This webpage aims to gather, assemble, and encourage concrete and ameliorative projects that explicitly link “Anthropocene” concerns, such as global warming, the spread of microplastics, or world population concerns, to questions of social justice.
Regenerative Grazing to Mitigate Climate Change
(2020-2021)
Bass Connections page: https://bassconnections.duke.edu/project-teams/regenerative-grazing-mitigate-climate-change-2020-2021
Project website: https://www.regenerativegrazingnc.org/ (project website)
The 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states that previous climate change predictions were drastic underestimates and warming must be capped at 1.5 degrees to avoid extreme climate disruptions. There is potential for agriculture, representing 13.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, to cut its emissions and store additional CO2 in soil.
Cattle are the largest contributor to agriculture emissions, but recent research shows promising results for pasture-based carbon sequestration as a climate solution in the Southeastern U.S. This is further validated by Drawdown.org’s evaluation of climate solutions that includes silvopasture, regenerative agriculture, conservation agriculture and managed grazing all within the top 20 most impactful efforts.
Industrial cattle production is dominant in the United States but globally contributes only 10% of total beef produced. Targeting pastured cattle could build an agriculture emissions solution that prioritizes equity by supporting U.S. farmers (who are often excluded by USDA and Farm Bill policies) but is also globally applicable. Small-scale systems are more adaptable, while support for graziers assists rural economic development and resilience-building for the impacts of climate change.
This Duke Bass Connections team aims to facilitate a dramatic expansion in the adoption and success of regenerative grazing systems in North Carolina and the Southeast. The team will seek to create a robust ecosystem of financing, policy and technical expertise through collaboration with key community partners necessary to encourage and support this expansion. Through this network, team members will work to expand funding mechanisms for regenerative grazing (e.g., USDA Regional Conservation Partnership Program grants).
The team will also expand on existing partnerships with non-profits and government officials to promote policy innovations that place regenerative grazing infrastructure and producer access on equal footing with the dominant industrial model. Team members will continue to build partnerships with local universities, non-profits and businesses, and will initiate long-term research studies in collaboration with these partners, monitoring soil indices tied to ecological health and productivity of farms, watershed and regional natural resource concerns.
Trees, Urban Planning, and Race in Durham, NC
Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment MA Thesis webpage:
Replanting Durham's Urban Forest Understanding The Current Oak Canopy through Historical lens
Authors: Gregory Cooper, Anne Liberti, and Michael Asch
In the 1930s, a federal program known as the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps within Durham and across the United States depicting neighborhoods based on their credit risks which, generally followed racial lines. These maps have become know as "redline" maps; they colored communities with the highest loan default risk red; these were usually black neighborhoods. The potential relationship between the tree plantings of the 1930s and the racial composition depicted by the HOLC maps are explored in the assessment of current canopy cover in the City of Durham.
A new non-profit, Trees Durham, seeks to readdress this history of tree planting in Durham. (See the related The News & Observer article: "In Durham, black neighborhoods have fewer trees. Now there's a plan to change that.")
Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue
The CISSCT co-sponsored Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue held April 14-22, 2016. The Anthropocene Curriculum is a trans-disciplinary collaboration initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science around forty scholars from around he world, working in the natural, environmental, and social sciences, as well as the humanities, arts, and architecture. Together with one hundred selected internal researchers from different fields as well as actors from outside of academia this program was put into teaching practice at the 2016 seminars.