How does the Anthropocene help rethink the modern issue of environmental degradation?

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological period in which humans are considered to be the driving force behind environmental change, with activities leading to environmental degradation. This idea that human activity poses a greater threat to the natural environment than natural processes that have existed for millions of years, emphasizes the importance of human influence.

The Anthropocene was first proposed by Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) as a new geological period based on the extent to which the climate has changed due to human interference, especially since the 20th century. In the last 5 million years, the temperature of the Earth has actually decreased, but the high temperature due to human activities is beginning to reduce this trend.

Environmental disasters are imminent, and extreme events are occurring with greater frequency and intensity (IPCC 2023). The current official geological epoch, the Holocene, spanned 11,700 years since the last ice age, and is a time of relatively stable climates compared to previous eras.

However, rapid change over the past 250 years has begun to prevent the Holocaust, prompting scientists to believe that we have entered a new era. Humans are now the main drivers of change on planet Earth, and our levels of production and consumption are beginning to exceed planetary boundaries.

As of 2023, Earth has passed six of the nine planetary boundaries, with ocean acidification not far from breaking. The safe operating space within planetary boundaries is based on stable conditions that existed during the Holocaust, so it is reasonable to suggest that we have left the Holocene and entered the new, be it the Anthropocene or something else.

The contemporary issue of environmental degradation (ED) is generally understood as the natural environment being degraded in some way. In 1997, Johnson et al. presented the following widely accepted definition: “Environmental degradation is any change or disturbance in the environment that is considered harmful or undesirable.”

ED includes the degradation of important natural resources such as water or land, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and pollution, all of which are accelerated by human development. About 40% of the world’s population is adversely affected by land degradation, one million of the world’s estimated 8 million plant and animal species are at risk of extinction (IPBES 2019) and we use the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to maintain our current lifestyle. life (UNEP 2021).

Overexploitation of the Earth’s resources and the consistent nature of human-induced destruction have led to the initiation of a new geological era. The Anthropocene helps to understand how human activities affect the environment, and places recent and recent environmental degradation in the context of Earth’s past climates.

Acknowledging the serious effects that human development has on the environment, in relation to how the environment was before, it emphasizes the urgency for mitigation plans to be implemented.

Human-induced ED comes from people trying to distance themselves from nature by “living in the modern age” with rational thought, science and technology. However, in their efforts to conquer nature, people unknowingly have become a great force in its destruction.

The Anthropocene builds on previous work describing human efforts to conquer nature, but focuses more on the 21st century context of growing concerns about climate change. Although the impact of “modern” humans on the environment is clear, the contradictions of human activities are becoming the main driver of environmental change.

Some researchers believe that this point can be as recent as the 1960s, due to the great increase in industrial and economic activity since then, while others look back at the transition period. industrialization and colonialism as factors that can influence people. It is also uncertain how historical environmental effects should be measured.

One example, Canada’s Crawford Lake, has been suggested as an indicator of anthropogenic climate change, as the bottom slopes of the lake are formed in annual cycles, providing a historical record of how conditions have changed. how the sky has changed from human activities. Symptoms include fallout from nuclear tests, plastic particles and debris from fuel fires, which show evidence of ED.

However, some researchers suggest colonialism and the establishment of slave plantations as the root of the current environmental crisis. During this period, nature was used as a separate resource to be used for production and gathering, like other groups of people.

Davis et al. (2019) believe that only a few powerful individuals were responsible for the outcome of ED from what they call the “plantationocene,” therefore the majority of individuals were not responsible. The Anthropocene suggests a collective human contribution to negative environmental impacts, but does not consider how these contributions may not represent the majority of people, as power and decision-making were directed towards rich, white men from Europe.

Furthermore, ED occurs unevenly over the Earth, so much of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, which takes a global average, does not account for spatial variation. The Anthropocene should be viewed as a short-term geological event rather than a period, as it is a period of change that involves the destruction of the environment.

ED is the most pressing issue of the 21st century, and change must be made urgently to reverse the current levels of biodiversity loss, habitat destruction and resource degradation. The Anthropocene sees humans as the driving force behind this change, and while the term helps highlight the impacts that human activities have, it fails to acknowledge the inequality of contributions to these activities among humans.

However, the Anthropocene raises the debate about human contributions to ED, acknowledging the complex nature of the current human development situation.