To kick off this issue, we begin with Sean Seary's excellent
overview of recent literature about anthropology's engagement with
climate. This review originally appeared on Anthropology Report,
has been reproduced here to give us a solid foundation for moving
forward. Seary, a recent graduate from Hartwick College, currently lives
in Brunswick, Maine. His research interests focus on the convergence of
anthropology and climate change. Seary's work has also been featured on PopAnth. --R.A.
Introduction: Anthropological Interventions
Since
the 1960s, global climate and environmental change have been important
topics of contemporary scientific research. Growing concerns about
climate change have introduced a (relatively) new variable in climate
change research: the anthropogenic causes of local-global climate and
environmental change. Despite archaeologists providing some of the first
research and commentary on climate change-a point that is explored in
Daniel Sandweiss and Alice Kelley’s Archaeological
Contributions to Climate Change Research: The Archaeological Record as a
Paleoclimatic and Paleoenvironmental Archive-the field of climate
and environmental change research has been predominantly studied by
“natural scientists.” This is where Susan Crate’s Climate and Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary Climate Change in the 2011 Annual Review of Anthropology
intervenes. Crate calls for anthropological engagement with the natural
sciences (and vice versa) on global climate change discourse, with the
intention of creating new multidisciplinary ethnographies that reflect
all the contributors to global environmental change.
Crate’s
review begins by stating that the earliest anthropological research on
climate change was associated with archaeologists: most of whom studied
how climate change had an impact on cultural dynamics, societal
resilience and decline, and social structure. Anthropological and
archaeological engagement with climate change revolved around how
cultures attributed meaning and value to their interpretations of
weather and climate. Archaeology has long been working on understanding
the relationship between climate, environment, and culture.
Historically, archaeologists have worked with “natural” scientists in
the recovery of climate and environmental data pulled from
archaeological strata (Sandweiss and Kelley 2012:372). Such works
include Environment and Archaeology: An Introduction to Pleistocene Geography (Butzer 1964), Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective (Waters 1992) and Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Practice
(Dincauze 2000). The archaeological record incorporates not only
stratigraphic data, but also proxy records. These records contributed to
much larger paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental studies, including
publications in general science literature like Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Sandweiss and Kelley 2012:372; see also the 2013 article in Nature, Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change).
Conversely, the work of “natural” scientists has also appeared in
archaeological literature. Contemporarily, archaeologists have studied
the impacts that water (or lack thereof) can have on human-environment
interactions, through the study of soil and settlements drawing from
case studies in Coastal Peru, Northern Mesopotamia, the Penobscot Valley
in Maine, or Shetland Island.
Contemporary anthropological
analysis of climate change usually focuses on adaptations towards local
climate, temperature, flooding, rainfall, and drought (Crate 2011:178).
Climate change impacts the cultural framework in which people perceive,
understand, experience, and respond to the world in which they live.
Crate believes that because of anthropologists’ ability to “be there,”
anthropologists are well-suited to interpret, facilitate, translate,
communicate, advocate, and act in response to the cultural implications
of global (and local) climate change. Understanding the role that people
and culture play in understanding land use changes is crucial to
defining anthropology’s engagement with climate change. Anthropologists,
as well as scientists from allied disciplines must engage in vigorous
cross-scale, local-global approaches in order to understand the
implications of climate change (Crate 2011:176).
Crate urges that
anthropology use its experience in place-based community research and
apply it to a global scale, while focusing on ethnoclimatology,
resilience, disasters, displacement, and resource management. By
studying people living in “climate-sensitive” areas, anthropologists can
document how people observe, perceive, and respond to the local effects
of global climate change, which at times can compromise not only their
physical livelihood, but also undermine their cultural orientations and
frameworks (Crate 2011:179). Anthropology is well positioned to
understand the “second disaster,” or sociocultural displacement which
follows the first disaster (physical displacement), as a result local
environmental and climate change. Some of these “second disasters”
include shifts in local governance, resource rights, and domestic and
international politics (Crate 2011:180). These “second disasters”
present yet another challenge to anthropology’s involvement with global
climate change: that global climate change is a human rights issue.
Therefore, anthropologists should take the initiative in being active
and empowering local populations, regions, and even nation-states to
seek redress for the damage done by climate change (Crate 2011:182) It
is the responsibility of anthropologists working in the field of climate
change to link the local and lived realities of environmental change
with national and international policies.
In order to accommodate
to the rapidly changing (human) ecology, anthropology is in need of new
ethnographies that show how the “global” envelops the local, and the
subsequent imbalance (environmental injustice/racism) that it creates
during this process. Crate urgently calls for anthropologists to become
actors in the policy process, utilizing a multidisciplinary, multi-sited
collaboration between organizations, foundations, associations, as well
as political think tanks and other scientific disciplines.
Anthropology’s task at hand is to bridge what is known about climate
change to those who are not aware of its impacts, in order to facilitate
a global understanding of climate change and its reach (Crate
2011:184).
Crate’s “Climate and Culture” may not have been the first Annual Review
article regarding climate change and anthropology, but it is certainly
one of the most urgent and pressing. Crate became a member of the
American Anthropological Association’s Global Climate Change Task Force.
Their report released in January 2015 sets an ambitious agenda for
anthropology and climate change. Crate’s article also became
foundational for a thematic emphasis of the 2012 Annual Review of Anthropology, which featured seven additional articles on anthropology and climate change.
Politics of the Anthropogenic
Nathan Sayre’s Politics of the Anthropogenic
continues where Crate’s Climate and Culture left off: at the advent of a
new form of anthropology, one that utilizes an interdisciplinary
approach towards understanding the human ecology in relation to global
climate change. Sayre invokes a term which Crate did not use in her
review article, but that seems to have increasing salience to
anthropology: The Anthropocene. Notably, the idea of the Anthropocene
and its relationship to anthropology was also the subject of Bruno
Latour’s keynote lecture to the American Anthropological Association in
2014: Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene.
Sayre
describes the Anthropocene as the moment in history when humanity began
to dominate, rather than coexist with the “natural” world (Sayre
2012:58). What defines the Anthropocene as a distinct epoch or era is
when human activities rapidly shifted (most often considered the
Industrial Revolution) from merely influencing the environment in some
ways to dominating it in many ways. This is evident in population
growth, urbanization, dams, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions,
deforestation, and the overexploitation of natural resources. The
adverse effects of anthropogenic climate change can be measured on
nearly every corner of the earth. As a result of local environmental
change and global climate change, humans, climate, soil, and nonhuman
biota have begun to collapse into one another; in this scenario, it is
impossible to disentangle the “social” from the “natural” (Sayre
2012:62). Sayre states that anthropology’s role, together with other
sciences, in analyzing climate change in the Anthropocene is to
understand that there is no dichotomy between what is considered natural
and cultural. Understanding the fluctuations in the earth’s ecosystems
cannot be accounted for without dispelling the ideological separation
between the natural and the cultural. By adopting conceptual models of
“climate justice” and earth system science, anthropologists and
biophysical scientists can further dispel the archaic dichotomy of
humanity and nature.
The atmosphere, the earth, the oceans, are
genuinely global commons. However, environmental climate change and the
subsequent effects are profoundly and unevenly distributed throughout
space and time (Sayre 2012:65). Biophysically and socioeconomically, the
areas that have contributed most to global climate change are the least
likely to suffer from its consequences. Those who have contributed the
least suffer the most. Anthropologists can play an important role in
utilizing climate-based ethnography to help explain and understand the
institutions that are most responsible for anthropogenic global
warming-oil, coal, electricity, automobiles-and the misinformation,
lobbying, and public relations behind “climate denialism” in the
Anthropocene. This is the first step in seeking redress for the
atrocities of environmental injustice.
Evolution and Environmental Change in Early Human Prehistory
Understanding climate change in the Anthropocene is no easy task, but as Richard Potts argues in Evolution and Environmental Change in Early Human Prehistory,
humans have been influencing their environments and their environments
have been influencing them well before the era that is considered the
“Anthropocene.” Throughout the last several million years the earth has
experienced one of its most dramatic eras of climate change, which
consequently coincided with the origin of hominins. Homo sapiens
represent a turning point in the history of protohuman and human life,
because of their capacity to modify habitats and transform ecosystems.
Now, approximately 50% of today’s land surface is reserved for human
energy flow, and a further 83% of all the viable land on the planet has
either been occupied or altered to some extent (Potts 2012:152).
Vrba’s
turnover-pulse hypothesis (TPH) and Potts’s variability selection
hypothesis (VSH) both serve as explanations for the correlation between
environmental and evolutionary change. Vrba’s TPH focused on the
origination and extinction of lineages coinciding with environmental
change, particularly the rate of species turnovers following major dry
periods across equatorial Africa. Potts’s VSH focused on the inherited
traits that arose in times of habitat variability, and the
selection/favoring of traits that were more adaptively versatile to
unstable environments (Potts 2012:154-5). There are three ways in which
environmental change and human evolution can potentially be linked.
First, evolutionary events may be concentrated in periods of directional
environmental change. Second, evolution may be elicited during times of
rising environmental variability and resource uncertainty. Finally,
evolution may be independent of environmental trend or variability
(Potts 2012:155). The aforementioned hypotheses and subsequent links
between evolution and environmental change help shed light on the
origins and adaptations of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthals. The
anatomical, behavioral, and environmental differences between
neanderthals and modern humans suggests that their distinct fates
reflect their differing abilities to adjusting to diverse and
fluctuating habitats (Potts 2012:160). Potts does an excellent job of
stating that before the Anthropocene, early Homo sapiens and Homo
neanderthals not only impacted and manipulate their surrounding
environments, but were (genetically) impacted by their environments.
Sea Change: Island Communities and Climate Change
Heather Lazrus’s Annual Review article Sea Change: Island Communities and Climate Change
returns to climate change in the more recent Anthropocene. For island
communities, climate change is an immediate and lived reality in already
environmentally fragile areas. These island communities, despite their
seeming isolation and impoverishment, are often deeply globally
connected in ways that go beyond simplistic descriptions of “poverty”
and “isolated” (Lazrus 2012:286). Globally, islands are home to
one-tenth of the world’s population, and much of the world’s population
tends to be concentrated along coasts. Therefore both are subject to
very similar changes in climate and extreme weather events. Islands tend
to be regarded as the planet’s “barometers of change” because of their
sensitivity to climate change (Lazrus 2012:287). Not only are islands
environmentally dynamic areas, consisting of a variety of plants and
animal species, but they also have the potential to be areas of
significant social, economic, and political interest.
Madagascar: A History of Arrivals, What Happened, and Will Happen Next
Madagascar
is a fascinating example of sociopolitical and ecological convergence,
and is explored by Robert Dewar and Alison Richard in their Madagascar: A History of Arrivals, What Happened, and Will Happen Next.
Madagascar has an extremely diverse system of human ecology that is
nearly as diverse the island’s topography, environments, and climate. As
a product of its physical diversity, the human ecology of Madagascar
has a dynamic social and cultural history. In the Southwest, the Mikea
derive significant portions of their food from foraging in the dry
forest. Outside of most urban areas, hunting and collecting wild plants
is common. Along the west coast, fishing is crucial as a central focus
of the economy, but also as a supplement to farming. Farmers in
Madagascar have a wide range of varieties and species to choose from
including maize, sweet potatoes, coffee, cacao, pepper, cloves, cattle,
chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, and turkeys (Dewar and Richard 2012:505).
Throughout the island, rice and cattle are the two most culturally and
economically important domesticates, and are subsequently adapted to
growing under the local conditions of the microclimates of Madagascar.
Semi-nomadic cattle pastoralism takes place in the drier regions of
Madagascar. Whatever the environmental, climatic, social, or economic
surroundings may be, Madagascar (as well as other islands) serve as
local microcosms for climate change on the global scale. This relates to
Crate’s call for an anthropology that brings forth the global array of
connections (“natural”/ sociocultural) portraying local issues of
climate change to the global sphere.
Ethnoprimatology and the Anthropology of the Human-Primate Interface
Agustin Fuentes’s main arguments in Ethnoprimatology and the Anthropology of the Human-Primate Interface
focus on human-induced climate change and how it affects a vast amount
of species, including the other primates (Fuentes 2012:110). By getting
rid of the ideology that humans are separate from natural ecosystems and
the animals within them, then anthropology can better grasp inquiries
relating to global climate change within the Anthropocene. Fuentes then
goes on to say (similarly to Crate and Sayre) that by freeing
anthropological (and other scientific discourse) from the dichotomy of
nature and culture, people will fully understand their relationship in
the order of primates, but also their place within the environment. Our
human capacity to build vast urban areas, transportation systems, and
the deforestation of woodland all impact the local environments in which
we live, and consequently gives humans an aura of dominance over
nature. As Fuentes states, “at the global level, humans are ecosystem
engineers on the largest of scales, and these altered ecologies are
inherited not only by subsequent generations of humans but by all the
sympatric species residing within them. The ways in which humans and
other organisms coexist (and/or conflict) within these anthropogenic
ecologies shape the perceptions, interactions, histories, and futures of
the inhabitants” (Fuentes 2012:110). Essentially, Fuentes points out
that humans have dominated ecosystems on a global scale; however, this
has impacted not only human populations but also various plant and
animals species, as well as entire ecosystems. It is only within the
understanding of the symbiotic relationship between
human/plants/animals/ecosystems that people will realize their impact on
the environment on a global scale.
Lives With Others: Climate Change and Human-Animal Relations
In Lives With Others: Climate Change and Human-Animal Relations,
Rebecca Cassidy ties together Fuentes’s arguments with Crate’s by
demonstrating how climate change not only impacts people’s physical
livelihood, but also their sociocultural lives. Cassidy states that
people with animal-centered livelihoods experience climate change on
many different levels, and subsequently, climate change may see those
animals (or plants) become incapable of fulfilling their existing
functions. Societies that are most frequently geopolitically
marginalized often are left reeling from the impacts that climate change
has on their social, political, economic, and environmental lives
(Cassidy 2012:24). The impacts that climate change has on marginalized
societies often affects their ability to live symbiotically and
sustainably with other species. Human/animal “persons” are conceived to
be reciprocal and equal, living in a symbiotic world system, in which
their sustenance, reproduction, life, and death are all equally
important. The extinction of particular species of animals and plants
can cause cosmological crises, as well as disrupt the potential for
future adaptability.
Cassidy’s claim that humans, animals, plants,
and their environments are reciprocal and symbiotic ties in with
Crate’s plea for an anthropology that rids itself of the old dichotomy
of the natural and cultural. Crate’s idea for new ethnographies that
consider the human ecology of climate change begin by utilizing what
Lazrus calls Traditional Environmental Knowledge, or TEK. TEK is “a
cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive
process and handed down through generations by cultural transmission,
about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one
another and with their environment” (Lazrus 2012:290). TEK utilizes the
spiritual, cosmological, and moral practices that condition human
relationships with their surrounding physical environments. Such
ethnographies should reflect all of the potential contributors to
climate change in the Anthropocene, but they should also infuse new
urgency to anthropological approaches. As Crate states “anthropologists
need to become more globalized agents for change by being more active as
public servants and engaging more with nonanthropological approaches
regarding climate change” (Crate 2011: 183).
As made evident by
the work of Sandweiss and Kelley, anthropology has early roots in
climate change research dating back to the 1960s. Since then,
anthropology’s contribution to climate change research has been
significant, and is now sparking a new generation of engaged
anthropology in the Anthropocene.