Humanity and the 21 st century’s resource gauntlet: a commentary on Ripple et al.’s article “World scientists’ warning to humanity: a second notice”

Abstract

A year ago, Ripple et al.’s “Warning to Humanity” was published (Ripple et al. 2017), reigniting debate on the importance of addressing the environmental crisis that humanity will increasingly face in the 21st century. While we fully endorse the pertinence of this initiative, we identify critical gaps which impede the capacity of this call to action in fostering the positive change that humanity needs. With our present manuscript, we provide a complementary assessment to Ripple et al.’s article for addressing the current environmental crisis, as well as some alternative paths forward. We emphasize the importance of considering historical patterns and underlying drivers of the current global socio-ecosystem, particularly in relation to social inequalities, human demography, and food production systems. Without such considerations, several of the steps proposed in the warning might be interpreted as prescriptions from a western-biased vision of our global socio-ecosystem, undermining the fundamental message of this unique initiative for achieving sustainability.