Protecting Global Wetlands? Ecosystems, migratory waterbirds, and the Ramsar Convention, 1962-1971

This talk examines the way more-than-human histories can bring together environmental history and histories of capitalism through two examples from my research. The first and most substantive example centres on the rapid increase in long-nosed fur seal numbers over the last decade and a half in the Coorong lagoon, an estuary wetland on the coast of South Australia. The seals have become the center of a heated debate, causing financial and cultural upheaval for Ngarrindjeri people and fishers. Some fishers have tuned to invasive European carp to recoup their economic losses. The seals remain protected, as scientists and managers argue that they are rebounding from sealing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and re-occupying their former ranges. Yet, others argue that the seals have never been in the Coorong before and do not belong there now. Historical sealing can be regarded as a kind of rippling capitalism, with ongoing effects, importantly shaping contemporary controversies in the Coorong lagoon area that in many ways are hallmarks of the Anthropocene. The second example draws on preliminary research from my new project on international wetlands protection since 1945, showing how efforts at scientists’ global conservation of these ecosystems were shaped in relation to flows of capital and nonhuman agency, as well as questions of race and Cold War politics.