The Sea and the Cities

摘要

Environmental history is a new field of science in Northern Europe. It studies long-term changes in the interaction between man and nature: the impact of human society on environment and vice versa. Change is a permanent phenomenon in nature and large-scale changes take place gradually over decades, centuries and millennia. Hence, a historic approach is needed to identify and to understand environmental changes and problems such as pollution and eutrophication.The Baltic Sea is said to be the most polluted, most studied, and most protected sea in the world, yet its environmental history is in practice unknown. The following studies on the environmental history of the Baltic Sea region were started with the cities because urban sea areas were assumed to have faced a long history of water pollution and protection. The cities have been the sources of pollution problems, but they have also actively generated solutions to the problems as they have had the necessary resources; they are centers of science, technology, media, and economic and political power.