Threatened Animals and Strong Borders: The International Office for the Protection of Nature between National, European and Global Nature Conservation

Long before Brussels would become the officious capital of Europe, it already housed the headquarters of the first international organization for nature conservation. The International Office for the Protection of Nature (founded in 1927) was by all means a small institution, but its ambitions were high. In spite of rising nationalism, it hoped to inspire governments to develop transborder policies for nature protection, and this on a global scale. The actual realization of such ambitions were limited, but echoes of the original aspirations would later be heard in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (from the late 1940s onward), the World Wildlife Fund (in the 1960s) and the EC (from the 1970s).

            Making nature protection a matter of international concern was not an easy task in the 1920s and 1930s. It confronted the staff of the Office with a broad set of questions: Which nature was internationally relevant? Who were the experts that would provide knowledge about its actual state? Which local and national networks could be mobilized for its protection? And how to relate policies on the national, the European and the global level in a time period of strong borders? My paper will discuss the intricacies that shaped the discussions on these issues – and that in many ways continue to influence debates on European and global nature conservation. To do so I will draw on both official meeting reports and personal correspondence, preserved in the Amsterdam City Archive. Currently, nature conservation might be a domain with a relatively clear object, respected experts and authoritative policymakers. All these things were, however, still matters of negotiation in the Interwar period. By focusing on these negotiations, my paper hopes to open the black box of present-day nature conservation.