A different scientific approach designed for the complex system challenges ahead of us and bringing the human dimension centre stage.
There is a huge body of excellent science exploring the pressing environmental problems facing the world today. This science of the ‘Anthropocene’ alerts us to these complex challenges and deepens our understanding of them. But what is now also urgently needed is learning about what to do in response. This science for the Anthropocene demands a different scientific approach designed for these complex system challenges, combining new ways of doing science, new tools and methodologies, and learning-by-doing.
We don’t know what the world will be like in 2050: a stable and predictable climate is only one of the factors that we can no longer take for granted. For better and/or worse, our lives are being transformed by technological advances, by new diseases in an increasingly connected world, and by major ongoing shifts in the global balance of power. Old ways of thinking – including established and authoritative ways of doing science – aren’t enough in this fast-changing, uncertain world. We can’t just extrapolate from the way things have been done so far, nor take for granted what may have been tacitly presumed. We need a different, pragmatic approach that can constantly adapt to changing circumstances, and illuminate them as they change.
Science for the Anthropocene brings the human dimension centre stage. We involve communities and stakeholders in our research and teaching, because if we don’t, we can’t grapple with today’s big scientific challenges. We combine the expertise of natural and social scientists to identify the specific pressing issues facing us and come up with promising interventions in response. These experimental interventions will be implemented, measured and evaluated to deepen our understanding of both the problem and responses to it. We’ll then develop and implement new interventions as an ongoing process. In this way, new conceptual insights and scientific findings will also arise, which can stimulate further research – but also, crucially, real change in environmental impacts.
Our starting point is that there is no simple or definitive solution to these complex problems, which are an ever-moving target as the world keeps changing. We can only move forward by continual, practical experimentation and by constantly updating our understanding of these problems through strategic, practical responses to them. This is a learning process with no endpoint or specifiable goal, but we can move in the right direction and learn as we go.
Some of the key challenges we are working on include:
CeMoRe - Centre for Mobilities Research, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Institute for Social Futures Fellow, Political Ecology
Join social geographers in conversation. Each monthly episode features hosts talking to the authors of papers that inspired them, discussing the realities of researching and writing high quality geographical publications. Listeners are invited behind the scenes to understand more about what inspires, drives and challenges academic writers, and to learn about the realities of research that didn't make it to print. Created by Dr Nadia von Benzon. Read the story behind the podcast: Launch of Academically Speaking
Academically Speaking podcast
New knowledge and technology is clearly needed to tackle urgent planetary problems of the ‘Anthropocene’: climate change, biodiversity loss etc… But the types of knowledge and ways we do research also need to change if science is to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And that change must be both profound and fast. We need a new science FOR the Anthropocene (‘S4A’), not just the existing science OF the Anthropocene. This podcast, from Lancaster Environment Centre’s S4A initiative, explores this ongoing epochal paradigm shift in science in conversation with leading thinkers. Created by Professor David Tyfield.
Science for the Anthropocene podcast
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