This infographic presents the current model of material use and shows how extraction, production, consumption and disposal drive environmental pressures. It also outlines key policy actions to overcome structural barriers, reduce resource use and decouple human well-being from environmental harm. It is based on the report “Moving from Interconnected Crises to Systemic Solutions. Resource Efficiency, Nature-based Solutions, and Systemic Transformation as Responses to the Complexity of the Triple Planetary Crisis” and highlights concrete pathways for action. The infographic is also included in the accompanying fact sheet under the same title.

This solution-oriented infographic showcases nature-based solutions (NbS) as systemic responses to the triple planetary crisis, illustrating how measures such as wetland restoration, mangrove protection or urban green infrastructure can simultaneously address climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, while delivering co-benefits for health, resilience and livelihoods.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution rank among the most pressing global challenges of our time. The research project "Challenges for International Climate Protection in the Face of the Global Triple Crisis", commissioned by the German Environment Agency (UBA), now presents a series of reports, fact sheets and infographics that systematically analyse these challenges as a single, interconnected crisis.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) can address multiple dimensions of the triple planetary crisis at once: climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution, while delivering benefits for people and ecosystems. This infographic, visualises how NbS can function as systemic responses when designed and implemented under the right conditions. It illustrates how measures such as mangrove restoration, constructed wetlands, and urban green infrastructure can simultaneously contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation, strengthen biodiversity, and reduce pollution-related pressures. It also highlights the broader societal challenges that NbS can support, including water and food security, human health, risk reduction, and reversing environmental degradation.

Climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution are deeply interconnected and reinforce one another. This infographic, based on the report "The Interconnected Challenges of Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss and Environmental Pollution: Drivers, Interdependencies and Impacts of the Triple Planetary Crisis", illustrates the main human-driven causes of the triple planetary crisis and the feedback loops that intensify its impacts.

The fact sheet explains why climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution must be understood as a systemically interconnected crisis driven by shared pressures such as resource use, land-use change and structural inequalities. It highlights how direct and indirect drivers interact across sectors and regions, creating reinforcing feedbacks and compounding risks for ecosystems and societies.

Humanity has already exceeded six of the nine planetary boundaries, with climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution pushing the Earth system beyond its safe operating space. Because these boundaries interact through complex feedback loops, surpassing one accelerates pressures on the others, creating cascading effects that amplify environmental degradation. This interconnected dynamic is driving a systemic triple planetary crisis, or polycrisis, that undermines ecological resilience and threatens long-term human well-being. Addressing it requires integrated, cross-sectoral approaches that tackle shared drivers and deliver co-benefits across environmental and socio-economic domains.

This fact sheet summarizes the information contained in the publication Burgos Cuevas et al. (2025): Moving from interconnected crises to systemic solutions. Resource efficiency, nature-based solutions, and systemic transformation as responses to the complexity of the triple planetary crisis. Interim report, Climate Change 83/2025. German Environment Agency: Dessau-Roßlau. https://doi.org/10.60810/openumwelt-8108.

The triple planetary crisis is a systemic challenge, not three separate issues: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution reinforce one another through shared drivers and feedback, threatening planetary and human well-being. It is driven by fossil fuel dependence, unsustainable production and consumption, overexploitation of land and resources, and structural inequalities. The analysis concludes that the triple crisis can only be effectively addressed through systemic, cross-sectoral, and justice-oriented approaches. By linking resource governance, NbS, and transformative change, this report highlights how today’s triple crisis can be turned into an opportunity to regenerate ecosystems, reduce inequalities, and build resilient societies within planetary boundaries.

This report, commissioned by the German Federal Agency (UBA), provides a systematic analysis of this triple planetary crisis. It demonstrates why climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental pollution cannot be understood and tackled in siloes, but instead share common drivers, feedback mechanisms, and cascading effects. The aim of the report is to close knowledge gaps and provide political and scientific actors with an integrated, holistic understanding.

The research project analyses the need for integrated strategies in order to ensure sustainable development and preserve the basis of life. The project focuses on analysing the challenges and interactions between the three crisis areas and the question of how measures can be designed to create synergies between climate protection, biodiversity conservation and the reduction of environmental pollution. More crises are being added, e.g. land degradation and food security.