The Sea and the Cities -project

Why?

A common belief today is that environmental protection and studies of pollution started in the 1970s. This is understandable. Environmental studies have focused on the past 20-30 years, not on the past century. Environmental politics have been studied mostly on a governmental level, not on a municipal level. The impact of green movements has been studied, but the role of urban residents, politicians or professionals in environmental politics has been neglected. Most of the studies on environmental history have concentrated on the history of the protection of nature in the countryside. Cities have rarely been studied in environmental history despite the fact that 80% of inhabitants in the Baltic Sea region, for example, live in urban areas.

The Sea and the Cities project is the first project devoted to a systematic study of the history of environmental politics, sciences and technology. The aim has been to understand the formation of contemporary environmental problems and solutions which have their roots in the past.

Research Area and Topics

The research area is the Baltic Rim: the socio-economic impact area of the Baltic Sea. Eleven major cities of Baltic Rim countries are participating. The river, estuary and coastal towns form the ecological comparative context. Oslo (Atlantic) and Vilnius (Continental) provide the extreme conditions. The main focus is on the 19th and 20th century.

The project includes the following topics for each city:

* the long-term development of water and wastewater technology
* the reconstruction of pollution and eutrophication histories
* successes and failures of municipal environmental politics

The research method consists of historical, natural scientific and technical analysis of the multidisciplinary structures of pollution and protection in society, the built environment and nature.

Hypotheses

The main hypothesis is that the municipal network of wastewater treatment plants in Northern Europe is the oldest, largest, and most effective sector of environmental protection. The cities created the ideology and practices of environmental protection between the end of the 19th century and the 1960s, consisting of urban environmental movements, research and development programmes, economic planning schemes and infrastructural reform programmes. It is claimed that this development was a precondition for the transformation of urban environmentalism to a national and governmental phenomena in the 1970s. As a result the contemporary network of municipal wastewater treatment plants has improved the state of our environment more any other single innovation. However, this goal has been achieved only by intensive technical and natural scientific research, expensive investments, and hard - and sometimes lost - political battles. Clean urban and coastal waters are taken for granted today. Effective wastewater purification networks and the monitoring of the water courses are considered to be commonplace in all developed countries.

Already preindustrial towns caused local pollution, and in the 19th century the introduction of modern sewage system changed the environment  in a hitherto unknown way. Eutrophication was also  recognized early, but until the 1960s and 1970s it was a problem of secondary importance. More significant were pathogens, odors and dirt on the shores. The miserable state of the coastal waters had an impact on recreation, economics, housing, town planning and the general well-being of the citizens. No wonder that the protection of the urban water courses was a hot topic in the beginning of this century. That era is our main interest.

The major cities were sources of problems and also of solutions. Only cities were able to allocate considerable economic and intellectual resources for solving environmental problems. The cities, the capitals in particular, conducted the first natural scientific studies on pollution at the end of the 19th century. The municipalities built the first mechanical, biological or activated sludge plants during the first decades of the 20th century. Cities dominated in environmental protection until the 1960s and they carry still the responsibility for the protection of the Baltic Sea.

Network

The Sea and the Cities is a pilot project. The main objects of the project are the recruitment and training of a new generation of scientists qualified to study the history of urban aquatic pollution, and the creation of a thematical network that can participate in a multidisciplinary dialogue in Northern Europe.

The creation of the network started from the zero point in 1995. It began with the question asked by the participants: What is environmental history? When the organisation was formed, urban environmental history did not exist in practice in Northern Europe. There were no professors of urban environmental history, only a few researchers and hardly any published works dealing with this subject. There was no information about the available study material, especially in Russia, Poland and in the Baltic Countries. In addition to the possibility of lack of source material, the new concept of multidisciplinary study involving methods and interaction of technology, natural sciences and politics also issued a challenge for research.

This project is co-ordinated by the Department of the Economic and Social History of the University of Helsinki. The responsible co-ordinator of the project is Simo Laakkonen.

The study proceeds mainly on regional level, but it has a common international framework. The cooperation between all the participating cities and countries has been enforced by common workshops arranged in Helsinki.

The participants

The participating cities are St Petersburg, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Gdansk, Kiel, Lübeck, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, and Helsinki.

The following contact persons are involved with the project:

Norway
Dr Hilde Ibsen, Dr Alf Johansson
Department of History, University of Oslo

Sweden
Dr Kerstin Wahlström
Department of Ecological Botany, University of Uppsala
Prof. Lars Nilsson, Department of History, University of Stockholm.

Denmark
Prof. Ole Hyldtoft
Institute of History, University of Copenhagen

Germany
Scientific director, Prof. Gerhard Kortum
The Marine Research Institute of Kiel and Department of Geography, University of Kiel
Prof. Thomas Riis
Department of History, University of Kiel
Prof. Michael Klausner
Fachhochschule Kiel

Poland
Dr Maciej Wolowicz
Laboratory of Estuarine Ecology, University of Gdansk, Gdynia
Prof. Piotr Kowalik
Department of Sanitary Engineering, Technical University of Gdansk.

Lithuania
Dr Anolda Cetkauskaité
Faculty of Natural Sciences, Vilnius University
Prof. Saulius Kaubrys
Department of History, Vilnius University
Dr. Liutauras Stoskus
Vilnius university

Latvia
Prof. Sarma Valtere
Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Riga Technical University.

Estonia
Prof. Ain Lääne
Department of Environmental Engineering, Tallinn Technical University
Prof. Eero Medijainen
Department of History, Tartu University.

Russia
Dr. Svetlana Basova
NW Territorial Department on Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring
Ass. Prof. Sergei Chivilev
Faculty of biology and soil sciences, St. Petersburg State University
Prof. Sergei Kashchenko
The State University of St. Petersburg, Department of Russian Historiograhpy and Source Studies
Prof. Ljudmila Tsvetkova
Department of Sanitary Engineering, St. Petersburg Technical University

Finland
Simo Laakkonen
Sari Laurila
Terttu Finni
Department of Economic and Social History, University of Helsinki.

Workshops

August 1996 -  3-day workshop for natural scientists

The first meeting of The Sea and the Cities -project took place during three warm days in Helsinki. Almost all participants were natural scientists from nine countries. The participants were experienced researchers, yet it was inspiring to note how much there was to learn about the differences between different parts of the Baltic Sea region. No results were presented at the first meeting, which was intended to stimulate co-operation by the project participants. The results became visible in August 1997. A special delight for the participants was a concert by the Finnish mezzo-soprano Monica Groop at the Finlandia House.

August 1997 - 6-day workshop

This workshop brought participants from all ten countries together for the first time. The main themes of the 6-day workshop were a) working on papers 2) visual presentations 3) formation of themes and teams 4) getting to know almost 30 people in a few days and enjoying each other's company.

The first evening everyone gathered for a Baltic Sea party. All the participants had brought with them national dishes and drinks from their respective countries. The seniors were happy with the variety of dishes and the juniors with the variety of drinks.

This year there was no concert in the Finlandia House, instead singing karaoke in pubs like Pataässä became popular. Some guests escaped a Finnish sauna heated by explosions caused by throwing Gammel Dansk on hot stones. The participants from the USA, Denmark and Norway also visited a Finland- Norway football match at the Olympic Stadium. The hosts were polite enough to lose 4-0 with the help of a Danish coach.

August 1998 - 6-day workshop

This year the workshop attracted old and new friends to Helsinki. Unfortunately Mother Nature arranged some rainy days. However, the organizers arranged good opportunities to stay indoors - working. The students also figured out that there would be fewer this year - one night less. So all got what they expected, except for some who were sorry that a sight-seeing tour by boat was not arranged, but an excursion to a wastewater treatment plant instead.

Good lectures, a poster session, the traditional Monday party, work on the papers and karaoke singing were already familiar to majority. The new item in the programme was www-pages.

Supervisors and commentators in history group: Karl-Erik Mickelsen, University of Helsinki and Martin Melosi, University of Houston.
 

Vegard Arnesen and Martin Melosi
 
 

Sven Grabowski, Hendrik Seeger, Nils Raahauge, Rasmus Rosengaard,Vegard Arnesen
 

Sergei Kachtschenko, Irina Zakharova, Tatiana Gorschkova, Maria Mandrik,Carolin Dembowski, Sven Grabowski
 

Commentators in technology group: Piotr Kowalik, Technical University of Gdansk, and Paul Cooper, UK.

Kestutis Kilkus, Jurgita Rimkuviene and Anolda Cetkauskaite from Vilnius University.

Pekka Lehtonen, Holger Miede, Talis Juhna, Laura Ikauniece, Janis Ikaunieks

Biology group: Igor Primakov, Edvins Rozins and Sergei Chivilev

Biology group: Petra Jakob, Simo Laakkonen, Kerstin Wallström and Polina Nikolaenko

Funding

The project received funding for coordination from the Nordic Council of Ministers, Helsinki Water and Oslo Water Company. The workshops has been arranged with funds from NorFa, Nordplus, Academy of Finland, and Letterstedska föreningen.

More information: simo.laakkonen@helsinki.fi.