In this blog, John Cropper introduces his new article in Environment and History, ‘Growing a World Wonder’: The Great Green Wall and the History of Environmental Decline in the Sahel, 1450–2022 (online first March 2023), which argues that the Great Green Wall Initiative gave new life to the ‘declinist’ narrative of the African environment and … More ‘Growing a World Wonder’: Problematising the Great Green Wall

Today’s blog by Mica Jorgenson is associated with her just-published article in Environment and History, Wild Smoke: Managing Forest Pollution in Northern British Columbia since 1950 (online first February 2023). Co-publication with NiCHE ‘A bank of pale gray smoke pours into the bay from the north and rolls over the water, engulfing the freighters in … More Wild Smoke: Forest Fires and Air Pollution in BC since 1950

Today’s blog by Dotan Halevy relates to his article published recently in Environment and History (online first 2022): Sand and the City: On Colonial Development and its Evasive Enemies in Twentieth-Century Palestine Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) brings together two decades of thinking and writing about land, landscape, flora, fauna, and the system that ties them … More Sands, Lupines and the Ecology of the Uncultivable

On 28 February 2023, The White Horse Press will publish John Dargavel’s Anthropocene Days, a collection of interlinked essays by one of Australia’s first environmental historians. The strikingly illustrated volume serves as a fragmentary memoir of the author’s 90 years on this Earth and focuses on how environment is experienced in the everyday. While the … More Dust and Dusting: A Taster of John Dargavel’s Anthropocene Days

This blog by Roger Norum originally appeared as the ICEHO pages in Global Environment 15.3 (October 2022). We are reposting today because Roger is the chair of the local organising committee for the 4th World Congress of Environmental History to be held in Oulu on 19-23 August 2024, whose CFP has just been launched! ‘Maps … More NAVIGATING TRANSFORMATIONS AND TRANSDISCIPLINARITY IN NORTHERN FINLAND

The timely new journal, Plant Perspectives, published by The White Horse Press, reflects the steady ascent of interdisciplinary plant studies especially over the last decade. Increasingly, the botanical world presents an enthralling area of research, writing, reflection and collaboration. Many scientific studies reveal that human beings and other creatures have more in common with plants than … More Plant Perspectives – A Note from the Editor, John C. Ryan

Excuse our blatant self-pollination in announcing our exciting new journal here! Opening for submissions in 2023, Plant Perspectives, edited by John C. Ryan with Deputy Editor Isis Brook will be an Open Access interdisciplinary forum for all things planty and peopley. Its shiny new website is here and the scope is copied below, with some … More Plant Perspectives: A New Open Access Journal Coming Soon

In this blog, originally published as a ‘Snapshot’ in Environment and History (28.3, August 2022), Sandy Hunter asks how to ‘understand the precipitous decline of the Northern cod as both metonym for contemporary crisis and an ecological tragedy with deep historical roots?’ …the number of which [the codfish] seems to equal that of the grains … More COD, COLONIALISM, AND THE ANTHROPOCENE

In this blog, Maurice Paulissen, Edward H. Huijbens and Roy van Beek introduce their forthcoming Open Access article in Environment and History, which will be published online-first next month. In the article, the theory of affordances is intriguingly applied to medieval and modern bog landscapes. Imagine someone who has never seen a coffee mug before … More THE WORKINGS OF NATURE’S MATERIALITY AS SEEN THROUGH THE LENS OF AFFORDANCES: THE EXAMPLE OF HISTORICAL BOG LANDSCAPES

In today’s blog, originally a ‘Snapshot’ in Environment and History 28.3 (August 2022), Tanja Riekkinen investigates petroculture as a ‘socio-technical imaginary’, proposing that ‘exploring the history of sociotechnical imaginaries related to energy’ – specifically positive advertisements for oil’s place in a bright future – ‘may provide novel perspectives for understanding current envisionings and practices of … More ENVISAGING ENERGY FUTURES: PAST AND PRESENT