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New book examines New Zealand's environmental histories
Published by the Communications and Development Department
16 September 2002
Environmental Histories of New Zealand is edited by Canterbury University Head of Geography Professor Eric Pawson and Otago University Associate Professor of History Tom Brooking.
It presents an interdisciplinary account of one of the most rapid and extensive transformations of nature in human history: that which followed Maori, and then European, colonisation of New Zealand.
Professor Pawson said that until Environmental Histories there had not been a wide ranging and concerted examination of the New Zealand’s environmental histories by researchers from within New Zealand. “It seemed that often overseas scholars have been more interested in the impact of people on our environments than we have.”
The book addresses a range of questions, and attempts to analyse change in its wider as well more local contexts. It is organised into five parts entitled Encounters, Colonising, Special Environments, Modernising, and Perspectives. In some respects it is an intellectual descendent of the New Zealand Historical Atlas on which Professor Pawson worked for seven years, and is well illustrated with maps, and reproductions of photographs, artwork and cartoons.
As well as a comprehensive analysis of environmental colonisation, the book also includes sections on less typical topics such as the meanings of mountains, urban environmental history, and the twentieth century home garden. It concludes with a chapter on environmental problems and prospects at the beginning of the twenty-first century, discussing the quest for environmental sustainability in the context of the drive for economic growth.
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