Healing nature will help us all. So why are MEPs fighting the crucial new restoration law? | Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Janez Potočnik and Paul Polman

The proposed legislation would require changes to farming methods in Europe to tackle the climate crisis and restore nature, ensuring affordable food for all

For 10,000 years, human civilisation has grown and thrived because of Earth’s remarkable regenerative capacity that sustains climate stability and rich biological diversity. Now human activity has severely undermined this resilience.

Our patterns of economic growth, development, production and consumption are pushing the planet’s life-support systems beyond their natural boundaries. Last week, members of the European parliament’s agriculture and fisheries committees voted to continue this destruction, rejecting European Commission proposals for a nature restoration law. The vote flies in the face of science, and the claims by some MEPs to be defending farmers and food security are flawed.