The Values of Nature

6During the nineteenth century, sometimes contradictory discourse was developed, promoting nature, either for its own worth or for the benefits derived by humanity. This represented the first occasion for finding the right words to justify the need to protect natural areas, out of a fear of their endangerment.

7From the second half of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the status of natural areas would change from countryside to landscape, that is to say an area observed, judged on an aesthetic basis, and, most often, depoliticized and stripped of its productive associations. [6] This outside view was facilitated through paintings and literature. [7] In this way, a vision of an aestheticized nature was being constructed, sometimes around a typical landscape, like in England, where the nation saw itself reflected in picturesque scenery. [8] Nature thus assumed a heritage value, just like historical monuments, which were protected along with it, for the same reasons and by the same people. They were representative of the nation. [9] This was the meaning behind the monumental Natural History of the German People, written by Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl between 1851 and 1869, in which the author presented the German scenery born of the traditional interaction between mankind and the environment, as a foundation for Germanic identity. This heritage is essential to understanding the movements for the protection of nature in Europe, with, for example, the creation of the French Société pour la Protection des Paysages de France in 1901 and of the Bund Deutscher Heimatschutz in Germany, in 1904.

8But other justifications for protecting nature also accompanied this patrimonialization. The first environmental concerns are indeed, the health benefits of green spaces like parks and gardens, the eradication of which was feared due to inappropriate urban expansion. Would not the fact of depriving the poorest members of the population, or children in the cities, of a walk through this area of “re-creation” [10] encourage the spread of barbarity at the very heart of civilization? In other words, nature should provide both physical, as well as moral, well-being to impoverished populations. [11] With such arguments, this concept was somewhat similar to the patrimony justification. By elevating the soul, those landscapes also established an attachment to the country, whose landscape transformation people loved.

9It was only later, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that scientific and ecological arguments would see the light of day. [12] While ecology, as a self-conscious science, was developing more or less throughout Europe during the last decade of the nineteenth century, [13] it was in 1913 in Great Britain that the British Ecological Society was founded, the first society created to encourage this new science. [14] Protected areas were also being established at the same time: gardens of refuge in the Swiss Alps, at the initiative of the Société Suisse pour la Protection des Plantes, led by naturalist Henry Correvon from 1883 to 1908; and nature reserves, like Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, managed by the National Trust from 1898 to 1911. [15] In 1912, at Charles Rothschild’s initiative, the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves was founded. [16] At the same time in France, speleologist Édouard-Albert Martel published a study of national parks, the definition including the protection of wildlife, plant life, and unique geological features. [17]

10These different valuations, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, were accompanied by the designation of threats facing natural areas. The process in England was symptomatic of this. First, the cities were incriminated, as their expansion led to concerns regarding the loss of plant life. The choice of horizontal urbanization drove this fear to a climax during the last third of the nineteenth century, when a real sense of siege mentality took hold. Industry also came under fire, first for its effects on the urban environment and then, occasionally at first, but then more generally (again beginning in the 1880s), for the impact on parks and landscapes. More discreetly, a number of agricultural practices began to cause resentment, and there were growing concerns about the effect of crowds on places for promenades. [18]

11But designating the enemy and that which needed to be saved was not sufficient; solutions for this situation were needed, so that they could be remedied by adopting a coherent approach.

New Relationships with Nature

12Two main lines of thought thus appear to have prevailed over the century. The first brought preservation and conservation into opposition. It was strongest in the United States, in the famous controversies between naturalist John Muir and forester Gifford Pinchot. The first fought for a nature free of any human interference, and therefore preserved from any anthropogenic activities. While the other argued, on the contrary, for the rational management of natural resources, which had to be conserved in order to be used optimally. [19] These two perspectives clashed in 1906, during the famed Hetch Hetchy affair, about a valley in Yosemite National Park, where there were plans to build a reservoir. Muir and his supporters were, obviously, staunchly opposed, whereas Pinchot campaigned in favor of the project. [20] An unconscious echo of this debate took place in Great Britain, when members of the Selborne Society tore each other apart over the management of the Epping Forest protected area, where some extremists challenged the forest’s maintenance, which, they claimed, artificialized it. [21]

13The other breaking point within the environmental movement focused on the approach to adopt with regard to the urban and industrial civilization emerging in the late eighteenth century. Should that civilization be rejected entirely, in favor of re-establishing a connection with Mother Earth, or only amended to limit excesses? Fierce opposition would arise around this simple question, between reformists and utopians. [22] The first, gathered in associations, worked daily to contain industry and urbanization, and to protect what they could. For their part, the utopians were no less important, even if their concrete achievements bordered on nil. [23] They formed groups around great intellectual minds, like thinker and artist William Morris and socialist writer Edward Carpenter, and could not conceive of any possible coexistence between industrial civilization and a flourishing population living in harmony with their natural environment. In doing so, they seemed to be implicitly outlining the beginnings of what would later be called “deep ecology.” In fact, a degree of filiation was detectable between Carpenter and D.H. Lawrence, [24] himself considered one of the forefathers of a more radical conception of humankind’s relationship with nature, one that rejected anthropocentrism. [25]

Informal Legitimization Processes

15At the outset, these processes were relatively vague. Protecting nature was still essentially a matter of aesthetics and/or heritage, so there was no need for any special training. Being an artist was enough. Thus, the great nineteenth-century British references on the subject were poets like William Wordsworth and art critics like John Ruskin. The latter was the main source of inspiration for all champions of nature, whether English, [26] or even foreign. [27] In France, those references were Sully Prudhomme, Jean Lahor, and Frédéric Mistral, who created the Société pour la Protection des Paysages in 1901. In Germany, the music teacher and composer Ernst Rudorff played a crucial role in defining the Heimatschutz, a movement to protect nature, which it perceived to be a “small homeland” and a key aspect of national identity. This role of artists was, in some instances, recognized by the legislature, as was the case with the French law of April 21, 1906, on “the protection of natural sites and monuments of artistic interest.” The law stipulated the creation of an ad hoc committee in each département (administrative district), including five members chosen by the departmental council, from among notables in the arts, sciences, and literature.

16For organizations as with individuals, those that had, through obstinate and effective action, come to embody the environmental battle were recognized as specialists. In this way, seniority and a few success stories were sufficient to establish one’s reputation and legitimacy.

17This was, for example, the case of Swiss naturalist Paul Sarasin, the first president of the Commission Suisse pour la Protection de la Nature in 1906, who, through his continuous environmental actions, gained sufficient recognition to organize the first international conference on nature protection in Bern, in 1913. [28] Associations were also justified by their longevity and successes. For example, the Commons Preservation Society (CPS) regularly celebrated its status as the leading environmental association created in Great Britain (in 1865), to the point, in some instances, of somewhat rewriting history to further emphasize its seniority and pivotal role. [29] Conversely, it could be difficult for a newly-created society to give credence to its interventions. In those cases, it would have to make use of other methods of legitimization, particularly in their composition. This meant it was commonplace to go to well-known public figures and others considered legitimate. In this way, the National Trust, created in 1894–1895, took great care in filling half of its executive board with both existing environmental organizations and renowned scientific and artistic institutions, like the Linnean Society and the National Gallery. [30]

18This example is, in fact, an illustration of the ever more common use of formally recognized experts.

Toward Formal Legitimization Procedures

19Experts were increasingly those who were, rightly or wrongly, considered to have intellectual or professional training that enabled them to speak and act with full knowledge of the facts. Thus, in the British Parliament’s Select Committees, the same people could always be found, as either members or consultants, whenever the questions of air pollution or the sewer system were addressed. [31] At a time when career paths were becoming more formal, in Great Britain as elsewhere, and in the absence of specific training on the environment, chemists, geologists, and engineers stood out as the preferred contacts, both for public opinion and authorities. The departmental committees created by the 1906 French law comprised, in addition to the aforementioned artists, the prefect, the chief engineer and the head of Ponts et Chaussées (the French highway agency), the chief road surveyor, and two departmental councilors. Administrative authorities and engineers from a major state agency were needed to assist the artists.

20Of course, environmental associations like the Société d’Acclimatation (founded in 1854) also benefited from this recognized expertise. The organization quickly became a first-class learned society in the field of the natural sciences. Although the shift toward protecting nature had uncertain beginnings in the early twentieth century, and although it was, at times, driven by motivations that were not strictly scientific, the work was facilitated by this recognition. Both the authorities and the general population were attentive to the environmental discourse of its members, who were famous institution-affiliated naturalists. [32]

21This legitimacy increased as ecology developed into a science, as true experts in the “science of nature” could be established, like Arthur Tansley, one of the inventors of the concept of the ecosystem and the father of British ecology. [33]

22Informal processes did continue, but with more and more competition from this move toward professionalization, launched in the nineteenth century, which placed a new category of experts at center stage.

23Already, however, dissent was cropping up regarding who was most capable of speaking for the environment. In Germany in the 1880s, for example, Ernst Rudorff opposed the plans of the Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge to build a funicular providing access to the Drachenfels, [34] rejecting any consumerist approach to nature. At the same time, two associations in England were asserting the right to speak in the name of the Lake District. The Lake District Defense Society, which was made up of public figures who did not live in the region, claimed that the inhabitants could not protect it properly, while the English Lake District Association defended the economic interests of local residents. [35]

24If there was one player to whom everyone looked, it was local and national government; Government alone seemed capable of taking effective, legitimate action.

Legitimizing State Interventions

25This legitimacy was first won through the fight for health and hygiene. In France, for example, a large segment of the hygiene struggle of the nineteenth century was founded on an 1810 decree regarding hazardous and polluting industries. In the end, the fights and controversies eventually certified the role of the state: “By 1900, everyone had stopped publicly challenging the idea that pollution, when it posed a threat to public health, could not be tolerated, and that the state was the guarantor of that principle.” [36] The same applied in all major industrialized countries, even Great Britain, where very staunch ideological resistance bowed to economic, moral, and health arguments.

26The same reasons were initially given in support of protecting green areas. The first major measures of this type, like Great Britain’s 1866 law on commons, for example, were, first and foremost, justified by the need for places to restore the physical and spiritual needs of the poorest city dwellers, located close to major urban areas. Likewise, forest protection, still in its early stages, was primarily based on economic reasons. Despite the fact, demonstrated by Richard Grove, that the environmental disruptions caused by massive deforestation could be observed very early on, the colonial authorities in Mauritius and India (with the creation of the India Forest Department in 1864) only agreed to act out of their interest to better manage a resource for which they had an absolute need and which was a source of significant profits. [37] This was also the argument put forward by American conservationists rallying around Gifford Pinchot: to ensure the renewal of forest resources. [38]

27And yet, the legitimization of the state’s intervention also began fairly early, in the name of the national or aesthetic value of certain landscapes. In France, for example, where an inspector of historical monuments had been in place since 1830, the special status of the Forest of Fontainebleau, which had been passionately defended by the Barbizon school of painters since 1853, was what convinced the Emperor to take action. With the decree of August 13, 1861, 1,097 hectares of that land were spared from logging on the grounds of their aesthetic quality. [39] This was an important first step toward legitimizing the state’s role in this domain. This recognition was all the more obvious in the United States, where Yosemite National Park, created in 1864 by federal law and managed by the State of California, was established for the same aesthetic reasons, with a purpose both spiritual and national. The national parks created thereafter, notably Yellowstone in 1872, followed the same pattern, recognizing the legitimacy of public authority in taking action in this arena. [40]

Mobilizing and Informing Public Opinion

29The first such means was an appeal to public opinion. At this point, with the spread of literacy, the expansion of the electoral body, and the development of media (a phenomena that would only gain momentum thereafter), public opinion took on a new, more palpable dimension.

30In the early twentieth century, there were multiple well-tested methods for appealing to the people. [41] It would often begin with a petition, a longstanding, proven weapon. For example, Wordsworth used one in 1844 when he launched the first attack on the irruption of railways in the Lake District. The press, in the form of newspapers and major journals, also helped to mobilize the people and develop arguments. It was becoming more and more open to environmental issues, with some articles successfully making a mark, such as those by Wordsworth, which were first published in the Morning Post on December 11 and 20, 1844, and then reprinted by other newspapers; that of Jean Lahor, who created the Société pour la Protection des Paysages Français (SPPF); [42] and the article penned by the Italian, Luigi Parpagliolo, which proved decisive in the preparation of a landscape protection bill. [43] There were occasional attempts to found new journals, albeit rarely with much success, as illustrated by the fateful adventures of Nature Notes in Great Britain. [44] Pamphlets were more fortunate, as they often benefited from a hint of controversy or were able to satisfy an expectation. This was the case of Merrie England, written by the socialist journalist, Robert Blatchford, which has sold two million copies since the first publication in 1893, [45] and the 1904 study on natural monuments by botanist Hugo Conwentz, which had an immense influence in Europe. [46] With time, the use of public opinion became more systematic and, above all, more effective. The Commons Preservation Society explicitly placed it at the center of its strategy, with growing degrees of success. [47] In Germany, the battle that was waged from 1886 to protect the Siebengebirge from the disfiguring mining operations was very typical of most environmental confrontations at the end of that century, involving a vain appeal to public authorities; an attempt to exert pressure on them through a petition signed by influential men from political or artistic domains; an intense public campaign with the support of newspapers like the Bonner Zeitung and the Kölnische Zeitung; and, finally, capitulation by the authorities, first at the provincial, and then at the national level. [48]

31In this way, the people were called to bear witness and were mobilized because they provide the best path for environmental action. This path was, first, a personal one. People were already thinking about changing certain behavior. Since the primary motivation for preservation was aesthetic, the masses required education (particularly those two troublemakers, children and workers) on deriving pleasure from the landscape and the beauty of nature. These occasions were commonly used to provide natural history instruction, as well. This explains the May Queen ceremony, revived by Canon Rawnsley in his rural parish, where children promised to follow a code of good conduct in nature. [49] It also included country vacations arranged for the poorest British children, [50] which were also popular among field naturalists’ societies in the United Kingdom. In 1873, 104 out of 169 local scientific societies in the country presented themselves as field clubs. [51] The Club Alpin Français (1874), the Touring-Club de France (1890), and even the Sierra Club in the United States (1892) sought nothing more than to promote the pleasures of hiking, and the ensuing respect for natural spaces. The organization of demonstrations and rallies as a further tool would have to wait until the twentieth century since this type of practice was already touched on with certain hikes of a contesting nature, like those connected to the socialist newspaper, The Clarion. [52]

32But the informative mission, charged with fostering new attitudes, could also take on a less recreational dimension, such as scientific events like the first International Forestry Congress, held in Paris, in 1913.

The Role of Associations

33Providing information and mobilizing public opinion not only made it possible to influence individual behavior, but also gave associations the means to take action on their own. The support of the population, or at least a part of it, was necessary, if only to raise funds. However, the fact is that, at least prior to World War I, environmental defense associations had few members and very limited resources, which did not necessarily correspond to their national audiences. [53] In Great Britain, the National Trust was entirely dependent on public donations for the acquisition of properties that it wanted to protect. It continuously appealed to the generosity of the British people, with varying levels of success. [54] And yet, this was the main role of the associations. In addition to their information and monitoring missions, they managed areas that the government was unwilling or unable to look after. The most striking example was that of the first French national park, La Bérarde. It was set up in 1913, with no real legal status. Therefore, it was the newly-created Association des Parcs Nationaux de France et des Colonies that handled its management. [55] In this way, associations could, temporarily, stand in for the government. For example, faced with the inaction of the authorities, art critic Ugo Ojetti asked the Italian Touring-Club to prepare a list of landscapes essential to Italian identity and of the dangers threatening them. [56]

34But, as these last two examples show, the true purpose of many movements was, in fact, to involve the state in environmental issues. Mobilizing public opinion was, obviously, a powerful strategy in achieving this, but one that, in certain cases, needed to be accompanied by lobbying (when the latter did not simply stand in to represent the population’s demands). The creation of Yosemite National Park was, thus, not the result of a powerful people’s movement. Rather, it was due to the discreet and effective actions of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and some middle-class individuals from San Francisco, who were able to win a US Senator over to their cause. [57] In Great Britain, the CPS very quickly realized that it needed to act from within the power base. In 1900, one-third of its trustees were also Members of Parliament. [58] In Parliament, an Amenities Committee was even created in 1898, consisting of nearly 200 MPs of every persuasion, although it would only survive a brief two years. [59]

Actions by Public Authorities

35Through government actions, different practices for environmental purposes were gradually put in place. The state, in this case, was, first and foremost, the legislature. As stated above, even in a country as liberal as Great Britain, legislative intervention was a goal of many movements. And at the start of the twentieth century, it was clear that an environmentally protective legislative agenda was being established across Europe, albeit with hesitant beginnings. Across the Channel, laws multiplied to limit air pollution (such as the 1863 Alkali Act) and water pollution (Rivers Pollution Prevention Act of 1876), although they were not always very effective. Since the passage of laws in 1866 and 1876, commons were better protected, and even the beauty of certain landscapes was starting to be covered by legislation. The Manchester Corporation Waterworks Act (1879) specified (for the first time ever!) that the landscape around the lake needed to be preserved as much as possible. [60] At the same time, other nations were not far behind. In addition to the French law of 1906, the government of the Prussian State established an office that same year, under the leadership of Hugo Conwentz. It protected natural monuments and, the following year, approved an anti-disfigurement bill that prohibited any construction that would deface a street, a square, or particularly beautiful natural landscapes. [61] In Switzerland, the first national park was created in the canton of Graubünden in 1914. [62]

36In environmental matters, public authorities acted not only as legislators, but also as judges, frequently called upon to enforce the law or set a legal precedent that would be favorable to environmental interests, a practice that was gradually determined to be relatively effective. In Great Britain, in terms of protecting parks and gardens, the major turning point occurred with the creation of the CPS, whose precise goal was, above all, to effect change by means of legal action, challenging improper enclosures in the name of the rights of commons users. The CPS would even go so far as to prompt trials through grand gestures designed to attract the public eye. To challenge the enclosure of the Berkhamstead Common, to the north of London, it organized a night-time expedition that, after some incredible adventures, managed to re-open the 200 enclosed hectares by dismantling three kilometers of fencing erected by the local landlords. This drove the landlords into a court case that, in the end, the Society would go on to win. [63] This method of action also enjoyed some success in France. In 1902, for the first time, the Besançon Court of Appeals agreed with the town of Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne, which challenged the industrialist Prost’s plans to exploit the source of the Lizon River, on the grounds that the undertaking would have damaged the natural beauty of the site. [64]

37At the end of the day, there was nothing particularly original about these practices applied by the public authorities. In fighting pollution, there was an increase in the number of measures limiting harmful emissions, while zoning was the strategy that prevailed in terms of protecting different areas, with the growing success of the national park concept, which, in various forms, was taking hold nearly everywhere. Suitable structures for managing nature were still lacking, with a few rare exceptions. Clearly, there was no question of creating nationwide administrations in charge of these matters, which, instead, were usually taken on by existing institutions. Furthermore, international cooperation was also almost completely absent, despite several abandoned attempts. [65]