Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Contested Ecologies: Munich
By: Clemens Hufeld Munich is a beautiful city that has much to offer. It has the Oktoberfest, one of the world’s largest urban fairs, surfers in the middle of the city, beautiful landscapes in its vicinity, and a long tradition of urban life. The city is shrouded in such a wonderful air of beauty that…
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Eden Park: The Birth of an Iconic Midwestern Municipal Park
*Featured image: Eden Park reservoir, Cincinnati, Ohio. Image courtesy of The New York Public Library. Guest post by Kathleen Smythe As you walk into Eden Park, one of the first things you encounter is the remains of a double basin reservoir—its walls more often than not being scaled by recreational climbers. The reservoir was removed…
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Fixing a Nation’s Plumbing II: What We Choose to Ignore
by Vikas Lakhani This is the second post about India’s National River Linking Project. Read the first part here. As has been clear in the previous post, I see several fundamental objections to the NRLP. First and foremost, environmentalists have rightly raised serious concerns about the ecological consequences of this grand scheme. They argue that…
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Fixing a Nation’s Plumbing I: India’s National River Linking Project
by Vikas Lakhani In 1946, British colonialists launched a grand scheme to cultivate groundnuts in the uninhabitable parts of Tanganyika, a former colony that corresponds to the mainland part of today’s United Republic of Tanzania. Under the leadership of the agronomist John Wakefield, the scheme—named the “Wakefield missionâ€â€”was driven by the desperation to overcome the…
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Asia and the Pacific: Environments—Cultures—Histories
Workshop Report (LMU-ChAN Satellite Conference, 3–5 November 2017, Rachel Carson Center, Munich, Germany) by Travis Klingberg (All sketches by Libby Robin) Flood-proof cities. The social costs of waste incineration. Water level changes in the Pearl River Delta. The environmental impact of nineteenth-century Chinese immigration across the Pacific. These are a sample of the topics discussed…
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Ecopolis München: Ecopolis Night
“A Student Exhibition on Munich’s Environmental Histories†All photographs courtesy of Florin Prună. In late July, students of the RCC’s Environmental Studies Certificate Program organized Ecopolis München: Umweltgeschichten einer Stadt. This interactive multimedia exhibition showcased Munich’s environmental histories through the students’ final projects, and was curated by doctoral candidate Sasha Gora, research assistant Raphaela Holzer, and…
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Day 7. Danube Excursion: Bratislava—Munich
by Lea Wiser Bratislava → Munich Spending a night on a boat and waking up to views over the glimmering river is not something that happens every day. After a long night, a hearty breakfast helped us to regain our energy for the last guided tour with Peter Pisut, who specializes in the historical…
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Day 6. Danube Excursion: Vienna—Bratislava
by Laura Kuen Vienna → Orth → GabÄÃkovo → Bratislava Traveling from Vienna to Bratislava, our day’s topics branched in quite different directions: water power and nature conservation. We first visited the Austrian National Park Donau-Auen in Orth and later the GabÄÃkovo Dams, Slovakia’s biggest hydroelectric plant. Conservation in the Donau-Auen The national park, which spans the distance…
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Day 5. Danube Excursion: Krems—Vienna
by Christoph Netz Krems → Vienna Research Channels, Sterlets, and the Danube Island of Vienna With another early start, it was lucky that the memorable apricot jam, a local specialty, provided a good incentive to get up in time for breakfast. Only five minutes behind schedule, we departed from Krems, with its beautiful historic center…