A planetary lens
A cure for ecological myopia requires using the planetary lens that political geoecology offers. It starts from a simple premise: Everything people depend on, including energy, water, food and health, is embedded in the Earth system.
Looking through this lens shifts priorities. Climate policy becomes inseparable from economic and social policy. Emissions targets are linked to land use and infrastructure, and what societies produce and build.
Indigenous and local knowledge systems are recognised as essential sources of resilience. Protecting ecosystems such as the Amazon is understood as protecting the processes that sustain rainfall and regional stability.
This perspective echoes ideas in research and policy circles on , which is not simply global governance at a larger scale. It focuses on how societies can govern within ecological limits and in response to feedbacks — the knock-on effects the Earth system sends back as conditions change — rather than managing climate as an external problem.
For example, shrinking river flows that threaten hydropower or severe flooding that disrupts food production and transport show how Earth system changes spill across sectors, not just climate policy.
Seeing more clearly is the first step toward wiser action.
The central challenge is not only to cut emissions. It is to rethink how societies understand and organise their relationship with the living Earth and to overcome ecological myopia in media narratives, institutional design and economic choices.
The Amazon is often described as the lungs of the planet. It is also a mirror that shows how closely human life is bound into the wider Earth system and how vulnerable that system has become. Now, it’s time to use this mirror to tackle our ecological myopia.
