The elephant’s mental map: Why our future depends on the living world
Guest post by Tim Christophersen, author of Generation Restoration
Tim Christophersen is the author of Generation Restoration and has spent years at the intersection of ecosystem restoration, policy, and finance, including leading work on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
His book makes the case that restoration is a true investment in the future, but one that requires fixing our relationship crisis with nature. He argues that by restoring ecosystems at scale, we can rebuild both planetary health and human prosperity within a generation. The knowledge and finance already exists to make that happen.
I find that argument genuinely compelling. But the gap between what’s theoretically possible and what our political and economic systems will actually do remains vast. Closing that capacity-action gap may be the defining work of our time.
The following is a guest post from Tim, who writes about rebuilding the living infrastructure we depend on. I’ve written before about shifting baselines, and Tim captures it well here: we’ve normalised loss and forgotten what abundance looks like. That’s a dangerous state to be in. But Tim provides a vision of how we can move forward—from our current extractive state to a restorative future.
Over to Tim.
I remember standing in Amboseli National Park in Kenya a few years ago, watching a herd of over 100 elephants shuffle through bone-dry soil. The dust they kicked up choked the air, but the real tragedy was invisible. In past centuries, these herds followed their matriarchs across vast migration corridors to find water and safety in times of drought. Today, the fences of our human “development” have done more than just block their path—they have erased the elephants’ mental map of the world. They are trapped in a shrinking arena, unable to even imagine the wetter lands that lie just beyond the horizon.
We are not so different from those elephants. We are shuffling through a “10 percent world,” picking at the bones of a natural abundance we have all but forgotten. We have spent the last three centuries liquidating our natural wealth, including rainforests in the tropics, cod in the North Atlantic, and eels and other freshwater fish in Europe. Since the 1970s, wildlife populations have declined by more than 70%, on average. We are treating the life-support systems of our only home as an “externality”. We suffer from a Shifting Baseline Syndrome: we are not even aware of this drastic loss, and how it makes us all poorer. Instead, we are lulled into a false sense of security while we approach irreversible tipping points.
But we have reached a moment of choice. We are the first generation that has the global perspective, the knowledge, and the finance to rebuild nature as our most critical planetary infrastructure. In my book, Generation Restoration, I outline how we can move from an extractive reality to a restorative future through three essential pillars.
1. Abundance by design
We have the tools and the money. We are currently spending more than 12 million US dollars every single minute on “nature-negative” subsidies, such as harmful agricultural subsidies and fiscal incentives for fossil fuels. We are funding the very extraction that is killing the natural world and us. What we need is the courage to imagine abundance at an unimaginable scale. Nature is not a machine to be optimised; it is a living flywheel of diversity and abundance. Once we give it a nudge through restoration, it creates more life and diversity on its own. We can regain a diverse and abundant world within one generation if we choose to act as ecosystem engineers.
2. Nature as infrastructure
We must stop viewing nature as a free commodity and start viewing it as humanity’s most critical infrastructure. We would never dream of letting our power grids or highways or data centres crumble into dust, yet we have done exactly that to our forest watersheds and coastal defences. When we invest in mangroves to protect our cities or mountain forests to secure our water, we are making institutional-grade investments in the stability of our entire civilisation.
3. From balance sheets to balance
Finally, we must move from seeing nature as just a line on our balance sheet to nature being our balance. This is about more than just economic visibility; it is about reciprocity. It is about adopting the Indigenous ethics of the “Honourable Harvest”: taking no more than half and leaving enough for the rest of life to thrive. It is about a journey from extraction to a state of profound ecological literacy.
Restoration is not a longing for the past. It is a journey forward to a wilder, wealthier, and more resilient world. Whether it is through my work at Salesforce, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, or my own family farm in Denmark, I have seen that this change is not only feasible. It is already happening.
We are not bystanders in this fight. We are part of nature. And the movement needs you. Not just as a consumer, but as a restorer. Ask where your food comes from. Ask where your water comes from. Let us reclaim our mental map and imagine a world of natural abundance.
Nature is waiting. It’s time to come home.
Tim Christophersen is the author of ‘Generation Restoration - How to Fix our Relationship Crisis with Mother Nature’.
Tim highlights that we have both the knowledge and the finance to restore nature at scale. What remains is closing the gap between capacity and action. I share Tim’s enthusiasm and optimism: with some nudges, nature’s flywheel can help to scale the positive effects of restoration.
Where you land on that? Are you broadly optimistic or pessimistic, and why? I’ve written several times about the need for rapid, widespread action, but this requires care: what I called The Paradox of Patient Urgency. This means acting rapidly but in a way that leads to lasting change. Tim’s post is a reminder that the initial push matters. Get that right and the benefits will come.
I’ll be back next week with the next edition of Nexus Notes.
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I love this post, and have been thinking a lot about point number three recently.... in our technocratic world, how can we "bake in" reciprocity to our current systems, for example through much more holistic use of compensatory mitigation for nature? How much of the honorable harvest principles are covered by following the mitigation hierarchy? What is left out, and why? I noodled on this (https://sophielgilbert.substack.com/p/this-one-weird-trick-could-restore), and ended up thinking that compensatory mitigation is a great starting place, but cultural change will also be necessary.
Tim you should be on DOAC. An actionable framework like this is exactly what they look for. And this is positive!! DM me or email me at andrea@capodilupoconsulting.com and I can help!