TY - JOUR

T1 - Intergenerational Inequity: Stealing the Joy and Benefits of Nature From Our Children

AU - Hayward, Matthew

AU - Meyer, Ninon

AU - Balkenhol, Niko

AU - Beranek, Chad T.

AU - Bugir, Cassandra K.

AU - Bushell, Kathleen V.

AU - Callen, Alex

AU - Dickman, Amy J.

AU - Griffin, Andrea S.

AU - Haswell, Peter

AU - Howell, Lachlan G.

AU - Jordan, Christopher A.

AU - Klop-Toker, Kaya L.

AU - Moll, Remington J.

AU - Montgomery, Robert A.

AU - Mudumba, Tutilo

AU - Osipova, Liudmila

AU - Periquet, Stephanie

AU - Reyna-Hurtado, Rafael

AU - Ripple, William J.

AU - Sales, Lilian P.

AU - Weise, Florian J.

AU - Witt, Ryan R.

AU - Lindsey, Peter A.

PY - 2022/2/8

Y1 - 2022/2/8

N2 - The Earth's wildlife and wild places provide essential ecosystem services for current and future generations of humanity, including visual and aural amenity, clean air and water, climate regulation, carbon sequestration, cultural services, energy, disease and pest control, fire regulation, food, habitat provisioning, medicine, land stabilisation, mitigation of natural disasters, pollination, resistance to high winds, and seed dispersal (Costanza et al., 1997). The utilitarian value of biodiversity, assessed via the use-values and ecosystem services that nature provides and upon which humanity's survival depends, does not reflect the entirety of the benefits humanity obtains from nature. There are additional elements of the human experience that are intrinsically connected to nature, in particular our physical, mental, cultural and spiritual well-being (Hough, 2014).Yet, policy making and current neoliberal economic paradigms of infinite economic growth in a finite natural system are at odds with the conservation of biodiversity and critical ecosystem services for future generations. The value of nature is becoming more obvious as it becomes scarcer, but awareness is not growing fast enough for humanity to stop the loss of wildlife and wild places that are disappearing as our planet passes through the Anthropocene. One species—Homo sapiens—is likely to be imparting more profound impacts on the geological record than ever before by changing its climate, releasing excessive amounts of pollution, harvesting a vast array of other species at unsustainable rates, introducing invasive species, simplifying ecological communities, and clearing much of the globe's terrestrial areas of native vegetation. Collectively, these factors are leading to a rate of biodiversity extinction that is unprecedented in geologic time (Smith et al., 1993).Older generations are increasing their wealth at a proportionally greater rate than younger generations, largely on the back of unsustainable utilisation of natural resources (Christophers, 2018). Virtually the entire history of humanity has been defined by the expectation that young people would live longer and “better” than their parents. This expectation however, is no longer certain. Furthermore, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources deprives future generations of the value of nature (sensu stricto based on Soga and Gaston, 2018), causing the benefits of nature to humanity to be distributed unequally across time. Hence, people in the future will be less likely to experience wildlife and wild places, and will be unable to reap the economic, ecological, and psychological benefits of nature. This is a vicious cycle as the extinction of the experience of biodiversity is a major threat to society's connection to nature, and, by consequence our ability to conserve biodiversity (Miller, 2005; Soga and Gaston, 2018).We discuss the principal issues of this intergenerational inequity of nature and wild places. We focus on the broader issue regarding the decrease in nature-based experiences future generations will face, and how the lack of such experiences will shape the future of biodiversity conservation. Throughout this manuscript we use biodiversity –the variety and variability of life on Earth– and species –the key units representing biodiversity– somewhat interchangeably to broaden the understanding of this paper beyond the scientific community.

AB - The Earth's wildlife and wild places provide essential ecosystem services for current and future generations of humanity, including visual and aural amenity, clean air and water, climate regulation, carbon sequestration, cultural services, energy, disease and pest control, fire regulation, food, habitat provisioning, medicine, land stabilisation, mitigation of natural disasters, pollination, resistance to high winds, and seed dispersal (Costanza et al., 1997). The utilitarian value of biodiversity, assessed via the use-values and ecosystem services that nature provides and upon which humanity's survival depends, does not reflect the entirety of the benefits humanity obtains from nature. There are additional elements of the human experience that are intrinsically connected to nature, in particular our physical, mental, cultural and spiritual well-being (Hough, 2014).Yet, policy making and current neoliberal economic paradigms of infinite economic growth in a finite natural system are at odds with the conservation of biodiversity and critical ecosystem services for future generations. The value of nature is becoming more obvious as it becomes scarcer, but awareness is not growing fast enough for humanity to stop the loss of wildlife and wild places that are disappearing as our planet passes through the Anthropocene. One species—Homo sapiens—is likely to be imparting more profound impacts on the geological record than ever before by changing its climate, releasing excessive amounts of pollution, harvesting a vast array of other species at unsustainable rates, introducing invasive species, simplifying ecological communities, and clearing much of the globe's terrestrial areas of native vegetation. Collectively, these factors are leading to a rate of biodiversity extinction that is unprecedented in geologic time (Smith et al., 1993).Older generations are increasing their wealth at a proportionally greater rate than younger generations, largely on the back of unsustainable utilisation of natural resources (Christophers, 2018). Virtually the entire history of humanity has been defined by the expectation that young people would live longer and “better” than their parents. This expectation however, is no longer certain. Furthermore, the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources deprives future generations of the value of nature (sensu stricto based on Soga and Gaston, 2018), causing the benefits of nature to humanity to be distributed unequally across time. Hence, people in the future will be less likely to experience wildlife and wild places, and will be unable to reap the economic, ecological, and psychological benefits of nature. This is a vicious cycle as the extinction of the experience of biodiversity is a major threat to society's connection to nature, and, by consequence our ability to conserve biodiversity (Miller, 2005; Soga and Gaston, 2018).We discuss the principal issues of this intergenerational inequity of nature and wild places. We focus on the broader issue regarding the decrease in nature-based experiences future generations will face, and how the lack of such experiences will shape the future of biodiversity conservation. Throughout this manuscript we use biodiversity –the variety and variability of life on Earth– and species –the key units representing biodiversity– somewhat interchangeably to broaden the understanding of this paper beyond the scientific community.

U2 - 10.3389/fevo.2022.830830

DO - 10.3389/fevo.2022.830830

M3 - Article

VL - 10

JO - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

JF - Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

SN - 2296-701X

ER -