Successful book launch event at SEI for Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance

As one of the world’s leading environment and sustainable development research and policy institutions, the Stockholm Environment Institute was the ideal setting for the launch of Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance: The Human Environment, a new book written by Sverker Sörlin and Eric Paglia from the Division of History at KTH. The book, published by Cambridge University Press, tells the story of Stockholm’s outsized role in facilitating action and creating conditions for the scientific understanding and political advancement of environmental issues on the international agenda over the course of some 75 years, stretching back to the immediate postwar period with the founding of the Meteorological Institute at Stockholm University. The establishment of the Beijer Institute in the aftermath of the seminal 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, and its transformation into the Stockholm Environment Institute in the late-1980s, is another one of the long-term processes recounted across several chapters in the book.

Some of the key individuals who have been central actors in the Stockholm story, including Lars Kristoferson, Thomas Roswall and Uno Svedin—all of whom had provided the authors with important oral histories while writing the book—were in attendance at the launch. Sadly, a few of the inspirational figures portrayed in the book had recently passed away, and the crucial contributions of Ambassador Bo Kjellén, Earth System scientist Will Steffen and Ambassador Lars-Göran Engfeldt to the evolution of global environmental governance were duly noted by the authors during their presentation. A stimulating discussion moderated by Åsa Persson, research director at SEI, followed the presentation and flowed into a mingle where many memories and reflections on the history of Stockholm as an international hub for environmental science and politics were shared amongst old friends and colleagues.

Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance: The Human Environment is available in both hard copy  and as a free Open Access digital download.