The latest report of the International Panel of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has concluded that biodiversity collapse is imminent, and the status quo is no longer an option. The IPCC 1.5°C report has also demanded drastic action to avert runaway climate change. Simultaneously, almost half the world‘s population continues to live on less than $2.50/day and UNICEF estimates that 22,000 children die daily due to poverty, even as the rich get richer! The decline in environmental and social indicators has been largely attributed to the economic model of capitalist development. A reliance on economic bottom-lines, the desire for efficiency and commodification of everything is leading us into a downward environmental spiral. What do we do as practising environmental researchers and teachers to understand this multi-dimensional and interconnected global crisis; a crisis that is clearly anthropogenic? Does the idea of Anthropocene help us understand the roots of the crisis, or do terms such as Capitalocene and Technocene highlight them better? Does sustainability science provide a way forward? Hassan, in this conversation, deplores that ―knowledge generation in sustainability science and education in the developing world has been very limited.‖ The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) has explicitly embraced this idea, and has structured its research programmes around themes or sectors, rather than disciplines, and set up an interdisciplinary PhD programme in Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies. We admit students from all disciplines, and introduce them to the fundamental theoretical and methodological aspects of ecology, environmental science, sociology and economics. Following this, we provide training in multi-disciplinary methods and specifically in integrated approaches in environment and development that expose students to framing interdisciplinary research questions. Dissertation committees are multi-disciplinary and students are encouraged to take interdisciplinary topics, which allow them to balance between the social and natural. Our experience provides valuable insights into the possibilities and challenges involved—challenges created by the multiple hegemonies we confront in the real world and within academia.