Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Environmentalism and the Politics of Pre-emption: reconsidering South Asia’s environmental history in the epoch of the Anthropocene Rohan D'Souza GraduateSchoolofAsianandAfricanAreaStudies,KyotoUniversity,Japan ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Environmental history South Asia Anthropocene Equilibrium Colonial-ecological-watershed Continuities-with-Change Environmentalism Stochastic Colonialism Great Acceleration Safe Operating Space Planetary boundaries Earth system ABSTRACT Scarcity is ideologically charged and shapes political possibilities. The recent but richly debated formulation termed the Anthropocene – as a distinct intellectual rubric for exploring human challenges and prospects in an already climate changed world – claims to offer new conceptual grounds for radically re-envisioning the existing challenges that confront humanity. Instead of the earlier anxieties about an over populated planet running out of resources, the Anthropocene warns of a crisis brought on by tipping points from excess Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, climate chaos from a heated planet and the crossing of critical bio-physical thresholds. The Anthropocene eco-catastrophe, hence, is less about the struggle over resource scarcities than it is about sus- taining conditions for planetary life. But does dealing only with the excesses of GHG emissions entirely revise the urgency for engaging with the notion of scarcity? Not so, this essay argues, especially if scarcity continues to imply finite limits and boundaries that cannot be crossed. Uncovering the Athropocene notion of scarcity, however, requires one to see double. First, the idea of scarcity can only be meaningfully fleshed out when located within broader discussions about environmental change and environmentalism. And second, through a com- parative contrast with environmental histories of South Asia, I argue, the novel claims of the Anthropoene discourse can be brought into sharp and visible relief. The Anthropocence, I suggest, is not only compelled to acknowledge a strong version of scarcity but, critically as well, its notion of finite limits shapes, defines and influences a Neo-Malthusian variant of environmentalism that, in essence, rests on the politics of pre-emption. 1. Introduction Scarcity is ideologically charged and shapes political possibilities. When defined as a natural, universal, finite or absolute category, scarcity can be overwhelmingly deployed as an apolitical and technical term, which privileges the ‘rule of the expert’, heightens environmental alarm and works against efforts for deepening democratic processes (Ehrlich, 1968; Meadows et al., 1974 [1972]; Meadows et al., 2005; Dixon, 1999). On the other hand, when de-naturalized and held to be context dependent, scarcity discloses complexities of culture, power, exclusion and antagonistic interests (Xenos, 1989; Mehra, 2005). Here, scarcity, principally as a political construct, puts a searching light on dimensions of social injustice, political inequality and economic ex- ploitation. Critically as well, notions of scarcity have been crucial in connecting assessments about radical environmental change with prospects for environmentalism. Malthusian and Neo-Malthusian frameworks, for example, as a consequence of defining resource limits as a type of natural universal scarcity have not only obscured the many political drivers that cause environmental degradation (i.e. environmental change) but have also advocated for environmental interventions or strategies (environmentalism) that further marginalise and impoverish the disenfranchised in society (Peluso and Watts (Eds.), 2001; Mehta, 2011 [2010]). A range of discourses on global warming and climate change, in a similar vein, have been unpacked as ideological assemblages and in- sightfully surveyed for their varied political implications (Giddens, 2009; McKibben (Ed.), 2011; Robin et al (Eds.), 2013; Barnes and Dove (Eds.), 2015). The recent but nonetheless richly debated formulation termed the Anthropocene – as a distinct intellectual rubric for exploring human challenges and possibilities in an already climate changed world – however, claims to announce a sharp political divergence. Instead of the earlier ‘limits to growth’ thesis with its eco- catastrophe based on a planet running out of resources, the conceptual armature for the An- thropocene suggests a crisis brought on by tipping points from excess Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, climate chaos from a heated planet and the crossing of critical bio-physical thresholds (Semal, 2015: 87-99; Rockstrom and Klum, 2015: 59-79). The idea of Anthropocene eco- catastrophe, hence, is less about the struggle over resource scarcities than it is about sustaining conditions for planetary life. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.033 Received 20 January 2018; Received in revised form 21 September 2018; Accepted 25 September 2018 E-mail address: rohanxdsouza@gmail.com. Geoforum 101 (2019) 242–249 Available online 09 October 2018 0016-7185/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T