Is the Arctic the last frontier? With text, audio, and video, historian Elena Baldassarri describes the historical struggle to find a passage through the perilous environments of the Far North. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “The Northwest Passage: Myth, Environment, and Resources.”

This is a part of the virtual exhibition “Famines in Late Nineteenth-Century India: Politics, Culture, and Environmental Justice”—written and curated by sociologist Naresh Chandra Sourabh and economic historian Timo Myllyntaus.

In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Drought, Mud, Filth, and Flood: Water Crises in Australian Cities, 1880s–2010s,” the authors show how the development of Brisbane, Queensland, on a floodplain rendered the city vulnerable to flood events. Although engineering measures have mitigated floods, this overview highlights the enduring belief in urban “flood-proofing” alongside evidence that it cannot ever be achieved in this context.

In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Drought, Mud, Filth, and Flood: Water Crises in Australian Cities, 1880s–2010s,” the authors describe how the city of Adelaide has responded to periodic water shortages. Water security was sought first in reservoirs, then the Murray River, and more recently desalination. While earlier periods of shortage led to the development of the dual-flush toilet, the need for water conservation was only really cemented in the urban consciousness with the Millennium drought of 1996–2010.