Sustainability: Literature Analysis

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In her analysis “The sustainability out of the past”, Erika Guttmann-Bond maintains that the Green Revolution of the 1960s was vitally crucial in the promotion of food production using new technology. She adds that many countries missed out on this critical revolution, and their health and environmental impacts have been substantial. This paper aims to develop a framework for archaeologists and other scholars to make an immense and constructive contribution to the modern climate debates. Even though the paleoclimate insights form the bedrock of the scientific research of modern climate, evidence based on communities’ response to climate change is entirely missing and should be considered greatly in the research. Therefore, by creating long-term perspectives on human interrelationships with climate change, archaeology is well considered to be able to promote the understanding of the social and ecological resilience of communities and their respective capacities.

The need for sustainable agricultural practices that are supported by the changing climate is an issue that Guttmann-Bond explains as the reason to preserve the few resources that we have. The analyst is hopeful that we already have the technological advancement to sustain our planet (Gee and Giller, 2016). However, to revitalise the upcountry and pull rural populations out of extreme poverty, farmers must embrace an appropriate agricultural practice that is congruent with the dynamic global climate. Agriculture is a significant subject of our past, present and the future. Apart from just growing food and feeding the nation, they also manage the countryside by creating an amenity that many people enjoy. Farmers also conserve the landscape and the few native plants and animals that have survived climatic deprivation and the industrial revolution. However, there is an emerging vested interest in traditional land management and agricultural practices. Famers have found them to be more harmonious and appropriate ways of promoting food production.

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Climate change archeology explains the operation feedback dynamics, which have gone without notice in the science of climate change. One example of such a mechanism entails the regional difference of marine transgression and regression and its effects on the marine ecology. The regional variability is measured by the input of various sediments through the rivers which had their confluence in the North Sea. These sediments however have been modified through human activities such as deforestation and agricultural expansion and intensification from the Neolithic period onwards (Lotze et al., 2005). The next feedback mechanism resulted from the coastal management practices and methods. For instance, the management of grazing land in the middle ages and the early modern period contributed to the conservation of the extensive dune system that led to the protection of the hinterland against the sea level.

As people concentrate on the failures of the past and the climatic calamities that ensued because of inappropriate land utilisation and practices, Guttmann-Bond insists that the few successes of the past are of equal importance too. Some of the old agricultural methods are being rediscovered and improved; this is because such techniques have been found to be more resilient in the changing environmental extremes (Jackson et al., 2017). Based on fossil fuels and imported materials, engineering and agricultural methods of the past are more recommended in developing countries compared with modern techniques. The researcher warns that global warming and desertification are an increasing threat; it is, therefore, crucial to articulate marginal environments for sustainability to people in developing countries.

Hudson et al. 2012 concentrated much of their work on Anthropocene, a geological era during which human activities became a significant dominant influence on climate and environment. The human population has increased exponentially in space within a short period. This has, in turn, increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stemming from the explosion of a large number of people inhabiting the earth. Other factors that significantly influence the climate include the unequal allocation of resources and unsustainable models of economic expansion in the developed nations (Ulm, Mate and Jerbic, 2014). The study suggests a remedy for this menace: formidable collaboration with other disciplines has the capability to create new ideas and knowledge which transcend disciplinary objectives. It can open avenues for further research that may benefit future generations.

According to Hudson et al. (2012), Anthropocene proposes a radical re-evaluation of social roles and impacts on the world’s past, present and future. Archaeologists, on the other hand, are concerned with a world that was created by human activity, analysing various human actions that may have transformed our lives, and the lives of other related species such as domesticated plants and animals (Contreras, 2017). However, the idea of the Anthropocene does not manipulate the archaeological understanding of human connection with the environment and ecology.

The Anthropocene is understood as a new geological era or epoch, and a new age of global history that is dominated by the human. The notion is therefore a challenge for the understanding of the future of the earth. When focusing on the anthropogenic climate change, environmental disasters, natural calamities and species extinction, the debate on Anthropocene entails the critique of the ideology of the human speciesism and an exploitative attitude towards nature and its resources. Ironically, the growing interest in the Anthropocene – or popularly known as the era of man – which emphasises the effects of human activities on the earth, shows a great decline in the anthropocentric paradigm (Dibley, 2012). This is therefore a counter discourse to modernity and modernisation that focuses on the liberation of the human kind through a continuous progress and advancement in technology, industrialisation, urbanisation and rationalism of the human environment relations.

There is an emerging recognition that human beings are faced with a critical narrowing of opportunities and ideas to mitigate some of the critical environmental crisis. Given the human activities and their effects, as well as the narrow and insensitive research on environment, a great concerted effort is necessary to put more perspectives and insights from humanities and social sciences at the forefront. A lot of concerted research is therefore needed to help mobilise the social sciences and humanities on the significance of sustainable transitions and a meaningful agenda to acknowledge the profound implications of the advent of the Anthropocene epoch.

Many archaeologists are also unable to produce explanations from an evolutionary concept about whether plants might have transformed themselves from a wild environment towards domestication. However, one of the greatest achievements of archaeology as a discipline is its capability to discover real lives and the way of living, to unmask the actual behaviour and practices; this, in turn, has raised the voices of the people that have previously been marginalized. Hudson et al. (2012) posited that global climate and environmental degradation and our ability to take initiative mitigations have, in most cases, transformed our understanding of the connection between humans and the environment.

The study of “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene” by Palsson et al. (2013) stresses the growing reality that the human race faces a very narrow opportunity to reverse the leading indicators involved in the environmental degradation. More efforts are therefore necessary to put the perspectives and understanding of social sciences at the forefront to mitigate this stalemate. Palsson and his colleagues, therefore, attempt to mobilize the application of social sciences and humanities on the issue of sustainability transitions. They also support the need for a meaningful research objective that will acknowledge the enormous implications of the Anthropocene epoch (Baer and Singer, 2018). They stress the need for an innovative research statement that is based on a critical outlook of the dynamic human condition concerning the global environmental changes.

Robert Van de Noort, in his analysis, attempts to explain the relationship between climate change research and archaeology. Regardless of whether climate irregularities have caused many humanity challenges, the apparent absence of any archaeological evidence diminishes any relevance of archaeology in the growth and development of the human race (Pétursdóttir, 2017). The analysts attempt to consider the connection between climate change research and archaeology, noting that any evidence based on the effects of the previous climate change and the response of the general community is removed from the agenda in his analysis. Van de Noort, in his work Conceptualizing Climate Change, argues that archaeology is in a better position to promote socio-ecological interaction of a community and their adaptive capability on climate change by referring to the previous adaptions (Brook et al., 2015). He adds that there is a need to develop a thinking human attitude within an ecological point of view that does not rely on past references but simply a climatic determinism.

A sense of human agency and empowerment are highly encouraged when making reference and interpreting the past, creating structured debates and making sound informed decisions (Naudinot and Kelly, 2017). This platform will offer an idea of conceptualising climate change and archaeology that attempts to connect people and communities in the landscape they inhabit. This is also supported by a theoretical framework that climatic conditions alter the environment and the health of people directly, an aspect that is a function of the environment.

The work attempts to create a platform for archaeologists to contribute fully and constructively in the new climate change forums (Baer and Singer, 2018). Through offering long-term approaches to the human interrelationship with climate change, the archaeology is put in a better position to enhance an understanding of socio-ecological resilience of people and their adaptive nature. This can turn out to be archaeologists’ greatest contribution to climate change.

Climate is a significant factor discussed by both analysts, and there is a need to embrace the application of past agricultural practices; they have been proven to be more resilient with changing global climate. The study of archaeology also attempts to reveal life practices of the past, thus giving an idea of how the increased population has created environmental challenges and their mitigations. The New Green revolution will, therefore, be based on knowledge and not technology; thus more equitable approaches will be needed to tackle agricultural production and climate change.

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