The Great Convergence: An Environmental History of BRICS is the result of a collaborative effort in which environmental historians from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa came together to offer new perspectives on the new and somehow intriguing entity. These scholars forged a dialogue from their own historical traditions to find common threads and common challenges. The contributors to this volume focus on three basic themes that can serve as building blocks for future research: the State, the Civil Society, and the Academia, that is, what has been written in each country on the relations between nature and society over time.

The historical perspective is crucial for understanding the environmental and social challenges which might be faced by the BRICS nations in the years to come. The past matters. It matters in understanding threads in policy making-on why certain ideals and frameworks emerged and endured. It matters to explain institutional evolution, and the efficacy or not, of governance. It matters to understand social acceptance and resistance, and of the emergence of what is often dismissed as irrational human trends.