A recent study from the University of Maine argues that certain key aspects of human evolution may be hindering our ability to solve global environmental problems such as climate change.
Over the past 100,000 years, human groups have gradually exploited more types of resources, with greater intensity, on a larger scale, and with greater environmental impact. This global expansion was facilitated by cultural adaptation to the environment, leading to the accumulation of adaptive cultural traits such as social systems and technologies for exploiting and controlling environmental resources.
Tim Waring, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Maine, points out that human evolution is driven primarily by cultural changes, which are faster than genetic evolution. This rapid adaptation allowed humans to colonize all habitable areas of the world. However, this expansion was dependent on large amounts of available resources and space.
Today, humans have also exhausted space. We have reached the physical limits of the biosphere and claimed most of the resources it has to offer. Our cultural adaptations, particularly the industrial use of fossil fuels, have created dangerous global environmental problems that threaten our security and access to future resources.
To solve global challenges such as climate change, the research team examined when and how sustainable human systems emerged in the past. They found that sustainable systems tend to grow and spread only when groups have had difficulty or failed to conserve their resources. Furthermore, strong environmental systems tend to solve problems within existing societies, not between them.
Dimensions of environmental management to create an attractive landscape for long-term human development.
Environmental sustainability challenges (curved boundaries) require a minimum level of cooperation in a society of a certain minimum size. Possible alternative paths lead humanity to different long-term evolutionary outcomes.
In Path B, competition between societies for shared environmental resources leads to cultural selection between groups for increasingly direct competition and conflict. Path A: Increasing cooperation between societies facilitates the emergence of global cultural traits to maintain shared environmental advantages.
Image credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0259
But Tim Waring points out that the bigger problem is that central features of human evolution are likely to work against our ability to solve collective global challenges. To solve these challenges, we have to swim against the current.
The work of Tim Waring and his colleagues suggests that altering the process of adaptive change between companies and nations could be a powerful way to address global environmental risks.