One of ICEHO’s chief activities is to organize a World Congress of Environmental History (WCEH) every 5 years.

The next World congress of Environmental History will take place in Florianopolis, Brazil 22-26 July 2019. The 3rd World Conference of Environmental History invites scholars from different disciplines to situate environmental history in a planetary perspective. The categories “Global South” and “Global North” are historically-charged, created in the 20th century. They point to the diversity and the inequality of past and present human societies, and how they have transformed their landscapes, exploited natural resources, and connected with each other. The challenges posed by these connections and the dynamics of human and non-human communities have gained urgency in what has been called the Era of Great Acceleration. From their historical studies of rivers, cities, mountains, forests and plantations, to world transmigration narratives for plants, animals, diseases, people and commodities, historians and other environmental humanities scholars add to the debate on how to address the environmental challenges of the 21st century. The program committee seeks to further discussions that cross disciplinary or conceptual divides in new ways. We especially invite proposals that span gender, generational, and geographic differences among presenters as well as topics. Please visit the page for submission guidelines and check out the full Call for Papers.

This series of congresses began in 2009, when ICEHO was a co-sponsor of the first World Congress of Environmental History held in Copenhagen, Denmark, August 4-8, 2009 which brought together more than 500 scholars from all over the globe, giving them a unique opportunity of to learn from each other and to create an overarching picture of the relationship of people and the environment through time. Interactions are found on many scales, from the local to the global. Resource issues cross national boundaries and ecosystem boundaries. Looking at our challenges from multiple perspectives, multiple spatial and temporal scales, and varied politics, economies and disciplines is the only way to enlighten the complex challenge of creating a sustainable future. A recap of the Congress was posted on the FHS blog Aug. 21, 2009.

The second World Congress of Environmental History took place July 8-12, 2014. The event was hosted in the cultural capital of Europe 2012, the beautiful northern Portuguese town of Guimarães. The conference was co-sponsored by the University of Minho and the International School Congress/International Workshop on Environmental History group (ISC/IWEH). The theme of the Congress, ‘Environmental History in the Making’, aimed to create synergy among all scholars engaged in environmental history, to fathom the reach of the field and to investigate its focus areas and theoretical underpinnings.