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‘The world after all was one’: The International Environmental Network of UNESCO and IUPN, 1945–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2011

ANNA-KATHARINA WÖBSE
ANNA-KATHARINA WÖBSE*
Affiliation:
Liebensteiner Str. 44, 28205 Bremen, Germany; annawoebse@gmx.de
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Abstract

The pursuit of nature conservation was central to the scientific section of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) from the outset. In order to build a network of expertise and practice, UNESCO supported the establishment of a non-governmental organisation, the fledgling International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN). This small core of non-governmental actors found itself thrown into the arena of global politics and was forced out of its conservation niche. In August 1949, UNESCO and IUPN jointly convened a global conference on ecology and education. The genesis and progress of this conference highlighted the growing prominence of environmental issues and the increasing reciprocity between these issues and questions of nutrition, development and health in the immediate post-war era.

“the world after all was one”: l'unesco et la construction d'un réseau environnemental global

La section scientifique des Nations Unies (UNESCO) met dès le début la conservation de la nature au centre de ses préoccupations. Afin de créer un réseau d'expertise et de savoir-faire, l'UNESCO parraine une nouvelle organisation non-gouvernementale, l'Union Internationale pour la Protection de la Nature (UIPN). Cette petite bande d'acteurs se retrouve tout d'un coup dans l'arène de la politique globale et dans la nécessité d'abandonner la petite niche qui jusque-là avait abrité les apôtres de la conservation internationale. Déjà en 1949, l'UNESCO, comme l'UIPN, appelle à la constitution d'un premier Congrès mondial pour l'écologie et l'éducation. L'histoire de ce congrès et de ses conséquences souligne l'importance toujours croissante des questions environnementales et l'apparition d'interconnections avec les problèmes d'alimentation, de développement et de santé tels qu'ils se présentaient dans le monde de l'après-guerre.

“the world after all was one”: unesco und der aufbau eines globalen netzwerks für umweltfragen

Von Beginn an verstand die Bildungsorganisation der Vereinten Nationen (UNESCO) Naturschutz als zentrale Aufgabe. Um ein Netzwerk für Experten- und Praxiswissen aufzubauen unterstützte die Organisation die Gründung einer korrespondierenden Nichtregierungsorganisation, der Internationalen Union für Naturschutz (IUPN). Der kleine Zirkel dieser Akteure fand sich plötzlich in der Arena globaler Politik wieder und war gezwungen, die Nische, in der sich internationaler Naturschutz bis dahin entwickelt hatte, zu verlassen. Bereits im August 1949 berief die UNESCO gemeinsam mit der IUPN eine erste Weltkonferenz ein, die sich mit Ökologie und Bildung beschäftigte. Die Geschichte dieser Konferenz und deren Verlauf spiegeln die steigende Bedeutung umweltpolitischer Fragen und deren wachsenden Wechselbeziehungen mit Ernährungs-, Entwicklungs- und Gesundheitsfragen in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit wider.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 20 , Issue 3: Transnational Cooperation in Food, Agriculture, Environment and Health in Historical Perspective , August 2011 , pp. 331 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 The Conference took place in Lake Success, 22–29 Aug. 1949. The manuscript of the proceedings can be found in the UNESCO Archives, Paris. A revised version was published: International Union for the Protection of Nature, ed., International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature, Lake Success, 22–29 Aug. 1949. Proceedings and Papers (Paris, Bruxelles: UNESCO 1950) [hereafter cited as IUPN, 1950]. Also available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001335/133578mo.pdf (last visited 17 April 2011).

2 In 1956 IUPN was renamed IUCN – The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Over time, the last three words disappeared from current use (see http://www.iucn.org/about/, last visited 12 May 2011).

3 IUPN, 1950, vii.

4 While most of the literature concerning the genesis of international and global environmental governance ignores it completely, some works relating to environmental law and international environmental policy mention the conference, see for instance Lausche, Barbara J., Weaving a Web of Environmental Law (Bonn: IUCN/ECL 2008), 14Google Scholar. Caldwell, Lynton K., International Environmental Policy: From the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century, 3d edn with Paul S. Weiland (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 54Google Scholar; McCormick, John, The Global Environmental Movement, 2nd edn (Chichester et al.: John Wiley and Sons, 1995), 40–2Google Scholar. The only more detailed account of the political dimension of the conference in times of population anxiety is given by Linnér, Björn-Ola, The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-war Population-Resource Crises (Isles of Harris: The White Horse Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Martin Holdgate refers to the conferences as ‘the first landmark in IUPN's history’: Holdgate, Martin, The Green Web: A Union for World Conservation (London: Earthscan, 1999), 41–2Google Scholar. In his latest book on the world history of the environmental movement, Joachim Radkau pays tribute to the role IUPN/IUCN played in the immediate post-war years. Radkau, Joachim: Die Ära der Ökologie: Eine Weltgeschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011), 104–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Holdgate, Martin, The Green Web: A Union for World Conservation (London: Earthscan, 1999), 12Google Scholar.

19 The object of IOPN was ‘to work internationally for the progress of nature protection by centralising, classifying, by publishing and by distributing to governments, institutions and persons interested in nature protection, documents, legislative texts, scientific studies, information and data of any kind regarding nature protection and especially the preservation of fauna, flora and natural scenery in a primitive state’: The International Office for the Protection of Nature, Brochure 1936, 9. Bundesarchiv Koblenz [German Federal Archives, BAK], 245/201.

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22 Together with his colleague Waléry Goetel he had approached William Hornaday to gain advice regarding similar projects along the border between Canada and the USA. Hornaday in return promoted the binational endeavour as did the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire. See Hornaday's foreword to Goetel, Waléry: ‘The great programme of Poland and Czechoslovakia for National Parks’, Zoological Society Bulletin (published by the New York Zoological Society), 27, 2 (1925), 27–36Google Scholar.

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28 It seems to be characteristic for such male environmental networks that they depended on versed female secretaries – in this case the Norwegian Tordis Graim, who actually ran the office.

29 In the reports of the IOPN Julian Huxley was listed as member of the General Council of the Office. See IOPN Biennial Report 1935–1937. BAK B 245/201.

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45 A Swiss, Charles Bernard, was elected to presidency, but the three vice-presidents (the French Roger Heim, Hal Coolidge of the USA and Henry G. Maurice of the UK) represented imperial preservationism. The old grand seigneurs of pre and inter-war nature protection, the Dutch van Tienhoven and the Belgian van Straelen, declined nomination. The latter's protégé, Jean-Paul Harroy, was elected secretary-general. Holdgate, Web, 35–6.

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47 See the description of the first conference in Fontainebleau by Rothschild, Miriam, ‘I remember. . .’, World Conservation, Anniversary Issue, 3/4 (1998), 7Google Scholar. While many of the European activists were occupied with rebuilding their scientific infrastructure, American protagonists such as William Vogt were optimistic. When talking to the latter, Rothschild ‘felt the future of the rhinoceros and the skylark depended on energetic visionaries, not reasonable men who discussed the basic question of our meagre resources’. Again, it was Julian Huxley who emphasised the emotional motivation the activists shared. He expressed, according to Rothschild, what the ‘delegates present all felt in their bones – the love and fascination of life other than our own, which must be protected’.

48 Nicholson, Max, The New Environmental Age (Cambridge et al: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 105Google Scholar.

49 Some of the European members had managed to emigrate while other prominent members of the IOPN did not survive the aggression of Nazi Germany, such as Jean Marie Derscheid, first secretary of the Office, who had been murdered by the Gestapo in 1944 (‘Obituary Jean-Marie Derscheid’, The Auk, 63, 1 [1946], 126). The Polish biologists Michal Siedlecki and his colleague Jerzy Smolenski, both representatives of various international initiatives concerning nature protection, and members of IOPN, had died in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. See August, Jochen, ed., ‘Sonderaktion Krakau’: Die Verhaftung Krakauer Wissenschaftler am 6. November 1939 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1997), 7–85Google Scholar. Roger Heim, a renowned mycologist who was soon to become one of the key figures of the IUPN, survived the concentration camps in Buchenwald and Mauthausen. See Heim, Roger: La sombre route (Souvenir des Camps de Concentration Nazis) (Paris: Corti, 1947)Google Scholar.

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60 United Nations, eds, Proceedings of the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources (New York: United Nations Publications, 1950)Google Scholar. Among others Allan Gille of UNESCO's Division of Fundamental Education talked on ‘environmental education’ (Vol. I, 256–62), Harroy and van Straelen talked on the environmental dimension of ‘Wildlife and Fish Resources’ (Vol. VII, 222–8).

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73 ‘Nur aus der Rückschau erkennt man, wie der internationale Naturschutz doch – zunächst unmerklich – aus der Nische hervorgelangte und wie dieses imaginäre Gebilde langsam, aber sicher materielle Substanz ansetzte’. Radkau, Ökologie, 116.