In the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern not only led to widespread calls for new policies, but also created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise. This led to novel challenges for advocacy groups such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which had to navigate rival scientific approaches, Cold War politics, and decolonization in their efforts to integrate the study and protection of nature into international policymaking. Planning for the Planet reveals how, despite their vast scientific knowledge and attempts to incorporate socially relevant themes, experts inevitably struggled to make conservation a central part of environmental politics within intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations.
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Conserving Global Nature
Chapter 1. Old Hands, Pastures New: IUCN and the New Environmental Age
Chapter 2. Classifying Ecosystems: The International Biological Program, 1964–1974
Chapter 3. Expertise and Diplomacy: Systems Politics at the UN Stockholm Conference, 1972
Chapter 4. Nature’s Value: The Fault Lines behind the World Conservation Strategy, 1975–1980
Conclusion: IUCN and Environmental Expertise, 1960s–Today
Appendix: Expert Biographies
Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr.
Edward Max Nicholson
Raymond Dasmann
Gerardo Budowski
Martin Edward Duncan Poore
Maurice Frederick Strong
Bibliography
Index
Simone Schleper is a lecturer at the University College Maastricht, where she also obtained her doctorate. In 2014 she held a visiting fellowship at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.
"Planning for the Planet gives an excellent account of the intricate political relations and negotiations of organizations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. I very much enjoyed reading this book."
– Sabine Hoehler, KTH Royal Institute of Technology