Environmental Governance. Experience, Knowledge, Expectations since 1945

The “environment” emerged as a new field of knowledge and experience after the Second World War. Since then, the formulation and implementation of policies often differed from the ideal type of rationalistic policy-making that simply demanded for the transmission of scientific solutions to political power brokers. Environmental governance itself became an object of theorization and questions about the proper instruments of how to best intervene into eco-systems and human environmental behavior were contested scientifically as much as politically. Changing political modes of governance have only been studied tentatively for environmental politics in the 20th century, while (master) narratives under such umbrella terms as Keynesianism or Neoliberalism have been discussed more intensively by political and social scientists as well as historians for developments in economic or social policy.

The expansion of the environmental management state occurred mainly since the 1970s, that is in the same period when the state’s capacity to regulate and intervene into economy and society was increasingly called into question. Environmental governance was, thus, deeply entangled with the political challenges and transformations since the 1970s. Focusing on both industrial production and consumption as fields of regulation, policymakers, politicians, and environmental experts had to grapple with the seemingly contradictory goals of economic growth and environmental protection, whilst expecting ecological catastrophes (resource exhaustion, Waldsterben, excessive waste, pollution or climate change) and experiencing prolonged economic crises. While the end of Keynesianism and traditional command-and-control-regulation is commonly supposed to have given rise to ideas of deregulation and economization, our workshop intends to scrutinize and challenge these broad concepts as well as historiographical narratives tha embody them. To that end, it focuses on concrete interactions of environmental expertise and policy-making.

Organized by Laura Kaiser (ZZF), Thomas Lettang (ZZF), Nils Güttler (ETH Zürich), Rüdiger Graf (ZZF)

Program:

Thursday, September 16

1:00 – 1:30 pm: Welcome & Opening Remarks

1:30 – 3:00 pm: Session I: Ecological Knowledge
Chair: Laura Kaiser, Potsdam

• Christian Reiß, Regensburg: Ecology as a Verwaltungswissenschaft. Counting animals and plants in the BRD after 1945
• Nils Güttler, Zürich: Bioindicators: Applied Ecology and Environmental Surveillance

3:00 – 3:30 pm: Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00 pm: Session II: Economic Instruments
Chair: Thomas Lettang, Potsdam

• Melina Antonia Buns, Oslo: Reinvesting in the Environment: Scandinavian Economists’ Instruments for Environmental Governance and their Reframing of the ‘Growth Paradigm’
• Julian Schellong, Darmstadt: Organizing Atmospheric Scarcity: Techniques and Practices of CO2 Trading

5:00 – 5:15 pm: Break

5:15 – 7:15 pm: Session III: The Politics of Energy Transitions
Chair: Rüdiger Graf, Potsdam

• Thomas Lettang, Potsdam: “Saving energy without sacrificing comfort!” Market economy and administrative interventions into household energy consumptions in West Germany, 1973-1989
• Thomas Turnbull, Berlin: The RAND Corporation as an Environmental Think Tank: Systematising Energy Demand in the 1970s
• Clarence Hatton-Proulx, Montréal: The Urban Governance of Energy Transitions. Lumber Yards and Gas Stations in Montréal, 1946-1960

7:30 pm: Dinner

Friday, September 17:

9:00 – 11:00 am: Session IV: Waste Management and Air Pollution Control
Chair: Rüdiger Graf, Potsdam

• Karolina Partyga, New York: Socialist Alchemy: Waste Recovery as a Solution to Economic and Environmental Problems in the Polish People’s Republic, 1947-1989
• Roman Köster, Freiburg: How to govern something you don´t know? The Development of Waste Legislation in West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s
• Eva Oberloskamp, München: Conflicts on Air Pollution Control in the United Kingdom during the 1970s

11:00 – 11:15 am: Coffee Break

11:15 – 1:15 pm: Session V: Scientific Expertise and Regulation
Chair: Nils Güttler, Zürich

• Lena Joos, Bern: Environmental Knowledge and Governance in the Framework of the UN Conference on the Human Environment 1972
• Felix Lieb, München: The Limits of "Marktsozialdemokratie": Ecological Concepts of the German SPD between Governmental Regulation and Individual Responsibility
• Laura Kaiser, Potsdam: How to Make the Polluter Pay?: The Role of the German Advisory Council of the Environment in the Implementation of a Foundational Policy Principle, 1970s

1:15 – 1:30 pm: Concluding Discussion

1:30 – 2:30 pm: Lunch