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61,005 resultsShowing papers similar to Navigating Crises of Scale in the Anthropocene
ClearFrom the Ecological Crisis of the Anthropocene to the Ecological Transition
This philosophical and scientific paper frames the current environmental crisis as an Anthropocene crisis involving not just climate change but the destabilization of the entire Earth system, including plastic pollution and biodiversity loss. The author argues that ecological transition requires systemic change in human-nature relationships.
A Framework for Deep Resilience in the Anthropocene
This paper presents a framework for building resilience at the individual, community, and planetary levels, developed through a summit of over 40 researchers, psychologists, and community leaders. The authors argue that addressing the current environmental crisis requires integrating inner well-being with broader ecological and social resilience. The framework is intended to guide organizations and governments in making decisions that account for the interconnected nature of human and environmental health.
Meaning in Anthropocene Life
This is a conference proceedings summary featuring presentations on finding meaning in life during the Anthropocene, including perspectives from psychology, theology, and philosophy addressing climate change, environmental guilt, and existential responses to ecological crisis; it does not present original empirical research on microplastics.
Making the Case for the Humanities’ Take on the Crucial Issue of Ecological Crisis
This paper argues for the importance of humanities perspectives in addressing the ecological crisis, contending that scientific approaches alone are insufficient and that ethical, cultural, and social analysis are essential for understanding and responding to environmental challenges.
The Task of Envisioning Security for the Anthropocene
Not directly relevant to microplastics — this is a political science and philosophy essay arguing for a broader, holistic concept of security in the Anthropocene that encompasses climate change, ecosystem degradation, and pandemics.
Corridors of Clarity: Four Principles to Overcome Uncertainty Paralysis in the Anthropocene
This conceptual paper proposed four principles for overcoming 'uncertainty paralysis' in environmental decision-making during the Anthropocene, arguing that scientists and policymakers can act effectively on global environmental change by clarifying the nature of uncertainty, separating knowable from unknowable risks, and using adaptive management frameworks.
Societal Relations to Nature in Times of Crisis—Social Ecology’s Contributions to Interdisciplinary Sustainability Studies
This review article examined how social ecology — an interdisciplinary field — approaches the crisis of societal relationships with nature, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. It provides theoretical frameworks relevant to understanding why plastic pollution persists despite growing awareness of its harms.
The human dimension: how social and behavioural research methods can help address microplastics in the environment
This paper outlines how social and behavioral science research methods — including surveys, interviews, and behavioral experiments — can be applied to understand human dimensions of the microplastic pollution problem. Addressing plastic pollution requires not just environmental science but also understanding why people produce, use, and dispose of plastics as they do.
Waste Journeys
This multidisciplinary study examined plastic waste as a material of the Anthropocene by tracing the journeys of plastic objects across cultural, natural, marine, and terrestrial landscapes, exploring how plastic's resilience makes it a defining and problematic artifact of modern civilization.
Superficial or Substantial: Why Care about Microplastics in the Anthropocene?
This viewpoint paper argues that microplastics represent a genuinely significant environmental threat rather than a superficial concern, examining the scientific evidence and social dimensions of the issue. The authors make the case for treating microplastic pollution as a priority environmental challenge in the Anthropocene.
Introduction to “One Word: Plastics Practicing Anthropology In Solid Waste Management: Usaid Clean Cities, Blue Ocean
This introductory essay discusses how anthropologists can contribute to improving solid waste management systems, including those dealing with plastic waste. The author argues that anthropological methods and perspectives are valuable for understanding the social and infrastructural dimensions of plastic waste management. This interdisciplinary approach is important because plastic pollution is as much a social problem as a technical one.
Introduction: Avowing Fragility
Despite its title referencing fragility, this paper is a work of philosophy and social theory examining how contemporary academia approaches questions of environmental uncertainty and modernity — not microplastic pollution. It discusses concepts from Husserl, Wittgenstein, and sociological theorists and is entirely unrelated to microplastics or human health.
Health psychology and climate change: time to address humanity’s most existential crisis
This paper argues that health psychologists need to actively address climate change because it is fundamentally a health crisis driven by human behavior. While not directly about microplastics, climate change and plastic pollution are closely linked environmental crises, as rising temperatures accelerate plastic breakdown into microplastics in the environment. The authors call for behavioral science expertise to help reduce consumption patterns that drive both greenhouse gas emissions and plastic waste.
Technology cannot fix this: To stay within planetary boundaries, plastic growth must be tackled
Researchers argue in response to Bachmann et al. that technological solutions alone cannot address plastics pollution within planetary boundaries, contending that the full lifecycle of plastics — from resource extraction to earth system process impacts — must be considered and that plastic growth itself must be curtailed.
A multidisciplinary perspective on the role of plastic pollution in the triple planetary crisis.
This perspective paper argues that plastics are a central driver of all three dimensions of the planetary crisis — pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss — and must be addressed with the same urgency as carbon emissions. The authors call for a multidisciplinary approach that recognizes plastics as a systemic environmental threat rather than a siloed waste management issue.
Plastic Humanities: Revaluing Humanistic Inquiry in the Plastic Age
This humanities essay argued for the value of humanistic inquiry in addressing the environmental and cultural consequences of the 'Plastic Age,' proposing the concept of 'plastic humanities' as an interdisciplinary framework. The work makes the case that understanding plastics' social and cultural dimensions is essential alongside scientific approaches.
Embrace complexity to understand microplastic pollution
This commentary argued that advancing microplastic science requires embracing the complexity of these pollutants rather than relying on narrow experimental models and inconsistent methods. The authors called for standardized methodologies and research designs that account for environmental context and global change interactions.
Methods of Solving Complex Problems in Science
This methodology paper discusses approaches to solving complex problems in science and technology, using tourism architecture as a case study. The general research frameworks discussed are applicable to the multidisciplinary challenges of understanding and managing microplastic pollution.
Freshwater systems in the Anthropocene: why we need to evaluate microplastics in the context of multiple stressors
Real-world organisms are exposed to microplastics alongside many other environmental stressors — temperature change, chemical pollutants, habitat degradation — yet most lab studies test microplastics in isolation. This review argues that ecotoxicology needs to adopt a multi-stressor approach to truly understand how microplastics affect freshwater life at every level, from individual cells to whole ecosystems. Without this broader context, risk assessments will consistently underestimate the actual harm microplastics cause in nature.
Anthropocene
This review examines how anthropologists have engaged with the concept of the 'Anthropocene', identifying four main disciplinary approaches to the phenomena of human-driven planetary change including climate change and mass extinction. Researchers found that the term functions both as a scientific descriptor of Earth system disruption and as a politically and morally loaded concept within and beyond academia.
Por uma arqueologia do antropoceno: tempo, identidade e novos artefactos numa nova era
This Portuguese-language archaeology paper discusses the emergence of 'Anthropocene Archaeology' — the study of human artifacts and materials from the current geological era of human dominance. Plastics, including microplastics, are among the defining material markers of the Anthropocene that will be part of this archaeological record.
The decaying stuff of the Anthropocene: exploring contemporary trashscapes through ruination
This paper is not primarily a scientific study of microplastic pollution. It is a humanities/social theory article that uses the concept of 'ruination' to philosophically examine how waste and trash are transforming landscapes in the Anthropocene era, arguing that collective wastage is turning natural environments into 'trashscapes.'
Paradigm shifts for a planetary emergency: Towards an anthropocenography for urban coastal research at False Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
This essay draws on Anthropocene scholarship to propose four interdisciplinary approaches for integrating social and natural sciences in urban coastal research, using False Bay in Cape Town as a case study for transdisciplinary environmental science.
Solutions to Plastic Pollution: A Conceptual Framework to Tackle a Wicked Problem
This review proposed a conceptual framework for organizing the diverse technological, governance, and societal solutions to global plastic pollution, mapping the value-laden issues that drive different actors' preferences for particular approaches.