Content Index

Using Northern Ghana as a case study, this paper questions the usefulness of regional data for understanding food insecurity, and shows that the supposedly novel ideas of the present in fact have a strong colonial lineage.

This article takes a closer look at the Polish culture of nature. Visions of nature are defined as public views on what nature is, what values are carried by nature and what is the appropriate relationship between humans and nature.

Beginning in the pre-modern world, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers both served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, “Mother Volga” and the “Father of Waters” became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism. Rivers, Memory, and Nation-Building discusses their histories, through which we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.

In 1997 and 1998 peat swamp forests burned in Borneo, Indonesia, spewing big amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Earthquakes occur along fault lines, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Italy. Fault Lines follows the history of these places before and after their destruction, explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters, and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins.

The 1928 hurricane that hit Okeechobee was one of the most severe hurricanes in US history. It caused more than 4,000 fatalities as well as widespread damage in the Florida area.

On 8 October 1871 a brush fire took hold of northeastern Wisconsin that destroyed acres upon acres of woodland areas and settlements and took up to 1,500 lives.

The history of the Swiss National Park is told for the first time in Creating Wilderness. The deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park, as implemented in Yellowstone, was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Powerless Science? looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives.

National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, Civilizing Nature adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time.