By Sanjayan and the Center for Global Trends

What we can see has always served as a proxy for what lies beyond our sight.

But the problem with that approach is that a six-foot-tall human standing on flat ground — be it the plains of the Serengeti, the steppes of Mongolia or the prairies of the U.S. Midwest — can still only see about two miles in any direction.

So humans have always sought ingenious ways of discerning information about what lies beyond their horizons. But we are now able — for the first time in human history — to collect and process information about the whole Earth all at once:

• Satellite imagery, for instance, tells us the extent of degradation for the world's grasslands and mangrove forests.
   
• We can assess the status of amphibians the world over from a combination of field-data collection and remote sensing.
   
•  And we have quantified the threats to the world's oceans on a holistic level —including the penetration of invasive species into 80 percent of the planet's coastlines.

Indeed, we are swimming in information about nature from beyond our horizons — from the poles to the deepest forests, lakes, and oceans.

You Have to Do Something With the Data

But this slew of information doesn't automatically yield prudent decision-making. We also need to process or analyze the information, discern trends or patterns and devise solutions at the appropriate scale to take action. 

Given that humans are now virtually everywhere — exploiting habitats across the planet — our cumulative impacts are fundamentally and irreversibly altering the Earth on a global scale. So we have to stretch our thinking and analysis to fit that scale.  

Climate change is the most obvious example. But other global-scale changes include widespread loss of habitat, the spread of invasive species, and depletion of ocean stocks from overfishing.

Our global trade system also ensures that development actions in one part of the world can have a big impact in another: 

• China's development comes largely at the cost of African forests, for instance.
   
• Or for a green example: Although Switzerland was recently named in a Yale University study as the world’s greenest country, its citizens achieved this rank in part by relying on goods and services from around the world. If Switzerland was an insulated or isolated system, it would have long ago outgrown its resources. 

Scientists at The Nature Conservancy — including those in the Center for Global Trends — are now working to gather and analyze global data on biological resources, socio-economic conditions and drivers of ecological change.

And the Conservancy will be using and disseminating these findings to develop strategies at a global scale commensurate with the problem. 

Global thinking for solving global problems: That’s a big idea

Nature picture credits (left to right): © Christopher Pague/TNC (Hustai National Park, Mongolia); © Erika Nortemann/TNC (Sanjayan)