The Greatest Debt of All Time

Izzy Fenwick

Founder & CEO, FENWICK

As a young person thinking about the future, and our current trajectory as a species, it is difficult to imagine a world without crippling debt, limiting our possibilities, and threatening our very lives.

This debt will not be purely financial. It will not just be the transition debt or adaptation debt – although that debt will also be colossal. There are things we can buy our way out of but in many instances, it will be too late. No amount of money will get back what we have lost – what we have spent and what we have compromised. The way we have traded, and continue to trade, our natural capital is not just bad business, it is reckless negligence. Our natural capital has been squandered. We are actively bankrupting those who will take over from us.

These future leaders are already rising to the challenge of reimagining what the future of business looks like. A future that recognizes the inherent, intersectional, and holistic value of our natural world and our undeniable reliance on it.

We all, both individuals and businesses, rely on  natural capital to live (literally) and thrive (economically). Our oceans, land, minerals, ecosystems, freshwater, and air. We also rely on its services – from growing the food we eat, to producing the materials we use for buildings, medicines, and fuel. Insects pollinate our crops, birds distribute seeds, and our forests provide  natural flood defenses. The list of natural services is extensive, and this does not even begin to include all the emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits we connect with as the human components of these complex natural systems.

However, most of the services and immense value provided by nature are economically invisible in our business world. We hardly consider them; we barely report on them, and we do not have clear plans for repaying them. The mere mention of GDP will often incite eye rolling from younger members of society. How can we value something that excludes the fundamental systems which allow it to exist? How can we be excited about GDP growth when we know it is systemically tied to the destruction of all that gives us life?

So, when you think about the natural capital you are reliant on, would you consider your organisation to be borrowing or stealing?

If we are borrowing, then we need to acknowledge the real bill and start repaying nature for what we have taken. And these bills also need to be paid in the currency that is of actual value to nature and emerging generations - restoring the stocks we have taken, embedding nature- based solutions and considering the broader ecosystems we all operate within.

Because the truth of the matter is, if we do not start taking that seriously, these bills are going to end up being the kinds of bills we can never pay our way out of. Our climate crisis is nature’s debt collector, and it will not be kind to future generations. It will hold them hostage. And, when we consider the potential scenarios of climate change, this is going to feel a lot like torture. For many, especially in developing countries, this torture is already manifesting in food insecurity, scarce water supplies, unbearable heat, and political instability with war for resources and global health. Here we sit, comfortably in the economic systems benefiting us today, while the natural systems and people we exclude along the way are the canaries falling silent in the coalmine.

Paying for services and resources is such a basic concept in our business world so it’s hard to understand why it’s not a standard consideration for how we treat the environment as supplier. And while this is not how I consider the environment it is the best analogy I have for communicating the responsibility that organisations have to the natural world we are all a part of.

And from an economic standpoint, this is especially critical for a country like New Zealand. We are a resource-based economy. Our economic system is almost entirely dependent on finite natural resources. Thirteen of our top 20 export commodities depend on natural capital, which is more than 70% of New Zealand’s entire export earnings. How can we be so dependent on something that we are not actively restoring? Why are nature-based solutions not the first thing we think of when we audit our impacts, especially when we think about future generations? What kind of existence will we leave for them if the natural world has been so depleted there is nothing left to enjoy or marvel at, let alone prosper from?

To see nature-based solutions so explicitly in the Emissions Reduction Plan is a massive step in the right direction. Recognising how inextricably linked our climate crisis is with our biodiversity and natural degradation is critical. This is a fantastic opportunity for all to learn about and embrace the kind of action that truly enhances and restores our natural world. The kind of action that mitigates the environmental debt our legacy is handing over to future generations. Actions like this require collaboration. They require organisations, industries, sectors, and systems to understand the collective way forward. A way forward that acknowledges the natural world we exist within and all the reciprocal relationship with share with it in a way that ensures its wonderous ‘stocks’ are around for generations to come. Because while our natural world is not a business, our capitalist structures and systems continue to take precedent.