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What We Lose When Nature Breaks Down
The Fragility of Resilience
One of the most important questions of our time isn’t “What can we gain?” It’s “What do we lose?”
And loss is not just a number in a bank ledger or a dip in GDP. Loss is the weakening of something fundamental — our ecosystems’ ability to withstand shocks, adapt, and thrive. It is the unraveling of a thread in a tapestry, the collapse of a balance that we didn’t even know was holding everything together. And when we talk about resilience — the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbances and bounce back — climate change is not just unraveling the thread; it’s ripping whole sections of the tapestry apart.
Across the globe, resilience is eroding, and nowhere is this clearer than in the quiet, often unnoticed decline of tree species — those green giants that anchor ecosystems and define entire biomes. The loss of resilience doesn’t just mean the death of a tree. It means the slow collapse of ecosystems that depend on them, setting off cascading effects that ripple far beyond the forests.
Take the lenga forests of southern Chile, where the moth Ormiscodes amphimone is wreaking havoc. This native insect has always coexisted with the lenga (Nothofagus pumilio), but warming temperatures are allowing the moth to thrive and reproduce in greater numbers. Once confined by harsh winters, the moth now emerges in waves, defoliating massive swaths of forest. Without their leaves, young lenga trees struggle to regenerate, and the delicate balance of the Patagonian ecosystem is tipping. These trees once stood strong in the face of extreme cold; now they are defenseless against an insect they have known for millennia.
Travel north to Uruguay, and you’ll find a different but equally devastating story. The picudo rojo beetle (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus), a pest native to Asia, is decimating palm trees, including native species like the butiá and pindó. This beetle’s spread is tied to warmer temperatures that allow it to fly farther and reproduce faster. In just a year, it has advanced 100 kilometers, leaving behind dying palms in Maldonado and threatening the iconic palm groves of Rocha. Even with targeted treatments, experts fear the beetle is here to stay, a permanent scar on Uruguay’s landscapes.
And then there’s Brazil’s Caatinga biome, a stark example of resilience lost to climate change. This semi-arid region has always danced on the edge of survival, but rising temperatures and erratic rainfall are pushing it into outright desertification. Native trees that once anchored the ecosystem are dying out, unable to adapt to the hotter, drier conditions. As tree cover diminishes, shrubs and grasses take over, further destabilizing the fragile soil. This isn’t just the loss of trees — it’s the loss of an entire biome’s ability to support life.
What do these stories tell us?
That the loss of resilience is not just about individual species or regions — it’s about the cascading fragility that follows. When trees can no longer resist pests, when forests can no longer regenerate, when biomes can no longer adapt, we lose more than biodiversity. We lose the stability that makes life possible.
This is where the nine planetary boundaries come into play — a framework that defines the limits within which humanity can safely operate. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and land-use change are three of these boundaries, and they are deeply interconnected. Cross one, and you weaken the resilience of the others. With every degree of warming, every acre of deforestation, every species lost, we push ourselves — and the ecosystems we depend on — closer to collapse.
Resilience is what allows nature to heal after a fire, a flood, or a drought. It’s what keeps the system spinning when it’s knocked off balance. And yet, in the age of climate change, resilience itself is slipping away.
In southern Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil, we see this fragility up close. The lenga forests, the palms, and the Caatinga are not just ecological casualties; they are warnings. When nature loses its ability to adapt, when it can no longer bounce back, it doesn’t just lose — it breaks.
Loss is not inevitable, but it is irreversible. What’s left of resilience must be protected at all costs, because once it’s gone, there’s no going back.
And if we lose nature’s ability to heal itself, then we lose the very systems that make life — and hope — possible. That is the real cost of loss. And it’s one we can no longer afford.
