Climate change: a long-standing challenge, but one whose scale is now unprecedented

François-Xavier Fauvelle, elected professor at the Collège de France in 2019 to the Chair of History and Archaeology of African Worlds , offers us a critical perspective on how societies that came before us responded to climate change. While humanity has already had to adapt—sometimes successfully—to radical changes in its environment, it now faces an unprecedented shift. Nevertheless, it remains useful to draw lessons from our past experiences.

From a historical perspective, is this the first time human societies have had to adapt to climate change? How does this differ from the situation we face today?

Since the beginning of the Holocene (see below), environmental and archaeological data show that many societies have had to cope with transformations in their environment. Depending on the region of the world, these changes may include climate warming, melting ice, rising sea levels and the resulting retreat of coastlines, increased precipitation, or even animal extinctions. Not all of these phenomena are, therefore, unprecedented. However, the warming we are currently experiencing does exhibit characteristics that are unique in the history of humankind. I see three such characteristics. First, its unprecedented scale, which will continue to increase over the coming decades before stabilizing if we manage to limit our environmental footprint. Second, its indisputably anthropogenic nature: The acceleration of global warming is due to the massive emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, our global awareness of this warming and its human causes: This is the first time in history that our societies can simultaneously observe the phenomenon (thanks to scientific tools), determine its causes, and muster the will and the means to limit it and combat its effects.

What are the different approaches societies have taken throughout history to deal with disasters?

The climate and social crisis we face is giving rise to prophetic calls: “You will adapt,” we hear—an injunction that can be understood as a moral imperative or as an optimistic declaration of faith in the future. However, in both cases, this imperative appeals to what is supposedly a capacity unique to certain societies and not to others: their adaptability. I believe we must resist this Darwinian view, which assumes there are winners and losers. If a society survives, it means it has adapted in one way or another anyway. By paying attention to the experiences of past societies, we observe very different responses to environmental changes. Yet these choices show us just as many possible paths for addressing today’s challenges. Societies can, for example, “invest” in their surrounding environment—whether by managing water supply and distribution in areas undergoing desertification, such as the Saharan peripheries in the Middle Ages, or by inventing efficient energy storage methods today. It is also possible to “divest” from the environment. This is what the inhabitants of certain Saharan oases did in the past, choosing dispersed settlements over urban concentration. This is what we can do today by revitalizing urbanized land or by designating natural areas as protected sanctuaries. Another approach adopted by certain societies is to increase mobility. Ancient societies thus moved away from eroding coastlines and the expanding edges of the Sahara. The climate refugees of today and tomorrow will do nothing different.

Is our identity the sum of all our adaptations to our environment and the changes we have experienced?

Every society evolves within a technical and cultural framework that is the product of a very long history—dating back to the Neolithic era—of responses to the constraints and opportunities presented by the environment. In this regard, Western societies’ confidence in technical solutions capable of saving us is the product of a history of technical domination over nature and other societies. Yet this confidence is in itself a limitation if it prevents us from implementing other possible responses, such as curbing environmental degradation, adopting a more frugal economy, and ensuring the equitable sharing of resources.