Loodusmõttest aktivismini: saateks keskkondluse erinumbrile / From Nature Contemplation to Activism: A Special Issue on Environmentalism: Saateks keskkondluse erinumbrile / A Special Issue on Environmentalism

The introduction to the special issue of Methis on Estonian environmentalism provides an overview of the phenomenon of environmentalism and its spread across political periods, economic formations, and regions. The essay starts by contextualising the central concepts of the issue, ‘environmentalism’ and its possible translation into Estonian as ‘keskkondlus’, and its relationship with the concept of ‘nature’. At the end of the 1980s, amidst a deepening awareness of environmental crisis, some authors announced ‘nature’ to have met its end. While this end has become widely accepted within environmental discourse, the approach clashes with the traditional thinking about the beauty of nature and its strong bonds with national identities. To foster discussion and to bridge the discursive and ideological gap between the two perceptions, the authors of the articles use the concept as an umbrella term for both paradigms. The second part of the introductory article discusses East European environmentalism, drawing attention to the research into erroneous assumptions regarding the lack of environmental activism within the Soviet Union. Before its brief heyday in the 1980s, East European environmentalism was hidden within economy, policy, society and culture. However, its roots went deeper, reaching back to 18th- and 19th-century thought, to Baltic German – and later Estonian – early voluntary associations and the value seen in the homeland and its natural objects. The founding of animal and nature protection societies in the late 19th century was an early practical outcome, and similar thought became pronounced in print culture. In early 20th century, several nature protection areas were established, and people became avid consumers of popular science journals – an interest that would continue throughout the Soviet period. The 1970s saw an environmental movement to protect the wetlands of Estonia which were in danger of being drained. Throughout the 20th century, also fiction reflected the prevailing views of nature and emerging concerns about the environment. The issue’s opening article by Ulrike Plath and Kaarel Vanamölder takes us back to the 17th century to demonstrate the possibility of climate movements more than three centuries ago. This is followed by Karl Hein’s case study that depicts in detail the emergence of animal protection in Estonia a hundred years ago in the context of local and regional history. The next four articles focus on different aspects of