Report on the Second Conference of East Asian Environmental History (EAEH2013)
Report on the Second Conference of East Asian Environmental History (EAEH2013)
by Ya-wen Ku and Marlon Zhu (Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica)
The Second Conference of East Asian Environmental History (EAEH 2013) was held on Oct. 24-26, in Hualien, Taiwan. This conference was co-organized by the Association for East Asian Environmental History, Academia Sinica, and National Dong Hwa University. With the general theme, “Transformation of East Asian Environment in Historical Perspective: Local Reality and Global Connection”, the conference consisted of 3 keynote speeches, a special session on GIS (Geographic Information System), 21 parallel sessions of paper presentation and a round table discussion. More than 100 scholars from China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Europe, North America, and Taiwan were brought together for the conference.
The three keynote speeches were respectively delivered in three days. The first one entitled “Sustainable Empire, An Oxymoron?” was delivered by J. Donald Hughes, Professor Emeritus at University of Denver. The second one on “Listening to Bamboo: The Literati’s Attitude and Behavior to Nature Sounds in Pre-modern China” was given by Lihua Wang, Professor of Nankai University. And the third one entitled “Two Types of ‘Industriousness’ and Changing Attitudes toward Nature in Early Modern Times: an International Comparison” was delivered by Satoshi Murayama, Professor of Kagawa University. The three keynote speeches covered a long temporal span from ancient to contemporary periods and a wide spatial sphere from Europe to East Asia.
The 21 parallel sessions covered various themes such as conceptual view of environmental history, attitude toward nature, environmental policy history, nature Hazard, disaster and prevention, disease and health, marine resources, forest management, biological resources and imperialism, land use, water resources, pollution, nature in 20th century East Asia, Taiwan’s post-war local environmental history, and American environmental legacies in the Philippines. Altogether, 67 papers were presented and discussed. Furthermore, a special attention was given to the use of GIS. In this special session, I-chun Fan, the Executive Director of Center for GIS, introduce the historical maps and GIS databases established in Academia Sinica.
On the last day, the conference ended with a round table discussion chaired by Prof. Hughes and five introducers including Phillip Brown, Andrea Janku, Shiyung Liu, Satoshi Murayama and Lihua Wang. They summarized the main achievements of this event and suggested some important issues for further research in the future.
Finally, at the General Meeting of the Association, the active members of the Association elected Professor Satoshi Murayama (村山聰) as the new President of AEAEH for the following two years (2013-2015). They also elected seven members,Professor Lihua Wang (王利華), Dr. Andrea Janku, Professor Michael Shiyung Liu (劉士永), Dr. Ts’ui-jung Liu (劉翠溶), Professor Philip Brown, Professor Donald Hughes, and Professor David Bello, for the Council of AEAEH.
In addition, two separate field trips were arranged in the afternoon of the third day. At the visit to Cidal Hunter School (吉籟獵人學校) participants learned how to make a crown with the leave of shell-flower (Alpinia zerumbet) and some techniques for living in the wild such as making ropes, setting a trap and lighting a fire. At the guided tour of the Dong Hwa University Campus, participants enjoyed the beautiful scene and biodiversity in the campus.
