Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes, Bacon or Montesquieu developed the idea of a social contract. For all the focus on science and rationality, they still took for granted the Judaeo-Christian view of man above and apart from nature, the soil and beasts given to them by God to use. Neoliberalism went one better and put man against man, each driven by his desire to win a zero-sum game to maximise his own material gain. (The overly gendered language would have been approved of by everyone involved.)

“This view is fundamentally flawed of course. We know that we are a part of nature not apart from it. We depend on this complex ecosystem for sustenance in the same way that we depend on social networks for our flourishing.” Huntjens began his career as a biologist when a course on ecology came with an epiphany on systems thinking.

“It’s considering complex systems as a whole, rather than just isolated mechanisms within the systems. In ecology itself, that is really self-evident: if you move one dial, the effects will be visible everywhere else.” He researched coral reefs in Curacao and noticed that people were moving sand on top of the reefs to extend the beach in order to accommodate more tourists. This damaged the reefs, which, in turn, had disastrous effects on the fish population and thus on food security.

“It was really frustrating: no one listened to me when I explained that short-term economic interests had dramatic consequences on the ecosystem – of which those people were a part!” Huntjens realised he had to apply systems thinking to a bigger system and pursued a career in political sciences and complex system sciences to understand how and why those ecological dials were fiddled with in the first place.
 

Good ancestors of the future

Much as he likes nature, Huntjens doesn’t see that as necessary to be motivated to improve the system. “It’s about being a good ancestor! In the same way that we should be grateful for standing on the shoulders of giants, we must also be aware that the decisions we take now will have consequences for future generations. It’s clear that we are at a dead end – just open the newspapers….”

From energy and food to the economic system underpinning them, major transitions are necessary. The good news is that those have already begun and there is an increasing appetite for them. “From a vegan diet becoming the cheapest available and renewable energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuel to Dutch civil society successfully suing their government or Shell for not doing enough to meet the targets of the Paris Climate Accord in their policies – there are positive signs of game-changers born of society.”

Huntjens researches examples like the short food supply chains in metropolitan areas such as Amsterdam, Maastricht, Istanbul and Milan; or new subnational governance structures among Dutch farmers’ cooperatives, who are paid for ecosystem services, i.e. sustainable agriculture which benefits everyone. At an international level, his work on a Natural Social Contract is increasingly used as an actionable and positive vision for transformative change, for example by the Global Research and Action Network for a New Eco-Social Contract, and by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in its (ongoing) Transformative Change Assessment.