Setting the stage
Life on Earth determines the ultimate state of the planet and thereby the livability on Earth. At the same time, life is a result of all the non-living forces on the planet, such as solar radiation, greenhouse gases and rock weathering.
Earth is a self-regulating system, where all the Spheres (biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, geosphere, cryosphere, atmosphere) closely interact. Life is both a result and driver in this “Gaia” dance between life, energy and resources.
And now our global culture is threatening all of this. We are facing Earth’s sixth mass extinction of species; the first to be caused by another species, humans. We have lost 70% of the populations of vertebrates on Earth since 1970. One million of eight million known species are threatened by extinction. What many don’t realize is that we are literally cutting off the branch we are sitting on.
So far, we, as a global society, have not fully understood our central role in the global crisis. And perhaps more important, we’ve had precious little science that shows the win-win-win “Life Gives Life” approach to shifting the planet to stabilized harmony.
Every day we’re reminded: there is so much at stake. Life depends on a stable, healthy, and resilient planet. Science now clearly shows we are putting this at risk. Life itself will determine the stability, health and resilience of Earth, and these now depend entirely on how humanity chooses to interact with life on our planet.
The fundamental role of living nature for the state of the planet, and thereby its livability, is rarely in focus. Emerging science shows the profound value of working with this Life Gives Life paradigm, rather than the dead end of working against it.
Defining the Life Gives Life threshold to our harmonious future will help change that, offering humanity a new and stabilized, life-sustaining path. Life as we know it; as we depend on it for our prosperity, harmony and equity; as we value it for economics, harmony and love; has only been around for 12,000 years, since we left the last Ice Age and entered the remarkably stable Holocene Interglacial period.
It is here, now, in that stable, nurturing Holocene, that all ecosystems – from the Siberian tundra to the Congo rainforests and South African kelp forests – settle into the configuration of ecosystems, biomes and species distributions, as we know them. Many of the life forms have been around for millions of years (we modern humans for only 250,000 years), but it is only in the Holocene that everything in life that we know, love and depend on, stabilizes within the narrow corridor of life that spawned human civilizations (and all within global mean temperatures of 14°C ± 0.5°C).
Partnerships
World-changing collaborations with the Life-for-Life project are already forming with our colleagues and networks across the world. It will be centrally placed as a complement to the Planetary Guardians and the Global Commons Alliance: both are initiatives with strong scientific capacity and engagement in bridging science and new insights to stakeholders across the world.
For all artistic work, we’ll draw on our collaboration with Félix Pharand-Deschênes of Globaia, and with Colin Butfield and the team at Silverback. Silverback will build companion film(s), messaging, and video podcast materials, with potential behind-the-scenes filming during upcoming field expeditions for the Life Gives Life project. We’ll work closely with EarthHQ, the communications platform of the Global Commons Alliance led by Tim Kelly, and we’ll develop further synergies with key visionaries in our networks, like Prince Albert of Monaco, David Attenborough, Sylvia Earle and Jane Goodall (both Planetary Guardians), and young voices like
Xiye Bastida (also a Planetary Guardian). We’re setting up a scientific advisory council for the project, and are inviting scholars like Alexandre Antonelli, Kew Gardens, Marco Lambertini (former WWF) and Sandra Diaz (former science lead of the global IPBES assessment).
Join us!
Widely considered to be among the world’s top planetary scientists for his breakthrough research on planetary boundaries and tipping systems, Johan
Rockström is one of the world’s most cited scientists and sought out speakers: a Carl Sagan of our time. And Mattias Klum, award-winning photographer and filmmaker, has dedicated his life to capturing the resilience and heartbreak of planetary boundaries in the decades leading up to this extraordinary moment in human history.
Together, Rockström and Klum share the breakthrough science at the heart of Life Gives Life: How life on Earth creates and sustains livability, and how humanity is only a few steps away from walking through the threshold to secure our stabilized and harmonious future.
Thanks in part to Rockström’s definitive work on planetary boundaries, humanity has a lifesaving new guidebook. Even as we face the sixth mass extinction, catastrophic wild fires, rising temperatures, frightening weather, and globally destabilized ecosystems and human populations, the science of planetary boundaries offers something entirely new to the human family.
Together Rockström and Klum highlight the critical role of biodiversity in planetary resilience, as well as the transformative power of working within Earth’s planetary boundaries: the stable equilibrium that has fostered all of human history since civilization.
Life Gives Life combines era-defining new science and stunning imagery to inspire not just a commitment to preserving our planet’s delicate ecosystems, but to ignite the paradigm shift already underway to move humanity and life on Earth into our next, stabilized, just and harmonious, era.
It is a mass market global project set to help send us on the moonshot to our own global Eden.