Giving Compass' Take:

• Gurpreet Singh at Skoll says that we need coherent, integrated, and collaborative action when it comes to addressing the global environmental crisis. 

• How are you addressing environmental issues with your giving?

• Take a look at several photographs that capture our planet in an environmental crisis. 

Hundreds of business, government, civil society, and other leaders recently weighed in on the most urgent threats confronting humanity and, for the first time in the Global Risks Report’s history, environmental risks now occupy all five of the top slots. The U.N. is also sounding the alarm. In his pithy opening to the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres shared an inconvenient truth. “Our world as we know it and the future we want are at risk,” he wrote. “The window of opportunity is closing fast.” Even a quick glance at recent headlines makes that risk obvious:

  • Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of untold suffering (The Guardian)
  • The tipping point is here, it is now, top Amazon scientists warn (Mongabay)
  • UN panel signals red alert on Blue Planet (BBC)
  • We have 10 years to save Earth’s biodiversity as mass extinction caused by humans takes hold, UN warns (CNN)

Will clean water be our biggest source of conflict in the future?

If not solved, we can expect loss of life, food and water crises, greater migration, exacerbation of geopolitical tensions, labor and supply chain disruption, economic stress, and impacts we can’t even anticipate. These threats may seem distant, or absent from one’s direct experience, but the latest science points to an indisputable reality—we have entered a pivotal decade that demands major global transformation. According to Guterres, the path forward is difficult. “We must connect the dots across all that we do—as individuals, civic groups, corporations, municipalities and Member States of the United Nations,” he wrote. “Science is our great ally in the efforts to achieve the Goals [and] I encourage all actors to translate the insights from [scientific] analysis into collective action.”

Read the full article about the environmental crisis by Gurpreet Singh at Skoll.