In 1968 photographic images taken from the spacecraft Apollo 8 led to envision the Earth as a “blue marble” and their beauty inspired many. As these images were taken –however- the planet was fraught with conflict. The ongoing Vietnam War was by then creating mounting unrest for its human and environmental consequences. And the whole planet was under the threat of nuclear Armageddon. The stark contrast between the earth’s representation, “the blue planet” and its reality, “the Cold War”, are telling of the inner tension between the aspiration to better know the earth and –at the same time- that to exploit this knowledge in the conflict between Superpowers. Indeed these ambitions are characteristic of this tense period in the history of humanity.

Scholars with interests as far afield as history, geography, intelligence, international relations, science and technology and the environment (just to mention a few) have begun to recognize that the Cold War contributed to expand the study of the earth to an unprecedented level. The sponsorship of new research propelled the understanding of oceans, the atmosphere, the solid earth, remote geographical locations, Polar Regions, the earth’s gravity and magnetic fields and many other features of our planet.

Yet, if the details of these scientific activities are now partly understood, much remains to be known about the motives behind this growth. In particular we need to know a great deal about the institutional set up that nurtured this development. In recent years –also thanks to the availability of previously restricted archive materials- we have learnt that the investment in earth studies was considered critical to the Superpowers’ strategic planning and national security. It also paralleled similar investments to foster international collaborative programs in all the areas of the world, partly through military alliances such as NATO, SEATO and CENTO. It coincided with the setting up of science and technology branches within intelligence and diplomatic organizations of many countries. Yet much work remains to be done to understand the inner motives that brought together scientists, politicians, diplomats and intelligence operators in planning and coordinating earth and environmental studies.

It is with the idea of filling this gap in mind that we are inviting you to participate in our workshop “Blue Planet-Cold War”. We would like to stimulate an examination of the science-policy-intelligence networks that propelled research on the earth and the environment during the Cold War from different perspectives. We aim to bring together worldwide experts from several disciplines and pave the way to forging a new synthesis. We are looking for contributions that want to address a number of relevant and related questions including: What kind of national and international networks did leading research organisations rely upon in shaping earth and environmental studies? To what extent did diplomatic urgencies and alliances make the sponsorship of earth studies pliable to foreign affairs? Was the growth of earth studies associated with the needs of intelligence-gathering? What kind of knowledge was produced and to what ends?

We believe such a coordinated effort would be of great importance not just to advance scholarly research on the Cold War period, but also to understand its legacy. In particular if we know a great deal about current preoccupation with climatic and environmental changes, we know far less on how the sponsorship regime defined by the Cold War helped scientists to gather vital data and develop new modelling now considered critical to the scientific analysis of these changes.

The meeting will also be an important component in the development of the TEUS (The Earth Under Surveillance) project. Established in 2009 and funded by the European Research Council, TEUS explores the history of scientific studies of the earth and the environment, especially by examining how the Cold War shaped funding and research trajectories. Among its innovative features is a focus on the interplay and mutual shaping of the geosciences and national security/intelligence programmes.