| 1. |
- Barthel, Stephan, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Global urbanization and food production in direct competition for land : Leverage places to mitigate impacts on SDG2 and on the Earth System
- 2019
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : SAGE Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 6:1-2, s. 71-97
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global urbanization and food production are in direct competition for land. This paper carries outa critical review of how displacing crop production from urban and peri-urban land to other areas– because of issues related to soil quality – will demand a substantially larger proportion of theEarth’s terrestrial land surface than the surface area lost to urban encroachment. Such relationshipsmay trigger further distancing effects and unfair social-ecological teleconnections. It risks also settingin motion amplifying effects within the Earth System. In combination, such multiple stressors set thescene for food riots in cities of the Global South. Our review identifies viable leverage points on whichto act in order to navigate urban expansion away from fertile croplands. We first elaborate on thepolitical complexities in declaring urban and peri-urban lands with fertile soils as one global commons.We find that the combination of an advisory global policy aligned with regional policies enablingrobust common properties rights for bottom-up actors and movements in urban and peri-urbanagriculture (UPA) as multi-level leverage places to intervene. To substantiate the ability of aligningglobal advisory policy with regional planning, we review both past and contemporary examples whereempowering local social-ecological UPA practices and circular economies have had a stimulatingeffect on urban resilience and helped preserve, restore, and maintain urban lands with healthy soils.
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| 2. |
- Brolin, John, et al.
(författare)
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Global trade in the Anthropocene : A review of trends and direction of environmental factor flows during the Great Acceleration
- 2022
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : SAGE Publications. - 2053-020X .- 2053-0196. ; 9:1, s. 71-110
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Global trade is a neglected topic in debates on the Anthropocene, but plays an implicit role in several suggested definitions of it. Trade’s role in shifting environmental burdens around the globe differed substantially between the Columbian Exchange (1492−1800), the Industrial Revolution (~1800−1950) and the Great Acceleration (post-1950). However, this systematic state-of-the-art review shows that the more than 350 global studies of trade-embedded environmental factors all centre on the Great Acceleration. An underlying concern here is whether environmental factor flows are to the economic and/or environmental benefit of all, a case of the rich exploiting the poor, or merely the inadvertent consequence of differences in environmental efficiency. We point out similarities in the trends and direction of flows between major world regions and between developed and developing countries. Factors such as land, virtual water, HANPP and eutrophying pollutants that are related to the organic economy (or direct biomass flows), primarily flow from regions where population density is low to where it is high, and are only secondarily affected by affluence. Indicators such as energy, airborne pollutant emissions and greenhouse gasses that are related to the mineral economy (fossil fuel, metal and mineral use) tend to flow from developing to developed countries, and are explained either by higher consumption rates or greater environmental efficiency in affluent countries, which has similar consequences for net flows. We weave the shifting trends and directions of flows during the Great Acceleration into a coherent story. Finally, returning to the period before the Great Acceleration, we argue the need for global studies of trade-embedded factor flows before 1950 to test ideas on the character and origins of the Anthropocene, and to accomplish this suggest either geographically extending quantitative long-term national and/or commodity studies, or environmentally extending recently compiled global monetary bilateral trade data for the pre-1950 period.
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| 3. |
- Dearing, JA, et al.
(författare)
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Social-ecological systems in the Anthropocene : The need for integrating social and biophysical records at regional scales.
- 2015
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : SAGE Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 2:3, s. 220-246
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding social-ecological system dynamics is a major research priority for sustainable management of landscapes, ecosystems and resources. But the lack of multi-decadal records represents an important gap in information that hinders the development of the research agenda. Without improved information on the long-term and complex interactions between causal factors and responses, it will be difficult to answer key questions about trends, rates of change, tipping points, safe operating spaces and pre-impact conditions. Where available long-term monitored records are too short or lacking, palaeoenvironmental sciences may provide continuous multi-decadal records for an array of ecosystem states, processes and services. Combining these records with conventional sources of historical information from instrumental monitoring records, official statistics and enumerations, remote sensing, archival documents, cartography and archaeology produces an evolutionary framework for reconstructing integrated regional histories. We demonstrate the integrated approach with published case studies from Australia, China, Europe and North America.
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| 4. |
- Epstein, Seth, Researcher, 1978-
(författare)
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Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene
- 2022
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : Sage Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 10:2, s. 415-433
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- While much has been written about the efforts in multiple jurisdictions to recognize nature and natural features as rightsholders, there has been relatively little research into the relationship of these Rights of Nature developments to the Anthropocene. This article uses historian Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument for the adoption of a human species identity in the Anthropocene as a jumping off point to analyze how legal rights for nature, such as those enacted in the Ecuador and New Zealand, can help address what Chakrabarty identifies as the challenges the Anthropocene presents to contemporary political thought. These pressing challenges include how to politicize relations between humans and non-humans, extend justice and the sphere of human morality to non-humans, cope with human limitations on our abilities to represent non-humans, and to initiate a withdrawal from a human-dominated world that is a common though uneven legacy of imperialism, capitalism, and globalization. The article argues that by providing responses to these challenges, Rights of Nature laws may also further the development of a human species identity. However, it also qualifies this conclusion in several important regards. First, the more expansive of these protections, embracing all of nature within political boundaries and relying on a remedial approach to justice and broad notions of representation in fact may hinder the adoption of the kind of species identity for which Chakrabarty has called. Second, as a cosmopolitan identity, this identity may be inhibited by continued circumscription of Rights of Nature by notions of state sovereignty.
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| 5. |
- Gärdebo, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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The orbital technosphere : The provision of meaning and matter by satellites
- 2017
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : SAGE Publications Inc.. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 4:1, s. 44-52
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With a new ‘technosphere’ concept, Peter Haff offers a provocative reconceptualization of technology in Anthropocene, not as derivative consequence of human activity, but as a new ‘quasi-autonomous’ sphere of the environment that conditions human survival within the Earth System. Paying attention to the expansion of the orbital satellites in outer space, this paper suggests that technosphere analysis needs to conceptualize specific histories of the planetary-scale technology while considering how these technologies provide the epistemological basis and limitations for the technosphere. Satellites enhance the capacity of the technosphere as a system and provide systemic knowledge that is the basis for the meaning of the technosphere concept. Yet, this expansion is rooted in the contingencies of earthly geopolitics and the continual breakdown of technology – in this instance as a space debris layer formed in orbit around Earth that endangers the technosphere itself.
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| 6. |
- Hansson, Anders, 1978-, et al.
(författare)
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Has the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B run out of steam?
- 2016
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : Sage Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 3:1, s. 64-74
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Paul Crutzen’s 2006 call for geoengineering research triggered public debate in the mass media of several countries. Since then, a common belief among numerous involved scientists has been that more geoengineering experimentation or research is needed and that geoengineering should be carefully considered in a precautionary way as an emergency option or ‘Plan B’. Despite the controversial potential of geoengineering in terms of mega-risks, ethical dilemmas and governance challenges, public geoengineering debate in the daily press from 2006 to 2013 was heavily dominated by accounts of scientists’ arguments for more geoengineering research or even deployment, only about 8% of mass media articles expressing criticism of geoengineering. However, based on a reading of 700 articles published worldwide in 2014 and 2015, we demonstrate a gradual shift in the coverage, and the daily press now primarily reports critical views of geoengineering technologies. The patterns outlined here point in the same direction: It seems as though the grand idea of geoengineering as Plan B is fading.
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| 7. |
- Hornborg, Alf, et al.
(författare)
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Yes, it is all about fetishism: A response to Daniel Cunha
- 2016
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : SAGE Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 3:3, s. 205-207
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Daniel Cunha misreads us as suggesting that climate change has been a conscious and deliberate strategy of a global elite. This was very clearly not our suggestion. He proposes that the Marxian concept of fetishism is applicable to anthropogenic climate change, apparently unaware of our recurrent use of precisely this concept in a number of publications over the past decades. We thus fundamentally agree with his position, but find his critique of our own interpretation of the Anthropocene unfair and misdirected.
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| 8. |
- Karlsson, Rasmus, 1978-
(författare)
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Three metaphors for sustainability in the Anthropocene
- 2016
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : Sage Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 3:1, s. 23-32
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents three different metaphors for sustainability in the Anthropocene. The first metaphor is the widely used notion of an ‘ecological footprint’, which offers a snapshot of what sustainability would require today using existing technologies. The second metaphor is one of a rocket taking off. Unlike the static footprint metaphor, this metaphor allows for the possibility that achieving a long-term sustainable trajectory might require entering a temporary state of even higher levels of unsustainability. Finally a third metaphor is presented, in which human civilisation is likened to an airplane and modernity to a runway. This metaphor suggests that sustainability can be achieved either by (1) a take-off into a post-scarcity space-faring civilisation or (2) a deceleration into a small-scale economy based on norms of frugality and simplicity. The third metaphor highlights the risk that insufficient political commitment to either trajectory might lead to (3) a catastrophic ecological overshoot.
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| 9. |
- Kunnas, Jan
(författare)
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Storytelling : From the early Anthropocene to the good or the bad Anthropocene
- 2017
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : Sage Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 4:2, s. 136-150
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper examines whether the Anthropocene can be a helpful metaphor for holistic understandings of human impacts on the Earth. I argue that for this, splitting the Anthropocene into several consecutive stages would be helpful, and suggest a multistage Anthropocene: the early Anthropocene, the first acceleration phase, the post-1950 Great Acceleration, and finally the good or the bad anthropocene depending on whether humans take decisive action in time that ensures us staying within planetary boundaries. This reframing uses the power of storytelling by presenting a multifaceted picture of human agency in the Anthropocene, provides a deep framing that is positive and supports action, and provides clear signals on the direction in which we are moving. It puts humans back in their rightful place on Earth – as one of many species, although with large power for the good or the bad, and the responsibilities this brings.
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| 10. |
- Paglia, Eric, 1970-
(författare)
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Not a proper crisis
- 2015
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Ingår i: The Anthropocene Review. - : Sage Publications. - 2053-0196 .- 2053-020X. ; 2:3, s. 247-261
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines and qualifies the proposition that humankind’s recently acquired geological agency has brought about the convergence of Earth and human history. Contrasting a contemporary representation of human–nature interactions – the ‘Great Acceleration graphs’ documenting humanity’s post-war dominance – with an earlier perspective elaborated by Fernand Braudel, whose historical philosophy assigned physical geography powerful agency over human affairs, this article contends that ‘environmental crisis’ is a valid characterization of the post-1950 reordering of human–nature relations. Yet it is not a ‘proper’ crisis, as the environmental and climate crisis cannot be managed as a discrete event – as crises are often thought of today – in hope of restoring the status quo ante. Drawing on an older connotation of crisis, this article proposes a temporal conceptualization of environmental crisis, signifying a multi-decade historical period of reordering that spans the decline of the Holocene and advent of the Anthropocene. The intended and unintended consequences of human decisions will determine whether convergence, through reflexivity or coercion, results from this ongoing epochal transition.
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