Thomas Hübl: Welcome back to the Collective Healing Conference. My name is Thomas Hübl, I’m the founder of this conference and I’m here with Marco Lambertini. Marco, very warm welcome. I’m looking forward very much to this conversation, so I’m happy your guest here today.
Marco Lambertini: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m looking forward to the conversation too.
Thomas: So Marco, I think it’s always interesting before we go into the areas that we really are deeply interested about to see what in life kicked us off in a way, what in life made us be passionate. Some people are passionate early on, they feel this is my track, whatever other people have certain experiences. So the fact that you’re giving your whole life to this mission, nature positive and nature in general, like in our planet, climate, what was it in your case?
Marco: Yeah, so when I was four years old, my mother told me that when I was four years old, she opened the board in my room and she found inside it a bunch of dead insects, shells, pieces of plants. So I have to say for me the fascination towards nature, but also the moral kind of urge to protect it. I was just born with me at a very young age and was very strong. But I have to say, everybody has that affiliation and fascination for nature. There is a book from Edward O. Wilson that the school was called in the eighties called the Biophilia Hypothesis. It basically says that everyone has an instinctive affiliation with nature and it’s just enough to see the reaction of a kid in front of an animal, for example, and see the lights in their eyes brightening up. So we are all, because for the majority of our life as a species, we’ve been living in nature, we were totally part of nature. And so this affiliation comes from those days. Some people lose it a little bit growing up, but then something in life can happen and bring it back. But in my case, it’s been constant from a very early stage till now.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very interesting that you’re saying this because in my work I also speak about the background given the givens and one of the givens is nature so that there’s actually a whole for such a long time, as you said, also our nervous system has this given for such a long period. So how do you think our current life in big cities and a bit removed from nature in big skyscrapers or whatever affects that kind of inner affiliation that you spoke about?
Marco: Yeah, so I think it affects, it of course is effect is the main effect is not about our need for nature. Because actually if you think about it, it’s not a coincidence that we have pets in our houses, that we have plants, we we buy flowers, we have paintings of nature, we have screen in our computer that depicts. So actually we bring surrogates of nature with us all the time because we need nature. We need that contact, we need that relationship. But of course it’s now in our urban modernized way, it is more of a surrogate. As I said, it’s more of a fake nature. It’s not real nature. And so that’s what makes a difference. And the other thing of course is that we lost touch with nature in a way that perhaps we are not understanding it any longer as we used to.
And so for example, the relationship in the food that we eat and nature is very, very, very low. So many people still do not connect the link between what we eat or what we actually use in many other ways in our lives. And the connection with nature, the fact that many of these things are actually origin from nature or originated thanks to nature services. So that’s a problem of modern society, our disconnection to the dependency that we have with nature, from nature. And so yeah, in that way, but actually the need for nature I think is still there for almost everyone.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. And looking from more the lens that I’m coming from looking through trauma like the disembodiment, because trauma often creates a lack of body awareness. And I think our bodies are very much our nature. So when the lack of awareness through our bodies is also a lack of awareness, a sensing, a felt experience of nature. So there is that disconnect maybe. And then there is our modern lifestyle maybe.
Marco: But look, nature is also continues to be a refuge in turn times, tough times, right? I mean, again, you take care of your garden, you take care of your plants, you grow up some of your own vegetables, you take care and connects empathetically very strongly with your pets, whatever it is not necessarily only dog and cats. So nature continues to be a place, natural elements, natural features continue to be a place where we find relief, we find calm, we find inspiration, happiness, we talk about nature very often in material terms for what provides to us in terms of food, water, clean air, things that are necessary to our biological survival, but nature contribution to our mental stability, happiness, balance, emotional regulation. It’s incredibly important. So many studies show that when people are not experiencing enough contact with nature, actually a lot of social behavioral problems emerge and people are unhappy and depressed and yeah.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. Yeah, you spoke beautifully to the resource that nature is in our life and that’s very, very important. So let’s say maybe you can describe us a little bit for people that are not so familiar with the term nature positive, that’s a big part of your work, what is nature positive? And maybe also to speak a little bit to the loss of biodiversity at the moment and maybe also the rate of the loss of biodiversity so that we get a little bit of a sense what we are talking about here when we talk about nature positive. Maybe you can introduce us a bit for listeners that are not so familiar with the subject.
Marco: I’m very happy to do that and thank you for asking me that because actually in any speech I give everywhere I am starting from that because the situation is so grave and so serious that we cannot glide over, we have to remind ourselves of that gravity. So that’s what I call if it was a chapter of the book, the Great Decline, because that’s what has been actually so fundamental problems that we’ve been taking nature for granted since actually very early days. This antagonistic relationship, [inaudible], with nature started a long time ago. Scientists have now found from fossils records they’re actually extinctions and not just something of the recent past extinctions started 20, 30, 40,000 years ago when humans started to move out to Africa, colonized different regions. For example, people reaching Australia and the Pacific Islands 40, 50,000 years ago drove extinction of 85, 90% with the large megafauna of the time because they were using at the resorts because they were wiping out to the animals that were dangerous.
So this relationship and relationship has been there all the time. But in recent time, particularly this idea that we could develop economically at dispenses of nature because nature is infinite, because its resources are limitless, has been really driving what scientists called the great acceleration Thomas, that started long time ago in terms of roots, but actually the great acceleration per se, the acceleration of use of natural resources started in the 1950s. So 70 years ago, blink of an eye compared to the whole story of life. And that great acceleration has been driven by population growth. Of course, when I was born in the late fifties, we were 2 billion people. Now we are four times more, but particularly the technological advances that equipped us to exploit nature so aggressively and so powerfully as driven, the exponential growth and consumption of natural resource, whatever you think, minerals, energy, fossil fuels, fish, timber or all the manufactured commodities from plastic to clothing to anything else.
The exponential growth has followed the same exactly same curve over the last seventy years. That has led to an incredible economic development and socioeconomic development as well in broader sense, which has to be honest, have probably been better times for humans than today. In the 1950s when that revolution started, the childbirth mortality was 40%. Today’s 4% life expectancy when I was born was forty five, fifty years. Now in average in the world now is 70, but all that has been at the expenses of the natural world. And so since particularly in the last 70 years, we lost half of the forest, half of the coral reefs, 80% of the wetlands, we have 1 million species on a blink of distinction, two third of the wildly population in the world are declining. And this is for me the most incredible statistic on how we are being created an unnatural order.
If you wait, all the human bodies and the bodies of the animals that we eat, we account for 96% of the body mass of every other mammalian on the planet. So all the elephants, gazelle, deers, lions account for 4%. So that’s –
Thomas: Really? Only 4%?
Marco: I know 200 years, 1 million. I know fish is another story luckily on the ocean. But so the impact of that acceleration has been massive. And the last thing to say is something complete – and this has triggered something which is very new or actually unprecedented in human history, which is the notion of achieving irreversible tipping points. And that’s the really scary part of our times that requires a massive urgent course correct effort. Tipping points means that entire systems or climatic and biological ecosystems, eco regions like the Amazon could reach a state beyond of weakening of impact, beyond which they will change into something different.
And that will create a world which runs stable and reliable as we have lived for the last 15,000 years after the last ice age, turn into an unpredictable, very extreme, very random type of natural world. And we’re beginning to see those signals today, particularly in climate where we have extraordinary weather events that we never experienced before with a frequency that we never experienced before. So that’s really what makes the whole crisis on biodiversity and climate. They’re all interconnected, really grave and serious is the potential. And science is very clear that the potential is actually, I mean the horizon is closing down and the time of tipping points is actually approaching of the tipping point where after that there is very little we can do to rectify it. When we were growing up as kids, our mother or grandmother, when we were making a mistake, they were telling us, don’t do it again, because we always felt that there was a possibility to rectify things. Actually the theory of planetary tipping points is telling us today, this is science is not a superposition. It’s telling us that there won’t be another time to fix this. We need to fix it now.
Thomas: And I think it’s very important to hear that. And even if it feels heavy or daunting, this is the reality and I’m very happy that you’re sharing it so clearly with us. And I think it’s also good because sometimes we hear things and they kind of cross like a chat. They fly through our mind and out or we really feel the reality and we say, okay, I take a moment to really hear what you just said. And they give you the space in my experience and see how I am emotionally connected to the reality that you described and to nature. And so that’s a place where maybe different kind of change can come from. So I think it’s very important that you share that.
Marco: No, I agree. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to start in a rather grim concern. But the thing is that on the other hand, the good news if you want a bit of good news is that we have all that we need to fix this problem. Still we have the understanding because we never understood their systems and the impact that we are generating better than today. Science has never been clearer. We have the technology to actually reverse some of the impacts that we have. So by changing technology, by replacing technology, something lower footprint, and we know exactly what the problem is, we know the consequences and we know the destination. We have decided to become sustainable, sustainable environment goals. We decided to become carbon neutral, that net zero emissions. And recently we have decided to become neutral positive, net positive by diversity. So we know the problem, we know the consequences.
We have the means, we know the destination. Now we need to focus on the transition because transitions are tricky. And our, I would say natural risk and change aversion that has been forging ourselves by again, by evolution. Because if something works, you don’t want to change, you don’t want to change. Change is something unknown, uncertain all the time. Now we need to embrace a big deep systemic change in the way we think. First of all, culturally, in the way we look at nature and value, nature in the way we behave in our own lives, the whole consumption patterns has gone on steroid crazy nor consuming like never before and in totally unsustainable way, and then the way we run our economy because the economy is based on an assumption that resources are limitless and we can continue to grow and to exploit without consequences, even economic consequences.
So now this has changed. Now we beginning to understand, and this is the good news, that actually ecological crisis, the climate crisis are not just issues to deal with the wellbeing of the natural world, but there are consequences for our society, for our economy, for our health, wellbeing, happiness. So that’s a major cultural evolution after having taking nature for granted forever. And so now we’re beginning to understand that we depend on nature actually more than nature depend on us. When I was four years old, we used to say, help us save the world. Actually the world is going to be fine. Sooner or later, natural world will reorganize itself. It’s us that we’re going to pay really, really dear consequences. And this links to another dimensional nature loss in climate change, which is justice. So there is a profound element of injustice in destabilizing climate and losing biodiversity in ecosystem health because first of all, the most vulnerable populations are suffering the most. Look at the forced migration from Sub-Saharan Africa driven by droughts and crop failure, for example, already happen, but also intergenerational justice because we are going to leave our kids. And this is the most terrible thing you can think of as a human, as a father, even just as a human vis-a-vis children of the world, we are leaving them a really difficult, difficult legacy to deal with, potentially intractable problem.
The good news is that we are now not assuming any longer that nature is going to be for us there forever actually. Nature is beginning to weaken and as a consequence, we are going to suffer.
Thomas: Yes, yes. So a lot depends on our capacity to change now. I’ll come back to that in a moment maybe to speak a little bit to the term nature positive. What actually do you mean?
Marco: That’s right. That was your question and I took long.
Thomas: One question was, okay, what’s actually the state and of the world? And now let’s see what does the term mean and what do you understand or mean when you say nature positive so that we can put this in a correlation now.
Marco: Thank you. So first, perhaps let’s say one nature positive is not. So nature positive is not a slogan is not a new eco word to signify that you’re doing something nice for nature. Nature positive is meant to change the paradigm, moving away from doing something good for nature to do what is necessary to hold reverse natural loss. So the definition of nature positive is hold reverse nature loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline. So it is actually a measurable goal because it has a deadline, a baseline, and allows us to measure progress towards that goal. Similarly to what carbon neutrality net zero emissions does for climate in nature positive, net positive biodiversity because net zero biodiversity, it’s not good enough nature, we lost so much nature as we said, but also nature can come back if you’re given a chance. Contrary to climate, and very quickly we have so many examples of nature, forest wetlands, species coming back very fast if we put in place the right conditions.
So carbon neutral, net zero emissions, nature positive, net positive biodiversity, simple words nature positive means a world by 2030 where we start, we begin to halt the loss and begin to reverse as well, loss to bring nature back. So a world with more nature, no less, more natural forest, more fish in the ocean and rivers, more pollinators in our countryside, more worms and bacteria, the soil, all things that actually are going to help us with food security, water security, our health, climate, security. So nature positive is a measurable goal, is a disruptive goal as well because it requires big changes in the way we consume. We produce, we think of nature and pushing us to protect more of what nature is left on the planet, restore as much as we can, what we lost, change, transition from nature negative to nature, positive practices. The key economy sectors then today are drivers of nature loss, top of the list, agriculture, fishing, so the food system and then infrastructure mining and forestry, but also other manufacturing. And finally it’s a necessary goal because as we said, we don’t, nature, we won’t exist. But also nature’s service is so critical in the short term, not in the long term, but in the short term today already. So critical for our economy, our stability, our health. So that’s in a nutshell what nature positive is, the global goal.
Thomas: Right. Thank you. Thank you so much. One question came up for me as I to you is when we say there are climate tipping points, when we look at biodiversity, are there some specific tipping points or fragile, more fragile points that we should be aware of, same as the tipping points in climate that are important for us to know about because they’re more fragile in the biodiversity conversation? Maybe you can speak a bit to that.
Marco: Yes, there are many ecosystem tipping point, right, tipping points of ecosystems. And that applies to different scales, very local scales. So there are tipping points of small patches of forest that begin to collapse because they’re just not reliable, they’re not viable, they’re not, they can’t sustain themselves vis-a-vis for example, climate change. There are tipping points at the co-regional level. The Amazon for example, we have deforested already enough Amazon that an extra 15, 20%, perhaps less, perhaps even close to 10, will begin to affect what the Amazon is doing to itself, meaning generating rain through evapotranspiration of the trees. So if you cut enough trees, there won’t be enough rain, enough water vapor generated by the Amazon itself that will sustain the rainforest of today. And so the forest will begin to change into savannas like the one in Africas with incredible consequences for the climatic system globally. So that’s another example.
Plankton in the ocean is another fascinating terrifying tipping point that nobody talk about, but it’s probably one of the most dangerous of all. Plankton today is generating alpha the oxygen and absorbing a CO2 from the atmosphere equivalent to four Amazon rainforest every year. So if phytoplankton is subject to stress from raising temperatures, but particularly from the absorption of CO2 in the ocean water, that makes it more acidic and to certain up until a certain level of acidity, it’s fine. But beyond that, that’s the tipping point. Pipelines will begin to collapse with all the implications that I just mentioned, oxygen production, CO2 absorption, which will then create a negative feedback loop exacerbating climate change and accelerating it even further, global warming. Amazon and phytoplankton, two examples, but there’s so many others.
Thomas: How close are we to the plankton tipping point? Where are we? What’s the rate?
Marco: Nobody knows. Nobody knows. I mean the Amazon, we actually know, we know that another 10, 15% of deforestation will begin to trigger the change state. When it comes to phytoplankton, we don’t know. There’s estimate of acidification that are quite terrifying and don’t want to scare too much. But really we are not a hundred percent sure because initially it’s so complex, so many interactions and things can go faster because of those interactions and loop feedback loops or could slow down because of the incredible ability of nature to heal itself to some extent. But we know that nature won’t be able to heal itself forever vis-a-vis these particular systems. And so scientists are actually quite in agreement that these tipping points are in the order of decades, not centuries. And so this could happen within some of our lifetime, particularly young people lifetime.
Thomas: So let’s say, let’s now transition a bit to change. You said it before, we need to change. It seems like we all know there are some resistances to change built into obviously our nature or maybe to our traumatized nature. Let’s speak a little bit about how do you see systemic change? What do we need to do and where do you see the friction, where we know what to do? Because you said already we know many things and just knowing those not always helps. So even if you know it, you sometimes don’t change sometimes with other habits or addictions, we simply know that it’s not good, but we are still doing it. So maybe you can speak a little bit to the change that’s needed right now and the systemic issues that you see on the level of systems change that we need to be aware of or work on or find new solutions for.
Marco: Yeah, so there’s so many different systems in our current human system that need to really change. I mentioned already the cultural system and the value system. So that is probably the most important thing that has to change. And we’re beginning to see actually the change. And that’s the way we talked earlier about how you look nature, how you consider nature fragile rather than limitless. How you understand the fact that nature provides so much to us. We can’t afford to lose those services even simply from a selfish human perspective, let alone the moral duty of coexisting with all the rest of the amazing life forms on the planet. But unfortunately moral arguments, they’re not as powerful to drive change, least until now they haven’t been. So we need to actually internalize the risk and the threat of nature loss to begin to respond. That’s what happening with climate change as well.
It’s the impacts that drive our immediate behavioral change and it’s more powerful driver of change, it’s threat, feeling the threat, feeling the danger. So understanding all that, understanding the dependencies and turning that into a willingness to change because we understand that without change we will face serious dangerous consequences. So that’s the first value set perception of nature, systemic change. Then that needs to translate into perhaps the first, second layer change is the one in our economic system because our economic system today reflects exactly those kind of misperception of nature as infinite, as expandable, et cetera. And I mean if you look at the founders of the modern kind of neoclassical growth model on which capitalism is based [inaudible] or Robert Solow in the capital of centuries ago, at the time there were 1 billion people on the planet, not even nation looks so infinite. So the whole model of growth forged at the time was based on population growth because the more people, the more consumption, the more production, the more inputs and outputs, more labor to be able to boost production and more technology to be more efficient in boosting production.
And if you look at these three elements of the three drivers, so the great acceleration on sustainable acceleration and the great decline on nature. So that has to change and that’s to change by unfortunately, and I know that this is quite controversial, but I’m convinced that’s parallel to the moral duty and moral imperative of coexisting with nature because is the right thing to do because nature has intrinsic value. We also need a waiver to embrace something that doesn’t exist today, which is valuing nature economically. And that’s a big systemic change that we need to make happen, begin to create to give nature economic value, financial value, monetary value, let’s be brutal. And because otherwise cutting a forest, the value, nothing in the current markets versus the option of converting into a soy bean field that generates money today is an economic no-brainer. And that’s why we have sacrificed forest in natural habitat to agriculture in a very wasteful way, by the way, simply because anything apart from intact nature was valuable and intact nature was not valued at all economically.
So the only way we’ve been valuing nature is dead nature. A tree is valuable when it’s cut down, a fish is valuable, when it is caught in the net and put on our dish, not when they are alive and producing all the benefits – trees who are regulating water, producing oxygen, absorbing carbon. All this stuff has been completely invisible, for the matter of fish contributing to the health of the ocean. All that has been economically invisible. And so we need to begin to create to see nature as an economic, as an asset class and something that when you destroy it, it has a cost. And at that point, if nature when destroyed has a cost will actually begin to trigger trade off considerations. We need to finally put nature at the same level of other economic investments and decisions and for sure raise the value of nature not only in the eyes of people, but also in the transactions of our economy. So this is something completely missing today and something needs to happen quickly because otherwise the economy itself is going to suffer from the loss from nature. So these are two examples of systemic change. One is the cultural value system perception. The other one is the actual very concrete material change of how economic evaluation of nature is run and is done.
Thomas: And do you given, you just now spoke about economic representation, which I think is super important. Do you do know of an impactful attempt to give a legal representation to nature?
Marco: So that’s another dimension. So this is the third, another dimension, systemic change, which is about again, connected to our perception but also to our legal system that you are raising. There’ve been attempts in different countries and I am a great supporter of those attempts. The rights of nature movement is growing very fast. Countries like Ecuador for example, have including their constitution, the right of nature giving nature features personhood, legal status. The problem is that when it comes to actually the courtroom, first of all, it’s not so clear who is representing nature. And although any stakeholders could be represented, there are many, many different ways the defendants could use to avoid the recognition of the representing the nature. But the second dimension, and I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not talking technical here, but the second problem is that ultimately we need to demonstrate not only the damage, but also who was solely responsible of that damage. And very rarely the responsible are only one actor, most likely is a combination of factors and actors. And so it’s relatively easy for the accused party to say, well, but actually it was not only me, there was a combination of factors that are driving this outcome. So anyway, it’s complicated in legal terms when it comes to actually prosecuting and getting indemnity and getting compensation, but it’s a super important dimension that is evolving fast and I hope will lead to some real impacts on the ground.
Thomas: And as you said, I mean these are new initiatives and at the beginning it often systems change looks a bit difficult and we don’t know exactly how to do it, but once we invest consistent energy and we are committed to it, so we will find ways how to make it work better and better until it becomes a system that looks like it was there all the time. So I think yes,
Marco: And that finally begins to really work. Absolutely. That’s why I’m very supportive of all these approaches. Absolutely. So very, very important.
Thomas: And so I’m curious, one thing comes to mind is on the one hand, the reason why I’m so interested also in your work is because we are looking very much in our work how systemic trauma, the systemic breakdown of feedback loops of intelligent systems to freeze like trauma is frozen. So it’s the opposite of change. So in certain ways of healing and opening those trauma frozen lakes in our society, we enable actually post-traumatic learning, which means systems maturation, systems learning, and also change, fluidity. So systems become more fluid to adapt to the evolutionary needs I believe. And so I’m curious, one of those symptoms for me is that when we talk about systems, we have a very human centric perspective on systems. So we think about our perspective on systems and I’m curious if you can speak a little bit to a more biocentric like biosphere centric perspective and how we can develop as societies like a perspective that is very much inclusive. You talk a lot about inclusivity and which is very important in healing social trauma, but it goes beyond that. Inclusivity means that we can take many more perspectives into account to create systems change. And I’m curious what you experience through your work and how that bigger perspective is needed, how to develop it, how it’s being inhibited.
Marco: Yeah, so look, this is probably the starting point of everything and actually where if we don’t succeed to shift our perception of nature and our perception, particularly actually on nature on one hand, but particularly our perception of our position in the world, our position, if you don’t shift that it’s very unlikely that we’ll achieve any durable and deep system change in the way we run our lives. And that’s again, as evolutionary links, old, very ancestral origins. Because let’s face it, nature is so important. We kept saying during the conversation, nature is so important to us, it’s so beneficial of course. And nature has been also threatening us, pushing us competing, living for many, many hundred thousands of years in wild nature. Living in wild nature is very tough. So over our evolution, we have tried first with agriculture, then with all the modernity of today, tried to separate ourself from the dangers of nature, effective on the pressures of nature, try to become independent from nature or rather delusively thinking than we could do.
And that’s what we got to, right? We have domesticated plants, animals, we live far from nature. We protect ourself from nature in any way possible. So all this has created this wrong perception that we can actually prosper if we isolate ourself from nature. And until now, that has been the case. As I said, we said earlier, right? We progressed a lot in human development indicators, but we are reaching a point now where nature is beginning to abandon us. And that’s where the change of perception is critical. It’s critical that we are beginning to understand that we are not on top of a pyramid with everything else at the bottom, anthropocentric, but we are actually in the middle of a sphere, the planet where everything is connected, including us. And although this is intuitive because we know that we need to breathe and drink and eat.
So we’re biological animals, although all that is intuitive in practice when it comes to daily behaviors, our economic structure, the way we run our society, we forget about it. So reminding that, reminding ourself of that is a critical step, is a critical step to achieve, to rebalance our relationship in nature, which doesn’t mean going back to the history, it means just to change the way we behave in a way that is allowing nature to be resilient, productive, healthy, and in turn support our own prosperity, happiness and equality. So that’s almost a fundamental, but I have to say it’s fascinating when you mentioned the post trauma, what trauma does to us. Because actually I think that on one hand, because we are beginning to realize the nature is so important and losing nature is basically a threat to us, to our future, to the future of our children.
On the other hand, climate change, nature loss, the things that I talked at the beginning, a risk to trigger a feeling of impotence. So the problem, the challenge feels so intractable, impossible to deal with that at the point their psychological reactions to this. So when the threat is imminent, it’s clear, it’s tangible, we are super good at avoiding it. But when the problem is so collective, so global, so big, then I think we see what we’re seeing in society today. Complete random, perhaps not random, but complete diverse set of reactions and responses from depression, eco depression, eco anxiety in the young generation in particular to anger, eco anger, which is also very strong in young people to of course, buyers optimism. Oh, technology will fix it, don’t worry too much. We’re going to find a way, we always did, the usual. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst type of terrible saying, I hate that, saying.
And then at the end, the very end, the icing on the cake of these reactions, denial. No, it’s not true, it’s not true. That climate is changing, has changed already all the time. I heard during the election, the European elections, politicians say in a public debate, politicians say, oh, well you’re talking about climate change, but what about the flood in the forties? That was climate change already. So climate change has always been there. They forget of course, or they conveniently forget that the floods in the sixties clearly very powerful, but they were one every decade, so to speak. Now the frequency in the violence of those episodes has increased many, many folds. So anyway, but denial is a powerful, powerful tool because gives you a safe refuge in business as usual, avoiding the problem that you think cannot be dealt with. And the last thing to say, I know I’m going on and on this, but it’s exciting.
Thomas: No, it’s fantastic.
Marco: No, no, no. The last thing to say is something else that has popped into a recent reading, this concept of identity. So we are tribal by nature. We evolved as a social animal, family groups first and then tribes. And we see tribalism everywhere these days from politics to football matches and so on and so forth. It’s not a bad thing actually, it’s been an important social construct. But this tribalism is leading us also now to create tribes around identities, value identities. So for example, the denialist of climate change or the denialist of the pandemic during COVID-19. And I don’t want to make comparison because I don’t want to judge, but those are identity around identity. So I am a denialist, I don’t believe in climate change and whatever science is telling me, I continue not to believe in climate change and I feel part of that tribe that hold the truth. We’ve seen this increasingly, and this is worrying because science is actually losing the ability to convince people because of that tribal kind of ivory tower refuge that people are building before, there’s immense problems that they feel they can’t deal with. And these are sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, subconscious decisions. But so it’s fascinating and terrifying and very complicated to see all these different reactions, society very fragmented, it polarized society with very divisive issues and very big challenges that may be for many begin to feel almost impossible to deal with.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very powerful. And it’s interesting because it reminds me, two things came up while I listened to you. One is that when you spoke about the fear and sometimes being paralyzed by the fear and not acting, not feeling our real agency or the anger like fight or flight too deeply built in mechanisms of our nervous system. And also the numbing, the base of denial is also not feeling because when we don’t feel things don’t make sense, they don’t go deep into our being and say, listen, we feel if you have to convince somebody to care or if you feel, and that’s why you care is a big difference. I think these symptoms that are also classified trauma symptoms that these are important also collective forces that you just described. And I think especially with social media also this tribalism that you said and the synchronization through social media in these tribes is very strong. So that’s something really to think about how to –
Marco: That’s a fundamental point. Social media in so many ways have helped a lot to bring together people, but also to divide people. And that’s exactly what we are seeing, right? In so many issues. And increasingly, and I think division and fragmentation is a response to the uncertainty on how to deal with the problem you take side instead of trying to understand the problem you take side. And then it’s very difficult to change side. However, let’s not be too negative because I think it is a question also on how you present these issues. So an extreme doom and gloom perspective brings that kind of reaction of different forms, but almost all pretty much leading to inaction, right? Because even eco depression equal anxiety or eco anger, it’s like blocking a real system chain real action.
But on the other hand, the fact that we perceive climate change and the loss of nature as a threat to us, and particularly I would say, I think we should really always think to our children if we have or to the children of others and to the rest of life on earth. That is a powerful, if you balance the message and the perception, the feeling between fear and imperative to act to address the threat, I think it’s powerful. I think it’s powerful. I think we’re at the point really where on one hand is this generational really that could take the right direction or the wrong one, but at least we are in a position to really make a big decision. And if I look at the social media, you are quite, you feel a bit discomfort to read things. So you think, how can we think like this, right?
But actually you need to make an effort to understand why people act like that and don’t judge but actually try to engage and provide solutions because at the end of the day, if we do provide a solution that works and then really address the fears, the threats, the trauma, as well as the hope and the good, it’s intrinsically in everybody. I think we are in this generation, has the massive opportunity to really put humanity in a completely different course from the time we started. That’s an historic, every generation says, every generation may argue that generation was unique for many different ways. My grandmother kept telling me, Marco, you have no idea. I went through two world war wars. So it’s true every generation has their own uniqueness, but this generation is dealing with the most existential of all relationship and challenges our relationship with the planet. And that should give us not anxiety, no angst, not denial, should give us excitement to really embrace the right course.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very powerful. That’s very powerful. And also it reminds me of what you said before. It reminded me of when you said there was human beings totally embedded in nature, then it’s like the dependent state of the maturation process. Then there’s the independence. So we actually try to be independent from nature and now it’s the interdependent phase. We need to mature actually into a next level where we are interdependent. That is the next maturation state. And obviously as humanity, that’s what we are going through at the moment. That’s really very powerful and it comes with some rocky phases, but it also pushes us to mature and collaborate globally. So that’s beautiful. Maybe we can leave our listeners with any nuggets or anything that has been unsaid because you said so many things.
Marco: Three quick snaps. One is let’s always remember that nature positive is people positive. Without harmony with nature, there won’t be a bright future for people. So it’s not just about nature. In fact, it’s more about us than actually nature. So whether you love nature, whether you love people or you love both, nature positive is the only thing you have to deliver to really secure the foundation of everything else. That’s why we are so passionate about this concept. But as I said, and then finally don’t give up hope, but particularly don’t let hope being in the way of action because hope is super important, but it’s not enough. We need to begin to act in our own little or big environment. Anything you can influence in the direction of a nature positive, people, positive future, it’s critical at this stage.
Thomas: Well, thank you. Thank you Marco, and thank you for your work. You’re doing such important work and I’m happy that so many people are being exposed to it. So thank you very much and the many blessings for your work.
Marco: Thank you, Thomas. Thank you for the invitation and conversation.
