For decades, climate policy has revolved around a single storyline: cutting carbon. This focus has helped build momentum, but it has also created what some call a “carbon tunnel vision,” a narrowing of attention that risks missing the bigger picture. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are deeply intertwined crises, not separate boxes to be ticked. Together, they form the so-called triple planetary crisis. And beyond the environment, these challenges are entangled with crises of identity, inequality, and trust that are fragmenting societies around the world.
When climate action sidelines nature and social justice, it risks making things worse. Forests, wetlands, soils, and oceans are not just carbon sinks; they are living systems, cultural spaces, and sources of meaning. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework underscores this truth: protecting nature is indispensable not only for planetary health, but also for human wellbeing and cultural continuity.
Beyond Carbon: Why Climate Action Needs Nature and Society
Lifestyle patterns – our diets, mobility, housing, and consumption – are major drivers of all three environmental crises. Yet focusing narrowly on carbon can create unintended harm. Expanding bioenergy plantations may lower emissions but destroy habitats and displace communities. More electric vehicles reduce tailpipe pollution, but fuel destructive mining elsewhere. Even nature-based solutions, when poorly designed, can collapse into monocultures rather than thriving ecosystems.
A different path lies in sufficiency-oriented lifestyles. Research shows that changes in diet, mobility, housing, and consumption can ease pressures on land, water, materials, and climate at the same time. Dietary shifts toward plant-based foods alone could cut food-related emissions by up to 70% while reducing habitat loss. These choices are not just technical fixes; they reshape how we live and how we relate to each other.
Learning from Forgotten Allies
One reason modern societies stumble is that we’ve come to privilege technological fixes over diverse ways of knowing. Indigenous and local knowledge systems, grounded in generations of living with ecosystems, hold deep lessons for sustainability. Traditional farming systems, for example, sustain an estimated 70–80% of the world’s food diversity. Faith traditions too – from sacred groves in India to Christian creation care – carry worldviews that place humans within, not above, nature.
Ignoring this plurality carries costs. Disconnection from nature feeds alienation, anxiety, and social conflict, while contact with nature is strongly linked to improved mental health and social cohesion. The growing popularity of forest bathing or mindful hiking is more than a trend; it reflects a cultural hunger for reconnection.
Sufficiency as a Cultural Shift
Sufficiency is more than consuming less. It’s about redefining prosperity. Compact homes, active and public transport, circular economies, and plant-rich diets all lower environmental footprints while building healthier, more resilient communities. Embedding these shifts in policy means setting footprint-based targets, tracking wellbeing beyond GDP, and investing in community-scale living solutions.
This is not a nostalgic call to return to the past. It is an invitation to imagine prosperity differently, where flourishing means thriving within planetary boundaries while nurturing care and equity.
A New Vision
The transition to 1.5°C is not just a climate challenge; it is about life in all its dimensions. If we treat it as a carbon-only puzzle, we risk deepening social divides and undermining nature itself. But if we embrace a holistic vision, rooted in sufficiency, equity, and reconnection, the current crises can become catalysts for renewal.
Indigenous perspectives remind us that humans are part of nature, not apart from it. Holding onto this truth could spark the cultural renaissance we need, one where sufficiency does not equate to sacrifice but shared flourishing.
The choice is clear: integration or fragmentation. By realigning climate action with nature and society, we can move beyond tunnel vision toward a future where people and planet thrive together.
