Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Why We Ignore Eco Loss (Part 1)

A major characteristic of our contemporary society is the increasing speed of life and the shrinking perception of time. We live in a world of "everything, right now." We no longer have time for anything. We must constantly move on to something else. Moreover, the era of the internet and social media only aggravates this phenomenon.

The continuous overconsumption of information forces our brains to empty their memory. Everything falls into oblivion in the blink of an eye. The only thing that matters is living in the present, forgetting the past and neglecting the future.

Some time ago, while watching a documentary on overfishing, it was pointed out that one of the greatest problems we face when trying to protect the environment and denounce extractive activities is that we suffer from generational amnesia. We always start from our own personal experience, even though it does not represent the original point of reference. For example, in the fight against climate change, the Paris Agreement takes the year 1990 as its baseline, even though greenhouse gas emissions actually began at the beginning of the 19th century.

This concept helps us understand why we remain passive in the face of the ecological disasters that surround us. It was originally developed to explain ecological decline, but it also provides a valuable framework for understanding human behavior, as I will attempt to demonstrate through the establishment of environmental law as a societal instrument for protecting and conserving our environment.

The Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Passivity in the Face of Ecological Disaster

The concept was formulated by the Franco-American marine biologist Daniel Pauly.

He observed that, within the fishing sector, both fishermen and scientists used the fish stocks existing at the beginning of their careers as their reference point, ignoring the fact that those populations had already been overexploited in comparison with those of the early 20th century.

This idea allows us to better understand why individuals and professional communities accept the systematic destruction of ecosystems, tend to underestimate the seriousness of the situation, and ultimately fail to grasp its true magnitude. This syndrome creates a false sense of normality.

Human Nature

A first explanation for this paradigm is simply that we ignore the real extent of environmental degradation. It is true that we assume environmental deterioration exists, but as individuals who learn through practice and personal experience, we find it difficult to measure the extent of past degradation in addition to the degradation that we witness today.

Indeed, although we are rational beings and, through writing, are able to transmit our knowledge and experience to future generations so that it can accumulate over time, it is only relatively recently that we have begun to systematically record the state of our environment. The most illustrative example is that of instrumental temperature measurements. Coherent global records only truly began between 1850 and 1880 in the industrialized countries.

Yet, even when such records exist, we continue to rely primarily on our own cognitive perception. Like every living being on this planet, we must adapt to our environment and its uncertainties. Although we do not begin from scratch because we live in society and have built great civilizations, human nature constantly drives us to learn, as the expression goes, "the hard way." This logic leads us to take our own initial experience as our point of reference. From that point onward, we construct our representation of the world as though no previous changes had ever occurred. Even if scientific records and an extensive body of literature demonstrate the opposite, our personal experience creates a form of normalization of the present moment: our own starting point.

This explains why climate sceptics still exist, even though overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates the reality of climate change. Nevertheless, after the heatwaves that have struck the Northern Hemisphere and made headlines around the world, this reality has become increasingly visible — and increasingly bitter.

This generational reset produces a perverse effect: it becomes a major obstacle to the effective protection, and even the restoration, of our environment.

Generational Amnesia

As we have seen, the environmental references of our surroundings gradually shift along with their deterioration, although the opposite is both possible and desirable. Each new generation gradually forgets previous ecological conditions and states, and accepts, with or without resignation, an ever-higher level of environmental degradation. We may therefore speak of a phenomenon of collective ecological amnesia, generally accompanied by individual amnesia.

How can we grasp this loss of biodiversity when we observe both the speed at which it disappears and, above all, the speed at which we forget it? History offers numerous examples that illustrate this phenomenon. Without going too far, let us consider the disappearance of the lakes that once occupied the Valley of Mexico. Later, as urbanization completely dried up the lakes and wetlands, reducing them to little more than remnants, the authorities channeled the rivers that had formed there. Today, for most city dwellers, these former waterways evoke nothing more than street names. It is only during earthquakes or major floods that we are reminded that there was once an extensive lake system and a network of rivers.

What disappears eventually becomes forgotten. Natural disasters sometimes remind us of this lacustrine past, but they do not remind us of all the natural wealth that has been destroyed. Nor do they evoke the extraordinary biodiversity that once flourished in this environment. Even today, the biodiversity found in the region may appear remarkable. This figure is impressive, but we should not forget that more than 70% of the hummingbird species that once inhabited the region have disappeared. But who still remembers all of this?

The fight against oblivion is therefore essential. Even in the case of the Valley of Mexico, where more than 60% of the territory consists of conservation land (agricultural and forest areas), one might believe that environmental conditions are satisfactory. Yet historical accounts clearly show that environmental degradation has been continuous and exponential, even though contemporary society tends to perceive this valley, with its forested areas, as a small paradise.

Human Time vs. the Time of Nature

This ecological amnesia can also be explained by the difference between the human perception of time and the temporal scale of nature. Human beings generally use the average length of their own lives as their temporal reference, whereas nature operates on much longer timescales.

In their activities and in their relationship with the world, human beings think in terms of one year, five years, ten years, and, at most, thirty years. Nature, by contrast, functions according to cycles that may sometimes be short but are, more often than not, much longer. Thus, the regeneration of a forest may require several decades before it regains its ecological balance, whereas the recovery of a coral reef may take several centuries.

Human beings are therefore incapable of fully appreciating the temporal cost of these natural cycles. They underestimate their importance and neglect their preservation, even though their destruction may have dramatic consequences, both for ecosystems and for future generations.

Although our life expectancy rarely exceeds 100 years, our actions may produce effects that last for decades, as in the case of an oil spill; or even for thousands of years, as in the case of radioactive contamination caused by a nuclear disaster such as Chernobyl.

We must therefore evolve rapidly and undertake a profound change in both our behavior and our model of society. Time is running out, as demonstrated by the accelerating pace of climate change, whose effects are becoming faster, more intense, and increasingly dangerous for humanity and for our model of civilization.

Human Instruments Are Not Adapted to Real and Effective Environmental Protection

Time, as we have seen, profoundly influences our perception of the world. Unfortunately, this perception is also reflected in our actions and in the instruments we create. It is almost impossible for us to foresee the very long term.

In the face of the shifting baseline, it is difficult to ensure genuine environmental protection or to achieve truly satisfactory levels of conservation. This difficulty is not only due to our lack of knowledge of the environmental legacy accumulated since the Industrial Revolution, or even before. It is also due to the fact that human civilization, in general, does not have adequate societal instruments to accomplish this task.

This concept shows that human beings always act from their own point of reference and that their long-term projections remain limited to their own timescale. They are therefore insufficient to respond to challenges that unfold according to the rhythms of natural cycles. To illustrate my point, I will take as an example the human societal instrument par excellence: law.

Environmental law is the branch of law that aims to protect natural environments and their components, and to regulate human activities that may harm a healthy environment. It is a relatively recent discipline, barely fifty years old, but its development has been remarkably rapid. In a very short period of time, it has risen to the level of a constitutional right and a human right, thereby acquiring its credentials. However, this apparent consecration conceals numerous conflicts of interest and many subtleties. Indeed, we observe that, in the face of political pressures and economic interests, environmental law frequently gives way, particularly in the name of economic recovery or energy sovereignty.

One of the major advances of this branch of law has been the introduction of a new legal actor: future generations. However, they are quickly relegated behind present priorities and short-term imperatives. Taking the factor of time into account therefore reduces the effectiveness of environmental law. The distant future always carries less weight than the immediate present in the balance of interests.

We often prefer to produce the irreversible, compromise the regenerative capacities of nature—in other words, its resilience—and accept what should be unacceptable. The "risk society" described by Ulrich Beck has become the norm. We thus adopt, consciously or unconsciously, the cynical attitude summed up by the famous expression: "After me, the deluge."

Another criticism that could be made is that, ultimately, environmental protection remains essentially anthropocentric. Nature is protected only because its degradation harms human beings, their interests, or their property. It remains placed under guardianship, either through private property or under the authority of the State.

Finally, insofar as environmental degradation often results from ancient and imperfectly understood causes, ecological problems transcend material, territorial, and temporal boundaries. This raises an additional difficulty: who should be held responsible and, consequently, who should be responsible for repairing the damage? This question is all the more complex because the extremely slow rhythms of natural cycles, whether in terms of contamination or ecosystem resilience, cannot be compared with the short time horizons of human decision-making, which are dominated by the pursuit of immediate gains.