How on Earth can we live together – we the humans and we with nature?

Our world has gotten out of hand. The significant financial and economic crises are insignificant compared to global environmental destabilization. Global economic contraction hurts hundreds of millions of people. An environment turning hostile to the human condition threatens billions.

Current initiatives by international groupings (such as G8), organizations and national governments promise to get the economy back on track, to normal. However, that “normality” produced the conflicts and crises that must now be resolved. Our political and market systems are not in control of humanity’s destiny.

We have an epic convergence of crises of interacting systems on our hands: economic/financial production, energy systems, urbanization, poverty alleviation, education, health, governance and security. They feed upon each other. These systems of human design interact with and depend on the functionality of ecosystems.

The biosphere is , as James Lovelock first discerned, a living complex adaptive system. The purpose of nature is to produce and reproduce life. To produce life of higher orders demands a requisite diversity of species.

Humans are the one species of nature that has the intelligence to invent tools and arms to expand its dominion. Humans have designed a global system for value creation, the purpose of which is to grow welfare and wealth that is on a collision course with nature. In any contest between nature and humans, nature will win. The choice for humans is to become sufficiently disciplined in order to avoid widespread disaster.

Systems interact, adapt. That is their innate means of survival.

The basic philosophy of the human world is one that encourages competition over adaptation, destruction over harmony. To believe that there would only be profitable solutions to the ecosystems crises would be a tragic self delusion. In the end we will be forced to do whatever it takes, as long as we consider our lives priceless.

The current application of capitalism is encouraging destabilization, not sustainability, as a means for innovation and economic growth. The focus of the present is primarily on the here and now. The future of our governance will only be found in a systems approach to how the world works. We have to abandon those models that lock our human activities into silos of stake-holder interests in isolation and in conflict with each other. We have to abandon hierarchy, linearity, reductionism and separatism as organizing principles. We need to enter learning, feedback circularity, and participatory processes into economic, corporate and political governance. The context for working in one’s own interest must include the interest of the whole. A new identity will inevitably emerge. Economists and ecologists must merge to recognize the moral and ecological boundary conditions that must not be transgressed.

Conflict among humans can be managed by conversations, negotiations, rule of law, agreements… or by war. Human societies have proven their serial inability to pre-actively design and harmonize technological, economic, social and political transitions. Millions have suffered from conquests, colonialism, slavery, empire building, genocides, religious and ideological hegemony and persecution. More often than not such transitions have provoked wars and terror. Humanity is a huge reservoir of angst. This must not be overlooked. Albert Schweitzer observed, perhaps prophetically, “that humanity has lost its ability to foresee and to forestall”. Can we prove him wrong?

To reconcile humans’ progress is the easy part. The difficult part is to re-stabilize the relationship between the exponential expansion of the human species, its economic activity with the functionality of ecosystems. Of this, modern humans have limited knowledge and scant know-how. Conscious environmental policies have only existed for a few decades. But despite new science, policies, technologies and business models a dangerous situation has further deteriorated. The next generation of policy frameworks, technologies and business models must provide a satisfactory way to stop the economy from bleeding as we stop the ice-caps from melting. For this we must incentivize technological leaps – primarily in every production - to spur economic growth for the soon nine billion who must learn to live equitably on this planet. This is our assignment and our legacy.

Globalization brings benefits. That is why we do it. But it also brought a new order of magnitude of risks. The present playing out of dangerous planetary crises is the wake up call to action for which the international community was irresponsibly unprepared. There can be no other consequence of the globalization dynamics than to design a governance system that serves the human interests of security in our ecological planetary system. Priority Number One.

This requires the reconfiguration of political processes, democratic mechanisms, international law, the concepts of sovereignty and the nation state and of the organization of political power and force.

Our focus must broaden to include our pasts and an infinite future within the ever present. The next systems of governance must provide us the answers to the question: “How on Earth can we live together – we the humans and we with nature?”

Is the planet in our hands? No. We are in the hands of the planet.

Bo Ekman
Tällberg Foundation

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