Situated Green Chemistries: a starting proposal

Abstract

Green chemistry has long benefited from interdisciplinary collaborations, integrating insights from disciplines such as toxicology, environmental science, economics, computer science, earth system sciences, and engineering. This paper further extends this approach by arguing that, due to the rapid changes of the Anthropocene, scientific methods must adapt to shifting conditions by integrating methods from social sciences. Since we have to produce research even when there is no time for ideal consensus-building, in the pressing circumstances where shrinking human habitability on the planet is a legitimate source of concern, we would benefit from acknowledging the value-driven, cultural and historical contexts that influence non-ideal current outputs. By integrating a contribution from the social sciences, specifically Donna Haraway's situated knowledge concept, the « situated green chemistries » framework proposes to do so by explicitly situating core drivers framing the research, such as local sustainability and robustness against severe environmental and social disruptions ("+5°C Fighters"), addressing imbalances affecting the Global South ("North-South" driver), developing technologies that are designed to be simple to use, repair and make ("Low-Techs"), pursuing science for the intrinsic value of knowledge ("Intrinsic Value of research"), environmental and societal stewardship ("Do No Harm"), business and governmental leverage ("Global Forces"), and treating research as a creative endeavor akin to art ("Research as Art"). By more explicitly framing research around these and others drivers of diverse desirable futures yet to be identified by the community of green chemists it is argued that green chemistry research can expand its scope, embrace complexity, and offer more robust solutions, because more diverse and contextually grounded, to some of the challenges for research during the Anthropocene.