Our Feature Image

We have taken this image from the 2024 WWF Living Planet Report as we think it captures our anguish and our call for a rebellion of all the Earth Kingdoms in partnership with those of our human friends who are fighting for us, knowing that we are their dearest kin.

The Earth Kingdoms Despair

Humans are strange creatures. They are often romantic and sentimental about Nature, and yet they ruthlessly exploit us for their own selfish wealth, disregarding the impact this has on the rest of us: the Earth Kingdoms of the Natural World. Yet, when humans are children, they are closer to knowing that they are our kin, and they regularly tell and write stories imagining themselves into our skin. Here in Australia, as kangaroos, koalas, birds, wombats, platypuses, whales, dolphins, eels and snakes. And of course the dogs and cats who frequently live with humans in their homes, and the farm animals they keep for food and clothing.

This Rebellion of the Earth Kingdoms is calling on adult humans to remember their childhood imaginings. To recall the magic of books like Wind in the Willows, which captures the world of the river and meadows of 19th century England in the lives of Mole, Rat, Toad and Badger, exploring themes of friendship, adventure, and danger through the lens of these members of the Earth Kingdom who lived in that river ecosystem on the edges of the human village world. A time when the consciousness of humans had begun its dangerous and destructive slide into techno-arrogance, and a terrible blindness about our shared destiny as the family of Planet Earth.

By 2025, however it has become clear to many of us in the Earth Kingdoms of the non-human world that Earth’s apex species, humanity, have become trapped in an ‘extractivist’, techno-alienated mindset, eating away at their own inner sense of wellbeing; even at their emotional connection to their communities of fellow humans; and especially to the rest of the non-human Earth Kingdoms. Major extinction events are looming, impacting many of our ecosystems in the marine, terrestrial, freshwater and sky worlds—from human-induced global warming of the planet and the environmental destruction of many of our habitats.

The Bird Kingdom is particularly alert to the crisis as they travel across much of the Earth on their various migratory journeys. When the wetlands and mangroves were cleared and drained for human settlements, their migratory journeys became ever more precarious. When the forests were cleared and trees began to be affected by dieback, they were losing their homes for nesting and resting. When the humans sprayed poison on their crops, their food sources became toxic.

The way all this worked can be seen in this diagram from the 2024 WWF Living Planet report that demonstrates the cycle of this cumulative effect in the Amazon domino effect. In a healthy, intact forest, rain clouds form over the ocean and travel west over the rainforest, releasing rainwater and recharging their moisture from the transpiring rainforest. This process continues as the clouds turn south, dropping more rain. Fewer trees result in less transpiration by the rainforest, less cloud recharging and consequently less rainfall to the west and south. Less rain drives degradation in the forest to the west and south, further contributing to ecosystem change.

While many humans in remaining Indigenous cultures in Australia, the Pacific, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Northern Arctic thought of themselves as our kin, intrinsically part of nature and not lords over it, this was not true of many human cultures that saw themselves as ‘advanced’. It is only now that ‘civilisation’ humans across the world are beginning to understand just how much nature and the non-human world contribute to the viability of their ongoing wellbeing

Figure 4.4 WWF 2024 Living Planet Report

Nature’s contribution to humans is shown here with darker values indicating higher levels of contributions to more people. 30% of the Earth’s lands and 24% of its coastal waters provide a range of benefits to people.

Many of the humans of the ‘advanced’ cultures of so-called civilisation had spiritual ideas in their understanding of the creation of life on Earth that they alone had been made in God’s image and given dominion over all the Earth (Genesis V1.26). However a small number of them in different religions also argued that this idea of ‘dominion’ meant responsibility as stewards of the rest of nature, not as masters and exploiters of it. We plead with their co-religionists to adopt this understanding.

It is only now, when humans are being warned that global warming of 2 degrees Celsius, which has already been set in train, will cause oceans to rise, inundating vast areas of human coastal settlements to make them unliveable, that humans are beginning to wake up. That there might be no ‘tech-fix’ to enable them to keep on living their destructive high-consumerist lifestyles.  Even as they magically look to the AI revolution to come to the rescue.

Colonial/Modernity

By ‘advanced civilisations’, humans mean they had built cities where humans could congregate, separate from the natural world and dependent on exploiting other humans as peasants and slaves to produce their food. Through the ‘science of agriculture”, including the use of machines and chemicals, they learned how to bend the world of animals and plants to their will as food systems; developed weapons of war to wage conflict on one another for competition over territory and ‘resources’. By resources they meant the lifeblood of our kingdoms—our soils, minerals, fresh water, oceans, and forests, along with our animals, fishes, and the great creatures of our oceans, the whales.

So entranced did the humans become by their capacity to invent technologies to extend their power over us and one another, that throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, their impact on us continued to negatively accelerate. The scientific quest, once motivated by the desire to understand us and our worlds, degenerated into the desire to exploit and control us for human benefit, including the use of some of us for cruel human experimentation in their medical labs, and shockingly even on fellow humans during WWII and in some captive prison populations elsewhere.

By the 20^th century these advanced ‘scientific’ humans had moved on to ‘factory’ farming and ‘factory’ fishing. Animals thus regarded as no more than skeletons upon which to grow meat. Great mechanised fishing nets now used to scoop all marine life before them on the floor bed of the oceans.

The ancient respect between humans and the rest of nature have been buried under the pursuit of what they called ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’—more for less (effort by humans).

However, we do have many friends among the humans, who have recently fought valiantly to get humans to wake up to the destructive trajectory of their assault on nature and our ecosystems.

WWF scientists estimate that during the late Holocene period, which is marked from about 11,700 years ago, there has been species loss of 56% in the marine ecosystem; 69% in the terrestrial environment; and 85% in the freshwater environment. This loss had occurred over a long period of time in areas of intensive human settlement such as Europe and Central Asia, and North America, accelerating since the 18^th century Industrial Revolution. But it is now intensifying in other areas: 95% in Latin America and the Caribbean; 76% in Africa and 60% in Asia and the Pacific. All of us are being affected: birds, amphibians, fishes, mammals, marsupials, insects and reptiles.

Earth the Living Planet

Our friends, the WWF scientists, understand that biodiversity is the heartbeat of our living planet. Every two years they have been publishing a report, The Living Planet. They acknowledge that the astonishing array of life on Earth is the greatest marvel in the known universe. They realise that it also, directly and indirectly, sustains human life – from the food humans eat to the fuel and medicines they need for survival, from clean air and water to a stable climate. Their economies, societies, and civilisations: biodiversity underpins them all.

In the face of the acceleration of species loss due to human impact on the environment, humans are beginning to understand that high species diversity indicates a healthy and resilient ecosystem capable of supporting various ecological functions and services.

Loss of species diversity on the other hand can disrupt ecosystem functioning and reduce overall ecosystem stability. The variation of ecosystems within a region including different types of terrestrial, marine and aquatic ecosystems, such as forests, grasslands, wetlands, coral reefs, rivers and lakes. Maintaining healthy and diverse populations is essential for ensuring the long-term health and resilience of ecosystems and sustaining nature’s contributions to all species.

WWF‚’s 2024 Living Planet Report details an average 73% decline in wildlife populations since 1970. The report warns that, as the Earth approaches dangerous tipping points posing grave threats to humanity, a huge collective effort will be required over the next five years to tackle the dual climate and nature crises. Habitat degradation and loss, driven primarily by our food system, is the most reported threat in each region, followed by overexploitation, invasive species and disease.

Tipping Point Changes

(2024 WWF, Living Planet Report)

• In the biosphere, the mass die-off of coral reefs would collapse fisheries and reduce coastal protection for hundreds of millions of people living on the coasts56. The Amazon rainforest tipping point would release tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere and disrupt weather patterns around the globe.
• In ocean circulation, the collapse of the subpolar gyre, a circular current south of Greenland, would change weather patterns in Europe and North America. The gyre is linked to the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the main ocean current system in the Atlantic, which if shut down would create a rapid decline in air temperatures in Europe, drying in the tropics and sea level rise.
• In the cryosphere (the frozen parts of the planet), the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would unleash many metres of sea level rise, while large-scale thawing of permafrost would trigger vast emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.

Figure 2.2 2024 WWF Living Planet Report

The Call to Humans for Action

WWF advocates say humans need more, and more effective, conservation efforts, while also systematically addressing the major drivers of nature loss. They advocate that humans needs to concentrate their efforts in three areas:

Conserve
—biodiversity inclusive spatial planning
—restore 30% of degraded lands
—conserve 30% of land and seas

Avoid
—reduce alien species spread by 50%
—reduce pollution risks, impacts by 50%

Safeguard
—fair share of benefits from genetic resources
—sustainable agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries forestry

Act
—sustainable consumption, halve food waste
—phase out ‘obstructive’ subsidies, increase regen finance

They acknowledge that this will require nothing less than a transformation of humanity’s food, energy and finance systems.

This is about establishing a new Commons- Public Partnership to value, learn and engage the active voice from traditional knowledge of ethnic communities, smallholders and grassroots. They must jointly develop and call for an innovative and transformative type of economic system that is built around the cycles of nature with people – an economy that reproduces life instead of destroying it.

It is mandatory to shift the economic system and rules to a nature-positive and equitable finance one. Making peace with nature is about understanding and learning how we can achieve a way of living in all societies, in all cultures, in all countries without exceeding planetary limits.

COP31 and The Big Transition

Next year, 2026, the humans are gathering for another global climate summit, COP31— the 31^st meeting of the Conference of the Parties to address climate change. Australia and the Pacific Islands are competing with Türkiye to host this event to showcase the steps they are taking to address global warming and environmental degradation. This event is expected to draw over 20,000 delegates from nations across the world.

The Australian government says its motivation in wanting to host this COP31 is ‘to show our region’s unique challenges and solutions to the world, and to accelerate global climate action, the net zero transformation, and investment in climate solutions. It’s an opportunity to bring Australia and the Pacific to the world.

Meanwhile, we ‘citizens’ of the Earth Kingdoms watch as ‘advanced’ countries like Australia struggle to reconcile their economic ambitions for their human population and their concerns about geo-strategic conflict with other human population groups, with their desire to look after all of the other Earth Kingdoms, besides humans, and the vitality of the ecosystems on which we all depend.

How they also struggle with cultural ideas about how to reconcile their desire to respect and acknowledge First Nations’ cultural ethos of Caring for Country, in all its multiple spiritual and practical meanings, and the continued refusal of many humans in Australia to realise that human life has to fundamentally change its modus operandi—less consumption, less waste, phasing out the use of fossil fuels, more equal distribution of wealth and opportunity among humans

Above all, we other Earth Kingdoms look for a fundamental change in consciousness, whereby humans will experience us as our kin, our dearest family members—embracing a new philosophy of enlivened living, whereby all of Earth is experienced as a precious living being.