Rispoli, Giulia (Author)
Olšáková, Doubravka (Author)
In this article we discuss two phases in the evolution of global environmental programs, namely the Man and Biosphere Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, with the aim of showing their hidden diplomatic ambitions from both US and Soviet perspectives. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet views on the biosphere prevailed thanks to the influence of Soviet scientists in the International Council of Scientific Unions and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In the 1980s, the domination of this field by US scientists ushered in the establishment of Earth system science as a new research trend based on Earth observation technologies. We argue that despite the influence of Soviet ecologists in directing international coordination of research on the biosphere, Earth system science did not set in a trajectory of environmental cooperation. This outcome can be explained if we take the environmental and ecological turn that arose during the Cold War as being intertwined with political concerns and national interests in both the US and the USSR. Security, scientific diplomacy, and geopolitical issues limited East-West collaboration on the interdisciplinary study of the earth, which instead turned into a sort of cooperative antagonism. The transition from biosphere studies to Earth system science reveals a changing strategy toward environmental problems, which in turn reflects changes in Cold War policy.This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.
...More
Article
Thompson, Nicholas;
(2011)
Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB001231373/)
Book
Graham, Thomas;
Hansen, Keith A.;
(2007)
Spy Satellites: And Other Intelligence Technologies That Changed History
(/isis/citation/CBB001032651/)
Book
Wolfe, Audra J.;
(2013)
Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America
(/isis/citation/CBB001251403/)
Book
Toshihiro Higuchi;
(2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)
Book
Weiner, Sharon K.;
(2011)
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise
(/isis/citation/CBB001221236/)
Book
Gordin, Michael D.;
(2009)
Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly
(/isis/citation/CBB001022665/)
Book
Oreskes, Naomi;
Krige, John;
(2014)
Science and Technology in the Global Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001551121/)
Article
Gorelik, Gennady;
(2009)
The Paternity of the H-Bombs: Soviet-American Perspectives
(/isis/citation/CBB000932050/)
Article
Barth, Kai-Henrik;
(2006)
Catalysts of Change: Scientists as Transnational Arms Control Advocates in the 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB000670751/)
Essay Review
Schweber, S. S.;
Wellerstein, Alex;
Pollock, Ethan;
Bernstein, Barton J.;
Gordin, Michael D.;
(2011)
Contingencies of the Early Nuclear Arms Race
(/isis/citation/CBB001566754/)
Article
Usdin, Steven T.;
(2009)
The Rosenberg Ring Revealed: Industrial-Scale Conventional and Nuclear Espionage
(/isis/citation/CBB001030400/)
Article
Heymann, Matthias;
Knudsen, Henrik;
Lolck, Maiken L.;
Nielsen, Henry;
Nielsen, Kristian H.;
Ries, Christopher J.;
(2010)
Exploring Greenland: Science and Technology in Cold War Settings
(/isis/citation/CBB001211528/)
Article
Krementsov, Nikolai;
(2007)
In the Shadow of the Bomb: U.S.-Soviet Biomedical Relations in the Early Cold War, 1944--1948
(/isis/citation/CBB001030407/)
Article
Kaiser, David;
(2005)
The Atomic Secret in Red Hands? American Suspicions of Theoretical Physicists during the Early Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001021588/)
Article
Kwa, Chunglin;
(2005)
Local Ecologies and Global Science: Discourses and Strategies of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
(/isis/citation/CBB000651019/)
Thesis
Benjamin W. Goossen;
(2021)
The Year of the Earth (1957-1958): Cold War Science and the Making of Planetary Consciousness
(/isis/citation/CBB233980968/)
Article
Höhler, Sabine;
(2010)
The Environment as a Life Support System: The Case of Biosphere 2
(/isis/citation/CBB001030021/)
Chapter
Kojewnikow, Alexei;
(2011)
Die Mobilmachung der sowjetischen Wissenschaft
(/isis/citation/CBB001211832/)
Article
Renner, Andreas;
(2013)
Ein Ort, drei Erinnerungen: Hiroshima aus sowjetischer Sicht
(/isis/citation/CBB001200602/)
Article
Reid, Susan E.;
(2002)
Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev
(/isis/citation/CBB000202963/)
Be the first to comment!