The Deteriorating Condition of Our Common Home

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely. That is the sombre message from a landmark soon-to-be-published report entitled Nature’s Dangerous Decline. This report, coming from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), is the most comprehensive scientific report ever undertaken on nature and the natural environment; in fact it is so comprehensive that, at the time of writing (January 2020) the full six-chapter report, expected to exceed 1,500 pages, had not yet been published. However, the gist of the report has been made available through a 12-page Media Release and a 39-page Summary for Policy-Makers, both issued in May 2019, almost exactly four years after the publication of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ encyclical on care for our Common Home. The IPBES report presents an ominous picture of the way the health of the natural systems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before. The people are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. While more food, energy and materials than ever before are now being supplied to people in most places, this is increasingly at the expense of nature’s ability to provide such contributions in the future and frequently undermines nature’s many other contributions. The net result is that the biosphere is being altered to an unparalleled degree, while biodiversity is declining faster than at any previous time in human history. This very full report presents decision-makers with the authoritative science, knowledge and policy options that they must consider in their concern to preserve and maintain the natural environment. But while it maps out in considerable detail the disastrous course upon which humanity and the modern world are set, the IPBES report, like Laudato Si’, also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference: what is needed is urgent and unprecedented social and economic transformation at every level, from local to global, aimed at bringing about a fundamental, system-wide reorganisation of the technological, economic, political and social features that govern today’s world, including its ideals, goals and values. Provided the necessary urgent and concerted efforts are made to promote such radical trans-formative change, nature can be conserved, restored and used sustainably while simultaneously meeting other global goals set by society, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations. Furthermore, several ways in which the environment is being degraded was discussed and the different repercussions these had on the future of the environment. The actions to be taken on behalf of the common home were outlined.