The History of Science Society

Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2009
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Report from the First World Congress of Environmental History

The first World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH) was held in August 2009 in Copenhagen. Titled “Local Livelihoods and Global Challenges: Understanding Human Interaction with the Environment,” WCEH included more than four hundred presentations with 560 participants from 45 countries.

Denmark was a significant choice for the first WCEH since it was the first country to establish a Ministry of the Environment, in 1971. The venue and participants shifted the narrative from an American-dominated version of the evolution of environmental history to one that includes the contributions of various countries and movements that preceded the work of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, such as the global movement to end nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s.

A sampling of just a few of my favorite panels shows the scope of the World Congress and its emphasis on a multinational analysis of policies and issues: the co-option of environmental rhetoric by NATO and Spain; recent deforestation in the coastal forests of Brazil; changing perceptions of the Arctic; the place of animals in environmental history; and making warfare’s consequences visible.

These broad views were enhanced by indigenous perspectives that created an emerging global narrative of responses and practices. For example, the Mowachaht Muchalaht First Nation, an indigenous village in Canada, experienced disproportionate exposure to industrial toxins. The case revealed the limits of western science to detect what was sensed as poisonous by the Mowachat Muchalaht and this mirrored the experience of the Navajo Nation with uranium mining pollution in the United States. For me, WCEH fulfilled environmental history’s promise to be a working template to respond to global issues, a response not limited by borders or language.

I was also privileged to participate in a pre-conference workshop for PhD students held at Roskilde University 1-3 August, organized by European leaders in environmental history, including the chair of the World Congress Program Committee, Verena Winiwarter, who helped usher the inaugural meeting of the World Congress into reality.

At the pre-conference, Winiwarter shared her design of the “T” model of environmental history pedagogy. We broke into small work groups that mixed scientists with social scientists – based on Roskilde’s progressive multidisciplinary research units – to create a proposal using ecological history to address complex current issues. I experienced the value of combining these different approaches to address environmental history as a competent discipline (the vertical line of the T) in an interdisciplinary conversant style (the horizontal line of the T, which reaches out in understandable terms to a variety of disciplines). The T model acknowledges the need for holistic approaches to address complexity – while highlighting the case-study approach – and prepared me to glean the most out of the World Congress.

WCEH was organized by the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations, Malmö University (Sweden) and Roskilde University (Denmark) and included organizers from Brazil, Switzerland, UK, India, South Africa, France, Canada, China, United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Linda Richards is a graduate student in the history of science at Oregon State University

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Report from the First World Congress of Environmental History

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