When Environmental Decline
Cascades into Global Instability
Environmental decline, if not properly mitigated, has the power to tip humanity into long-lasting global instability as a result of degraded world conditions and widespread systemic pressure. This is the cascade we explore in this article.
Environmental Decline: The First Domino
Environment, here, is understood not narrowly as nature but as the entire biophysical context in which we live. It encompasses:
– the Earth’s ecological realities (biodiversity, ocean acidification, soil fertility, pollution loads, land use, water availability…) and planetary boundaries (as per Rockström’s framework);
– both the biotic and abiotic resource levels (respectively: plants, animals, forests… and water, minerals, air…);
– the climate and Earth system conditions (atmospheric patterns, temperature, sea level, ocean circulation, albedo…)
The environment therefore represents the planetary health and wealth; it is the set of life-support systems and resources upon which societies depend. In this, it constitutes the very foundation human societies are embedded in, built upon and operate within.
Environmental degradation – water pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, overfishing, toxic chemical release… – is happening when we violate the planetary boundaries. It is today a global and ever more pressing reality. One crucial way to visualize this is through ecosystem services, also referred to as nature’s contributions to people. The 2019 IPBES report warned that environmental mismanagement is diminishing these services at an alarming rate, arguing that our life-support system is stretched almost to breaking point. For example, oceans are being depleted and fresh water polluted (provisioning services). Insect pollinator populations are plummeting and healthy forests are being felled – jeopardizing crop yields as well as reducing air quality and water security (regulating services). Agricultural pesticides disrupt and impair fertile soil formation by killing or weakening key organisms – microbes, fungi, and earthworms – leading to soil erosion and drought (supporting services). In short, environmental mismanagement is using up the natural capital human societies depend on.
A major consequence of environmental decline is the reduced resilience of the Earth system to climate variability and other environmental stresses – that is, the reduced ability of ecosystems and planetary processes to absorb disturbances well enough so as to maintain proper functioning. When resilience diminishes, each disturbance has a larger impact while the system’s weakened recovery capacity makes it longer and more difficult for it to bounce back. If disturbances are too potent or occur within too short a time of each other, they can lead to ecological crises, particularly on a backdrop of degraded resilience. Yet these crises do not confine themselves to the biosphere – they spill over into human systems, translating into social, economic, political and even geopolitical pressure. If disruptions are such that ecosystem services no longer meet societal needs, they become a leading factor of social and political instability.
Hence, unsustainable human practices are gradually generating destabilizing conditions as they damage and weaken the Earth’s ecological basis, setting the stage for increasingly powerful ecological crises that will eventually surface as human crises. Past a certain threshold, environmental decline increasingly becomes both the root cause and the stress amplifier that destabilizes human civilization. In this, it is the first domino in a cascade from ecological stress to systemic instability.
Mounting Systemic Pressure & Degrading World Conditions
Resource overshoot (humanity currently uses natural resources 1.7 to 1.8 times faster than ecosystems can regenerate them) is one of the main drivers of systemic pressure. Overshoot means we are accumulating ecological debt. For example, forests are shrinking faster than they regrow, groundwater is pumped faster than aquifers refill, and the atmosphere is loaded with more CO2 than natural sinks can absorb. Initially, societies buffer this by importing resources or using reserves, but over time overshoot manifests as punctual or local scarcity and cost escalation. Eventually, such depletion of natural capital creates a constant, increasing systemic pressure: more effort and cost are required each year to extract dwindling resources (drilling deeper wells, mining poorer ore grades…), farm marginal lands, or access shrinking water resources. This can hinder economic productivity and spark competition or conflict over what remains.
A second key driver is the onset of ecological feedbacks that directly affect human security, particularly in the realms of food, water, and energy. Climate change is intensifying droughts, floods, and heatwaves, which increasingly disrupts agriculture and water supplies. The result is episodic but intensifying food and water crises contributing, in turn, to food price spikes and, in worst case scenarios, even famines. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report confirms with high confidence that climate hazards (such as drought) are now a growing driver of food insecurity, involuntary migration, political instability, and even conflict. The consequence can sometimes be felt halfway around the world. As a prime example, a climate-exacerbated drought and heatwave in 2010-2011, in the Eurasian wheat belt (Ukraine and Russia) led to crop losses, driving up global wheat prices. In import-dependent countries like Egypt and Syria, the price of bread surged, fueling public anger. Indeed, research has linked food insecurity and these food price spikes to the Arab Spring uprisings. Similarly, the IPCC Report found that an extreme drought from 2007-2010 contributed significantly to the Syrian civil war. Although it wasn’t the sole cause of the Syrian upheaval (governance and political factors also played crucial roles), it exemplifies how ecological stress disrupted a fragile, already strained stability, nudging society into full-blown social unrest. Likewise, according to the IPCC, climate-induced water scarcity and changes in rainfall patterns can inflame existing tensions over water resources: as water tables drop and rivers dry (e.g. the Tigris-Euphrates or Lake Chad), communities and states may enter into competition, leading to heightened risks of conflict. Energy systems begin to feel the strain, too, and may prove a major factor of instability in the future since any significant energy supply disruption or contention tends to ripple through inflation, unemployment, and geopolitical friction.
Other factors feeding into systemic pressure are important biophysical alterations, extreme weather events, and synergetic events. Biophysical alterations can eventually trigger nonlinear changes once certain thresholds are crossed. Examples include soaring temperatures once sea ice and permafrost are lost; abrupt sea level rise (on a planetary time scale); and biodiversity and/or ecosystems sudden collapse – rainforest transforming into savannah, lake reaching a point of eutrophication and basically dying (algae replaces fish), or coral reef (essential for fish reproduction) shifting to a barren, algae-dominated state. Adding to this, environmental changes and extreme weather events can magnify or reinforce each other, creating a downward spiral: climate change amplifies mega-droughts which, in turn, causes crop failures and wildfires while land degradation makes droughts and wildfires more severe – emitting more CO2 (fueling climate change) and further reducing land, and thereby crop, productivity.
An additional manifestation can be observed in the increased frequency of humanitarian crises and migration flows arising from environmental stress – climate disasters now displace more people each year than conflicts in many cases. Each uprooted population represents pressure on receiving social systems through competition for jobs, services, and local resources, or even the rise of nationalist backlash. Governments must then carefully manage sudden influxes of displaced people, providing support while preventing local conflicts. For poorer nations or those already dealing with political tensions, large-scale displacement can prove destabilizing.
Therefore, systemic pressure reveals itself in multiple, interconnected forms that are becoming increasingly harder for societies to ignore or dismiss. Environmentally, it emerges through extreme weather events (mega-droughts, flash floods, superstorms) or biophysical alterations. Economically, crop loss, infrastructure damage, industrial shortfall, volatility in commodity prices… can take their toll on a country’s financial health, sometimes leading to economic shocks and debt crises for nations unable to afford imports. Socially, it appears as heightened grievances, even price riots or mass protests, as people cope with higher costs of living, lost livelihoods, or actual displacement. Structurally, it shows through infrastructure stress under new extremes as well as scarcity of essential resources (water rationing in cities, energy blackouts, food shortages). Politically, it tests institutions’ capacity, responsiveness, and integrity. Geopolitically, we can see regional conflicts flaring up whose underlying motives might well be tied to resource acquisition (Ukraine, Sudan, Sahel…). Further, economic globalization means local resource crises can transmit globally – ecological stresses don’t confine themselves; they propagate through trade, migration, and finance.
Such degrading world conditions are the actual manifestations of systemic pressure which itself stems increasingly from environmental decline. Far from remaining a mere background inconvenience, the latter translates into tangible stresses on human socio-economic systems such as food, water, energy, and economic crises, straining institutions worldwide. Eventually, this feeds back into international relations as countries prioritize their own stability or survival. If such pressure is not adequately managed and alleviated, it paves the way for a more generalized world condition of instability.
Averting Full-Blown Systemic Instability
Systemic instability is the phase where crises begin to converge and feed public perception of breakdown. They become so interconnected, frequent and far-reaching that human systems may have no chance of rebounding between shocks; instead, one crisis bleeds into the next. The emergence of non-linear changes (i.e. abrupt shifts) in both natural and social systems also makes crises more potent and unpredictable. This pushes the socio-ecological system into a state of dysfunction and turbulence to a point where governance structures and social cohesion start to fall apart. If unchecked, it has the power to bring about a multi-faceted collapse because the environment is so altered that the very foundation society depends on is failing.
Here, ecological instability and collapse become entwined with widespread instability in the human realm. The world conditions under deep systemic stress may be characterized by rampant and persistent humanitarian crises, infrastructural collapse, conflicts, and health emergencies. These are both symptoms and causes of instability: they signal that pressures have exceeded manageable thresholds. A hallmark of systemic instability is the pervasive perception of insecurity and loss of control: essentially, the world looks and feels destabilized. As governments start to be overwhelmed by cascading crises they struggle to handle, public anxiety and disillusionment grow, and people’s faith/confidence in institutions begins to erode. Populations may then turn to radical solutions or leaders out of desperation for order.
Full-blown systemic instability is not necessarily an end state nor is it a fatal outcome. It can worsen toward systemic collapse or, if addressed soon enough, can inspire a radical transformation of the system. In this, humanity sits at a crossroads: either we tip further into instability through inaction and continued exploitation – locking into a degenerative trajectory for humanity and the planet – or we strive to avert the worst of it, collectively finding ways to reinvent our systems so as to promote environmental regeneration, stability, and resilience. One cannot overstate the importance of timing, here. Systemic instability, once deeply entrenched, is self-reinforcing and hard to reverse. If rainforest loss hits a tipping point and turns into a savannah, we cannot regrow a rainforest on a timeline relevant to human stability. Likewise, if a society descends into lawlessness and chaos, it’s incredibly challenging to steer it back towards social cohesion and institutional trust. The window for effective action is shrinking, so it’s time to act – now. Otherwise, each new crisis is going to leave humanity weaker and less capable of recovery, leading towards a potential collapse or at least a much degraded state of civilization.