Pub Date : 2022-07-15DOI: 10.1177/20530196221112137
T. Noszczyk, K. Cegielska, Krzysztof Rogatka, Tomasz Starczewski
Recent decades saw a global degradation of ecosystems and climate change caused by rapid anthropogenic socio-economic growth. The paper investigates spatio-temporal changes in green areas in Polish cities. The study involved two levels: macro (all 936 towns and cities in Poland) and micro (zooming in on Kraków and Toruń) from 2006 to 2018. The authors analysed 64,312 records of statistical data and 32,317 polygons representing areas of specific land use categories in the Urban Atlas with GIS tools and algorithms. Results for the entire country (a macro level) indicate that the area of forests in cities is in decline, but the total share of green urban areas is increasing slightly. Polish towns and cities also exhibit a positive balance of shrub count and a negative balance of tree count. At a micro level, land use analysis indicates a slight decrease in green urban areas, but an increase in the forest area. Moreover, an analysis of the spatial distributions of changes in green areas in Kraków and Toruń demonstrated specific trends. Sites exhibiting a significant decrease in green urban areas were found mainly along main transport routes. Moreover, incomplete green belts around highly urbanised zones turned out to be a characteristic component. The slight differences in results at a micro and macro level are due to a more significant generalisation at a macro level. Micro-level research focuses on an individual case. Hence, it should be used mainly to juxtapose cities, while the macro-level perspective is adequate for cross-country analyses, for example. The results are relevant to urban policies deployed by local and regional authorities, the European Green Deal and climate neutrality.
{"title":"Exploring green areas in Polish cities in context of anthropogenic land use changes","authors":"T. Noszczyk, K. Cegielska, Krzysztof Rogatka, Tomasz Starczewski","doi":"10.1177/20530196221112137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221112137","url":null,"abstract":"Recent decades saw a global degradation of ecosystems and climate change caused by rapid anthropogenic socio-economic growth. The paper investigates spatio-temporal changes in green areas in Polish cities. The study involved two levels: macro (all 936 towns and cities in Poland) and micro (zooming in on Kraków and Toruń) from 2006 to 2018. The authors analysed 64,312 records of statistical data and 32,317 polygons representing areas of specific land use categories in the Urban Atlas with GIS tools and algorithms. Results for the entire country (a macro level) indicate that the area of forests in cities is in decline, but the total share of green urban areas is increasing slightly. Polish towns and cities also exhibit a positive balance of shrub count and a negative balance of tree count. At a micro level, land use analysis indicates a slight decrease in green urban areas, but an increase in the forest area. Moreover, an analysis of the spatial distributions of changes in green areas in Kraków and Toruń demonstrated specific trends. Sites exhibiting a significant decrease in green urban areas were found mainly along main transport routes. Moreover, incomplete green belts around highly urbanised zones turned out to be a characteristic component. The slight differences in results at a micro and macro level are due to a more significant generalisation at a macro level. Micro-level research focuses on an individual case. Hence, it should be used mainly to juxtapose cities, while the macro-level perspective is adequate for cross-country analyses, for example. The results are relevant to urban policies deployed by local and regional authorities, the European Green Deal and climate neutrality.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48937297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-10DOI: 10.1177/20530196221109354
C. Amo-Agyemang
Climate-induced indigenous migration has become a radical adaptation vision in the Anthropocene. The article focuses on the problematic of representation of indigenous traditional knowledge and imagination in the Anthropocene, in Frafra ethnic group especially. The article does so by critically examining how indigenous traditional knowledge politicise anthropogenic climate change and migration conceived as a struggle between regimes of governing. It analyses alternative approaches to adaptation and resilience, from the Western scientific knowledge and modernist ontologies, often relying on the engagement of local communities, actively produced through the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality, understood as a relational outcome and contingent relation. I argue that indigenous traditional knowledge approaches to resilience and adaptation in the Anthropocene disrupt, contest and subvert modernist discourses of climate-induced migration. It is suggested that contemporary discourses of resilience and adaptation appear to be drawing to a close as it lacks an adequate agential, transformative and also opening up alternative possibilities.
{"title":"Climate migration, resilience and adaptation in the Anthropocene: Insights from the migrating Frafra to Southern Ghana","authors":"C. Amo-Agyemang","doi":"10.1177/20530196221109354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221109354","url":null,"abstract":"Climate-induced indigenous migration has become a radical adaptation vision in the Anthropocene. The article focuses on the problematic of representation of indigenous traditional knowledge and imagination in the Anthropocene, in Frafra ethnic group especially. The article does so by critically examining how indigenous traditional knowledge politicise anthropogenic climate change and migration conceived as a struggle between regimes of governing. It analyses alternative approaches to adaptation and resilience, from the Western scientific knowledge and modernist ontologies, often relying on the engagement of local communities, actively produced through the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality, understood as a relational outcome and contingent relation. I argue that indigenous traditional knowledge approaches to resilience and adaptation in the Anthropocene disrupt, contest and subvert modernist discourses of climate-induced migration. It is suggested that contemporary discourses of resilience and adaptation appear to be drawing to a close as it lacks an adequate agential, transformative and also opening up alternative possibilities.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"10 1","pages":"592 - 611"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65480988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-07DOI: 10.1177/20530196221110388
Philipp Höfele, O. Müller, Lore Hühn
In a paradigmatic selection, the Special Issue unites contributions from biology, sustainability research, psychology and philosophy as well as media science and literary studies. It aims to discuss to what extent and on what basis the concept of nature is treated in the Anthropocene discourse with new perspectives, intentions and narratives. Not only the possibly changed conditions for a definition of nature in the Anthropocene are questioned, but also the necessity of an inter- and transdisciplinary opening, which goes along with this questioning and its connection with theoretical and practical issues.
{"title":"Introduction: The role of nature in the Anthropocene – Defining and reacting to a new geological epoch","authors":"Philipp Höfele, O. Müller, Lore Hühn","doi":"10.1177/20530196221110388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221110388","url":null,"abstract":"In a paradigmatic selection, the Special Issue unites contributions from biology, sustainability research, psychology and philosophy as well as media science and literary studies. It aims to discuss to what extent and on what basis the concept of nature is treated in the Anthropocene discourse with new perspectives, intentions and narratives. Not only the possibly changed conditions for a definition of nature in the Anthropocene are questioned, but also the necessity of an inter- and transdisciplinary opening, which goes along with this questioning and its connection with theoretical and practical issues.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"9 1","pages":"129 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41404137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1177/20530196221107397
N. Clark, L. Rickards
It is already well understood that unbinding materials and energy from their lithic reservoirs impacts upon Earth systems. But that is just the first stage of a cycle of ‘Anthropocene trouble’. This paper tracks the multiple ways in which subsequent Earth system change reacts back upon the social infrastructures of subsurface exploitation and the landscapes they produce. Shifting fire regimes, intensifying hydrometeorological events and sea level rise impact upon the infrastructures of hydrocarbon extraction, hydroclimatic change impacts upon infrastructures and landscapes of mineral extraction, and both pyroclimatic and hydroclimatic change impact upon nuclear infrastructures and on landscapes already contaminated by radioactive materials. To make sense of these ‘negative synergies’ we draw upon social science diagnoses of late modern hazards as well Anthropocene science’s deepening collaboration between ‘hard rock’ geology and Earth system science.
{"title":"An Anthropocene species of trouble? Negative synergies between earth system change and geological destratification","authors":"N. Clark, L. Rickards","doi":"10.1177/20530196221107397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221107397","url":null,"abstract":"It is already well understood that unbinding materials and energy from their lithic reservoirs impacts upon Earth systems. But that is just the first stage of a cycle of ‘Anthropocene trouble’. This paper tracks the multiple ways in which subsequent Earth system change reacts back upon the social infrastructures of subsurface exploitation and the landscapes they produce. Shifting fire regimes, intensifying hydrometeorological events and sea level rise impact upon the infrastructures of hydrocarbon extraction, hydroclimatic change impacts upon infrastructures and landscapes of mineral extraction, and both pyroclimatic and hydroclimatic change impact upon nuclear infrastructures and on landscapes already contaminated by radioactive materials. To make sense of these ‘negative synergies’ we draw upon social science diagnoses of late modern hazards as well Anthropocene science’s deepening collaboration between ‘hard rock’ geology and Earth system science.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"9 1","pages":"425 - 442"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41753526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-18DOI: 10.1177/20530196221095569
Jesse L. Reynolds
Although a judicious use of solar radiation modification (SRM, or solar geoengineering) appears able to reduce climate change, SRM would create risks of its own. How results and conclusions are conveyed is important. This article describes nine cases in which scientific articles and their official press releases communicate results inaccurately: by inappropriately comparing SRM with a reference world of non-elevated greenhouse gas concentrations; focusing on the residual climatic anomalies that SRM would not entirely eliminate; generalizing a predictably harmful assumed implementation regime to all possible SRM; or reporting conclusions that the paper does not substantiate. Notably, each of these cases unduly amplifies SRM’s apparent risks and limitations. Collectively they may skew SRM communication and cause negative impacts on scientific assessments, news reporting, and policy discussions. The article suggests explanations for why SRM scientists and their official communicators sometimes inaccurately convey their results as well as how they and others should respond.
{"title":"Communication of solar geoengineering science: Forms, examples, and explanation of skewing","authors":"Jesse L. Reynolds","doi":"10.1177/20530196221095569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221095569","url":null,"abstract":"Although a judicious use of solar radiation modification (SRM, or solar geoengineering) appears able to reduce climate change, SRM would create risks of its own. How results and conclusions are conveyed is important. This article describes nine cases in which scientific articles and their official press releases communicate results inaccurately: by inappropriately comparing SRM with a reference world of non-elevated greenhouse gas concentrations; focusing on the residual climatic anomalies that SRM would not entirely eliminate; generalizing a predictably harmful assumed implementation regime to all possible SRM; or reporting conclusions that the paper does not substantiate. Notably, each of these cases unduly amplifies SRM’s apparent risks and limitations. Collectively they may skew SRM communication and cause negative impacts on scientific assessments, news reporting, and policy discussions. The article suggests explanations for why SRM scientists and their official communicators sometimes inaccurately convey their results as well as how they and others should respond.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"10 1","pages":"573 - 591"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41510485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-13DOI: 10.1177/20530196221093477
E. Zemanek
Nature documentaries often present contradictory images of, on the one hand, a fragile nature that is threatened or already destroyed by humans and, on the other hand, a resilient nature that indifferently survives the human species. Similar ambivalences characterize the public discourse on “nature” in the Anthropocene. From the perspective of cultural and media studies, this essay attempts to disentangle the incoherencies in popular imaginaries of nature by exploring the challenges of narrating and picturing the two opposite qualities of vulnerability and resilience. Tracing the conceptual evolution of documentaries presented by David Attenborough between 1979 and 2020 and their gradual increase in environmentalist rhetoric, I show how different visual motifs undergo a recoding (resilient/fragile) and relate it to paradigm shifts in ecology, earth system science, and environmental protection principles. With an interest in the historical development of multimedia discourses on resilience and vulnerability, I focus on the relationship between visual and verbal representation as well as on the interplay of semantic and aesthetic aspects, while reflecting on whether the observed ambivalences are intentional and how they might influence the perception of the documentaries. This essay is a contribution to Transmedia Ecocriticism and thus situates itself in the Environmental Humanities.
{"title":"Between fragility and resilience: Ambivalent images of nature in popular documentaries with David Attenborough","authors":"E. Zemanek","doi":"10.1177/20530196221093477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221093477","url":null,"abstract":"Nature documentaries often present contradictory images of, on the one hand, a fragile nature that is threatened or already destroyed by humans and, on the other hand, a resilient nature that indifferently survives the human species. Similar ambivalences characterize the public discourse on “nature” in the Anthropocene. From the perspective of cultural and media studies, this essay attempts to disentangle the incoherencies in popular imaginaries of nature by exploring the challenges of narrating and picturing the two opposite qualities of vulnerability and resilience. Tracing the conceptual evolution of documentaries presented by David Attenborough between 1979 and 2020 and their gradual increase in environmentalist rhetoric, I show how different visual motifs undergo a recoding (resilient/fragile) and relate it to paradigm shifts in ecology, earth system science, and environmental protection principles. With an interest in the historical development of multimedia discourses on resilience and vulnerability, I focus on the relationship between visual and verbal representation as well as on the interplay of semantic and aesthetic aspects, while reflecting on whether the observed ambivalences are intentional and how they might influence the perception of the documentaries. This essay is a contribution to Transmedia Ecocriticism and thus situates itself in the Environmental Humanities.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"9 1","pages":"139 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42213561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-11DOI: 10.1177/20530196221087790
Donald V Kingsbury
The global economy’s neoliberal era began in 1973 with a military coup in Chile lead by General Augusto Pinochet. Though the country returned to civilian rule in 1990, the dictatorship continues to determine much of Chile’s political economy, especially in extractive sectors, a legacy that also carries consequences for decarbonization in the 21st century. As the latest stage of globalization, contemporary energy transitions offer an opportunity to examine the kind of global and local extractivisms established in the context of the dictatorship in Chile – an order that also accelerated the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene. Just as the Anthropocene is less a geological age defined by human activity as much as the compounding consequences of a relatively small segment of humanity, so too is neoliberalism traceable to specific people, histories, and institutions. This article traces these elements as Chile rewrites Pinochet’s constitution to highlight hopes and challenges of energy transitions as political, social, and ecological processes.
{"title":"Energy transitions in the shadow of a dictator: Decarbonizing neoliberalism and lithium extraction in Chile","authors":"Donald V Kingsbury","doi":"10.1177/20530196221087790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221087790","url":null,"abstract":"The global economy’s neoliberal era began in 1973 with a military coup in Chile lead by General Augusto Pinochet. Though the country returned to civilian rule in 1990, the dictatorship continues to determine much of Chile’s political economy, especially in extractive sectors, a legacy that also carries consequences for decarbonization in the 21st century. As the latest stage of globalization, contemporary energy transitions offer an opportunity to examine the kind of global and local extractivisms established in the context of the dictatorship in Chile – an order that also accelerated the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene. Just as the Anthropocene is less a geological age defined by human activity as much as the compounding consequences of a relatively small segment of humanity, so too is neoliberalism traceable to specific people, histories, and institutions. This article traces these elements as Chile rewrites Pinochet’s constitution to highlight hopes and challenges of energy transitions as political, social, and ecological processes.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"10 1","pages":"556 - 572"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46394742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-02DOI: 10.1177/20530196221078929
Seth Epstein
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.
{"title":"Rights of nature, human species identity, and political thought in the anthropocene","authors":"Seth Epstein","doi":"10.1177/20530196221078929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221078929","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"10 1","pages":"415 - 433"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48908948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-26DOI: 10.1177/20530196221095700
Martin Möller, Rainer Grießhammer
In the Anthropocene, humankind has become a quasi-geological force. Both the rapid development as well as the depth of intervention of new technologies result in far-reaching and irreversible anthropogenic changes in the Earth’s natural system. However, early and development-accompanying evaluation of technologies are not yet common sense. Against this background, this review article aims to compile the current state of knowledge with regard to the early sustainability assessment of technologies and to classify this status quo with respect to the key challenges of the Anthropocene. To that end, the paper initially outlines major existing definitions and framings of the term of sustainability. Key milestones, concepts and instruments with regard to the development of sustainability assessment and technology assessment (TA) methodologies are also presented. Based on this overview, the energy sector is used as an example to discuss how mirroring ongoing transformation processes can contribute to the further development of the TA framework in order to ensure an agile, goal-oriented, and future-proof assessment system.
{"title":"Prospective technology assessment in the Anthropocene: A transition toward a culture of sustainability","authors":"Martin Möller, Rainer Grießhammer","doi":"10.1177/20530196221095700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221095700","url":null,"abstract":"In the Anthropocene, humankind has become a quasi-geological force. Both the rapid development as well as the depth of intervention of new technologies result in far-reaching and irreversible anthropogenic changes in the Earth’s natural system. However, early and development-accompanying evaluation of technologies are not yet common sense. Against this background, this review article aims to compile the current state of knowledge with regard to the early sustainability assessment of technologies and to classify this status quo with respect to the key challenges of the Anthropocene. To that end, the paper initially outlines major existing definitions and framings of the term of sustainability. Key milestones, concepts and instruments with regard to the development of sustainability assessment and technology assessment (TA) methodologies are also presented. Based on this overview, the energy sector is used as an example to discuss how mirroring ongoing transformation processes can contribute to the further development of the TA framework in order to ensure an agile, goal-oriented, and future-proof assessment system.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"9 1","pages":"257 - 275"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47978909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-25DOI: 10.1177/20530196221087789
Boris Shoshitaishvili
The theory of the superorganism—that there exist composite forms of life organized at scales above the multicellular organism—has been part of scientific discourse and speculation since the late 1800s. Over the last century theories of the superorganism have grown in scope from designating the local insect colony as emergently alive to positing a global entity enveloping the entire planetary surface. The planetary version of superorganism theory has developed in two different forms, the ecological form of Gaia theory and the sociological form of globalized humankind, with the possible implication that the surface of our single planet is now occupied by two distinct planetary superorganisms. In this article, I summarize the parallel histories of this speculative biological-planetary concept, propose a theory about the relationship of the two coexisting planetary superorganisms, and reflect on how this theory recasts the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. I conclude with a note about simplistic or totalizing superorganism assertions.
{"title":"Is our planet doubly alive? Gaia, globalization, and the Anthropocene’s planetary superorganisms","authors":"Boris Shoshitaishvili","doi":"10.1177/20530196221087789","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196221087789","url":null,"abstract":"The theory of the superorganism—that there exist composite forms of life organized at scales above the multicellular organism—has been part of scientific discourse and speculation since the late 1800s. Over the last century theories of the superorganism have grown in scope from designating the local insect colony as emergently alive to positing a global entity enveloping the entire planetary surface. The planetary version of superorganism theory has developed in two different forms, the ecological form of Gaia theory and the sociological form of globalized humankind, with the possible implication that the surface of our single planet is now occupied by two distinct planetary superorganisms. In this article, I summarize the parallel histories of this speculative biological-planetary concept, propose a theory about the relationship of the two coexisting planetary superorganisms, and reflect on how this theory recasts the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene. I conclude with a note about simplistic or totalizing superorganism assertions.","PeriodicalId":74943,"journal":{"name":"The anthropocene review","volume":"10 1","pages":"434 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49502458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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