Man-Earth system problems and solutions, Part 1

Contents

The Great Restoration of Nature – A Proposed Global Environmental Framework Introduction Global Problems 2. The Impacts of Man 3. Global Economic and Social Order 4. How Nations treat each other 6. Systemic Problems. Lack of change in the Status Quo Structural Solutions Towards a New System Solution A Proposed Framework Solution – Global Economy with a Global Environmental Overlay Conclusion Recent posts:

November 11, 2024

The Great Restoration of Nature – A Proposed Global Environmental Framework

An examination of global system problems and potential solutions. Nature is still the best carbon removal and climate change solution we have. As Nations remain stuck in their orbits and continue to revisit old ground, new structural Climate Finance commitments and solutions must take precedence.

#COP13 #COP16 #COP29 #MOP36 #Reforestation #NatureProtection #Restoration #naturalcapital #greenfinance #greenbonds #bluebonds #movethemoney #CarbonDebtSwaps #DebtforNature #ClimateAction #Nature #Kazan #RightsofNature #IndigenousRights #EnviromentalGovernance #Ecology #NaturebasedSolutions #CarbonRemoval #EcosystemRestoration #GlobalRestoration #ClimateChange #Biodiversity #GlobalBiodiversityFramework #GenerationRestoration #LandDegradation #Conservation #Ecocide #InnovationFinance #SustainableLand #SDGs

Introduction

The solutions to limit and reverse the ecological crisis (including climate change) are already known.

But first we need to transcend the problems that are limiting action

The messaging of continued damage to the biosphere amidst inadequate action is clear:

GHG emissions are still increasing, despite the widespread adoption of Net Zero policies
Expectations for global mean temperature are already at 1.5 C and moving beyond.
We are entering new territory, in terms of the likelihood of climate tipping points.
We must prioritise the Great Restoration – Restoration of Nature and our highly diverse planetary ecosystems.

“We have the technology and knowledge to solve the climate crisis; we just need the political will.” James Hansen

Global Problems

1. Global Population

“The massive growth in the human population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity than any other single factor”

Sir David King

“If true ecological balance exists, then human populations should be stable. They would not grow rapidly for too long, nor would they crash”

Steven LeBlanc

The population explosion continues worldwide, with c.1.46 million new births per week and a historic doubling of the global population every 75 years. We now have 8.2 billion individuals on the planet, each one a potential ‘consumption engine’ within the global economy.

The overpopulation of Man is the main driver of the extinction of many kinds of wildlife, degradation of forests, water bodies and wildlands, and the creation of pollution, including CO2 and other GHGs.

We humans are not good at seeing non-linearity. But non-linearity is all around us. Accelerating ice loss and accelerating temperature increases from seemingly linear changes in GHG concentrations. More weather events and more extreme weather events. Longer dry seasons and more wildfires than the previous year and the year before that. Positive feedbacks that are now leading to climate tipping points. The list goes on.

All of this is fueled by population overshoot (non-linearity of population growth) and the accompanying industrialisation of the economy and the agricultural system to support such populations.

Population growth is slowing – but still exponential over a long enough time period:

c. 50 million in 400

1 billion in 1804

2 billion in 1927

4 billion in 1974

8.2 billion in 2024

More population growth compounds the existing problem – one that is already becoming too problematic and complex to solve.

Peak population is expected to be 9.5 billion under the SSP2-4.5 scenario.

“Except for giant meteorite strikes or other such catastrophes, Earth has never experienced anything like the contemporary human juggernaut. We are in a bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption that could push half of Earth’s species to extinction in this century.”

E. O. Wilson

The human climate niche and temperature extremes

Adapted from Lenton et al, Quantifying the human cost of global warming (2023)

Exposure outside the niche will result in increased morbidity, mortality, adaptation and displacement /migration. High temperatures have been linked to increased mortality, decreased labour productivity, decreased cognitive performance, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased crop yield potential, increased conflict, migration and infectious diseases.

2. The Impacts of Man

“There are five stacks of woe that our Man swarm brings: (1) Land scalping, (2) Resource depletion, (3) Starvation, (4) Social, political upheaval, and (5) Ecological/Evolutionary wounds.”

The Centre for Biological Diversity, in “Owning Up to Overpopulation”

“Ecology is bigger than capitalism, bigger than human civilisation itself. Yet for most of us ecology takes place somewhere in the sidelines of our existence, or in a classroom. We fail to grasp the gravity of our ignorance of basically almost everything that exists. On a planet with 10 million species, well over a third of habitable land has been modified by just one: humans. This is not a civilisation. This must be a type of infestation.”

George Tsakraklides

Our contemporary consumption and production patterns are the origin of the current environmental and social emergencies. We see the effects on the natural world of mankind’s activity, and how these interact with and impact upon the global biogeochemical cycles and the global commons.

The chief culprit for this situation is Man – our global population, our industrial scale activities, our social policies, our massive use of and changes to land, our use of fossil fuels and our wastes. We are in such a hurry to make “progress” and capital, that we do not clean up after ourselves (or see the need to, until recently).

But it is easy to polarise. In earlier times, fossil fuels were one of the main reasons behind improved living standards and longevity (through e.g. modern heating, medicines /petrochemicals) and why there is now population “overshoot” to 8.2 billion people and beyond. They have fostered and indirectly fed the global population, industrial growth and living standards.

But as part of some kind of Faustian bargain – the downside is GHG emissions, waste and many other anthropogenic stressors to the environment. The lucrative and hugely useful nature of fossil fuels has historically amplified their use and infiltration into every walk of life and government. But now to be seen as a virus or cancerous growth to be eradicated.

Taken to an even greater extreme, we have the excellent video “Man” (2013), by animator Steve Cutts.

On Life Capital and Capitalism, the late Profesor John McMurtry absolutely nailed it, when describing our entering of “the cancer stage of capitalism”.

“The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods.”

Prof. John McMurtry, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure

Banks and the Cancer Stage of Capitalism (1997) – original paper and book

On Social Order:

“Can we see in any media or even university press a paragraph of clear unmasking of a global regime that condemns a third of all children to malnutrition with more food than enough available?

In such a social order, thought becomes indistinguishable from propaganda. Only one doctrine is speakable, and a priest caste of its experts prescribes the necessities and obligations to all. Social consciousness is incarcerated within the role of a kind of ceremonial logic, operating entirely within the received framework of an exhaustively prescribed regulatory apparatus protecting the privileges of the privileged. Methodical censorship triumphs in the guise of scholarly rigor, and the only room left for searching thought becomes the game of competing rationalizations.”

Prof. John McMurtry, the Cancer Stage of Capitalism (1997)

And on the ‘money code’ pervasive to our modern way of existence:

“Beneath much confusion on the values we live by, there are in our epoch two primary sequences of value – in unseen but cumulative conflict with each other. The first is the money sequence of value which uses life as means to become more money for money possessors (producing money capital value over time as its regulating objective). The second is the life sequence of value which creates and uses means of life to enable more flourishing life (producing life capital over time as its regulating objective).”

“In accordance with the money sequence of value, unpriced ecological elements and systems are continuously wasted, polluted and exhausted as “externalities” of turning money into more money and commodities for private money possessors at maximum velocity and scale across continents. Over time, no level of life organization is untouched by the ruling global value mechanism.”

Prof. John McMurtry, The Global Crisis Of Values, PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD PROBLEMS-Vol . I and book

And for good measure a quote from the now centenarian ex-President:

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. President (1979)

Yes there are many problems with the world today:

A ‘life blind’ economic system that follows the ‘money code’ – extracting and redistributing ‘value’ (of all kinds) from populations, nations, Nature and future generations
A ‘global system’ that is unfair to the majority – and not dealing properly with the problems it exists to solve.
A world built on historical exploitation of the ‘underdeveloped’ world, full of colonial legacies
A world where ‘growth’ has always been the mantra – historically, policymakers have steered an economic ship, with growth the overriding focus – for jobs, revenues, budgets, continuity.
Policymakers are also stuck in a system that simply cannot accommodate the required change. There are no renaissance politicians at the current time – they normally appear after the problems are well under way.

4. How Nations treat each other

“The bargaining power that comes from the physical harm a nation can do another nation is reflected in notions like deterrence, retaliation, reprisal, terrorism, and wars of nerve, nuclear blackmail, armistice and surrender, as well as in reciprocal efforts to restrain that harm in the treatment of prisoners, in the limitation of war, and in the regulation of armaments.”

“The central characteristic of both forms of coercion is that they depend, ultimately, on cooperation by the party receiving the threat. This is by no means friendly cooperation, but it is cooperation nonetheless.”

Thomas Crombie Schelling, Arms and Influence (1966)

Structural problems to international cooperation arise when dominant powers undertake subtle (and not so subtle) exploitations of their perceived dominant position(s).

The resource-rich BRICS nations are actively championing the developing world and challenging the Western liberal democratic order, a.k.a. the “status quo coalition”. Notwithstanding other narratives and the Russia problem, the perception is that the US has abused its dominant position in the world order, to the detriment of the “Global South”.

Political actors routinely use coercive threats – to protect themselves and to preserve and promote their interests. The US is no stranger to this type of stratagem. US hegemony and the way the US formulates and achieves its foreign policy objectives have been increasingly criticised.

But even great powers possessing high levels of ‘coercive leverage’ over others find that target states can resist in unexpected ways.

“While a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community.”

Embassy of the People’s Republic of China

A rapidly globalized economy has highlighted the perceived divide between the “Global North” and “Global South”. According to Wallerstein’s world systems theory, a global capitalist system separates countries into the core (the North), semi-periphery and periphery (the South) – based primarily on their economic participation.

The Global South countries are still marked by the social, cultural and economic legacies of colonialism, even after independence. Home to c.85% of the world’s population and with youthful populations, many are resource-poor, economically-dependent nations.

Despite attempts to encourage international progress on climate action and other important global goals, the US – and by extension “Global North” countries – are increasingly perceived as seeking to impose their agendas on other countries.

BRICS+ players in the new multi-polar world are duly critical, and this is getting in the way of globally coordinated climate action and future climate deals.

“You have almost a system [akin to] apartheid South Africa where the minority decides for the majority, and that’s still the situation on the world stage today. We don’t want to be told what is right for us, we want the fault lines of the current global governance architecture to be redesigned, to be reformed, to be transformed […] we want to be part of the process to create a more equitable, a more inclusive, a multipolar global community […] ”

Dr. Anil Sooklal, Deputy Director-General – MEA, Department of International Relations and Cooperation; Former South African Ambassador to the EU

Some Post WW2 Era Context – World War 2 (WW2) transformed the United States from a mid-level global power to the leader of the “free world”. Two world wars, decolonization and declining UK economic (and British Pound) strength gave way to a new era of US and US dollar dominance. With exchange rates linked to gold reserves, and the US holding roughly two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves, the US dollar emerged as the new reserve currency for international trade.

Since WW2, the US has led the peacetime international order and frameworks. Exerting increasing power in international geopolitics and economic dominance. And since the Gulf War in 1991, the US has been the world’s dominant military, economic and political power.

Despite much ado about the BRICS’ economic strength and ‘de-dollarisation’ initiatives, the current picture is little changed.

5. The United Nations and Global Environmental Goals

The UN was not designed for such a unipolar world, and conflicts between the US and other UN members have increased.

Some 8 decades after its formation, the UN is still working to maintain international peace and security, uphold international law, protect human rights, and give humanitarian assistance. However, it is now also conducting new activities not originally envisioned – with economic, social, environmental and development goals.

The UN is increasingly visible in its work as planetary protector – with the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) relating to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and Destination 2030, ozone-depletion, land degradation, desertification, climate action and biodiversity protection – including national commitments (NDCs) and action plans.

The recent Kazan Declaration shows clear intent for the BRICS countries to take their own path – not in the wrong direction but with a wider ambit for member countries. Far from advocating for a break from the current international architecture, the Declaration is confirmatory:

“[W]e reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone, and the central role of the UN in the international system”.

6. Systemic Problems. Lack of change in the Status Quo

The notion of “status quo” is a key concept in sociological thinking.

The absence of significant structural changes is not necessarily a good quality for a living system. It can weaken or destabilize the host system, or lead to an increase in dissatisfaction and even to revolutionary events. In historical experience, new states of instability have led to significant social change.

The status quo needs to be shaken up periodically, as a form of ‘risk reset’. We see this in economics and markets (depressions, bubbles, Kondratieff cycles). We also see it in social systems (revolutions, reform of institutions, conflicts, repeal of laws).

Social and economic systems may be periodically reset/ corrected. But the biosphere cannot – economic activity has become an almost unstoppable juggernaut in terms of environmental damage. So we must aggressively pivot our economies towards sustainable activities and outcomes.

In today’s world, a non-changing status quo is indicative of a less governable system (too many actors and agendas, more complexity, more people to govern), with structural problems and syndromes that may be unhealthy for the host system. These are typically externalised as ‘world problems’. To list but a few:

A. Syndromes of Global Change

As set out in an earlier post and in the paper Syndromes of Global Change, our collective development has been described by some 16 identified syndromes of unsustainable global environmental and social change. Such syndromes have led to the current status quo and the imbalances in carbon, water and other budgets, and the continuing feedback effects.

B. Ecosystem stresses and feedbacks

“Maybe 2024 is the best year of the ones that are coming, as incredible as it may seem …. The climate models show a big share of the [Amazon] biome is going to become drier.”

Erika Berenguer, senior research associate, University of Oxford.

C. Systematic Land Use and Land Cover changes

Source: Roy et al. (2022) – Anthropogenic Land Use and Land Cover Changes—A Review on Its Environmental Consequences and Climate Change

D. And more generally, a gamut of Systemic Anthropogenic problems

Source: GreenFin, Author compilation (2020)

“Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways. The changes we experience will increase with additional warming”

Panmao Zhai, IPCC Working Group Co-Chair

E. “Dragon King” risks.

“Positive feedbacks, when unchecked, can produce runaways until the deviation from equilibrium is so large that other effects can be abruptly triggered and lead to ruptures and crashes.”

Didier Sornette, Professor – Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at ETH Zurich, Professor – Swiss Finance Institute. Previously Professor of Geophysics at UCLA.

Developed by Prof. Sornette, a “Dragon King” is a double metaphor for an event that is both extremely large in size or effect (a “king”) and born of unique origins (a “dragon”) relative to its peers (other events from the same system).

Dragon King (DK) events are associated with mechanisms such as positive feedback, tipping points, domino effects, bifurcations, and phase transitions, that tend to occur in nonlinear and complex systems. These serve to amplify Dragon king events to extreme levels.

“It’s not that the world hasn’t had more carbon dioxide, it’s not that the world hasn’t been warmer. The problem is the speed at which things are changing. We are inducing a sixth mass extinction event kind of by accident and we don’t want to be the ‘extinctee.’” – Bill Nye

“Capitalism is going to deal itself out of existence, but before it does that, you’re gonna pay $50 for a latte, because inflation is going impoverish all of us before people get p**d off enough to realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed.”

“The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

Terence McKenna

Structural Solutions

The global economy was built on fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) and abundant, cheap money.
The system of economics is non-natural, non-scientific and essentially unlimited in scope.
We live on a finite planet, with the governing economic system “extracting” from Nature and people on an industrial scale, to the point where it is near collapse.

The current path is adapting, but not quickly enough to be ‘truly sustainable’. Better that the necessary actions are taken with “best efforts” unity, before greater problems overtake events and the wider population realises it is now a survival game. None of us wish to contemplate the scenarios depicted in apocalyptic films such as The Road and Mad Max.

The required solution path involves rapid implementation of Nature Restoration plans.
There are currently no working GHG reduction plans of significant impact.

The IPCC, the UN body for evaluating the science related to climate change, makes it clear that no single sector, action, or fuel type can provide the required emission reductions. 1.5 C is already gone, and 2 C appears locked in.

The current ‘default’ path for climate action does not actually involve Nature:

– reducing CO2 emissions from industry by 75-90% by 2050

– supplying most electricity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar

– significantly enhancing energy efficiency across all sectors.

One structural solution is for the ‘under-represented’ to be fairly represented and for this to become law, in terms of:

– environmental obligations (ecocide and other offences as crimes);

– rights for and obligations to our children and the future generations; and

– rights for and obligations to Nature and its custodians.

The World has politics and vested interests that seek to maintain the status quo and prevent radical effective solutions. Money interests and “the money code” are at the heart of this. It will prove impossible to overturn something so deeply ingrained – through some form of social system re-engineering.

A mass-acceptable structural solution is not to reinvent the world, but to impose an environmental tax and funds overlay as part of the global system. To teach everyone how to act in a Nature Positive way, according to their own ‘money code’ rules.
We might also be able to add reform overlays to governance and democracy as regards Nature, through enhancements and ‘sandboxes’ for online forms of collaboration and voting. With adoption of Nature Positive resolutions and initiatives through direct voting.

Challenges with Major Transitions

“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer”

Terence McKenna

“..it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom.”

M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author

Transitioning to a different system more suited to Nature Protection and Restoration, will encounter some structural resistance from incumbents who are doing very well.

“There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem”

Eldridge Cleaver, US writer and political activist

Linear Transitions and Networked Transitions

Linear Plans and Responses

What would be the strategy if there wasn’t a GHG-Climate polycrisis, just rising sea level, or just deforestation? We would be faster to react, as with the ozone layer and CFCs problem nearly 40 years ago, when swift global action was taken. Mobilising “linear” plans to deal with singular problems is straightforward and we humans are good at responding to such situations. We do not handle non-linearity so well.

The global response for sea level rise might be (i) build more dikes, (ii) build sea dams where sensible, (iii) build ‘sand motors’ as in the Netherlands, (iv) ‘room for the river’ capacity, (v) remove /refit more areas preventing natural drainage in cities and towns. Alongside strategic programs for moving to higher ground, recovery and adaptation, progressive abandonment of repeat-flood properties in flood plains and coastal areas. Simple emergency management programs, some civil engineering and observing how everyone else around the world is responding.

The global response for deforestation might be (i) legal and societal reform – to stop deforestation activities occurring in practical on-the-ground terms, with (ii) adequate policing, meaning (iii) criminal penalties for ecocide and environmental harm and evasion of governmental/ environmental authority actions; (iv) army, police and specialised enforcement of the environmental laws; (v) sustainable quotas for activities deemed legitimate and in keeping with the overall environmental conservation objectives. Along with Nature Protection, Conservation and Restoration programs.

Formalising the crime of ecocide and serious environmental harms is a concrete step to redressing environmental wrongs. It is a great start, albeit decades late. Belgium has already put this into law, and a handful of countries will do the same shortly. This will quickly go global and with sufficient legal consequences for offenders, will change corporate behaviours. We don’t have time to waste – pursuing polluters will come later, once ecocide is a crime. The priority is to have national and international legal frameworks that are effective in protecting Nature, and that penalise Nature-negative behaviour at company and society /government levels.

Such ‘linear plans and responses’ involve strategy, planning and execution. As well as an understanding of how big the problem is likely to be over time, so that actions and funding can be distributed according to the longer term strategy. Actions and plans will naturally build on the already existing plans and programs in place, and can be accomplished quickly.

Multiple Linear Plans and Responses

Closer to real life, what would be the strategy if there were several linear responses needed, all longer term and all running in parallel? Sea level, deforestation, decarbonisation and effective waste management. Again we are faster to respond and formulate linear plans, and doing so in parallel simply takes more resource, and an understanding of how big each problem is likely to be over time, to make a coherent and well thought out longer term strategy.

Again, actions and plans will naturally build on the already existing plans and programs, where we have them in place. If we don’t have the necessary infrastructure in place, then time is needed to build it, also dependent on funding and the time needed to arrange that. And so on. There are more layers to the ‘solution onion’, and the sense of urgency becomes greater still.

For waste management, the problem is larger and more endemic – as we must counter industrial and societal norms across a whole range of activities, value chains and levels of accountability. There are huge geographical variations and funding available as regards waste disposal, waste management, littering, sustainability of products, packaging and materials, production and life cycle waste streams, and so on. Some countries manage their waste loads effectively, but more could be done regarding circular activities such as ‘waste-to-energy’, ‘waste-to-carbon’, and more generally waste-to-X. Other countries may export part of their waste problem to other countries with lower or no regulation – this is a problem requiring penalties for action, alongside workable solutions for both the waste-generating and the waste-receiving countries. The response becomes complex as (i) funding and access to waste and recycling technologies are typical problems, leading to apathy (ii) the lack of waste infrastructure leads to a compounding and long duration waste overfill / dumping / landfill problem with accompanying health, environmental and other risk factors.

For decarbonisation, often the low carbon processes and technologies need to be created first, itself a process with timing driven by lack of funding and risk appetite for novel technologies. New industries need to be created and there is less understanding outside and even inside the industry. Again, to form the response plan we need to understand the root causes of the problem, so that responses are not wasteful and directly address the problem we are trying to solve.

The Jevons paradox – technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, yet the falling cost of use induces increases in demand such that resource use is increased, rather than reduced. For example, governments have typically expected energy efficiency gains will lower energy consumption, rather than expecting the Jevons paradox.

Towards a New System Solution

We need to create a system solution that every nation will believe in and back, so there will necessarily be a variety of financing approaches and entities

A. Existing solutions are not working

Within the existing monetary and market frameworks, market-based incentive structures such as carbon credits have not worked well. Biodiversity credits won’t fare much better.

There are several types of credit and approaches in the marketplace. For the underlying projects, there is insufficient infrastructure in place for assessing, validating and monitoring project credentials and benefits.

Nature Restoration projects throughput and funding needs to be increased 100-fold. And the focus should be on Nature and its Restoration. Not so much cook stoves and similar – still important but a form of padding out the numbers, focusing on money /credits not the end goals.

From a system-wide viewpoint, a top down funding and infrastructural solution is needed, rather than more years of piecemeal progression.

B. Re-Purposing of Existing Subsidies

Environmentally-harmful activities persist. Despite the entire world being aware of climate change, deforestation and the impacts, in 2024 banks still lend to companies that are destructive to Nature. This perpetuates emissions increases, rising temperatures and extreme and changing weather patterns.

And governments still provide huge subsidies to fossil fuel interests, agricultural interests and other environmentally-harmful activities.

These situations persist due to sociopolitical agendas, the inertia of policymakers, the ‘capture’ of governments and politicians, and because once something is in place, it can become ‘structural’ and hard to undo.

While central banks and regulators introduce a slew of new regulations to change this behaviour – in Europe in particular – it will take years to fully percolate around the planet.

Scale of Funding

Environmentally-harmful subsidies may now collectively be worth over $ 7 trillion p.a.

The exact total is hard to know, even for determined sleuths. But it is a multiple of the funding currently being sought for environmental good – global climate commitments and biodiversity protection.

The global biodiversity protection plan will weigh in anywhere between $250-500 billion annually, once ultimately agreed. The Great Restoration of Nature is likely to cost considerably more over the long term.

The ‘climate funding’ required to meet a new 2 C goal – with 1.5 C already a busted flush, is higher still – at c. $4.5 trillion p.a. by 2030.

We have a greater need for lawyers and reformers. A force and a movement – to target and re-purpose existing subsidies and industry-supportive practices. Re-purposing and restructuring financial incentives for the good of humanity and not those special interests who currently benefit.

A united front to all politicians, backed by well-developed reform proposals and legal actions where useful, is the pragmatic way forwards. Change will always be resisted so the role of pro-environment legal action will become increasingly important over the next 5 years.

On the back of some landmark legal precedents and new laws in 2024 and 2025, the outlook for significant legal actions is improving greatly.

Dismantling subsidies and underlying activities that are incredibly damaging to nature is achievable. Reallocating them to Nature Restoration is sorely needed.

Critical mass already exists for renewable energy investment, with public commitments acting as a finance multiplier alongside private, third and fourth sector investments. To achieve proper scale and priority, Nature Restoration and other global-scale initiatives need a helping hand too.

C. Existing ‘Climate Funding’ Plans

The goals of existing climate plans are well established and mainstream – NDCs, energy transition, circular economy. This has been a very positive development in recent years.

But the focus on a low carbon energy system and economy does not reduce GHGs already in the atmosphere. They will only have an impact on future additions to GHGs and temperature i.e. additional to those already here and in the system pipeline.

D. Monetary Systems Overhaul?

A new paper by Kuypers (2024) introduces a novel money supply model with demurrage fees – to restructure economic incentives and “to prioritise long-term stability, ecological health, and social equity.” The model is explicitly designed to be growth-agnostic in contrast to traditional models that rely on continual economic growth and growth-based metrics, such as GDP.

An approach that is meant to discourage short-term financial gains is a worthy idea, but likely impractical given the ‘second nature’ embeddedness of the money code in today’s world. Global implementation of new models will always meet resistance due to the novelty and due to the diversity of implementation required.

“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease”

François-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire)

A Proposed Framework Solution – Global Economy with a Global Environmental Overlay

In the short-term we must take direct remedial action on the ground, with direct climate finance for major restoration projects in the time remaining. Policymakers and financiers need to have a major re-think of what and how they are funding. And they need to do this now.

The Great Restoration of Nature – Nature Funding is Climate Funding.

Given that the Great Restoration of Nature is currently the only pro-active measure that will directly cool parts of the planet from today’s (rising) levels, while taking up more carbon, this must be the ABSOLUTE #1 PRIORITY over the next 20 years.

This will include the restoration of biodiversity and along with it the world’s stock of forests, wetlands, coral reefs, grasslands, drylands and so on.

For additional background please also refer to earlier posts regarding Natural Capital and Ecosystem Restoration, Nature Finance, Carbon and Restoration and a vision of a Nature Protected world in 2045 and how this was achieved.

The nature of the funding needs to be more automatic and structurally-driven, in order to get us away from piecemeal negotiation, terse negotiations and periodic refusals / lines in the sand. Catering to the strategies of all of the Parties at the COPs is surely hard work, exhausting on many levels. So other forums and mechanisms are needed for success.

Regional then Global – An Environmental Funding and Ownership Framework

“Leaps of greatness require the combined problem-solving ability of people who trust each other.”

Simon Sinek, author – Leaders Eat Last

To solve the polycrisis requires the Great Restoration Plan to be funded and to deliver. There is no globally agreed plan, outside of the United Nations process. Countries are responding but in their own ways, with their own funding constraints and their own agendas.

Funding of the new Environmental Funds framework will need great solutions – great in size and great in nature.

A Global Environment Funding Program

The establishment of an environmental funds sector would help to decentralise decision-making from particular funds or supranational entities, each with their own processes and requirements. We need to recognise what is at stake if we do not remove bottlenecks and move much faster.
By establishing the accounting and valuation frameworks to value Nature correctly – investors can help establish a new funding system – with payments for ecosystem services (PES) a new “offtake” and core source of income for those owning Nature assets.
Nature Positive activities – restoration, remediation and reforestation – will all improve the PES income flows and carbon uptake capabilities of the Nature Assets concerned, leading to more investor income and (unrealised) gains in capital valuation.
The scale and timing for Nature Positive projects getting into action needs to be much much greater. We are in a race against time and we are losing. Environment first over Economics. Straight investment into Nature, not more delays to collect credits.
With the right support and agreements, a well-funded Environmental Funds infrastructure is not far away, and can be seeded by existing Parties without the need for full agreement among Nations.
We need to establish the working model as soon as possible. With expertise from the public and private sectors, and industry specialists alongside financiers – to ensure a proper Nature Positive approach and credibility. Ecologists, agronomists, silviculturalists and other Nature experts working alongside fund managers, or even as fund managers.

A Global Environmental Taxes system

By establishing an Environmental Taxes system – regional then global – funding for the new system becomes permanent and structural, collected through everyday taxes. An environmental tax (Pigouvian tax) on corporate profits, income, assets under management, environmentally-harmful activities etc.
Taxing at global transactional level can achieve humanity’s objectives – a universal environmental transactions tax with universal awareness of its purpose.
Raising global tax funds for Nature Restoration and other necessary Transition Funds and Funds for the Future Generations. Yes it may start regionally, but its status will grow not diminish, as the fundamentals behind its purpose are overwhelming, and with simple application. Hence the idea of Pigouvian transaction and asset taxes – less complex to implement and universal enough to garner huge amounts of funding to finance the transitions required.
A global environmental taxes overlay is the most efficient, in order to bolster the required amounts of ongoing funding provided by governments, corporations and other sources. No nation will get anywhere near the required amounts on their own. The global taxation mechanisms would accomplish the goals much more quickly and could raise of the order of $1-2 trillion p.a., subject to ambition

A Pigouvian tax (named after English economist Arthur Pigou) is a tax on market transactions that create negative externalities, such as environmental pollution or tobacco. These are otherwise borne by society, rather than the producer of the externality. In taxing the producer or consumer of the goods or services, such taxation aims to recoup the cost of the externality by adding it to the price of the product or transaction.

Conclusion

We have all grown up in an economic world, where economic interests have subsumed the natural world. But prosperity is not merely economic, or where one sits in the food chain.
Economics as a discipline is ‘life-blind’ – it is not fit for future purpose. It does not currently value Nature correctly or, by extension, long-term ecosystem services and long-term environmental liabilities. For the sake of everyone, this blind spot must be addressed.
Planetary economic indicators that included environmental liabilities would be deeply in the red, with immediate corrective action.
The continued destruction of Nature is no longer possible without collapse. That impending collapse – of biodiversity, food, water, and ultimately society and economies – is inevitable without Nature to support us. Populations will wither as we hit key resources cliffs.
Funding for a revitalised natural world – the Tropics and the “Global South” are home to the vast majority of global population and global biodiversity, providing both ecosystem and eco-survival services to the rest of the world.
We cannot separate the provision of funding to restore Nature, from the provision of funding to those countries that host such Nature, who are typically in much worse situations.
We must transcend the divisions in how nations treat each other – the wealthier nations must come to the aid of others (and themselves in the process). Cooperation not conflict. It is not a battle against our fellow man – global agreements and actions are needed to stave off existential risks – in everyone’s interest.
The world’s polycrisis risks are astronomical in size. The estimated damages from 2024 floods and hurricanes are of similar size to the funding needed for Nature. And the damage is going to get worse.
Clean energies and circular economies are important for slowing the GHG emissions problem. But they do nothing about existing GHGs (which are still rising).
The pro-active GHG solutions are carbon removal technologies (as yet ineffective), climate interventions (as yet unproven) and Nature Restoration (so far underfunded).
Nature is still the best carbon removal and climate change solution we have. It is in everyone’s interest (economic and social) to fund and accelerate the Great Restoration of Nature as quickly as possible.
Nations must develop new long-term-oriented systems – to bypass economic orthodoxy and the short-term national self-interest. The Great Restoration of Nature must begin in earnest, alongside other global initiatives.
The funding for a Global Environmental framework must be of long-term design. It cannot be derailed by short-term national agendas and politicians. New financial sectors and instruments are needed for permanence and decentralised control.
The track record of action is not satisfactory. Patience is running thin. Countries and leaders are beginning to desert the UN COP process.
New solutions, funding and forums for serious engagement will be needed.