Urban Ecology and Humanism: Pathways to Renaissance

Abstract

This chapter underlines the alarming biodiversity decline, as humanity is already heavily overusing the resources it avails and needs almost 1.6 planets like the Earth to provide the goods and services consumed each year. The 2020 Earth Overshoot day, the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year, was 1 month later than in 2019, due to the suspension of economic activities during the months March–May 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic put the world on its knees. Still, in less than 8 months, the global community consumed all resources that the planet can sustainably regenerate over an entire year. In 2021, it fell on July 29. This chapter highlights that anarchic urbanisation and overconsumption resulted in disastrous effects not only for the environment and human health but also the economy and society, and trends have to be more than urgently reversed.

Cities are vital and vibrant ecosystems able to responsibly mobilise scarce resources, nutrients and materials, ensure food security, and offer sustainable goods and services. However, the fundamental resources of air, water and soil face extreme tensions in many cities, despite technological progress, often offset by growing consumption. Urban air pollution is a critical risk for human health, globally killing more people per year than the pandemic during its first year. Inefficient urban metabolisms and unbearable flows of pollution and waste are a great threat for the living planet.

Resourceful cities have to reduce their ecological debts and increase biocapacity, their ability to regenerate their assets and use them sustainably, respecting the pace of their renewal. Their attention to the nexus ‘health, food, water, energy’ has to be strengthened. Exemplary approaches and models of ecological urban areas, with zero pollution and waste, provide inspiration for reconciling the technosphere with the biosphere. Nature-based solutions have a great potential and communities and stakeholders play a central role for the exploration, exploitation and regeneration of their precious urban cells and organs.