The climate change challenge has made many people wake up, change their lenses and realize that successful human development is fundamentally dependant upon vital ecosystems, from productive oceans and agricultural fields to the water cycle and a functioning biosphere.
It should by now be quite obvious that human societies are embedded in the dynamics of the biosphere and ultimately dependent on the capacity of the living environment to sustain development with essential ecosystem services as reflected in the findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
The scale and speed of human actions have expanded towards globally interconnected societies that are involved in Earth processes at all levels.
For the first time in history, human actions shape environmental processes not only at local and regional scales but also at global scales. Social conditions, health, democracy, and matters of security, survival and the environment are interwoven in a grand panorama of regional and worldwide dependencies subject to uncertainty and change.
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