How is the Anthropocene helping to rethink the contemporary issue of Environmental Degradation?

Significant environmental changes in the biosphere, including glacial retreat, rising carbon dioxide levels and declining rainforests, distinguish the past 250 years from the Holocene’s 11,700 years of environmental stability. These changes are largely driven by human activity; thus, researchers propose a new epoch, the Anthropocene, a term introduced to acknowledge humanity’s dominant role in environmental degradation (ED) (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). ED refers to the deterioration of the environment through resource depletion of both biotic and abiotic elements, driven by human development through deforestation, urbanisation, industrialisation and overpopulation. This blog outlines how the Anthropocene is helping to rethink ED, by emphasising the instability of Earth’s current conditions compared to the Holocene, underscoring the drastic need for mitigation. Additionally, the Anthropocene recognises human activity as the primary driver of ED, thus encouraging investments in green technologies and international agreements for mitigation. This blog also critiques the Anthropocene using alternative perspectives such as the Capitalocene and Plantationocene, which challenge the Anthropocene’s universality by highlighting the role of capitalism, colonialism, and systemic exploitation in driving ED.

Viewing ED from the Anthropocene perspective highlights the drastic shift from Holocene stability, underscoring the urgency for mitigation. Additionally, the Anthropocene perspective emphasises that humanity’s role in ED is not passive, rather it highlights how modern societies, through excessive consumption, unsustainable practices and economic growth have directly contributed to environmental destruction. For instance, the burning of fossil fuels is one of the most significant drivers of climate change, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. Similarly, the extraction of minerals like coal and oil, along with mining activities, has led to extensive land degradation and environmental pollution. Human activities including deforestation and the overexploitation of natural resources further exacerbate ED. For example, deforestation in the Amazon, primarily driven by agricultural expansion, has led to a substantial loss of biodiversity and significant release of CO2 into the environment, demonstrating humanity’s role in ED prioritising short-term profit over long-term environmental stability. The Anthropocene acknowledges humanity’s role as both a driver and victim of ED, promoting collective agency and a global sense of shared responsibility, inspiring international collaboration towards mitigation, and encouraging institutions like the UN to establish international goals, such as the SDGs to address current and future risks.

Human-induced ED stems from modernisation and advancement of science and technology, which separates humans from nature, by advancing human progress at the expense of the environment, perpetuating environmental destruction. This human-centric viewpoint positions humanity as separate and superior to nature, promoting the relentless exploitation of natural resources to drive economic expansion and technological progress through reliance on fossil fuels, large-scale agriculture, deforestation and widespread land use changes. The Anthropocene contests this separation by emphasising humanity's deep connection to the environment and the profound impact human actions have on the planet. The Anthropocene lens acknowledges Earth’s environmental limits and advocates for a transition from the paradigm of unchecked growth towards sustainability (Reichel and Perey, 2018). The Anthropocene shifts thinking to acknowledge humanity’s responsibility, therefore denoting that solutions should be rooted in human action and response. For example, the Anthropocene has facilitated an ontological shift of understanding of technology’s role in the emerging world, thus prompting vast investments in green technology and nature-based solutions; however, this approach relies on technological solutions rather than addressing deeper social, political, or economic causes of ED.

While the Anthropocene highlights humanity’s role in ED, researchers argue that the Anthropocene encourages an oversimplification by attributing ED to the whole of humanity without considering the significance of capitalism. From this critique emerged the perspective of the Capitalocene which emphasises that ED is deeply linked to capitalist economic systems, underscoring how capitalism, through its relentless pursuit of profit-driven resource extraction, environmental exploitation and industrialisation has been the primary driver of ED. Additionally, the Anthropocene presents the history of environmental change primarily as a succession of technological advancements and resource use, which promotes a simplified understanding of ED, overlooking the exploitative and profit-driven nature of these technological and economic systems including capitalism, colonialism, and systemic inequalities (Davis et al, 2019). The Capitalocene perspective underscores that without addressing the structures and systems enabling ED, humanity will continue to act with indifference towards the environment, perpetuating ED, this critique is extended by Malm and Hornborg (2014) emphasising that the Anthropocene’s emphasis on the Industrial Revolution reinforces a Eurocentric view by attributing ED to all of humanity rather than to the small European elite responsible for fossil-fuel-driven industrialisation. Furthermore, Moore (2016) highlights how the Anthropocene lens masks the exploitative production dynamics that allow the Global North to appear sustainable, despite its reliance on resource extraction and ED in the Global South.

The Anthropocene is further critiqued by Davis and Todd (2017) for overlooking the colonial and enslaving foundations of environmental changes, such as the early 17th century Orbis Spike caused by a reduction in atmospheric CO2 resulting from the depopulation of the Americas, and the dispossession of Indigenous lands. Thus, the Plantationocene emerged as a critique of the Anthropocene highlighting how ED is rooted in colonialism, racial capitalism, environmental homogeneity, and modernisation, which were developed on historical plantations. These critiques argue ED is not solely a modern industrial phenomenon, but an epistemological and material project aimed at replicating European norms on colonised lands. Whyte (2018) argues that the Anthropocene erases Indigenous communities’ historical experiences of and resistance to settler communities, thereby obscuring the role of colonialism in ED,  further contesting that ED is not the product of all of humanity, but rather a product of interconnected historical processes driven by a privileged minority, who facilitated global capitalism through settler colonialism and enslavement.

To conclude ED is a critical issue that demands urgent action to mitigate resource depletion, deforestation and biodiversity loss. The Anthropocene facilitates a comprehensive understanding and recognition of human activity as a primary driver of ED. The term encourages accountability and international collaboration for mitigation, while it promotes discourse around humanity's role in ED, and the devastating consequences of human development, it overlooks the historical and global inequalities, failing to address the roles of capitalism, colonialism, and systemic exploitation.

Author: Jessica Southern - MSc Environmental Change and International Development.

References

Crutzen, P.J. and Stoermer, E.F., 2000. The “Anthropocene”. Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17-18.

Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., Van Sant, L. & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12438 

Davis, H. & Todd, Zoe. (2017). On the importance of a date, or decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME. 16(4). 761-780. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v16i4.1539

Malm, A., & Hornborg, A. (2014). The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1), 62-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019613516291

Reichel, A., & Perey, R. (2018). Moving beyond growth in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Review, 5(3), 242-249. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019618799104

Whyte, K. P. (2018). Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1-2), 224-242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621

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