This editorial note introduces the four major conference themes of the 5th International Water History Association (IWHA) Conference ‘Pasts and Futures of Water’ in June 2007: (i) water, health and sanitation; (ii) water, food and economy; (iii) water and the city; and (iv) water governance and policy.
Content Index
This article analyses the contribution of the Austrian-born Russian scientist, Franz Joseph Ruprecht (1814–70) to the development of geobotany in general and to the controversial issue of the origins of the very fertile chernozem (Black Earth) of the steppe region of the Russian Empire.
This study is an overview of the state-led development projects and local efforts to ‘improve’ local conditions on the Zoige grass and wetlands on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau since 1949 and their impact on the regional ecological and social environment. It focuses on historical state-led development projects, as well as more recent efforts to raise environmental awareness of the importance of Chinese wetlands.
This paper explores the social and political factors that historically limited the national nature conservation movement’s influence in Japan, and outlines recent developments which may lead to both a greater emphasis on the greater participation of non-governmental organisations in the political process, and a greater emphasis on the protection of the natural environment.
This paper explores the history of trees and scientific forestry in South Africa and how it changed southern African hydrologies.
The aim of the paper is to understand our predecessors’ understanding of their environmental predicament and any contingent steps they may have taken, in order to put in context the contingencies of our own understanding.
Four centuries of colonial extraction lead to severe ecological degradation of the forests and soils of the Atlantic region of Brazil. This article discusses the management of soil fertility and the relationship between agricultural practices and forest stands based on agricultural manuals published in Brazil over a period of more than two centuries.
Recent research on Africa has emphasised conservation and trypanosomiasis control as the major factors, which first motivated colonial officials and scientists to embark on forestry preservation and bush clearing policies. This paper contends that in Chepalungu, Kenya, forestry preservation and bush clearing were implemented with the objective to create a racially and tribally segregated landscape.
This paper explores imperial forestry networks by focusing on a single individual, Sir David Hutchins, who spent the final years of his life in New Zealand extolling the need for scientific forest management in the Dominion.
This article examines the conflicts behind the scenes, within the AAS, between the AAS and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority (SMA), and within the SMA. It argues that the scientists’ conflict with the SMA over plans for the summit area of Mount Kosciusko (now Kosciuszko) not only established ecology as a scientific basis for conservation thinking: It foreshadowed the current idea that management of a healthy country involves recognition of the links between aesthetic and scientific thinking.