1.7 Building ecological resilience
Addressing the climate risks to people involves recognising that we are inherently related to and reliant upon the natural environment. Therefore adaptation must also seek to build the resilience of nature and wider ecological systems. The recent Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity 7 identified that our economy and society have collectively failed to engage with nature sustainably, to the extent that our demands far exceed its capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on. This has neatly been acknowledged in the concept of ‘Doughnut’ economics – which explicitly recognises the environmental constraints, as well as the need to provide strong social foundations for all. As shown below, the world is operating far beyond the ecological ceiling in many areas, including climate change.
Fig 11: The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries for the global population, with overshoot of planetary boundaries and shortfall on basic needs both shown in red. Source: Doughnut Economics Action Lab.
16
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online