One of the most common questions asked of environmentalists is ‘What can I do?’. The answer is different for every individual, but a new framework released in a study today is the ‘Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy’, or ‘Four Steps for the Earth’.
Two of the authors of this study, Hollie Booth (DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford) and Sophus zu Ermgassen (PhD researcher at the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent) explain how this framework could help us all contribute to transforming humanity’s relationship with nature.
As 2021 begins, we are at a precarious time in both human and natural history. Human-made objects now outweigh all living things on planet earth, and over 8,000 species are threatened with extinction due to human actions. This is drastically undermining the capacity of nature to contribute to good quality of life for people, as indicated by climate change, land degradation, and even outbreaks of infectious diseases like COVID-19.
This decade must be the turning point, where we transform humanity’s relationship with nature, and put the planet on a path to recovery. This is the vision of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which is currently developing a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, for the world to “live in harmony with nature” by 2050. There has never been a more important time for this bold vision, and everyone has a role to play in its delivery. However, conservation actions to regenerate the natural world are typically disconnected from the human processes that draw down on our planet’s resources. How can we engage the whole world in nature-positive living?
Everyone has the power, and a responsibility, to become nature positive by 2030. Image: Hollie Booth
What is our role?
In general, nature is harmed by our consumption, and healed by our stewardship. For example, while average UK consumers do not live in a ‘biodiversity hotspot’, their diet and fashion choices ripple through globalised supply chains, causing impacts in forests and oceans at the source of the raw inputs into their products.
Alternatively, indigenous and rural populations in the Brazilian Amazon may rely on hunting and consumption of wildlife for their food security, but also play a role in protecting millions of square km of tropical forest from conversion, and can aid the recovery of threatened species.
On an even larger scale, multi-national corporations, which source vast quantities of raw materials from producers throughout the world, can shape entire ecosystems. Yet they also have the power to dictate the standards by which they are produced and used. While these three groups operate in different places and at different scales, they all have one thing in common: the responsibility, and the power, to have a net positive impact on the natural world. But how?