Introduction

The contemporary world is characterised by systemic sustainability challenges that for the first time in human history have the potential to endanger the fate of humanity. Scholars warn that we are crossing critical “planetary boundaries” (Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015), and have introduced novel concepts such as the “Anthropocene” to convey the idea that human beings have become such a major force that they have changed the way the entire earth system operates (Crutzen 2002). The world that is emerging, with more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, extreme storms, and floods – a planet that environmental activist and author Bill McKibben (2010) called “Eaarth” – is in many ways less hospitable to human beings, more volatile, less predictable, and seemingly angrier. There may still be opportunities to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by limiting warming to 1.5°C – a task that would require, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2018), “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” however. The IPCC’s counterpart that examines biodiversity issues – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – has warned of an accelerating extinction crisis, with one million species threatened and potentially grave impacts on human well-being (IPBES 2019). These ecological challenges exist in a context of significant and growing global economic and social inequality (Alvaredo et al. 2018) – one estimate, provided by Oxfam, is that the 26 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of humanity, some 3.8 billion people (Lawson et al. 2019).