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Environmental Protection in the Global Twentieth Century: International
Organizations, Networks and Diffusion of Ideas and Policies
International Conference at the Research College “The Transformative Power
of Europe”, Free University Berlin, held on 25-27 October 2012
Organisers: Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer
The long rays of the yellow autumn sun shining on the red leaves of the
Free University Berlin's Dahlem Campus provided a local touch of nature
for an international conference devoted to the protection of the
environment on a global scale. Sixteen researchers from eleven different
countries from Europe and overseas gathered from 25 to 27 October 2012 at
the Free University's Silberlaube conference centre to discuss
"Environmental Protection in the Global Twentieth Century: International
Organizations, Networks and Diffusion of Ideas and Policies". The
conference was hosted and sponsored by the Research College "The
Transformative Power of Europe" (jointly directed by TANJA BÖRZEL and
THOMAS RISSE) at Free University's Otto Suhr Institute for Political
Science, and organized by WOLFRAM KAISER (Portsmouth) and JAN-HENRIK MEYER
(Aarhus).
Scholars of International Relations and environmental history tend to
agree that international organizations (IOs) played a crucial role in
defining and diffusing ideas about the environment. Notably, IOs were
central forums for negotiating and placing environmental protection on the
international political agenda. It is widely assumed that 1972 – the year
of the first UN conference on the human environment in Stockholm and of
the publication of the Club of Rome report "Limits to Growth" – marked the
starting point of international environmental politics. Taking a long-term
perspective across the entire twentieth-century, the conference set out to
reconsider this received wisdom. Paper givers approached IOs from two
perspectives: first, which role did IOs play as norm entrepreneurs,
selecting, defining, diffusing and translating ideas about the environment
in the course of the twentieth century? Secondly, which structural
conditions facilitated – and at times inhibited – the diffusion or
transfer of policy ideas? It can safely be assumed that the embedding of
IOs in national and transnational networks crucially mattered in this
respect.
The contributions addressed these core issues in six panels in roughly
chronological order. In a first panel PATRICK KUPPER (Zurich) traced the
origins of environmental internationalism to Paul Sarasin, a Swiss
scientist and networker, advocating "World Nature Protection"
("Weltnaturschutz"). Sarasin managed to gather an international group of
scientists in Berne in November 1913 for what could have been the start of
a first international NGO, but the outbreak of World War I thwarted his
ambitions. Sarasin's ideas were however not forgotten. As ANNA-KATHARINA
WÖBSE (Geneva) explained in her paper on the League of Nations, during the
interwar years other activists picked up these ideas and took them to the
new organization. While the League of Nations failed to fulfill the hopes
of the activists, the way the first global IO defined nature – frequently
in terms of economic resources – continued to frame discussions well into
the post-World War II United Nations. IRIS BOROWY's (Paris) paper
similarly traced the diffusion and transfer of central concepts and ideas
across IOs. She argued that it was a network of actors – notably
particularly active and influential individuals – who transmitted and
translated environmental ideas from the OECD Environment Committee in the
early 1970s to the Brundtland Commission in the 1980s. The latter sought
to overcome the apparent contradictions between developmental and
environmental goals, advocating the notion of "sustainable development".
Focussing on a variety of different actors, the second panel covered a
number of issues that only became part of the environmental agenda in the
early 1970s. While ENORA JAVAUDIN (Paris) studied how scientists turned
nuclear technology into an environmental issue from the 1950s until the
early 1970s, WOLFRAM KAISER (Portsmouth) rather explored the conditions
for preventing the transfer of ideas and change. In the relevant
committees of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC,
the predecessor of the present-day OECD) and the UN Economic Commission
for Europe (ECE), heavy industry representatives made sure that air
pollution in their sector was exclusively treated as a technological issue
in the 1950s and 1960s, to avoid the imposition of tighter rules and new
capital costs. RAF DE BONT outlined the research agenda of the new project
"Nature's diplomats" at Maastricht University, which focuses on the role
of experts in environmental IOs in the 20th century.
Two panels zoomed in on the Stockholm conference of 1972. LUIGI PICCIONI
(Calabria/Rome) allowed the audience a glimpse behind the closed doors of
the Vatican, and its surprisingly active involvement and networking in the
context of the Stockholm conference. MICHAEL MANULAK (Oxford/Ottawa) and
ROGER EARDLEY-PRYOR (Santa Barbara) both considered the role of developing
countries led by Brazil at the UN conference, opposing a strong UN
environmental organization and laying the groundwork for the subsequent
"sustainable development" agenda. JAN-HENRIK MEYER (Aarhus) and FRANCESCO
PETRINI (Padua) pointed to IO responses to the Stockholm conference: The
European Communities started their own environmental policy, taking on
board what seemed to be a popular new issue, while adapting the agenda to
the legal and practical needs of an economic community, organized around a
common market. OPEC's price rise in 1973 was informed by debates within
OPEC about limited resources – and the need to protect them for the
future, a finding that clearly contradicts the usual image of the OPEC as
a cartel of revenue-maximizing oil producers.
As part of a panel on societal actors, STEPHEN MACEKURA (Charlottesville,
VA) returned to the issue of sustainability, however, highlighting the
role of NGOs in the crafting of the World Conservation Strategy. RENAUD
BECOT (Paris) provided insights in the mutual transfer of ideas on the
working environment between labour unions and the International Labour
Organization. The final panel was devoted to post-1972 issues across the
globe. ALLESSANDRO ANTONELLO (Canberra) explained how the scientific
concept of the ecosystem became a shorthand reference for political actors
designating the political and ecological space of Antarctica. DAVID HIRST
(Manchester) pointed to the scientific networks and path dependencies in
the creation of the International Panel on Climate Change. MICHEL DUPUY's
(Paris) study about the late German Democratic Republic's vain attempts to
conform to international conventions on air pollution provided an
instructive case of the strength of IOs as norms entrepreneurs across the
Iron Curtain.
In their concluding remarks, WOLFRAM KAISER and JAN-HENRIK MEYER
emphasized that the conference was a pioneering enterprise in an emerging
area of historical research. The goal was to try to bring together for the
first time researchers working on this issue world-wide, laying the basis
for future cooperation, and mapping the field. This field seems to be
dominated for the moment by Western researchers working with (mostly)
Western sources. De-centering Europe and the EU – one of the initial
objectives of the conference – will eventually require moving beyond this
state of research, activating scholars in other world regions like Asia
and Latin America to discuss issues linking environmental protection,
international organizations and the diffusion and transfer – including the
selective appropriation and re-interpretation – of relevant environmental
ideas, concepts and policy practices.
Conference schedule
Session 1: Institutional Origins
Patrick Kupper (Zurich): Internationalizing Nature Protection: The First
Wave
Anna-Katharina Wöbse (Geneva): Welcome to the Blue Planet: Framing the
Global Environment in the League of Nations and the United Nations,
1920-1972
Iris Borowy (Paris): (Re-)Thinking Environment and Development: From the
OECD Environment Committee to the Brundtland Commission
Session 2: Early Issues
Enora Javaudin (Paris): How did Nuclear Technology become a Global
Environmental Issue? Scientists and the Rise, Evolution and Transformation
of an International Debate 1945-1972
Wolfram Kaiser (Portsmouth): From Health in the Workplace to Water and Air
Pollution: IOs and Heavy Industry
Raf de Bont (Maastricht): Nature's Diplomats. Outline of a Research Plan
Session 3: Stockholm – A turning Point?
Michael Manulak (Oxford/Ottawa): The 1972 Stockholm Conference and the
Design of the United Nations Environmental Programme
Luigi Piccioni (Rome): The Holy See and Ecology in the Shadow of the
Stockholm Conference: between Movements and IOs
Roger W. Eardley-Pryor (Santa Barbara): Reclaiming Environment for
Development: Brazil and the Roots of Sustainable Development at the 1972
UN Stockholm Conference
Session 4: Stockholm’s Impact on International Organisations
Jan-Henrik Meyer (Aarhus): "Me, too! The Emergence of a European
Environmental Policy and the Role of International Organizations"
Giuliano Garavini (Padova): OPEC's Environmentalism in the 1970s
Session 5: Societal Actors and IOs
Stephen Macekura (Charlottesville, VA): Towards a Discourse of
Sustainability: The UN, NGOs, and the Crafting of the World Conservation
Strategy
Renaud Bécot (Paris): The International Organization Influence's on the
Shaping of an Environmental Labour Agenda. The Case of the French
Trade-Unions, 1960-1990
Session 6: IOs Saving Sea, Air and Climate
Allessandro Antonello (Canberra): The Protection of the Southern Ocean
Ecosystem, 1968-1980
Michel Dupuy (Paris): The Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air
Pollution: A Challenge for the GDR
David Hirst (Manchester): Push and Pull: the Science-Policy Interface and
the Making of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Prof.
Wolfram Kaiser
University of Portsmouth
School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies
Milldam, Burnaby Road
Portsmouth PO1 3AS
United Kingdom
Phone: ++44 23 9284 2215
E-mail: wolfram.kaiser@port.ac.uk
Jan-Henrik Meyer, Dr. phil.
Aarhus University
Department of Culture and Society
Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5, 4.
DK-8000 Aarhus C
Tel: +45 871 62217
Email: jhmeyer@gmx.de
Office: bldg. 1463 room 622
http://person.au.dk/en/ihojhm@hum
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