Sustainability, capitalism and evolution

Abstract

Humans are exploiting the Earth in an unsustainable manner, which is accelerating both environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity. Moreover, owing to global climate change, the rates of deterioration and extinction will probably increase in the near future. The scientific community has been highly sensitive to this alarming development and increased the number of baseline and ecological studies on the impact of humans on the biosphere and proposed various strategies to alleviate the environmental and biotic crisis. This has triggered vivid discussions about the potential risks and benefits of measures such as adaptation and/or mitigation actions, ecosystem restoration, the assisted migration of species or triage conservation.