Different institutions have been involved in the formalizing process of the Anthropocene, among them the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) alongside the cultural institution Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the scientific research institute Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. In this session recorded during Unearthing the Present, Simon Turner, the scientific coordinator of the AWG project, and Victor Galaz, a scholar of complex systems, governance and global sustainability, focused on the difficulties and affordances of such an undertaking. While scientifically studying the concurrence between transformations in social, financial and environmental systems remains challenging, at the institutional level we may ask: How best can organizations reconcile alliance building, promote public discussions on environmental crises and nurture cultural shifts?