Československo a Mezinárodní biologický program
Czechoslovakia and the International Biological Program

Infrastructural globalism and its Consequences for the development of “environmental sciences” behind the Iron Curtain

Summary/Abstract: The study deals with Czechoslovakia’s involvement and participation in the International Biological Program (IBP) and attempts to assess its effect on the “ecologization”of environmental sciences in Czechoslovakia. The authoress characterizes the International Biological Program, which was taking place between 1964 and 1974,as one of the largest and most important global research projects dedicated to the living environmental of man on the Earth in the 20th century. Held under the auspices of UNESCO and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), its objective was to monitor natural processes and environmental changes. It was prepared duringthe period of Khrushchev Thaw, launched at the time of international crises of the Cold War, and it ended during the period of détente, which circumstances affected not only its course, but also defined areas of research where the Westernand the Eastern Blocs were furthering their own respective priorities. The principal goal of socialist countries participating in the program under the leadership of theSoviet Union was to use knowledge of biological and other sciences to maximize the exploitation of natural resources at the expense of minimum devastation of the environment, while capitalist countries were predominantly striving for a preventive approach to environmental protection. The authoress claims that the International Biological Program stimulated the interest of scientists in environmental issues and to some extent filled the space which had opened for biological sciences thanks to the process of de-Stalinization and the policy of “limited internationalism” leading to international scientific cooperation across the Iron Curtain. The study describes the institutionalization of the International Biological Program in Czechoslovakia,showing how the program’s promising progress and international aspirations were disrupted by the so-called normalization after 1968, and its later splitting between the Czechoslovak National IBP Committee and the IBP Department of theUniversity of Agriculture in Brno, each of which had a different relation to political powers-that-be and and a different international legitimacy. According to the authoress, the International Biological Program provided a link to global scientific infrastructures, including newly established monitoring networks, and contributed to the establishment of new research topics and new scientific structures (suchas the Ecological Section of the Biological Society of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences), which played an active role in environmental protection and in theformation of the civic society in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.

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