Sustainability Language
Anthropogenic
Meaning "caused or produced by human activity" — the qualifier that distinguishes human-driven environmental change, such as most modern greenhouse gas emissions, from natural variation.
Definition
Resulting from or produced by human activities. In climate science, "anthropogenic" distinguishes human-driven changes — emissions from burning fossil fuels, deforestation and industry — from natural sources and variability; the IPCC concludes that observed warming is unequivocally anthropogenic.
References
Overview
What it means
The term does similar work across sustainability fields: anthropogenic emissions (vs natural fluxes such as volcanoes), anthropogenic climate change (vs natural cycles), anthropogenic pressures on ecosystems (vs background processes). Establishing that a change is anthropogenic is what makes it a policy problem — and, in climate attribution science, a legal one.
How it is used
Inventories and reports separate anthropogenic from natural flows (national GHG inventories count anthropogenic sources and sinks). Courts and regulators use the distinction in climate litigation and disclosure rules; communicators use "human-caused" as the plain-language equivalent.
Why it matters
"Anthropogenic" is the hinge word of modern environmental responsibility: it is the basis for assigning responsibility for climate change to human action rather than nature, and therefore for mitigation duties. Its meaning is stable, but its implications — liability, duty to act — remain contested terrain in policy and law.
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