At the  Annual Pierre du Bois Conference 2018, during the fifth panel on “Contemporary Environmental Concerns and the Cold War”, Katja Doose (University of Birmingham/CIES Visiting Fellow) presented on the history of climate change research in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s arguing that the food problem in the Soviet Union during the 1970s an 1980s was more severe and urgent than in the West, due to their climatic conditions which shaped the way climate change was viewed among scientists and the State. Professor Susanna Hecht (Graduate Institute) gave a talk on Brazil’s military developmentalism focusing on how during WWII collaboration with both the US military and the “New Deal internationalists” set the stage for both the military coup of 1964 and the massive infrastructure development and the deforestation that ensued. With virtually no civil society institutions to control, or even to report on the destruction, and the secrecy surrounding the rates and locations of clearing, only uproars and the threat of international funding problems tempered the military developmentalism, which was in full cry.

The subsequent democratic period which had the development of many new and engaged institutions and civil society with highly inclusive politics was successful in reducing the deforestation rate by 80%. The entrance, or re-entrance of authoritarian regimes has been accompanied by massive clearing once again. In her comments Liliana Andonova (Graduate Institute, CIES Co-Director) stressed the similarities of the military’s role in both case studies, indicating a certain militarization of nature and of a kind of military developmentalism during those decades.

The discussion with the audience afterwards evolved around the current situation of Russia’s scientific consensus on climate change and the international scientific cooperation during the Cold War as part of the 1972 bilateral agreement between the US and USSR on environmental protection. With regards to the Brazilian study, the role of nationalism within the Brazilian army and its impact on decision-making as well as on collaboration with the United States was discussed.