Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
for sustainable agriculture, land use and ecosystem management
Amir Kassam
Moderator
Global CA-CoP
URL: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture
Dear BIOPLANNERS,
Over the weekend, I worked my way through the March 2021 issue of the open access journal “Sustainability” – 589 articles, in just one month’s issue!
It took me about an hour to scroll through the metadata, to add just 5 articles to my electronic library, and it struck me that none of the articles is really about sustainability, but rather more about becoming less unsustainable – at best, mere bubbles of local sustainability in our gigantic Melchizedek of unsustainability.
Until we achieve real sustainability, we will continue to drain the most resources so that, on transition, we have that much less of that resource, (i.e. nature, in which our economy is embedded) from which to build recovery as we will learn if we continue to allow deforestation to increase – see here.
Which links back to the Dasgupta Review, now the subject of a series convened by the Oxford Martin School, starting with a panel discussion including Sir Partha himself on 29 April 2021 at 5:00pm and repeated on 20 May 2021 at 6:00pm so another excuse to delay my thoughts on the review!
Having flagged the initial articles of two ongoing series, I feel duty-bound to “see them through”, so below are links to the fourth in the UNEP-New Scientist “Rescue Plan for Nature” series, produced in association with UNEP partner agency GRID-Arendal. The final part of the series, on 10 April, will look at the links between climate change and biodiversity loss. See: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933270-800-green-spaces-arent-just-for-nature-they-boost-our-mental-health-too/........
and the third and fourth articles in the Australian Corrs Chambers Westgarth Law’s Insight series on Biodiversity banking, focused more on legal/contractual issues:
https://corrs.com.au/insights/breaking-down-biodiversity-banking-part-three
https://corrs.com.au/insights/breaking-down-biodiversity-banking-part-four.
Finally, this week I took a deep dive back into the Anthropocene debate via an Earth’s Future journal review authored by 27 leading researchers including the geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group, tasked with examining it for potential inclusion in the Geological Time Scale – even the abstract is a deep dive!
Zalasiewicz, Jan, et al (2021) The Anthropocene: Comparing Its Meaning in Geology (Chronostratigraphy) with Conceptual Approaches Arising in Other Disciplines. Earth’s Future; https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2020ef001896 (open access)
Abstract: The term Anthropocene initially emerged from the Earth System science community in the early 2000s, denoting a concept that the Holocene Epoch has terminated as a consequence of human activities. First associated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it was then more closely linked with the Great Acceleration in industrialization and globalization from the 1950s that fundamentally modified physical, chemical, and biological signals in geological archives. Since 2009, the Anthropocene has been evaluated by the Anthropocene Working Group, tasked with examining it for potential inclusion in the Geological Time Scale. Such inclusion requires a precisely defined chronostratigraphic and geochronological unit with a globally synchronous base and inception, with the mid‐twentieth century being geologically optimal. This reflects an Earth System state in which human activities have become predominant drivers of modifications to the stratigraphic record, making it clearly distinct from the Holocene. However, more recently, the term Anthropocene has also become used for different conceptual interpretations in diverse scholarly fields, including the environmental and social sciences and humanities. These are often flexibly interpreted, commonly without reference to the geological record, and diachronous in time; they often extend much further back in time than the mid‐twentieth century. These broader conceptualizations encompass wide ranges and levels of human impacts and interactions with the environment. Here, we clarify what the Anthropocene is in geological terms and compare the proposed geological (chronostratigraphic) definition with some of these broader interpretations and applications of the term “Anthropocene,” showing both their overlaps and differences. The Anthropocene concept, that modern human impacts on Earth have been sufficient to bring in a new geological epoch, is only two decades old. In that short time, its use has grown explosively, not only in the Earth sciences but also far more widely to spread through the sciences generally, to spill over into the social sciences, arts, and humanities. This has led to welcome discussions between diverse scholarly communities, though also to some very different interpretations of the Anthropocene, when interpreted through different disciplinary lenses. Notably, the geological interpretation used as basis for a potential unit of the Geological Time Scale, of a time unit starting planet‐wide and synchronously in the mid‐twentieth century with the massive changes triggered by industrialization and globalization, jars with interpretations of an Anthropocene that ranges back many millennia to encompass early human environmental impacts. We analyze and compare these diverse standpoints and their effect upon evolving disciplinary practices, and discuss approaches that could make communication clearer and enhance cross‐disciplinary exchanges. The Anthropocene concept developed in the Earth System science community is closely consistent with its proposed chronostratigraphic (geological) definition A wide range of other meanings of the Anthropocene subsequently emerged that represent inherently valid, but partly different, concepts Cross‐disciplinary discussion is encouraged to help resolve issues of meaning and communication in this important area The Anthropocene concept developed in the Earth System science community is closely consistent with its proposed chronostratigraphic (geological) definition A wide range of other meanings of the Anthropocene subsequently emerged that represent inherently valid, but partly different, concepts Cross‐disciplinary discussion is encouraged to help resolve issues of meaning and communication in this important area.
Perusing the footnotes and bibliography of the above led me to another “trying (not) to make a -cene” compilation which extends my previous collection up to 27 – see https://arcade.stanford.edu/blogs/neologismcene, to which I can add Homogocene (Hassol & Katzenberger, 1995; p68) and Myxocene, suggested by fisheries biologists Dirk Zeller and Daniel Pauly, to reflect an age
of jellyfish and slime in the oceans (Dirk Zeller and Daniel Pauly, “Good News, Bad News: Global Fisheries Discards are Declining, but So Are Total Catches,” Fish and Fisheries, no. 6 [2005]: 156–59, doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-2979.2005.00177.x ).
Have a safe and relaxing Easter weekend – dreaming up more -cenes!
Best wishes
David Duthie
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