ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter contextualizes the Earth’s most pressing global challenges of today, in relation to the Anthropocene: the human-made era that is provoking rapid and unprecedented geological, ecological, biological and socioeconomic changes on the planet. Anthropocenic challenges are explored through the lenses of the Western economic theories and concepts that prompted an extractive economy that still characterizes the current predatory capitalist system, based on human self-interest and domination over nature (business as a root cause of the systems challenges of today). This analysis is contrasted –conceptually and factually—with the rise of a new business paradigm based on the Eco systemic view of life, where business is conceived as a solution to complex systems problems. In this contrasting comparison, the drivers of change and the features of the new paradigm are decoded.
