S. Belardinelli, T. Pievani, From biophilia to geophilia: A challenging but necessary expansion

The current state of our planet is marked by a “triple plus one” planetary crisis comprising climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and land degradation (Rockström et al., 2009; IPBES, 2019; UNEP, 2019, 2022) - a polycrisis, as it has been recently defined (Søgaard Jørgensen et al., 2023). While all are concerning, the drop in biodiversity is perhaps the most urgent, yet it has been neglected for far too long. Biological diversity is the fabric of which the entire biosphere is made, and its rapid depletion, which has dramatically accelerated over the last 500 years (Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2023), poses a great threat to the current configuration of life on Earth. Compelling evidence suggests that we are now on the brink of the sixth mass extinction event1 in the history of life (Barnosky et al., 2012; Dirzo et al., 2014; Pievani, 2014; Ceballos et al., 2015, 2017; Cowie et al., 2022). However, despite the long-standing situation, the issue of biodiversity loss did not receive due consideration until the 1970s. Seminal works on the topic appeared between the late 1970s and early 1980s (Myers, 1979; Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1981), acknowledging the magnitude of the crisis and the urgency to find solutions to prevent the rapid wave of extinction on a global scale. In the years that followed, the issue gained momentum and became a topic of discussion in both scientific and public debates