Geography in the Anthropocene: Transforming our world for sustainable development

Abstract

The world is changing at an accelerating pace due to increased human exploitation of the earth's resources and the consequent climate change and biodiversity loss crises. As a transdisciplinary discipline studying the coupled human and nature systems and their interactions, Geography has natural advantages to promote sustainable development. With the aim of stimulating sustainable development in the Anthropocene, the International Geography and Sustainability Workshop 2021 was held virtually during 23-24 November 2021. This editorial briefly reviews the development history of Geography, summarizes the presentations of keynote speakers, outlines the overall research framework, and discusses the future directions by which the discipline of Geography can be harnessed to advance sustainable development. The key outcomes are as follows: (1) The research paradigms of Geography are shifting from basic knowledge acquisition to understanding of coupling patterns and processes, and to the simulation and prediction of complex human-earth systems; (2) Landscape sustainability science and the metacoupling concept are emerging as new comprehensive research perspectives, and the framework of “Pattern—Process—Service—Sustainability” can be used as a basis to underpin Geography's role in sustainability; (3) Geography can support sustainable development in many ways, such as in agricultural development, disaster and risk monitoring and early warning, global climate change mitigation, and in helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Future research directions include: integrated geographical research on climate change and sustainable resource utilization; integrated geographical research on social and economic sustainable development; sustainable cascades of ecosystem structure, functions, services, and human well-being; metacoupling for sustainability; safe and justice space boundaries; the classification-coordination-collaboration approach; and geographical education for sustainable development.

Keywords

Geography / Anthropocene / Sustainable development / Framework / Education

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42042026, L1924041), Research Project on the Discipline Development Strategy of Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XK2019DXC006), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China.

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