preservation and their embrace ofdeep ecol-
ogy. Arguing against the anthropocentric/ bio-
centricdistinctionthatmarkedcurrentthinking
on these matters, Guha (1989) insisted that
efforts to extend wilderness protection world-
wide had many harmful consequences for indi-
genouspeoples,andurgedenvironmentaliststo
place ‘a far greater emphasis on equity and the
integration of ecological concerns with liveli-
hood and work’. Meanwhile, anthropologists
and geographers working on questions of
developmentandunderdevelopmentin the
globalsouthcoined the termpolitical ecol-
ogyto describe their interest in the linkages
between political economy and cultural
ecology (broadly, the relations between
human societies and their natural environ-
ments). Political ecology is a broad church that
has attracted many geographers – including,
for example, Karl Zimmerer (Zimmerer
and Bassett, 2003), Paul Robbins (2004),
Roderick Neumann (2005) and Philip Stott
(Stott and Sullivan, 2000), amongst others –
for whom contemporary issues were more
pressing than historical enquiry,sensu strictu,
but many reached into the past to understand
current circumstances, and the Journal of
Political Ecology, established in 1994, promised
‘Case Studies in History and Society’ in its
subtitle.
All of this made for something of an identity
crisis in environmental history. A decade after
Australian historical geographer Joe Powell
suggested that the field reflected its practi-
tioners’ collective will to believe in the field,
American historian ofscienceHarriet Ritvo
described it as ‘an unevenly spreading blob’
(Powell, 1996; Ritvo, 2005). Responding to
such challenges and seeking to define their
enterprise, several environmental historians
found order in diversity. According to one
prominent American authority, environmental
history proceeds on three levels. The first
documents ‘the structure and distribution of
natural environments of the past’. The second
‘focuses on productive technology as it inter-
acts with the environment’. The third is
concerned with the ‘patterns of human per-
ception, ideology and value’ and the ways in
which they have worked in ‘reorganizing and
recreating the surface of the planet’ (Worster,
1990b). Another specialist claims that envir-
onmental historians ‘study how people have
lived in the natural systems of the planet ...
how they have perceived nature [and how]
they have reshaped it to suit their own idea
of good living’ (Warren, 2003). A third
American scholar differentiates environmental
histories by the extent of their concern with
material, cultural/intellectual or political mat-
ters (McNeill, 2003). Studies of the first type
focus upon ‘changes in biological and physical
environments, and how these changes have
affected human societies’. Cultural/intellec-
tual environmental history is concerned with
‘representations and images of nature in arts
and letters’, and political environmental his-
tory examines ‘law and state policy as it relates
to the natural world’. In a rather different vein,
the English geographer Ian Simmons has given
shape to his own form of environmental history
in a number of sweeping book-length essays
(Simmons, 1993, 1997, 2001).
chaos theory and post-structuralism
have also contributed to the (re)definition of
environmental history. Thanks in part to the
contributions of geographers such as David
Demeritt (1994b, 1998, 2001a), Bruce Braun
(2003), Noel Castree (1995) and Braun and
Castree together (Braun and Castree, 1998;
Castree and Braun, 2001), a field that rested,
at its inception, upon a particular conception
of scientificecology(predicated on notions
of stability and climax vegetation complexes),
and upon a dichotomized view of nature and
culture, has been forced, in recent years, to
grapple with the question of ‘which nature
andwhichconceptions of science should be
brought in’ (Asdal, 2003: but see also, and
more importantly, Worster, 1990a; Cronon,
1995). At the same time, a new awareness of
the relations between knowledge andpower
(and an associated concern with questions of
ethicsandsocial justice) has rendered less
satisfying the once-common declensionist nar-
ratives of environmental despoilation attrib-
uted tocapitalistgreed or human hubris.
All of this has greatly complicated the stories
that environmental historians tell. The fieldis
broad and diffuse. It is also inherently inter-
disciplinary, and many of its practitioners are
interested in providing perspective upon and
contributing understanding to contemporary
debates about human use of the Earth. Thus
the field forms ‘a locus for exploration and
intellectual adventure’, offering humans a
spirited, reflexive understanding of themselves
and their world (Weiner, 2005). gwSuggested reading
Cronon (1991); Evenden and Wynn (2009);
Langton (1988); McNeill (2003); Worster
(1983); Wynn (2007).Environmental Impact Assessment A pro-
cess of systematically identifying and assessingGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 200 1.4.2009 3:17pmENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT