A History of the Australian Environment Movement

Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environment Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 320 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0 521 45686 X.

In relatively recent times we have come to be well served with accounts of the environmental movement in Australia. Preceding the work under review there has been, in particular, Colin Michael Hall, Wasteland to World Heritage (Melbourne University Press, 1992) and Libby Robin, Defending the Little Desert ((Melbourne University Press, 1998). It is indicative of the interdisciplinary range of academic interest in 'environmental history' that the writers have come from diverse academic backgrounds; tourism and heritage studies in the case of Hall, history and philosophy of science in the case of Robin, and now the further perspectives of Hutton (political science and history) and Connors (also history).

Hutton and Connors are more than objective academic observers. They also have long experience as activists in environmental political, organisational and protest activities. This personal involvement clearly informs...