of drought, and the introduction of fi re into a region that had no prior fi re regime. The massive forest fi res in 2008, which created an Asian Brown Cloud3
across Southeast Asia, contributed the
equivalent of thirty percent of that year’s global emissions of greenhouse gases. Scientists are now worried that the vast clouds of soot and aerosols (mainly sulfates and nitrates) emitted from these vast fi res may aff ect the South Asian monsoon, and thereby impact food security in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and else- where. If that happens, it could drive up food prices and trigger social unrest, demonstrating how even local shifts in ecosystem management may compromise security across an entire region. This is an example of the new complexity facing humanity.
In a world where all societies are wired-up in real time, both in social and ecological terms, the knock-on eff ects of local changes rapidly transcend scales with ramifi cations across the globe. This new challenge is manifested in various hot spots around
the world, where social unrest, abrupt migration of populations, armed confl icts, and economic instability are driven, directly or indirectly, by human-induced environmental changes. And the societies causing these changes are often located far away from the ground zero of abrupt social unrest.
MULTIPLE WHAMMIES AT THE SAME TIME The political upheaval across North Africa in 2011, collectively known as the Arab Spring, constituted a vivid demonstration of the world’s new complexity. On one level, the revolutions that took place in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and the civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen were social reactions to decades of repression under infamous dictatorial rules. These revolutions, initially triggered by the tragic and symbolic self-immolation of the vegetable vender Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, were enabled by the mass connectivity provided by widespread access to the Internet and mobile phones. On another level, these uprisings were responses to a rapid spike in food prices across the region, which boosted by more than 100 percent in 2008, and again in 2010. This rise in food prices may have been caused by the complex interaction of volatile oil prices, speculation on the food market, and constraints on the world’s grain markets, caused by weather-related events linked to climate changes. Among these weather-related events, the most crucial was the 2010 ban on grain exports in Russia, following crop losses due to an un- precedented heat wave and a rash of wildfi res.4
Biofuel policies in
the U.S. and Europe may also have contributed by increasing demand for crops that could otherwise have been used for foods.5 And so on. In a world where everything connects with everything, socio-political factors interact with resource constraints and ecological changes to propagate disruptions across the world in unexpected ways. When this happens, social change can take
place at a large scale, as interacting social and ecological processes play out faster. And it can sometimes create surprises, when processes like these begin with a slow onset–creeping over decades–but end with an abrupt impact. In such a world, it is imperative that we understand how global environmental change and resource constraints can interact with local social change to cause surprising and rapid shifts in life conditions for people.
IN AN INCREASINGLY TURBULENT WORLD THREE KEY INSIGHTS EMERGE:
1. We now live in an increasingly complex, changing, and globalized world—not only economically but also eco- logically. Our behavior in one corner of the planet aff ects, in real time, living conditions for fellow citizens in other parts of the planet. The way we go to work in Stockholm infl uences rainfall patterns for a small-scale farmer in Southern Africa, and the way mangroves are managed by local fi shermen in Thailand aff ects weather patterns in England. The social-ecological wiring of the modern economy is now global.
2. We can no longer act locally to further global develop- ment; we must also act globally to further local develop- ment. No matter how well environmental policies are applied locally or in critical biomes—such as the Galapagos, Western Papua coral reefs, or the Arctic— their continued success now depends on the actions of other nations, regions, and economic sectors. Environ- mental protection is no longer enough. It can only succeed in combination with global stewardship.
3. We no longer have environmental challenges in isola- tion. Sustainability challenges are now interconnected with strategic foreign policies, with wise development strategies, and responsible fi nancial policies. Environ- ment and development are intertwined. Our chief task in the Anthropocene, in which a stable biosphere forms the basis for the world as we know it, is to reconnect societies with the biosphere.
These key messages mean that our »global commons«—shared resources such as our climate system, oceans, and Polar regions— are no longer external to our national economies. Just the opposite: They are internal to our societies, as vital for our prosperity as the source of our local drinking water, or the natural resources on
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TH E H U MAN Q U E ST – P R OS P E R I N G WI TH I N P L AN E TA RY B O U N DA R I E S
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