Description
In this paper, I focus on the private governance networks of Maurice Frederic Strong and his second wife Hanne Marstrand. I will look at the Strongs’ invitations, gatherings, and private projects in the mid-1970s, first in Nairobi, then at the model solar village the coupe tried to build in Crestone, Colorado. These meetings connected acquaintances from the worlds of business, development banking, international organizations, and NGOs from the preparation period of the Stockholm Conference, with likeminded new age environmentalists, Schumacherian economist, and Buddhist philosophers. The paper does not claim that the history of oil actors’ involvement in environmental policymaking is not contradictory of conflicting, and from today’s point of view literally incredible. Yet, it aims to show that the networks that the Strongs were involved in promoted environmental imaginaries, including language, norms, and metaphors, influenced by humanist economic values and second-order cybernetics, which allowed for systematic feedback and redefinitions of planetary limits as socio-political. While essentially opposing the type of market environmentalism that would emerge during the 1980s, the seemingly flexible interpretation of environmental limits that emerged in this context, as well as the role assigned to business as environmental agents, can help explain some of the early links between organizations such as UNEP, the oil industry, and international banking.| Period | 10 Oct 2025 |
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| Event title | SHOT 2025 Annual Meeting: Technologies of Migration – Migrating Technologies |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Esch-sur-Alzette, LuxembourgShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |