Background
Human development, especially over the last 11,500 years (the Holocene), has taken place against a climatic and geological backdrop of varying stability. Throughout evolutionary time, sudden and dramatic shifts in climate and extreme biophysical events have always ensured that nature is in flux, not static balance. Evidence of contemporary climate and environmental change is clearly evident in the far North. The peoples of the region are now seeing a range of effects on landscapes, ecosystems and on their traditional way of life. The Arctic and Sub-Arctic region may, thus, yield important insights into basic human responses to rapid change, whether climate-induced or not.
How did past human communities adapt to and recover from an ever-moving and frequently harmful natural background? What lessons are there from the past to aid future adaptation to rapid change? And, most critically, how can we disentangle the environmental and cultural consequences of natural change from those of human actions?
These questions are at the core of a series of interdisciplinary meetings under the umbrella of an international effort entitled Dark Nature - Rapid Natural Change and Human Responses. This project is working to refine the record of rapid environmental changes affecting physical environments and ecosystems during the Holocene, and to examine how past societies and communities reacted in the face of harmful change. It is funded by ICSU (the International Council for Science), in cooperation with other international and national organizations, led by IUGS (the International Union of Geological Sciences¹). Other meetings are focussing on arid, lacustrine, fluvial and coastal environments where major natural changes have had profound effects on people and ecosystems in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America.
¹ Through its Geoindicators Initiative which emphasizes the importance of tracking rapid (<100 years) geological change, especially in environmental and ecosystem assessment and reporting (see www.geoindicator.org).