Recent Events about Environment and Landscape Change

In the Spring of 2022 we continued the series of discussions on environmental themes from a Central European perspective. Just like in 2021, we focus on environmental history, political ecology and responses to climate change as well as changes and histories of rural landscapes. 

On 4 April 2022, we had a hybrid event on Landscape, Environment and Historical Memory in East Central Europe. As part of the event, we hosted an English language roundtable. 

With Małgorzata Praczyk, Adam Miczkiewicz University, Poznan, Kate Brown (MIT, Cambridge MA) and Daniela Apaydin (Institut für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, Vienna),  we discussed 

 1. the gap between mainstream memory politics and the importance of attitudes/attachements towards the environment 2. the role of stories in ecological crisis; 

3.  applicability of the conclusions of our research to other periods or turning points in the history of the region, and 4. the impact of war on environment and environmental history

On 29 April 2022, Sándor Borbély, one of the recepients of our scholarship for 2021, talked of Borderland, Environment and Economy in the Sub-Carpathian Region of Ukraine, near the Hungarian border. 

He presented how modern greenhouse technologies and tomato growing household level ventures cause degradation through the artificial materials and fertilizers these imply and due to the resulting abandonment of traditional economic practices, such as grazing. Dr. Borbély presented greenhouses as one of the facets of informal economic practices that the post-socialist crises prompted. 

On 10 May 2022, we invited Ferenc Jankó from Loránd Eötvös University to talk about the impact of the current state of communicating climate change research as well as of the specificities of Hungary in this regard. We also discussed the prospective and actual responses to aridity and environmental degradation.