Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Jundt: Dueling Visions for the Postwar World: The UN and UNESCO 1949 Conferences on Resources and Nature, and the Origins of Environmentalism

Thomas Jundt (Brown Univ. - History) has published Dueling Visions for the Postwar World: The UN and UNESCO 1949 Conferences on Resources and Nature, and the Origins of Environmentalism (Journal of American History, Vol. 101, no. 1, pp. 44-70, June 2014). Here's the abstract:
Thomas Jundt examines the 1949 United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources held in Lake Success, New York. Concerned that the conference would promote only traditional notions of conservation focused on the wise use of natural resources and the preservation of natural spaces deemed aesthetically pleasing, one of the United Nations’ own agencies, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, held the concurrent International Technical Conference on the Protection of Nature designed to encourage broader ideals of environmentalism—focused on issues of ecology, pollution, and sustainability—that emerged after World War II.