How can a unique agricultural area on the urban fringe of Cape Town, South Africa be protected to provide ecosystem services, fresh produce for low income city dwellers, and a local model of agro-ecological farming? The vast green fields of the Philippi Horticultural Area are an incongruous sight, in the midst of one of the most densely settled areas of the Cape Flats, an expanse of gritty, peri-urban townships [...]
Can humans enable organisms to adapt to new conditions in the Anthropocene? What are the longterm implications of this? Can marine life and habitats adapt to the increasing temperatures and acidity of the ocean? Scientists at the research centre on Hawaii’s Coconut Island are hoping to save the coral reefs off the island of Oahu from permanent degradation. Ruth Gates and her team’s mission is to create coral that can [...]
Can the knowledge developed by observing a small dryland village adapt to climate change be used in other places? In spite of the challenges they pose, drylands have been successfully settled by humans over time, and constitute a “hot spot” for the study of adaptive resilience in dry climates. Ricote, in SE Spain, provides an example of adaptive resilience in drylands. For over 1000 years, the village of Ricote (c. [...]
How much is stopping destructive behaviour essential to creating a good Anthropocene? Fossil Fuel divestment is a rapidly growing campaign aims to morally stigmatize the fossil fuel industry. Divestment is the opposite of investment, it is the removal of your investment capital from stocks, bonds or funds, and recently a global movement for fossil fuel divestment, also called disinvestment, is demanding that key people and organisations halt their investments in oil, coal and gas companies [...]
Addressing the Anthropocene's large-scale, complex challenges - beyond reductionist problem solving The Blindspot Think Tank, based in England, aims to develop solutions informed by system-change opportunities that are widely overlooked. One of their projects is ‘Planet levers’: a problem-solving method and ready-to-use policy options designed to match the complexity, scale and speed of today's problems (http://blindspot.org.uk/projects/#planetlevers). They suggest that breaking big problems into pieces has become the standard approach, even though this has never worked for [...]
Can a formal appeal to human decency and traditional national values cause a massive uprising that might impact how a country is governed? And can celebrities help the cause? The Leap Manifesto is a call to arms to create a Canada based on caring for the Earth and each other. The Manifesto outlines a set of demands ranging from implementing rights for indigenous peoples, to a complete shift to green energy, to national childcare [...]
Five-Feet.org aims to initiate gatherings large and small "at the tide" (along beaches and tidal lowlands) around the globe to connect everyday people with the coming realities of sea level rise. Five feet (or 1.5 meters) has been chosen as a benchmark, because it is a measure easily judged using human stature as a guide. The goal is to use these Five-Feet Moments as a learning tool to engage everyday [...]
Is it easier to change systems, markets and human behaviour at smaller scales, and can this add up to global change? A transition town, or more generally a transition initiative, is a grassroots community project that seeks to build resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability by creating local groups that uphold the values of the transition network (https://www.transitionnetwork.org/). Values include: Respecting resource limits Promoting inclusivity [...]