A different scientific approach designed for the complex system challenges ahead of us and bringing the human dimension centre stage.

There is a huge body of excellent science exploring the pressing environmental problems facing the world today. This science of the ‘Anthropocene’ alerts us to these complex challenges and deepens our understanding of them. But what is now also urgently needed is learning about what to do in response. This science for the Anthropocene demands a different scientific approach designed for these complex system challenges, combining new ways of doing science, new tools and methodologies, and learning-by-doing.

We don’t know what the world will be like in 2050: a stable and predictable climate is only one of the factors that we can no longer take for granted. For better and/or worse, our lives are being transformed by technological advances, by new diseases in an increasingly connected world, and by major ongoing shifts in the global balance of power. Old ways of thinking – including established and authoritative ways of doing science – aren’t enough in this fast-changing, uncertain world. We can’t just extrapolate from the way things have been done so far, nor take for granted what may have been tacitly presumed. We need a different, pragmatic approach that can constantly adapt to changing circumstances, and illuminate them as they change.

Science for the Anthropocene brings the human dimension centre stage. We involve communities and stakeholders in our research and teaching, because if we don’t, we can’t grapple with today’s big scientific challenges. We combine the expertise of natural and social scientists to identify the specific pressing issues facing us and come up with promising interventions in response. These experimental interventions will be implemented, measured and evaluated to deepen our understanding of both the problem and responses to it. We’ll then develop and implement new interventions as an ongoing process. In this way, new conceptual insights and scientific findings will also arise, which can stimulate further research – but also, crucially, real change in environmental impacts.

Our starting point is that there is no simple or definitive solution to these complex problems, which are an ever-moving target as the world keeps changing. We can only move forward by continual, practical experimentation and by constantly updating our understanding of these problems through strategic, practical responses to them. This is a learning process with no endpoint or specifiable goal, but we can move in the right direction and learn as we go.

Some of the key challenges we are working on include:

• Pollution, air quality and the environment
• Climate change and biodiversity
• Agri-food systems
• Natural resource management
• (‘Smart’, ‘green’, equitable) Urbanization and infrastructure
• Energy systems and renewable energy
• Environmental justice
• Earth sciences, hazards and the ‘geo-social'