It seems difficult to overstate the scale of the issues (outlined here) facing both humanity and the biosphere as a whole: from climate change to biodiversity loss, and from increasing economic inequalities to the rise of authoritarian governments,\u00a0 <\/span>global trends are hardly cause for optimism.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I tried to outline some essential points of concern on this page<\/a>. More recently, I have also (thanks to the indispensable George<\/a>) come across the hugely stimulating concepts of \u201cplanetary boundaries<\/a>,\u201d and of \u201cdoughnut economics<\/a>.\u201d As a brief summary, the first notion identifies 9 \u201cboundaries\u201d out of which we should absolutely refrain from pushing the planet, for fear of reaching tipping points that would trigger extreme, irreversible, and unpredictable change at the world scale:<\/p>\n As we can see from this graph, the authors of this concept (Johan Rockstr\u00f6m and his team) estimate that we have already moved out of the \u201csafe\u201d zone (the blue circle) for at least four of these earth-system processes: climate change, biosphere integrity, land-use change, and biogeochemical flows (mostly flows of nitrogen and phosphorus, in which agriculture and other forms of organic pollution play a critical role). In the case of the last two boundaries, we have even entered a phase of extremely high risk.<\/p>\n Kate Raworth\u2019s notion of \u201cdoughnut economics\u201d takes planetary boundaries as a basis, but adds to them a \u201csocial foundation,\u201d measures of essential human deprivation:<\/p>\n Graphic by Kate Raworth and Christian Guthier\/The Lancet Planetary Health<\/i><\/p>\n In sum, our goal as a species should be to remain within the safe green zone\u2014within our \u201cecological ceiling,\u201d but above a common \u201csocial foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n I find this framework particularly useful and thought-provoking.<\/p>\n And yet, each of the parameters mapped out on this graph represent an infinite complexity of flows and inter-related phenomena on the world scale. Given the immensity of the challenge, how should one go about deciding where to act, and what to do with one\u2019s limited time?<\/p>\n Of course, it is possible to set such \u201cmega-issues\u201d as climate change or social equity as one\u2019s focus, from a macroscopic perspective, and to make it one\u2019s mission to fight this phenomenon on a global level\u2014within such large organisations, for example, as Oxfam, the WWF or UNEP. Thousands of people do precisely this, and I am sure they find their work to be profoundly meaningful and rewarding.<\/p>\n On the other hand, it is probably just as commendable to act in a local fashion, and try to make the world a better place by first making one\u2019s home, one\u2019s neighborhood, and\/or one\u2019s city a better place\u2014the Transition network<\/a>, to name but one example, has shown just how potent grassroots organizing (alied to the power of the Internet) can be.<\/p>\n I find both those approaches necessary to make any sort of real progress toward a world that is fairer, more humane, and especially more respectful of the natural ecosystems that we are a part of. However, I also feel that neither is really satisfying, as far as I am concerned.<\/p>\n To put it briefly, I am skeptical as to whether global organizations or their grassroots counterparts are really best suited to bringing about change at the scale\u2014and especially, the speed we need right now. This is but a gut feeling.<\/p>\n I am willing to believe that institutions like the various UN bodies, or huge NGOs like the WWF have been instrumental in contributing to solve some of the issues mentioned above; but is it at all possible for such vast organisations to avoid the pitfalls of bureaucracy, and to successfully deal with each and every one of the very diverse issues they chose to tackle? Anecdotal evidence from conversations with friends working in such institutions seems to generally point to a negative answer.<\/p>\n Likewise, I am quite confident that local action can be very efficient in tackling important social or environmental issues, or simply in providing people from a certain area with healthier, happier lifestyles, bringing them closer to nature and giving extra meaning and beauty to their lives. These are invaluable rewards in themselves. Nonetheless, one need only consider the very marginal and fragmented nature of such initiatives, even in such a relatively free and wealthy country as France for example, in which people enjoy a high level of education overall, to realize the limits of the \u201cpower of example\u201d (see this book review<\/a>, in French, for further details); as for the Transition movement, it may be growing, but a decade after it started, its scale still remains minuscule<\/a> worldwide. In other words, while such local actions are far from negligible, I cannot but doubt the strength of their impact on a national level, to say nothing of the world scale.<\/p>\n These criticisms in no way negate the importance of these various ways of organising. Believing that only a certain form of social and political action should take place would be naive and foolish.<\/p>\n However, in view of the above, as regards the way to answer my own question at the beginning of this article, I am feeling increasingly interested in organisations (or action networks) that would correspond to the following criteria:<\/p>\n This last point is, to me, especially crucial. What I refer to as \u201croot causes\u201d would correspond to the third and fourth levels of the well-known \u201ciceberg model\u201d used in systems thinking:<\/p>\n (Source<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n In a word, this mode of thinking involves tackling the deepest structural basis of the issue under consideration. For example, simply forbidding people to cut down trees in the Amazon Basin would only address deforestation patterns<\/i>, and the efficiency of this kind of policy might only be very shallow. But making European cattle only consume feed made from sustainably-produced soy might considerably decrease the incentive for farmers in Brazil to cut down the forest to plant soy\u2014especially if they can rely on more sustainable livelihoods\u2014thus dealing with some underlying structures<\/i> of the problem. But one could go even deeper, and go about converting Europeans to a mostly vegetarian diet, and educate Brazilian farmers and their children to the benefits of ecosystems services, to change the mental models<\/i> that are primarily to blame for the fact that people even cut trees to raise cattle\u2026<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s imagine we want to find (or create) organisations that tackle the root causes of some of the major social and ecological issues that the world faces today. The next problem is that these issues are so overwhelmingly vast and far-reaching, in both their causes and their consequences. Can any single organisation take on the root causes of \u201cclimate change,\u201d \u201cbiodiversity loss\u201d or \u201cworld poverty\u201d as a whole? Even reducing one\u2019s scope to only certain particularly prominent structural elements of such issues appears challenging to me; the sheer magnitude of the problem seems to make its perimeter hardly compatible with the requirements I raised above, in terms of organisation size, efficiency, and focus.<\/p>\n (Again, this is all just intuition and guesswork here, I haven\u2019t read any comparative studies of organisational efficiency relative to organisations\u2019 size and scope; I might be wrong.)<\/p>\n From this starting point, it might make sense to reduce the scope of the \u201cmajor issue\u201d under consideration, so as to make it more actionable. But how to do this and yet keep the global scale of the \u201cdoughnut\u201d in mind? In other words, can one identify a limited number of major \u201cleverage points\u201d which, if solved, might synergetically help combat several problems at once?<\/p>\n In the remainder of this article, I will try to do just that. What I present here is a set of five \u201cissue nexuses,\u201d for lack of a better word. Each of these elements, in combination with the others, plays a fundamental role in causing (or exacerbating) the major issues mentioned at the beginning of this article. They are interconnected and self-reinforcing. Bringing one down will only solve part of the global equation; but if each of them can be tackled with maximum strength and efficiency, then many root causes of such diverse issues as climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, world poverty or wealth inequalities will be addressed in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n What confirms my opinion that these elements are so fundamental is that they could also be read as fundamental paradigms <\/i>which mankind should phase out of, in order to make any substantial progress:<\/p>\n This is but a tentative list, for my personal use. Any feedback and criticism would be most welcome.<\/p>\n (Or: \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t grow, we\u2019re screwed\u201d)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Economic growth is vital to the stable functioning of modern (industrialized) societies as we know them. Without it, everything starts to fall apart (public services, employment, general well-being, etc.). Therefore, all mainstream economics places its pursuit at the heart of its models<\/a>.<\/p>\n Historically, it has indeed been thanks to economic expansion (and to the ongoing technological innovation at its core) that societies have been able to achieve higher standards of living, including better education, healthcare, nutrition, etc.<\/p>\n However, this historical expansion has been carried out at an increasingly high social and environmental cost worldwide. Social, because the need to find the resources and labor necessary for production have generally led to immense human exploitation and suffering on behalf of the owners of the means of production; and environmental, because economic growth is by definition a process of ever-increasing production and consumption of goods and services, and therefore of raw materials and energy. The extraction of materials and energy has led to deforestation, to soil, water and air pollution, and of course to vast emissions of greenhouse gases, among other impacts.<\/p>\n Although some have raised the possibility that economic growth could be somehow \u201cdecoupled\u201d from material and energy consumption (i.e. every extra unit of GDP would require less materials and less energy), this decoupling has never taken place<\/a> as of yet.<\/p>\n A case can be made for the continued focus on economic growth as a fundamental pursuit of society within many \u201cdeveloping\u201d countries, in which a large share of the population still lives in poverty. But in the case of \u201cdeveloped\u201d societies, where (1) the fundamental needs of the vast majority of people are met on a stable, everyday basis, (2) the average GDP per capita (or any equivalent measure) has already reached levels beyond which any additional unit does not bring more satisfaction\/happiness, and (3) any additional unit of GDP entails considerable social and\/or environmental impacts around the world: the pursuit of economic growth should no longer be necessary\u2014or at least, it should lose its central position within macroeconomic models. On the contrary, in such countries, it is high time for the already accumulated wealth to be better shared among people, and for social safety nets to be extended to cover everyone in need, so as to attain the highest possible levels of general prosperity.<\/p>\n Therefore, a new \u201csteady-state\u201d economics is needed, which would enable societies to remain stable and prosperous without the need to rely on every-increasing production and consumption\u2014and perhaps even to accept more \u201csimple\u201d or \u201csober\u201d lifestyles, with less emphasis on material accumulation.<\/p>\n (Or: \u201cIt is normal for a few people to own the same wealth as half the world\u2014and to use it to rule us all\u201d)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Since the end of the 1970s, and especially since the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, neoliberalism has led to an increasing democratic deficit in the world\u2014especially in the US, and in global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, but also in many other countries into which this ideology was \u201cexported\u201d with or without the consent of local people (from Chile in 1973 to Russia in 1991 or Greece in 2015).<\/p>\n Due to the rise of financial capitalism and to labor deregulation, once-powerful labour unions have grown weak, and the workforce atomized, while global firms emancipated from national states have appeared and spread thanks to trade globalization. In order to attract or keep foreign investments in the territories they represent, politicians now have important incentives to partner up with these firms, thus forming a global dominant class<\/a> controlling business, states, the media, and international institutions. These elites have also overwhelmingly benefitted economically from the neoliberal enterprise. For example, between 1993 and 2012, the top 1% richest people in the US saw their incomes grow by 86.1%<\/a>, while the incomes of the bottom 99% only grew by 6.6%. Most of the wealth created in advanced economies since the 1980s has been captured by the rich, which has not been of great economic benefit to countries as a whole. [1. Stiglitz, J.\u00a0Globalization and Its Discontents.\u00a0<\/em>2003]<\/p>\n As for citizens, they have been turned into consumers, passive observers of the political spectacle, whose votes no longer challenge the status quo\u2014except through the election of populist, xenophobic leaders.<\/p>\n The effects of this \u201cpost-democratic\u201d trend are far-reaching. The increasing difficulty for ordinary citizens to exert any meaningful control over political processes ensures that the globalized elites may continue pursuing their self-serving goals, generally in a short-termist manner that does not take into account the public well-being, nor the impact of their activities on the planet as a whole (which is exponentially higher than that of poorer populations) [2.\u201cThe biggest source of planetary-boundary stress today is excessive resource consumption by roughly the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world\u2019s population, and the production patterns of the companies producing the goods and services that they buy.\u201d\u2014 Raworth, K. A safe and Just Space for Humanity<\/i> – Oxfam Discussion Paper, 2012]. This self-enrichment process increases economic and social inequalities, leading to a world of \u201chaves\u201d and \u201chave-nots\u201d; faced with the situation, the latter group is becoming more and more receptive to politically or religiously extreme messages, which foreshadows possible new conflicts.<\/p>\n In a word, neoliberal globalization has had very negative impacts on the world, on social, political and environmental levels. A paradigm shift towards more meaningful (as opposed to merely formal<\/i>) democracy is absolutely necessary to avoid further increase of inequalities, unchecked environmental destruction, and the resurgence of conflicts and authoritarianism.<\/p>\n (Or: \u201cMake the World Great Again\u201d)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The industrial civilization has been largely built on the exploitation of cheap and abundant fossil fuel reserves, especially coal and oil.<\/p>\n However, the threat of runaway climate change now makes it necessary to stop using such energy sources, and accomplish a complete transition as soon as possible to renewable sources of energy. At least 80% of all fossil fuel sources<\/a> currently confirmed to be in the ground must remain there to limit global warming to 2\u00baC.<\/span><\/p>\n Besides considerably lowering the human impact on climate change, transitioning to renewables is also likely to bring about many benefits in terms of:<\/p>\n Obviously, keeping the maximum of fossil fuels in the ground and accomplishing a global transition to renewable sources of energy is no panacea. In a growth economy, for instance, an ever-increasing amount of materials will be needed to produce windmills or solar panels, thus requiring ever more extraction of natural resources around the globe (often to the detriment of the local populations and ecosystems). But a radical transformation of the global energy system is a necessary step toward a fairer and less destructive human presence on the planet.<\/p>\n (Or: \u201cTo solve hunger in the world, we should just use more fertilizers, pesticides, and GMO\u201d)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The so-called \u201cGreen Revolution\u201d that spread around the world during the twentieth century might have increased global food security and reduced the prevalence of famines\u2014although this is still a topic of debate. What is quite sure is that by encouraging the mass cultivation of a limited number of crops, and through the massive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, these practices have notably decreased agricultural and wild biodiversity, and led to global land degradation and soil nutrients depletion, as well as an increase of pests and diseases affecting crops. This, in turn, also pushed farmers to cut down large swaths of forests around the globe to farm new productive lands\u2014and the erosion that ensued exacerbated topsoil losses, leading to further depletion of the ground. As a result, we might have only 60 years of harvests<\/a> left globally, if things carry on this way. In sum, \u201cpast agricultural performance is not indicative of future returns,\u201d according to a recent FAO report<\/a>.<\/p>\n Besides, high intensity agricultural production is largely reliant<\/a> on fossil fuels for the production of pesticides and nitrates\u2014not to mention machinery operation. This contributes to the human impact on the climate, and makes phasing out fossil fuels even more difficult. The widespread use of these chemical products has also had severe impact on soil and water pollution, and on human and animal health.<\/p>\n Furthermore, while the \u201cGreen Revolution\u201d was largely state-sponsored in the beginning, intensive agriculture is now a market increasingly controlled by multinational corporations such as Monsanto or Bayer (now a single entity), which sell the seeds, the pesticides, and the fertilizers to their clients worldwide. Especially with the advent of seed patenting, leads to increased socioeconomic dependence of farmers upon these corporations for their entire food production process. This is likely to further exacerbate global economic inequalities.<\/p>\n Finally, monocropping tends to be very sensitive to extreme weather events, among other climate-induced impacts.<\/p>\n On the other hand, agroecological practices have been demonstrated to bring yields at least comparable<\/a> to (if not higher than) those obtained through intensive agriculture, while having a far lighter impact on the soil\u2014and even favouring soil regeneration, since such systems make very little use of chemical inputs such as pesticides or fertilizers. As these practices generally rely on combinations of multiple crops, they are also much more resilient to climate change. Agroecological farming systems also mitigate impacts on climate change, as they produce soil that stores carbon, and their cultivation does not emit greenhouse gases. Other environmental impacts (such as soil and water pollution, etc.) are also minimized, while also boosting agro-biodiversity.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wazabizapto.org\/life\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Boundaries-2015update.jpg\")
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1. Economic growth<\/b><\/h2>\n
2. Post-democracy<\/b><\/h2>\n
3. Fossil fuels<\/b><\/h2>\n
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4. Destructive agriculture<\/b><\/h2>\n