In today’s blog Rune Svarverud, whose article ‘Ventilation for the Nation: Fresh Air, Sunshine, and the Warfare on Germs in China’s National Quest for Hygienic Modernity, 1849–1949′ has just been published ‘online first’ in Environment and History (subscription access / paywall ), zooms in on the micro-level, exploring questions, problems and perceptions of air quality in … More Polluting smoke or fragrant fumes: The dilemma of a Chinese rural kitchen

In this blog, Matthew Holmes takes a long view on the role – and risks – of agricultural pesticides in the delicate balance between food security and environmental conservation. His article ‘Melancholy Consequences: Britain’s Long Relationship with Agricultural Chemicals since the Mid-eighteenth Century’ has been published ‘online-first’ in Environment and History. The market for organic food … More Agricultural Arsenic: Uncovering a Nineteenth-Century Pesticide Scare

In today’s blog, Thomas van Goethem, whose article with Jan Luiten van Zanden ‘Who is Afraid of Biodiversity? Proposal for a Research Agenda for Environmental History’ was recently published ‘online first’ in Environment and History, considers the role of historians in understanding the drivers of biodiversity loss and calls for historians’ engagement in  tackling the problem. Headlines … More Ecological Armageddon?! What can historians do to help?

The first issue of Environmental Values in 2019 (Vol. 28) will be a Special Issue on Ecological Democracy. Marit Hammond’s article ‘A Cultural Account of Ecological Democracy’, can be previewed here. In today’s blog, adapted with thanks from cusp.ac.uk she asks: are sustainability and democracy in conflict? Some argue saving the planet cannot be left … More A Cultural Shift towards an Ecological Democracy

In today’s blog, part of our occasional series with NiCHE, Gregory Kennedy (professeur agrégé en histoire et directeur scientifique de l’Institut d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, Canada) introduces his co-written article in the latest issue of Global Environment (GE 11.2) on adaptive capacity and strategies in the face of environmental change. We continue to witness … More Agency, Adaptive Capacity and Hope across Seven Research Sites

Esme Murdock’s article Unsettling Reconciliation: Decolonial Methods for Transforming Social-Ecological Systems. is just published in Environmental Values (27.5 October 2018). In today’s blog she explains the article’s genesis and motivation. This blog is part of an occasional series in collaboration with NiCHE. How do we talk about the painful, violent distance between ourselves and the … More Unsettling Reconciliation: towards decolonising land and rights relations in Canada

In this blog John Morgan reports on last week’s inaugural Environmental History Workshop which we followed with great interest and with which we plan next year to establish a formal engagement. Last week, the Institute of Historical Research in London was host to the inaugural Environmental History Workshop. Sponsored by the Royal Historical Society, the … More Environmental History Workshop: intersections across space and time

In today’s blog, which featured in the August 2018 issue (Volume 24.3) of Environment and History as the ESEH Notepad, Antonio Ortega Santos presents a useful overview of environmental history research and publications in Spain which may not be well-known to anglophone audiences.  The research field of Environmental History in Spain has been developing for … More Environmental History in Spain: Eyeing the Future from the Past.

This is part two of William Wheeler’s Aral Sea blog, linked to his forthcoming paper in Global Environment. The first part appeared last week. Here William describes a Danish-led project to regenerate Aral Sea fisheries in the post-Soviet period, against the prevailing narrative of a ‘dead’ Sea. In the previous part of this blog, I … More II The flounder and the Danes: Rebuilding a fishery on the North Aral Sea

In today’s blog, the first in a two part series, William Wheeler ruminates on the ‘disaster discourse’ and the local human experience of the Aral Sea regression, subject of his forthcoming article in Global Environment (Special Issue on Disasters and Property guest-edited by Marc Elie and Fabien Locher, forthcoming September 2018).  Disasters, as anthropologists have … More I. The Aral Sea disaster