In an invited article for the Boku Magazine, Martin Schmid introduces his lecture “The Social Ecology of the Anthropocene”, which encourages long-term, interdisciplinary thinking by looking back into the past. With the climate crisis, the rapid loss of biodiversity and other global crises, it reveals the Anthropocene as a specific, historically unique way in which human societies relate to nature. From a socio-ecological perspective, the Anthropocene is essentially the consequence of an industrial socio-metabolic regime based on fossil fuels, which began to spread in the modern era in conjunction with colonial power relations. Sustainability problems and their solutions should therefore be discussed as a question of the co-evolutionary coupling of social and natural systems over longer periods of time. In his article Martin also addresses the question of what actually makes a good lecture in terms of didactics and design of communication.

Martin was granted a Teaching Award by BOKU University earlier this years, and this article was written by Martin on invitation of the BOKU Magazin.