The Anthropocence - The Academic Quandry & Debate

The Anthropocene is a multidimensional process that has many unfolding consequences on a planetary level. However, it is significantly sensitive to context-specific variables, which leads to very different circumstances in different parts of the globe. In this sense, climate change is a clear steering aspect within the Anthropocene. In the past few decades, this topic has become part not only in the Earth sciences debates, but also in the social sciences. More recently, even historians have been addressing climate change as a driver of social movements, such as migration and revolutions (McNeill, 2014). Thus, the social-technological and the natural-ecological realms are the two major and complementary spheres in which the Anthropocene manifests itself.

Humanity has reached a point in which its activities are no longer sustainable. Specifically, if production and consumption patterns prevail, modern society will no longer have a safe operating space to continue long term viable existence (Rockström et al, 2009). Thus, social and natural aspects are completely intertwined and are not in opposition (Steffen et al, 2015). Development and sustainability go hand in hand, because climate change produces social changes that affect low income areas with greater severity. Vulnerable communities often face challenges in term of income, sanitation, health and ecology altogether and that is why an interdisciplinary approach to the Anthropocene is so important (Robin & Steffen, 2007).

It is towards these communities that resilience factors should be addressed – and resilience should be an ultimate priority in a changing sustainable aims. Yet, the proper way of achieving this goal remains a highly contested debate. Social-ecological resilience is one of the main concepts within the safe operating space argumentation, but other authors question the reliability of the methodology chosen to measure and set the planetary boundaries (Powell, 2014). Another source of criticism is the underlying assumption that there is an ideal state of sustainability that can be defined through proper and rigorous scientific expertise (Ibidem).

The social-ecological resilience concept itself is defined in a global scale. In spite of the recognition that sub-regional systems are as much as important, the planetary boundaries are conceived within a planetary level (Steffen et al, 2015). This may lead to an unintended result of recreating and maintaining the power structures that exist in contemporary status quo. How can the social aspect be thoroughly dealt with in the social-ecological resilience framework if the little attention is paid to processes of norm production? The definition of a safe operating space cannot adopt an ontology in which takes into account only technocratic and scientific unbiased knowledge. It further needs to address the social process within the debate and encompass the power clashes that exist in the environmental debate.

If the Anthropocene is about human drivers of change, then social aspect of human societies cannot be underestimated. It was social organization and development that led to the current production and consumption patters. Therefore, if we are to transition to an actually sustainable thinking, it should aim at the social aspect as well. In this sense, resilience thinking needs to further assess social processes, particularly in a local scale, instead of adopting a single planetary approach. Resilience to climate change is a primarily local process, thus, it needs to adopt a more context-specific stand and a smaller scale in order to achieve a broad and comprehensive view of the Anthropocene’s dynamics.

References:

McNeill, J. (2014). Changing Climates of History. Retrieved from http://www.publicbooks.org/nonfiction/changing-climates-of-history

Powell, N. S., Larsen, R. K., & van Bommel, S. (2014). Meeting the “Anthropocene” in the context of intractability and complexity: infusing resilience narratives with intersubjectivity. Resilience, 2(3), 135–150.

Robin, L., & Steffen, W. (2007). History for the Anthropocene. History Compass, 5(5), 1694–1719.

Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., … Foley, J. A. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461(7263), 472–475.

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., … Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 1259855.