Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The text from a recent United Nations (UN) report has a title that buries its serious message: Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services published this report on 6 May. The text is the fruit of 145 experts from 50 countries, with input from another 310 researchers and authors. It draws on a reading of over 15,000 scientific and governmental sources and it incorporates the wisdom of indigenous knowledge. It is a summary, which will be elaborated later this year into a 1500-page final report. The weight of the scientific community sits at its heart. The most important finding of the report is this: 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades.

Two main reasons for this catastrophe are evident, and they are related: the ‘current limited paradigm of economic growth’ and ‘climate change’. This UN report, like several previous ones, is measured in its language but not in its analysis. The phrase – current limited paradigm of economic growth – is a euphemism for capitalism, for a system of economic activity that is premised on private property and profit, on the accumulation of capital as the reason for existence. It is this ‘current limited paradigm of economic growth’ – in other words, capitalism – that has developed through energy forms that exude immense amounts of greenhouse gases. Capitalism – reliant upon fossil fuel emissions to power its engines – is the main driver of global warming. What leads the planet to its demise is not ‘demography’ (too many people on too small a planet), what was once known as the population bomb. Rather it is the ‘current limited paradigm of economic growth’, which produces global warming and a boundless appetite to turn our planet into commodities so that capital can accumulate and accumulate endlessly.

The UN report challenges orthodox economic thought – the science of capitalism. Rather than ‘abstract economic goals’ – such as profit-maximisation – the focus of economic activity should be ‘life-improving and emissions-reducing’. ‘Economic activity will gain meaning not by achieving economic growth’, write the Finnish academics, ‘but by rebuilding infrastructure and practices towards a post-fossil fuel world with a radically smaller burden on natural eco-systems’. The new summary of the UN report, along this grain, notes that the transition would ‘entail a shift beyond standard economic indicators such as gross domestic product to include those able to capture more holistic, long-term views of economics and quality of life’. Unable to give a name to all this, the reports suggest that the only human-led antidote to extinction is socialism.

The über-wealthy believe that they can hide from the crisis. They are in search of citadels, novel ways to preserve their wealth into the era of catastrophe, frightened that their guards might turn their guns on them, dipping into the fantasy of building a robot army to protect them in their islands of prosperity. Europe builds its ‘wall’ along the Sahel, as the United States does so deep into Central America. Achille Mbembe calls the attempt to stop human beings from migration ‘para-genocide,’ asking instead that we try to imagine ‘different ways of reorganising the world and redistributing the planet among all its inhabitants, humans and non-humans’.

The Masters of War are spending more time provoking war in Iran and Venezuela, standing aside as Afghanistan continues to burn and as the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert continue to claim human lives. For them the para-genocide is an acceptable reality. They are unwilling to imagine a reorganised world. For them, any price is worth paying if they retain their wealth – the murder of gentle people like Macli-ing Dulag in the Philippines in 1980, as he tried to defend his community from the Chico River Dam Project, the murder of thousands of others as they try to construct a socialist future.

We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.

Unless we do something about it.

Professor Sandra Díaz, who teaches in Argentina’s National University of Cordoba and is the co-chair of the IPBES report, said that although bio-diversity and eco-diversity are ‘declining fast’, ‘we still have the means to ensure a sustainable future for people and the planet’.

If we do something about it.

Warmly,

Vijay.

PS: our offices regularly have meetings and events. This Friday (17 May), our office in Buenos Aires will hold a discussion on their conjunctural bulletin from April – on the situation in Argentina. See the flyer below. To keep up with our events in our offices, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram (use the buttons below).