Abstract This chapter explores the complex and creative dimensions of transdisciplinary research within the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES programme. It begins by discussing the nature of transdisciplinary approaches, emphasising the value of integrating diverse perspectives and collaborating across disciplinary boundaries. The second part shifts focus to a personal narrative, using a dream as a case study to delve deeper into alternative research methodologies. Indigenous perspectives view dreams as a powerful form of knowledge, offering insights into personal, collective and ancestral wisdom. My dream illustrates how research assumptions can be challenged and promotes a novel and critical reflection on the role of societal partners in research. Through telling this story, I highlight the importance of reflexivity and equity in deconstructing academic hierarchies and truly embracing co-design methods that incorporate alternative, often marginalised, perspectives as legitimate knowledge. By working with Indigenous knowledge systems, particularly with regard to the spiritual and cultural significance of dreams, this chapter advocates for the recognition of alternative methodologies in transdisciplinary research, emphasising their potential to broaden the scope of enquiry and deepening research relationships. By embracing these alternatives, the chapter calls for a more inclusive and creative approach to research that transcends conventional disciplinary silos, offering a new way of thinking about the relationship between research, society, and the production of knowledge.
Abstract I propose a method for linking archaeological or historical evidence with research on urban resilience today. The greatest harms from climate change—the most severe negative impacts on the greatest numbers of people—occur in cities, particularly cities in the Global South. How can archaeology and history contribute to this topic? I begin with the literature on contemporary urban adaptations to climate change, and highlight a list of twenty-one adaptation measures identified in the latest report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I select four of these adaptation measures—water provisioning, food production, livelihoods, and housing—plus urban relocation, and illustrate some of the pertinent archaeological and historical research. I then describe four criteria for evaluating the long-term success of cities (persistence, resilience to shocks, growth, and prosperity), and discuss how these can be used to test or evaluate the five adaptation measures in the past. The final step in my proposed method—the coproduction of knowledge with urban sustainability scientists and policy makers to integrate these findings into broader scientific and policy realms—has yet to be carried out.
Abstract Despite its widespread use, the concept of sustainability is highly ambiguous, with multiple interpretations of its meaning. Among these, the ‘needs’ of the present and future remain largely undefined, a significant omission given highly unequal levels of consumption, past and present. Food systems and land use currently have a large environmental footprint; reducing the damage inherent in the current agro-industrial model can be informed by insights from the thousands of years of agrarian history studied by historians and archaeologists. Indeed, many past and present agricultural regimes have been held up as examples of sustainability. Too often, however, such claims are based primarily on temporal longevity without consideration of past power relations. Using data from multiple trajectories of agricultural change in southern India, I argue that even longstanding historical systems have tradeoffs and may be built on foundations of social inequality, suggesting that historical scholars pay close attention to diverse social and environmental effects of past lifeways.
Abstract This chapter discusses broader implications of the activities of the European Geoscience Union Biodiversity Task Force. Created in 2022 from volunteer members of the EGU as a science-for-policy initiative, the Task Force focused its efforts on advising different members and groups within the European Parliament in the context of the legislative process on the EU Nature Restoration Law. The chapter deals with the limitations, potential and challenges in scientists’ involvement in the legislative process in environmental and historical context.
Abstract This chapter offers perspectives on bridging academe and the public sector through 25 years of professional experience—15 in federal service and ten in higher education and the nonprofit sector. It argues that professionally trained historians can be well-suited to achieve such bridging by embracing their expertise while communicating and collaborating across disciplinary boundaries. Successful bridging depends upon being actionable, intentional, and strategic in one’s career trajectory. It also depends upon self-awareness, self-empowerment, and resilience; building, maintaining, and growing a network of trusted and mutually supportive colleagues; setting priorities and goals, and being flexible and open to the fact that opportunities to bridge academe and the public sector can arise by design and by chance. When they happen by design, be prepared to fail. When they happen by chance, be comfortable being uncomfortable taking an unfamiliar path. The journey can be deeply meaningful, and the destination can be a rewarding career through which one can be an impactful envoy for historical training and the history profession.
Abstract This article examines the integration of historical analysis into policymaking via systems thinking to address the complexities of human-environmental systems. It discusses practical, epistemological, and ontological uncertainties in applying historical insights to policy. The article advocates for interdisciplinary collaboration, transparent workflows, and formal modelling to align policies with historical insights and enhance decision-making processes.
Abstract Information availability, how it is perceived, understood and utilised can play a key role in determining resilience and sustainability. We explore two aspects of this: firstly, how information flows across lived and utilised environments; and secondly, how it passes between generations. Different information behaviours, information access and information limits can shape societal responses to environmental challenges, successful or not. In the study of information literacy and information practice, a key idea is that of information landscapes —where tangible landscapes are used as an analogy or metaphor. People navigate a metaphysical information landscape each time they interact with an actual landscape, and thus the tangible analogy or metaphor can itself be viewed in those terms- for example, tangible landscapes viewed scientifically will have areas rich or poor in potential proxy environmental records, some of which may have be investigated and other not; the same landscapes may have rich cultural associations related to collective memory, personal experiences, placenames, stories and texts—or not. We explore spatial and temporal aspects of information through a case study of Norse Greenland which existed from the late tenth to mid-15th centuries ad . Insights drawn from the contrasting information flows and outcomes for Norse and Inuit society in the past have implications for our understanding of twenty-first century approaches to childhood learning, sustainable practices and the unfolding climate crisis. We could learn from past experiences, and whilst not immediate and easily quantifiable, innovative approaches to education could promote, societal resilience and sustainability.
Abstract Rice was a major commodity crop across the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from the late seventeenth century until after the Civil War. Previous mapping efforts (by this team) documented hundreds of thousands of acres of rice fields, constructed and maintained by enslaved people, across the coast of South Carolina. To fully describe the landscape impact of rice as a commodity crop, we have now documented rice fields from Florida to North Carolina and totaling nearly 350,000 acres (141,600 ha). This final, multi-state mapping effort relied on several methodologies including digital elevation models, historical plats, historical references, older aerial photographs, and expert input. Rice fields in South Carolina became a major landscape feature for conservation of natural resources across the coast. Many of these rice fields (and the surrounding uplands) have voluntarily been placed under conservation easements and are managed by both state and federal entities but also private landowners. This chapter reflects on how rice culture transformed into conservation successes over many decades and how collaboration between public and private stakeholders has allowed continued conservation of a historic landscape and management of these wetlands for the benefit of all.
Abstract In recent decades, residents and land managers in the American Southwest have been plagued by persistent wildfires causing devastation to natural resources, property, and loss of life in this region which is already stressed by long periods of recurring droughts. Many of these fires accelerate due to an abundance of undergrowth related to nearly 150 years of fire suppression policies. In recent decades, some Western scholars have drawn attention to the fact that Native Americans have accumulated traditional knowledge about these landscapes and the importance of fire cycles for maintaining ecozones, biodiversity, as well as economically important plants. This has influenced some policy makers to suggest that fire cycles play an important role in the maintenance and sustainability of ecozones across this region. Our recent work in the upper Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico suggests that humans have played a role in igniting beneficial fires throughout deep time in the Southwest. Our geoarchaeological and phytolith evidence from three drainages (Dixon, Tesuque Creek, Arroyo de los Chamisos) shows that natural fires appear to have occurred very infrequently from ca. 40,000 BP, until the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene when fire frequency accelerated and intensified with time throughout the past 19,000 years. This suggests that naturally ignited fires were infrequent before humans arrived in the Southwest, and that most fires were ignited on a regular basis after their arrival, accelerating during the middle to late Holocene Archaic Period. This study suggests that traditional knowledge of sustainable landscape management is rooted in deep time, and there is much to learn from this traditional heritage of controlling ‘firescapes’ across the American Southwest.
Abstract Politics is the art of the possible. Policy-making needs to react to external demand but more importantly to decide between possible future pathways and shape them. This comprises recognising possibilities for future developments as well as the ability to implement the choices that were made. For both, insights from historically informed modelling can play a role. Firstly, patterns in historical data can give insights in cause-effect-relationships, understanding what is important for implementing policies to achieve agreed goals. These insights are often derived from analysing time series data. However, in the historic context, the data that is at the core of such an analysis might have been gathered in a way that is structured by the socio-technical context as e.g. decisions have been made in the past about which artefacts to archive, and those were influenced by the technical possibilities at the time. In these cases agent-based modelling can not only play a role in analysing the existing data but also for investigating the ways how data collections are formed and the resulting implications for an analysis. Secondly, history shapes the space of possible futures; models for assessing future developments have to take into account the memory of the system and how it influences the probabilities for future trajectories as e.g. through path dependencies. Similarly, collective decision making is influenced by such information about past developments. For complex systems, these relations are usually not fully transparent and accessible, such that the simulation of future developments has to rely on a wide range of assumptions. This necessitates innovative approaches for continuous collaboration between modellers and stakeholders, such as e.g. the Decision Theatre method.
Abstract In recent decades the idea of “learning from the past” has become increasingly popular among historians and others. This paper critically examines this discourse and its underlying assumption—that the past offers meaningful lessons for the present. It distinguishes between non-reflective approaches, in which the past is used to justify present-day positions, and reflective approaches, which engage with the methodological and theoretical challenges of drawing such lessons. The first section analyzes examples of non-reflective uses of the past in which presentism influences research. A subsequent section explores how these issues manifest in policymaking, with attention to the pitfalls of analogy and oversimplification. The next section investigates a particular case study that has drawn much public attention—the different attempts to remove Gazans from Gaza since the early twentieth century—and reflects on how this history is relevant for the present. Ultimately, the paper argues that although the past can inform our understanding of the present, its relevance is contingent and shaped by the ethical frameworks through which observers interpret the past.
Abstract This chapter examines shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) as a framework for integrating historical and archaeological data into contemporary marine resource management. First articulated by Daniel Pauly in 1995, SBS identifies how each generation accepts as baseline the environmental conditions they first observe, leading to progressive erosion of standards for ecosystem health. The chapter explores methodological challenges in historical data integration, discusses the development of Marine Historical Ecology as a response to SBS, and presents a case study of Atlantic cod in Iceland spanning 1100 years. This millennial-scale analysis revealed that pre-exploitation cod were 25% larger, three times older, and populations were 570% more abundant than modern specimens, with stable natural mortality rates throughout the period. These findings provide quantitative measures of pristine populations, establish concrete recovery targets, and demonstrate how archaeological and historical data can correct skewed perceptions by extending temporal perspectives beyond conventional scientific monitoring, with significant implications for setting more ambitious conservation goals in marine resource management.
Abstract Is advancing human development feasible as we confront narratives of limits to growth, planetary boundaries, ecosystem collapse? In framing, and addressing, this question, the natural sciences dominate, as we can see from the influence of the IPCC on climate policy and debate. But it is clear that the natural sciences are not enough because people are the protagonists in shaping how we address the question. To fully account for the possibilities to advance human development at a time of dangerous planetary change also needs a deeper engagement with the humanities. This chapter reviews the potential held by history, and environmental history in particular, to contribute. History helps to bring human agency to the fore, and not describe humans as passive recipients of environmental change, which results in environmental determinism. History also brings to the fore contingency, including intended and unintended consequences of actions taken to respond to specific threats or shocks. In short, by engaging with history, we bring the human back in, recognizing people as informed agents.
Abstract Environmental solutionism (ES) approaches environmental policy, and any intervention in nature, solely in terms of problems and solutions. ES is arguably a deeply flawed framework. Many of the Western approaches and policies ES has spawned can be characterized as failures if we consider their enormously adverse impacts on our ecological—and thus overall survival—prospects. ES-driven policy usually leads to a self-referential endless problem-solution-problem loop (Cockerill et al. Environmental Realism: Challenging Solutions . Cham: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), drifting away from addressing the state of the environment itself. ES also entails a normatively questionable environmental ethic. All told, any search for policy-driven paths to improving our current ecological prospects undertaken within the ES framework is arguably fatally impoverished from the outset. Yet ES remains the dominant approach to the environment in twenty-first century Western and global policy discourse. ES is therefore also poised to deeply shape and distort the ways in which an increasing number of academic fields, including environmental history, engage in trying to produce environmental policy-relevant research. Environmental realism (ER) offers one potential alternative to ES. ER can potentially re-frame both environmental policy thinking itself, and which types of research questions in environmental history align most with possible policy relevance. Given ES’s inertia, reaching a place where environmental policymakers stop defaulting to ES frameworks—and could instead begin to explore ER’s relative advantages—will likely require much more investigation and critique of ES and its long hold over our environmental imagination. Environmental history can thus find immediate policy relevance via studies of the history of ES itself, using the environmental past to increase our understanding of ES’s origins, strengths, and severe weaknesses as a human environmental strategy.
Abstract Archaeology offers a deep-time perspective on how societies have responded to environmental stress, revealing adaptive strategies and resilient systems that allowed urban centers to persist for centuries. This chapter explores Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as a compelling case study in long-term urban resilience and adaptation. At its height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ce , Angkor supported a population of almost one million, sustained by an elaborate water management system that redistributed rivers through vast channels and reservoirs. This infrastructure supported rice agriculture and protected the city against seasonal flooding and drought. While Angkor eventually experienced political and economic decline, paleoenvironmental and archaeological research reveals that the city survived several severe droughts. These findings suggest that earlier phases of adaptation were successful and that it was only during later environmental stressors, combined with political and social shifts, that Angkor’s systems were no longer sustainable. This chapter highlights how Angkor’s history serves as a natural experiment in urban resilience, offering valuable insights into the dynamics of societal persistence and transformation in the face of environmental uncertainty.
Abstract Humanity faces unprecedented challenges such as pandemics, climate change, and mass migrations that demand innovative, global responses. However, history and archaeology reveal that similar crises have been navigated before, offering invaluable insights into human adaptability and resilience. Archaeological and historical records can extend our temporal perspective, providing data on past human-environment interactions that illuminate how societies have responded to climatic fluctuations and local anthropogenic changes. These time-depth analyses allow for retrospective assessments of causality and consequence, enabling modern forecasting and strategic planning. Yet there can be challenges in imprecise analogies between the past and the present, and dangers in linking natural climate fluctuations in the past with human agency. This paper highlights the dual roles of archaeology in studying historical climatic responses and anthropogenic impacts, demonstrating its relevance to contemporary issues while also discussing the caution needed to properly link archaeological data with the present.
Abstract Societal collapse has always lacked a clear definition and is now often being replaced by critics with less-confronting alternatives such as ‘resilience’, fragility’, and ‘transformation’, or shrouded in the idea of societal ‘complexity’. None of these are convincing or reasonable alternatives to collapse. Resilience is even more vague than collapse, not a positive characteristic, and simply focuses on different aspects of historical case studies (such as the continuation of culture and local communities). Fragility has never been defined by those who use it and appears to be just a poor way of saying ‘societies that are more predisposed to collapse’. Transformation is too broad to be either helpful or coherent. Complexity is ambiguous, nonsensical (hierarchies often simplify social relations), and smuggles in old, outdated notions of progress. If scholars don’t like the apocalyptic depictions of collapse, then we just need better analysis and a better definition. Defining collapse as a rapid, severe, and lasting contraction and fragmentation of power structures is precise, reasonable, and reframes collapse as a process with costs and benefits, winners and losers, rather than as an ancient apocalypse. This new definition also helps us make better sense of the impacts of collapse and why they occur.
Abstract Can the study of human responses to past climatic changes inform the fight against present-day global warming? Scholars in History of Climate and Society Studies (HCSS) often make that claim. They argue, for example, that the purported collapse of ancient empires, dynasties, city-states, and settlements can provide lessons to strengthen climate adaptation policies today. By examining 1191 publications published between 2017 and 2021, we evaluate how HCS scholars extract these lessons from the past. We reveal that although most publications in the field claim to have relevance for present-day activism and policymaking, only a tiny minority include takeaways that are actionable for policymakers. We show how these takeaways are influenced by the region, period, discipline, and method of each study. Quantitative studies are more likely to include lessons, for example; so are publications that focus on Europe or Asia in the modern or early modern periods. Ultimately, we argue that there is a disconnect between what HCSS publications claim to contribute to the fight against global warming, and what they actually do. It is a disconnect that scholars must now work to resolve.
Abstract In central Japan, past summer climate has been precisely reconstructed using tree-ring cellulose oxygen isotope ratios (δ 18 Ocel) for the last 2600 years (Nakatsuka et al., Clim Past 16:2153–2172, 2020). Given that there are positive relationships between the δ 18 Ocel and annual rice yields in the Tokugawa period (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries), the influence of climate changes can be discussed in the context of the rice productivity. The multi-decadal variations in rice productivity always caused numerous famines, probably because people could not survive long-lasting crop failures. Although famines did not result in peasant uprisings during the early part of the Tokugawa period until the 1730s, crop failures always induced numerous peasant uprisings after 1750s. The difference in societal response to climate change between the early and later parts of the Tokugawa period can be explained by various factors including the decline in the financial situation of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rapid development of a market economy from the early eighteenth century. The historical change in the relationship between famine and peasant uprisings during the Tokugawa era in Japan is an example of adaptations to climate change. Similar research can be conducted at various periods and regions by using high time-resolution climate and/or crop yield records. The results of such work can then be compared with results from other periods and areas to generate common lessons for climate adaptability in human societies.
Abstract How relevant can history be to policy? History can have enormous persuasive power and offer a long-term cultural-historical context through which policymakers and other stakeholders can make sense of emerging phenomena. Historical analysis can also serve as a quantitative or qualitative tool for benchmarking and evaluation, indicating best (or worst) practices that can emerge under a given set of circumstances. But reaching a situation where historical and archaeological evidence has a positive influence on policy decisions is a particularly difficult task. In this introductory chapter we address questions of quality of data, timescale, types of historical analysis, the kinds of effect research can have in the policy domain, the range and types of audience for historical research, as well as issues of knowledge transfer. We conclude by emphasizing that greater precision is needed in what we can offer, to whom, and with what aims; that we need to identify those policy areas in which our research results have some relevance; and that greater attention should be paid to the important role of mediators, who can provide links to policy but whose role is at present largely ignored in discussions in the historical literature. Historians and archaeologists need to interact and collaborate with policy specialists to achieve acceptance for our research findings beyond our own disciplines.
