The Biosphere is the layer of the Earth where life has flourished in its diverse forms and dimensions. Within the biosphere, there exists an infinite variety of living organisms that fly, run, swim, and teach us to recognise how we humans are merely one species participating in an immense interconnected web of living organisms. Organisms, from bacteria to humans, perform functions that keep the planet habitable. Beyond depending on the ecosystems present on Earth to survive, grow, and reproduce, living beings also shape it, generating structural changes in the environmental conditions of the places they inhabit. This idea of the Earth as a self-regulating system governed by its inhabitants was consolidated by the Gaia Theory, and has been reaffirmed by indigenous notions of "Pachamama", which recognise it as a mother endowed with fertility.
According to the Global Tipping Points Report on the 'points of no return' of the Earth System, it is precisely the constant interaction between the biosphere and the other layers of our planet that keeps it functioning, stable, and habitable. Forests, for example, participate in the biogeochemical carbon cycle, as they sequester carbon from the atmosphere and release oxygen through photosynthesis, just as cyanobacteria do in the oceans.
However, the abusive use of the planet and its natural resources by globalised and industrial society, resulting in the relentless burning of fossil fuels, has released a great deal of the carbon stored for millions of years beneath the Earth's surface and in its forests, warming the atmosphere and destabilising the climate, the biosphere and other components of the Earth, such as glaciers and oceans. Beyond global warming, the conversion of ecosystems into agro-industrial fields for human use is destroying the habitat of the majority of living beings and triggering a wave of mass extinction of species. By consuming and degrading our own planetary home and fragmenting the interconnected web that sustains life — from which we draw vital resources — we are putting our own existence at risk.
Yet not all human relationships have been or are predatory. There are mutualistic relationships that generate mutual benefits both for humans and for the other species involved in the interaction. The millennia-old indigenous management of Amazonian soils, for example, transformed poor soils into fertile dark earths capable of sustaining diverse forests rich in food for humans and other animals. Today, indigenous peoples and traditional communities have contributed to the regeneration of the biosphere, acting as guardians of biodiversity within their territories.
Is there still a civilisational blindness that limits us from recognising that we are part of the biosphere, and are therefore capable of caring for and regenerating it? Is it possible to reverse the planet's destructive trajectory and adopt a different perspective? Rather than accepting the "humiliating condition of consuming the Earth", as Ailton Krenak writes in his book Futuro Ancestral / Ancestral Future (2022), I believe we must take responsibility for its regeneration.
Carolina Levis