Societal Collapse: An Introduction

One of the greatest issues facing current and future human generations is that of Climate Change. Living and growing sustainably while adapting to future changes in the environment is a serious concern for people worldwide. It is therefore important to understand how societies have reacted to environmental change in the past and the role, if any, played by the environment in their downfall.

The collapse of societies is obviously brought about by a huge range of causes. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), five major factors that contribute to societal collapse are identified:

• Climate change
• Hostile neighbors
• Collapse of essential trading partners
• Environmental problems and 
• Failure to adapt to environmental issues.

It is therefore clear that the environment can play numerous roles in the breakdown of societies, with the root issue often (but not always) lying in the relationship between overpopulation and environmental carrying capacity.  

I personally find the collapse of past societies particularly interesting because the problems those ancient peoples faced are in many ways analogous to the challenges we face today and this is something I will explore through this blog amongst other issues.

As Flenley and Bahn point out (1992), past societies have carried out for us “the experiment of…unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources [and] destruction of the environment,” allowing us the ability to learn from past failures and possibly overcome future challenges.