NEWSLETTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN DIMENSIONS PROGRAMME ON GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE UPDATE IHDP 02/2005 WWW.IHDP.ORG IHDP Update is published by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Enviromental Change (IHDP), Walter-Flex-Str. 3, 53113 Bonn, Germany, V.i.S.d.P.: Ula Löw 1 Modern Global Environmental History: A Turbulent and Dramatic Scenario | John McNeill 4 Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) | Rik Leemans and Robert Costanza 6 A Socio-Ecological View on Industri- alization in Europe since the 19 th Century | Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Fridolin Krausmann 8 Africa’s Environmental History | Jane Carruthers 10 Bialowiez • a Primeval Forest: The Last Remnant of Pristine Woodlands Between Conservation and Eco- Tourism | Tomasz Samojlik 11 Disaster Coping and Prevention in the Swiss Alps in the Early 19 th Century | Agnes Nienhaus 12 Becoming Aware of the Seas’ Potential Richness | Interview with Poul Holm 14 From LTER to LTSER:The Socio- Economic Dimension of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research | Helmut Haberl 16 Can Cities Reduce Global Warming? Urban Development and the Carbon Cycle in Latin America | Summary Report 18 The Challenge of Stabilizing Atmospheric CO 2 Concentrations | Pep Canadell and Michael Raupach 20 Increasing IHDP’s Visibility Across the Globe | Debra Meyer-Wefering 21 In Brief 23 Meeting Calendar, Publications C ONTENTS ➤ In its time the earth has undergone many dramatic environmental shifts, from ice ages and hot spells to the emergence of new species and massive extinction spasms. Lately another historical moment of rapid environmental change has dawned, an era of environ- mental shock and awe, on this occasion brought on by the activities of a single species, the rogue primate homo sapiens sapiens. Humankind of course affected earth’s environment from the earliest moments of our career, and in thoroughgoing ways at least since the late Pleistocene megafauna extinc- tions. The intensity and scope of human impact upon the earth only grew with the transi- tions to agriculture that began roughly 11.000 years ago, and grew yet more with the initial harnessing of fossil fuels in the 18 th century. But what has occurred in the past three or four human generations is novel in scale and scope, and in some respects, in character. Some forms of modern environmental change are totally new. Until 1930, there were no CFCs anywhere on earth (nor presumably anywhere else either). The earth’s protective layer of stratospheric ozone remained robust. But by the late 20 th century, large quantities of CFCs had escaped to the stratosphere, significantly depleting the ozone shield. Until the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction in 1942 there were no nuclear wastes anywhere on earth, but within six decades there were millions of tons of them. But what makes the last century such an era of unusual environmental turbulence is more the scale and scope of venerable human practices such as farming and forest clear- ance, the use of fire and fuel, fishing and so forth. The following table gives a rough sense of the magnitude of some forms of environmental change over the last century. More data ➤ continued on page 2 MODERN GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY A Turbulent and Dramatic Scenario | BY J OHN MCNEILL ISSN 1727-155X FOCUS: ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Transcript
N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L H U M A N D I M E N S I O N S P R O G R A M M E O N G L O B A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L C H A N G EUPDATEIH
DP
02/2005
W W W . I H D P . O R GI H D P U p d a t e i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l H u m a n D i m e n s i o n s P r o g r a m m e o n G l o b a l E n v i r o m e n t a l C h a n g e ( I H D P ) , Wa l t e r - F l e x - S t r. 3 , 5 3 1 1 3 B o n n , G e r m a n y, V. i . S . d . P. : U l a L ö w
1 Modern Global Environmental History: A Turbulent and DramaticScenario | John McNeill
4 Integrated History and Future ofPeople on Earth (IHOPE) | Rik Leemans and Robert Costanza
6 A Socio-Ecological View on Industri-alization in Europe since the 19th
Century | Marina Fischer-Kowalski andFridolin Krausmann
8 Africa’s Environmental History | Jane Carruthers
10 Bialowiez•a Primeval Forest: The Last Remnant of Pristine WoodlandsBetween Conservation and Eco-Tourism | Tomasz Samojlik
11 Disaster Coping and Prevention in the Swiss Alps in the Early 19th Century | Agnes Nienhaus
12 Becoming Aware of the Seas’Potential Richness | Interview with Poul Holm
14 From LTER to LTSER: The Socio-Economic Dimension of Long-TermSocio-Ecological Research | Helmut Haberl
16 Can Cities Reduce Global Warming?Urban Development and the CarbonCycle in Latin America | Summary Report
18 The Challenge of Stabilizing Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations | Pep Canadell and Michael Raupach
➤ In its time the earth has undergone many dramatic environmental shifts, from iceages and hot spells to the emergence of new species and massive extinction spasms. Lately
another historical moment of rapid environmental change has dawned, an era of environ-
mental shock and awe, on this occasion brought on by the activities of a single species, the
rogue primate homo sapiens sapiens.
Humankind of course affected earth’s environment from the earliest moments of our
career, and in thoroughgoing ways at least since the late Pleistocene megafauna extinc-
tions. The intensity and scope of human impact upon the earth only grew with the transi-
tions to agriculture that began roughly 11.000 years ago, and grew yet more with the initial
harnessing of fossil fuels in the 18th century. But what has occurred in the past three or
four human generations is novel in scale and scope, and in some respects, in character.
Some forms of modern environmental change are totally new. Until 1930, there were
no CFCs anywhere on earth (nor presumably anywhere else either). The earth’s protective
layer of stratospheric ozone remained robust. But by the late 20th century, large quantities
of CFCs had escaped to the stratosphere, significantly depleting the ozone shield. Until the
first self-sustaining nuclear reaction in 1942 there were no nuclear wastes anywhere on
earth, but within six decades there were millions of tons of them.
But what makes the last century such an era of unusual environmental turbulence is
more the scale and scope of venerable human practices such as farming and forest clear-
ance, the use of fire and fuel, fishing and so forth. The following table gives a rough sense
of the magnitude of some forms of environmental change over the last century. More data
➤ continued on page 2
MODERN GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
HISTORY A Turbulent and Dramatic Scenario | BY JOHN MCNEILL
ISSN 1727-155X
FO CUS:
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
Environmental History
of the same sort may be found at the website maintained by the
Dutch Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezonheid en milieu (RIVM) at:
http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/hyde.
It is well to remember that environmental turbulence is nei-
ther all good nor all bad, and indeed almost all of it is good for
some people or some species, and bad for others.
Just why the last few human generations have been so envi-
ronmentally turbulent is not self-evident. Many interacting, co-
evolving variables are involved. Probably the most important
among them is the energy system that grew up around fossil
fuels such as coal and oil. Cheap and abundant energy in the
form of fossil fuels helped to create the smoky, sulfurous atmos-
pheres of industrial cities such as Pittsburgh or Glasgow (much
improved since 1960 one should note). Cheap energy also made
possible the modern mining industry, capable of crunching
through thousands of tons of rock to get a few grams of gold,
and the modern timber industry, which over the past 40 years
has done much to clear the forests of the world’s tropical lati-
tudes.
Cheap and abundant energy is of course only part of the
story. The 4-fold expansion of human numbers (from 1900 to
2000) and the 14-fold expansion of the world’s urban popula-
tion are also important driving forces helping to explain mod-
ern environmental history. So, of course, are matters not easily
reduced to numbers, such as the nature of modern technologies
and the systems in which they are embedded, the emergence of
(now) prevailing ideologies of mass consumption and econom-
ic growth, the pressures on state behavior generated by the
international political system and so forth (see McNeill 2000:
267-356).
E D I T O R I A L
The global environment changes at an ever-increasing
pace. Many of the changes are triggered by human
activities, and the magnitude of human-induced
changes is rising. Understanding of changes in the
earth system critically depends on an improved under-
standing of these ‘socio-economic drivers.’ Environ-
mental history, the theme of this UPDATE, is one of
the approaches to fill some of the gaps in our under-
standing of the past. The study of interactions
between human societies and their biophysical sur-
roundings emerged as a distinct field of scholarship in
the 1970s, as part of the then new environmental
movement. It has since then become increasingly pro-
fessionalized with the development of organizations
like the American (1979) and the European (1999)
Societies for Environmental History (ASEH and ESEH,
respectively). As the subject requires an understanding
of both natural and social systems, environmental his-
tory is an interdisciplinary field. This UPDATE gives an
overview of relevant issues in the light of the field’s
interdisciplinarity.
The introductory article by John McNeill stresses that the
emerging superpowers of the East, especially China,
may soon be responsible for a major part of global
human pressures on ecosystems. Rik Leemans and
Robert Costanza describe IHOPE, a new project
designed to increase our understanding of past
changes in society-nature interactions. IHOPE aims at
improving our ability to project plausible future sce-
narios. In casting a “socio-ecological view” on Euro-
pean industrialization over the last 200 years, Marina
Fischer-Kowalski and Fridolin Krausmann offer a bio-
physical analysis of long-term changes in society-
nature-interaction in Europe. Jane Carruthers gives a
brief overview of African environmental history and
analyses the (geo-)political framework, especially that
of colonization and decolonization, which has shaped
the discourse within the field. The interview with one
of the pioneers of marine environmental history, Poul
Holm, gives an intriguing insight into his field of
research. Agnes Nienhaus demonstrates how changes
in the understanding of nature, especially the scientific
and mechanistic worldview, have affected strategies of
disaster coping in the Swiss Alps. Tomasz Samojlik
introduces the environmental history of Bialowie•za
National Park, a large and ecologically extremely valu-
able woodland in Poland and Belarus, and points out
how humanities scholarship can inform initiatives for
sustainable tourism.
VERENA WINIWARTER, HELMUT HABERL,GUEST EDITORS
The Guest Editors are lecturing and researching at the Institute forInterdisciplinary Research, Universities of Vienna and Klagenfurt,Austria; www.iff.ac.at
A D R A M A T I C S C E N A R I O
freshwater use 9-fold increase
marine fish catch 35
cropland 2
irrigated area 5
pasture area 1.8
forest area 0.8 (i.e. 20% reduction)
CO2 emissions 17
SO2 emissions 13
Lead emissions 8
Cattle population 4
goat population 5
pig population 9
Table 1: Scale of Environmental Change, c.1890s-1990s (co-efficient of increase)
sour
ce:M
cNei
ll 20
00;R
IVM
Population 4
Urban proportion 3
Urban population 13
World economy 14
Industrial output 40
Energy use 13
Coal Production 7
Table 2: Some Driving Forces Behind EnvironmentalChange (co-efficients of increase, 1890s-1990s)
Sour
ce:M
cNei
ll 20
00 a
nd R
IVM
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 3
Environmental History
For most of the period from, say, 1870 to 1970 the industrial
heartlands of the world, mainly in Japan, Europe, and North
America, were undergoing the most dramatic environmental
turbulence. They suffered the most acute air pollution prob-
lems, the most severe chemical pollution (as opposed to bacteri-
ological pollution) of their waterways, and witnessed many
quick shifts in land use. They also helped to generate environ-
mental transformation elsewhere in the world, through their
hunger for energy and resources, their capital investment in
transport and other infrastructure-often undertaken in colonial
contexts-and the export of their ideas and ideologies. The rea-
sons behind this were simple enough: the most rapid industrial-
ization, the most rapid economic growth, and the greatest con-
centrations of political power were to be found in these lands.
In the last 30 or 40 years, however, things have changed. East
and Southeast Asia emerged as the zone of the greatest turbu-
lence, and lately have begun to generate environmental pressures
elsewhere in the world.
In some ways this is a return to patterns of the more distant
past. The emergence and centralization of the Chinese state,
from the Bronze Age onward, proved highly disruptive for peo-
ples and environments of East Asia, organizing a long trend of
deforestation and agricultural expansion (Elvin 2004; Reardon-
Anderson 2000). Despite the prevalence of religious ideologies
often held to be reverent of the natural environment – Bud-
dhism, Taoism – traditional China was neither an environmental
Eden nor a Shangri-la. By the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, the ecological impact of the Chinese economy made itself
felt throughout adjacent lands and out into the islands of the
Pacific, which for example, supplied Chinese consumers with
fragrant sandalwood and delicious sea slugs (McNeill 1994).
From the end of the 19th century, Japan’s rapidly industrializing
economy – and its imperial expansion between 1895 and 1945 –
meant that its ecological impact extended to Manchuria, Korea,
Taiwan, Micronesia, and parts of Southeast Asia.
China, meanwhile, underwent imperial collapse and political
chaos (c. 1910-49), followed by a political consolidation under
Mao Zedong which brought its own unique environmental con-
sequences (Shapiro 2001). Mao’s China took infrastructure
development as a sacred duty, building dams, roads, and rail-
roads with great gusto. For a few years, during the so-called Great
Leap Forward (1958-61) the government ordered peasant com-
munes to make steel in backyard furnaces, a tremendously ineffi-
cient process that led to widespread loss of vegetation (used as
fuel) and masses of nearly useless steel. Perhaps 10% of China’s
extant forests went into the furnaces. Beijing alone acquired
2,000 smelters with their attendant air pollution. Mao’s geopolit-
ical and other ambitions translated into environmental disrup-
tions across China, few of which can be regarded as beneficial
from the human point of view.
Since the end of the Mao era in 1976, China has taken part –
lately the leading part – in a general surge of economic growth
and industrialization in East and Southeast Asia. Between 1980
and 2000 China managed to raise per capita incomes about 10-
fold. Never in the annals of human history has so much econom-
ic growth been achieved so fast, and by so many. Meanwhile,
South Korea, which in 1960 was poorer on a per capita basis than
Ghana, in one generation became one of the world’s richer
countries and most efficient industrial producer in many areas of
heavy industry such as steel and shipbuilding. Japan rebounded
from the destruction and privation of the war years (1937-45) to
emerge again as East Asia’s leading industrial power, hungry for
fuel, timber, and other raw materials from adjacent lands. By the
1980s, Taiwan, and to some extent Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Thailand had also managed to transmogrify themselves into
Asian tigers in the world economy.
The astonishing rapidity of economic growth in this part of
the world inevitably brought environmental repercussions. East
Asian cities soon became among the most polluted in the world,
particularly those of north China, which burn quantities of
high-sulfur bituminous coal. Fresh water shortages came to
bedevil much of North China, as did more frequent dust storms,
a result of putting millions of hectares of grasslands under the
plow (Economy 2004; Smil 2004). In many respects, China’s
environmental problems by 2005 came to resemble those of the
United States as of 1905 – urban air pollution, regional water
shortages, rapid soil erosion on former grasslands – except China
was growing economically even faster than the U.S. of a century
ago, and had more than ten times as many people in roughly the
same territory.
Paralleling the U.S. and Britain of a century ago, China’s rapid
industrial growth has lately come to mean that China generates
environmental turbulence for other parts of the world, as does
Japan and, on a smaller scale, South Korea. The tiger economies
import massive amounts of grain, oil, timber, mineral ores and
other primary products from Southeast Asia, Australia, the Pacif-
ic Rim generally, and in the case of oil from the Persian Gulf, pro-
viding a fillip to extractive activities in all affected lands (King
1998). The 21st century bids fair to be just as environmentally
turbulent as was the 20th, and if it is, the historic resurgence of the
East Asian economies will be among the major reasons.
REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website
at www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm;http://www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm
JOHN MCNEILL is Professor of History at the History Depart-
ment and Cinco Hermanos Chair in Environmental and Inter-
national Affairs at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown
University, Washington DC, USA; [email protected];http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs
A D R A M A T I C S C E N A R I O
➤ The IHDP UPDATE newsletter features the activities ofthe International Human Dimensions Programme on GlobalEnvironmental Change and its research community.ISSN 1727-155XUPDATE is published by the IHDP Secretariat Walter-Flex-Strasse 3 53113 Bonn, Germany.EDITOR: Ula Löw, IHDP; [email protected] AND PRINT: Köllen Druck+Verlag GmbH, Bonn+Berlin,GermanyUPDATE is published four times per year. Sections of UPDATE maybe reproduced with acknowledgement to IHDP. Please send acopy of any reproduced material to the IHDP Secretariat.This newsletter is produced using funds by the German FederalMinistry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the UnitedStates National Science Foundation (NSF).The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarilyrepresent the position of IHDP or its sponsoring organizations
I H O P E
4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
Environmental History
INTRODUCTION
➤ Understanding past environmental change is seen as aprerequisite for understanding future change. But most past
changes were driven by natural trends and variability, while
future changes will be strongly determined by human activi-
ties. Over the last century, human activities have already
become so pervasive that they affect the whole system Earth in
a complex, interactive way. The Earth system now probably
operates beyond its normal historic mode (Steffen et al. 2004).
Earth System modelers have simulated this complex
dynamic behavior by stressing the environmental processes
within the Earth system. They now also start to recognize the
importance of human activities in their models (e.g. Rotmans
and de Vries 1997, Alcamo et al. 1998, Boumans et al. 2002),
but few comprehensive datasets have been available to initial-
ize and validate these models. Some research groups
(Ramankutty and Foley 1998, Klein Goldewijk 2000) have
filled part of this void by creating global historical databases of
land-cover change. Their approaches filled gaps in incomplete
statistical datasets by applying interpolations and model-
based extrapolations. These datasets have, for example,
improved simulations of the contemporary carbon cycle but
did not generate enhanced understanding of historic human
environment interactions.
Social scientists, in contrast, have traditionally portrayed
the history of the Earth in terms of the rise and fall of great
civilizations, wars, and specific human achievements. They
essentially ignored environmental contexts that often trig-
gered and mediated these events. Based on the last decade of
research, we are now beginning to understand the complex
ways in which humans have affected and have been affected by
Table 1: The agrarian and the industrial socio-ecological regime
Sour
ce:F
isch
er-K
owal
ski
and
Habe
rl 20
06
T H E A F R I C A N P A S T
8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
Environmental History
➤ Over the last twenty years a rich literature dealing with avariety of environmental issues – biodiversity conservation,
eco-justice, colonial agricultural policy and science, and land-
scape heritage among them – has developed about the African
past. A number of factors is responsible for this. First, Africa
(particularly southern Africa) enjoys a strong tradition of
social history that began in the 1970s when a younger genera-
tion of radical socialist scholars challenged older conservative
historiographies. Employing a Marxist paradigm of class rela-
tions to explain African dispossession, capitalist industrializa-
tion, the disruption of indigenous lifestyles and African resist-
ance to oppression, the environmental themes that were
implicit in much of this activist historiography have emerged
as seminal concerns in more recent years.1
A second factor was the growth of environmentalism as an
international political movement. In the South African situa-
tion of that time, this translated into robust debates around
environmental justice within the socialist order that was
expected to follow the end of apartheid. Using slogans like
‘apartheid divides, ecology unites’ and ‘the greening of our
country is basic to its healing’, environmentalism rode a wave of
euphoria.2 Third, in addition to responding to societal con-
cerns around eco-politics, environmental history was invigor-
ated by appropriating new sources. The environment itself was
reconceptualized and examined anew as a site of power.
Fourth, African environmental history emerged in order to
contest the point of view emanating from the United States that
environmentalism was modern North America’s achievement
alone. A number of Africanists were adamant that environ-
mentalism was a consequence of past imperial and colonial
eras and that investigating these periods was more ‘interesting
and innovative’, ‘more integrated, outward-looking and com-
parative ... in uncovering the processes and discourses of colo-
nial expansion and cultural encounter’ than the ‘ultra-national-
ist’ North American perspective.3
William Beinart, one of Africa’s leading practitioners,
believes that African environmental history has made its con-
tribution by refiguring colonialism in environmental terms. A
close analysis of colonial environmental responsibility and
African agency, he argues, influences our understanding of
power relations and environmental transformation in Africa.4
Many historians regard environmental history as an aspect of
African history rather than a stand-alone enterprise on a spe-
cific topic or one that is necessarily aligned with the concerns of
environmental historians in the rest of the world.
African environmental history has been described as a
‘rather large can of worms’ and the subject generally as ‘one of
the least understood [with] more inherent theoretical ambigu-
ities and methodological dilemmas than any other area of his-
tory’.5 In addition, Africa is a uniquely diverse continent and
the task of interpreting common themes seems daunting. Cov-
erage is very uneven. Researching in many parts of Africa is
hard and expensive work, fraught with cultural and language
barriers and a paucity both of oral and documentary sources.
Another difficulty relates to the contestation around intellectu-
al and disciplinary boundaries, particularly anthropology-his-
tory and archaeology-history. For some regions, inspiring work
by gifted individuals (such as Terence Ranger with respect to
Zimbabwe6) has played a large part in engaging other enthusi-
astic scholars and creating a vibrant historiography, but other
areas have not found the champions they deserved. It has not
gone unnoticed that very little African environmental history is
written by indigenous Africans and a great deal by ‘outsiders’7
and ‘foreigners’ who may not have sufficient African insights.8
Capacity-building and academic encouragement for black
African historians is a real challenge.9
Because of Africa’s colonial history of subjugation, it is not
surprising that there has been an emphasis on the history of
environmental injustice and eco-racism. Other important
themes relate to those that have practical relevance to econom-
ic development, including agriculture, eco-tourism and the
extraction and export of natural resources. Reconceptualizing
the colonial experience – so fundamental to many parts of
Africa – is proving a fruitful avenue of investigation, generating
nuances and uncovering agencies. The cultural history of colo-
nial and imperial science is another high-growth area.
While these are important contributions, there are substan-
tial gaps in African environmental history and there are sub-
jects as well as places that have received very little attention.
Generally speaking, the historiography lacks work on disease,
urban and bioregional studies, cultural and visual constructs of
African space and place, explorations of ‘deep time’ and aspects
of public history. There is also an overall absence of active col-
laboration between historians and other disciplines which is
counter-productive.
Any historical field is influenced by the concerns of its time
and the rise of environmentalism has already been mentioned
as a catalyst to rethinking history within an environmental par-
adigm of the 1980s and 1990s. But ‘Africa’ itself is, at the begin-
ning of the 21st century, being reconceptualized from within.
While history has always been shifting and contested terrain,
current debates about who ‘owns’ history and heritage and who
has the ‘right’ to speak for cultural diversity are more heated
than they have been in the past. This affects Africa directly and
South Africa in particular.
During the years of apartheid from 1948 to 1994, South
Africa had an uneasy relationship with the rest of Africa, one
that, generally speaking, denied or minimized African connec-
tions and celebrated links with the ‘civilized’ West. Since 1994 the
new South African government, which received great support
from the rest of Africa when it was an outlawed liberation move-
ment, has realigned itself with Africa and moved away from
Europe and the United States. The discourse is often overtly anti-
West and promotes ‘African solutions for African problems’. A
recent newspaper article puts it thus: ‘ ... part of the liberation of
South Africa is to transform it from a European outpost in Africa
into an African country with a predominantly African cultural
character ...’10 As far as the cultural construction of the environ-
ment is concerned, this is fundamentally encapsulated in the
Parliamentary Millennium Project, a permanent exhibition of
AFRICA’S ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY BY JANE CARRUTHERS
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 9
Environmental HistoryT H E A F R I C A N P A S T
antique maps owned by the South African Parliament in Cape
Town. This display, together with its educational outreach pro-
gramme, is explicitly constructed to minimize the European per-
spective on and contribution to Africa and to emphasize pre-
colonial African map-making and Chinese cartographical
knowledge about Africa well in advance of its ‘discovery’ by
Europe.11 The significance of the cultural pride that is generated
can be appreciated through the ‘African Renaissance’, a pan-
African intellectual movement that encourages Africans to
reconnect with each other and with an honourable precolonial
heritage.12 Because academic environmental history is taking a
leading role in reclaiming African agency and possession, it is
paradoxical that so much of
the current non-historical
literature about Africa’s
environmental issues con-
tinues to reflect an inaccu-
rate and pessimistic percep-
tion of African inaction,
inertia and helplessness.
The colonial experience
was, without doubt, the
most defining historical
experience of the conti-
nent, at least south of the
Sahara, but it was too
diverse to be encapsulated
within a single postcolonial
theory. As Sachs argues,
much of the postcolonial
perspective locks history –
including environmental history – into a stereotype of an
unchanging bi-fissured exploitative relationship between mono-
lithic groups of colonizer and colonized, recognizing neither
change over time nor specific historical context.13 In most parts
of Africa, both colonized and colonizers were highly diversified
and the imposition of an over-arching ‘settler mentality’ was
uneven, specific, and always challenged strongly by continuous
African resistance. Beinart refers to a ‘struggle to free historiogra-
phy and social studies from narratives of dependence, victim-
hood and romanticism’ and this is the theoretical, even activist,
role that environmental history encourages.14 In this regard the
research of Melissa Leach, James Fairhead, James McCann and
other environmental historians has gone a long way to changing
both historical and current thinking about African responses to
the environment.15 Very little, however, is still known about what
indigenous or authentic regional natural resource strategies
might have been, nor how they might be revived or integrated
into modern conservation biology and management. There are
‘explicit claims about who best understands African environ-
ments, and who should have the right to control them – whether
scientists, national governments or local people. Environmental-
ists sometimes emphasize ... responsibility to future generations
for the well-being of the planet ... Africanists by contrast, some-
times see access to resources as the critical issue for communities
... All such approaches imply both historical investigation and
historical judgment.’16
That Africans are taking control of many of the theoretical
debates around conservation thinking is evident from Africa’s
hosting of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg in 2002 and of the Fifth World Parks Congress in
Durban in September 2003.17 Natural resources exist in disre-
gard of national boundaries and, depending on how they are
utilized, they have the power both to fracture or to unify com-
munities. Because of this, as well as reflecting a greater African-
ist perspective, transnational themes are emerging as signifi-
cant in African environmental history.18 More recently there
has been critical literature that moves the discussion away from
social and conservation policy and considers issues of identity
and cross-cultural African concerns, particularly the paradox
of a nationalism that uses ‘nature’ to further the aims of local
and international capital
and the aspirations of a
global elite.19
The present is a time of
shifting ideas around en-
vironmental conservation
that cry out for historical
analysis and interdiscipli-
nary consideration.20 Con-
servation managers use
history – stories about the
past – simplistically in
order to bolster policy and
entrenched positions21 but
also, one suspects, because
they are somewhat afraid
of historical analysis, igno-
rant of historical context,
wary of professional histo-
rians and unsure of how best to combine the humanities and
conservation science.
Environmental historians have been active in analysing
ideas around colonial agricultural science and have played a
modest role in bringing together the sciences and humani-
ties. Whether African environments were ‘degrading’ and
‘declining’ as so often stated, is a case in point, and historians
have begun to unpack what these have meant in specific
places at specific times.22 African historians have also started
to consider issues relating to the invasion of alien species of
plants and their effect on cultural constructs of nature.23 The
relationship betwen humans and wildlife has loomed large in
African environmental history from the start. Imperial (par-
ticularly British) attitudes to wildlife and game protection
has been a significant strand in African environmental histo-
ry. The rise of national parks and game reserves has been dis-
sected and an extensive literature has developed.24
The environmental history of Africa is diverse, informa-
tive and becoming richly layered. It provides a highly pro-
fessional, scholarly and innovative interpretation of the
African past.
REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website
at www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm
JANE CARRUTHERS is Senior Lecturer at the Department of
History, University of South Africa; [email protected];www.unisa.ac.za
A BaTswana hartebeest hunt. Contemporary painting byCharles Bell, from W.F. Lye, ed., Andrew Smith’s Journal ofhis Expedition into the Interior of South Africa, 1834–1836
(Cape Town: Balkema, 1975)
F O R E S T M A N A G E M E N T
1 0 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
Environmental History
➤ Bialowie •za Primeval Forest (BPF) which covers about 1500
km2 is not the largest woodland in Poland and Belarus, but it is
undoubtedly the most recognized one. The fragments of
primeval forest that survived many wars, political changes and
management regimes, make Bia lowie •za a special place for
everyone interested in natural processes as undisturbed by
humans, as it is possible in European lowlands. A central part of
the forest, straddling the Pol-
ish-Belarussian border, is
strictly protected; on the Polish
side, Bialowie•za National Park
covers over 100 km2, and on
the Belarussian side, the strict
reserve covers about 160 km2. It
was granted a status of World
Heritage Site and UNESCO’s
Man and Biosphere Reserve.
However, the larger part of the
forest on both sides is currently
exploited for timber, though
with varying intensity.
Annually, 130,000 tourists
visit BPF to see European
bison, hike in primeval woods, do bird-watching, and perform
other ecologically-oriented activities. Tourism is a serious
source of income for the local community, but further increase
of visitors has its limits. Pristine forest is a fragile ecosystem.
Thus, already now, the access to the reserve is strictly regulated.
With its nearly 200-year tradition, the scientific research in
BPF has predominantly focused on pristine nature, as biologists
tended to perceive the great primeval forest of Bialowie•za as an
ecological model and reference point for other temperate
ecosystems in Europe (eg. Falinski 1986). Human footprints in
BPF, nicely featured in popular books (eg. Schama 1995), have
only recently become subject of scientific endeavours. Studies in
environmental history of BPF may answer the question how the
Forest located in the heart of Europe survived in such a good
condition, and what traces of past human activities are still visi-
ble in the ecosystem. As evidenced by scarce archaeological,
palynological, and written sources available, in historical times
BPF was slightly but steadily influenced by humans, with patch-
es of deforested land constituting 5-15% of the contemporary
Forest area. Ancient and early medieval settlers inhabited small
glades inside the forest, and as of the 14th century BPF became a
strictly protected royal game preserve of Polish kings, Lithuan-
ian dukes, and (in the 19th century) Russian czars. The research
conducted so far suggests that the centuries-long administrative
protection, combined with traditional sustainable use of non-
timber resources, has led to preservation of the forest itself and
also allowed for the survival of its most fascinating animal, the
European bison (Samojlik and Jedrzejewska 2004). It was only
in the 20th century, that economic-scale timber exploitation
began to threaten the natural character of BPF.
The environmental history study currently carried out in
BPF aims at reconstructing the main ways of forest use in the
past and determining their impact on the ecosystem. Such
results can be translated into concrete actions, both in the fields
of conservation as well as eco-tourism. First, the reconstruction
of the extent, durability, type, and role of human impact on the
forest through time is highly relevant to present protection
needs. It can give conservationists
new historical arguments for
strengthening and adjusting the
protection rules and regimes. The
historical context has already been
used by ecologists in the cam-
paign for enlarging the Bialowie•za
National Park (created in 1921
and expanded in 1996), and
establishing a small nature-
archaeological reserve in 1979.
Also, by showing how sustainable
use was functioning in the past,
environmental history may
change the way of thinking about
forest usage nowadays. Hopefully,
the decision-makers will be guided towards sustainable multi-
purpose use of various resources rather than simply timber
exploitation.
The reconstruction of the past could also be a magnet for
visitors. Ancient barrow and stone graves surrounded by the old
trees, places with well-recognized history of settlement, and for-
est ranges connected with royal hunts appeal to imagination.
Some of the existing tourist trails already refer to the history of
BPF, but usually in a rather general and banal way. This could be
improved by communicating the research results. Yet another
possibility is the reconstruction of traditional crafts (such as
forest beekeeping, traditional use of mushrooms, medicinal
plants, forest fruits, wood types) in the form of an outdoor
museum or seasonal workshops.
Last but not least, environmental history may help forest
managers to preserve or restore some old, relic forms of anthro-
pogenic landscape within BPF, such as wooded meadows, and
glades with single ancient oaks, which are often reservoirs of a
unique biodiversity of plants and invertebrates. Conclusively it
can be said that, in the case of the Bialowie•za Primeval Forest,
environmental history appears to have a good potential of link-
ing conservation needs to sustainable eco-tourism develop-
ment.
REFERENCES at www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm
TOMASZ SAMOJLIK is Research Fellow at the Mammal Research
BIALOWIE •ZA PRIMEVAL FOREST The Last Remnant of Pristine Woodlands Between Conservation and Eco-Tourism
BY TOMASZ SAMOJLIK
European bison, the largest European land animal, roaming inBia lowie •za Primeval Forest, Poland
Phot
o by
R.K
owal
czyk
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 1
Environmental History
result of a general change in the way how society identified social
and natural phenomena as «problematic», and how it thought to
solve these problems. This redefinition has to be regarded as a
social process and cannot be separated from the actors putting it
forward – actors who also pursue their own interests. A central
subject of research is therefore the identification of various social
groups, their interests and respective approaches in developing
natural hazard management strategies.
As a result of these changes, scientifically or technically trained
experts became the ones who increasingly influenced the natural
environment. This is most evident in the example of river regula-
tions. These rules often changed the borders between communi-
ties. In addition, newly acquired land property had to be attrib-
uted to owners and to its intended use. The new role that the engi-
neers took up also created tension: Many of their disaster man-
agement solutions were not only contrary to traditional knowl-
edge, but also to economic interests and local political structures.
Thus it is scarcely surprising that the experts’ commitment to sci-
entific progress and technical feasibility sometimes met social
limitations, as the above-discussed example of Felsberg shows.
Reform-oriented philanthropists and their enlightened soci-
eties played a central role in establishing these experts, as well as in
introducing rational approaches towards managing natural haz-
ards. They initiated first discussions and private projects of
hydraulic engineering and helped to fund relief measures through
relief campaigns for the victims of natural disasters. They increas-
ingly subordinated these measures to rational procedures such as
collecting statistical data about the losses, applying mathematical
formulas to distribution and public reporting. Above all, these
societies introduced the use of donations for prevention. Stressing
the need for the improvement of traditional structures these cam-
paigns achieved some successes in modernizing infrastructure. It
can be argued therefore, that the philanthropists used their power
in the distribution of resources to impose their own approaches
on an agrarian society that did not necessarily share their views.
As the technical approaches proved their value and the state
increased its financial power, Government finally took over origi-
nally private initiatives, introduced subsidies for preventive infra-
structure and issued a new legislation on the use of natural
resources.
The new measures of modern disaster management resulted
in fundamental changes in the alpine landscape which are still
shaping the face of the region today. The previously avoided valley
plains became a central area for living, agriculture, industry and
infrastructure. While these changes initially were due to an
increased security level, they nevertheless led to an expanding
exposure to the impacts of natural hazards.
REFERENCES at www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm
AGNES NIENHAUS is a Junior Researcher at the Department
of Economic, Social and Environmental History at the Uni-
versity of Berne, Switzerland; [email protected];www.wsu.hist.unibe.ch
D I S A S T E R P R E V E N T I O N
➤ Between 1834 and 1843, the rocks above the village ofFelsberg in Grisons, eastern Switzerland, started to move. Under a
lot of public attention experts surveyed the opening cleavages. In
1843 they forecasted an enormous rockslide, but after two minor
rockslides without much damage in 1843 and 1844, the geological
situation stabilized. Nevertheless a governmental commission
proposed to resettle all villagers into a new model village. In an
international campaign philanthropic societies raised funds for
this resettlement programme. But as the forecasted disaster never
eventuated, the resettlement met increasing communal resist-
ance. In the end, Felsberg consisted of two separate villages whose
inhabitants were quarrelling about the distribution of public
infrastructure for decades.
The case of Felsberg is one of several case studies analysed in
the course of a dissertation undertaken within a wider historical
disaster research framework at the University of Berne. The
research specifically examines concepts of coping with natural
disasters (avalanches, floods and rockslides) in Grisons during the
first half of the 19th century. In this period Grisons, the largest
alpine canton in Switzerland, underwent fundamental changes
regarding its political structure and culture. How these changes
are reflected in natural hazard management shall be shown in this
paper.
Far into the 19th century, religious practices formed one of the
main aspects of natural hazard management – such as praying
and the ringing of the church bells during times of danger or the
cult of patron saints in processions, pilgrimages and vows to
ensure the saints’ help in the future and remember their help in
the past. Christian theological interpretations of God’s punish-
ment often mixed with popular beliefs in devils and witches. Until
the 19th century, technical preventive measures – such as special
construction methods for buildings to reduce avalanche damage,
avalanche forests and basic hydraulic structures – were limited to
the individual community level.With the enlightenment era, cop-
ing strategies to deal with natural disasters changed fundamental-
ly. A new, mechanistic and scientific understanding of nature
resulted in more research on the dynamics of environmental
processes. Disastrous events were increasingly linked to natural
processes on a regional instead of a local level. Religious interpre-
tations and practices were gradually replaced by scientific expla-
nations and technical solutions. Based on a scientifically oriented
cause-and-effect study, discussions emerged on how to improve
the preventive protection infrastructure. Flooding danger in the
valley areas was tackled by means of new hydraulic engineering
approaches which aimed simultaneously at reducing damages
and winning new land for cultivation. As the deforestation of the
mountains – due to the surging wood export during the industri-
alization period – was considered as a major cause of floods,
efforts emerged to halt deforestation by means of forestry laws
and better supervision of the various economic uses of the forests’
resources.
The process of scientification was not only just a consequence
of the progressing scientific knowledge. In accordance with the
current historical debate, scientification can be regarded as the
DISASTER COPING AND PREVENTION IN THE SWISS
ALPS IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY
M A R I T I M E H I S T O R Y
1 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
Interview
➤ Poul Holm is Professor of Maritime History at theUniversity of Southern Denmark, President of the European
Society for Environmental History, and Chairman of the Dan-
ish Research Council for the Humanities. He is also Internation-
al Chair of the History of Marine Animal Populations Project
(HMAP).
Q: Can you outline the focus of your work and the research
agenda of the HMAP?
My main focus is on the environmental history of the
world’s oceans. The questions I address in my work mainly
relate to what has been the impact of humans on life in the
world’s oceans. I am also utilizing historical documentations
and historical archives to help build longer time series and
effectively shift the baseline of our thinking about biodiversity
and long-term changes in marine life. It is an interaction
between environmental history and marine science. So, the
research agenda of HMAP basically encompasses the two
dimensions of long-term historical change in the natural habi-
tat, and the impact of humans on the seas.
Q: Who is working in HMAP?
HMAP is currently bringing together marine scientists,
fisheries historians and ecologists. This kind of research com-
munity has not really been in existence a few years ago, so it is
very innovative, and a developing environment – many
researchers are coming into the field and many seminal papers
have been published in the last four to five years.
Q: Can you give us some interesting examples of the project’s
research?
One of the real eye-openers and a stimulus to HMAP was
Jeremy Jackson’s studies of the green turtle in the Caribbean,
published in 1997. It can be called the first marine-historical
ecological paper. He used British colonial archives to docu-
ment the enormous impact of human fisheries in the
Caribbean in the 17th century, which effectively led to a
regime shift in the Caribbean. This shift was caused by a
strong preference for turtle in Europe. They were exported in
hundreds of thousands. Based on colonial customs records,
Jackson back-casted the effects on the marine turtle popula-
tion and calculated the carrying capacity of the Caribbean.
What came out was a dramatic decline in the turtle popula-
tion. With this finding, he was also able to explain the changes
in the benthic ecosystems. The turtles – the ‘lawn-mowers’ of
the Caribbean – were herbivorous animals, feeding on the
plants and sea grasses on the sea bottom. With their disap-
pearance, the sea bottom turned into a benthic environment
which was dominated by sea urchins and which changes the
whole set-up of the ecosystem and the food-web. With this
dramatic change, which was already caused in the 17th and
18th century, we have irrevocably lost the pristine ecosystem of
the Caribbean.
Q: What lesson can be
learnt from this intervention?
Perhaps the most salient
lesson we can learn from
these historical studies is
that pristine nature is not a
useful concept to us when
we think about the world’s
oceans. By and large, people
think that the impacts of
humans have only really
come into existence in the
last thirty to fifty years, and
that there are no major
extinctions yet. That is not true. We are seeing large-scale com-
mercial extinctions, and we are seeing regime shifts that have
been caused not only by recent activities but actually have
been taking place over the last four to five hundred years. The
effect of early human contact with marine populations is
much more dramatic than we have realized previously.
We have another very good example from Australia. Neil
Klaer did a study for the Australian Fisheries Administration,
the CSIRO, where he used business archives of Australian
trawling companies of the early 20th century. The findings
show that the first two decades of the 20th century which saw
the introduction of modern-type steam trawlers in Southeast-
Australia caused a fundamental change of the ecosystem of,
for example, Botany Bay off Sydney. With the publication of
that report the CSIRO has actually stated that, in the future,
historical references need to be taken into account when con-
servation targets are determined. This is a major break-
through for environmental history – managers pick up the
message and actually say themselves that, if we push back the
reference points, we realize that we have lost very much in the
sea. So much has changed already that we are challenged in
our views on what a sustainable fishery is. Present fisheries
may be sustainable only at a very basic level, and at a very
deprived level for the ecosystem. The food-webs may have
been much more elaborate previously.
Q: So the findings are even worse than what we have thought
before?
The historical exercise is indeed quite depressing. When we
shift our baseline and realize that we should look beyond the
past generation of marine biological research and begin inves-
tigating historical records it becomes blatantly clear how much
we have lost. Sometimes, however, we get reassured that things
change and stocks rebuild. There is a lot more resilience than
we have thought. We can document very few actual extinctions
of marine species of commercial fisheries, and of related
species. We do see a lot of ‘commercial extinctions’, meaning
that the stocks are no longer economically viable but the
stocks could be rebuilt. So, we are becoming much more aware
of the potential richness of the seas. You can take this as the
BECOMING AWARE OF THE SEAS’ POTENTIAL RICHNESS
Poul Holm
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 3
Interview
optimistic message – the productivity and resilience of the
oceans is much bigger than we have thought.
Q: What kind of policy results are you aiming at?
What we want to do is interact with fisheries managers,
and also with nature conservation agencies as regards biodi-
versity. I think the historical approach will feed into our
thinking of marine protected areas, as this approach provides
essential information for conservation. Environmental histo-
ry should also feed into our thinking about climate change.
We are also documenting a lot of long-term interactions
between climate change and marine populations. For exam-
ple, we now have a wonderful documentation of 500 years of
herring fisheries in the North Sea where we were able to
establish catch-per-unit-effort series over a very long time
span. We are working with climatologists to read the climate
signal from these changes and we should be able to address
some of the big puzzles of environmental history with regard
to climate as a main driver.
One of the big puzzles of climate and marine life is the so-
called ‘Bohuslan phenomenon’ which is the fact that in a cen-
tury-long perspective you see the occurrence of enormous
schools of herring off the Swedish coast of Bohuslan. They are
there for two, three decades and suddenly disappear again.
That is a phenomenon which we observe in many natural sys-
tems. The challenge is to get an understanding of what is driv-
ing these enormous outbursts of one species. Historical
analysis is opening new ways to analyse the climate as a likely
main driver of this phenomenon.
Q: Is active policy collaboration already happening?
Personally, I am in close collaboration with the Danish
Institute for Fisheries Research. Another clear signal that this
is an emerging field is that they have co-funded a new
research professorship in historical marine ecology. It is
spreading across the globe that managers need to gain a
longer perspective. I already mentioned the report of the Aus-
tralian Fisheries Administration, CSIRO. Also, this year in
early March, the journal ‘Frontiers in Ecology’ had a lead arti-
cle by Andrew Rosenberg on the calculation of the Gulf of
Maine’s historical biomass of cod stock in the 1850s based on
a huge collaborative research project. They were able to show
that the historical stocks in the 1850s were ten to fifteen times
larger than the conservation targets that are set today for the
Gulf of Maine. So, not just the actual biomass that is present
but even the perceived potential carrying capacity for the Gulf
of Maine is now being challenged with this historical infor-
mation.
This type of research and awareness building is happening
in a lot of places mainly within the History of Marine Animal
Populations Project. It is an international community that has
grown in the course of the last five years only. We began in
2000 and we will have our first World Conference in October
this year, called ‘Oceans Past’*. This will be an exciting next
move where we will see a lot of this work on marine history
coming forward and, hopefully, getting across to managers
and also to the wider public.
Q: What are the research challenges in assessing biodiversity?
The challenge in assessing biodiversity is that, of course,
most of the historical data is generated from commercial catch
statistics which will not necessarily tell us a lot about biodiversi-
ty. We are trying to develop a broader collaboration which also
looks at habitat changes because that will have enormous infor-
mational potential for understanding biodiversity changes. If
we even could begin to understand how we have changed sea
bottoms, for example, or the way that we have changed our
coastal defences. That is a major driver for biodiversity change.
We also need to develop the collaboration with archaeolo-
gists because their kitchen-midden sites will tell us a lot about
the actual marine species that were taken out of the seas.
Kitchen-midden sites are shell banks piled on the shorelines
since prehistorical times by humans who dumped the shells of
oysters, shellfish or crayfish. These sites have built up well into
the 19th century and they have real potential for research! In
HMAP, we are now building a large project where we undertake
a comparative study of these kitchen-middens. We find that
these are excellent documentations of very long-term changes
in marine biodiversity – all kind of creatures have been dumped
there and they are often well-preserved.
Q: Can you share with us some of your insights on interdiscipli-
nary studies, particularly of biodiversity?
One thing to really take to heart in an interdisciplinary collab-
oration is the mutual respect of the disciplines. There needs to be
an intellectual benefit to both disciplines – both to marine scien-
tists and to historians. Also, we need to identify as many disci-
plines that can provide an insight as possible. Do not restrict
yourself to just two or three disciplines – this is multi-disciplinary
work. You need very hard science, i.e., you can learn a lot from
isotope analysis, but you need to spread out to, at least, history,
archaeology, anthropology, to make it a multi-disciplinary team
work. No one discipline can be said to be privileged in its ability
to inform us on long-term changes in biodiversity.
So, one important thing is to be inclusive. At the same time
we need to raise tough questions. We need to ask: ‘what do we
know, what don’t we know and what could we know?’ And this
‘what could we know’ is extremely interesting because it can be a
driver to get us out of the research agenda that is often contained
within one discipline (and will not talk to other disciplines). So
we need to really come from the outside and ask a pertinent
question and say, let us put our brains together and address the
overarching question. It is not about forgetting your disciplinary
origin but to bring in your skills while at the same time standing
outside the restrictive research agenda of your own discipline
which may be fully understandable from a historical point of
view but which often will not allow us to have interdisciplinary
collaboration.
* The Conference ‘Oceans Past: Multidisciplinary Perspec-tives on the History of Marine Animal Population’ will takeplace in Kolding, Denmark, from 24 to 27 October 2005;www. Marbef.org
FROM LTER TO LTSER The Socio-Economic Dimension of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research
liphe4 summer schoolProcedures and Toolkits for Integrated and ParticipatoryAnalysis of Sustainability
Scope of the Summer School
The purpose of the summer school is to provide a referencepoint on the state of the art in the field of sustainabledevelopment studies to young researchers and students.
2005 Themes
(i) Integrated Assessment for sustainability – epistemo-logical and conceptual issues
(ii) Social metabolism on multiple scales (iii) Tool and methods for organizing scientific information
for decision making (iv) Resources, time, and land – operationalizing biophysi-
cal constraints(v) Geographical Information Systems applied to Integrat-
ed Analysis of Sustainability(vi) Participatory approaches and Multicriteria Evaluation
MethodsPlease download the detailed schedule of the Liphe4 –CEMACAM Summer School here http://www.liphe4.org/programme.doc
Participants
The summer school invites PhD and Master students, as wellas young professionals, interested in problems related tosustainable development and natural resource management.Participants should have proficiency in English, which is theworking language of the event. In addition, a basic knowl-edge of analytical tools used in the field of Ecological Eco-nomics is preferred. The total number of participants willnot exceed 30 to allow for close interaction between partic-ipants and teachers.
The modalities of application and selection are availableat: http://www.liphe4.org/application.html Send the application form to Jesus Ramos [email protected] not later than June 25, 2005.
Adaptive Management and Resilience� Adaptation to Extreme Events:Concepts and Results from South Asia� Climate Change / Vulnerability – Conceptual Frameworks� Hazards and Vulnerability� Local Responses to Environmental Stress and Risks� Local Strategies for Adapting Water Resources Management in Semi Arid Environments
under Global Change� Vulnerability: Social and Legal Dimensions and Early Warning� Vulnerability to Climate Change� Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Developing World� Vulnerability to Climate Variability and Change
Coastal Zones,Human Use of Oceans� Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change� Integrating Human Dimensions and Coastal Zone Management� Marine Risks and Sustainability
Environmental History� Historical Depth,Temporal Patterns, and Trajectory
Global Environmental Change and Human Security� Arctic Environmental Change – A Bellwether of Global Changes� Droughts, Poverty and Livelihoods:Key Issues from Southern Africa� Early Warning of Natural Hazards and Disaster� Environment,Development, and Sustainable Peace� Environmental Change,Conflict and Vulnerability in Africa� Environmental Migrants and Refugees� Global Environmental Change, Equity, and Human Security� Global Environmental Change,Gender, and Human Security� Human Security and Climate Change� Transboundary Water Governance: Lessons learned in Southern Africa
Globalization and Global Environmental Change� Differential Vulnerability of Local Communities to Global Economic and Environmental
Changes:Modelling Agent’s Behaviour� Lifestyle Dynamics,Consumption Patterns and Global Environmental Change� Migration and its Impact on Forest Governance and Management� The Role of the Human Dimension in the Global Water System Project
Human Dimensions of Carbon and Water Management,Food and Health� Controlling GHG Emissions� Globalization, Sustainability and Health� Green-house Gases,Carbon Cycle� Human Dimension in Water Management – Experiences from European Research� Human Dimensions of the Carbon Cycle:Networks of Research and Policy Making� Institutional Coordination among Stakeholders for Environmental Risk Management in
large River Basins� Land Use Changes and Social Systems – Linkages to Water Use and Resource Manage-
ment� Water Management
Industrial Transformation� Analysing and Managing Societal Transitions� Analysing the Dynamic of Transitions towards Sustainability – and How to Induce them?� Entrepreneurship Policy and Global Change. Industrial Transformation in Comparative
Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change� Ecologies of Scale:Multi-Level Environmental Governance� Enhancing Compliance in Environmental Governance� Environmental Governance within the Local-Global Interplay:Understanding the Chang-
ing Role of the State in a Multilevel Setting� Global Institutions:Theoretical Questions� Globalization, Institutional Change and Vulnerability� Human Dimensions of Natural Disasters Risk Reduction:Comparative Analysis of Institu-
tions and Mitigation Responses to River Floods in Asia� Institutional Dimensions of Food Systems Studies across Spatial Scales� Institutions in Africa� Intermediating Pathways to Sustainability� International Environmental Regimes� Local, Regional, and International Institutions to Reduce Conflict and Increase Capacity
for Restoration, Protection, and Usage of Transboundary Waters� National Institutions in Latin America and Asia� Non-state Authority and Legitimacy in Global Environmental Governance� Reflexive Governance for Sustainable Development� Resilience and Vulnerability in Environmental and Resource Regimes
Land-Use/ Land-Cover Change� Agriculture and Land Use� Beefing up the World: Spatial Dynamics of Global Livestock Systems� Beyond the Primary Transition: Land Use and Land Cover Change in Agricultural Areas� Biodiversity Conservation� Contextualizing the Pixel:Comparing Continuous and Discrete Methods for Regional
Studies of Human Dimensions on Land-Use/Cover Change (LUCC) Research� Drought Preparedness in the Context of Global Desertification� Effects of Postsocialist Transformations on Land Use and Agrarian Institutions
� Global and Regional Forest Cover Monitoring� Household Decision Making Under Uncertainty:Concepts and Methods� Human Dimensions of Landscape Changes in the Amazon� Human Dimensions of Local LUCC in Asia� Impact of Land Use Change on Soil Resources� Land Use/ Cover Change and Ecological Security Assessment in Asia – The 5th Interna-
tional Colloquium on Land Use/ Cover Change and Environmental Issues in Asia� LUCC Methods: Spatial Analysis, Remote Sensing, Landscape Change� LUCC:Case Studies, Forests� LUCC:Case Studies, Forests,Agro-pastoral Systems� LUCC:Models,Decision-making, Scenarios� Modeling Environmental and Socio-economic Impacts of Land Use� Modeling Land Use Dynamics:The Challenge to Relate Process and Pattern� Multi-scale Scenario Development: Linking Narratives Stories and LUCC Models� Rates and Patterns of Global Land Cover Change� The Forest Transition� Understanding Biodiversity� World Market, Farmers and States
Methods in Human – Environment Studies� Can We Study Global Change without Global Data? Will Collaborate with the Panel on
“Open Access to the Global Change Data and Information in Developing Countries”� Integrated Modelling� Methods in Human-Environment Studies:What Does the World Look Like Beyond
Regression?� Modeling and Collaborative Planning within a Multi-Agent Framework – Empirical
Approaches and Methods� New Ontologies: Exploring the Anthropo-Sphere� Spatial Theory and Methodologies for Integrated Socio-Economic and Biophysical Analysis
and Modelling of Land Use Change: an International Test of Theory and Method and aComparative Synthesis of Change at Local and Regional Scales
� Remote Sensing and Early Warning� Remote Sensing and GMES as Tools for Environmental and Human Security� Uncertainty in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation:Challenges for IPCC AR4
Regional Approaches to Human – Environment Studies� Case Studies on Adaptation� Environmental Ethics� Making Global Change Research Matter in Mountain Regions� Perspectives on Adaptation to Climate Change� Reframing Sustainability Issues, in Response to Global Governance and Environmental
Change in Africa� Regional Approaches to Food Systems Studies� Social Aspects of Desertification� Urban Transformation and Reform for Sustainability� Various Case Studies on Climate Change
Science – Policy Interface in Global Environmental Change� Climate Change Needs Social Change:The Role of Communication� Climate Change Policy and Science Interface:Case Studies of Adaptation from the Devel-
oping World� Climate Change Science and Policy Interface:An Overview of Adaptation Research and
Application� Climate Change, Energy and Policy� Climate Policy� Climate Science Policy Assessment and Research� Cross-cutting Themes in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report� Enhancing the Contribution of Research-Based Knowledge to the Pursuit of Sustainability� Human Dimensions Research in the IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report� Law and Policy� Mainstreaming Climate Change Concerns in Development Policy: Issues and Challenges
for Asian Countries� Making Population-Environment Research Relevant to Policy Makers� Population and Environment Relations� Science – Policy and Stakeholders� The Challenge of Integrating Tourism into Current and Future Climate Change Policy� The Science-Policy Interface – Integrating Climate Information into Decision Making
Sustainable Development� Consumption and Choices:The Behavioural Side of the Problem� Consumption in Developed and Developing Countries� Psychological Perspectives on Sustainable Development� South North Dialogue on Equity in the Greenhouse� The Politics of Sustainable Consumption within an Area of Global Environmental Change� Where Do the Poor Live? What Have We Learned in the Past Decade?
Urbanization� A Two-Way Lane:Cities as Drivers and Targets of Climate Change� Globalization,Megacities and Health� Urban Environment� Urban Environmental Management and Urban Planning� Urban Structure and Growth� Urbanization and Global Environmental Change� Urbanization and LUCC� Urbanization in West Africa: Patterns, Processes and Implications for Land Use and Land
Cover
SESSIONS ACCEPTED FOR THE 6TH OPEN MEETING OF THE HUMAN DIMENSIONS OF
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE RESEARCH COMMUNITY, BONN, 9-13 OCTOBER, 2005
The Open Meeting website: http://openmeeting.homelinux.org
U R B A N I Z A T I O N / G L O B A L C A R B O N P R O J E C T
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Core and Joint Projects
➤ As the growing Latin American population becomesmore urban, the importance of the way cities develop and are
managed for greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and associat-
ed pollution happens to be a central point of intervention for
addressing climate change. This report explores the interac-
tions between both local and global socioeconomic and insti-
tutional processes and the carbon cycle in the cities of Mexico,
Mendoza, Buenos Aires and Santiago. It analyses how specific
pathways of urban development interact to influence land and
energy use; and how different mixes of forces or underlying
factors (e.g. economic and socio-demographic dynamics, lib-
eralization) operate at diverse scales to produce cities’ green-
house gases (GHG) emissions trajectories.
URBAN GROWTH AND ITS SPATIAL CRYSTALLIZATION,URBAN FORM
Mexico, Buenos Aires and Santiago transited during the
1980s from a city-based to a region-based pattern of urban
development.1 The city-based model dominated during the
import substitution industrialization (ISI) period (1940-
1970). The cities registered high rates of economic growth,
enjoyed big captive markets and attracted migrant labor, also
expulsed by increasingly hard conditions in rural areas. The
cities experienced a contiguous and apparently uncontrolled
urban growth outwards. The current, region-based pattern
of urban development crystallizes in a polycentric urban
expansion of first and second-order urban localities sprawl-
ing along major highways and functionally linked to the
main city. Its drivers (demographic, economic and institu-
tional dynamics operating at diverse scales) experienced a set
of carbon relevant changes during the last two decades in the
four cities.
Economic activities transited to liberalized and deregulat-
ed markets, and open economies, and were affected by the
retrenchment of the State as developer. Industry lost its role
as leading activity of the local economies, while financing
and commerce became the most dynamic sectors. Foreign
investment increased its presence within the most dynamic
enterprises of the three largest cities. There were changes in
enterprises’ localization patterns, related to a process of eco-
nomic fragmentation. The bulk of foreign investment and
most dynamic commercial activities tend to be situated in
modern corridors (e.g. Santa Fé-Polanco in Mexico City, or
renovated areas such as Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires).
One consequence of the retrenchment of the state in its
role as developer is that rather than by public planning,
urban growth has been driven primarily by market forces.
The case of Santiago shows how laws and regulations aimed
at controlling urban sprawl have at times been altered or not
fulfilled to satisfy the requirements of speculators and devel-
opers. Actions aimed at containing land occupation by the
poor did not take into regard that housing has increasingly
taken place through informal self-help practices outside legal
regulations, as high costs of legal land and low levels of
income make these the only way for most dwellers to get
access to land.
Population growth decreased at diverse rhythms in gener-
al but especially within the core areas of the cities. Contrary
has been the case in peripheral areas where growth-rates
have increased in different ways contributing to urban sprawl
(e.g., population growth decreased to 2.1% yearly in the core
area of Mexico City, and increased by 2.8% in the suburban-
ized municipalities).
These pathways of urban growth resulted in three carbon
relevant consequences. Passengers tend to travel longer dis-
tances to move from the locations of residence to their edu-
cation, employment and recreation facilities. Freight trans-
port tends to move products to longer distances. As the cities
increase, their ecological footprint on their satellites and on
areas outside their boundaries serving their carbon-related
needs (e.g. energy and food) becomes more distinct.
SCALE MATTERS
GHG emissions trajectories and their drivers change in
space and through time. As of the mix of activities emitting
carbon, transportation is the main releaser at city level, not
necessarily at national scale. Energy is the main releaser for the
three countries, followed by agriculture and livestock in
Argentina, transportation (32%) and manufacturing (24%) in
Chile, and the forest sector (24%) and transportation (14.6%)
in Mexico. Emissions patterns illustrate the economic struc-
ture of the countries that are more dominated by services –
especially by the informal sector – than by manufacturing.
The team found commonalities and differences as to how
GHG emissions drivers operate at global, national and local
scales to produce cities’ trajectories of carbon emissions. At
least two components of the current era of globalization, liber-
alization and regionalization of markets, exert an influence on
the patterns of localization of population, productive activities
and public investments, and by this on GHG emissions by
cities and regions around them. Driven by markets opportuni-
ties opened by the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), corporations for instance have relocated their estab-
lishments within the central region of Mexico. Subsidiaries are
set in the city’s most dynamic corridors; high tech enterprises
move to localities in or around the satellites; activities
demanding cheap labor move to suburban localities function-
ing as dormitories. All this contributes to urban sprawl, to
longer commuting and freight transportation distances and,
by this, to increased GHG emissions.
CAN CITIES REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING? Urban Development and the Carbon Cycle in Latin America
A summary of the research report resulting from two workshops in Mexico City and Santiago de Chile,
2004
1 Mendoza has undergone a slightly different urbanization process character-ized by the functional centralization of industrial, administrative and com-mercial activities; accelerated growth of urban population stimulated bycity’s economic dynamics and the crisis of the rural sector.
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 7
Core and Joint Projects
One component of the state reform is also present in all the
cities and in other Latin American urban areas: reduced state
participation in the management of public transportation,
which is related to deregulation, decentralization and liberal-
ization. This process became one of the drivers of the shift in
mode share from high-capacity modes (Metro and buses) to
low capacity modes (e.g. minibuses, private cars). The share of
public buses in Mendoza diminished from 50.5% in 1986 to
34.8% in 2000. As in other urban areas, motorization is taking
place in the four cities. The total fleet increased 2.3 times in
Santiago, 1.5 times in Mexico City, and 0.7 times in Mendoza.
Most automobiles are private (85%, 73% and 68.8% respec-
tively), but this is not reflected in their share of daily trips
(45%, 19.9% and 25% respectively).
Motorization tendencies have diverse carbon implications.
As calculated for Mendoza, a passenger using a private car
consumes about 4 times more energy than a passenger using a
public means of transportation. Motorization is related to the
weight of transportation in CO2 emissions, but most of the
total fleet is made up of private cars having a smaller share of
daily trips. Therefore, rather than private vehicles only serving
the requirements of middle to upper sectors, cities need better
public transportation systems, and public actions aimed at
making public transport more attractive.
IPAT OR KAYA IDENTITY
We kept the Kaya identity2 in mind to explore some driv-
ers of GHG emissions. Regarding technology, we found that
decreased emissions rates in Argentina relate to more effi-
cient thermal generation of electricity. But these indicators
are not enough to understand the complexity of the techno-
logical dimension. Two technological constrains for a car-
bon-relevant restructuring of Mexico City’s economy are low
levels of human capital and research, of innovation and tech-
nology, and lack of competition of the economy. Enterprises
have hence reduced incentives to introduce new technolo-
gies.
When applying the Kaya approach to the residential sec-
tor, it is usually assumed that when population grows and
standards of living improve so do the consumption of fossil
fuels and GHG emissions. We found that technology, afflu-
ence and demography are not enough to understand GHG
emissions trajectories in Mexico City. High levels of social
segregation relate to a differentiated contribution to both
energy consumption and GHG emissions. As an example,
private cars are highly concentrated among wealthy sectors
of Mexico City (50% from the trips go to and come from
16% and 23% of the city respectively), but only cover 18% of
the 29.5 trip segments.
Institutional settings are another key driver of GHG emis-
sions trajectories. Instruments like the Plan Canje (govern-
mental subsidy to automobile companies for each old car
accepted as payment for a new car) together with a good dol-
lar-peso exchange rate induced Argentineans to buy new
cars. The Plan intended to support the automotive industry,
but it also contributed to the renovation of the automotive
fleet, by this, to reduced levels of pollutants like Nitrogen
Oxide. Rather than climate change, air pollution has been
the main public concern in all cities. Public concern though
is not enough to guarantee effective management. As the
Mexico City case shows, GHG related policies, are con-
strained by the organizational structure and institutional
capacity of the city. States and the Federal District have dif-
ferent legal and fiscal systems undermining the city’s capaci-
ty to deal with this issue at metropolitan scale. Diverse man-
agement agencies have competing and overlapping responsi-
bilities, tend to focus on and react to specific issues, and can
not address the array of causes driving them. They lack
appropriated harmonization of their programs and responsi-
bilities, as well as financial provisions for them to work
together.
CAN CITIES REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING?
Cities are key players in the field of GHG emissions.
Notwithstanding their role, it is hard for them to reduce their
GHG emissions. Key drivers of emissions trajectories operate
at national and even global scales. Relevant actors in the car-
bon arena such as transnational corporations have national
and international decision making power. It is hence difficult
for local authorities to issue regulations without corpora-
tions’ conformity. Cities do not have institutions that are
explicitly prepared to deal with GHG emissions. Instead, they
focus on (for example) air quality issues. It is therefore neces-
sary to undertake future studies focusing on carbon-related
strategies and their interplay with environmental policies
more focused on pollution control. One example is the via-
bility of promoting win-win strategies that aim at reducing
GHG emissions and improving air quality.
The workshop coordinators and editors of the report are:
PATRICIA ROMERO LANKAO, Professor, Research Group on
Public Policies and Management and SSC member of the
Global Carbon Project, Universidad Autónoma Metropoli-
U R B A N I Z A T I O N / G L O B A L C A R B O N P R O J E C T
2 According to the Kaya identity, carbon emissions (I) are the product of thelevel of population (P) combined with affluence (A) (e.g., measured byincome per capita) and the level of technology (T) (e.g., measured by emis-sions per unit of income).
G L O B A L C A R B O N P R O J E C T
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Joint Projects
➤ The entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in February thisyear is a historic development in international environmental
negotiations, and a significant step towards Earth sustainability.
The protocol limits the emissions to the atmosphere of six
greenhouse gases for the 30 ratifying countries from the devel-
oped world.
There has been much debate as to how much difference the
first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol will make to
atmospheric CO2 concentrations (a[CO2]), and which subse-
quent emission reduction targets would be required to stabilise
a[CO2] at a given level. This article will attempt to provide a
sense of the tremendous challenge of stabilising a[CO2] at a
level thought to avoid dangerous interference in the climate sys-
tem.
Although there is no consensus as to what a[CO2] will avoid
dangerous climatic interference, it is well understood that this
depends upon the sensitivity of the major Earth System process-
es to climate change, and the vulnerability – that is, sensitivity
to, and capacity to adapt – of different economic, environmen-
tal and social sectors. Thus, there is no single a[CO2] we can tar-
get, unless we apply a lowest-common-denominator approach.
For example, at the recent International Conference on
„Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change“ (Exeter, UK, February
2005), experts argued that human societies would be safeguard-
ed from dangerous interference in the climate system by a sta-
bilisation of a[CO2] equivalent to a global warming of 2°C. This
translates to a[CO2] of less than 550 ppm. Although these fig-
ures are contestable, they serve our present purpose, which is to
highlight the challenge in stabilising a[CO2] at 550 ppm – or
indeed at any level below 750 ppm. For context, the pre-indus-
trial CO2 concentration was 280 ppm, and the current concen-
tration is 378 ppm. Notably, the Framework Convention on Cli-
mate Change (FCCC), which has gained the commitment of
over 160 countries to stabilise a[CO2], has been very careful to
avoid stating a desirable stabilisation level.
A number of normative scenarios covering major possible
routes that societies could take in this century, have been devel-
oped (IPCC1 SRES2, 2000) based on major storylines leading to
alternative future emission pathways. These scenarios required
assumptions about population and income
growth, the cost and availability of current and
future energy production and utilisation, and
many other driving elements. The approach is con-
sistent with the fact that there are big uncertainties
as to whether our grandchildren – and the govern-
ments and institutions they may choose and create,
will be highly environmentally conscious, or will
become full practitioners of economic globalisa-
tion, understanding that the two trends are not
necessarily incompatible.
The range of carbon emissions covered by the
SRES scenarios is very broad, so that for practical
purposes, IPCC leaves us without a best guess at
the most likely future carbon emission scenario.
Carbon emissions for the end of this century in the
SRES scenarios, range from 3-35 Pg yr-1 (current
carbon emissions from fossil fuel are close to 7 Pg
yr-1), leaving an unconstrained set of requirements
for the amount of change needed to avoid danger-
ous interference in the climate system, for whatever
target we choose for the purpose of evaluating the
challenge.
Part of the uncertainty lies with the difficulty of quantifying
the impact of major technological improvements on a[CO2],
and understanding the difference we can make by, for instance,
collectively moving into automobile-hybrid technology, improv-
ing household energy efficiency by 50%, or generating two-
thirds of our electricity from renewable energies. None of these
major technological changes can be realised any time soon.
As part of a SCOPE3-GCP synthesis of the carbon cycle (Field
& Raupach, 2004), the value of some earlier work on emission
scenarios was rediscovered – particularly the IS92a IPCC sce-
nario. This scenario belongs to the family of „business-as-usual“
scenarios – those which attempt to highlight what could happen
if we do not take specific actions to address the climate change
issue, or in other words, what could happen if we let energy mar-
kets evolve as they have in the past without specific policies to
curb CO2 emissions.
The IS92a scenario does not include any CO2 emission reduc-
tion targets, nor any broad policy proposals to reduce deforesta-
THE CHALLENGE OF STABILIZING ATMOSPHERIC CO2
CONCENTRATIONSBY PEP CANADELL AND MICHAEL RAUPACH
1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change2 Special Report on Emission Scenarios3 Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment
Figure 1. Global carbon emissions 1990-2100 using the IS92a and a 550 ppm stabilisation scenario
From EdmondsJ et al. (2004)
Scenarios,targets, caps,and costs. In:
Filed C andRaupach M
(Eds) The Global
Carbon Cycle:Integrating
Humans,Climate andthe Natural
World,Pp. 77-102
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 1 9
Joint Projects
tion rates. What is less widely known, is that this scenario also
assumes business-as-usual in technological development, based
on the experience of the last century. Thus, IS92a assumes a
decrease in energy intensity by 0.8% annually up until 2025, and
a 1.0% decrease annually from 2025-2100. More strikingly, IS92a
also assumes that by the end of this century 75% of power ener-
gy will be carbon free, and that energy generated from bio-fuels
will provide more energy than the combined global production
of oil and gas in 1990 (Edmonds et al, 2004). These are massive
and difficult to appreciate transformations of the energy system,
but are probably not beyond what could happen, judging by the
impressive advancements of the last century.
Such magnitude of change towards renewable and zero-
emission energies, might suggest that the CO2 stabilisation
problem would be largely solved by the time we achieve such
transformations. But disappointingly, far from it – a[CO2] by
the end of this century would be over 700 ppm under IS92a –
about three times the pre-industrial level (Figure 1).
To appreciate the technological challenge involved in limit-
ing a[CO2] to 700 ppm – which itself may involve unacceptable
interference with the climate system, one can project a [CO2]
under a „freezing“ of technology at 1990 levels, without effi-
ciency improvements (Figure 1). This scenario provides a refer-
ence that illustrates the scale of the advancements already
expected to occur. Any attempts to stabilise a [CO2] below 700
ppm will require an even larger effort.
The difference in carbon emissions between a given busi-
ness-as-usual scenario (for example IS92a with a [CO2] at
about 700 ppm) and a chosen stabilisation level (for instance
550 ppm as argued above), is referred to as the „energy gap“.
The energy gap between IS92a and a 550 ppm stabilisation level
is a staggering 14 Pg C yr-1 (Figure 1). This gap can only be
closed by implementing emission reduction policies and clear
emission cuts, most likely with costs involved. For a number of
SRES scenarios, the carbon emission gaps by 2100 range from
1-25 Pg yr-1 (IPCC 2001).
Stabilizing a [CO2] will not only require large absolute cuts
of greenhouse emissions during this century, but it will ulti-
mately require reducing emissions to close to zero.
REFERENCES to this article are included on the IHDP website at
www.ihdp.org/updatehistory05/references.htm
JOSEP (PEP) CANADELL is Executive Director of the Global Carbon
Project,
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia;
Austria: As the result of a long heritage of significant com-
petences in various fields of climate and global change
research, the University of Graz has started the Wegener Cen-
ter for Climate and Global Change (WegCenter) with the
recognition of the potential of putting the diverse climate-
related activities under one umbrella. With its official opening
in April 2005, the WegCenter is an interdisciplinary, interna-
tionally oriented research center with a focus on climate, envi-
ronmental and global change monitoring, analysis, research,
impacts and policy. The WegCenter addresses natural and
anthropogenic climate, environmental and global change,
respectively, including impacts of changes, mitigation, and
policy issues. The initial research foci of the WegCenter are
mainly related to climate change, but the broader area of glob-
al change is addressed and will increase in the longer term. The
activities of the WegCenter are initially organized into two
major programmes, the Climate and Environmental Change
Research and Monitoring Programme and the Human
Dimensions of Climate and Environmental Change Pro-
gramme. The later will host the Austrian Human Dimensions
Programme (HDP-A). These Programmes are highly compli-
mentary to each other and tight cooperation is foreseen at the
multitude of interfaces and overlapping areas between climate
INCREASING IHDP’S VISIBILITY ACROSS THE GLOBE
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 2 1
National Committees/In Brief
and environmental monitoring and research on the one hand,
and research on climate and global change impacts and policy
on the other hand. (http://www.wegcenter.at) Switzerland: The 6th annual Swiss Global Change Day was
held in Bern, Switzerland on 7 April 2005, organized by Pro-
Clim – Swiss Forum for Climate and Global Change in collab-
oration with the IHDP and IGBP Swiss National Committees,
the Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and
the Swiss Biodiversity Forum. The established event provided
a platform and brought together 250 global change researchers
from Switzerland and experts from abroad to share and dis-
cuss leading research issues in a transdisciplinary manner.
Invited speakers from each field of global change research pre-
sented the state-of-the-art of ongoing research, according to
the aims of the ESSP Global Environmental Change Pro-
grammes (IHDP, DIVERSITAS, IGBP and WCRP). Topics
included global change and human health, the challenges for
the North and South; traces of global change in polar ice cores;
the fate of arctic sea ice; the ‘Syndrome Approach’ in studying
the syndromes of global change; and many others. The Swiss
Global Change Day is a continuing success in terms of number
and high caliber participants and discussions. Panel discus-
sions include representatives from inter-governmental institu-
tions, the private sector, policy, and the media to provoke dis-
cussions on needs and differing views on presented topics. A
highlight of the event for young scientists is the award for best
poster in each of the fields of ESSP Programmes. Congratula-
tions to Anke Huss of the Institute of Social and Preventive
Medicine at the University of Bern, whose poster „Impact of
the 2003 Heatwave on Mortality in Switzerland“ won the
IHDP award of SFr. 1000 to participate in a future internation-
al conference.
All full-length articles to the abstracts above on 2005
regional workshops related to IHDP research are available on
the IHDP Website (http://www.ihdp.org) under „National
Committees“.
Compiled by Debra Meyer Wefering ([email protected]), Science Project Coordinator and IHDP Liaison for
National Committees at the IHDP Secretariat, Bonn, Ger-
many.
N E T W O R K I N G A N D C A P A C I T Y B U I L D I N G / N E W S
Urbanization➤➤➤ The IHDP ScientificCommittee officially laun-
ched its new core project on
Urbanization and Global
Environmental Change in
March this year. Karen Seto(Stanford University, USA)
chairs the project. Her
research interests include
integrated land system sci-
ence, urbanization, agricul-
tural intensification, and
remote sensing. Further
members of the Scientific
Steering Committee are: Frauke Kraas (University of
Cologne, DE), David Simon (University of London, UK),
William Solecki (City University New York, USA) and
Xiaopei Yan (Zhongshan University, CN). The Scientific
Steering Committee will be extended during 2005 and
fundraising for an International Project Office will start.
Also, the Urbanization Science Plan has been published
under the leadership of Roberto Sánchez-Rodríguez and can
be obtained from the IHDP Secretariat or downloaded from
the IHDP website (www.ihdp.org). The science plan has four
thematic foci that cover the array of interaction between the
urban and the global environment components of the Earth
system. The conceptual framework starts with processes
within the urban system that contribute to global environ-
mental change. A second focus is on the pathways through
which specific global environmental changes affect the urban
system. Once these pathways and points of intersections are
identified, the framework addresses the resulting interac-
tions and responses within the urban system. Finally, the
framework centres on the consequences of the interactions
within the urban system on global environmental change, or
feedback processes. These four thematic foci create a com-
prehensive perspective of the dynamic, diverse, and complex
interactions between urban systems and global environmen-
tal change processes.
The Urbanization project will present itself by ways of ses-
sions and a reception at the 6th Open Meeting of the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research
Community, taking place in Bonn, Germany, from 9 to 13
October 2005.
Global Land Project
➤➤➤ The second new IHDP core science project, theGlobal Land Project (GLP), was also officially launched in
March 2005 by the Scientific Committees of both IHDP and
its global change partner, IGBP. GLP will act as a successor to
the IHDP/IGBP core project LUCC (Land-Use and Land-
Cover Change) which will come to its end this year, as well as
the IGBP core project GCTE which closed in 2003. The GLP
Science Plan will soon be put to print and will be available on
the IHDP website. The next step is to set up a governance
structure with a Scientific Steering Committee and an Inter-
national Project Office.
The GLP Science Plan develops a new integrated paradigm
focused on two main conceptual aspects of the coupled
socio-ecological system. First, is a focus on land-use decision
making and secondly, on ecosystem services. Main themes
are 1. the causes and nature of land system change (globaliza-
tion & population, management decisions and practices,
atmospheric, biogeochemical and biophysical dimensions, as
well as combined human and biophysical impacts); 2.the
consequences of land system change (changes in ecosystem
IN BRIEF
Karen Seto
2 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5
structure, human well-being, human adjustment to changes
in ecosystem service provision, feedbacks from changes in
ecosystems to the coupled Earth system); and 3. integrating
analysis and modelling for land sustainability (dynamics of
land-systems, vulnerability and resilience of land systems,
land sustainability and policies/institutions). As is the case
with the Urbanization project, the Global Land Project will
be presented at the 6th Open Meeting in October in Bonn,
Germany.
GECHS
➤➤➤ Karen O’Brien (Uni-versity of Oslo, Norway)will be the new Chair of the
IHDP core science project
Global Environmental
Change and Human Security
(GECHS). She is a geogra-
pher working on issues relat-
ed to global environmental
change, vulnerability and
human security. Her
research has focused on
deforestation and climate
change in southern Mexico,
climate variability and the use of seasonal forecasts in south-
ern Africa, as well as climate change impacts and vulnerabil-
ity in the context of economic globalization. She has been a
member of the GECHS Scientific Steering Committee since
2001, and is a lead author on the adaptation chapter for the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Karen’s publications include two books: Sacrificing the For-
est: Environmental and Social Struggles in Chiapas (Westview,
1998) and Coping with Climate Variability: User Responses to
Seasonal Forecasts in Southern Africa (Ashgate 2003, edited
with Coleen Vogel).
Also, five new members nominated by the GECHS Scientific
Steering Committee were approved by the IHDP Scientific
Committee in March 2005: Jon Barnett (University of Mel-
bourne, AUS), Indra de Soysa (University of Trondheim, N),
Patricia Kameri-Mbote (University of Nairobi, Kenya), LylaMehta (University of Sussex, UK), and Joni Seager (York
University, CAN). The GECHS International Project Office is
moving from Ottawa, Canada to Oslo, Norway in July 2005.
The GECHS IPO will be hosted by the Geography Depart-
ment at the University of Oslo. We are thanking Mike Brk-lacich, former GECHS Chair and Maureen Woodrow,
GECHS Executive Officer, for their commitment to the proj-
ect over the course of the past six years.
Other IHDP Publications
➤➤➤ Besides the Urbanization Science Plan, also the
revised Science Plan of the IHDP core science projects
IDGEC (Institutional Dimensions and Global Environmen-
tal Change) and New LOICZ (Land-Oceans Interactions in
the Coastal Zone) have been published. The scientific frame-
work of the original LOICZ Science Plan was further devel-
N E W SIn Brief
oped to integrate human dimensions. The revised IDGEC
Science Plan includes a new section on three flagship activi-
ties and a current version of the IDGEC publications list. The
IHDP Secretariat has also compiled a bibliography in order
to highlight the contributions of IHDP to global change
research, and produced a workshop report of the 2002
IHDW workshop, Urbanization and the Transition to Sus-
tainability. Further, flyers of the following projects have been
printed: GECHS, IDGEC and LOICZ. A general flyer
describing IHDP has also been produced. All publications
are (or will soon be) accessible online on the IHDP website.
They can also be ordered from the IHDP Secretariat.
More Short Cuts
➤➤➤ The International Group of Funding Agencies forGlobal Change Research (IGFA) and the InternationalCouncil for Science (ICSU) organized a workshop from 17 to
19 May 2005 in Stockholm, Sweden, called „The Interface
between Global Change and Development-Oriented Research“.
The workshop brought together researchers in global change,
researchers engaged in development, as well as funding agen-
cies that fund global change research, or development activi-
ties respectively. The meeting was felt to be of high impor-
tance and seen as a good start for these different communities
to work together and to make a better case to major donors.
Further steps include discussions between funding agencies
and research groups on both sides (GEC as well as develop-
ment). Both communities have to take advantage of intersec-
tions between global environmental change research and
development research and highlight them at important meet-
ings.
➤➤➤ The United Nations University’s Institute for Envi-ronment and Security (EHS) held a scientific colloquium on
„Reflections on Common Concerns and Scientific Challenges in
the Field of Risk and Vulnerability“ in Bonn, Germany, on 5
April 2005. The colloquium included presentations on: vul-
nerability from economic prospective, the perception of flood
risk, the meaning of risk and vulnerability in applied peace
and conflict research, and the vulnerability of the global water
system. IHDP Executive Director Barbara Göbel presented the
Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS)
core project.
➤➤➤ IHDP will hold a workshop called „Global environ-
mental change: how do we link science to policy and practice?“ on
7 September at the International Forum on the Social Science-
Policy Nexus, 5 to 9 September 2005 in Buenos Aires, Argenti-
na. For more information on the conference, go to
www.unesco.org/shs/ifsp.➤➤➤ ICSU, The International Council for Science, has
established an ad-hoc scoping group for a programme on nat-
ural and human-induced environmental hazards. A hazard
programme should build on the basis of the disciplinary
expertise of the ICSU unions, in particular the geo-unions and
the hazards theme of the Year of the Planet Earth, as well as the
relevant subject areas of the Global Environmental Change
programmes, with additional components such as population
health and critical infrastructure. IHDP Chair Coleen Vogel has
been appointed by ICSU as a member of the scoping group.
Karen O’Brien
I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 2 / 2 0 0 5 | 2 3
Calendar/PublicationsN E W B O O K S
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IN THE EU:ACTORS, INSTITUTIONS AND PROCESSES(2ND EDITION)
Edited by Andrew Jordan
This second and fully revised
edition brings together some of
the most influential work on the
theory and practice of contem-
porary EU environmental poli-
cy. Comprising five comprehen-
sive parts, it includes in-depth
case studies of contemporary
policy issues such as climate
change, genetically modified
organisms and trans-Atlantic relations; and an assess-
ment of how well the EU is responding to new chal-
lenges such as enlargement, environmental policy inte-
gration and sustainability. One of the main aims of this
new edition is to look forward and ask whether the EU
is prepared or even able to respond to the ‘new’ gover-
nance challenges posed by the perceived need to use
‘new’ policy instruments and other processes to ‘main-
stream’ environmental thinking in all EU policy sectors
in pursuit of sustainability.
Earthscan 2005, 352 pages, Paperback £19.51,
ISBN 1-84407-158-8; Hardback £68.00, ISBN
1-84407-157-X
PUBLICS, RISK COMMUNICATION AND THESOCIAL AMPLIFICATION OF RISK
By Jeanne X. Kasperson and Roger E. Kasperson
We live in a ‘risk society’ where
the identification, distribution
and management of risks, from
new technology, environmental
factors or other sources are cru-
cial to our individual and social
existence.
The two Volume edition collects
the authors’ fundamental work
on how risks are communicated
among different publics and stakeholders, including
local communities, corporations and the larger socie-
ty. It analyses the problems of lack of transparency
and trust and explores how even minor effects can be
amplified and distorted through media and social
responses, preventing effective management. The
final section investigates the difficult ethical issues
raised by the unequal distribution of risk depending
on factors such as wealth, location and genetic inher-
itance - with examples from worker and public pro-
ardous waste and widespread impacts such as climate
change.
Earthscan 2005, 376 pages, Paperback £24.95,
ISBN 1844070735; Hardback 2 volume set £120.00,
ISBN 1844070727
MEETING CALENDAR➤➤➤ 6–7 July – Marseille, France
Environment, Knowledge and Democracywww.vcharite.univ-mrs.fr/shadyc/CIEnv.pdf
➤➤➤ 7–9 July – Amsterdam, The Netherlands
People and the Sea III: New Directions in Coastal and MaritimeStudieswww.marecentre.nl
➤➤➤ 10–12 August – Beijing, China
PAGES 2nd Open Science MeetingPaleoclimate, Environmental Sustainability and Our Futurewww.pages2005.org
➤➤➤ 21–27 August – Stockholm, Sweden
World Water Week15th Stockholm Water Symposium on Drainage Basin Manage-ment–Hard and Soft Solutions in Regional Developmenthttp://worldwaterweek.org and http://www.siwi.org
➤➤➤ 23–27 August – Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Modelling Land Use ChangeSession at the 45th Congress of the European Regional ScienceAssociationwww.feweb.vu.nl/ersa2005
➤➤➤ 27 August–2 September – Grindelwald, Switzerland
From the Holocene to the Anthropocene: Climate of the Last 1000 Years; 4th International NCCR Climate Summer School
➤➤➤ 28 August–2 September – Wageningen, The Nether-lands
Land Science: Concepts, Tools and Uncertainties in Land-UseStudies and Landscape Dynamicswww.dpw.wageningen-ur.nl/PEenRC/education/courses/pgc-land_science.htm
➤➤➤ 29 August–1 September – Buenos Aires, Argentina
Environmental Change and Rational Water UseCommission for Water Sustainability of the International Geographical Union (IGU)http://water-sustainability.ph.unito.it
➤➤➤ 31 August–2 September – London, UK
Flows and Spaces in a Globalized Worldwww.rgs.org/AC2005/registration.htm
➤➤➤ 11–14 September – Liverpool, UK
Complexity and Ecological Economics www.euroecolecon.org/pdf/EcoEcoCallForPapers_Liverpool2005.pdf
➤➤➤ 19–23 September – Goettingen, Germany
The Stability of Rainforest Margins: Linking Ecological, Econom-ic and Social Constraints of Land Use Conservation www.storma.de/symp2005
➤➤➤ 20–21 September – Cambridge, UK
7th Annual BIOECON Conference on the Economic Analysis ofPolicies for Biodiversity Conservationwww.bioecon.ucl.ac.uk
• Global EnvironmentalChange and Human Security c/o Maureen WoodrowExecutive OfficerGECHS International Project OfficeDept. of Geography & Environmental Studies,Carleton University1125 Colonel By DriveOttawa, ON K1S 5B6, [email protected] www.gechs.org
➤ IDGEC
• Institutional Dimensions ofGlobal Environmental Change c/o Heike Schröder, Executive OfficerIDGEC International Project Office4526 Bren Hall, Bren School ofEnv. Science and ManagementUniversity of California at Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA 93106-5131, [email protected]@bren.ucsb.eduhttp://fiesta.bren.edu/~idgec/
➤ IT• Industrial Transformation c/o Anna J. Wieczorek,Executive OfficerIT International Project OfficeInstitute of Environmental Studies De Boelelaan 10871081 HV AmsterdamThe [email protected]://130.37.129.100/ivm/research/ihdp-it/index.html
➤ LOICZ• Land-Ocean Interactions inthe Coastal Zonec/o Hartwig Kremer and MartinLe TissierLOICZ International Project OfficeP. O. Box 59, 1790 AB, Den Burg,Texel, [email protected]
➤ LUCC
• Land-Use and Land-CoverChange c/o Helmut Geist, Executive Officer LUCC International Project Office University of LouvainPlace L. Pasteur 3 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, [email protected]/LUCC
JOINT ESSP PROJECTS
➤ GECAFS
• Global EnvironmentalChange and Food Systems c/o John Ingram, Executive OfficerGECAFS International ProjectOffice, NERC-Centre for Ecology &Hydrology, Wallingford OX 10 8BB, [email protected]
➤ GCP
• Global Carbon Projectc/o Pep CanadellExecutive OfficerGCP International ProjectOffice, CSIROCanberra, [email protected]
➤ GWSP
• Global Water Systems Projectc/o Eric Craswell, Executive OfficerInternational Project Office GWSPCenter for Development ResearchWalter-Flex-Str. 353113 Bonn, [email protected]
IHDP SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE (SC)
➤ Chair
• Coleen Heather VogelDept. of Geography & Env. StudiesUniversity of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South [email protected]
➤ Vice Chair
• Roberto Sánchez-RodríguezUC-Mexus, University of CaliforniaRiverside, CA, [email protected]
• Katrina BrownSchool of Development StudiesUniversity of East Anglia,Norwich, [email protected]
• Geoffrey DabelkoEnvironmental Change and SecurityProject (ECSP)Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter for Scholars, WashingtonD.C., [email protected]
• Carl FolkeCentre for Research on NaturalResources and the Environment(CNM)CNM, Stockholm UniversityStockholm, [email protected]
• Roberto GuimarãesUnited NationsDivision for SocialPolicy andDevelopmentNew York, NY, [email protected]
• Gernot KlepperKiel Institute of World EconomicsKiel, [email protected]
• Tatiana Kluvankova-OravskaInstitute for ForecastingSlovak Academy of SciencesBratislava, Slovak [email protected]
• Sander van der LeeuwDepartment of Anthropology,Arizona State University, Tempe,AZ, [email protected]
• Elinor OstromCenter for the Study ofInstitutions, Population &Environmental ChangeIndiana UniversityBloomington, IN, [email protected]
• Xizhe PengInstitute of Population ResearchFudan UniversityShanghai, P.R. [email protected]
