From Human Sufficiency to Earth sufficiency: The role of nature quotient cultivation

The current sufficiency paradigm and its limitations

Humanity is rapidly approaching a point of no return as the Earth system edges closer to multiple climate and planetary tipping thresholds. Recent assessments by the World Meteorological Organization (2026) indicate that the period 2023–2025 comprises the three warmest years across all major global datasets, with a consolidated average temperature of 1.48°C (±0.13°C) above pre-industrial levels. Even with the cooling influence of La Niña, 2025 remained among the hottest years ever recorded—underscoring the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As highlighted in analyses such as those by Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), surpassing the 1.5°C threshold and above risks crossing multiple tipping points and increases the likelihood of tipping cascade dynamics, where crossing one boundary amplifies the risk of others (Klose et al., 2021). Beyond temperature alone, the Earth’s systemic distress is evident in the fact that 22 of 34 identified planetary vital signs have reached record levels, signaling widespread risks of destabilization (Ripple et al., 2025). These escalating pressures may push humanity beyond the relatively stable climatic and ecological conditions under which it has adapted and flourished, toward far more volatile states reminiscent of the Pleistocene (Gowdy, 2020). Such a transition would not only accelerate mass extinction among non-human species but also heighten the likelihood of social collapses, large-scale mortality, and deteriorating human health outcomes (Gowdy, 2020; Kemp et al., 2022; Penn et al., 2018; Rothman, 2017).

In response to these challenges, the concept of sufficiency has emerged in sustainability literature as a response to the inability of efficiency improvements and green growth strategies to halt climate change and ecological degradation (Niessen and Bocken, 2021; Spangenberg and Lorek, 2019). Broadly defined, sufficiency calls for meeting human needs within planetary limits by reducing excessive consumption (Niessen and Bocken, 2021). Often framed through normative concepts such as “strong sustainable consumption” or “enoughness,” this paradigm stresses that the levels of consumption—rather than its patterns—are decisive for environmental impact (Lorek, 2010; Lorek and Spangenberg, 2014; Mihić and Čulina, 2006). It contends that only by consuming less overall can societies remain within ecological boundaries. As articulated in Princen (2005)’s The Logic of Sufficiency, sufficiency offers an alternative to the dominant economic logic of efficiency. It is not about deprivation or sacrifice, but about shifting the focus from optimizing ratios (the essence of efficiency) to recognizing absolute limits and embracing the notion of “enoughness.”

Despite its growing prominence, the sufficiency paradigm remains largely anthropocentric. By centering on human needs and limits, it often treats the environment as a passive boundary condition rather than as a dynamic system with intrinsic requirements. Heindl and Kanschik (2016) define ecological sufficiency as the voluntary restriction of consumption in recognition of the planet’s finite ecological resources, asserting that current generations must act responsibly toward both future generations and non-human species by conserving those resources. While this formulation acknowledges other species in principle, it retains a one-way orientation—humans choosing to limit consumption for the benefit of others—without fully recognizing humanity’s dependence on an interconnected web of life and ecosystems. It does not explicitly require ensuring the sufficiency of non-human life for its own sake; rather, non-human species appear primarily as incidental beneficiaries of human restraint.

By focusing narrowly on aggregate human consumption levels, the conventional sufficiency paradigm overlooks a crucial reality: non-human species play indispensable roles in regulating the climatic and ecological stability of specific spatiotemporal contexts that sustain human existence, growth, and reproduction, while human activities are simultaneously pushing these systems beyond those stable conditions. Myriad other species play active and indispensable roles in sustaining the Earth’s habitability—and, by extension, humanity’s survival, development, and continuity. Far from being a static backdrop to human activity, they form intricate, self-organizing networks whose interactions generate essential ecological functions, including pollination, seed dispersal, soil regeneration, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and climate regulation (Díaz et al., 2009; Furey and Tilman, 2021; Howe and Miriti, 2004; Isbell et al., 2013; Klein et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2015). Collectively, these processes underpin the stability of the Earth system, making it imperative to allocate adequate space and resources for non-human species to fulfill their ecological roles. Once lost, the critical ecological functions provided by other species cannot be replaced, further accelerating the destabilization of the current climatic and ecological stability (Dobson et al., 2006; Lindenmayer, 2015).

Such absurdity can lead to epistemic blindness by assuming that planetary stability will follow if humans simply restrain consumption. A society might meet “sufficiency” targets in terms of reduced resource throughput while permitting greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and the erosion of ecosystem integrity—thereby undermining the very life-support systems sufficiency is intended to protect. Framing sustainability solely in terms of human sufficiency risks the outcome Wilson (2016) warned against—crowding out the rest of life. His Half-Earth proposal contends that nothing short of setting aside half the planet as natural habitat will avert catastrophic biodiversity loss. Protecting roughly 50% of Earth’s surface, he argues, could preserve 80% or more of species from extinction, underscoring the scale of space required for nature to maintain a resilient biosphere. Such calls make clear that ecological stability depends not only on moderated human consumption but also on ensuring the continued vitality of non-human life at a planetary scale.

In light of this, the present paper calls for an expanded sufficiency paradigm—one that is Earth-centric, or ecocentric, rather than anthropocentric: Earth Sufficiency. This approach builds on the principle of living within limits but reframes the goal: not only that humans have “enough,” but that the Earth system itself is sufficient to sustain life’s diversity and complexity. Earth Sufficiency means ensuring that other species and ecosystems have the space, resources, and conditions to meet their own needs and perform their ecological functions, not as a residual byproduct of human restraint, but as a core objective in defining sustainable limits. Within an Earth Sufficiency framework, ecological integrity is recognized as a foundational necessity—a central component of the sufficiency “ceiling”—rather than an externality managed for human benefit alone. This paradigm shift acknowledges that humans are part of a broader community of life, and that true sustainability hinges on the well-being of that entire community.

The next section elaborates on the Earth sufficiency paradigm and explains why incorporating non-human species into the sufficiency framework is essential (Section ‘Why sufficiency must include other species?’). Section ‘The role of the semiconducting principle’ then proposes the semiconducting principle as a means to overcome the epistemic limitations of anthropocentric perspectives. Section ‘The necessity of Nature Quotient (NQ) for Paradigm Adoption’ examines how cultivating NQ can facilitate the transition toward Earth sufficiency. Finally, Section ‘Challenges and further research questions’ outlines the key challenges and research priorities for advancing this paradigm shift.

Why sufficiency must include other species?

The stability of climatic and ecological conditions emerges from a dynamic balance among interconnected system components, in which energy, matter, and information continuously circulate across species and ecosystems. Within this finite Earth system, human expansion—expressed through population growth, economic development, and spatial appropriation—inevitably redistributes energy, resources, and ecological space. This redistribution is not neutral: it diverts flows away from non-human species and ecological processes essential to maintaining planetary equilibrium. Consequently, the integrity of climate-regulating and ecosystem-stabilizing functions is progressively weakened, giving rise to systemic uncertainties such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasingly extreme and unpredictable environmental events. In this sense, the Earth system is being pushed beyond the relatively stable conditions that have historically enabled human civilization to flourish, toward a more volatile and uncertain state (Gowdy, 2020; Kemp et al., 2022).

From the perspective of Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT), humanity can be understood as an information collection–cum–processing system that regulates its internal entropy (i.e. uncertainties) by constructing social structures, institutions, and technological systems (Vuong et al., 2026). These structures filter, prioritize, and organize information in ways that support the survival, growth, and reproduction of the system. However, the dominant paradigm guiding this process—centered on growth-oriented and technology-centric paradigms—is increasingly revealing its limitations, as evidenced by phenomena such as the innovation curse, the battery bubble, the impoverishment of growth in developing economies, and rising global inequality (Nguyen et al., 2025a; Spash and Hache, 2022; Vuong et al., 2025a, 2025b). Rather than addressing the problem, this paradigm paradoxically generates new layers of uncertainty. It resembles what Kemp (2025) characterizes as a desperate attempt to address ecological overshoot through ever-increasing complexity—a trajectory that historically culminates in social exhaustion rather than a sustainable transition. In doing so, it reflects a deeper misalignment between human systems and the broader Earth system within which they are embedded.

As ecological degradation intensifies and systemic risks become more visible, humanity’s information-processing system begins to recognize the need for constraint, giving rise to the sufficiency paradigm. This paradigm represents an emergent recalibration—an attempt to reduce pressure on the Earth system by re-evaluating priorities and limiting excess (Heindl and Kanschik, 2016; Princen, 2005). Yet, this recognition remains largely anthropocentric. It continues to treat humanity as relatively separate from the web of life, implicitly assuming that reducing unnecessary excess or luxury consumption will suffice to keep human impacts within planetary boundaries (Gough, 2023). In doing so, it overlooks the fact that current climatic and ecological stability is the outcome of a long co-evolutionary process among physical, chemical, and biological systems, and that humanity, as part of it and benefiting from it, must actively contribute to maintaining and regenerating this balance (Donges et al., 2020; Raven and Wackernagel, 2020). Consequently, while the sufficiency paradigm signals an important shift in awareness, it remains constrained by an epistemic boundary that separates humans from the broader ecological system.

This disconnection gives rise to several critical limitations. First, anthropocentric sufficiency is unlikely to halt trajectories toward social collapses, understood as a reduction in collective capacity and a difficult-to-reverse loss of basic societal and ecological functions (Steel et al., 2024). By focusing primarily on reducing negative impacts rather than generating positive ecological contributions, it leaves the net effect of human existence on the biosphere negative. With a global population exceeding 8 billion and projected to approach 10 billion (Ritchie and Rodés-Guirao, 2024), even “sufficient” levels of per capita consumption can aggregate into unsustainable total demands. The combined pressures of resource extraction, waste generation, and environmental degradation can still exceed the Earth’s life-support capacity. Indeed, humanity has already transgressed multiple planetary boundaries. Early assessments identified breaches in biodiversity loss, climate change, and nitrogen cycles (Rockström et al., 2009), while more recent analyses indicate that six of nine boundaries—including biogeochemical flows, land-system change, freshwater use, biosphere integrity, climate change, and novel entities—have been exceeded (Richardson et al., 2023; Steffen et al., 2015). Under such conditions, reductions in individual consumption may be offset—or even overwhelmed—by continued population growth.

Compounding this challenge, humanity is already pushing key components of the Earth system toward critical tipping points, driven by the accumulated legacy of ecological debt. Despite the temporary cooling influence of La Niña, recent observations reveal alarming signals, including record-low ice mass levels and unprecedented ocean heat content (World Meteorological Organization, 2026). Emerging evidence suggests that both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may have crossed critical thresholds under current warming conditions (Stokes et al., 2025). Accelerated ice loss—now several times higher than in the 1990s—could lock in meters of long-term sea-level rise even without further emissions (Ripple et al., 2025). At the same time, rising ocean temperatures have triggered the largest recorded coral bleaching event, affecting approximately 84% of global reef areas, while ocean acidification has reached historically unprecedented levels, threatening foundational marine organisms such as corals and phytoplankton (Findlay et al., 2025; NOAA Coral Reef Watch, 2025). These developments underscore the growing instability of the Earth system and the inadequacy of approaches that merely aim to “limit” human impacts without restoring ecological resilience.

Second, anthropocentric sufficiency can generate epistemic blind spots by offering a false sense of progress. While it may reassure societies that reducing consumption is sufficient to address environmental crises, it obscures the structural reality that human expansion—through agriculture, infrastructure, and consumption—inevitably accelerates climate change, displaces other species, and degrades their habitats. Even technological solutions often redistribute rather than resolve environmental burdens—for example, by reducing land use while increasing greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. vertical farming reduces land use but has a significantly higher carbon footprint per kilogram of produce than traditional field-grown crops; Blom et al., 2022; Gargaro et al., 2025), or by lowering emissions at the expense of destroying primary forests (e.g. producing batteries for electric vehicles requires deforestation for mining; Vuong et al., 2025b). Over the past five decades, this pattern has culminated in a severe biodiversity crisis: global populations of vertebrate species have declined by an average of approximately 73% since 1970 (WWF, 2024). This decline erodes the ecological functions that sustain planetary stability, with direct consequences for human well-being, including reduced pollination, increased pest outbreaks, diminished water quality, weakened coastal protection, and so on.

Thirdly, sufficiency operates by constructing thresholds—forms of socially imposed order—intended to reduce uncertainty. However, such ordering carries the risk of order-induced blindness. Within the anthropocentric paradigm, this requires defining a “needs” boundary (a minimum threshold of well-being that every human deserves) and a “limits” boundary (an upper threshold constrained by planetary boundaries, or what the Earth can regenerate; Gough, 2023). While conceptually appealing, this approach attempts to fix precise thresholds within systems that are inherently dynamic, non-linear, and context-dependent—namely, human subjectivity and ecological regeneration capacities. As a result, it risks generating sources of systemic uncertainties. Static thresholds may obscure the evolving nature of both human needs and ecological conditions; when misaligned, they can simultaneously degrade human well-being and environmental integrity. In such cases, rather than alleviating uncertainty, sufficiency frameworks may inadvertently intensify it—for instance, by incentivizing environmentally destructive behaviors when perceived basic needs are unmet (Nguyen and Ho, 2026).

Moreover, attempts to quantify how much nature can provide and how much humans need reveal profound epistemic limitations. Well-being is personally and culturally contingent and resistant to universal measurement, while ecological regeneration capacities are complex and uncertain. Decentralized approaches risk free-rider problems and collective action failures, whereas centralized imposition risks rigid mismatches with local realities. In both cases, the formalization of sufficiency exposes the limits of human knowledge and control within complex adaptive systems.

Fourthly, anthropocentric sufficiency not only risks falling short in addressing ecological crises but may also give rise to a more subtle, existential strain at the socio-psychological level. Treating “being sufficient” as an end rather than a means reifies static, artificial thresholds that orient society toward maintaining equilibrium rather than pursuing meaningful transformation. In this framing, human life becomes defined by restriction—what must be limited or avoided—rather than by purpose, creativity, and active engagement. Such a perspective neglects the inherently evolutionary and co-evolutionary character of both humans, human cultures, and ecological systems.

In essence, a human-centric sufficiency paradigm addresses the symptoms—our excessive resource consumption—while leaving the root cause largely untouched: the epistemic limitations of human-centered thinking, which give rise to and sustain a fundamentally imbalanced, dominance-oriented relationship between humans and the rest of nature.

Meanwhile, the Earth sufficiency paradigm addresses these limitations by situating humans as one component within a complex, interconnected web of life, where the degradation or extinction of other species directly increases the likelihood of systemic collapses. From this perspective, humanity is not external to nature but embedded within a broader ecological community, and its long-term continuity is inseparable from the continuity of that community. Accordingly, the paradigm calls not only for reducing per capita consumption and total ecological footprints, but also for actively ensuring that other species retain the habitats, resources, and environmental conditions necessary for their survival and evolution. By safeguarding the “needs” of other life forms—space, food, water, reproductive opportunities, and stable climatic and ecological conditions—human societies can help reinforce the regenerative and stabilizing capacities of the Earth system that ultimately sustain human survival and development.

In this paradigm, sufficiency is reimagined not as a static constraint but as a dynamic resonance with the regenerative and stabilizing capacities of climatic and ecological systems. As these capacities strengthen, they can sustain higher levels of human population and consumption; when they weaken, human demands must correspondingly contract. This adaptive logic helps overcome the epistemic limitations inherent in anthropocentric sufficiency and avoid rigid thresholds that can be detached from socio-ecological realities. Instead, it prioritizes the restoration and maintenance of Earth system functions as the basis for any expansion of human activity. In doing so, it also reorients human purpose—from merely meeting predefined limits toward actively participating in the regeneration of the systems that sustain life—thereby fostering a flexible, co-evolutionary dynamic between humanity and the biosphere. Ultimately, this co-sufficiency paradigm resonates with Daoist philosophy, emphasizing harmonious alignment with the Dao—the fluid, self-organizing processes of the natural world—and enabling a path in which human and planetary flourishing emerge through mutual, adaptive synchrony (Cooper, 2014; Nguyen, 2025).

Earth Sufficiency advances a co-sufficiency logic grounded in dynamic alignment with the regenerative and stabilizing capacities of the Earth system. This marks a shift from an “eco-deficit” trajectory, where human activity systematically erodes ecological integrity, to an “eco-surplus” trajectory, where human presence actively contributes to the regeneration of life-support systems (Vuong et al., 2025a). By anchoring human aspirations within the adaptive limits and potentials of ecological processes, the Earth Sufficiency paradigm not only avoids the rigidity and blind spots of anthropocentric frameworks but also strengthens the resilience and regenerative capacity of the biosphere, thereby sustaining—and potentially extending—human survival and prosperity over the long term.

The role of the semiconducting principle

Transitioning to an Earth Sufficiency Paradigm requires profound transformations in how humanity governs its relationship with nature. The central challenge lies in navigating a shift from the current eco-deficit trajectory toward an eco-surplus trajectory without triggering severe socio-cultural and economic disruptions. A direct transition from an efficiency-driven system—organized around the logic of “doing more with less” to sustain growth—toward a sufficiency-oriented paradigm is likely to generate substantial systemic friction.

Contemporary socio-cultural, institutional, and economic structures are deeply embedded in growth imperatives. Imposing absolute ceilings on consumption within such a system risks creating acute allocation bottlenecks, as production, distribution, and employment systems are not designed to operate under strict limits (Daly, 1997; Huber, 2000; Rudolf and Schmidt, 2025). Industrial sectors oriented toward surplus production may face rapid obsolescence, potentially precipitating economic contraction and cascading social instability. This gives rise to a great absurdity where efforts intended to secure long-term human well-being and ecological stability may undermine both, driving individuals and communities toward desperate, short-term survival strategies that further intensify environmental degradation. Not to say, the historical entrenchment of wealth accumulation and efficiency-based capitalism over centuries means that demand structures, social norms, and consumerist cultures cannot be abruptly dismantled. Even in hypothetical scenarios where production is significantly curtailed, the underlying drivers of consumption—cultural norms, expectations, habits, and institutional dependencies—would persist, generating structural tensions and adaptive pressures across the global system.

From the perspective of GITT, current socio-cultural, institutional, and economic structures—though often criticized for their growth orientation—function as adaptive tools that enable humanity to process information efficiently in order to survive, develop, and reproduce. Thus, transitioning toward an Earth Sufficiency Paradigm does not necessarily require dismantling these systems altogether. Rather, it calls for a reconfiguration of the core values that govern how these tools are deployed. In essence, the transformation lies not in abandoning the mechanisms of optimization, but in redirecting their underlying value orientation—from trajectories centered on exploiting life toward those that prioritize nurturing life as the foundation for long-term survival, development, and reproduction (Vuong et al., 2025a, 2026).

A pivotal concept for operationalizing this shift is the semiconducting principle (Vuong, 2021). Borrowed as an analogy from electronics, this principle conceptualizes the exchange between human economic systems and the natural environment as a regulated, asymmetrical flow. In this framework, environmental value may be converted into monetary value only under conditions that preserve and improve the regenerative and stabilizing capacities of ecological systems. More concretely, while value can flow from nature into the economy, monetary gains cannot be used to legitimize or offset irreversible environmental degradation.

Under this principle, the semiconducting mechanism operates as both a normative and operational filter within the human system. It selectively constrains production and consumption activities that exceed the regenerative and stabilizing capacities of current ecological conditions, while facilitating those that either contribute to—or at minimum do not undermine—these capacities. In this sense, it does not merely impose limits but actively reconfigures the direction of socio-economic flows in alignment with ecological thresholds. Importantly, this transformation is not conceived as abrupt or disruptive. Rather, it unfolds gradually through structural reallocation—redirecting labor, capital, knowledge, and technology away from excessive, extractive activities toward those that generate eco-surplus value. By enabling this phased reallocation, the semiconducting principle helps address the core bottleneck of the anthropocentric sufficiency paradigm, which struggles to manage resource distribution under rigid consumption ceilings without destabilizing existing systems.

Operationally, the principle can be translated into a clear, three-tiered hierarchy of activity prioritization, in which flows of resources, technologies, and decisions are “filtered” according to whether they enhance or degrade ecological integrity.

Although this structured prioritization remains provisional and will require further refinement, it illustrates how the semiconducting principle does not eliminate economic activity but reorders it. Specifically, it establishes a directional flow in which regenerative and protective actions are amplified, excessive and non-essential activities are attenuated, and necessary yet imperfect systems are selectively optimized under constraint. In doing so, it aligns human economic and technological systems with the regenerative logic of the biosphere, enabling adaptive continuity while minimizing the risk of ecological destabilization.

Implementing the semiconducting principle would directly safeguard the sufficiency of other species by eliminating the possibility of their unsustainable exploitation for perpetual human utility. In the prevailing economic paradigm, environmental protection is often subordinated to profit-making. Environmental harm is typically treated as an externality that can be offset or paid for—if at all—as a cost of doing business (Anderson and Leal, 2015; McCarthy, 2004; Wiesmeth, 2012). For example, a mining company might pay a fee or purchase carbon credits to “compensate” for pollution and habitat destruction, effectively converting money into environmental damage under the false assumption that the damage is settled by payment. This logic has entrenched an eco-deficit culture, where economic success is built on accumulating ecological debt. It frames nature—including irreversible losses such as extinction—as a capital asset to be priced, optimized, and traded, thereby embedding environmental degradation within financial decision-making systems that tend to legitimize, rather than prevent, destruction (Spash and Hache, 2022). Companies are incentivized to minimize environmental compliance costs—often through lobbying for weaker regulations or engaging in greenwashing—which may result in far greater ecological loss than compensation covers (Adi, 2018; Walker and Wan, 2012). The current carbon trading system illustrates this flaw because it allows high-emitting actors to continue polluting by purchasing offsets, effectively sanctioning ongoing degradation in exchange for monetary transactions.

Operationalizing this principle is essential to Earth Sufficiency because it directly aligns economic incentives with the restoration and preservation of other species and ecosystems. If broadly adopted, it would gradually restructure markets and governance so that ecological enhancement becomes financially attractive, while ecosystem harm becomes economically and socially untenable—regardless of short-term profitability. Initially, implementing an eco-surplus trajectory may require a top-down approach. However, once this principle becomes deeply embedded within socio-cultural and institutional systems, it can generate multiple layers of filtering across the individual, institutional, and cultural levels. Over time, these filters can function in a manner similar to how societies have developed strong normative and operational barriers against the commodification of humans (e.g. slavery and human trafficking). As these filters take hold, they reinforce a self-sustaining dynamic: businesses and communities seeking profit increasingly innovate in ways that help nature rather than harm it. Firms could shift from exploitative to regenerative models, calculating New Net Profits as the sum of traditional monetary profit and Net Environmental Value (NEV) contributed (Vuong, 2021; Vuong et al., 2025b). For instance, a venture restoring wetlands or advancing climate-resilient agriculture could report both financial and ecological gains—and be rewarded for both—while ventures that profit solely from liquidating natural assets would lose their social license and long-term profitability.

As species and ecosystems recover under such conditions, the Earth’s capacity to sustain human survival, development, and long-term continuity correspondingly expands. The semiconducting principle does not “freeze” human use of nature; rather, it channels human activity into pathways that reinforce, rather than erode, the biosphere’s resilience. In doing so, it systematically curtails “win–lose” transactions—where human gains come at the expense of ecological degradation—and promotes “win–win” dynamics in which both human and ecological systems benefit. Over time, this reorientation embeds co-sufficiency into the core logic of the economy, aligning value creation with the regenerative capacities of the Earth system.

The necessity of Nature Quotient NQ for Paradigm Adoption

While the semiconducting principle of value exchange provides the structural foundation for Earth Sufficiency, its success ultimately depends on human capacity. Realizing the Earth Sufficiency Paradigm is not just an institutional and economic challenge—it is fundamentally a cognitive and cultural challenge (Nguyen, 2024). It requires a profound shift in how societies perceive and relate to nature. This is where the concept of Nature Quotient becomes pivotal (Vuong and Nguyen, 2025). NQ can be defined as the human capacity to perceive, process, and organize information about ecological interconnections and dynamic interactions among complex systems—human societies, wildlife populations, ecosystems, and the climate, to name a few (Vuong and Nguyen, 2024b, 2025). This is a form of intelligence or cognitive capacity that enables humans to understand natural systems, recognize interdependence with other species, and make decisions aligned with ecological processes.

In this sense, cultivating a high NQ extends far beyond knowing species names or memorizing environmental facts. It entails developing the cognitive capacity to perceive the world as an integrated, information-processing whole, in which humans are one component of a living network rather than masters positioned above it. At its core, NQ involves recognizing what fundamentally underpins survival and long-term persistence—namely, the integrity and functionality of interconnected ecological systems. An individual with high NQ can, for instance, anticipate how altering or destroying one component of an ecosystem may generate ripple effects throughout the entire system. From this perspective, NQ in contemporary society appears to be in serious decline, as human activities increasingly erode the very foundations of life. In the tightly woven fabric of the Earth system, human well-being is inseparable from the well-being of the non-human world. By shrinking habitats and driving species toward extinction, humanity is progressively dismantling the life-support systems upon which its own survival and development depend (Diamond, 2011).

High NQ also entails the ability to appreciate the intrinsic value of non-human life and anticipate unintended ecological consequences of human actions. From an information-processing perspective, such intrinsic value can be understood as emerging from informational interactions: living systems are themselves products of evolutionary information processing, and species and ecosystems can therefore be seen as evolved informational configurations whose interactions help maintain stable climatic and ecological conditions (Soulé, 1985; Vuong and Nguyen, 2025). Accordingly, when a species is lost, its loss is simultaneously an informational loss—the disappearance of unique interaction potentials accumulated through evolution—regardless of whether humans are aware of it. If this loss goes unrecognized, the models embedded within human epistemic systems become increasingly distant from reality. Conversely, awareness of these dynamics enables epistemic systems to better approximate natural processes, improving alignment between human cognition, culture, and the ecological mechanisms that sustain life. The closer this alignment, the greater the likelihood of enhanced human well-being and long-term persistence (Liu, 2024; Nguyen et al., 2025b).

However, it should also be noted that even the most rigorous human epistemic systems, such as mathematics, are subject to internal constraints (e.g. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems), suggesting that any formal epistemic framework will remain an incomplete representation of the total complexity of reality (Gödel, 1931). Under such constraints, epistemic systems tend to gravitate toward anthropocentric filtering to reduce uncertainty—prioritizing information directly relevant to immediate human needs and what humans are aware of while neglecting or even discarding broader ecological interdependencies. This tendency can produce order-induced blindness, where stabilized cognitive and socio-cultural structures obscure underlying ecological realities. This blindness can escalate into an uncertainty–absurdity spiral, in which simplified and misaligned epistemic models initially create a false sense of order but progressively generate deeper uncertainty; in turn, attempts to resolve this uncertainty often reinforce the same flawed logics, leading to increasingly counterproductive and self-undermining outcomes (e.g. reliance on growth-oriented and technology-centric paradigms to protect environments leads to further ecological destruction and biodiversity loss while socio-economic systems become more vulnerable; Kemp, 2025; Nguyen, 2026).

Thus, to avoid such blindness and the subsequent descent into an uncertainty–absurdity spiral, humans need to cultivate NQ to temper epistemic hubris and continuously update their knowledge systems in alignment with natural processes. Mechanisms such as the semiconducting principle can help compensate for the inherent limitations of individual epistemic systems by structuring how information is filtered and acted upon within the socio-economic systems. Even if certain irreversible processes are unavoidable, enhancing NQ can help delay their onset and improve preparedness for “unknown unknowns” (Kemp et al., 2022).

Most importantly, NQ equips individuals with the capacity to connect the resilience of the biosphere and ecosystems with themselves and their “objects of care”—including valued people, places, possessions, and elements of identity (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002; Wang et al., 2018). These personalized connections are crucial for translating ecological understanding into decisions and behaviors that respect ecological limits and the necessity of maintaining sufficiency for other species. Cultivating NQ, therefore, entails a fundamental shift in mindset—from viewing humans as separate masters of nature to recognizing them as participants in, and stewards of, interconnected ecological networks. This perspective does not deny self-love. Humans are part of nature; thus, caring for oneself is caring for nature and vice versa. In this sense, self-love can serve as a motivation for pro-environmental action (Kopnina et al., 2018). The critical point is that such self-love needs to be conducted with consciousness and wisdom under the paradigm of knowing sufficiency.

知 足 者 富—Those who know when they have enough are rich (in Chapter 33 of Daodejing; Stenudd and Lao, 2011). But where does this “richness” come from? It arises not from material accumulation, but from well-being, inner peace, and the awareness of reciprocal connections and relationships within the web of life. Empirical evidence supports this view. A large-scale study of 100,956 observations across 37 nations shows that individuals who engage in environmental donations or volunteering are more likely to experience positive emotions and less likely to experience negative ones (Piao and Managi, 2022). This “richness” becomes even clearer when we apply a form of reductio reasoning: consider how we may be impoverishing future generations. From birth, they are increasingly burdened with survival pressures—competing against climate change, ecological degradation, and a society marked by hubris and a loss of relational awareness (i.e. loneliness; Cacioppo and Cacioppo, 2018; Gunasiri et al., 2022).

This “richness” finds its modern resonance in Soper (2020)’s Post-Growth Living: Alternative Hedonism, which articulates an epistemic shift from extractive, high-carbon consumption (e.g. fast fashion, high-carbon travel, or disposable technologies) toward immersive, low-impact experiences that prioritize the quality of living and the depth of environmental and social attunement. By disrupting the work-and-spend cycle—a system that perpetuates time scarcity and existential strain—this shift creates the cognitive and emotional space needed to move away from commodity accumulation toward forms of relational wealth (in the sense of both social and ecological aspects; Diwan, 2000; Soper, 2020). In this light, knowing what is enough is not an act of deprivation, but a refined reorientation of pleasure—one that reconnects humans to the broader web of life while safeguarding the conditions for future existence and well-being (Soper, 2008). Within this framework, NQ plays a critical role by enabling individuals to recognize a more complete paradigm of sufficiency: not only do humans require sufficient resources, but so do other species, on which we depend to survive, thrive, and generate value. Acknowledging this shared requirement is essential for ensuring that human self-love remains ecologically grounded and sustainably maintained

Thus, for the Earth Sufficiency paradigm, cultivating NQ across society is indispensable. A high collective NQ enables societies to manage and organize human–nature interactions more optimally, essentially constructing a dynamic “order” that fosters harmonious co-development. With greater NQ, the society can design cities, agricultural systems, and economies that function more like ecosystems—circular in resource flows, resilient to disturbances, and supportive of diversity. This informed societal order would nurture overarching ecological systems as the foundation for human survival, development, and continuity, rather than undermining them.

Policies based on the semiconducting principle or ambitious conservation targets will falter if people fail to perceive their necessity. A populace with high collective NQ would understand why a forest is worth more standing than converted to farmland, not just in economic terms, but as a foundation for climate regulation, water security, and the broader community of life. They would internalize that ecological health is foundational to human survival and well-being (Vuong and Nguyen, 2024a). This understanding is key to shifting from an eco-deficit culture, where nature is viewed as an inexhaustible provider or passive backdrop, to an eco-surplus culture, where enriching the environment is recognized as integral to prosperity and well-being. NQ enables this shift by helping individuals connect the dots—linking biodiversity in a wetland to flood control for their community, or healthy pollinator populations to food security. These connections foster a sense of co-dependence and co-flourishing with other species.

Such a perspective resonates with the wisdom of the Daodejing by Laozi (老子), a foundational text of Daoism (in Chapter 81):

聖人 不 積

既已 爲 人 己 俞 有

既已 與 人 己 俞 多

天 之道 利 而不 害

聖人 之道 為 而 不爭。

[Translation by Stefan Stenudd]

The sage does not hoard.

The more he does for others,

The more he has.

The more he thereby gives to others,

The ever more he gets.

Heaven’s Way

Is to benefit and not to harm.

The Sage’s Way

Is to act and not to contend.

When guided by a high NQ, actions that contribute to the integrity of climatic and ecological systems can simultaneously enhance human well-being, even when they seem not to. This reflects the principle of wu-wei (non-action), a core tenet of Daoism, where alignment with natural processes allows outcomes to emerge effortlessly, without forceful intervention.

Developing NQ broadly would facilitate the implementation of Earth Sufficiency in several ways:

Challenges and further research questions

A shift toward Earth Sufficiency—underpinned by the semiconducting principle and widespread cultivation of NQ—is an ambitious undertaking. It faces a diverse set of practical, economic, cultural, and institutional barriers. This section outlines key challenges to adopting the Earth Sufficiency paradigm and embedding NQ across society, and proposes directions for research and action to overcome these hurdles.