Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait

"This book about the Bering Strait is one of two books on the shortlist that deal with environmental studies or environmental history. There are clear connections with Kate Brown’s book on Chernobyl. Floating Coast is about the environment and what modern society does with it when we come to this land at the end of the world. What is unique about the book is that she looks at this from both sides of the Bering Strait: American and Soviet, comparing the two archenemies of the Cold War . The regimes had completely different ideologies . They were both messianic in their own right: only they had the right way to deal with the issues of environment, development, and indigenous population. And, indeed, they came with their own playbooks. But the most striking and maybe depressing, conclusion is that they came to the same results. Whatever the policies are, the result is the same, which is a bit disheartening. But that’s also a way to think about us as a world community and what we do with our environment, despite our differences, because it looks like, whatever the differences are, we end in the same place. We are destroying and exploiting the environment by our attempts to civilize it, to turn it into a productive force. There is a connection in this book between Russia and the outside world which is very, very important. With the Cold War, there is a tradition of looking at Russian or Soviet history as kind of sui generis , completely different, completely separate from the rest of the world. Integrating the Soviet and Russian experience into the global one not only helps us to understand things that we didn’t understand before, but also to figure out how we can move forward. Well, it’s probably not as bad as in places where ‘civilization’ came earlier so I wouldn’t push that too far. It’s also not that bringing the benefits of the modern science and technology to the region didn’t bring any benefits, but that came at an enormous price. And that, especially in our current situation with climate change, is a key issue that we’re dealing with today. Going back to your question of whether the books have to speak to what we are living through today. They don’t have to, but it looks like we tend to pay attention to books that resonate with today’s concerns or fears or insecurities, or questions that we have today. This is one of those books and it’s an international perspective which is maybe not absolutely unique, but quite rare. That is one of main contributions of the book."