Repairing the Earth is urgent and it is possible

CThese are records that we would like to never see broken and to which it is impossible to get used. The latest one, announced on Friday, September 6 by the European Copernicus Observatory, informs us that we have just experienced the hottest summer ever measured. The three summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, from June to August 2024, have experienced the highest global average temperature since it has been recorded. Humanity has just experienced the hottest months of June and August and also the hottest day in history. This series of observations increases the probability that 2024, breaking the record already set in 2023, will be the hottest year ever measured.

This disastrous increase is inevitably accompanied by its procession of climatic catastrophes, heat waves, floods, hurricanes, fires, droughts, the human tragedies they cause and the concomitant crisis of the collapse of biodiversity.

So much for the findings, which are gloomy. This dynamic, however, is not inexorable: solutions exist, on a human scale, are undertaken and produce results. This is what The World also wished to highlight, in order to oppose the deadly defeatism and fatalism, a series of investigations published since 1^is September under the title “Repairing the Earth”.

This series of experiments, conducted in Romania, Benin, Italy, the Mediterranean Sea, India and Copenhagen, in areas as diverse as the treatment of household waste, marine biodiversity or carbon neutrality in urban areas, reflects a common desire. That of combining the exit from fossil fuels and the end of the overexploitation of natural environments without sacrificing the democratic framework in the negotiation of such a complex shift.

Enlisting the local population

Beyond their diversity, these experiences show that several conditions must be met to achieve a minimum of effectiveness. They often start with the goodwill of pioneers and visionaries that must then be multiplied tenfold to reach a critical mass. Intended to preserve the evolutionary capacities of the European bison here, the ecosystem of coastal forests there, or to keep the promise of carbon neutrality in a large city, these initiatives necessarily rely on local organizations and enlist the population in the preservation of their own living environment. There can be no question of distinguishing populations from their environment, nor of imposing on them ex abrupto to disrupt their way of life.

Nor is it a question of putting nature under a bell jar. Ensuring wildlife corridors in India requires improving the lot of farmers. This change itself requires a gradual exit from the agrochemical system that traps them in a vicious circle of debt and impoverishes the soil.

Another condition is that the effort be sustained, continuous and substantial. The Indian cotton farmer does not abandon pesticides overnight, he converts gradually, waits for the harvests to do his accounts. The action, finally, must be carried out in a coherent manner by playing on several levels at once, as the city of Copenhagen did at the cost of a collective decarbonization effort, by combining individual commitment of the inhabitants and constant investment of the public authorities. Repairing the planet: it is urgent – and it is possible.