Current policy responses try to address food through intensive agriculture, biodiversity through protected areas, and climate change through reducing emissions.
In 2023 the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) met in Montreal, adopting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a shared international roadmap out of the ecological crisis. This ambitious commitment includes 23 targets aimed at reversing habitat and species loss, including Target 3 (“30x30”), which calls for effectively protecting 30% of the world’s terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030. At present only about 17% of terrestrial and 8% of marine areas are under some form of protection, which often may not be truly effective.
Protecting 30% of the world’s wild areas by 2030
30x30 is an immensely positive development and a huge commitment, but it won’t be achievable unless people at local, regional, national and international levels begin to understand and endorse the prime value of intact ecosystems and thus their species.
To ease the relentless pressure on other life, we must also learn to reduce and reverse disturbance and further degradation of already impoverished ecosystems, and to reconnect these remnants to increase their viability for other species. Given the prevailing anthropocentrism, this is a huge challenge.
In the long term, however, we need to also address our own numbers and needs. Clearly, 10 or 12 billion top predators on Earth are too many. They put the trophic pyramid upside down, creating massive ecological and ethical fall-out.
The human species urgently needs ethical and economically manageable ways to curb its explosive proliferation. The goal must be an optimizing rather than maximizing use of nature. This will require to
- Self-limit the number of humans straining the ecosystems
- Self-limit the number and scope of individual and collective human desires.
In short: Co-existence with other life forms. This requires acknowledging that we are no more and no less than “life that wants to live amidst life that wants to live” (Albert Schweitzer, 1875-1965).
We offer no cheap advice on how to tackle this immense problem. However, tabooing it belies its existential nature, enormity and pervasiveness.
Contribute!
There's only one wild. Join us in saving it.
