Humanity and Politics misaligned by Nature

Humanity and Politics misaligned by Nature

Faced with the umpteenth Italian political crisis and the cyclical repetition of these events all over the world and in the face of the 59 * wars (July 2022) currently being fought (practically all over the planet) the question arises spontaneously whether, in addition to this , it gets worse.
Certainly in the face of the atrocities of the war that “democratically” reaps men and women of all ages, it would be necessary to reflect that we cannot go further.
Unfortunately, if wars kill the innocent lives of people all over the planet, depriving them first of their rights and often also of their lives, there is now a much greater threat that threatens to wipe out our civilization, at least as we know it today.
The biggest threat comes from the way we look at and use Mother Nature’s goods.
For the majority of people, their culture and the consequent ideologies and political actions there is such a great distance between the principles of nature (ecological ethics) and those of our behavior (and therefore of politics) that the real crisis is not the cyclical one. various governments and, unfortunately, of the third world war parceled out. The only real and real crisis is that still, as many scientists now affirm: “We defend nature only if there is to be gained” and this is a political behavior that we observe today in all world and European programs aimed at giving “sustainability “To their agendas.
Suffice it to say that the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), to name perhaps the best known, provides for a package of investments and reforms, divided into six missions which, to analyze them, with the eyes of the experts, are almost exclusively a massive quantity of investments aimed at financing projects, labeled with the term sustainable, but which, in fact, have almost no synchronicity with the dynamics and needs of the ecosystem and, therefore, of the humanity present in it.
These considerations, which could seem very subjective, instead arise from data, studies and analyzes now known to a large part of the scientific world, much less to the political world and, even less (almost nil), to the financial one.
This ruling was (if ever it were needed) the latest report of the IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) which is the UN’s intergovernmental scientific policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services, with the aim of improving the interface between science and policy on issues of biodiversity and ecosystem services and which is destined to play (we hope) a similar role to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
As if to say that the IPBES is to biodiversity as the IPCC is to the climate.
This intergovernmental organization represents the most important scientific reference point for the protection of living plant and animal species. It took four years of work to write it, coordinated by 82 researchers, together with hundreds of experts, who evaluated thousands of studies and sources.
The dramatic conclusion is that humanity is destroying the species on whose protection its very survival depends.
The conclusions of this report are that without them, 70% of the world population could no longer have the necessary means for their subsistence. In fact, these are fundamental species, for example, for food, for the production of energy, for obtaining raw materials, for the manufacture of medicines, for tourism.
But there is more. From an economic and ethical point of view, the document in fact paints a bleak picture. According to the IPBES, in fact, the protection of nature is still almost entirely subordinated to profit. As mentioned, we protect it if there is something to be gained.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Platform has explained, in no uncertain terms, that the fact of always privileging short-term profits and, more generally, economic growth, based on purely quantitative indicators such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product), it makes us totally lose sight of the non-financial value of nature. Which is treated only as a commodity, rather than as a tool to avoid climate catastrophe, to protect the cultural identities of indigenous peoples, to improve the quality of life of people, to protect public health.
According to Mexican researcher Patricia Balvanera, biologist and co-author of the report, “We see nature as an immense factory that provides goods for which consumers agree to pay a price imposed by the market. The question we ask ourselves is: how much will I have to pay for this coffee? But we completely ignore the other costs that are imposed by the supply chain. Nor do we consider the ecological processes that allowed the production of that coffee, as well as the social consequences ».

We have developed, especially since the advent of economic liberalism and the resulting world policies, a purely economic approach, which engulfs every other aspect and impact.
It is as if we wanted to solve an equation, trying to balance it, but ignoring the most important unknown that is the ethical and economic organization of Nature.
A behavior that is so innate in our DNA and in our policies that we are more than certain that these cyclical crises (yesterday, today and tomorrow) will not lead to anything good but only to worsen events if we do not put the variable Nature into the unknown. (with its needs and rules).
To do this, we need to completely dismantle our political logic that sees, in the markets, only in profit, in competition, in “Sustainable Development”, which in itself is an oxymoron (as there is no such thing as something that can grow indefinitely and be also sustainable – docet thermodynamics), the model that, in words, we want to change but which in fact is still pursued in the political scaffolding of the West and the East which, in the end, are branches of the same tree.
In this sense, IPBES is not just a scientific study: it is a warning that the world will radically change its development model.
We must “re-naturalize” our political ideas, our financial models, and re-naturalize means first of all reconnecting every single person with the nature that surrounds him, connecting and synchronizing his needs with ecological ones (and not vice versa).
I recently dealt with this theme in my latest book entitled “Ecology between heaven and earth”, published by Medinova, where these dynamics are explained, what are the solutions to deal with them and how to change lifestyles.
The synthesis of the text leads to the consideration that we must reverse our way of thinking about the economy (with all the social and environmental consequences): not an economy that is sustainable for the ecosystem but an ecological policy that creates a new economic model, starting precisely from respect for nature in its entirety. We must understand, that it is only by entering into the full understanding of the rules of nature that we can find true well-being.
For example, it is not at all true (and it is scientifically proven) that in order to feed the world we must produce using pesticides and herbicides, in the name of protecting productive yields. This production paradigm, desired by a certain organization of the markets, and its dynamics, has led us to productivity models of farms often based on monoculture or, in any case, on the impoverishment of biodiversity. In these conditions we have altered not only the ecological dynamics (with a decrease in the primary productivity of agricultural systems) but, also, we have had to resort to an external control of the imbalances caused (through the often use of poisons and toxic substances for living beings and for man), generating an ever wider drift between the needs of natural systems and those of agricultural systems (the same can be said in all human activities).
In a nutshell, our planet is able, with its huge energy heritage (of which 95% is renewable) and biodiversity, to satisfy enough not only ecological but also human needs, only if this the latter are synchronous with the former.
To do this it is necessary to understand, first of all, that every time we annihilate or kill a living being (even the most microscopic) for profit or for a productive yield, in fact we are impoverishing and starving the planet more and more, dangerously moving away from its rules. (and therefore breaking the rules of physics) which, if observed and applied, are the only ones that can make us return to our home.
We have constructed economic laws at odds with the laws of physics and nature is ultimately making the bill.
Yes, because ecology and economy have the same term in common, namely that òikos which means family or home, with its rules and principles.

Guido Bissanti

* According to the Armed conflict location & event data project (Acled), an unconventional organization that collects non-aggregated data to monitor conflicts, there are currently 59 wars in the world (July 2022).