2 The Environmental Challenge and Bahá'í Approaches

Introduction

This planet is our home, and we have to learn to live within its environmental limits. At smaller geographic scales we have usually been able to escape our environmental mismanagement by moving to new frontiers, exporting our pollution or importing additional resources, but at the planetary level that is no longer possible. Science has now defined nine planetary boundaries that we should not exceed if we want to sustain the life-supporting systems of our planet, and we have already gone beyond six of them: climate change, genetic diversity, biogeochemical cycles, land conversion, novelties (includes plastics), and freshwater change.

For environmental sustainability, we have to reduce our impact to return within these external boundaries, just as social sustainability requires that we rise above the inner boundaries of unacceptable poverty and injustice. We have to understand how the planetary system works and the operating principles of the biosphere in what is called a systems-ecology approach. We also need to learn to relate the global and local scales, and understand how to turn global thinking into local action. The BIC Statement, One Planet, One Habitation - A Bahá’í Perspective on Recasting Humanity's Relationship with the Natural World available in the resources for this unit at the end of this page provides an insight about the interconnection of the different dimensions of Sustainability. 

Discussion

Consider the following questions:
1. What do planetary environmental limits mean for sustainable development?
2. What do spiritual principles tell us about our responsibility for the environment?
3. What are the implications of environmental vulnerability for our local resource use and waste management?

Environmental Sustainability

It is only in recent years that science has progressed sufficiently to begin to quantify the operation of the global biosphere, the narrow layer of land, water and air populated by living beings at the surface of the planet, and where our growing human impact may be reaching or exceeding planetary limits or boundaries that we can measure. An overshoot now means that we are living off our planet's capital rather than its renewable interest, and eroding the ability of our Earth to support life, including our own. Because of time lags in the system, we may not feel the impacts until it is too late, so scientific warnings have to be taken seriously. Fortunately there is considerable resilience in the planetary system, so there are many opportunities to redesign our economy and our use of resources to make them sustainable within those boundaries.

Watch: Abundance within Planetary Boundaries - by Professor Dr Johan Rockström, 38:22

This excellent talk (given in 2015) by the lead author of the first paper defining planetary boundaries provides a comprehensive introduction to the concept. The image below the video on the right is a 2023 update of the planetary boundaries.

Nine Planetary boundaries.

Credit: Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023 https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html

As our awareness of environmental problems has grown over the last half century, we have come to understand the complexities of our environment, from the deep sea and microbial communities buried within the Earth's crust, to Arctic tundra and tropical forests, now overlain and exploited by our expanding human society. Many different environmental issues have combined to create our present challenges, and only a systems approach can help us to find ways out of them.

Reading 1: Dahl: The Eco Principle, chapter 3: Where are we going? (pp. 29-45)

This chapter describes the environmental limits on development at global, regional, national, and local scales. It reviews the population problem and how the planet's carrying capacity is determined by population size and density and by our lifestyle and culture. It covers environmental issues such as nonrenewable and renewable resource limits; the human environment; the impacts of technologies; wastes and the environment's pollution absorptive capacity; and poverty.

Nature has been evolving for millions of years, creating complex ecosystems that have solved many of the challenges that human society is now facing.

The State of the World Environment

One of the responsibilities of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is to report regularly on the state of the world's environment. To do this, it assembles teams of scientists from all over the world to review all the scientific literature and summarize the latest knowledge of the environment in ways that are relevant to policy makers. The result is a series of Global Environment Outlook (GEO) reports, with the latest GEO6 released in 2019.

Reading 2: Reading 2:  The United Nations Environment Programme Global Environment Outlook 6, Summary for Policy-Makers

Reading 2: read the lead part of each paragraph in bold in the Summary for Policy-Makers or watch the video talk below.

The sixth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), focusing on the theme “healthy planet, healthy people”, aims to help policymakers and all of society achieve the environmental dimension of the Sustainable Development Goals. It does so by assessing recent scientific information and data, analyzing current and past environmental policy, and identifying future options for achieving sustainable development by 2050.

Watch: Co-chair Joyeeta Gupta on Global Environment Outlook 6

You may stop the video after her 25:30 minute presentation. This video is optional. 

Joyeeta Gupta, Professor at IHE Delft as well as at the University of Amsterdam was one of the two co-chairs of the Global Environment Outlook 6 - 'Healthy planet, healthy people'. In this launch seminar she presents the substance of the report as well as the process it took to get the report - a meta-study of already published research - produced. (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, Published on May 21, 2019.)

Spiritual Perspectives

Climate change has emerged as one of the most significant environmental threats to human society and well-being in the decades ahead, caused in large part by our growing consumption of fossil fuels and changes in land use. Since energy is so fundamental to our economy, there is great inertia and resistance to change. Governments finally agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a renewable energy economy in the Paris Agreement of 2015, but its implementation has recently been questioned. The Bahá'í International Community has issued several statements on the subject, including at the Paris Climate Change Conference (see below in Resources for Unit 2). The following paper provides an overview of the scientific and ethical dimensions of climate change.

Reading 3: Climate Change and Its Ethical Challenges, The Bahá'í World 2004-2005.

The Bahá'í writings conform to a scientific understanding of the environment, but also demonstrate its spiritual dimension and our need to respect and conserve nature. There are many spiritual principles to help us address our environmental problems. It is for us to consider how to apply them in our own daily life and life-style choices and in our communities.

Reading 4: Governing Our Planetary Emergency: Charting a Safe Path for a Workable Future 

Read pages 17 until p. 20 (end after the two short paragraphs on top.)

"The world has already overshot six of nine scientifically identified Planetary Boundaries and is now facing a deepening planetary emergency."

The Climate Governance Commission brought together experts Mary Robinson Lead Co-Chair, María Fernanda Espinosa Co-Chair, Johan Rockström Scientific Co-Chair, and Maja Groff Convenor and Author, for this up-to-date report on the state of the world and concrete suggestions for improving global environmental governance. 

Reading 5: Bahá'í Perspective on Environment and Sustainable Development

Read the following sections:
Origins of the universe
Nature
Evolution
The Bahá'í attitude toward nature
Biodiversity
Ecological principles
Environmental sustainability

Example of a Baha'i inspired project for community based sustainable food production and ecosystem restoration in Colombia with FUNDAEC

See also: https://fundaec.org/en/

Resources for Unit 2

In this file you will find a variety of voluntary useful resources for Environmental Sustainability.

Resources for Unit 2

Go to Unit 3