The anthropogenic footprint is swiftly degrading many ecosystems and changing regional and global climates, resulting in a most serious threat to humankind and many other species. For the first time in the history of our planet, one single species is producing a global impact, threatening not only many other species but also impacting a large fraction of its own population. But also, for the first time in its history, humankind is aware of the limited resources of our planet and recognizes that its current interaction with nature is unsustainable. This awareness is growing not only in international bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union but also, very importantly, in a significant fraction of its population. Hence, global change is also an opportunity to rethink how we want to evolve as a species, how we envision our future generations.
Here we propose that this future should aim at an increased connection with nature, with the ocean as its essential and central component, searching a state of harmony where we feel and act as part of nature rather than as a privileged species that owns nature. This requires an expanded cognition of nature, where cognitive and sensory knowledge combine to expand our perception of the environment. This expanded cognition shall not only develop real natural intelligence to our lives – much beyond simple technological and even scientific knowledge – but will also bring consciousness that we are all interconnected, with people and nature. To recognize that we belong to nature is probably the only way to get rid of those individual and collective egoisms that prevent our individual and collective happiness: the single path for Homo sapiens to fully release its inner potential.
The Networking Fridays Webinar Series was endorsed as an UN Ocean Decade Activity and this is an UN Ocean Decade Event.
Click here for more information.
Register for the event in this link, or watch live on YouTube. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel