With this issue of Environment and History, van Dam contributes to the thesis that the expansion of trade systems and the emergence of large-scale human intervention in (formerly) natural ecosystems is a continuous, interactive process with a long history, long before the Industrial Revolution or the discovery of the New Worlds.
Sacred groves in the ancient Mediterranean are compared with surviving groves of South India, particularly Uttara Kannada, to evaluate the roles of these refugia in maintaining balance between human groups and the ecosystems of which they are part.
This paper suggests an approach for using different types of data sources, and for bringing together understandings of ecosystem dynamics and of people’s interaction with the environment, and thereby achieving ‘closure’ in a highly contested terrain.
The authors assert that potash production in northern Sweden lost out to German producers, who started to produce potash industrially at the same time that production in northern Sweden ceased. The ecological significance of the potash production is difficult to estimate…
Archaeological evidence demonstrates that prehistoric human activities caused significant environmental alteration in many parts of the region…
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publishes its “Red List” of endangered animal and plant species.
The 1992 international convention articulates a legally binding obligation to maintain the integrity of ecosystems.
This dam project alters the Niger delta’s previously dynamic and self-regulating ecosystem.
The oil production and related infrastructural developments severely disrupt the natural equilibrium of this West African ecosystem.
The Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel is founded in 1953; today it is the largest conservation organization in Israel.
