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Welcome to the Anthropocene!; the UNESCO Courier; Vol.:2; 2018

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Welcome to the Anthropocene!; the UNESCO Courier; Vol.:2; 2018 THE UNESCO CourierApril-June 2018 Welcome to the Anthropocene! 2220-2285 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Read the Subscribe to UNESCO the digital version Courier It’s 100% and spread FREE! the word! https://en.unesco.org/courier/subscribe Published in Be a major actor! 9 languages Arabic, Chinese, English, Share the UNESCO Courier Esperanto, French, Portuguese, with your network Russian, Sardinian and Spanish. by promoting it, in line with Become an active publishing partner by proposing new language editions of the Organization’s Open Access the UNESCO Courier. publishing policy: Contact: [email protected] https://en.unesco.org/open-access Subscribe to the print version t 1 year (4 issues): €27 t 2 years (8 issues): €54 Subscription fees cover printing and For more details, visit: http://publishing.unesco.org distribution costs. There is no profit motive. or contact Discounted rates for group subscriptions: DL Services, C/O Michot Warehouses, 10% discount for five or more subscriptions. Chaussée de Mons 77, B 1600 Sint Pieters Leeuw, Belgium Tel: (+ 32) 477 455 329 E-mail: [email protected] tO¡t1VCMJTIFETJODF Editors: *44/tF*44/ Arabic: Anissa Barrak The UNESCO Courier is published quarterly by Chinese: Sun Min and China Translation the United Nations Educational, Scientifc and and Publishing House Cultural Organization. It promotes the ideals of English: Shiraz Sidhva Periodical available in Open Access under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence UNESCO by sharing ideas on issues of French: Régis Meyran (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). international concern relevant to its mandate. Russian: Marina Yaloyan and Marina Yartseva Spanish: Beatriz Juez By using the content of this publication, the users accept The UNESCO Courier is published thanks to the to be bound by the terms of use of the UNESCO Open Translation (English): Peter Coles and Cathy Nolan generous support of the People’s Republic of China. Access Repository (https://en.unesco.org/open-access/ Director: Vincent Defourny Design: Laetitia Sauvaget terms-use-ccbysa-en). The present licence applies exclusively to the texts. For the use of images, Editorial Director: Jasmina Šopova Cover image : © Falco prior permission shall be requested. Production and Promotion Director: Ian Denison Printing: UNESCO The designations employed in this publication and Associate Editor: Katerina Markelova the presentation of the data do not imply the expression Section Editor: Chen Xiaorong Co-published Editions: Portuguese: Ana Lúcia Guimarães of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO Digital Editor: Malahat Ibrahimova concerning the legal status of any country, territory, Photo Editor: Danica Bijeljac Esperanto: Trezoro Huang Yinbao Sardinian : Diegu Corràine city or area of its authorities, or concerning Digital Production: Denis Pitzalis Information and reproduction rights: the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Media Relations: Laetitia Kaci [email protected] Articles express the opinions of the authors and do not Administrative and Editorial Assistant : 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP, France necessarily represent the opinions of UNESCO and do not Carolina Rollán Ortega © UNESCO 2018 commit the Organization. CourierTHE UNESCO Waiting for the heroes to come As you begin reading After all, humans began to exert pressure this April-June 2018 issue on the environment over 10,000 years ago of the Courier, you are – since their sedentarization and the invention of living in the Phanerozoic agriculture. For others, the Anthropocene started eon, the Cainozoic era, with the industrial revolution, in the eighteenth the Quaternary period century. Still others view the beginning and the Holocene epoch. of the Anthropocene as coinciding with These are all subdivisions the release of the frst atomic bomb in 1945. of our planet’s geological In spite of these disagreements, all but a very timescale, to which a new bar few acknowledge that in the last half-century, will probably soon be added the state of the planet has deteriorated more – the Anthropocene. rapidly and more dramatically than ever The Earth entered the Holocene before. There are gigantic amounts of plastic (from the Greek “entirely” and “recent”) on beaches and in the seas; an unprecedented more than 10,000 years ago. But human development of new substances that are activities have had such a signifcant and covering the Earth’s surface and which are generalized impact on the planetary system that, rarely recycled; soils that are overfowing with for the past few decades, scientists have been fertilizers; increasing acidity of the oceans; Marine debris football, part of wondering whether we should be speaking unprecedented levels of pollution; the erosion the PENALTY series by British artist of a new epoch. To describe this new epoch, of tropical forests; the disruption of ecosystems; Mandy Barker. the American biologist Eugene F. Stoermer initially the massive extinction of species and a drastic © Mandy Barker (mandy-barker.com) coined the term Anthropocene (from the Greek loss of biodiversity, and global warming at an “human being” and “recent”), popularized in the alarming rate – the list goes on. early 2000s by the Dutch atmospheric scientist Who is to blame for all this? “Humans!” is and Nobel laureate in chemistry, Paul Crutzen. the resounding reply of most scientists. Since then, it has stirred up endless debates in the It remains to be determined whether we scientifc community and caused a great deal of – the world’s rich and poor – should all bear angst among those who have heard about it. the same burden of responsibility. There are It is now up to the international community of some who blame, above all, the capitalist palaeontologists, geologists and stratigraphists system created by the West, and speak – in particular, the International Commission of the Capitalocene or Occidentalocene. on Stratigraphy and the International Union Are we all heading for a catastrophe? The voices of Geological Sciences (IUGS) – to determine of doom are prophesying the end of the world! whether there is indeed a new geological epoch Concepts like Chthulucene and Thanatocene or whether the Anthropocene will go down in are being put forward to warn us that there is future encyclopaedias as a philosophical construct a monster on the loose, that death is stalking aimed at alerting humans living in the twentieth us. Some more moderate experts are just and twenty-frst centuries of the threats their as concerned about the indecision, and activities posed to the planet. therefore, inaction, of our decision-makers. “It seems as though humanity is being lethargic While awaiting this verdict, the scientists continue – waiting for the end of the flm, when the to argue, plead and quarrel. How should we date heroes arrive to sort everything out, and we can the beginning of this hypothetical new epoch? all live happily ever after,” as one of the articles In other words, how long have we supposedly in this issue concludes. been responsible for a process that could prove fatal for our planet? For some, the Anthropocene Meanwhile, the debate rages on, the solutions is just another name for the epoch that we call are slow to come. The Courier takes stock the Holocene. of the situation. The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 3 Contents WIDE ANGLE 7 Anthropocene: the vital challenges of a scientifc debate Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna 11 Dipesh Chakrabarty: Humans are a geological force Interview by Shiraz Sidhva 15 The unbearable burden of the technosphere Jan Zalasiewicz 18 The little frog that lost its lustre Karla Jiménez Comrie 20 Climate change raises confict concerns Caitlin E. Werrell and Francesco Femia 23 The view from Dominica: Anthropocene or Capitalocene ? Andreas Malm 26 Francis Chateauraynaud: Stop the catastrophist discourse ! Interview by Régis Meyran 6-29 28 A lexicon for the Anthropocene 30-37 ZOOM An ordinary day in the life of Qello Ignacio Marín and Katerina Markelova 4 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 38-49 IDEAS We, the servants and tenants 39 of Earth Souleymane Bachir Diagne Creolizing the idea of humanity 42 Mireille Delmas-Marty A missive for youth 47 Abdourahman A. Waberi 54-62 CURRENT AFFAIRS 50-53 55 Athens : Books everywhere Anna Routsi 56 Filling the cultural vacuum Lucy Mushita OUR GUEST 58 Young Africans: Reinventing politics Bibi Russell: Finding magic in fngers Hamidou Anne Interview by Krista Pikkat and Jasmina Šopova 60 Listen to the voice of the lake Chen Xiaorong THE UNESCO 63-66 COURIER IS 70! Attending the school of free thought Roberto Markarian The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 | 5 Wide angle Welcome to the Anthropocene! Wide angle Wide The Vitruvian Man in copper. The crew of the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise help artist John Quigley recreate da Vinci’s iconic sketch of the human body on the Arctic sea ice, 800 km from the North Pole. Made using rolls of copper, this huge image is the size of four Olympic swimming pools. The Melting Vitruvian Man is an appeal to world leaders to take urgent action on climate change. © Nick Cobbing / Greenpeace 6 | The UNESCO Courier t April-June 2018 Wide angle Anthropocene: the vital challenges of a scientific debate Liz-Rejane Issberner and Philippe Léna The term Anthropocene was coined to take into account the impact of the accelerated accumulation of greenhouse gases on climate and biodiversity, and also the irreversible damage caused by the over-consumption of natural resources. But do we need to turn this into a new geological epoch? While the debate continues among scientists, solutions have yet to be found. We are, in efect, witnessing a collective form of Greenpeace / denial – the result of a naive faith in progress, consumerist ideology and powerful economic lobbies. © Daniel Beltrá Aerial photograph documenting deforestation in the northern The term Anthropocene appears in Other research, started in the 1950s area of Pará State, Brazil (2013).
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