This report was written for the 2019 Flourishing Diversity Series, and shares insights drawn from the research that inspired the conception of Flourishing Diversity. It features case studies evidencing the connection between culture and biodiversity, and how this offers an approach to ensuring a habitable earth for all species.
Coping with severe ecological uncertainty is perhaps the most profound undertaking humanity will ever face.
Life on Earth is no longer as robust or predictable as it once was. Land conversion, monoculture crops and pollution have profoundly altered our planet’s ecological integrity. The systems put in place to ensure comfort and predictability for humanity now threaten our demise.
Existing climate solutions – developing biofuels, doing more and more conservation, moving towards natural gas and other climate mitigation strategies – range from inefficient to insufficient, leaving an urgent need for effective and achievable climate action.
However, the severity of the challenges we face and the alarming implications of the climate/ecological crisis often leave ordinary people feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the problem – resulting in fatalism and inertia.
The Flourishing Diversity Series seeks to reverse this disengagement by identifying, encouraging and supporting a diversity of locally based practices that anyone can take up, to ensure a habitable earth for humans and our companion species. The ‘Flourishing Diversity Series’ aims to cultivate hope amongst all people and engender resistance to damaging agricultural and industrial practices. Rooted in anthropological research, FDS promotes the idea that encouraging diversity to flourish in all spaces is an important part of how every citizen can contribute to regenerating species diversity and healing ecosystems. It also highlights the practices that are reducing biological and cultural diversity – which must be resisted and stopped to ensure a habitable earth.
