British botanic gardens and the biodiversity crisis, c.1960 – c.2000

Abstract

This PhD project explores the integration of the idea of a biodiversity crisis into the research, governance, and outreach of four British botanic gardens: the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Cambridge University Botanic Garden. The project takes its start date from when Kew began to engage with the initiatives of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and follows through to the early 2000s when many of the projects under discussion evolve into something new or end completely. It is driven by a research question that has deep significance for society today: how have we historically understood our relationship to the natural world, and why? Though often thought of only as places of leisure, or imperial institutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, botanical institutions have contributed significantly to the construction of environmental ideas, conservation action, and public education over the later decades of the twentieth century. The botanists, horticulturalists, education officers, and other staff employed by botanic gardens have integrated flora into the fauna-dominated conservation movement, created international networks to support environmental governance, led groundbreaking conservation initiatives, pushed scientific research in new directions, and have communicated with millions of people about their relationship with nature. Contextual developments and themes shaping these initiatives that weave through the thesis are the emergence of environmental governance, the integration of ex situ (away from a natural habitat) and in situ (within a natural habitat) conservation, the complex concept of species, the diffusion of environmental education, the advent of molecular biology, and the growing integration of economics and ecology at the political level. Overall, the thesis contends that botanic gardens, whilst engaging with the idea of a biodiversity crisis as a method to find relevance, have also been significant in shaping our current understanding of, and our relationship to, the natural world, and their recent history is of paramount importance to understanding the development of environmental thought in the late twentieth century.