Archaeological, historical and ancestral perspectives from the Global South to navigate the Anthropocene crisis
An Assessment Report for the Convention of Parties (COP-30)
We are now living in the Anthropocene, an epoch in which human activities have undeniably left an indelible mark on the Earth system. Beyond the ongoing discourse surrounding this epoch's temporal boundaries, it becomes increasingly evident that the factors contributing to the Anthropocene are deeply rooted in history and often characterized by stark inequalities. Archaeology, history, and palaeoecology have provided compelling evidence that human-environment interactions have engendered profound and enduring impacts on contemporary ecosystems, potentially resulting in feedback loops within different planetary systems..
One particular example of this are the ways in which the advent of European colonialism and the reconfiguration of the Global South's geopolitical landscape disrupted millennia of Indigenous landscape management practices, sowing the seeds of contemporary global socioeconomic disparities and 21st-century challenges.
To address these issues, we have assembled a panel of specialists who seek to critically examine human history in the Global South and its rich scholarly traditions with a focus on the following topics.
- A conceptual framework for a Global South Anthropocene, its historical roots and contemporary climate and biodiversity challenges.
- Paleoecological reconstructions and land use, and their relevance for understanding past human settlement legacies for contemporary ecosystem dynamics.
- Biodiversity management and entanglements across the Holocene, and their relevance to the role of historical processes in reshuffling communities and nutrient flows across different parts of the globe.
- Global, national and traditional heritage protection, and its relevance to policies and practices of cultural-natural heritage integration.
This endeavour is a collaborative, multi-author initiative, and we welcome participation from interested scholars and experts. The panel's findings will be presented to the Convention of Parties (COP-30) community in 2025 in Belém, Brazil, underscoring the urgency of these discussions in addressing the Anthropocene crisis.
We also publish as a working group under the name of ECHOES: Exploring Climate and Human Observations from the Global South.
