Anthropocene Challenges Research Articles

Planetary Health: a public health answer to climate change and other Anthropocene challenges

Abstract Although in the last century, humanity achieved extraordinary outcomes in terms of health, social and economic improvements, the Earth ecosystems around us suffer of high levels of degradation. This issue poses our recent public health and development gains at risk. The Anthropocene, a new geological era we are living in since mid 20th century, is indeed characterized by humanity’s dramatic impact on Earth’s biophysical conditions. Planetary Health is a relatively new field, oriented to solutions, based on transdisciplinarity and social movement, focused on analyzing and addressing the impacts of human disruptions to Earth’s natural systems on human health and all life on Earth. In this presentation, a brief overview of the main issues related to the Anthropocene in the public health perspective will be provided and new tools for the analysis of planetary health challenges will be proposed, citing relevant case studies for discussion.

A conceptual classification scheme of invasion science

Abstract In the era of big data and global biodiversity decline, there is a pressing need to transform data and information into findable and actionable knowledge. We propose a conceptual classification scheme for invasion science that goes beyond hypothesis networks and allows to organize publications and data sets, guide research directions, and identify knowledge gaps. Combining expert knowledge with literature analysis, we identified five major research themes in this field: introduction pathways, invasion success and invasibility, impacts of invasion, managing biological invasions, and meta-invasion science. We divided these themes into 10 broader research questions and linked them to 39 major hypotheses forming the theoretical foundation of invasion science. As artificial intelligence advances, such classification schemes will become important references for organizing scientific information. Our approach can be extended to other research fields, fostering cross-disciplinary connections to leverage the scientific knowledge needed to address Anthropocene challenges.

From the Anthropocene to the Capitalocene and beyond

Ever since its inception, the Anthropocene as a concept has proven divisive among researchers in both the natural sciences and humanities. While some accept its validity, integrating the Anthropocene into a broader postanthropocentric turn alongside related ideas such as posthumanism, others reject the Anthropocene as somehow incriminating a collective ‘humanity’ as a whole. For its critics, the Anthropocene is a mistaken concept, because it is supposedly blind to historical, social and political factors. Jason W. Moore, a Marxist environmental historian, has argued for replacing the Anthropocene altogether, in favor of the ‘Capitalocene’. This would denote the causal effect capital accumulation exerts upon planetary processes. For Clive Hamilton, however, it is the Capitalocene which is too shallow. Similarly, Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that exclusively society- or history-centric ideas are not enough and fail to take account of the ways in which geological deep time radically transcends the bounds of human history. Chakrabarty admits the local relevance of critical theory – as do many Anthropocene researchers. Emphasizing the importance of social critique need not necessarily come at the expense of privileging a human temporal perspective In this article, we argue that the Capitalocene and related concepts fail to take account of how the Anthropocene challenges Western humanist meta-narratives of linear temporality, progress and emancipation.

Fit for purpose? Climate change, security and IR

As the contributions to this special issue suggest, IR has had a problematic relationship with environmental issues. Indeed it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that IR has treated environmental change almost as a distraction from important concerns of global politics, and gives us few significant resources for understanding these challenges or addressing them effectively. This is perhaps most starkly evident in the subfield of security studies, despite increasing recognition that environmental change warrants consideration as a security issue. This paper examines this engagement with a particular focus on climate change. Ultimately, the paper advances two arguments. First, examinations of the climate change–security relationship located in traditional security studies struggle to come to terms with the nature of the Anthropocene challenge and more specifically with the questions of who needs securing; what the nature of the threat posed is; and who is capable of or responsible for addressing this threat. Second, however, we can see progressive potential in engagement with the security implications of climate change in IR where such scholarship parts ways with traditional accounts of security; does not allow existing configurations of power to define the conditions for thinking about agency and sites of politics; and reflexively and self-consciously draws on insights from beyond the IR discipline. The increasing volume of work consistent with this more critical engagement is grounds for hope for this field of study in engaging productively even with a challenge as complex and significant as climate change.

Uncertain, unstable and unequal: Can regime interaction help international fisheries law address anthropocene challenges?

The term “Anthropocene” has become ubiquitous within debates on the future of international environmental law. While contested, it can generally be understood to refer to the fundamental idea that the world has entered a new era in which human activities, more than any other factor, are the driving force for change within the Earth system. This concept has inspired a rethinking of traditional international environmental law in line with the challenges that are expected to result from human-induced environmental impacts. This article explores how the Anthropocene will challenge international fisheries law and how understanding the role of regime interaction as a central characteristic of international law will be a necessary part of addressing these challenges. In order to determine what might be said to constitute Anthropocene conditions the article explores the effects of human activities on two core planetary boundaries, climate change and biosphere integrity, in the context of the world’s oceans. Through examining the human-induced threats to these boundaries, common themes of uncertainty, instability and inequality within the Anthropocene ocean are identified, highlighting broadly the ways in which the current international fisheries legal regime alone is inadequate to achieve its goals in the Anthropocene context. This article proposes that enhanced regime interaction, between related regimes such as international fisheries law, international climate change law and international biodiversity law could allow international fisheries law to be more readily able to meet the uncertain, unstable and unequal Anthropocene context.

Disasters in the Anthropocene: a storm in a teacup?

Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.

Responding to the need of postgraduate education for Planetary Health: Development of an online Master's Degree.

Planetary Health has emerged as a new approach to respond to the existential risks that the clime and global environmental crises pose to human societies. As stated by various stakeholders, the challenges involved in Planetary Health are of such magnitude that education must be at the forefront to obtain a meaningful response. Universities and higher education institutions have been specifically called to embed the concept of planetary stewardship in all curricula and train the next generation of researchers and change makers as a matter of urgency. As a response to this call, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) developed the first online and asynchronous Master in Science (MSc) in Planetary Health. The aim of the programme is to train a new generation of academics and professionals who understand the challenges of Planetary Health and have tools to tackle them. This article describes the development of the curriculum of this MSc, presents the main characteristics of the programme and discusses some of the challenges encountered in the development of the programme and its implementation. The design of this MSc was based on: the alignment of the programme with the principles for Planetary Health education with a focus on human health; a multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary approach; the urgency to respond to the Anthropocene challenges; and the commitment to the 2030 Agenda. The MSc was recognized as an official degree by the Agency for Quality of the Catalan University System, included in the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education, and the Spanish National Academic Coordination body in April 2021 and launched in October 2021. There are currently more than 50 students enrolled in the program coming from a broad range of disciplines and geographic locations. The information presented in this article and the discussion on challenges encountered in developing and implementing the programme can be useful for those working in the development of similar programs.

Amplifying Solidarity in The Anthropocene: Public Engagement for Hope in Dialogic Organizing

In this paper, through the analysis of ethnographic accounts of citizens engagement events, we will explore manners in which experiences with the momentous impacts of the Anthropocene has given way to calls for new ways of organizing our lives. These engagement events were organized in Vietnam and UK with the purpose of presenting the concept of the Anthropocene, its stakes and its effects; taking into account the participants impressions and everyday experiences; and contemplating and discussing alternative forms of business models less detrimental to/impactful on the environment and the Earth System. A common theme emerging in these workshops was that of doing something in a form of solidarity: a commitment to the idea that we owe it to ourselves and others to unite in new ways, to act and organize differently, forgoing what we already have and do, redressing, reinventing and reconfiguring, for the sake of an (ever) emerging “we” that cuts across the borders of time and space and species that we usually identify ourselves by. We investigate specifically the impetus for the questions most frequently posed by the participants of the ethnographic work: what can we do as engaged citizens, how to become active together, and in which ways is it possible to hope for a future in this new geological time unit of the Anthropocene. In the paper, we theorise two of the features to the Anthropocene Experience: the practical question of when and where and, especially, on which scale to begin reorganizing our ways of living when apprehending the Anthropocene ramifications — which we will show some features of in the narrative account concerning the citizens engagement events; and how the responses to the Anthropocene challenges are motivated when people begin to consider them together. Our paper contributes, in the first instance, to the body of work on the grassroots movements and forms of activism in different spaces of hope and to theorise the concept of solidarity

International Relations in the Anthropocene

International Relations in the Anthropocene

Book Review: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences

Book Review: <i>Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences</i>

Portmanteau planetarity

Portmanteau planetarity

Relationships between ergodic indicators of dispersal intensity, IUCN Red List values, and selected environmental variables in connection with European birds whose foraging and flying behavior is associated to roads and highways

Displaying an appropriate dispersal intensity (DI) in response to environmental fluctuations may determine if a given species goes extinct or not. Thus, developing indicators of the DI necessary to harness a given ecological niche breadth is urgent due to the changing latitudinal boundaries between the Earth’s great climate belts because of global warming. So, a better assessment of extinction risk should require DI as a complementary indicator. However, the IUCN Red List, indirectly linked to niche assessments, does not take into account DI, and its values are expressed on an ordinal scale. In contrast, there is a theoretical consensus about the link between DI and extinction risk, as well as about the continuous nature of species extinction, which therefore should be measured on a ratio scale. This paper proposes solutions to the above-mentioned issues. Assuming the trait of ergodicity, successfully applied in several publications in ecology so far, measurements of the average values of recent indicators of DI of birds at the species level as well as at the plot level were performed starting from 52 samplings of roadkill events, in eight European countries. DI values were correlated with the respective values of extinction risk reported by the IUCN Red List. Collaterally, a comparative study between DI and two key environmental variables (traffic intensity, and average temperature over land areas) was performed. Inverse and significant correlations between DI and the ordinal scale of IUCN Red List values were obtained, indicating that higher DI values seem to reduce extinction probability. Our results also show that birds seem able to display rapid adaptive behaviors to the increase of traffic intensity. It was found that DI peaks of European birds are associated with deviations of only half a degree Celsius above the general background of temperature over land areas. This set of results, based on a new theoretical framework (Organic Biophysics of Ecosystems –OBEC–; see references and explanatory notes in the main text), is in favor of the appropriateness to rescue the classical foundations of ecosystem ecology based on interdisciplinary links between ecology and physics to promote a better management of the Anthropocene challenges, all of them typified by interdisciplinary traits that require holistic approaches.

Governing complexity: Integrating science, governance, and law to manage accelerating change in the globalized commons

The speed and uncertainty of environmental change in the Anthropocene challenge the capacity of coevolving social–ecological–technological systems (SETs) to adapt or transform to these changes. Formal government and legal structures further constrain the adaptive capacity of our SETs. However, new, self-organized forms of adaptive governance are emerging at multiple scales in natural resource-based SETs. Adaptive governance involves the private and public sectors as well as formal and informal institutions, self-organized to fill governance gaps in the traditional roles of states. While new governance forms are emerging, they are not yet doing so rapidly enough to match the pace of environmental change. Furthermore, they do not yet possess the legitimacy or capacity needed to address disparities between the winners and losers from change. These emergent forms of adaptive governance appear to be particularly effective in managing complexity. We explore governance and SETs as coevolving complex systems, focusing on legal systems to understand the potential pathways and obstacles to equitable adaptation. We explore how governments may facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance and promote legitimacy in both the process of governance despite the involvement of nonstate actors, and its adherence to democratic values of equity and justice. To manage the contextual nature of the results of change in complex systems, we propose the establishment of long-term study initiatives for the coproduction of knowledge, to accelerate learning and synergize interactions between science and governance and to foster public science and epistemic communities dedicated to navigating transitions to more just, sustainable, and resilient futures.

Nigel Clark and Bronislaw Szerszynski: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences

Article Nigel Clark and Bronislaw Szerszynski: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences was published on August 28, 2021 in the journal New Global Studies (volume 0, issue 0).

Travelling Sideways in Time (Without a Suitcase): The Aggregate Identity of Audrey Parker on Haven

A distinct strand has differentiated itself in television programming in the twenty-first century: television series that feature female protagonists travelling between parallel worlds. The worlds in most of these series are on the edge of destruction through terrorism, war or another traumatic event. The female protagonists, who share the special ability to travel between the worlds, have a unique role to play – they serve as mediators between the universes. Their inbetweenness enables their autonomy and resistance to violence, death, and appropriation. This role is played by Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) in the fantasy/supernatural drama Haven. Audrey’s task is to travel through an interdimensional portal to the town of Haven every twenty-seven years to help as a police officer to protect the inhabitants who are plagued by “the Troubles,” that is, supernatural abilities, which finally threaten them with imminent destruction. The uniqueness of Audrey resides not only in her special status as a traveller between the worlds but also in her identity, which consists of many segments in which different consciousnesses inhabit the same non-ageing body over five hundred years. The essay will analyse the unique temporality of the character, governed by female patterns of travel and her nomadic subjectivity, proposing that her figure links human lifetimes to geological aeons, symbolised by aether, the primary substance of the Void, located between the worlds. That link makes Haven a show of the Anthropocene, the geologic time period defined by humanity’s influence upon the earth. The Anthropocene challenges us to think beyond the usual temporality of a human lifespan, and so does Haven. The imminent destruction as a result of individual egotism leading to the misuse of aether in the show is a trope for the destruction of our planet. Haven uses the figure of Audrey Parker to represent a network of connections and repercussions dispersed over centuries to illustrate how our cumulative actions impact our planet. The show’s anti-linear strategies thus address the environmental concerns of an increasingly unstable environment to propose new ways through which to figure and address imminent threats concerning ecological disaster.

Travelling Sideways in Time (Without a Suitcase): The Aggregate Identity of Audrey Parker on Haven

A distinct strand has differentiated itself in television programming in the twenty-first century: television series that feature female protagonists travelling between parallel worlds. The worlds in most of these series are on the edge of destruction through terrorism, war or another traumatic event. The female protagonists, who share the special ability to travel between the worlds, have a unique role to play – they serve as mediators between the universes. Their inbetweenness enables their autonomy and resistance to violence, death, and appropriation. This role is played by Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) in the fantasy/supernatural drama Haven. Audrey’s task is to travel through an interdimensional portal to the town of Haven every twenty-seven years to help as a police officer to protect the inhabitants who are plagued by “the Troubles,” that is, supernatural abilities, which finally threaten them with imminent destruction. The uniqueness of Audrey resides not only in her special status as a traveller between the worlds but also in her identity, which consists of many segments in which different consciousnesses inhabit the same non-ageing body over five hundred years. The essay will analyse the unique temporality of the character, governed by female patterns of travel and her nomadic subjectivity, proposing that her figure links human lifetimes to geological aeons, symbolised by aether, the primary substance of the Void, located between the worlds. That link makes Haven a show of the Anthropocene, the geologic time period defined by humanity’s influence upon the earth. The Anthropocene challenges us to think beyond the usual temporality of a human lifespan, and so does Haven. The imminent destruction as a result of individual egotism leading to the misuse of aether in the show is a trope for the destruction of our planet. Haven uses the figure of Audrey Parker to represent a network of connections and repercussions dispersed over centuries to illustrate how our cumulative actions impact our planet. The show’s anti-linear strategies thus address the environmental concerns of an increasingly unstable environment to propose new ways through which to figure and address imminent threats concerning ecological disaster.

Book Review: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences

Book Review: Planetary Social Thought: The Anthropocene Challenge to the Social Sciences

Anthropocene challenges for youth research: understanding agency and change through complex, adaptive systems

ABSTRACT The Anthropocene has come to signify human dominance over the more-than-human world with all its negative consequences for this planet’s human and nonhuman inhabitants. As young people have started to express their feelings of concern and frustration with the inertia of the political elites, youth research, too, is called upon to reconsider and broaden its perspective. In particular, we argue, that the Anthropocene challenges anthropocentrism, dualisms, and traditional notions of agency in youth research, and must be critiqued through multi-disciplinary investigation. A transgression of the mainstream paradigm in youth research through the perspective of Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) could provide much needed analyses of a broad range of issues at the intersection of youth and ecological concerns. This article will therefore outline Complex Adaptive Systems Theory (CAS) as a multi-disciplinary tool, and apply it to two examples: the biosocial system of the Elwha River waterscape, and the #Fridays for Future strikes that are both motivated by environmental concerns. Finally, it discusses the possible contributions of a CAS approach in youth research to a better understanding of agency and change in ecologically turbulent times.

Exploring Connections in Agroecosystems

A challenge of the Anthropocene is to advance human development without undermining critical natural processes. At the heart of this challenge is a better understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between nature, ecosystem services, and human wellbeing, in dynamic and complex social-ecological systems. These interrelationships have been the focus of much work in the past decades, however, more remains to be done to identify and quantify them, at different scales...

Drift in an Anthropocene: On the work of terrain

As geographers confront the manifold challenges of an Anthropocene, so the framing of geography as the critical study of space – a framing that took hold of theory and practice in the 20th century and that searched for antecedents as well as prognostications – is increasingly splayed across the long durée of geography as the interrogation of the nature of human being as well as the Earthly environment and the constitutive relations between these. While the prospect of a new geologic epoch situates these Anthropocene challenges as the conjunction of a human history with the deep time of the planet, it also suggests, for example, the entanglement of the geopolitical and the geophysical, an entanglement that the (colonial and imperialising) discipline of geography has helped to articulate and produce even while proffering an explanation of the same. In pivoting back once more to the knotty matter of geopolitics and geophysics, what concepts and lexicons might be productive? Here, and thinking through the work that terrain has done and can do, I offer the multi-agential, survey defying, taxonomically mutable, drifting geographies of drift that have been so perturbing to a solid geology and its stratigraphic tempo, and hence can, perhaps, provide another resource from which to construe the political materialities of an Anthropocene.