For the third in our series of Deeper Thinking webinars, Beyond Carbon: nature’s big moment, we had the privilege of listening to Tom Rivett-Carnac, who has been a leading figure in developing mainstream action on climate change. Tom was Senior Advisor to Christiana Figueres when she acted as Executive Director to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Together, they co-authored the book The Future we Choose and founded Global Optimism, which – among other things – delivers an excellent weekly podcast.
In this discussion, we wanted to draw on Tom’s expertise in the climate world and ask what can be done to help create a groundswell of support to address biodiversity loss, a less talked about – but equally urgent – ecological crisis. In this piece, we pick out some of the key points that emerged from the webinar, which you can watch in full below.
The ecological crises we face – climate breakdown, the destruction and degradation of nature, the spread of zoonotic diseases – are all connected. To think and act otherwise is a mistake.
“2015 was the last moment where it made sense to think about the components of the Paris Agreement and of climate change and the destruction of nature and the nature emergency that we’re in, in isolation. In 2015, to get to the Paris Agreement it was necessary, to some degree, to break down what was happening and focus on certain elements of it so we could get to the long-term goal to reach net zero. But we were aware that we were oversimplifying what we were doing, in order to make it possible. Since then, the name of the game has been integration between the different elements and they’ve had to come back together again, and that’s been an incredibly positive journey.
I would say the issue is not how we replicate climate success in the field of biodiversity, but how we get people to understand that this was always the same thing.”
We must stop seeing these issues in silos
“If we continue to see these issues in silos, it will be almost impossible to get our arms around the entirety of the problem.
It is ridiculous that we have structured our not for profit system in these vertical ways – some people are concerned about climate, others are concerned about biodiversity. I think sometimes we have to put our hands up and admit that maybe this is what is partly creating the problem.
People who work in the not for profit space are to some degree funded and incentivised to say ‘my issue’s the most important’. Actually, from the perspective of either a business or a concerned citizen, the integrations and interconnections are much more important.”