What is the climate & ecological emergency?

Life on Earth depends upon interconnected natural support systems: atmosphere, oceans, freshwater systems, land, soils and biodiversity. These vital systems support life, providing food, air, clean water and shelter. They also regulate the climate. Scientists at the Stockholm Resilience Centre have identified nine Planetary Boundaries that enable a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity.

The unsustainable activities of humans have driven seven of the nine boundaries to be breached, including those for climate change, biodiversity, pollution, and freshwater, putting all life on earth at serious risk. The planetary boundaries are interwoven, so breaching one impacts on others. E.g. loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, such as forests and peatlands, makes climate change worse. In turn climate change is causing decline in biodiversity, risking dangerous, irreversible tipping points, with dire consequences, including the loss of the Greenland ice sheet—probably already inevitable—and the transition of the Amazon rainforest to savanna.