At the end of August some of our members attended the European Society for Environmental History Conference 2025 in Uppsala, Sweden.

We learned a lot, had interesting and important conversations, and met many wonderful people working in the field of environmental history. This year’s theme, climate histories, highlights the urgency of the field and the relevance of historical perspectives to today’s crises.

At the same time, we argue that more attention could have been given to food and agriculture as central themes within the histories of climate and biodiversity change.

Our contributions:
Caroline Kreysel – Soybeans, Water, and the Wetland: Flows from the Pantanal (1970s-present)
Antonia Weiss, PhD, M.Arch – Sprouting pasts: towards a counterhistory of urban gardening in Amsterdam, ca. 1950-2024
Anna Teijeiro Fokkema– Normalising and Depoliticising the Pesticide Industry: Dutch Discourses of Economic Necessity, Inevitability and Doubt (1973-2000)
Paulien Daelman – The Great Sparrow Massacre: Climate, Food and Bird Pests in Europe, c. 1700 – c. 1850
Amber Striekwold, Floor Haalboom, Liesbeth van de Grift and Larissa Schulte Nordholt organised, together with Christophe Bonneuil, Nina Toudal Jessen and Anders Wästfelt, an important roundtable titled: Agriculture, climate change histories and the past, present and future food systems.