The Anthropocene is a time of human activity causing massive environmental degradation. This phase has begun. It is characterized by biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, with huge ramifications on food, water and energy security. In order for our species to survive this critical chapter, we need to mobilize everybody. Every person has to participate and understand that there are science-and-technology-based solutions available, waiting to be applied. Urgently. Decision makers need to support an action-based approach towards human survivability. Our resilience does not depend only on overcoming pandemics, armed conflicts and wars, but also on functioning ecosystems providing clean air, food and water, and ensuring climate justice for all species.

The importance of science, the social sciences and the arts, and education must no longer be undervalued. It is with this in mind that I am happy for this scholarly book Vulnerable Earth being produced, with the aim of examining multiple vulnerabilities, as documented in numerous literary texts across the world.

I congratulate Professor Pramod K. Nayar, UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad, for the timely production of this important educational tool.

Vulnerable Earth is a study of the literature of climate crisis. But the climate crisis cannot be looked at in isolation. We need to look at the whole picture at large. We must look at the cumulative effect of the triple planetary crisis. This book brings to the reading public a vast corpus of literary material that foregrounds species loss, habitat destruction, climate injustice and its antecedents, and other themes. It covers a range of themes that enable a bringing-to-consciousness the nature of our present crisis, at this critical juncture in our planetary history.

Vulnerable Earth, I hope, will function to enhance the knowledge of and as an encouragement for the reader to actively recognize this triple planetary crisis, and engage in the search for and application of solutions in support of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.