Research on Innovation and Development in the Anthropocene

Increasing environmental challenges have led to the concept of the 'Anthropocene'. In a broad sense it denotes the period since the Neolithic revolution during which Homo sapiens has become a geological force on the planetary surface. More narrowly it refers to the period after the industrial revolution, especially since the 1950s, during which the effects on the environment from human activity have accelerated. In the Anthropocene the biosphere is deeply affected by human society and almost the whole physical world we encounter is man-made. The Anthropocene leads to a number of 'Grand Challenges', most of them related to sustainability and social inclusion: Climate change, demographic change, exploitation of global commons (for example oceans, fresh water resources, soil, biodiversity), food security, poverty and increasing inequality. In many contexts in which these challenges are discussed, such as in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the importance of institutional and technical change is recognized. Still the innovation and development research community have been slow to react. In this paper we argue that there is a kind of denial of the seriousness of the problems, which together with a lack of environmental ethics may explain why innovation studies in our opinion hasn't responded adequately to the serious innovation challenges raised by the Anthropocene. We argue that the much too vague and ambiguous concept of sustainable development has to be reformulated in terms of planetary boundaries based on scientific data and methods. This means that learning, competence building and development of innovation capabilities may be placed at the centre of the sustainability discourse instead of being a side-track as now.