For nearly a century, we have relied increasingly on science and technology to harness natural forces, but at what environmental and social cost?
This paper examines the mentalities associated with the transformation of “nature” into urban life in industrial societies, with particular reference to the conversion of rainwater into tap water. It argues that industrial technologies dissociate urban dwellers from the natural environment upon which they depend.
Once an environment in which the notion of nations was unheard of, the Arctic region is now a disputed space among superpowers. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources”—written and curated by historian Elena Baldassarri.
Analyzing the history of fish populations in the Neva and Viennese Danube, the Russian-Austrian research group discovered numerous links between the great cities and their great rivers, including the fish populations. This introduction to the virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers” explains how the exhibition visualizes these links and reveal some hidden (or at least not immediately evident) sides of urban life.
In this chapter of their virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers,” the authors examine the dynamic landscapes of the Neva and Danube Rivers, the ways they determine people’s lives and are also modified to secure people’s needs and protect them from flooding.
In this chapter of their virtual exhibition “‘Commanding, Sovereign Stream’: The Neva and the Viennese Danube in the History of Imperial Metropolitan Centers,” the authors discuss similarities and differences in the history of water supply, pollution, and waste management in St. Petersburg and Vienna.
Patagonia Rising gives voice to the Gauchos, a frontier people dependent on the Baker and Pascua river systems, who are caught in the struggle between Chile’s pro-dam business sector, clean energy proponents and the country’s rising energy demand.
The film examines the social and ecological consequences of the Turkey’s South-East-Anatolia-Project (GAP), designed to enable energy production and irrigation on a huge scale.
