Greening Europe : Environmental Protection in the Long Twentieth Century – A Handbook

Today, the environment seems omnipresent in European policy within and beyond the European Union. The idea of a shared European environment, however, has come a long way and is still being contested. __Greening Europe__ focuses on the many ways people have interacted with nature and made it an issue of European concern. The authors ask how notions of Europe mattered in these activities and they expose the many entanglements of activists across the subcontinent who set out to connect and network, and to exchange knowledge, worldviews, and strategies that exceeded their national horizons. Moving beyond human agency, the handbook also highlights the eminent role nature played in both "greening" Europe and making Europe a shared environment. Table of Contents 6 On the “Contemporary European History” Handbook Series 10 1 Introduction: Writing a European History of Environmental Protection • Patrick Kupper and Anna-Katharina Wöbse 12 I Conserving Nature 26 2 Counting Birds: Protecting European Avifauna and Habitats • Anna-Katharina Wöbse 28 3 Europe and its Environmental Other(s): Imagining Natures for “Global” Conservation • Raf de Bont 58 4 Restoring, Reintroducing, Rewilding: Creating European Wilderness • Anna-Katharina Wöbse and Hans-Peter Ziemek 84 5 Protecting Eurofisch: An Environmental History of the European Eeland its Europeanness • Peter A. Coates 112 6 Transcending the Cold War: Borders, Nature, and the European Green Belt Conservation Project along the Former Iron Curtain • Astrid M. Eckert and Pavla Šimková 140 II Preserving Livelihoods 166 7 Transforming Woodlands: European Forest Protection in a Global Context • Richard Hölzl and K. Jan Oosthoek 168 8 Travelling (Western) Europe: Tourism, Regional Development, and Nature Protection • Ute Hasenöhrl and Robert Groß 196 9 Moving Mountains: The Protection of the Alps • Romed Aschwanden, Maria Buck, Patrick Kupper, and Kira J. Schmidt 228 10 Negotiating the Maritime Commons: Protecting the Baltic Sea in a European Context • Simo Laakkonen and Tuomas Räsänen 254 11 Recycling Europe’s Domestic Wastes: The Hope of “Greening” Mass Consumption through Recycling • Heike Weber 280 III Sustaining Environments 314 12 Visualizing the Invisible: Communicating Europe’s Environment • Silke Vetter-Schultheiß 316 13 Revealing Risks: European Moments in Nuclear Politics and the Anti-Nuclear Movement • Astrid Mignon Kirchhof and Jan-Henrik Meyer 342 14 Combatting “Acid Rain”: Protecting the Common European Sky • Arne Kaijser 374 15 Developing Europe: The Formation of Sustainability Concepts and Activities • Elke Seefried 400 16 Europeanizing Biodiversity: International Organizations as Environmental Actors • Liesbeth van de Grift and Wim van Meurs 430 17 Epilogue: The Nature of Europe • Anna-Katharina Wöbse and Patrick Kupper 458 List of Contributors 462 Index 466 Today, the European environmental regime seems omnipresent. A rare beetle can stop a building project, the local water authorities have to make sure that the European Eel can reach his home waters after having travelled the Atlantic, European standards for air quality cause trouble for the German diesel-driven car industry, and lighting products are subject to EU energy labelling and eco-design requirements. Implementing laws and sticking to environmental norms and standards has become an integral part of the European integration process. To the EU this is self-evident: "We share resources like water, air, natural habitats and the species they support, and we also share environmental standards to protect them." The idea of any such 'shared environment', however, has come a long way and is still being contested. Thinking and writing about the history of "protecting the environment" requires us to study the long 20th century. In order to understand the peculiar rise of Europe environmental regimes and green values we have to consider the modern concept of Europe as a shared geographical space, linked by habitats, migrating species, rivers, pollutants, climate and risks. Moreover, we have to analyse the 'invention' of conservation as a moral enterprise. That is why environmental history needs a long durée's perspective to understand the evolution of the European Common