Damian Carrington are to be congratulated on a wide-ranging and informative article on the urgency and scale of the current global threat to biodiversity and the Guardian (What is biodiversity and why does it matter to us?, theguardian.com, 12 March). However, we of the Beyond Extinction Economics (BEE) network have reservations about the article’s diagnosis of its causes, and proposals for addressing the crisis. First, to say “we” or “human activity” is responsible for biodiversity loss sidesteps the more serious challenge of identifying the specific socio-cultural, and, more centrally, economic drivers of destruction. Popular pressure and inter-governmental cooperation to restrain these forces by such measures as planning and regulation are urgently needed. In the longer term, only deep economic and social transformations give us any hope of a liveable and genuinely sustainable world.

Source: The Guardian March 15, 2018 16:41 UTC