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Good Trees, Bad Trees – Colonial Debates on the Climatic Impact of Forests

Thu, March 31, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Westin Seattle Hotel, Olympic

Abstract

Environmental histories of colonialism are filled both with stories about the alleged destruction of forests by indigenous populations and with plans and attempts of forest conservation and afforestation. These tropes are indeed so common that they can serve to connect the histories of forests from Africa to Asia, and Australia to America. On all continents, one of the main concerns of colonial officials and foresters was that trees play an important – or even the most important – role in moderating climates. This claim, while widespread, was not without its detractors (and is, in its universalizing form, still disputed today). In fact, the turn of the twentieth century witnessed a controversial debate over the effect of forests that filled the pages of geographical and meteorological journals across Europe.
In this paper, I will examine the origins and the development of the international debate on the climatic effects of trees, tracing not only the ways and places evidence was gathered and analyzed, but also the role of political and economic rationales. The debate, ranging from European to African environments and beyond, had a clear colonial dimension, which implicitly or explicitly figures in the contributions of foresters, botanists, geographers, and administrators. It can thus offer a fascinating view of the socio-economic context and the transnational and trans-environmental extent of scientific inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In highlighting the frequent attempts to arrive at universal rules of the arboreal function, the paper also adds another chapter to the already complex history of the notion of a “global” environment.

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