Abstract

"The Financing of Environmental Protection in the Global North, 1970s-1990s"

Dennis Duennwald, New York University (dd3578@nyu.edu)

Financial institutions enabled the rise of environmentalism in the Global North during the latter half of the twentieth century. Through a comparative analysis of financial institutions, including the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, and the Environmental Protection Agency, I demonstrate that the realization of environmental protection depended not only on political will, social movements, or scientific innovation, but on the availability of financial capital. Furthermore, financial institutions shaped how contemporaries conceptualized environmental protection by determining which projects were eligible for funding under this term, initiating new programs, funding academic chairs in the field, and shaping government institutions such as Germany’s Ministry of the Environment. These institutions also often promoted environmental protection through their consultancy services and public relations efforts, and established investment practices that can be summarized under the term environmental finance. Taken together, I show that historians cannot understand the rise of environmentalism without examining the roles of bankers, consultants, and brokers. In addition to the well-known negative impacts the financial industry has had on the environment, financial corporations were among the primary drivers of environmentalism.

I combine business, environmental, and conceptual history. Drawing on archival materials, including annual reports, board minutes, parliamentary minutes, and media coverage, I reconstruct how and why financial institutions allocated resources for and thought about environmental protection, and shaped environmental knowledge and finance. Historians have focused on examining the intersections of the environment with politics, society, culture, ideology, and knowledge. These studies are critical, not least since financial institutions’ actions were contingent on social, cultural, and political factors. Nevertheless, to understand the rise of environmentalism, one must consider that bankers, consultants, and brokers provided the capital and knowledge necessary to enable environmental protection.