The Commons Against the Anthropocene
How the Anthropocene legitimizes the expansion of private property relations
In 2000, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer proposed the term Anthropocene as a more accurate name for our current geological epoch. With it, they argued that the Earth’s geological and atmospheric conditions had begun to bear the mark of human civilization to the point that a new name was needed to describe our current moment in Earth history, one that identified more accurately our current geological period’s main protagonists: human beings.
Generally, supporters of the term argue that humanity has developed into a geological force capable of affecting not only certain environments and ecosystems but planetary existence as a whole. Because of this, the term has raised important questions about climate change, fueling debates about humans’ relation to planetary life across a wide range of disciplines.
An important but often overlooked consequence of Anthropocenic narratives is how they frame our relations to property, land, and resources. As I will argue, Anthropocenic narratives mobilize a series of humanist, technocratic, capitalist, and geopolitically skewed tropes that support the expansion of private property relations to all of the world’s resources and productive capacities (the justification being that this is what it will take to save humanity from extinction). These measures are more harmful than helpful to human and nonhuman life and must be countered with a resurgence of the commons.
What the “Anthropocene” does
Let’s start with the visions of human-nature relations that the Anthropocene endorses. As the climate crisis intensifies, natural forces are making it more and more difficult to access and manage the world’s resources in ways that are consistent with dominant (i.e. Western, capitalist) ideas of human flourishing. Because of this, Anthropocenic narratives tell us that the conditions for human life are being jeopardized by human-driven geological, ecological, and atmospheric changes — that environmental forces are becoming increasingly hostile to human projects.
These narratives support problematic humanist visions of Man vs. Nature in which human survival depends on our capacity to subordinate nature for human ends. Because of this, Anthropocenic narratives often end up promoting climate solutions that rely on precisely the types of interventions and human-nature relations that produced the climate crisis in the first place. Add to this apocalyptic narratives about scarcity and population growth, and you end up with a particularly bleak vision of what our future and relations to nature will look like some years from now (unless we boost our efforts to master nature through capital- and technology-intensive measures).
The sense of urgency that accompanies Anthropocenic accounts of climate change leads us to believe that there is — quite literally — no time to waste thinking about “unrealistically” different or innovative tactics and alternatives. Instead, the Anthropocene encourages us to put our faith in the “tried and true” humanist, technocratic, capitalist, and geopolitically skewed tactics of the global North. (The idea is that it is ultimately these countries that have the capital, scientific, and technological resources to effectively steer anthropogenic climate change in directions more favorable to human life).
By favoring North-led climate efforts, Anthropocenic narratives promote the expansion of private property relations to the entirety of the world’s resources and productive capacities. More specifically, the Anthropocene promotes an enclosure of the global commons and an alienating, top-down, technocratic management of the world’s spaces and resources (although not on the civilizational or modernist grounds we have seen in previous centuries but on moral and pragmatic ones, as necessary steps for the preservation of the human species). But things don’t end there. This type of rhetoric also helps legitimize North-led efforts to secure the expansion of private property relations through various state, legal, police, economic, and military apparatuses (think, for instance, of current strands of green nationalism and climate colonialism).
Therefore, in addition to determining our historical trajectory along humanist and apocalyptic lines, Anthropocenic narratives also encourage top-down interventions that further prevent the establishment of commons-like relations to global spaces and resources. In fact, Anthropocenic narratives seem willing to accept the full range of social, political, and economic implications that North-led efforts to save “humanity” might have for at-risk populations around the world (e.g. local and Indigenous communities in Chile’s Atacama desert fighting against the expansion of lithium extraction projects responding to the booming electric car industry).
The concept of the Anthropocene is thus incompatible with ideas of the commons and of human and nonhuman flourishing.
Anthropocenic narratives homogenize the experiences of communities differently affected by climate change. They presuppose a humanity that is equally at risk to climate-based disruptions when, in reality, global North countries have the capital, technology, and geopolitical power to effectively quarantine themselves from the worst effects of climate change. For instance, developed countries do not have to worry about their entire nation ending up underwater as ocean levels rise, or about most of the food their farms produce being shipped overseas.
As such, Anthropocenic narratives frame the current environmental crisis in ways that undermine or overlook the specific needs and interests of at-risk populations. Questions regarding access and management of the world’s resources are filtered through a lens that prioritizes the future wellbeing of an abstract vision of humanity instead of the specific and immediate needs of existing, unequally affected communities — rendering these communities more-or-less sacrificial for the greater good of “humanity.”
These visions of an undifferentiated at-risk human species foreclose more important questions about the possibilities and benefits of collective ownership and management of land and resources. Instead, Anthropocenic narratives portray the world’s resources as best managed by technocratic representatives of humanity capable of organizing the extraction, production, mobilization, consumption, and recycling of resources according to top-down utilitarian and functionality principles.
Ultimately, these rationalizations ignore the specific circumstances of people in immediate need of access to vital resources to ensure the prosperity of an abstract future humanity. Because of this, Anthropocenic projects deny at-risk populations proper ownership and participation in the world’s commons while reducing their specific needs to a set of common denominators and one-size-fits-all solutions that are unable to address the specific challenges faced by these communities.
Remembering the “commons”
Generally, the commons refers to the idea of collectively owning and managing the resources and spaces that make our lives possible. As such, the commons propose a different relation to property, one that rejects the alienating logics of private (and some forms of public) property, encouraging more communal forms of ownership and responsibility. By thinking about property through the lens of the commons, we open ourselves to new ways of addressing people’s evolving needs and circumstances — in turn, reimagining what structural and relational conditions more favorable to human and nonhuman flourishing would look like.
The case of the Anthropocene is worth analyzing from the perspective of the commons.
Escaping the alienating private property and global governance logics that the Anthropocene mobilizes requires, above all, a resurgence of ideas about the commons. But we cannot do this without first recognizing and taking responsibility for the unequal and evolving needs and circumstances faced by at-risk populations around the world.
If we really want to create structural, relational, and environmental conditions more conducive to human and nonhuman flourishing, we need to challenge the Anthropocenic expansion of private property relations. To effectively do this, we must work toward anticapitalist, environmental justice, and decolonial ends that can secure conditions under which the evolving needs of specific and immediately affected communities can be properly addressed from the bottom up.
The point is to try to free the world’s land and resources from the alienating determinations of North-appointed representatives of humanity. Doing this will allow us to unlock the capacities of these spaces and resources to meet the specific and evolving needs of currently existing life forms (instead of trying to secure the imagined needs of an abstract, undifferentiated, future humanity).
A good first step in this direction is rethinking climate change and our relations to property along the lines of the commons. Ideas of the commons allow us to think beyond the homogenizing, private property, and global governance logics of the Anthropocene. They give us the means to challenge alienating top-down efforts to organize and police our lives and relations to land, resources, and the nonhuman world. As such, a resurgence of the commons in the context of the Anthropocene would allow us to better think conditions under which human and nonhuman life can collectively create open-ended spaces capable of meeting the immediate and evolving needs of differently affected communities and ecosystems.
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