Thematically, there is significant convergence and complementarity in the contributions in this issue. In one way or another, they all address the problem of inaction despite dangerous environmental decline and suffering, human and nonhuman, and seek ways to foster wiser choices in favor of greater solidarity, including with nature, to ensure interlinked human and environmental health.
Elaine Savory’s piece on Rachel Carson discusses the obstacles that Rachel Carson faced in the middle of the 20th century—not only as a woman in a male-dominated world and profession, but also as a scientist popularizing ideas that were unpopular, especially among chemical and agricultural industries. She faced a murky but pernicious and unmistakable mix of hubris and economic interests, and of chauvinism, when urging humans to opt out of the self-destructive killing of nature on our way toward “a dubious promise of a comfortable future.” The chauvinism reflected misogyny but also an arbitrary scientific hierarchy of worth that placed ecology “near the bottom of scientific disciplines in prestige and support,” reinforcing deafness and resistance to her messages, both inside and outside the halls of science.
Written three-quarters of a century after Carson’s pleas and warnings, other contributions in this issue illustrate the consequences of discrediting her vision and warnings. They also point to the centrality of politics and socioeconomic inequality in the human world—topics that Carson left out, as Savory also discusses. We know now how important inequities are, not just morally but also for the environment. In Brazil, the injustices and damages of “chemical colonialism”Citation1 are all too apparent. Documented in the meticulous work of researchers such as Larissa Lombardi and others,Citation2 chemical colonialism is the phenomenon where corporations headquartered in the Global North sell products in countries in the Global South that have been banned elsewhere, destroying nature and human lives. Even after successful lawsuits brought by victims of the Roundup herbicide now sold by the Bayer Corporation, Bayer continues to claim its product’s negative impacts are unproven. Bayer is modifying its product’s formula for U.S residential use but, Savory writes, not for use in farming anywhere, nor for any kind of use overseas.
Pope Francis—focus of another contribution in this issue—is a powerful voice on the interlinked problems of environmental deterioration and socioeconomic inequality in the 21st century. “The Papal Plea” discusses Pope Francis’s stocktaking in Laudate Deum, eight years after his 2015 Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, which championed a theology of ecological and social integrity. Cognizant that his vision of just transformations through compassion and caring for humans and nonhumans alike remains more vision than reality in 2024, Pope Francis urges a redoubling of efforts, placing his hope on activated people and community-empowered transformations in favor of inclusive interests.
Social science supports Pope Francis’s bet on community-led, broad-based popular efforts.Citation3,Citation4 The social science literature also underscores the need for top-down support for change, however.Citation5 Missing are institutions inclined and empowered to wisely guide the needed transformations in timely manner, not least at the global level.Citation6,Citation7,Citation8 Several of this issue’s contributions address aspects of this problem and call attention to windows of hope and opportunity for interventions. Paula DiPerna, special advisor to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), calls attention to the problem of biodiversity loss. It is disheartening how far we are from bending the curve on biodiversity loss, despite this 30-year-old treaty. DiPerna notes yet another opportunity to break with inaction at the forthcoming (October 2024) 16th Convention of the Parties (COP) to the CBD. The ambition is to “Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed.” The hope is that the convention can help “flip entirely our system of valuation,” conceptualizing nature as infrastructure on a par with bridges and airports. One hears the voice of Carson reproduced in Savory’s text. Carson championed a deeper connection with nature, whereas the Bayer story shows just how pervasively commercial hegemony overrides rights of nature. The 16th COP under the CBD will test the institution’s power and integrity.
The “last ditch effort” under the CBD in October takes place the month before the UN Summit of the Future. Hosted by the UN General Assembly, this summit is designed to encourage much-needed “big sky thinking,” in the words of economist Jeffrey Sachs. Out-of-the-box thinking is crucial to inventing ways out of the tragedies of inaction. This summit’s approach contrasts with the imagination-stultifying instruction to be “realistic” given to scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Future Summit’s organizers call it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to achieve global governance in service of inclusive interests, present and future.
Global institutional change is as crucial as people-led mobilization. A world order based on sovereignty continues to leave sustainable planetary outcomes to the lowest common denominator. Marred by “empty” institutions—some of them ineffective by designCitation9—the United Nations has not yet been inclined or empowered to act on the full dimensions of its own charter, in particular at the levels of international law and human rights. A huge effort is required to push and support the United Nations such that it seriously and effectively promotes peace, law, and human and nature’s rights, properly recognizing the environmental dimensions of human rights and its own mandate to protect them.Citation10 Whether the Summit of the Future will be up to the task or yet another missed opportunity is yet to be seen.
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NOTES
- F. A. Scorza, L. Beltramim, and L. M. Bombardi, “Pesticide Exposure and Human Health: Toxic Legacy,” SciELO Brasil 78 (2023): 100249.
- Ibid.
- I. Scoones, M. Leach, and P. Newell, The Politics of Green Transformations (New York: Routledge, 2015).
- A. Stirling, “‘Opening Up’ and ‘Closing Down’: Power, Participation, and Pluralism in the Social Appraisal of Technology,” Science, Technology and Human Values 33, no. 2 (2008): 262–94.
- Scoones et al., note 3.
- Ibid.
- R. S. Dimitrov, “Empty Institutions in Global Environmental Politics,” International Studies Review 22, no. 3 (2020): 626–50.
- B. Walker et al., “Looming Global-Scale Failures and Missing Institutions,” Science 325, no. 5946 (2009): 1345–46.
- Dimitrov, note 7.
- K. Conca, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).