Abstract
ABSTRACTDespite the current environmental crises of anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation afflicting the world, dualisms of culture/nature, human/non-human and animate/inanimate sustain a perspective on ‘the environment’ in which the human and the cultural are privileged over the natural world and other species. Policies on ‘sustainable development’ are likewise predicated upon efforts to assure future human prosperity. Our objective in this paper is to establish an alternative, post-anthropocentric perspective on environmental sustainability. Drawing on feminist materialist scholarship supplies an ontology to critique humanist approaches, and establishes the foundation for a posthuman sociology of environment, in which (post)humans are an integral but not privileged element. We consider the implications of this perspective for both sustainability policy and ‘climate justice’. A posthuman ontology leads to the conclusion – perhaps surprisingly, given the anthropogenic roots of current climate change – that some unusual human capacities are now essential to assure environmental potential.
Highlights
Climate change, dramatic rises in species extinctions, and life-threatening levels of pollution mean that issues of environmental sustainability and sustainable development are centre stage in research and policy
We explore the implications of a posthuman and materialist ontology of human/environment interaction for social research on sustainability and sustainable development policy
As we have argued, global policy on sustainability and sustainable development is framed by anthropocentrism, the same can be said for much other environmental decision-making, right down to the planning committees of local government that adjudicate on proposals for the natural and built environment
Summary
Dramatic rises in species extinctions, and life-threatening levels of pollution mean that issues of environmental sustainability and sustainable development are centre stage in research and policy. The subsequent UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment considered the effects of ecosystem change upon human well-being, and how to the conserve and sustain ecosystems so they may ‘continue to supply the services that underpin all aspects of human life’ (World Health Organisation (WHO) 2005, ii) This emphasis is recapitulated in more recent UN policy statements such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which argues that economic growth, social justice and environmental protection are ‘integrated and indivisible’ goals (United Nations (UN) 2015, 1), while explicitly setting the eradication of poverty as the ‘greatest global challenge’ (ibid.).
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