Global Environmental History is the comprehensive study of the complex and unstable patchwork of relations between humans and the biosphere as seen from a situated, yet large scale perspective, incorporating both global and planetary viewpoints.

The approach is mindful of the globe as a human-centric construction of world-spanning networks of ideas, people, institutions, goods, and infrastructures, and of planet Earth as an ecosystem in which plants, animals, and other organisms in addition to weather and landscape work together to form the bubble of life.

Like all forms of environmental history, Global Environmental History has one foot in the sciences and one in the humanities. It brings together deep and recorded histories and works with the archives of nature, such as scientific data on soil samples, wind currents, or contamination patterns, in addition to the archives of societies, such as diaries, newspapers, or government reports.

Focused on planetary environmental issues, Global Environmental History is necessarily engaged in a lively conversation with the inter- and transdisciplinary Environmental Humanities, a burgeoning research field inserting humanist approaches, such as questions on value, norms, responsibility or historicity into today’s discussions on planetary environmental crises.