In 2019, Robert Watson, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), warned that ‘[t]he loss of species, ecosystems and genetic diversity is already a global and generational threat to human well-being. Protecting the invaluable contributions of nature to people will be the defining challenge of decades to come’ (IPBES 2019). This statement highlights the importance of biodiversity to humanity, for example, in terms of crop security. Such warnings are already the backdrop to blockbuster films such as Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), in which humanity in a not-too-distant future depends on a few crops and comparatively thin genetic diversity. Reliance on those few crops, increasingly affected by blight in that film, threatens human survival on Earth. The basic idea is not an alternate reality but a foreseeable future. In times of massive environmental change, a wide range of crops would provide fallback options for food security. In its 2019 Global Assessment Report, IPBES also warned that around one in four species is at risk of extinction (Kolbert Reference Kolbert2014). At the current rate, this would be one of the worst extinctions in Earth’s history, with many mammals used for food and agriculture also at risk (IPBES 2019).

The perspective of the planetary boundaries framework is that the loss of biodiversity has multiple negative impacts on the functioning of the Earth system and thus the preservation of a safe operating space for humanity. In the framework’s 2023 update, the boundary on biosphere integrity is ‘markedly exceeded’, and conditions are moving into a zone of high risk (Richardson et al. Reference Richardson, Steffen and Lucht2023: 3). Currently, the boundary on biosphere integrity has two control variables: genetic diversity and functional diversity.

Genetic diversity refers to the ‘maximum extinction rate compatible with preserving the genetic basis of the biosphere’s ecological complexity’. The boundary value is set at less than 10 extinctions per million species-years (E/MSY), but with the aspiration of reducing it to one E/MSY. The current value is at more than 100 E/MSY (Richardson et al. Reference Richardson, Steffen and Lucht2023: 3). Since the 2023 update to the planetary boundaries framework, functional diversity has referred to the energy and material flows into the biosphere, also known as net primary production (NPP). NPP can be explained using photosynthesis as an example. Plants (primary producers) use abiotic components (e.g., CO₂ or nitrogen) and energy (i.e., solar light) to produce energy stored in complex organic compounds (e.g., carbohydrates, fats, and proteins). Plants need some of this energy for their own metabolism. So, the energy difference between what they produce and what they need is the NPP, or the net gain over a period. Almost all other organisms depend on the energy sources provided by NPP (Andersen & Quinn Reference Andersen, Quinn, Goldstein and DellaSalla2020). The boundary value sets a limit to the human appropriation of NPP (HANPP) to ensure the functioning of the biosphere. The boundary value is set at less than 10 per cent human appropriation of pre-industrial Holocene NPP, meaning that more than 90 per cent of NPP remains in the biosphere. With 30 per cent HANPP, the current value is already in a zone of high risk, that is, beyond 20 per cent HANPP (Richardson et al. Reference Richardson, Steffen and Lucht2023: 3–6).

From an ethical and epistemological perspective, ‘biodiversity’ is an interesting term. Scientifically speaking, it is about ‘[t]he variability among living organisms from all sources including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part. This includes variation in genetic, phenotypic, phylogenetic, and functional attributes, as well as changes in abundance and distribution over time and space within and among species, biological communities and ecosystems’ (Díaz et al. Reference Díaz, Demissew and Carabias2015: 12). This definition, however, does not fully capture the meaning of the term, which is not only about a quantifiable diversity of species, biological communities, and ecosystems. It also implies that such a diversity is something morally good and in need of political protection. As such, it is a concept composed of scientific forms of knowledge as well as value judgements – something Thomas Potthast (Reference Potthast, Meisch, Lundershausen, Bossert and Rockoff2015) called an ‘epistemic-moral hybrid’.

In Chapter 9, Uta Eser traces precisely this specific conceptual history of the term ‘biodiversity’, which emerged in the borderland between biology, ethics, and politics. She takes a critical look at the planetary boundary itself and how it has developed since 2009. Eser focuses on what value judgements are embedded in the framework’s conceptualization of biodiversity, which she finds too reductionist. In Section 9.4, she suggests more inclusive ways of framing biodiversity that recognize the many different human–nature relationships.

Makere Stewart-Harawira’s Chapter 10 uses the case of Aotearoa New Zealand to discuss how ontologically distinct human–nature relationships are socially and politically negotiated. Three key points emerge from her text. First, most biodiversity hotspots are located on the lands of Indigenous communities, whose understandings of thriving human–nature relationships are often ontologically different from those of an international political community whose knowledge is inspired by Western scientific concepts. Second, there is a need for more inclusive framings of biodiversity that recognize the onto-cosmologies of Indigenous communities and support interspecies justice and the right of more-than-human species to thrive. Third, her case illustrates the fragility of governance approaches and how political achievements are threatened by a movement of extreme right-wing political parties.

Planetary boundaries are defined from a functional perspective. Only biodiversity appears as also having a value in its own. The original publication contains the laconic note: ‘Massive loss of biodiversity [is] unacceptable for ethical reasons’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009). Remarkably, this brief reference is only to be found in a table that characterizes the nine proposed planetary boundaries. Nowhere else in the document do the authors name ethical concerns. They do mention that establishing values for the respective boundaries depends on value judgements or normative judgements. However, the idea that crossing a particular boundary is morally wrong per se only occurs in relation to biodiversity.

For scholars who study ‘biodiversity’ from a theoretical perspective, this reference to ethics comes as no surprise. The concept of biodiversity has been morally impregnated from the beginning. It was coined at the interface of biology and politics to send a wake-up call to decision-makers and has never seen itself as a value-free scientific concept (Eser Reference Eser2001). Nevertheless, like the closely related concept of ecosystem services, it appears in public discourse with the full authority of scientific knowledge. The concept of planetary boundaries presents itself as a ‘science-based analysis’, too. However, under the guise of ‘Science’ the values that underpin conservation efforts largely remain hidden. My chapter aims to address this shortcoming.

Section 9.1 will characterize the term ‘biodiversity’ as a concept that is situated in the borderland between biology, ethics, and politics and has factual, evaluative, and normative dimensions. Section 9.2 presents critique that has been made of biodiversity as planetary boundary, and how this has been addressed in more recent versions of the framework. The main section focuses on the different values of biodiversity, which I consider to be insufficiently reflected in the PB approach. Besides its instrumental value for humanity’s safe operating space, the diversity of living beings also has intrinsic and relational value. I will present these different value concepts and discuss them with regard to the PB framework (Section 9.3). Finally, I will argue for a more inclusive perspective on biodiversity that recognizes and takes into account differences between the manifold ways in which humans live from, with, in, and as nature (Section 9.4).

9.1 Biodiversity: A Boundary Concept

The term ‘biodiversity’ comes from conservation biology (Maclaurin & Sterelny Reference Maclaurin and Sterelny2008). It is a shorthand of ‘biological diversity’ or ‘biotic diversity’ (Faith Reference Faith and Zalta2021) and was coined in the course of the Washington Conference on BioDiversity in 1986 in order to raise public awareness of the ongoing mass extinction (Wilson Reference Wilson1988). In extensive interviews with protagonists of the concept, David Takacs, a scholar of science studies, has shown that the invention of the term was associated with remarkable boundary work (Takacs Reference Takacs1996). Both the established separation of science and politics and the common concepts of scientific objectivity and value-neutrality were explicitly challenged in the scientific advocacy for a more resolute policy in favour of biodiversity.

The Conference on BioDiversity itself was a political, rather than a scientific, endeavour. Dan Janzen, one of the many renowned biologists involved, remembers in his interview: ‘That was an explicit political event, explicitly designed to make Congress aware of this complexity of species that we’re losing . … A lot of us went to that talk with a political mission’ (Takacs Reference Takacs1996: 37). Part and parcel of the message that biodiversity is under threat is the message that biodiversity is important, that is to say: It has value. Such a statement is obviously at odds with the conventional understanding of science as being value-neutral. Accordingly, Takacs’ interviewees question this scientific norm. ‘One of the silly things is the idea that science is somehow separate from society. There is no value-neutral science,’ says Paul Ehrlich (Takacs Reference Takacs1996: 181). With regard to both intricate knowledge and imminent danger, biologists feel obliged to bridge the gap between ‘Is’ and ‘Ought’ that is so well established in philosophy.

This combination of expertise and urgency drives the protagonists of the planetary boundaries framework, too.

In his seminal book, Takacs illustrates that the commitment of biologists to biodiversity was accompanied by an attempt to shift the boundaries between science, politics, and ethics. Biodiversity was associated with ‘a new ethic, in which biodiversity’s multiplicity of values will be respected, appreciated, and perhaps even worshiped’ (Takacs Reference Takacs1996: 9).

Given that history, ‘biodiversity’ can be regarded as a thick concept. ‘Thick’, in philosophy, are concepts that have a substantial degree of descriptive content but also are value-laden (Williams Reference Williams1985). With regard to biological concepts like biodiversity, ecology, or evolution, such thick concepts have been named ‘epistemic-moral hybrids’ (Potthast Reference Potthast and Potthast2007). In view of this hybrid character, biodiversity loss is not only a scientific matter of fact. The statement that we are losing biodiversity at unprecedented rates per se involves the value judgement that this loss is bad, and the normative statement that we ought to do something to halt it. In other words, the term has factual, evaluative, and normative dimensions.

Since its invention in the 1980s, the term ‘biodiversity’ has had a rapid career, in both the scientific and political arenas. Within science, the question of how to define biodiversity and how to measure it fills volumes. In the political arena, the term became the focus of global conservation efforts with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The close entanglement of political and scientific dimensions of the term makes it both important and difficult to define biodiversity. According to the CBD, ‘“[b]iological diversity” means the variability among living organisms from all sources …; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems’ (1992: Art. 2). The UNESCO funded ‘Man and Biosphere’ Program described it as living variability: ‘Biodiversity is the property of living systems of being distinct, that is different, unlike. Biological diversity or biodiversity is defined here as the property of groups or classes of living entities to be varied’ (Solbrig Reference Solbrig1991: 9). An explanatory leaflet produced by the CBD’s clearinghouse mechanism for communication purposes explained: ‘The term “biological diversity” … is defined in terms of genes, species, and ecosystems, which are the outcome of over 3,000 million years of evolution. The human species depends on biological diversity for its own survival. Thus, the term can be considered a synonym for “life on earth”’ (CBD 1999). When asked for a definition of biodiversity, David Ehrenfeld stated, ‘I don’t have a definition of biodiversity … I think it’s one of those wonderful catchwords like sustainable development, that, because it’s vaguely defined, has a broad appeal, like motherhood’ (Takacs Reference Takacs1996: 46–47).

This indeterminacy of content contrasts with scientific exactness but is precisely why it enables practical cooperation. It is, therefore, helpful to understand biodiversity as a boundary object that is ‘both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites’ (Star Reference Star, Gasser and Huhn1989: 46). While such objects can be very useful enablers of cooperation, it is hardly possible to pin them down to a single metric within a science-based framework. This becomes apparent when we look at the scientific debate on biodiversity as a planetary boundary.

9.2 Biodiversity as Planetary Boundary

How can an ill-defined concept as biodiversity be used within a framework that intends to be science-based? In particular: How is it possible to formulate a reliable boundary that separates the safe operating space from the danger zone? What are appropriate metrics for such a boundary? And how to deal with the huge amount of non-knowledge with regard to both the numbers of existing and endangered species and their relevance for ecosystem functioning?

The planetary boundaries framework uses extinction rate as a proxy for biodiversity loss. In calculating the boundary and the zone of uncertainty, the original paper made use of a rather rough rule of thumb: ‘The lower and upper bounds of extinction rates in the fossil record … provide the best estimates of the background extinction rates that have historically conserved global biodiversity’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009). With regard to this natural extinction rate, the authors set the boundary at an extinction rate of less than 10 extinctions per million species per year (E/MSY), and the zone of uncertainty at 10–100 E/MSY. However, they admit, ‘it remains very difficult to define a boundary level for the rate of biodiversity loss that, if transgressed for long periods of time, could result in undesired, non-linear Earth System change at regional to global scales’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009).

Within conservation biology, there have been controversial debates for years about whether biodiversity is an end or a means of conservation, and how biodiversity helps in the selection and prioritization of conservation objects (Maclaurin & Sterelny Reference Maclaurin and Sterelny2008; NRC 1999; Sarkar Reference Sarkar2005). Due to massive conceptual and methodological difficulties, some even argued for abandoning the term altogether (Santana Reference Santana2014). Accordingly, the biodiversity community’s response to the planetary boundaries framework was mixed. The reactions range from constructive criticisms (Mace et al. Reference Mace, Reyers and Alkemade2014) to harsh verdicts (Montoya et al. Reference Montoya, Donohue and Pimm2018). Mace et al. (Reference Mace, Reyers and Alkemade2014) argued that extinction rate and species richness were weak metrics and suggested alternative approaches to determine biodiversity loss boundaries. In response to their critique, the PB framework was adjusted and the initial boundary ‘biodiversity loss’ was replaced by ‘biosphere integrity’ (Steffen et al. Reference Steffen, Richardson and Rockström2015). Biosphere integrity has two components: genetic diversity, with extinction rate as control variable, and functional diversity with a Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) as control variable. The updated table no longer contains the remark on ethics but the note: ‘These are interim control variables until more appropriate ones are developed’ (Steffen et al. Reference Steffen, Richardson and Rockström2015), thus acknowledging practical and theoretical challenges of finding appropriate control variables at regional or global scales.

Despite these adjustments, some still doubt the practical utility of the concept. ‘[N]otions of planetary boundaries add no insight into our understanding of the threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, have no evidence to support them, are too vague for use by those who manage biodiversity, and promote pernicious policies’ (Montoya et al. Reference Montoya, Donohue and Pimm2018). In addition to practical conservation concerns, the authors of this verdict also express moral and political concerns. In the face of boundaries that are difficult to operationalize, they consider the talk of a ‘safe operating space’ problematic because it could encourage policymakers to assume ‘if the planet is not obviously collapsing around us, then surely we can continue to deplete it’ (Montoya et al. Reference Montoya, Donohue and Pimm2018).

I will leave the question of a proper metric for biodiversity here and turn to the ethical implications of a concept that considers the diversity of living beings exclusively in terms of a safe operating space for humanity.Footnote ¹

9.3 The Value(s) of Biodiversity

‘Our primary reason for including biological diversity as a planetary boundary is its role in providing ecological functions that support biophysical sub-systems of the Earth’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009). Apart from the marginal note in the first table, the planetary boundaries framework considers biodiversity for functional reasons. The only value of biodiversity taken into account is its instrumental value: Biodiversity is valued as a means to humanity’s continued existence. Genetic diversity is appreciated as a database that allows adaptation to an uncertain future, and functional diversity is treasured for its contribution to ecosystem services (Steffen et al. Reference Steffen, Richardson and Rockström2015). There is no doubt that this functional perspective contains essential reasons for the protection of biological diversity. However, it ignores other, equally important reasons: it does not take into account the possible intrinsic value of other than human living beings (Instrumental vs. Intrinsic value), nor does it adequately address the diversity of meaningful relationships between humans and nature (Relational Value).

9.4 A More Inclusive Perspective on Biodiversity

For decades, environmental discourse has been framed as a conflict between humans and nature. Such a framing ignores that in environmental protection and nature conservation we are usually not dealing with conflicts between ‘man’ and ‘nature’, but with conflicts between different people with different interests and needs – and different potentials to achieve those. One consequence of this binary framing is that the exclusion of people is often seen as the best way to protect nature. One recent example of such a preference is the Kumming-Montreal biodiversity framework adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Montreal in December 2022. It established the 30 by 30-target of global biodiversity conservation, to ‘[e]nsure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, and of coastal and marine areas, … are effectively conserved and managed through … systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation’ (CBD 2022). Only after fierce debates and in response to serious concerns with regard to: Indigenous people and local communities, the document finally explicitly recognizes and respects the rights of these groups. As long as we conceive of biodiversity loss as a conflict between humans and nature, crucial distinctions between different lifestyles and economies and their impacts on biodiversity cannot come into view – and hence cannot be adequately addressed in the political arena.

This critique of generalization also applies to the concept of planetary boundaries. ‘Human activities increasingly influence the Earth’s climate … and ecosystems’, ‘humans are effectively pushing the planet outside the Holocene range of variability …’, ‘humanity has already entered deep into a danger zone’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009, emphasis added): These quotes demonstrate the shortcomings of a planetary perspective mentioned earlier. Different human activities influence climate and ecosystems in very different ways – not ‘human activities’ as such but particular activities of particular persons. Not ‘humans’ are pushing ‘the planet’ outside of the comfort zone, but some humans with specific lifestyles and policies are pushing other humans – and other species – ‘deep into the danger zone’.

Talk of ‘humanity’ tends to ignore morally relevant differences between originators and victims of the depletion of nature. Those who are responsible for the decline of species and those who suffer from this decline more often than not are different persons. As the Human Development Report 1998 pointed out, responsibility for environmental damage, including biodiversity loss, lies mainly with the top global consumers (UNDP 1998). Increasing consumption not only puts strains on the environment but also reflects and increases global inequality. The richest fifth of the world’s population account for 86 per cent of total private consumption expenditures – and the related environmental and social burdens (UNDP 1998). On the other hand, consequences of biodiversity loss ‘will be felt disproportionately by the poor’ (Díaz et al. Reference Díaz, Fargione, Chapin and Tilman2006). Degradation of the Earth’s life support systems ‘is threatening the fulfillment of basic needs and aspiration of humanity as a whole but especially, and most immediately, those of the most disadvantaged segments of society’ (Díaz et al. Reference Díaz, Fargione, Chapin and Tilman2006). Both with regard to the polluter pays principle and with regard to responsibility for particularly vulnerable groups, the unifying talk of humanity is inadequate from an ethical perspective.

Talk of ‘humanity’ also tends to ignore conflicting interests: on the one hand, conflicts between interests in different kinds of use (e.g. provision of food vs. provision of housing); on the other hand, conflicts between interests in use and interests in other kinds of relations with nature (e.g. aesthetic, cultural, or spiritual). In order to overcome the unsatisfactory frontline between humans and nature and to recognize the diversity of human-nature relationships, IPBES initiated an assessment on the multiple values of nature and its contributions to human well-being in 2018. Over a period of four years, a multidisciplinary and multinational team of nearly a hundred authors scrutinized different concepts of value and methods of evaluation, analysed the values underlying current decision-making, and inquired if the inclusion of multiple values might lead to better decision outcomes. The results, published in July 2022, provide extensive evidence that ‘decisions based on [a] narrow set of market values of nature underpin the global biodiversity crisis’ (IPBES 2022b). The Summary for Policy Makers establishes that decisions are (too) often made on the basis of monetary values, neglecting other values. ‘Despite the diversity of nature’s values, most policymaking approaches have prioritized a narrow set of values at the expense of both nature and society, as well as future generations, and have often ignored values associated to indigenous peoples and local communities’ worldviews’ (IPBES 2022c). According to the Values Assessment, dominance of market values and ignorance of non-instrumental values are to be seen as root causes of the biodiversity crisis. To overcome this restriction, the assessment suggests a value typology that leaves room for different ways in which humans can relate to nature. It discriminates four ‘live-frames’: living from, living in, living with and living as nature. Living from nature designates the instrumental perspective on nature as a resource. Living with nature emphasizes relational bonds between humans and other than human beings. Living in nature highlights place-based connections between people and nature while Living as nature underlines the inseparability of humans and nature.

The findings of the IPBES Values Assessment may shed new light on the planetary boundary approach. By taking a functional perspective on biodiversity, it is clearly situated within the living-from frame. Within that frame, it provides powerful reasons for action. However, this achievement comes at the expense of neglecting other perceptions. A more inclusive perspective on biodiversity needs to take into account diverse values and to address social aspects such as power, poverty, and inequality. As long as such an inclusion is missing, it is doubtful whether the planetary boundaries approach can provide adequate solutions to the ongoing crisis of biodiversity.

10.1 Introduction

In 2024, global temperatures reached more than 1.4°C above pre-industrial temperatures for the first time (Copernicus Climate Change Service 2025). This was marked by increasingly urgent-voiced reports and statistics underscoring the extreme danger facing humanity and indeed the entirety of the biosphere (see for instance Ripple et al. Reference Ripple, Wolf and Gregg2022; Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Gupta and Qin2023). The frighteningly rapid pace of change, the identification of an extensive list of interrelated climate feedback loops (Ripple et al. Reference Ripple, Wolf and Lenton2023b), the warning that we are on the verge of five critical and inter-connected tipping points (Livina Reference Livina2023; Ripple et al. Reference Ripple, Wolf and Gregg2023a), that six of the earth’s nine critical boundaries had already been passed (Wang-Erlandsson et al. Reference Wang-Erlandsson, Tobian and Ent2022), and most likely, the seventh – ocean acidification (Caesar et al. Reference Caesar, Sakschewski and Andersen2024) – the continuing failure of the United Nations Conferences of Parties on Climate Change to secure drastic reductions in carbon and methane emissions and the refusal of the fossil fuel industry to end fossil fuel expansion and use underscored the cascading dangers of species extinction and the urgency of resolving the impasse on climate action. Food production and agriculture alone are responsible for 8–10 per cent of global emissions (UNEP 2024) and have caused 70 per cent of biodiversity loss on land and 50 per cent in fresh water (WWF 2022). With over a million plant and animal species threatened with extinction (WWF 2022), the intertwined global catastrophes of climate change and the extinction of species as manifested in the alarming loss of global biodiversity (World Economic Forum 2021) threaten the well-being of all interrelated aspects of life on Planet Earth (Mahon et al. Reference Mahon, Sack and Aleuy2024).

Despite making up only 6.7 per cent of the land surface area of the globe, islands are outstanding for hosting 20 per cent of the world’s biota. This extraordinary proportion of the world’s biodiversity on islands is, however, surpassed by the rate of endangered and extinct species due to the vulnerability of islands, particularly marine islands, to anthropogenic disturbances (Fernández-Palacios et al. Reference Fernández-Palacios, Kreft and Irl2021). Fernández-Palacios et al. report that 50 per cent of the threatened species and 75 per cent of the known extinctions since the European expansion around the globe are occurring on islands. Marine islands, which are surrounded by ocean, include land-bridge islands as well as continental fragments such as Aotearoa New Zealand. Oceanic islands are reported as some of the most severely impacted on the planet. Although fresh water makes up less than 0.3 per cent of the global available surface water, fresh waters support around 50 per cent of the total fish species (Reid et al. Reference Reid, Carlson and Creed2019). The gravest decline in biodiversity is occurring in freshwater habitats which support around 50 per cent of the total fish species are reported as experiencing two to three times the rate of biodiversity loss of terrestrial and marine habitat (Birnie-Gauvin et al. Reference Birnie‐Gauvin, Lynch and Franklin2023).

Against this background, increasingly urgent calls for environmental justice and transformed systems of governance elicit an ever-widening range of responses. Many of the responses to climatic crisis raise critical issues of justice and equity in particular for those occupying regions and areas threatened by rising oceans and vulnerable to extremes in weather conditions and diverse populations in the Global South (Sultana Reference Sultana2023). Multispecies justice scholars argue that normative frameworks of climate justice are no longer adequate to address the climate crisis. Multispecies justice rejects the three core ideas of human exceptionalism, namely that humans are physically separable from other species and non-human nature, that they are uniquely separable from all other species because they possess consciousness and agency, and that they are therefore more important than other species (Celermajer et al. Reference Celermajer, Schlosberg and Rickards2022). Using a relational lens, multispecies justice approaches recognize the myriad of networks and relationships to which individuals and societies are bound in everyday interactions. This includes recognition of the multiplicity of different types of being, in their own terms and their involvement in thick relational webs. As Celermajer et al. (Reference Celermajer, Schlosberg and Rickards2022) point out, recognizing this thick interrelationship between humans and other beings, other species, means that justice for one equals justice for all. Nonetheless because humans have the capacity to impact these relations, and an ability to have a conception of justice that might reshape human institutions and actions, humans also have a unique ability to conceive and practice multispecies justice. This approach recognizes that practicing different ways of co-existing between the human and non-human is essential in order to generate new forms of being and acting in this world (Tschakert et al. Reference Tschakert, Schlosberg and Celermajer2021). Calls for an expansion of the notion of justice to more-than-human species have many alignments with Indigenous onto-cosmologies. In seeking deeper understandings of the meaning of relationality, multi-species justice scholars frequently turn toward the ontologies of being that underpin Indigenous peoples’ ethics and values in enacting their first responsibilities under their own traditional laws; to care for and protect the multiplicity of the more-than-human beings with whom they coexist.

Indigenous communities on whose traditional lands over 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity have been protected for thousands of years, and whose ways of life, livelihoods, cultural identity, and physical and spiritual well-being are inseparable from the well-being of the more-than-human species in their lands and territories have been some of the most powerful voices against the devastating impacts of market capitalism (Celermajer et al. Reference Celermajer, Schlosberg and Wadiwel2023). Today they are in the forefront of calls for action on climate justice. For the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand where the case study that is central to this chapter is located, the relationship between all human and non-human or more-than-human beings is delineated in the onto-cosmologies of Maori genealogies in intricate detail (Rewi & Hikuroa Reference Rewi and Hikuroa2023). Encompassing the tangible and intangible, the organic and inorganic, the seen and the unseen, throughout and beyond the universe (Durie Reference Durie2001: 88), these deeply entwined co-creative relationships have defined and articulated Maori relational values and ethics, their spirituality, and their cultural practices for over a thousand years (Salmond et al. Reference Salmond, Hikuroa, Robertson, Bashford, Kern and Bobbette2023). In contrast to planetary justice approaches, these relationships are place-based, communal, and also deeply personal. Mountains, rivers, and many landmarks are recognized as ancestors to which the traditional human occupants have inalienable obligations. Predicated on these genealogical and cosmological relationships, Maori have an abiding responsibility of kaitiakitanga (loosely interpreted as guardianship) to the more-than-human species with whom they co-exist in place. Protocols and practices that care for the environmental have deep cultural and spiritual meaning and are recognized as such in traditional sayings, songs, and chants. Underpinning these protocols is recognition of the sacred nature of the mauri, the life force that binds everything together. Rivers have particular importance and are conceptualized as the lifeblood of the land. The well-being of the river which is encapsulated by its mauri is intertwined with the well-being of its people, thus its protection is of the highest importance (Stewart-Harawira Reference Stewart‐Harawira2020). This deeply ethical relationality and interconnectedness that for aeons underpinned Maori traditional cultural practices for caring for and managing their environment is today the foundation of Maori environmental governance (Redvers et al. Reference Redvers, Aubrey and Celidwen2023; Salmond et al. Reference Salmond, Hikuroa, Robertson, Bashford, Kern and Bobbette2023).

The failure of the international governance system of nation-states and corporate-government partnerships to address the global scale of the destruction is self-evident. Transformative forms of governance have been high on the agenda of the UN Conferences on Climate Change since 2014 and the UN Sustainable Development goals since 2015. The evolving planetary boundaries framework is one such response (Cf. Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Steffen and Noone2009), yet as Blythe et al. emphasize (Reference Blythe, Silver and Evans2018), there are a number of latent risks with transformative government proposals that are often overlooked in the articulations of such aspirational goals, not least of which is the political processes and shifts in power that are involved. A recent report calling for a new paradigm for planetary governance positions environmental and climate justice in its goals and invokes a proposed new legal architecture of earth law as one arm of planetary governance (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Gupta and Qin2023). A critical examination of the role of law in maintaining a safe operating space within the planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024) concludes that, while

While the role of law is widely promoted as an effective tool in addressing the failure of calls for justice to address inequity, it too is hampered by the principle of state sovereignty which overrides issues of justice at the global and national levels. As dramatically demonstrated in the November 2023 national election in New Zealand, this is particularly the case within nation-states whose national governance strategies and policies can be reversed almost on a whim.

Situated at the intersection of Indigenous onto-epistemologies, multispecies justice, and proposed planetary justice frameworks of transformative governance, this chapter focuses on the critical issue of the right of more-than-human species to thrive in the context of increasingly catastrophic effects of anthropogenic climate change. The vehicle for this exploration is a consideration of the challenges to transformative governance and the implications that accrue to indigenous biodiversity. The context is the catastrophic climatic events that occurred in the South Pacific Island nation of Aotearoa New Zealand in early 2023 with devastating consequences and the well-intentioned, but contradictory, responses of a liberal humanist government with a transformative agenda. Of particular note is the recognition of Maori knowledge, ethics, and values in very recent environmental policy documents and responses to crisis after decades of its absence. Attention is drawn to the power of political upheavals in climate obstructionism and some inherent dangers in evoking transformative governance as a response to the crisis of extinction. In the final analysis, it is argued that nothing less than deep systemic transformation underpinned by an ontology of being that is committed to the ethics of deep interrelationship, the importance of place, and protection of the ability of all species to thrive will provide a pathway for maximizing the protection, regeneration, and survival of species into the future.

10.2 Extinction in the Pacific

The small island nation in the South Pacific and one of the last countries to be settled, Aotearoa New Zealand, as it is known today, has some of the world’s most unique biodiversity due to 70 million years of Gondwana’s isolation from other continents. Elaborated in an address on the Gondwana inheritance shared by Southern hemisphere lands (Logan Reference Logan2001), New Zealand’s biodiversity evolved in the absence of many species and families of plants and animals dominant elsewhere in the world due to its isolation and unique environmental history over 80 million years. As Logan enumerates, these absences include large land mammals, large reptiles, and snakes. Its unique biodiversity includes the distinctive kakapo, the only flightless parrot in the world, primitive frogs that lay eggs that hatch into adult frogs, and large insects such as the Stephens Island giant weta that fill niches occupied by rodents elsewhere. Unique features of the landscape include the braided river systems of the South Island, the kauri forests of the North Island, and the geothermal ecosystems of the central North Island. Yet today Aotearoa New Zealand has the greatest loss of indigenous biodiversity in the world (Joy & McLean Reference Joy and McLean2019). Heavily forested prior to colonization,Footnote ¹ by the 1860s Andrew Rutherford of a prominent Canterbury squatter family, was able to revel in the replacement of the forested cover of the Canterbury Plains with ‘nothing but grass and wind’ (Holm Reference Holm1992), a comment revealing of the extent of destruction of the indigenous forest biome caused by settler burning in the pursuit of prosperity. As Park (Reference Park1995) wrote, ‘When the colonists’ fires cleared at the end of the nineteenth century, New Zealand had become a different place. Maori had lost their most precious life support system’ (Park Reference Park1995). Legitimated in their eyes by both biblical and Lockean ideologies of ownership and the subjugation of nature, colonists unhesitatingly took the opportunity to clear the land for building and development. In the early 1900s, as Salmond and Caddie report (Salmond & Caddie Reference Salmond and Caddie2026), the Royal Commission on Forestry stated that ‘No forestland, except if it be required for the special purposes of a climatic or scenic reserve and which is suitable for farmland, shall be permitted to remain under forest if it can be occupied and resided upon’. In hilly, highly erodible terrains such as in Tairawhiti (the East Coast of the North Island), debates about indigenous forests which prevented erosion versus exotics for which there was a ready market drove changing policies. Ultimately fast-growing exotic Pinus radiata plantations, which offered local communities a steady income from forestry and an unfulfilled promise of permanent plantations to address erosion, supplanted indigenous forests. The impact of this on the highly erodible terrains in Tairawhiti was particularly pronounced on the catchment areas of the five major rivers in the region (Fuller et al. Reference Fuller, Brierley and Tunnicliffe2023).

At the beginning of the first National Forest Survey 1945, on a total land area of 26.6 million hectares, only 25 per cent of indigenous forest remained and that mostly in areas difficult to farm (Masters et al. Reference Masters, Holloway and Mc Kelvey1957 as cited in Marden et al. Reference Marden, Lambie and Phillips2018; cf. Cunningham Reference Cunningham1953: 40). Almost 80 years on from the NZ Forest Service survey, 62 per cent of New Zealand’s ecosystems classified as rare are listed as threatened (Stats NZ 2023). Ninety per cent of New Zealand country’s wetlands have been destroyed with the remaining 10 per cent under extreme threat from polluted waterways in farming areas, polluted urban environments, over-abstraction from waterways, industrial fishing practices, introduced species, and the effects of climate change (Department of Conservation 2020; see also Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2019). In consequence, New Zealand has the highest proportion of threatened indigenous species in the world. Regarded as national treasures, as well as being an important food source for Maori, New Zealand’s endemic species hold cultural significance (De Lange as cited in Hancock Reference Hancock2022).

Over the past 50 years, freshwater biodiversity is reported as vanishing at a particularly fast rate (Elston et al. Reference Elston, Anderson-Lederer and Death2015). While much of this is due to invasive species, equally serious is the effects of large-scale habitat destruction through deforestation, wetland drainage, and ecosystem degradation (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2020). In 2013, almost 33 per cent of assessed native freshwater plants (182 of 559 species) were threatened or at risk in 2013. Of these, almost 20 per cent were in the highest risk category: nationally critical (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023a). Ten years on, in 2023, around one-third of New Zealand’s unique indigenous marine, land, and freshwater species were listed as threatened.Footnote ² Seventy-four per cent of assessed freshwater species were ranked as ‘threatened’ and a further 17 per cent as ‘At Risk’. Nearly a quarter of the freshwater species were described as ‘Data Deficient’, meaning that there was insufficient data to make a proper assessment (Department of Conservation 2020). A machine learning analysis published in 2022 found that more than half of species whose endangered status cannot be assessed due to a lack of data are predicted to face the risk of extinction (Borgelt Reference Borgelt, Dorber and Høiberg2022). Many of New Zealand’s rare native bird species also depend on freshwater environments. Eighty-two per cent of these were classified as threatened or at risk of becoming threatened in 2023. Eleven are already extinct (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023a). Sediment levels which have a direct impact on river quality and freshwater biodiversity have been found to be significantly higher in areas of pastoral land and exotic forestry, compared to indigenous forest cover (Spicer Reference Spicer2021, as cited in Salmond & Caddie (Reference Salmond and Caddie2026)). In recent years New Zealand’s market-oriented approach to emissions reduction has seen the exotic, fast-growing Pinus radiata become the forestry product of choice for carbon emissions trading. For some Tairawhiti communities, this has represented significant investment with overseas partners (Fuller et al. Reference Fuller, Brierley and Tunnicliffe2023). For the five major rivers on the East Coast, the two largest of which comprise ‘steep, highly dissected terrains that are subject to recurrent hillslope failures’ and one of which, the Waiapu, is reported to be the highest sediment yielding river in Aotearoa New Zealand, the impact has been particularly pronounced (Jones et al. Reference Jones, Macmillan and Woodward2023). Owing to the lobbying power of New Zealand’s key export industries, forestry, and dairy products, however, to date efforts to reduce the effects of agriculture and over-abstraction on waterways as well as land have spectacularly failed. This failure is acerbated by policies underpinned by utilitarian approaches which measure and divide ecosystems according to their economic worth.

10.3 Forests, Rivers, and Floods: Tensions in Paradise

In March 2023, following two months of unprecedented rain and flooding that accompanied Cyclone Hale in January and sparked by superheated atmospheric storms, Cyclone Gabrielle gathered strength and velocity as it headed towards Aotearoa New Zealand (Jones et al. Reference Jones, Macmillan and Woodward2023). It hit the north-east of the country leaving in its wake the loss of 11 lives (adding to the 4 lives lost 2 weeks earlier in an unprecedented flooding event further north), 6,500 people still missing one week later, and the destruction of homes, roads, and bridges leaving some townships cut off without power, water, food, or any way out for up to 2 weeks (Kerr et al. Reference Kerr, Thomson and Wilson2023). A government-commissioned panel called under urgency to ‘investigate the situation in Tairawhiti/Gisborne and Wairoa’ as a result of weather events which flooded woody debris and sedimentation into land, waterways, and infrastructure, concluded that ‘Sedimentation from more than a thousand untreated gullies, trees, logs and slash off hills that should never be plantation planted or clear felled, waterways choked with debris flows, riverbeds aggraded, coastlines suffocated and dangerous, roads and bridges unfit, unpassable, and many broken’ (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023b: 6).

Recommendations from the eight-week investigation, which included consultation with local Maori communities, the forestry industry, and scientists, focused attention on the well-known erosion susceptibility of the land and advocated for immediate restrictions on large-scale clear felling of plantation forests (of exotic pines), restrictions on plantation forests, and returns of some areas to permanent – preferably native forest – ‘which would have the advantage of biodiversity co-benefits’ (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023b: 19) as well as strengthening biodiversity through a system of mosaic planting. Many of these recommendations had been previously made in 1988 following the devastation of Cyclone Bola (Campbell Reference Campbell2023). Regarding waterways, the panel noted that legislating for the health of the two rivers to be a mandatory legal requirement would ‘considerably speed up the health and wellbeing of the two rivers’ (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023b: 13).Footnote ³ Some of the critiques levelled at the report exposed tensions and contradictions within local Maori communities. Other critiques focused on the potential loss to a highly lucrative timber export industry, particularly from partnerships with overseas investors whose pine plantations represented a multibillion-dollar industry based on carbon credit trading, harvesting, and export (cf. Te Taumata 2022). Behind these tensions and anxieties was a colonial history of commodification and extraction which had seen indigenous forests replaced with more market-lucrative exotics for export and a ready employment market for local communities.Footnote ⁴ A report on the health impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle is unequivocal in its statement that prevention of this disastrous flooding ‘means systemic decolonisation and restoration of Indigenous relationships with the land and waterways’ (Jones et al. Reference Jones, Macmillan and Woodward2023: 8).

In July 2023, the New Zealand National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity was published as part of a bundle of policy documents aimed towards fulfilling Aotearoa New Zealand’s climate commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. Using language which prioritizes Maori ethics and values regarding guardianship of the environment, the document acknowledges ‘the web of interconnectedness between indigenous species, ecosystems, the wider environment, and the community, at both a physical and metaphysical level’ and recognizes ‘that the health and wellbeing of people and communities are dependent on the health and wellbeing of indigenous biodiversity and that in return people have a responsibility to care for and nurture it’ (Ministry for the Environment New Zealand 2023a: 1.5.2). Yet the emphasis on the role of Maori knowledge and values was not matched in the proposals. Directed towards local body roles and responsibilities for ‘identifying, protecting and maintaining indigenous biodiversity under the Resource Management Act (1991)’, the policy extended provisions relating to promoting restoration and increasing indigenous vegetation cover to include natural inland wetland areas and included partitioning the land for forestry based on catchments rather than their original habitat and natural groupings known to Maori (Thomas et al. Reference Thomas, Lythberg and Hikuroa2024). From a matauranga Maori or Maori knowledge perspective, these proposals flew in the face of place-based knowledge and relationships. Species do not exist in isolation. They exist within ecosystems of mutual interdependence such that the loss or destruction of one species causes the diminishment, and, ultimately, the loss of those whose ability to thrive is dependent on it for sustenance (Thomas et al. Reference Thomas, Lythberg and Hikuroa2024). Similarly, the spiritual, physical, and emotional health of Maori communities is inextricably tied to the health of those species with whom they co-exist.

10.4 The Challenge of Transformative Governance and the Return of the Extreme Right

Within the first 100 days of the newly elected extreme Right coalition government elected in November 2023, the liberal humanist policies of a six-year Labour government which sought to reduce carbon emissions, improve freshwater governance, install wide-ranging policies to address biodiversity loss, and prioritize well-being were overturned. Without public consultation and with merely a ministerial stroke of a pen, the New Zealand Government abandoned an agreement to significantly widen a deep ocean marine sanctuary in the Pacific, reopened coal and oil mining throughout New Zealand including on the only habitat of a rare protected fauna, ceased implementation of new Significant Natural Areas legislation introduced by the previous government (Sowmund-Lund Reference Sowmund-Lund2023), introduced Fast-track Approvals legislation offering a fast-track consenting process for certain listed, and referred projects that will have ‘significant regional or national benefits’. The stated objective of the Fast-track Bill is to ‘reduce consenting costs and timeframes to enable the efficient implementation of large-scale projects’ (Garvan & Hulme-Moir Reference Garvan and Hulme-Moir2024). The Bill allows for projects to be approved by three ministers with unprecedented powers to ‘authorise harm to wildlife in return for compensation’, a single Minister after rapid examination by a Fast-track Expert Advisory Group supported by officials from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, and a great deal more. In his submission opposing the Fast-track legislation, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment stated that the proposed Fast-track Approvals legislation will ‘achieve sub-optimal outcomes through poor decision-making, poor allocation of resources, a lack of legislative durability, and increased litigation risk’ (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment 2024). As he noted, ‘Ministers subject to political lobbying are empowered to allocate public resources with potentially harmful environmental and health consequences.’ Former Prime Minister and Queen’s Counsel Sir Geoffrey Palmer was unequivocal about the harmful consequences, stating,

Aotearoa New Zealand is a signatory to the Convention on Biodiversity (since 1993) and the Kumming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022). The implications of the proposed removal of environmental protection legislation would mean an extremely poor prognosis for the last remaining 10 per cent of New Zealand’s wetlands, 20 per cent of and dunes, 27 per cent of rare ecosystems, and 20 per cent of indigenous species would be extremely poor. Like marine life in the South Pacific Ocean and indeed biodiversity globally, without deep systemic intervention, the biodiversity on this island nation in the South Pacific is facing even further extinction. The consequences of such massive disruption to ecosystems can only exacerbate the effects of climate change and accelerate the already devastating loss of biodiversity.

At the time of first writing this conclusion, news headlines in New Zealand reported that the Fast Track bill was crumbling under the weight of thousands of submissions opposing such action (Edwards Reference Edwards2024). As Salmond et al. (Reference Salmond, Hikuroa, Robertson, Bashford, Kern and Bobbette2023) noted, in the country that was one of the first to recognize a mountain as an ancestor with legal personhood, resistance, and transformation was happening from the ground. Awareness of the catastrophic impact of industrial development and climate change had seen the principles of kaitiakitanga rise to the fore. Yet critical as this movement was, and is, it was insufficient to stop the juggernaut of market capitalism and financial power. Rising awareness and New Zealand’s role as a signatory to international conventions seeking to protect biodiversity notwithstanding, the determined efforts of a government elected by the power of the financial-industrial lobby saw the Fast Track Approvals Act passed into law in December 2024 (New Zealand Government 2024). Under this Act the impacts of industrial development on rare and/or endangered species are no longer to be considered nor, of course, are impacts on Maori values or communities. The removal of Maori rights, language, and the principles of kaitiakitanga from all legislative considerations under the Coalition Government is not coincidental.

10.5 Governing for the Survival of Species

Among the proposals for transformative governance for planetary well-being and multispecies justice is a new planetary commons framework proposed by a large consortium that includes the Potsdam Institute, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and many others. Calling for a new paradigm for governance that ‘foregrounds planetary stewardship and secures critical planetary life-support systems in a safe and just way’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024), the proposed planetary commons approach for earth system governance recognizes that the ‘transgression of boundaries and undermining of biophysical symptoms already have multispecies justice implications for past and present generations’ (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024: 3). As this preliminary document emphasizes, to achieve the goal of ‘collectively securing critical biophysical Earth system functions that regulate livability on Earth for everyone, irrespective of where these functions are located’ would require a shift from governing of resource use of natural resources to universal rules of planetary stewardship. Alongside this major challenge to the ‘outdated traditions of an old European political order’, including state sovereignty and self-determination, vested corporate interests, inequities of global power, and the complexities of demarcation (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024: 6), is a proposed new legal paradigm of earth system law and a new planetary ethic that would rest on sets of principles such as differentiated degrowth and sufficiency, interconnectivity, and a new planetary ethic (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024: 8). The particular engagement of indigenous peoples with their ‘knowledges, practices, and contributions to ensure stable living conditions across the planet’ is included in this framework for planetary well-being, as is the relationship between ‘territorial custodians of a planetary commons and the broader spectrum of planetary beneficiaries’, yet it is unclear to what degree the importance of place-based species and knowledge that is central to Indigenous onto-epistemologies is fully understood. As the authors acknowledge, ‘the spectre of climate and environmental colonialism’ is ever present (Rockström et al. Reference Rockström, Kotzé and Milutinović2024: 7). So also, as the document demonstrates, is the centring of the human. Critiques of the planetary model point out that there are other ways of conceiving of planetary ethical commitments that require a radical shift in our conceptualizations of humans and more-than-human, of communities, and of the planet. One example is Latour’s model of using the concept of planetary to break apart the concept of a ‘whole’, ‘singular planet’ that can be looked down upon from on high. Others point to multispecies justice lifeways as a route to achieving planetary, multispecies justice (Kurki Reference Kurki2024). The ethics and values of Indigenous peoples who have for thousands of years recognized the animated, agential nature of the world, including human and nonhuman, and whose first law of governance is the protection of biodiversity represent the foundation of such a model. One thing is unequivocal, while the exceptional human remains at the centre, the transformative paradigm for protecting biodiversity that is sought in the framework for planetary stewardship will repeat the mistakes that have led to this extinction.

Aotearoa New Zealand is not alone in its demonstration of the fragility of governance and law as mechanisms for protecting the well-being of species, human and more-than-human, and the distribution and protection of justice from the proclivities of power and ambition. The achievement of deep systemic change will require transformation from the bottom up. It begins with the ethics and values of right relations and the first law of traditional Indigenous governance. Traditional Maori ethics and values of right relations recognized that status accrued not from ownership and power over but from uplifting and protection of the rights of others, that our first and foremost responsibility is to the protection of the life force, well-being, and right to thrive of all our relations, human and more-than-human (Williams Reference Williams2013). ‘Kaitiakitanga’, stated Chaz Doherty, ‘is an action, not a title’ (Te Ao with Moana 2020).

Without an underpinning onto-epistemology of the sacredness of the lifeforce which binds all existence and the decentring of the human, the achievement of deep systemic transformation may be long in the making.

Granting legal personhood to geological bodies such as rivers and mountains is one representation of the broadening of concepts of justice to the more-than-human, to multi-species justice. However critical limitations and challenges exist, some of which are reflected in the planetary boundaries framework. The onto-cosmologies of Indigenous peoples, such as, for example, those traditionally held by Maori in Aotearoa New Zealand, by First Peoples in Australia and in the Americas, in the high mountains of Bhutan and elsewhere, hold the sacred nature of all being and of ethical relationality itself, as the essence of existence. Such an ontology decentres property rights and economic priorities and re-centres the well-being of life itself. These are the ethics and values that must be embedded in and enframe legal and civil legislation and boundaries not only for planetary wellbeing, but for the well-being of all aspects of existence now and into the future, and in such a way that they cannot be overturned. Never have they been more urgently needed.