While geologists are still considering whether the Anthropocene should be accepted as a formal geological epoch, it is up to us humanists to search for ways making this human era a good one. In this article, I will examine how we can use historical research to provide such tracks based on past regularities or similarities. Positive success stories from the past can at least provide faith that we can do something about our current environmental problems. This investigation is based on two case studies: the Tesla Model S electric car, and the Swedish pulp and paper industry's transition to chlorine-free bleaching. It argues that the sustainability revolution doesn't just share similarities with the quality movement of the 1970s and 1980s, but is essentially a continuation of it. In concordance with previous megatrends, the major benefit of the sustainability revolution will be reaped by countries and companies running ahead of the curve. A new term, 'trail-blazer dependency' is introduced; by setting an example, the first-movers are opening a trail for late-comers to follow.
{"title":"Trail-Blazer Dependency – A Roadmap for the Sustainability Revolution","authors":"Jan Kunnas","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130204","url":null,"abstract":"While geologists are still considering whether the Anthropocene should be accepted as a formal geological epoch, it is up to us humanists to search for ways making this human era a good one. In this article, I will examine how we can use historical research to provide such tracks based\u0000 on past regularities or similarities. Positive success stories from the past can at least provide faith that we can do something about our current environmental problems. This investigation is based on two case studies: the Tesla Model S electric car, and the Swedish pulp and paper industry's\u0000 transition to chlorine-free bleaching. It argues that the sustainability revolution doesn't just share similarities with the quality movement of the 1970s and 1980s, but is essentially a continuation of it. In concordance with previous megatrends, the major benefit of the sustainability revolution\u0000 will be reaped by countries and companies running ahead of the curve. A new term, 'trail-blazer dependency' is introduced; by setting an example, the first-movers are opening a trail for late-comers to follow.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"29 1","pages":"317-337"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80366917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nature and the Iron Curtain.","authors":"Astrid Mignon Kirchoof, J. McNeill","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130212","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86005418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Western Australia (WA) State Barrier Fence stretches 2,023 miles (3,256 kilometres) and divides Australia's largest state. The original 'Rabbit Proof Fence' fence was built from 1901–1907 to stop the westbound expansion of rabbits into the existing and potential agricultural zone of Western Australia. Starting as a seemingly straightforward, albeit costly, solution to protect what was considered a productive landscape, the fence failed to keep out the rabbits. It was subsequently amended, upgraded, re-named and used to serve different purposes: as Vermin Fence and State Barrier Fence (unofficially also Emu Fence or Dog Fence) the fence was designed to exclude native Australian animals such as emus, kangaroos and dingoes. In the Australian 'boom and bust' environment, characterised by extreme temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, interrupting species movement has severe negative impacts on biodiversity – an issue aggravated by the fact that Australia leads in global extinction rates (Woinarski, Burbidge and Harrison, 2015). The twentieth century history of the fence demonstrates the agrarian settlers' struggle with the novelty and otherness of Western Australia's ecological conditions – and severe lack of knowledge thereof. While the strenuous construction, expensive maintenance and doubtful performance of the fence provided useful and early environmental lessons, they seem largely forgotten in contemporary Australia. The WA government recently commenced a controversial $11 million project to extend the State Barrier Fence for another 660 kilometres to reach the Esperance coast, targeting dingoes, emus and kangaroos – once again jeopardising habitat connectivity. This paper examines the environmental history, purposes and impacts of the State Barrier fence, critically discusses the problems associated with European farming and pastoralism in WA, and touches on alternative land-use perspectives and futures.
{"title":"Fortress Farming in Western Australia? The Problematic History of Separating Native Wildlife from Agricultural Land through the State Barrier Fence","authors":"A. Vlachos","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130206","url":null,"abstract":"The Western Australia (WA) State Barrier Fence stretches 2,023 miles (3,256 kilometres) and divides Australia's largest state. The original 'Rabbit Proof Fence' fence was built from 1901–1907 to stop the westbound expansion of rabbits into the existing and potential agricultural\u0000 zone of Western Australia. Starting as a seemingly straightforward, albeit costly, solution to protect what was considered a productive landscape, the fence failed to keep out the rabbits. It was subsequently amended, upgraded, re-named and used to serve different purposes: as Vermin Fence\u0000 and State Barrier Fence (unofficially also Emu Fence or Dog Fence) the fence was designed to exclude native Australian animals such as emus, kangaroos and dingoes. In the Australian 'boom and bust' environment, characterised by extreme temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, interrupting\u0000 species movement has severe negative impacts on biodiversity – an issue aggravated by the fact that Australia leads in global extinction rates (Woinarski, Burbidge and Harrison, 2015). The twentieth century history of the fence demonstrates the agrarian settlers' struggle with the novelty\u0000 and otherness of Western Australia's ecological conditions – and severe lack of knowledge thereof. While the strenuous construction, expensive maintenance and doubtful performance of the fence provided useful and early environmental lessons, they seem largely forgotten in contemporary\u0000 Australia. The WA government recently commenced a controversial $11 million project to extend the State Barrier Fence for another 660 kilometres to reach the Esperance coast, targeting dingoes, emus and kangaroos – once again jeopardising habitat connectivity. This paper examines\u0000 the environmental history, purposes and impacts of the State Barrier fence, critically discusses the problems associated with European farming and pastoralism in WA, and touches on alternative land-use perspectives and futures.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"35 1","pages":"368-403"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77443445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay uses history as a key to access the environmental issue and the Anthropocene as a concept on which to hinge the history of the relationship between humankind and the environment, proposing it be used in education. It begins by analysing how environmental themes are dealt with in international school textbooks. It then moves on to the Anthropocene, the new age in which man candidates himself as a geological agent, dwelling on the theme of climate change and on the co-evolutionary process between social orders and natural systems. It offers the most recent historical readings of the Anthropocene, elaborating its dating and the numerous visions of the world the Anthropocene opens up. The essay ends with considerations on methodology and with some suggestions for teaching environmental history.
{"title":"Environmental History in Schools: The Anthropocene and Us","authors":"Salvatore Adorno","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130209","url":null,"abstract":"This essay uses history as a key to access the environmental issue and the Anthropocene as a concept on which to hinge the history of the relationship between humankind and the environment, proposing it be used in education. It begins by analysing how environmental themes are dealt\u0000 with in international school textbooks. It then moves on to the Anthropocene, the new age in which man candidates himself as a geological agent, dwelling on the theme of climate change and on the co-evolutionary process between social orders and natural systems. It offers the most recent historical\u0000 readings of the Anthropocene, elaborating its dating and the numerous visions of the world the Anthropocene opens up. The essay ends with considerations on methodology and with some suggestions for teaching environmental history.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"8 1","pages":"451-469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89119190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent studies have demonstrated the high spatial, economic and ecological stakes of solid waste management in remote island environments, like Hawaii, but also suggested ways in which conceptions of risk and identity have factored into stakeholders' decisions regarding particular waste management technologies and processes. Through an analysis of historical and archival documents, this article examines linkages between a declining sugar plantation industry and the development of a major waste disposal project, and shows how an ecological identity narrative which combined an understanding of Honolulu as a place needing to reduce reliance on imported resources with an understanding of metropolitan Honolulu as a major centre for plantation sugarcane agriculture resulted in a plan for combining waste disposal with sugarcane processing. Focused on the historical case of the HPOWER facility on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, I argue that ecological identity offers new insights for understanding how environmental infrastructures are conceptualised and resisted, and that explicit consideration of ecological identity in the analysis of environmental governance may lead to improved scholarly understanding as well as improved outcomes for governance itself.
{"title":"Sweetness and HPOWER: Waste, Sugar and Ecological Identity in the Development of Honolulu's HPOWER Waste-to-Energy Facility","authors":"J. Howell","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130203","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies have demonstrated the high spatial, economic and ecological stakes of solid waste management in remote island environments, like Hawaii, but also suggested ways in which conceptions of risk and identity have factored into stakeholders' decisions regarding particular waste\u0000 management technologies and processes. Through an analysis of historical and archival documents, this article examines linkages between a declining sugar plantation industry and the development of a major waste disposal project, and shows how an ecological identity narrative which combined\u0000 an understanding of Honolulu as a place needing to reduce reliance on imported resources with an understanding of metropolitan Honolulu as a major centre for plantation sugarcane agriculture resulted in a plan for combining waste disposal with sugarcane processing. Focused on the historical\u0000 case of the HPOWER facility on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, I argue that ecological identity offers new insights for understanding how environmental infrastructures are conceptualised and resisted, and that explicit consideration of ecological identity in the analysis of environmental governance\u0000 may lead to improved scholarly understanding as well as improved outcomes for governance itself.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74594077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Agroforestry and the Reappraisal of Roman Viticulture","authors":"Dimitri van Limbergen","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130208","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78527489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article retraces the late modern and contemporary history of East Naples through its environmental transformations. By the end of the eighteenth century, this marshy rural/suburban area hosted small urban agglomerations and many proto-industrial activities, deeply intertwined with agricultural production. During the nineteenth century, the area experienced its deepest transformations as a result of the three parallel processes of drainage, urbanisation and industrialisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century, East Naples became an industrial suburb, home to an uncontrollable residential sprawl interspersed with factories. This inchoate suburban mix has determined the area's unsustainability, leading to those hygienic deficits, environmental risks and economic and social complications that have plagued it to this day.
{"title":"Suburban Environment. East Naples Historical Transformations and Sustainability","authors":"V. Caruso","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130205","url":null,"abstract":"This article retraces the late modern and contemporary history of East Naples through its environmental transformations. By the end of the eighteenth century, this marshy rural/suburban area hosted small urban agglomerations and many proto-industrial activities, deeply intertwined with\u0000 agricultural production. During the nineteenth century, the area experienced its deepest transformations as a result of the three parallel processes of drainage, urbanisation and industrialisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century, East Naples became an industrial suburb, home to\u0000 an uncontrollable residential sprawl interspersed with factories. This inchoate suburban mix has determined the area's unsustainability, leading to those hygienic deficits, environmental risks and economic and social complications that have plagued it to this day.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"71 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83612983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article analyses how new settlements in the Andaman Islands changed the demography of humans and livestock in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Initially, British interest in the Islands was guided by its strategic location in the midst of the Indian Ocean. The aim was to establish a flag-post to secure imperial rule in India, Australia, Mauritius, and South East Asia. Convicts, guards and soldiers soon populated the islands. British expansionism had to face environmental forces that endangered the imperial project. Frequent cyclones, for example, resulted in a high number of shipwrecks on the coast of the islands. This article examines the role of ecological factors in the British imperial expansion in the Andaman Islands.
{"title":"Cyclones, Shipwrecks and Environmental Anxiety: British Rule and Ecological Change in the Andaman Islands, 1780s To 1900s","authors":"Vipul Singh","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130106","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses how new settlements in the Andaman Islands changed the demography of humans and livestock in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Initially, British interest in the Islands was guided by its strategic location in the midst of the Indian Ocean. The aim was to\u0000 establish a flag-post to secure imperial rule in India, Australia, Mauritius, and South East Asia. Convicts, guards and soldiers soon populated the islands. British expansionism had to face environmental forces that endangered the imperial project. Frequent cyclones, for example, resulted\u0000 in a high number of shipwrecks on the coast of the islands. This article examines the role of ecological factors in the British imperial expansion in the Andaman Islands.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"38 1","pages":"165-193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75804657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In British India and the Australian colonies, drought and famine, as well as other hazards, were challenges facing local and metropolitan meteorologists. In this article, I examine the colonial and environmental contexts that animated the studies of both Indian and Australian scientists and the meteorological futures they sought to realise. Colonial scientists in India and Australia were eager to develop means of seasonal weather prediction that could aid the advancement of Empire underway in their respective continents. As this article shows, meteorologists in both places understood that the climate knowledge emerging on each side of the east Indian Ocean could be mutually beneficial in related ways. Their vast continental scales, imperial bonds, geographic orientation and telegraphic connection made them worthy partners in colonial efforts to discern and predict weather patterns, while contributing to the wider field of meteorological science. The threat to colonial security and prosperity that drought and famine posed helped to thicken the bonds between these reaches of the empire, as their meteorologists sought to impose their territorial logic of the skies above.
{"title":"Prophecy and Prediction: Forecasting Drought and Famine in British India and the Australian Colonies","authors":"R. Morgan","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130104","url":null,"abstract":"In British India and the Australian colonies, drought and famine, as well as other hazards, were challenges facing local and metropolitan meteorologists. In this article, I examine the colonial and environmental contexts that animated the studies of both Indian and Australian scientists\u0000 and the meteorological futures they sought to realise. Colonial scientists in India and Australia were eager to develop means of seasonal weather prediction that could aid the advancement of Empire underway in their respective continents. As this article shows, meteorologists in both places\u0000 understood that the climate knowledge emerging on each side of the east Indian Ocean could be mutually beneficial in related ways. Their vast continental scales, imperial bonds, geographic orientation and telegraphic connection made them worthy partners in colonial efforts to discern and predict\u0000 weather patterns, while contributing to the wider field of meteorological science. The threat to colonial security and prosperity that drought and famine posed helped to thicken the bonds between these reaches of the empire, as their meteorologists sought to impose their territorial logic\u0000 of the skies above.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"13 1","pages":"95-132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85814668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the rise and development, from about 300 bce to c. 1750 of an Indian Ocean World 'global economy' – a long-distance system of exchange that linked East Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, South-east Asia and East Asia. Focusing on human-environment interaction, Campbell challenges spatial and temporal paradigms based on the conventional beliefs that humans alone are the catalyst of historical change, and that Europeans gained economic ascendancy in the region from the time of the 'Voyages of Discovery'.
{"title":"The Indian Ocean World Global Economy in the Context of Human-Environment Interaction, C. 300 BCE–1750","authors":"Gwyn Campbell","doi":"10.3197/ge.2020.130102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2020.130102","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the rise and development, from about 300 bce to c. 1750 of an Indian Ocean World 'global economy' – a long-distance system of exchange that linked East Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, South-east Asia and East Asia. Focusing on human-environment\u0000 interaction, Campbell challenges spatial and temporal paradigms based on the conventional beliefs that humans alone are the catalyst of historical change, and that Europeans gained economic ascendancy in the region from the time of the 'Voyages of Discovery'.","PeriodicalId":42763,"journal":{"name":"Global Environment","volume":"42 1","pages":"30-66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76242738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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