ICEHO Bulletin 8
April 2016
The International Consortium of Environmental
History Organizations is a ‘network of networks’ forenvironmental history in universities, museums,
publishers and other institutions.
We sponsor International Congresses every 5 years(next one in 2019). Between Congresses, we work
actively to promote environmental history in all its
forms: as scholarship and research, informing public
policy and education, and in promoting collaboration
between environmental historians around the world.
Our website is regularly updated – we are keen to
publicise your conferences and events:
http://www.iceho.org/

From the Editor
This is the first bulletinsince our very
successful General
Assembly on 1 April in
Seattle, USA, hosted by
the American Society ofEnvironmental History.
Thanks to Lisa Mighetto
and the ASEH
conference for making
this possible.
The main business of the Assembly was the election of a
new team, including a new President, Vice-President
and 7 board members for the next 3 year term (20162019). I am now ex officio Past President, but willcontinue on as your Bulletin editor.
In this Bulletin we welcome Verena Winiwarter as
President, and Claudia Leal as Vice-President. Dagomar
Degroot has agreed to serve as Secretary for the rest of
the term of former Secretary, Dolly Jørgensen who has
stepped down because of pressure of work. The formal
terms of office of the Secretary and the Treasurer end in2017.
Thanks to the sterling work of Nominating Committee,
chaired by Cindy Ott, we had a very good list of
candidates for election to our new board.
Congratulations to our new board members and to thediverse member organizations they represent:
James Beattie (New Zealand; Waikato Historical
Research Centre)

Hou Shen (China: Association for East Asian
Environmental History AEAEH)
Siddhartha Krishnan (India; The Ashoka Trust for
Research in Ecology and the Environment ATREE)Claudia Leal (Colombia; Sociedad Latinoamericana y
Caribeña de Historia Ambiental SOLCHA)
Alan MacEachern (Canada; Network in the CanadianHistory of the Environment NiCHE)
Mucha Musemwa (South Africa; South African Historical
Society)
Daisy Onyige (Nigeria; African Network forEnvironmental Humanities)
We look forward to working together, and torepresenting all the organizations that come together
under the ICEHO banner.
Libby Robin
Australian National University, Canberra

Introducing…
Claudia Leal – incoming Vice-President
Claudia Leal was born and lives
at 2,600 meters above sea levelin Bogotá (capital of Colombia),
where she works as associate
professor at the Department ofHistory at Universidad de losAndes. She holds a Ph.D. in
Geography from UC Berkeley,
was co-president of the Latin
AmericanandCaribbean
Society for Environmental
History (SOLCHA) and fellow of
the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
in Munich. She identifies with mountains but has done
most of her research on rainforest regions and on thetransition from slavery to freedom. Her bookmanuscript Landscapes of Freedom, on the formation ofa rainforest peasantry after emancipation in the Pacificcoast of Colombia, should be published soon. She iscurrently working on the history of nature conservation,
again in her home country, co-editing a book on Latin
American and Caribbean environmental history, andediting another book on Colombian environmental
histories with articles (mostly) by her former
students. She is also interested in the history ofanimals.

As ICEHO Vice-President she wishes to contribute to theorganization of the 3rdWorld Congress. She plans on
strengthening the relations between societies andresearchers working in various parts of the world,
expanding and tightening the global network ofenvironmental history.

Dagomar Degroot – incoming Secretary
Dagomar Degroot is anassistant professor ofenvironmental history at
Georgetown University,
Washington DC. He is theauthor of a forthcoming
book, The Frigid Golden
Age: Experiencing Climate
Change in the Dutch
Republic, 1560-1720.
Dagomar also won the 2015 ESEH Article Prize for"'Never Such Weather Known in these Seas:' Climatic
Fluctuations and the Anglo-Dutch Wars of theSeventeenth Century, 1652-1674."
As co-founder and co-director of the Climate History
Network, Dagomar represents one of the ‘theme
network’ members of ICEHO. He also hosts the Climate
History Podcast, directs HistoricalClimatology.com, andGeorgetownEnvironmentalHistory.org, and sits on thesteering committee of the War and Environment
Network, another ICEHO theme network.
As secretary of ICEHO, he plans to update and greatly
expand our online presence. He will rebuild our website
to make it easier to use, and pack it with new resources
for teaching and research in environmental history. He
will also give us a social media presence on Twitter,
Facebook, and possibly Weibo, a Chinese microblogging
site. He is leading a subcommittee of graduate student
assistants who will help him manage these resources.
For more, visit his website, at DagomarDegroot.com

And meet some of our new Board Members…

Daisy Onyige
Chioma Daisy Onyige(Daisy) is a member of theAfrican Environmental
Humanities Network in
ICEHO and is a SeniorLecturer of Sociology andCriminology at the
University of Port
Harcourt, Nigeria. She is apioneer fellow of the
Global South Scholar in
residence programme of
the Graduate Institute forInternational andDevelopment Studies,
Geneva, Switzerland;
Fellow of the Rachel Carson Center, LMU, Munich,Germany; Fellow of the Africa Science Leadership
Programme, University of Pretoria, South Africa; andrecently a Commonwealth Research Fellow at the
University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
She is the Editor of “Indigenous Knowledge response to
climate change”. www.africaclimatechange.com. She isa member of the African Network of Environmental
History (ANEH). She is a regional representative for the
Africa region at the International Sociological
Association (ISA), RC32-Women in society. She is also anexpert group member for Africa Scoping Deliverable 2b,
Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), as well as amember of the Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP),
Thematic Working Group (TWG 2) –Biodiversity andEcosystem Services; Sectorial Working Group (SWG 3) –Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
As an ICEHO Board member, she plans to draw on her
academic and pedagogical knowledge as well as her
professional networks as an International scholar tohelp increase outreach in terms of ICEHO membershipfor the African region, and to especially work within that
context to recruit member organisations from Africa
into the ICEHO.

Mucha Musemwa
Mucha Musemwa is
Associate Professor ofsocial andenvironmental history
at the University of the
Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg, South
Africa, and Assistant
Dean for Postgraduate
Affairs in the Faculty of
Humanities.
His monograph: Water, History and Politics in
Zimbabwe: Bulawayo’s Struggles with the Environment,
1894-2008 was published in 2014 by Africa World Press,
Trenton, New Jersey. He is current President of theSouthern African Historical Society, an Editor of theSouth African Historical Journal and a foundation
member of editorial board of Water History – theflagship journal of the International Water History
Association (IWHA), another ICEHO member.
As a board member, Mucha intends to work towards
more diversity in ICEHO, particularly seeking out black
scholars from sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Africa toparticipate in the WCEH2019. He will try to include
young scholars working at the intersection of history
and the environment, and other environmentally-related disciplines through holding regional workshops,
organising publications of their papers in special issuesof journals, and raise the profile of the various ways inwhich the environmental past can be understood. He
will also work to raise funds to support early career
black environmental historians to present at the third
WCEH. His ultimate objective is to ensure that WCEH is
more representative of diverse African scholarship.

WEHN
Women in Environmental History Network
From the President Julie Cohn

In the course of the evening, several individuals
proposed an informal goal of holding similar networking
receptions at environmental history meetings aroundthe world. By acclimation, those in attendance created a
new entity, titled “Women’s Environmental History
Network” (WEHN) and raised $100 to join theInternational Consortium of Environmental History
Organizations (ICEHO). After the meeting, Kathy
Brosnan submitted our funds to ICEHO and established
our membership with the consortium.
The reception was great fun! It lasted well past thescheduled ending time, and guests continued visiting
while the hotel staff converted the room for the next
event.
In the relatively near future, we will create a permanentemail list and provide periodic communications tointerested participants.
If you would like to be included on this list, please send
your name and email address to Julie Cohn atjacohn@uh.edu.

ATREE

Here Nancy Jacobs addresses the Women’s Reception that launched
WEHN in Seattle (Julie Cohn, President in orange, third from left)

On Thursday, March 31st, at 6:30 pm, a lively andenthusiastic group of nearly seventy individuals
gathered for the first ever Women’s Networking
Reception at ASEH! The organizers of this event hoped
to encourage greater visibility, interaction, and support
for the women who are active in environmental history.
Nancy Jacobs gave a warm welcome to everyone inattendance, thanked our sponsors, and invited thosepresent to really focus on making new contacts andexpanding networks within ASEH. While this gathering
was billed as a “women’s” event, we enjoyed thecompany of several men, and in general hoped to create
an open atmosphere for anyone seeking to connect toothers working in the field.
During her remarks, Nancy noted briefly that the event
organizers are interested, among other matters, inunderstanding and addressing barriers to women
pursuing professions in environmental history, while atthe same time supporting and expanding opportunities
for success. To that end, we are gathering data related
to participation in the field and how that is reflected inpublications, reviews, conference presentations, andrelated matters. Going forward, we plan to share ourfindings with those involved in the networking group,
and with relevant organizations.

The Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and theEnvironment, India
ATREE www.atree.org is an interdisciplinary research
institution, and member of ICEHO. The disciplinary
identities of its faculty are diverse and range from
ecology, environmental science, environmentalsociology, environmental history and ecologicaleconomics. Faculty teach and do research across anequally diverse repertoire of broad and specific areas
including forest ecology and livelihoods, pastoral
landscape transformation, urban water, sustainable
development, climate change, ecosystems services andhuman wellbeing and environmental justice. ATREE’s
yearlong coursework for PhD students include core andelective courses in which natural history andenvironmental history figure prominently.

New ICEHO board
member, Siddharta (Sidd)
Krishnan is ATREE’s
environmental sociologist andhistorian. Though trained insociology, archival work has
always been crucial to his
fieldwork in conservation andlandscape oriented research.
Sidd was ‘initiated into the environmental history
league’ when he became a Carson Fellow at the Rachel
Carson Center, Munich, in 2012—2013, and since hasorganized panels at a range of environmental history
congresses. He describes his mission as ‘historicizing

environmental sociology and sociologizing
environmental history’ through research, teaching and
PhD mentoring. ATREE co-hosted an environmental
history conference ‘Unruly Environments: Ecologies ofAgency in a Global Era’ (with RCC and the Nehru
memorial Museum and Library, NMML), in New Delhi in
2014.
ATREE has since gained credentials in environmental
humanities. Being a member of the ICEHO will only help
expand upon this front. The field of environmental
history itself will benefit from being a part ofinterdisciplinary efforts the kind of which ATREE
spearheads.
ATREE has been ranked 18 in the list of environmental
think tanks in the world by the Think Tanks and Civil
Societies Program (TTCSP) of the University ofPennsylvania. The field of environmental history canthus increasingly gain social and policy relevance in thesubcontinent.

deriving from the Earth First! movement, including EarthFirst!, Wild Earth, ALARM and Live Wild or Die!
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/collection/ef. In an introductory essay, Bron Taylor offers ahistory of radical environmentalism’s print publications:
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/taylorbron-radical-environmentalisms-print-history-earthfirst-wild-earth

What’s News in the world of Digital
Environmental History?

“Beyond Doom and Gloom”: A Virtual Exhibition andCall for Responses
The “doom and gloom” surrounding climate change andextreme weather events makes communication about
them difficult. The Environment & Society Portal has a
new virtual exhibition “Beyond Doom and Gloom: An
Exploration through Letters”(http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/beyond-doom-and-gloom) collects and shares visions ofhope through letters. Write to us and share yourresponse or your vision here:
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/beyond-doom-and-gloom/send-us-your-letter… from Kim Coulter at the Environment & Society
Portal http://www.environmentandsociety.org/
Become part of the Arcadia network!

What are you working on? In 750
words or less, share your original
research with Arcadia, the RCC's and
ESEH's online, peer-reviewed shortform digital publication platform forenvironmental histories.

Green Capital of Europe? A Legacy of
WCEH 2014
View all current and past Arcadia issues here:
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/issues.
Here’s how to submit your piece:
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/contri
bution.
The Print History of Radical Environmentalism
The Environment & Society Portal is proud to present afull-text searchable digital archive of radical journals

In the July 2015 Bulletin, Jane Carruthers, past presidentof ICEHO, reported on her visit to Guimarães, Portugal,
to continue an association that began with the 2014
World Congress of Environmental History. The current

project involves the application of the city to become theGreen Capital of Europe in the next few years. Here Janecontinues the story.
As one of the three ICEHO members of the Scientific andMonitoring Committee that will assist to shepherd thecity of Guimarães in its application to gain the covetedGreen Capital of Europe accolade, I attended the second
meeting of this committee, comprising 14 members, atthe end of January 2016. Under the chairmanship of
Mohan Munasinghe, we are working with overall
direction from the Mayor, Dr Domingos Bragança, andthe Rector of the University of Minho, Professor António
M. Cunha, and an executive committee led by ViceMayor Amadeu Portilha and Vice-Rector Paulo Ramisio,
in tandem with an operational group of 19
environmental experts many of them engineers. Thisinitiative is a partnership between the city and the
University of Minho. The coordinator of the project isProfessor Isabel Loureiro who works with theoperational committee to target 12 environmental
indicators on which the city will be evaluated by a panelof experts from the European Union. These include
matters such as waste and water management, air
quality, noise reduction, green energy and green
transport and similar aspects of sustainable urban
management.

The format of the meeting this year included visits tovarious projects that have already begun in the quest for
the Green Capital award. These were, for example, thefreshwater treatment facility and reservoir on Mount
Penha, a travelling theatre bus that visits schools to give
performances on environmental issues, an innovative
Pay As You Throw (PAYT) waste collection system thatencourages recycling and regular collection in thehistoric city centre (no unsightly bins on the streets) anda living science centre in the restored Couros leather
tanning area, where we had our WCEH event.
Apart from the formal meeting to chart the way forward
over the next six months, there was an international
conference on ‘How to build a Green City’ that attracted
an audience of around 100 people. Professor Estelita
Vaz, whom many ICEHO members will remember fromthe WCEH, gave a presentation on ‘University
commitment to build a Green City’, and I spoke on the
topic of ‘From UNESCO World Heritage to a sustainable

city’. Estelita and I were followed by three people
directly involved in sustainable urban centres. They
were Gunnar Söderholm, head of environment andhealth administration in Stockholm (the first Green
Capital in 2008), who spoke on ‘A vision for urban
development’ and Luis Orive, a landscape specialist andleader of the team that took the Basque city of VitoriaGasteiz with its remarkable Green Belt to the award ofGreen Capital in 2012, with a focus on ‘Green inside andGreen Outside’. Finally we were treated to an extremelyinteresting explanation of how Pontevedra, a city northof Portugal on the coast of Spain, virtually banned
motor vehicles from the city centre, thus creating a
liveable and clean city that has received numerous
awards for its achievement. This lecture, ‘A model forthe city centred on people’, was given by the long-time
mayor of Pontevedra, Migual Anxo Fernándes Lores,
who spoke Galician, thus giving Carlos Duarte, theexcellent simultaneous translator, a bit more work thanhe had anticipated!
It is both a pleasure and a privilege for ICEHO to be
involved in this project and to have a lasting relationshipwith the city and the university after the extremely
successful WCEH.
For further information see the following sites
relating to Guimarães Mais Verde (some in English,
some in Portuguese):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guimar%C3%A3es
www.cm-guimaraes.pt/pages/1092
www.fpguimaraes.pt/guimaraes-vai-estar-maisverde/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpxKFTo1T4E
Guimarães Cidade Verde - Os Verdes
www.osverdes.pt/.../guimaraes-cidade-verde.php

VIII Simposio de laSociedadLatinoamericana y
Caribeña
de Historia Ambiental
Puebla, México 2016
Website online now:

http://solcha2016.com

A Postcard from St Petersburg,
Russia, April 2016
Meet Professor Julia Lajus, whoruns the International Masters
Programme in ‘Usable Pasts’ at
the Higher School of
Economics, National Research
University in St Petersburg

In April 2016, Libby Robin travelled to St Petersburg tobe part of an exciting International Masters Course inpractical and applied history, ‘usable pasts’, at theinvitation of Julia Lajus. Her international students comefrom places as varied as Ghana, Khazakstan, Serbia andIndia to join local Russian students in a course taught
entirely in English, which is strongly historical, but widein its scope. Students are working on film, photography,
and art and all of them undertake internships in the
many wonderful museums of the Baltic port city of St
Petersburg. It is a very international place, andconversations were broad. I spoke to them about the
National Museum of Australia, and some of theinitiatives to present the Anthropocene in Museums,
particularly in Europe, and the following evening I joined
the class for a wonderful lecture from another visitor, Dr
Joost Schokkenbroek Manager of Academic Programs at
the National Maritime Museum Amsterdam
https://www.hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl/ where several of the St
Petersburg staff had worked on exchange. The course
benefited greatly from the many crossroads that meetin St Petersburg, and from Julia’s wide networks inenvironmental history, in ESEH and other ICEHO groups.
Libby Robin

Final 2013-2016 Presidents’ Report(from General Assembly)
from Jane
Carruthers
and Libby
Robin
As we convene ICEHO’s second General Assembly the occasion
seemed appropriate to summarise the activities of theconsortium during the shared presidency of both Jane
Carruthers (2013 to 2014) and me, Libby Robin (2014 to 2016).
Jane was the informal president from ICEHO’s inception in
2009, but was formally elected at the General Assembly in
Munich in 2013 and, as then Vice-President, I took over fromher at the World Congress in Guimarães in 2014 to serve out
her remaining term of office.
Over the past three years, ICEHO has had a numberof successes and we are well poised to enter a new phase of
institutional stability, maturity and progress. Both Jane and I
have been honoured to have been Presidents of ICEHO and to
welcome a great new team.
BOARD MATTERSFirst, we both would like to thank the outgoing Board
members for their support and help. Being on a committee
entails responsibilities and sometimes a considerable amountof work. We are grateful to all Board members who have
served over the past few years. We are grateful to our former
board members who now be ‘supporters in the wings’: Mauro
Agnoletti, Ranjan Chakrabarti, John McNeill and Lise Sedrez.
In our thanks, we makespecial mention of Dolly
Jørgensen, our outgoingsecretary, who resigned fromher position with effect fromthis General Assembly. Dolly
has ongoing enormous
Dolly Jørgensen, foundation
responsibilities as President
secretary of ICEHO pictured here
on a research trip to Australia in Februaryof the European Society of2016 for the Foreign Bodies Intimate
Environmental History, as
Ecologies Conference, Macquarie
well as a new and demanding University, Sydney.
career position in Luleå
University, Sweden.
We have been extremely fortunate to have had Dolly as our
founding secretary and she has shouldered the website, thecorrespondence and the administrative technicalities of ourcomplex by-laws with knowledge, flair and competence. We
are grateful for her efficiency and courtesy and for getting
ICEHO’s secretarial portfolio going on such a secure footing.
Although we will miss Dolly very much, we know that she willcontinue to support ICEHO and its close liaison with the ESEH
and for this we are very appreciative.
We are grateful that Dolly will be replaced for the rest of her
term of office by Dagomar Degroot, whom we warmly
welcome.
Treasurer Steven Anderson of the Forest History
Society has also done a sterling job. Having shepherded our
bylaws through the labyrinth of North Carolina’s legal
processes, thanks to him, we have solid legal foundations andan excellent constitution. His support team, of Maggie Porelland subsequently Valerie Bass have been very patient andefficient with the complexities of levels of membership, newmembers, lapsed members and in keeping the list of member
organizations regularly updated.
WORLD CONGRESS 2014
The highlight of the joint presidency has been the World
Congress of Environmental History held in Guimarães, Portugal
in July 2014. Succeeding the first in Copenhagen in 2009, thesecond was going to be a hard act to follow. There is a great
deal that could be said about this very successful congress in
Portugal, but suffice it to say here that it was an outstanding
event, attracting hundreds of delegates with excellent papers,
all of whom enjoyed the hospitality and warmth of the city of
Guimarães and the University of Minho. Those involved put ina great deal of work: the ICEHO site selection committee,
members of the Program Committee under Graeme Wynn, thelocal organising committee under Estelita Vaz, the university

and the municipality. Under the editorship of Cristina de Meloand Estelita Vaz, with help from Mauro Agnoletti, two volumesof peer-reviewed selected papers will be published shortly bySpringer Verlag. This means that there will be a tangible legacyof the congress and an important lasting contribution of how‘Environmental History in the Making’ (the theme of theCongress) was actually made during that week. The WCEH waspreceded by a ESEH summer school, and the two conferences
resulted in the formation of the Portuguese Network ofEnvironmental History (REPORT(H)A, whom we warmly
welcome into the fold.
A further legacy of the congress has been an ongoing
relationship between ICEHO and the city of Guimarães and the
University of Minho. (Full report on this below).
NEWS BULLETIN
An organisation such as ICEHO – a consortium of organisations– relies heavily on communication for its vitality. To assist thiscommunication and to augment the website, I began a regularquarterly Bulletin in July 2014. This is a virtual hub to exchange
members’ news, identify issues of importance to ourdiscipline, welcome and profile new members and alert
members to conferences and important publications. The
Bulletin is sent directly to member organisations but is also put
on the website. It has been a great success and we encourage
all members to contribute to it: it is YOUR news and ourshared discipline.
ICEHO INTO THE FUTURE
It is exciting to consider the future of ICEHO, poised as it is for
growth and development. We now move into a fresh era withnew leadership. A truly hearty vote of thanks to Cindy Ott, as
Chair, Matthew Evenden, Bo Poulsen and Richard Tucker for
their assistance in what was a difficult task.
The major issue looming in the future is the third
World Congress of Environmental History that will be
convened in 2019. A Site Selection Committee, comprising
Graeme Wynn as Chair, Lisa Mighetto, Stefania Gallini and Bo
Poulsen, is handling the matter and they will report back onprogress later in the year. So watch this space.
As we leave the Presidential position, we have anumber of ideas for the future that, as and when appropriate,
we hope the new Board will take further. These include
strengthening the organisation with new members of all kinds– networks, institutions, societies, clusters, publishers andothers with an interest in environmental history. We need toserve those members and one way of doing so would be toconsider a strategic plan for ICEHO for the next five years andthen allocate specific responsibilities to individual board
members to put this plan into operation.
We would like to end with a final thanks to everyone attending
this General Assembly and who have shown their interest in
ICEHO, our absent members for their support and theoutgoing Board of 2013 to 2016. We congratulate theincoming Board members and wish them every success.
Libby Robin and Jane Carruthers
Note: Verena Winiwarter our new President since the General
Assembly will present her report in the upcoming Bulletins.

News from journals:

GAIA: Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society(Gaia: Ökologische Perspektiven für Wissenschaft undGesellschaft) is a peer-reviewed academic journal
established in 1992. Its main focus is on backgroundinformation, analyses, and solutions of environmental
and sustainability problems. Since 2001 it is publishedby oekom verlag. Articles are in English and German.
The editor-in-chief is Verena Winiwarter (Klagenfurt
University).

Instructions for prospective authors:
http://www.gaia-online.net/
If you have contributions for the next bulletin,
please send them to me
libby.robin@anu.edu.au
Or talk or write to our Executive Board members
about it:
Alan MacEachern amaceach@uwo.ca
Claudia Leal claleal@uniandes.edu.co
Daisy Onyige chioma2nv76@gmail.com
James Beattie jbeattie@waikato.ac.nz
Mucha Musemwa mucha.musemwa@wits.ac.za
Shen Hou houshen@ruc.edu.cn
Sidd Krishnan siddhartha.krishnan@atree.org

Do you want to join ICEHO?
From as little as $US100/year.
Information online:
http://www.iceho.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/01/ICEHOMembership-Application.pdf
Or contact Valerie Bass
Valerie.Bass@foresthistory.org