The 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30, will be the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference and will take place in Belém, Brazil, between November 10 and 21, 2025. What will be at stake at COP 30, as it was at previous conferences and will be at future ones, is the lack of political will to face this simple truth, which is easy to formulate but very difficult to put into practice: nature does not belong to us; we belong to nature. The difficulty is also simple to identify but very difficult to address: capitalism and colonialism, which have dominated the global economy and society since the 16th century, have become incompatible with the survival of human life and life on Earth in general. The incompatibility is also simple to formulate: for Eurocentric modernity, constituted primarily by capitalism and colonialism, nature belongs to us, and as such, we can dispose of it freely. Disposing of it implies the power to destroy it.

For capitalism and colonialism, there is a radical separation between human society/humanity and nature. The Cartesian philosophy that presides over this duality establishes an absolute separation and hierarchy between human beings and nature, just as it separates the mind from the body. While human beings are a res cogitans, a thinking substance, nature is a res extensa, an extensive and impenetrable substance. As God is human thought about the infinite, human beings are immensely closer to God than nature.

Human beings are truly worthy of the dignity that God has granted them to the extent that they denaturalize themselves. Herein lies the root of the abysmal line that characterizes modern domination, the possibility of absolute dualisms, and, with that, the impossibility of holistic thinking. Nature is subjected to an abyssal exclusion from society, and the same occurs, logically, with all entities considered closer to nature. Historically, women, indigenous peoples, Black people, and, in general, all races considered inferior have been examples of these entities.

All the main mechanisms of exclusion and discrimination existing in modern societies, whether based on class, race, or gender, are ultimately founded on the radical dualism between society/humanity and nature, between mind and body, and between spirituality and materiality. The ways in which modern society deals with inferiority are modeled on the ways in which it deals with nature. If abysmal exclusion means domination through appropriation/violence, nature—including the land, rivers, and forests, as well as the people and ways of being and living whose humanity has been denied precisely because they are part of nature—has been the preferred target of this domination, and therefore of appropriation and violence, since the 17th century.

Environmental destruction and the ecological crisis are the other side of the social and political crises we are facing and which conventional policies are increasingly unable to resolve. Different schools of thought have attempted to account for the double link between the ecological crisis and the social crisis. Most point to the urgent need for a paradigm shift, which in itself indicates both the severity of the crisis we are going through and the magnitude of what is at stake. They agree with the idea that the paradigm shift consists of replacing the humanity/nature dualism with a holistic conception centered on a new understanding of nature and society and the relationships between them.

A paradigm is a specific type of social metabolism, a set of material and energy flows controlled by humans that occur between society and nature and which, together and in an integrated manner, sustain the self-reproduction and evolution of the biophysical structures of life, including human life. From the 16th century onwards—following European colonial expansion and, in particular, after the first industrial revolution in the Western world (1830s)—the social metabolism characteristic of the capitalist and colonialist paradigm generated a growing imbalance in the flows between society and nature, producing a metabolic rupture.

It is now accepted that this rupture, by creating a systemic imbalance between human activity and nature, marked the beginning of a new age in the life of planet Earth, the Anthropocene. This imbalance has worsened to such an extent that we are now facing an imminent ecological catastrophe, a situation which, when it becomes irreversible, will put human life on Earth at great risk. It is imperative to set in motion, as quickly as possible, a process of transition to a different type of social metabolism, based on a different type of relationship between society and nature. This is what the necessary paradigm shift is all about.

The paradigm shift presupposes the need for a philosophy to underpin it and a strong social mobilization to put it into practice. The transition is a historical process, which means that it is urgent to begin it, but it is impossible to predict its pace and timing. We have more reasons to be optimistic about the philosophy than about social mobilization.

This is because philosophy has long been available; it is the set of philosophies of the peoples who have been most sacrificed by capitalism and colonialism, the peoples who have often been exterminated, whose territories have been invaded, and whose so-called natural resources have been stolen, a historical process that began in the 16th century and continues to this day. I am referring to the philosophies of indigenous or native peoples, first nations. Fortunately, these philosophies have reached us thanks to the resistance and struggles of these peoples against oppression, exploitation, and annihilation.

Although these philosophies are very diverse, they converge on one point. What we refer to as nature is conceived by these philosophies as Pachamama, or Mother Earth. If nature is a mother, it is the source of life; it is care, deserving of the same respect as our mothers who gave us life. In short, nature does not belong to us; we belong to nature. This radical belonging contradicts any idea of dualism between humans and nature. The divine entity, regardless of how it is conceived, is an entity of this world and can manifest itself in a river, a mountain, or a particular territory. The divine is the spiritual dimension of the material, and both belong to the same immanent world.

Among many other examples of this philosophy, I refer to the thinking of the Nasa indigenous people of Colombia:

“From the perspective of the law of origin, to speak of principles of life and the guarantee of life is to speak of spiritual and natural mandates or laws that justify the difference between the way of life of the Nasa and that of non-indigenous cultures. For the Nasa, everything that exists is a living being: minerals, stars, air, water, plants, etc. Therefore, all beings (nasa) have the right to procreate and to care for themselves and for Mother Earth. Mother Earth is a living being; she is Una Kiwe, a member of the community, and therefore has rights. The nasa come from Mother Earth and are part of her before they are born and after they die. All knowledge, ancestors, wisdom, and dreams are recorded in Mother Earth. And above all, she is part of the community.” (Plan de Salvaguarda de la Nación Nasa).

For the NASA people, as for indigenous or native peoples in general, the territory, far from being just a physical space, is home to a multiplicity of entities or spiritual beings. The human community is just one of the communities of life that make up this territory. Far from being an object, what we call nature is a subject, even a subject of rights, the rights of nature. For capitalism and colonialism, conceiving of nature as a subject of rights is a death threat. The rights of nature are incompatible with the right of capitalism and colonialism to perpetuate themselves. Recognizing this incompatibility is the beginning of the paradigm shift.

We have the philosophy, but do we have the social mobilization to carry out the paradigm shift? The answer is not for now. In fact, the current period seems much more hostile to the idea of a paradigm shift than previous periods. The maximum hostility stems from the threat of global war hanging over the world and the growing polarization between “us” and “them” that fuels the politics of hatred. A new world war will certainly be more destructive than previous ones, and the destruction will not only be of human life but also of what remains of the ecosystems that sustain life in general. In turn, social polarization and tribalism, which are growing in its wake, fueled by the promoters of hatred, make it impossible for humanity to talk to each other and to all non-human beings with whom they share planet Earth. The struggle for a paradigm shift begins today with the fight against war and against social polarization fueled by tribalism and the politics of hatred.