Nature in the Anthropocene: Political Science Meets Ecology Debates

Social scientists are aware that ‘nature’ itself has to be understood in its ‘social quality’. However, in the context of the Anthropocene, understanding of ‘nature’ needs to be informed by three interrelated developments within biology and its sub-discipline of (conservation) ecology: 1. Recognition that all ecosystems are naturally dynamic, although rates of change are much faster in the Anthropocene. 2. The spread of novel ecosystems: Although difficult to quantify in simple metrics, analysis suggests that up to 83% of Earth’s land surface is to some degree now ‘novel’. The development of ecosystems that differ in composition and/or function from present and past systems is a consequence of changing species distributions and environmental alteration from climate and land use changes. There are also calls to additionally create such systems in anticipation of further climate change. Novel ecosystems need to be seen as legitimate targets for ecological thought, not least because they challenge cultural norms of conservation and their related management/interventionist strategies, but also challenge our understanding of ‘the natural’. Societal relations with novel ecosystems is further complicatedly by their relatively stable, high cultural value in certain places and capacity to deliver ecosystem services, especially given climate change. 3. The rise of ‘new conservationism’ that promotes economic development, poverty alleviation, and corporate partnerships as substitutes for endangered species listings, protected areas, and other mainstream conservation tools. Closely linked to this is the Anthropocene ‘ecomodernist manifesto’ arguing that humans embrace, not minimize, their enormous influence on the planet. These three developments help: build an understanding of society: nature relations on a dynamic, non-binary view of nature; inform a more nuanced set of questions about the future of environmental policy, including conservationism in the Anthropocene; and open up debates about the ideological significance of the turn to ‘new conservationism’ for the future of environmentalism.