EcoSummit 2023 Conference Declaration: Building a Sustainable Wellbeing Future

We - an international community of environmental researchers and practitioners - met in Australia for the 6th International EcoSummit. We acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land on which we met and their elders, past, present, and emerging. We met at a time of multiple, escalating, interconnected crises, including:

(1)

Biophysical planetary boundaries and being exceeded, including that the climate crisis is here and fast approaching irreversible tipping points, creating a world that human civilization has never experienced.

(2)

Natural ecosystems and their biodiversity are being lost and degraded resulting in ongoing destruction of sustainable life-supporting functions and services.

(3)

Social capital is eroding due to runaway inequality and political polarization - people around the world recognize that life is not getting better.

(4)

Levels of anxiety, depression, and burnout are skyrocketing in parts of the world, while poverty and famine still exist in others.

(5)

Our economic system remains dependent on fossil fuel, continues to extract renewable natural resources at rates that exceed their regeneration, and has insufficient concern for the loss to biodiversity and damage to valuable ecosystem services, both on land and in the sea.

(6)

We are faced with increasingly uncontrollable conflicts in various regions linked to resource depletion.

We have come together here around the theme of “Building a sustainable and desirable future: Adapting to a changing land and sea-scape.” During this conference, we have presented leading, cutting-edge research showcasing a way forward to achieve sustainable wellbeing for humanity and the rest of nature.