FIXING THE "ANTHROPOS" IN THE "CENE"

Why Environmental Studies and  the Age of Human go together? 

Conceptualising the Anthropocene 

Anthropocene is a term used to describe the period in human history when the earth and  everything on it have been impacted by human beings. Simply put- it is the Age of the  Human. We are all in the Anthropocene, an ongoing epoch. We have passed over from the  epoch of the Holocene that originated at the end of the last Ice Age some 11,700 years ago  and entered a new geological epoch. Anthropocene, however, is a term with some significant  contestations, being of new coinage in the 1980s by biologist Eugene Stoermer, later  becoming a common term through the efforts of Paul Crutzen, a meteorologist and chemist1.  Environmental politics and environmental studies, both closely associated terms, in the latter  half of the last century developed in the definitive backdrop of the Anthropocene. 

The most widely accepted date of origin of the Anthropocene is the onset of the Industrial  Revolution that took off in the late 18th century, a period marked by the beginning of the  rapid burning of fossil fuels. This view, of course, is contested by those who argue that the  “Great Acceleration” of the 1950s is the most convincing date for the beginning of the  Anthropocene. Before the “Great Acceleration”, large-scale shifts in the earth system were  lesser and with its onset socio-economic transformations reached a tizzy. A popularly cited  example of the Great Acceleration is the experiment of the first nuclear explosion when  radioactive fallout from the New Mexico Desert entered the earth’s atmosphere and  sediments2. 

Other periods forwarded as candidates of the Anthropocene’s origins include the Columbian  exchange of the late 15th century that emphasised colonialism and early global trade as necessary pre-conditions; and the Neolithic Revolution which marked humanity’s shift  towards a settled, sedentary mode of life and livelihood.  

Relevance of the Anthropocene and its indicators (A real deal or an abstract fugazi?

The Anthropocene is marked by indicators. Economic activity and population growth have  grown exponentially despite intermittent periods of slowdown like the Global Financial  Crisis of 2008. The planet’s total population, despite a fall in global fertility rate, is expected  to be anywhere between 10 to 11 billion by the end of the present century. Simply put, the  Anthropocene is marked by the aggressive increase of not only economic activities and 

population growth, but also the use of chemical fertilisers, hydrocarbons, and even cleaner  sources of energy like renewable resources. The transport sector has increased manifold with  contributions from the growth of the mobile phone industry, international tourism, and the  manufacture of vehicles. The rapid pace of urbanisation, most palpable after 1800 AD, has  resulted in more than half of the world’s population staying in towns and cities. To say that  the Anthropocene is omnipresent would not be an exaggeration as a simultaneous growth in  the number of greenhouse gases like methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide continue to  rise, corresponding closely with the growth in the economy and primary energy use. To cite  yet another obvious but significant indicator: more of the earth’s land is under human use  than at any point in time ever, in the form of cities, agricultural or industrial land etc. 

In the words of climate activist Bill McKibben, the Anthropocene is the “biggest thing that  humans have ever done”3. When we talk of environmental studies and environmental politics,  this statement makes us ponder over the fact that there is a moment in natural history, an age,  when human activity has turned into a geological phenomenon, a process shaping and  transforming the planet. It is because of this reason that the Anthropocene has arguably  garnered equal, or even more, attention compared to the Holocene, a time when social  phenomena like the division of labour, the rise of patriarchy, and agricultural traditions  originated4. As such, the Anthropocene has also been mentioned as the history of humans colonisation over nature5.

Environmental studies, politics and the Anthropocene (Is the Anthropocene  anthropomorphic?)

If we go back in time to the recent past, we can see that humankind’s struggle over nature  was dubbed “Man’s Conquest of Nature” making possible what was seen as progress with  “P” in the upper-case. Development was seen as linear and growth-dependent since nothing  could be gotten for free from nature and it was humanity’s toils that made life and livelihood  possible. The notion behind such an idea was that the human race would perish otherwise.  The Industrial Age saw this conquest as nearing completion when control over nature had  reached an unprecedented degree and a proverbial point of no return was reached when the  Great Acceleration, as recounted earlier, had begun. But gradually a realisation has started to  dawn on humanity that even as nature indeed had been dominated to an unimaginable level, the erosion of basic life support systems is increasing. A collective pain and trauma is  palpable with the continued destruction of nature, and the use of more of the planet than is  available.  

At such a juncture of trauma, environmental studies become relevant although it had a very  different beginning. Tracing its roots back to the 20th century, its early origin had a  management-driven orientation. Infact, before colleges and universities in the US could  introduce courses on environmental studies; it was already a part of curricula in schools of  forestry, fisheries, and wildlife. This fixated approach towards environmental studies was  radically transformed in the 1950s. 

It is interesting to note briefly that early environmental studies had two conflicting  philosophies viz. conservation and preservation, which are still palpable in approaches titled  anthropocentrism and eco-centrism, respectively. The anthropocentric school is closer to  reformist ecology, with sustainable development as an operative idea reconciling capitalism  or modernity with principles of ecology. As such, it is also called “shallow ecology” that  treats nature as a means to an end, although putting the caveat of doing so at a judicious pace.  The well-known tragedy of the commons theory by Garrett Hardin, in a sense, captures the fears put forward by reformist ecology: in the absence of a private market regulatory  mechanism, each person would try to maximise her benefits from the commons at the cost of  the commons and, of course by implication, of others too. 

The second type of ecological political thought, and that is closer to an eco-centric approach,  is radical ecology which strives for more revolutionary changes by uprooting the existing  structures and hierarchies- private property, market capitalism, patriarchy etc.- and arriving at  a more egalitarian society where no form of domination over nature would exist. For  example, a “Deep Ecology” is envisaged in the Gaia hypothesis developed by James  Lovelock when the earth itself is accepted as a living being. 

There was always an environmentally conscious backlash against industrial society, ever  since the industrial revolution began, but it did not become a politically viable issue till the  time environmental studies began to rise in the 1960s. Pioneering works of early  environmentalism like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) shifted the focus from resource  utilisation towards the harmful effects of pesticides and chemicals used in agriculture.  Murray Bookchin’s Our Synthetic Environment (1975) showed the carcinogenic effects of  additives and fertilisers etc. Kenneth Boulding devised the interesting metaphor of the  “Spaceship Earth” in 1966: the earth is a spaceship on flight with a limited amount of  resources that would run out one day. He drew attention to the fact that humans have  traditionally acted as if they had lived in a “cowboy economy” of never-ending opportunities  as had happened in the North American West during the period of speculation at and beyond  the frontiers6. 

Environmental studies became tangled with environmental politics coinciding with the mood  for self-determination and rebellion brought on by the Civil Rights Movement and the  Vietnam War in the West (Soulé & Press, 1998) . These theoretical and academic  developments of environmental studies and politics started at around the same time as the  Great Acceleration, by far the most convincing date for the Anthropocene. Significantly,  environmental studies are as much of a child of the social sciences, as much as they are of the  natural sciences, because of political implications and contestations.  

Later, in the sphere of inter-governmental and transnational organisations, unofficial reports  of the UN like Only One Earth (1972), and official reports like The Limits to Growth (1972)  by The Club of Rome had a significant bearing on the idea that natural resources are finite.  By the 1970s, with the Anthropocene’s effects well on their way on human societies, the first  international conference on the environment was held by the UN in Stockholm in 1972. It led  to the establishment of the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) with a  mandate to bring onboard international concerns and promote cooperation regarding issues of  the environment. A few significant efforts have followed since including sustainable  development, reasonable consumption, and climate change as the foci : Bruntland  Commission Report titled Our Common Future (1987), Rio Earth Summit (1992), Kyoto  Summit (1997), Copenhagen Summit (2009), and the Paris Accords (2015). 

Is the Anthropocene everywhere? 

The idea of the Anthropocene has also been criticised for treating the mass of humanity as a  homogenous whole, overlooking in the process the differences of paths to development  among the comity of nations and regions. It has been pointed out that the language of the  Anthropocene scholars use terms like “us” and “we” as if human societies were one flat, free flowing society, ignoring socio-economic differences and political conflicts. 

However, recent scholarship has paid attention to these criticisms and argued the case of  fundamental ecological transformations brought on by human actions as a cumulative whole.  For instance, it is acknowledged that the effects of the Great Acceleration on OECD and non OECD countries have been different7(Steffen et al., 2015). Post-colonial studies have also  responded by showing how European colonial science and technology created new  epistemologies of understanding and how nature was commoditised. As such, the concept of  the Anthropocene is a helpful theoretical and contextual backdrop in the rise of green politics,  environmental activism, international summits, and the combat to reverse climate change. 

References:

1. Diogo, M. P., Louro, I., & Scarso, D. (2017). Uncanny Nature: Why the concept of Anthropocene is relevant  for historians of technology. ICON : International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) , 25-35 

2. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the  Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review , 81-98.  

3. Ireland, C. (2013, September 18). Big Problems, Small Solutions. Harvard Gazette . 

4. Husdon, M. J. (2014). Placing Asia in the Anthropocene: Histories, Vulnerabilities, Responses. The Journal of  Asian Studies , 941-962.

5. Diogo, M. P., Louro, I., & Scarso, D. (2017). Uncanny Nature: Why the concept of Anthropocene is relevant  for historians of technology. ICON : International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) , 25-35.

6. Heywood, A. (2011). Global Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

7. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. (2015). The trajectory of the  Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review , 81-98

Photo courtesy: National Gallery of Canada