{"title":"Along the Western Margin of Park Am Gleisdreieck, an Urban Hybrid Environment","authors":"Elena Ferrari","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16945097374236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16945097374236","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136372489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ERLAND MÅRALD, JIMMY JÖNSSON, ÖRJAN KARDELL, JÖRGEN SJÖGREN, ANNA TUNLID
{"title":"An Exotic Tree in a Foreign Country: A Cultural Biography of the Lodgepole Pine in Sweden","authors":"ERLAND MÅRALD, JIMMY JÖNSSON, ÖRJAN KARDELL, JÖRGEN SJÖGREN, ANNA TUNLID","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16869924234822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16869924234822","url":null,"abstract":"The movement of plants, animals, and microorganisms by humans, consciously or unconsciously, has changed both ecosystems and societies throughout history. This article focuses on one such transformative species, lodgepole pine, and its relocation from northwestern America to northern Sweden in the mid-twentieth century. A cultural biography of the lodgepole pine’s existence in Sweden examines how this tree has been linked to different value regimes, which creates a historical pattern. Through so-called ‘thinning processes’, powerful actors, in both production forestry and the environmental movement, have tried to reduce the importance of the species to a limited meaning and context. At the same time, more arguments, knowledge and changed contexts have made the lodgepole pine a ‘thick thing’, with superimposed values and meanings. Although the tree has moved far geographically, from one continent to another, its importance has continued to be framed by interacting international, national and local perspectives. The lodgepole pine, however, is not just an inert thing that is determined by cultural discourses. It is a living tree, with its own ability to act and whose life in a foreign land has created a dynamic that crosses the border between nature and culture.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135514091","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erland Mårald, Jimmy Jönsson, Örjan Kardell, Jörgen Sjögren, Anna Tunlid
{"title":"An Exotic Tree in a Foreign Country: A Cultural Biography of the Lodgepole Pine in Sweden","authors":"Erland Mårald, Jimmy Jönsson, Örjan Kardell, Jörgen Sjögren, Anna Tunlid","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234822","url":null,"abstract":"The movement of plants, animals, and microorganisms by humans, consciously or unconsciously, has changed both ecosystems and societies throughout history. This article focuses on one such transformative species, lodgepole pine, and its relocation from northwestern America to northern Sweden in the mid-twentieth century. A cultural biography of the lodgepole pine’s existence in Sweden examines how this tree has been linked to different value regimes, which creates a historical pattern. Through so-called ‘thinning processes’, powerful actors, in both production forestry and the environmental movement, have tried to reduce the importance of the species to a limited meaning and context. At the same time, more arguments, knowledge and changed contexts have made the lodgepole pine a ‘thick thing’, with superimposed values and meanings. Although the tree has moved far geographically, from one continent to another, its importance has continued to be framed by interacting international, national and local perspectives. The lodgepole pine, however, is not just an inert thing that is determined by cultural discourses. It is a living tree, with its own ability to act and whose life in a foreign land has created a dynamic that crosses the border between nature and culture.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83235986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Water Origins of Brazil’s Nuclear Energy Infrastructure","authors":"JENNIFER EAGLIN","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16869924234840","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16869924234840","url":null,"abstract":"Today, Brazil relies on nuclear energy for three per cent of its energy needs while hydroelectricity accounts for over sixty per cent. However, Brazilian officials sought to aggressively incorporate nuclear energy into the country’s energy infrastructure at any cost in the second half of the twentieth century. This article examines the connections between hydroelectric and nuclear energy development between 1960 and 1985. I argue that water resources, both shortages and excess capacity, were critical to Brazil’s nuclear energy pursuits. While scholarly attention has often focused on Brazil’s diplomatic negotiations and exploitation of the country’s uranium deposits, this article shows how droughts played a pivotal role in legitimising Brazil’s nuclear aspirations in the face of extensive hydroelectric capacity. In the process, both Brazil’s nuclear power plant and enrichment plant relied heavily on Brazilian water resources, fundamentally linking these two separate electricity sources in Brazil’s diversified energy grid to this day.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135514092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Lost Macedonian Ecosystem: The Land Reclamation and Politicisation of the Philippi Marshes in Interwar Greece","authors":"George L. Vlachos","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234831","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the land reclamation of the Philippi Marshes in eastern Greek Macedonia during the interwar period, in order to demonstrate the political implications of hydraulic engineering projects. It is argued that the land reclamation was not simply a technical project, but a tool for the Greek state to extend its grip across its northern frontiers and impose land management policies that aligned with its political goals. The article is divided into three parts. The first reconstructs the ecosystem and the interaction between the adjacent communities and the marshland. The second gives the historical context for the reclamation, and the third speculates on the course of the state’s land-management policies, hypothesising that these were an attempt to appease the radicalised communist and socialist threat in the area. The article adds to recent historiography exploring the dimensions involved in grand technical works and the role of technocrats in serving political agendas.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78220063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Lost Macedonian Ecosystem: The Land Reclamation and Politicisation of the Philippi Marshes in Interwar Greece","authors":"GEORGE L. VLACHOS","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16869924234831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16869924234831","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the land reclamation of the Philippi Marshes in eastern Greek Macedonia during the interwar period, in order to demonstrate the political implications of hydraulic engineering projects. It is argued that the land reclamation was not simply a technical project, but a tool for the Greek state to extend its grip across its northern frontiers and impose land management policies that aligned with its political goals. The article is divided into three parts. The first reconstructs the ecosystem and the interaction between the adjacent communities and the marshland. The second gives the historical context for the reclamation, and the third speculates on the course of the state’s land-management policies, hypothesising that these were an attempt to appease the radicalised communist and socialist threat in the area. The article adds to recent historiography exploring the dimensions involved in grand technical works and the role of technocrats in serving political agendas.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135514089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ecology in Transition: Fernando González Bernáldez, Scientific Modernisation and Environmental Advocacy in Late Francoist Spain, 1960–1980","authors":"Santos Casado","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234813","url":null,"abstract":"The final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the subsequent transition to a democracy saw the unfolding of parallel processes of economic and scientific modernisation in Spanish society. An unexpected interference between both processes occurred in the fields of ecology and the environmental sciences, when environmentally minded scientists defended threatened ecosystems, rural landscapes and traditional land-use systems. At the time, prevailing discourses and policies considered these ecosystems and landscapes backward remnants of an undeveloped Spain, ready to be transformed by irrigation plans, afforestation schemes and urban development. From the early 1970s onwards, ecologist Fernando González Bernáldez consciously chose to take on a dual role, combining and mutually reinforcing two distinct yet associated personae: a highly respected scientist and an outspoken defender of the environment. This paper examines González Bernáldez’s various strategies to strike the right balance between both identities, and how his aims were challenged by the changing political context at the time.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77637540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Changing Course: Water Management in the Demer Valley, 1950s–1990s","authors":"Eline Lathouwers, Y. Segers, G. Verstraeten","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16702350656951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16702350656951","url":null,"abstract":"Transformations in river management that manifest diverse forms of (increased) human interference, evidenced by hydraulic ingenuity and associated ecosystem disturbance, are usually explained as successive water regimes. Researchers then analyse factors that triggered regime shifts and discuss (un)successful attempts by policymakers to juggle conflicting interests. Few studies, however, centre on medium-sized rivers that are nevertheless characterised by fragmented policies in which multiple stakeholder parties have a say. We discuss, through a close reading of archival records, the evolution of post-war water management in the Demer valley, Flanders. We conclude that agricultural interests prevailed until the 1970s, notwithstanding an early exploration of the valley’s industrial and recreational potential, whereupon nature organisations put forward an alternative approach that led to changing policies in the early 1990s. These conclusions do not fit into the reportedly global transferable, river management model proposed by Wolf et al.* By showcasing the Demer’s unique management developments and emphasising the individual aspects of the essentially rural Demer valley, we scrutinise the model’s generalisability and argue that it is especially valid for industrialised rivers. * S. Wolf et al., ‘Influence of 200 years of water resource management on a typical central European river: Does industrialization straighten a river?’ Environmental Sciences Europe 33, 15 (2021).","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90835846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ecology in Transition: Fernando González Bernáldez, Scientific Modernisation and Environmental Advocacy in Late Francoist Spain, 1960–1980","authors":"SANTOS CASADO","doi":"10.3828/096734023x16869924234813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734023x16869924234813","url":null,"abstract":"The final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the subsequent transition to a democracy saw the unfolding of parallel processes of economic and scientific modernisation in Spanish society. An unexpected interference between both processes occurred in the fields of ecology and the environmental sciences, when environmentally minded scientists defended threatened ecosystems, rural landscapes and traditional land-use systems. At the time, prevailing discourses and policies considered these ecosystems and landscapes backward remnants of an undeveloped Spain, ready to be transformed by irrigation plans, afforestation schemes and urban development. From the early 1970s onwards, ecologist Fernando González Bernáldez consciously chose to take on a dual role, combining and mutually reinforcing two distinct yet associated personae: a highly respected scientist and an outspoken defender of the environment. This paper examines González Bernáldez’s various strategies to strike the right balance between both identities, and how his aims were challenged by the changing political context at the time.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135666975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Devil-Fish to Friendly Whale? Encountering Gray Whales on The California Coast","authors":"Anna Guasco","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16788762163687","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16788762163687","url":null,"abstract":"Eastern North Pacific gray whales are famed for their remarkable ecological history: from near extinction to recovery and from ‘devil-fish’ to ‘friendly whale’. This article critically examines the origins and development of the narrative framing of gray whales’ history as one in which the whales were long known as ‘devil-fish’, until they became ‘friendly whales’ in the 1970s. Drawing on archival sources from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, this article interrupts the premise of a smooth and linear transition from devil-fish to friendly whale. Instead, gray whale histories reveal much more complex and even contradictory human–whale encounters along the California coast. Throughout the time period examined, precursors of the familiar contemporary narrative of gray whale history emerged, each building on prior remembrances of gray whale pasts. More broadly, this article contributes to contemporary conversations in more-than-human historical studies about nonhuman agency, multispecies encounters, memory, and environmental histories of emotion.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87357773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}