Isthmus in the World: Elements for an Environmental History of Panama

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo Castro H.

Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.



2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.





2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Pyne ◽  
J. Donald Hughes






2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexandra Dekker

<p>The Wellington Acclimatisation Society was established in 1871, as part of a larger acclimatisation movement that featured the systematic introduction and exchange of many species across the world. After merging with other lower North Island societies, the Wellington Society began work on introducing trout to the streams and rivers of the district. Initially, the Society was made up of prominent members of the Wellington community, but over time these well-connected enthusiasts gave way to those with practical skills and knowledge. During the twentieth century the Society became an increasingly formalised group, working closely with the Government and other acclimatisation societies within New Zealand, as well as internationally. These networks, which were initially essential for trout introductions through imperial links, soon moved from an emphasis on importations and exchange to a focus on the continued maintenance of trout species throughout the Wellington district. The success of trout introductions relied on the ability of the Wellington Society to sufficiently modify the New Zealand environment. The close ties that existed between acclimatisation societies and the colonial Government meant the Wellington Society could undertake extensive environmental modification and management using a special authority, alongside a degree of involvement from the community. In this way, the introduction of trout had a significant impact on both the social and environmental history of New Zealand.</p>



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