Humanity is a part of—not separate from—Nature

Humanity is subject to physical and ecological laws

The first tenet of the Qualicum Institute is the foundation for all the rest. It sets the stage for sustainability, recognizing that humanity is subject to the physical and ecological laws and principles of Nature that govern the lives of all organisms.

It baffles us that anyone can believe, while looking at an image of the Earth from space, that humanity is separate from Nature, and not dependent on the natural world for all of our needs. Everything we need for our social well-being, economy, indeed our very survival, comes from the ecosystems of the planet with but one significant exception: the energy that rains down on Earth each day from an average star we call the Sun, some 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) away.

And yet, there are those who believe we don’t need ecosystems and the resources they provide. Fisher and Peterson in their book, The Environment in Economics: A Survey¹ note that: “Man has probably always worried about his environment because he was once totally dependent on it,” implying we’re no longer totally dependent upon it.

Robert Solow², Nobel-laureate economist, is famous for his comment suggesting that resources aren’t really finite and that we can get along without them because any limits can be taken care of by capital: “If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then… the world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.” Of course, he neglects to mention that the “other factors” are made from the natural capital—natural resources—of the Earth.

Comments such as these to the contrary, humanity is, indeed, a part of Nature, fully dependent on ecosystems and ecosystem services, including natural resources, and are subject to the natural laws and principles that govern all biodiversity on the planet.^3,4,5 As Kathleen Smythe notes, “It is very clear that humans are the environment; it is not simply that we have had complex relationships with it. We are the environment.”⁶

Next: Humanity is completely dependent on what Nature can provide or Return to Tenets.

References

¹Fisher, Anthony C., and Frederick M. Peterson. “The Environment in Economics: A Survey,” Journal of Economic Literature, March 1976, 1-33.

²Solow, R.M. 1974. The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics. American Economic Review 64:1-14.

³Alberro, Heather. 2019. ‘Humanity and Nature Are Not Separate – We Must See Them as One to Fix the Climate Crisis’. The Conversation. 17 September 2019.

⁴Chapin, F. Stuart, Elke U. Weber, Elena M. Bennett, Reinette Biggs, Jeroen van den Bergh, W. Neil Adger, Anne-Sophie Crépin, et al. 2022. ‘Earth Stewardship: Shaping a Sustainable Future through Interacting Policy and Norm Shifts’. Ambio 51 (9): 1907–20.

⁵ Moore, Jason W. 2017. ‘The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis’. The Journal of Peasant Studies 44 (3): 594–630.

⁶ Smythe, Kathleen R. 2014. ‘Rethinking Humanity in the Anthropocene: The Long View of Humans and Nature’. Sustainability 7 (3): 146–53.