ENVIRONING TECHNOLOGY Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment 1969–2001 JOHAN GÄRDEBO
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ENVIRONING TECHNOLOGY
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment 1969–2001
EN
VIR
ON
ING
TE
CH
NO
LO
GY
Swedish Satellite R
emote Sensing in the M
aking of Environm
ent 1969–2001
The cover is based on remote sensing data gathered above northern Ukraine by the French satellite SPOT-1 during its orbit around the Earth on May 1, 1986.
JOHAN GÄRDEBO
JOH
AN
GÄ
RD
EB
O
Johan Gärdebo is a historian at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Environing Technology is his doctoral thesis.
Environing-Technology-Cover.indd 1 2019-03-07 12:01
Johan Gärdebo
Environing Technology
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment
1969–2001
Stockholm Papers in the History and Philosophy of Technology
TRITA-ABE-DLT-195
Environing Technology
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the Making of Environment 1969–2001
Defended April 5th, 2019, at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Main Campus,
F3-Lecture Hall, kl. 13.00
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
Department of Philosophy and History
School of Architecture and the Built Environment
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
ISSN: 0349-2842
ISBN: 978-91-7873-126-8
© Johan Gärdebo, 2019
Printed by US-AB, Stockholm 2019
Environing Technology: Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing in the
Making of Environment 1969–2001
Abstract
The state-owned Swedish Space Corporation established a satellite remote sensing infrastructure and defined uses for the technology both within and beyond Sweden during the latter part of the twentieth century. This thesis studies Swedish satellite remote sensing as an environing technology – a technology that environs, that produces environments and our perceptions of the environment. This perspective is important in historicising Sweden’s role in developing a technology that now is used both to manage environments on a global scale and to provide an understanding of what the environment is. It is also important to understand these environing activities as motivated by and related to other aims, for example Swedish non-alignment, development aid, and the export of expertise to new markets. I ask two questions. Firstly, how did Swedish satellite remote sensing activities contribute to the making of environment? Secondly, why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these activities?
Studying environing technologies requires combining the theoretical understandings of history of technology and environmental history and treats technology and environment as outcomes of environing activities. Methodologically, the thesis studies written and oral sources to find activities related to satellite remote sensing that take part in sensing, writing about, or shaping environments. From these activities, new understandings of technology and environment emerge over time.
The thesis is structured around five empirical chapters: 1) the institutionalisation of remote sensing as part of environmental diplomacy in Sweden, 1969–1978; 2) the establishment and expansion of a French-Swedish remote sensing infrastructure, showcased by sensing the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986; 3) the export of Swedish technoscientific expertise as a form of development aid, 1983–1994; 4) the promotion of satellites as a tool for sustainable development, 1987–1992; and 5) the establishment of an environmental data centre to monitor the European environment as part of managing the expansion of the European Union, 1991–1999.
Swedish satellite remote sensing experts contributed to numerous international demonstrations that emphasised the technology as a tool for sustainable development of environments on a global scale. These activities beyond Sweden, often through transnational collaborations, were undertaken to establish satellite remote sensing within Sweden. The lack of a long-term strategy for the Swedish government’s space activities forced the technoscientific experts to find ad hoc uses for their technology, of which environmental applications were the most significant.
Keywords: COPUOS, environing, environmental diplomacy, infrastructure, satellite remote sensing, SPOT, Spot Image, sustainable development, Sweden, Swedish Space Corporation.
Author’s address: Johan Gärdebo, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]
Till Elsa
Acknowledgments
According to my daughter Elsa, I have “tagit år på mig att skriva en väldigt lång läxa
om sånt som hände förut [taken years writing a very long homework assignment about
stuff happening in the past]”. She is right, of course, but I feel compelled to
acknowledge how I did not do it all by myself.
The thesis emerged as part of the research project “Views from a Distance:
Remote Sensing Technologies and the Perception of the Earth”, initiated by my
supervisors Nina Wormbs and Sabine Höhler and with funding from the Swedish
Research Council. It also benefitted from Nina’s oral history project “50 Years in
Space: A Documentation Project on Swedish Space Activities”, with funding mainly
from Vinnova. The KTH Royal Institute of Technology granted me a stipend from
“Gösta Milton’s donation fund” as part of a research exchange at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) that allowed me to visit a number of American
archives. These projects have defined the thesis’ research problems within the fields
of history of science, technology, and environment. With this said, however, I have
enjoyed the freedom to pursue my own set of questions about Swedish satellite remote
sensing. For this, I am immensely grateful.
For source material, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the archivists
whom I met at various places around Stockholm, Uppsala, Kiruna, Paris, Florence,
Enschede, Boston, and Washington, DC. The archives of the Swedish Space
Corporation and of the Swedish National Space Agency have been of particular
importance to my work. I thank their staff, past and present, for making these available
for research. Alongside my visits to public and professional archives, I have met with
and interviewed numerous people who received my questions with curiosity and
candour. Their comments have all contributed to and shaped the thesis. Many
provided sources from private collections that otherwise might have been lost to time.
Some passed away before seeing the completion of this thesis.
For my doctoral training, from start to finish, my primary acknowledgement
goes to my main supervisor – Nina. Nina expected the best of me but also cautioned
when perfect became the enemy of the possible. She threw lots of books at me, taught
me when to put them aside to venture into archives, and reigned me back in with
enough time to write things up. My debts to her are legion. My second supervisor
Sabine has always, it seems, kept an open door for me. Sabine has patiently listened to
my thinking out loud until it started to make sense. She has also told me (shouting if
necessary) when my writing did not. I have often blamed myself for not being an
easier doctoral student for these two eminent scholars who taught me to think
critically about, and to feel kindly with, the knowledge with which we remake our
world – I hope they consider their tutoring to have been worthwhile.
I am particularly grateful to my opponents at the mid-term and final seminar,
Mats Fridlund and Finn-Arne Jørgensen, who provided substantial and constructive
critique at critical points of my doctoral studies. Per Högselius evaluated the entire
thesis draft and shared insights on how to develop the argument in its entirety.
Colleagues at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
have been generous with discussions and comments at seminars, luncheons and fika
breaks with the result that very different analytical angles fed into my writing. I am
particularly thankful to Marco Armiero, Roberta Biasillo, Miya Christensen, Jacob von
Heland, Kim Tae Hoon, Arne Kaijser, Kati Lindström, Peder Roberts, Linus Salö, and
Anna Storm for thoroughly discussing the empirical work. Sverker Sörlin pushed me
to be both specific and speculative regarding the environment. David Nilsson urged me
to pose the big questions, “So what?”. And numerous are the times that Sofia Jonsson
defended my sanity in the face of Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
I am thankful for the diversity of the Division’s PhD cohort with whom
I shared laughs as well as tears: Anna, Hanna, and Isabel helped procrastinate writing
by decorating our offices with flowers, philosophy, and acrobatics, as well as co-
authoring some stuff; Anne, Irma, and Jesse made the Environmental Humanities
Laboratory revolutionary; Corinna continued the good fight for PhD rights; Daniele
and Ilenia built a commune where my children learned their first Italian. In my Nordic
PhD cohort, I count Karl Bruno at SLU, Malin Nordvall at Chalmers, and Peter
Bennesved at Umeå University. The Treaty of Trondheim, signed with Saara Matala at
Aalto University, Espoo, and with Tirza Meyer at NTNU, Trondheim, will hopefully
be a code of academic conduct for us as well as for others in the coming years.
A number of migratory birds have seasonally frequented the Division – Bill
Adams, Anna Åberg, Jim Fleming, Sebastian Grevsmühl, Paul Josephson, Anna
Kaijser, Arn Keeling, Teasel Muir-Harmony, Libby Robin, Helmut Trischler, and Paul
Warde. I am indebted to them for encouragement and acknowledge how their advice
guided my work in new directions. I also wish to recognise Maths Isacson and
Aristotle Tympas for supporting my first attempts, before doctoral studies, at
combining history, technology, and environment.
Several friends have laid their healing hands on the language of the thesis –
special recognition here to Paulina Essunger – with the hope of making it a more
enjoyable read. All remaining flaws are mine.
In travels, I have been warmly welcomed by numerous departments abroad.
Håkan With Andersen and Thomas Brandt provided means to stay at NTNU, as did
Frank Schipper who hosted me at Eindhoven University of Technology, the
Netherlands, for seminars organised by him and Erik van der Vleuten. Frank and Anna
Åberg also made me feel welcome in the Tensions of Europe network and summer
schools. I am grateful for sessions organised with Gemma Cirac Claveras, Roger
Launius, and Erik Conway at SHOT and for comments by Tiago Saraiva, Dick van
Lente, and Suzanne Moon at ICOHTEC. The Anthropocene Campus in Berlin,
among other courses abroad, turned out to be a total experience. I am particularly
thankful to Jürgen Renn for organising the follow-up writing session at the Max Planck
Institute and to Paul Edwards for reviewing my contribution to their special issue, as
well as to Scott Knowles for providing opportunities to host sessions at the
Anthropocene Campus in Philadelphia with Etienne Benson, Karena Kalmbach, and
Ellan Spero.
In 2016, I profited from the long-standing MIT-KTH exchange programme with
HASTS (History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society) for what
would be an intense semester – for me personally and for America politically. Roz
Williams served as mentor, fixed me a bike, and more than one dinner. Her sharp
questions about environing, together with comments by Deborah Fitzgerald on my
chapters, gave me courage to retool the entire thesis. I am thankful to David Mindell
and Peter Galison for taking me onboard for two exceptional courses. I greatly
appreciated having my work challenged at seminars hosted by Sonja Schmid at
Virginia Tech, Jim Fleming at Colby College, and Scott Knowles and Amy Slaton at
Drexel University who both extended their family hospitality, seemingly, into
perpetuity. My special thanks go to Teasel at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
for hosting me and making possible numerous archival trips to Washington, DC, as
well as introducing me to colleagues whose writings have influenced me since.
HASTS’ PhD basement, with leaky pipes, friendly mice, and a ceiling window
for rain to drum on, provided fitting scenery for post-election camaraderie among
students from very different walks of life. And when my entire housing block in
Cambridge caught fire, it was they who offered me shelter. In particular, I am glad to
have been in Cambridge at the same time as Moran Levi, Helge Peters, and Kasper
Schiølin. A special acknowledgement is due to Saara with whom I shared most of the
wonders and who helped me endure the woes.
After uprooting from my student collective in Uppsala to embark on doctoral
studies in Stockholm, friends and family have remained a source of support: my
friends, within and beyond Sweden, who put up with my metaphorical way of
thinking; my brothers Viktor and Arvid, who are braver and brighter than myself; my
parents Carin and Ulf, who with patience and love nurtured my inquisitiveness. In
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy states “all happy families are alike”. The Östmans, my
partner’s family, is an exception to this rule. I am thankful for the support that each
of them has given me during these doctoral studies, and I look forward to seeing
Dante grow older with people more sensible than myself.
Kikki – to whom I have promised honesty, curiosity, and adventure – this thesis
is a meagre harvest for all your encouragement, co-parenting, and editorship. Words
fail me, and so this is where I stop for now.
Stockholm, 8 March 2019
CONTENTS
Introduction 13
Motivations and Aims 15
Research Questions 19
Earlier Research – Technology and Environment 20
Theoretical Framework: Environing Technology 38
Method: Emphasis on Activities 43
Use and Critique of Sources 47
Thesis Disposition 52
Delimitations 55
From Sensed to Sensing State, 1969–1978 61
Defining and Using Outer Space in the UN, 1958–1970 64
Establishing a Swedish Space Programme and Foreign Policy, 1970–1972 79
Combining National and International Concerns, 1972–1974 84
Principles and Practice of Remote Sensing, 1975 95
Defining the Nature of Data, 1976 102
Sweden Shifts from Sensed to Sensing State, 1977 104
Asserting Sweden’s Role as an Environmental Sensing State, 1978 108
Summary 112
Causes and Consequences of Sensing the Chernobyl Meltdown, 1976–1991 117
Establishing the French-Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing Infrastructure, 1976–1986 120
Sensing Chernobyl in April and May, 1986 128
Writing about Chernobyl and the Access to Satellite Remote Sensing, 1986–1991 142
Summary 155
Satellites as Aid, 1983–1994 159
164
168
183
193
201
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing as Part of Swedish Exports of Expertise, 1978–1983
Consultants Find, Define, and Fund SSC’s Development Projects, 1983–1987
Sensing the Philippines, 1987–1988
Writing and Shaping the Philippines, 1987–1991
SSC Seeks a Permanent Position in Southeast Asia, 1990–1994
Summary 211
Swedish Environmental Diplomacy via Satellite, 1987–1992 215
Preparing Swedish Space Activities for ISY-92, 1988–1991 219
Environmental Concerns in the Baltic Region, 1988–1991 229
The Swedish Environmental Agenda and the Rio Conference, 1990–1992 239
After the Rio Conference – SSC Announces the Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna, 1992 251
Summary 254
A Centre for Environing Europe, 1991–1999 257
Environmental Centre in Space Town Kiruna, 1991–1993 258
Swedish Monitoring in the Baltic Region, 1991–1995 263
Establishing the Environmental Data Centre, 1991–1996 270
Operating the Environmental Data Centre, 1996–1998 279
SSC Reorganises the Earth Observation Division, 1998–1999 290
Summary 296
Conclusions 299
300
303
307
How did Swedish satellite remote sensing activities contribute to the making of environment?
Why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these activities?
To Study Both Technology and Environment
Epilogue – A Swedish Space Odyssey, 2001 311
Sammanfattning 315
Sources and Literature 323
Appendix A: List of Organisations 371
Appendix B: List of Key Actors 377
Index 383
Acronyms
Here are listed central acronyms of the thesis, which include organisations,
collaborations, and satellites. For a full list of the organisations, see Appendix A.
CNES COPUOS CORINE DENR
EEA ESA IGBP ISY-92 Mistra
RESE SBSA SNSB SPOT SSC Swedish EPA UN
Centre National d’Études Spatiales Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Coordination of Information on the Environment Philippine’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources European Environmental Agency European Space Agency International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme International Space Year 1992 Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research Remote Sensing for the Environment Swedish Board for Space Activities Swedish National Space BoardSystème Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre Swedish Space Corporation Swedish Environmental Protection Agency United Nations
13
Introduction
Technology contributes to producing new environments and to our perceptions of
what the environment is. Remote sensing performed from satellites orbiting above the
Earth’s surface illustrates how this relationship between producing and perceiving the
environment expanded to the global level during the second half of the twentieth
century. This dissertation examines how Swedish remote sensing experts have sensed,
written about, and shaped environments.
I use ‘environment’ as an analytical concept to historicise how its meanings
have altered over time.1 In this thesis, the environment is the historical outcome of an
activity – that of environing. The term ‘environment’ is not a stable reference to
something out there. Environing includes the practices, productions, and perceptions
of how people relate to their environment. As technologies are often used to environ,
I define satellite remote sensing as an environing technology and group its various
activities into the sensing, writing, and shaping of environment.2
According to a commonly used definition, ‘remote sensing’ refers to “a
practice of gathering data about phenomena without coming into direct contact with
these”.3 This definition primarily pertains to satellites orbiting at an altitude of 700 to
900 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. Orbiting pole to pole, a single satellite passes
above every part of the Earth, gathering heat or light emitted back into outer space
1 For example, see Paul Warde, Libby Robin and Sverker Sörlin, The Environment. A History of the Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). 2 Environing technology developed from research tracks of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. See Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormbs, “Environing Technologies: A Theory of Making Environment,” History and Technology 34, no. 2 (2018): 101–25. For earlier reflections on research tracks of the environmental humanities, see Johan Gärdebo, Daniel Helsing, Anna Svensson and Adam Brenthel, “We Don’t Need No Education: A Case Study for Situating the Environmental Humanities,” in Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 1, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 179–204. For an earlier version of remote sensing as an environing technology, see Sabine Höhler and Nina Wormbs, “Remote Sensing. Digital data at a distance,” in Methodological Challenges in Nature–Culture and Environmental History Research, ed. Jocelyn Thorpe, Stephanie Rutherford and Anders Sandberg (London & New York: Routledge, 2017), 272–83. 3 This definition has been used since the first major historical study on satellite remote sensing, see Pamela E. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 53. For later uses, see Megan Black, The Global Interior. Mineral Frontiers and American Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018), 185 n4, 191. See also Gemma Cirac Claveras, “Factories of Satellite Data. Remote Sensing and Physical Earth Sciences in France,” in ICON: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology 21 (2015): 24–50, especially 27; Angelina Long Callahan, Satellite Meteorology in the Cold War Era: Scientific Coalitions and International Leadership 1946–1964, dissertation (Atlanta: Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013), 7.
as data of phenomena on the Earth’s surface.4 The experts defined remote sensing with
reference to the distance between the satellite in orbit and the phenomena sensed on
the Earth’s surface.5 Rather than offering a precise definition of remote sensing based
on present-day knowledge, the contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate how the
use of the technology by experts involved in sensing, writing about, and shaping
environments changed descriptions of the technology.
I have focused on the Swedish satellite remote sensing activities as these
developed during the second half of the twentieth century. Between 1969 and 2001,
the Swedish government reformed previous space initiatives into the Swedish Remote
Sensing Committee (Fjärranalyskommittén), the Swedish Space Corporation (Svenska
rymdaktiebolaget, hereafter SSC), and the Swedish Board for Space Activities
(Delegationen för rymdverksamhet, hereafter SBSA). During this period, these expert
organisations secured the money and mandate to lead Swedish satellite remote sensing
activities, nationally and internationally.6
The Swedish experts who were active during this period contributed to
establishing satellite remote sensing as the prime technology for sensing and
monitoring the environment. Satellite imagery provided a visual backdrop against
which other environmental studies, like surveys of flora and biodiversity,
phytoplankton, and ice cores, were argued to be part of a systemic Earth environment
that was also undergoing change on a global scale.7 Both satellite remote sensing and
the global environment became natural categories for future policymaking.
4 Nina Wormbs and Gustav Källstrand, A Short History of Swedish Space Activities (Noordwijk: European Space Agency, 2007), 18. 5 For previous historicising of remote sensing and objectivity, see Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” Social Studies of Science 22, no. 4 (1992): 597–618; Charles Goodwin, “Seeing in Depth,” Social Studies of Science 25, no. 2 (1995): 237–74. On the importance of aerial photography for asserting objective perspectives of relevance also for subsequent uses of satellite imagery, see Jeanne Haffner, The View from Above: The Science of Social Space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2013), 4–5. 6 A Swedish space committee had already in 1963 aimed to secure support from the Swedish Government. I will return to these earlier Swedish space activities in the next chapter and demonstrate their relationship to remote sensing. For more on the first plans for observation by satellite, see SOU 1963:61, Organisatoriska åtgärder för rymdverksamhetens främjande, 63. 7 A number of senior European officials recently argued that “in just a few decades, space-based Earth observation has become an indispensable tool for understanding and protecting our planet, and how Europe has played an ever-growing part in this success”. See Institut Francais d´Histoire de l’Espace, Earth Observation from Space. Optical and Radar Imagery: A European Success 1960–2010 (Paris: Tessier and Ashpool Editions, 2018), 10. For similar arguments from the US, see National Research Council of the National Academies, Earth Science and Applications from Space. National Imperatives for the next decade and beyond (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2007); Diana Liverman, Emilio F. Moran, Ronald R. Rindfuss, and Paul C. Stern, People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science (Washington, DC: Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, National Academies Press, 1998), vii; C. B. Pease, Satellite Imaging Instruments: Principles, Technologies and Operational Systems
14
15
The global imagery produced with satellites has informed numerous universal
claims about what the environmental predicament is as well as what is to be done
about it. The more influential of these include arguments for “limits to growth”
(1972), the “sustainable development” of society (1987), and “planetary boundaries”
(2009). In his 2015 encyclical, Pope Francis made reference to these ideas as part of
staking out how humans should live on the Earth – a fragile planet surrounded by
dead space.8
By now, then, sacred as well as secular communities may take for granted that
sensing the Earth’s environment is essential to saving it. This was not always the case
and instead demonstrates a recent and unprecedented role for technology during the
twentieth century. Swedish satellite remote sensing experts contributed to activities
that gave satellite remote sensing this importance. The purpose of this study is to
illustrate how and why this happened.
Motivations and Aims
There are two main motivations for this study of Swedish satellite remote sensing.
The first concerns the environment; the second is about Sweden. With respect to the
environment, this study addresses a growing interest among historians in
understanding relationships between technology and the making of environment. I use
(New York: Ellis Horwood, 1991). This perspective has also influenced history-writing about space technology, see Brian Michael Jirout, One Satellite for the World: The American Landsat Earth Observation Satellite in Use, 1953–2008, dissertation (Atlanta, Georgia US: Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017); Kenneth P. A. Thompson, A Political History of U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing , 1984–2007: Conflict, Collaboration, and the Role of Knowledge in the High-Tech World of Earth Observation Satellites, dissertation (Virginia Polytechnic and State University, 2007), 11, 30. 8 For specific descriptions of viewing the Earth as a system, see Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth. A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Potomac Associates, Universe Books, 1972), 11, 23, 45, 183, 185–92. See also Club of Rome, Predicament of Mankind (New York: Potomac Associates, Universe Books, 1970), 11, 24. For references to space technology, see World Commission on Environment and Development (hereafter cited as WCED), “Chapter 10: Managing the Commons. II. Space: A Key to Planetary Management. Statement 56–62,” Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). On monitoring changes in land use or land cover, see Johan Rockström et al, “Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for humanity,” Ecology and Society 14(2), no. 32 (2009). On the importance of limits, sustainability, boundaries, and technology for global political imperatives, see Francis, Encyclical letter ‘Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home (Rome: Vatican Press, 2015), 39, 78, 84–85, 101, 123–29. See also Pontifical Academy of Sciences, “The Impact of Space Exploration on Mankind, October 1–5, 1984,” Pontificiae Academiae Scientiarvm Docvmenta, no. 13 (Rome: Vatican Press, 1984). For more on the importance of visualisations to global environmental politics, see Piero Morseletto, “Analysing the influence of visualisations in global environmental governance,” Environmental Science & Policy 78 (December 2017): 40–49.
the word ‘making’ since technologies are involved in both our perceptions about the
environment and in the practices that shape it.9
Historical research has demonstrated how technology functions as a system
that has contributed to environmental knowledge. From this perspective, remote
sensing is a technology systemically connected to many people, practices, and places
that together produce a new sense of the environment.10 Other systemic studies
illustrate how what was once conceived of as technology over time became part of
and informed notions about the environment. This process is often an aggregated,
hence unintentional, result of how we use technology to make environments. The
important point here is an understanding of ‘technology’ and ‘environment’ as
relational concepts that inform each other.11
Humanistic research on remote sensing demonstrates how technology is also
part of making the environments that it senses. For example, monitoring global
environmental change has in turn influenced how people interact with environments
globally, to shape that change in ways considered desirable. 12 This suggests that
referring to something as ‘environment’, or ‘nature’, is not a means of shutting down
the subject from further debate, but rather of opening up new political domains.13
9 Sara Pritchard, “Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies: Promises, Challenges and Contributions,” in New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies, ed. Dolly Jørgensen and Finn Arne Jørgensen (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013); 1–17, especially 13–14. 10 Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010). 11 Sara Pritchard, Confluence. The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). More recently, see also Jon Agar, “Technology, environment and modern Britain: historiography and intersections,” in Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain, ed. Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (London: UCL Press, 2018), 14–15; Matthew Kelly, “The Thames Barrier: climate change, shipping and the transition to a new envirotechnical regime,” in Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain, ed. Jon Agar and Jacob Ward (London: UCL Press, 2018), 206–8, 226. 12 William Rankin, After the Map. Cartography, Navigation and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). For contemporary studies, see Jennifer Gabrys, “Sensing Lichens: From Ecological Microcosms to Environmental Subjects,” Third Text 32, no. 2–3 (2018): 350–67; Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). See also Peter Taylor, “How Do We Know We Have Global Environmental Problems? Undifferentiated Science-Politics and its Potential Reconstruction,” in Changing Life: Genomes, Ecologies, Bodies, Commodities, ed. Peter Taylor, Saul E. Halfon and Paul N. Edwards (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 149–74.13 Kristin Asdal’s work describes it as, “‘Nature’ has, in an environmental political context, seldommeant having the last word, to end a debate. Rather, it has been a means to open up political discussions.To refer to nature, or effects in nature, has therefore contributed to starting debates, to politicise apolitics that appeared to be settled” (Authors translation: “Naturen” har, i miljøpolitisk sammenheng,sjelden betydd å få det siste ordet, å stenge for debatt. I steder har det vært en måte å åpne for politikkog diskisjon på. Å henvise till natur, eller effekter i naturen, har dermed heller bidratt til å starte debatt,å politisere en politikk som framsto som fastlagt). See Kristin Asdal, Politikkens natur – Naturens politik[The nature of politics – the politics of nature] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2011), 16–17.
16
17
In this thesis, I use historical examples to illustrate how the environment is not
a thing existing remotely out there, as if it were something that could be sensed
provided one simply had the right tool. Instead, the environment is the aggregate
outcome of activities that involve technologies. Over time, this making of the
environment – this environing – ends up informing our perceptions about what the
environment is, based on practices of sensing and shaping it in the past and
preferences for how to sustain it for the future. In brief, the environment is an
outcome of environing. Instead of asserting a definition of what the environment is,
my aim is to open up questions about why environing happened the way it did. A
study of environing, such as this, provides insight into possibilities for, and limitations
to, our historical understanding of the environment. This insight is of use in
addressing present-day questions about how we make sense of an environment that
we ourselves have been part of making.
My second motivation concerns history that involves Sweden. History of
space technology has tended to focus on achievements, affinities, and animosities
during the space race between the Cold War’s two vying superpowers – the United
States and the Soviet Union.14 Recent transnational research has begun to revise these
narratives by demonstrating how histories previously perceived to be peripheral played
a significant role for the centres of space power. This research has also brought outer-
space activities into closer dialogue with, and holds explanatory value for, other
topics in history, such as postcolonial struggles, international technoscientific
networks, and the emergence of global environmental politics.15
For influential Swedish literature arguing that environmental knowledge has been used to close down political debates, see Johan Hedrén, Miljöpolitikens natur [The nature of environmental politics], dissertation (Linköping: Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, 1994), 211–19, 275–78. For arguments that the concept of nature close down political debates by blurring “is” and “ought”, see Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, eds, The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), especially 1–2 and 14–15. 14 Pamela E. Mack and Ray A. Williamson, “Observing the Earth from Space,” in Exploring the Unknown, Volume III: Using Space, ed. John M. Logsdon, Roger D. Launius, David H. Onkst and Stephen J. Garber (Washington, DC: NASA, 1998), 155–77; Roger Launius, “United States Space Cooperation and Competition: Historical Reflections,” Astropolitics, no. 7 (2009): 89–100. In some respects, this also applies to new initiatives, see John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan, and Ashok Maharaj, NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).15 Asif A. Siddiqi, “Competing Technologies, National(ist) Narratives, and Universal Claims: Toward a Global History of Space Exploration.” Technology and Culture 51, no. 2 (April 2010): 425–43; Teasel Muir-Harmony, Project Apollo, Cold War Diplomacy and the American Framing of Global Interdependence, dissertation (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014); Gemma Cirac Claveras, POLDER and the Age of Space Earth Sciences. A Study of Technological Satellite Data Practices, dissertation (Paris: Ecoles des hautes etudes en sciences sociales 2014); Sebastian Grevsmühl, A la recherche de l’environnement global: De l’Antarctique à l’Espace et retour, dissertation (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2012), 240–43.
By focusing on Swedish satellite remote sensing, I demonstrate how and why a
relatively small country made significant contributions to the use of this
technology.16 These contributions include formulating international definitions for
satellite remote sensing and for what was being sensed, challenging secrecies of
the Cold War superpowers by disseminating satellite imagery of nuclear disasters,
writing policies for sustainable development to motivate the mapping of entire
countries, and shaping the environmental boundaries of Europe by repeatedly
sensing the Baltic Sea following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Each initiative beyond Sweden was influenced by, arose with, and responded
to needs existing within Sweden. SSC, SBSA, and the Swedish Remote Sensing
Committee intended to use remote sensing to expand Swedish space activities and to
increase their own technoscientific expertise. When challenged by other national
organisations that also provided sensing technology for Nordic users, these Swedish
satellite remote sensing experts instead sought money and mandates through
transnational collaborations, international negotiations, and multilateral financiers.
The need to find rationales for remote sensing led to new uses of the technology, ad
hoc or accidental‚ that in time significantly influenced Swedish diplomacy, non-aligned
surveillance, and development aid.
This is a history about Sweden, but it is not a Swedish history. My aim is to
write transnational history. I focus on Swedish satellite remote sensing as an activity,
rather than a group of actors, seeking to follow this activity to wherever it leads. Due
to the numerous practices involved in sensing by satellite, writing about the data, or
using it to reshape environments, it would be incorrect to speak of one particular
group of experts responsible for the history of Swedish satellite remote sensing. The
Swedish satellite remote sensing experts often collaborated and competed with other
industries, consultancy firms, subsidiary companies, additional governmental agencies,
ministries, university groups, and research associations, nationally as well as
internationally. In brief, many Swedish satellite remote sensing activities did not take
place within Sweden, nor were they necessarily conducted by Swedes.
As part of writing a transnational history about space technology, I provide
background on the Swedish context to make it accessible to an international reader.
16 I use the term “relatively small” in recognition that the role of Swedish satellite remote sensing differed with respect to who the experts collaborated with or competed against. Where relevant, I describe these relations and particularities in the chapters.
18
19
For the same reason, I also illustrate how international events influenced Swedish
space activities. In the coming sections I will return to discuss what this means in
terms of historiographical foundation, theoretical framework, use and criticism of
source material, as well as the delimitations of the thesis. The study is motivated, in
sum, because it illustrates how the making of environment is part of many other, smaller,
intentions, ambitions, and activities, including those conducted by Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts.
Research Questions
There are two main questions that inform this study. Firstly, how did Swedish satellite
remote sensing activities contribute to the making of environment? And how were
these activities part of sensing, writing about, and shaping environments? Secondly,
why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these activities?
These questions are relevant both to the history of technology and to
environmental history. Since researchers in the US began promoting the term ‘remote
sensing’ in the 1960s, the field has been acknowledged as an interdisciplinary effort,
including engineers, scientists, and policy-makers, to make military technology
available for civilian purposes, establish technological tools of relevance for society at
large, and explore new phenomena in the environment. The relationships,
collaborations, and conflicts that arose while establishing remote sensing have
relevance for understanding the interplay between industry, government, and
academia during the late twentieth century. They are also important for understanding
how transnational informal networks bridged national constraints and shaped
international competition.
In this dissertation, I analyse different intended uses for satellite remote
sensing, unintended outcomes of these activities, and how the practices and
perceptions changed with respect to both the environing technology and the
environment. In the following five chapters, I analyse Swedish satellite remote sensing
activities in a number of central projects conducted between 1969 and 2001. This
period and these projects cover Swedish contributions to the technology during the
Cold War and in its aftermath as well as major changes in the institutional organisation
of Swedish space activities.
The central projects included drafting international principles for the use of
remote sensing, monitoring facilities in the Soviet Union, mapping natural resources
in developing countries, defining the relationship between the technology and
sustainable development, and expanding European political integration to the Baltic
region at the end of the Cold War.
Each project illustrates an interplay between the remote sensing technology
and new groups of experts. It also illustrates how satellite remote sensing was used to
sense, write about, and inform the shaping of the environment. By empirically
demonstrating how satellite remote sensing functioned as an environing technology, I
contribute to the ongoing shift in the historical understanding of how humans are
part of making the environment, which in turn informs the meaning of that
environment.
Earlier Research – Technology and Environment
I position the thesis as a convergence between the history of technology and
environmental history, drawing upon both fields for insights.17 I argue that this is
absolutely necessary for understanding a technology such as satellite remote sensing.
I here describe previous studies of how technologies have produced environmental
knowledge, why Swedish technoscientific expertises are relevant to a transnational
history of space activities, and what can be considered to be driving these activities.
Central to any history of technology, according to historian of technology
Thomas Hughes, is to think of technologies as part of a system – a large technological
system. This means that an artefact, like a satellite in orbit or its sensors, is only one
part among many other components required to make the technology work. The
experts working with this technological system were used to defining these
components. To the historian, they often become visible in written sources when
17 For previous synthesis and overviews on the convergence of history of technology and environmental history, see Sara Pritchard, “Toward an Environmental History of Technology.” in The Oxford Handbook of Evironmental History, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 227–58, in particular 228–29; Edmund Russell, James Allison, Thomas Finger, John K. Brown, Brian Balogh, and W. Bernard Carlson, “The Nature of Power: Synthesizing the History of Technology and Environmental History,” Technology and Culture 52, no. 2 (2011): 246–59; Hugh S. Gorman and Betsy Mendelsohn, “Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Converging Themes in the History of Technology and Environmental History,” in The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History, ed. Martin Reuss and Stephen Cutcliffe (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Jeffrey K. Stine and Joel A. Tarr, “At the Intersection of Histories: Technology and the Environment,” Technology and Culture 39, no. 4 (1998): 601–40. More recently, see also Alexander Elliott and James Cullis, “The Importance of the Humanities to the Climate Change Debate,” in Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis, ed. Alexander Elliott, James Cullis, and Vinita Damodaran (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 15–42.
20
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something prevented the system from functioning as intended. As experts sort out or
circumvent the problems of their system, they make visible to the historian many
other activities involved in the technology.18
Researchers have added further demarcations to the theory of technological
systems in order to expand or shift the analysis. Among these are the terms
‘sociotechnical’ to stress that technology also involved people,19 ‘technopolitical’ to
argue that technology promoted or naturalised certain political preferences,20 and
‘envirotechnical’ to demonstrate that a system over time became part of the
surrounding environment, like embankments of a river.21
Of particular relevance is historian Paul Edwards’ use of systems-thinking to
explain the production of knowledge during the last two centuries about a globally
changing environment. Edwards argues that the connection and convergence of
several technological systems resulted in an infrastructure that enabled the
demonstration, and knowledge, of global climate change.22 To understand collective
perceptions of the environment, Edwards studies how builders of this knowledge
infrastructure intended to use it to produce, interpret, and disseminate data. He does
this by identifying where friction emerged when people sought to move data from
local places into global models. This involves examining institutional and structural
18 Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power. Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 14–17. For a study on the origins of system thinking, see David Mindell, “Automation’s Finest Hour: Radar and System Integration in World War II,” in Systems, Experts, and Computers. The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering , World War II and After, ed. Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 27–56. 19 See Wiebe Bijker, Trevor Pinch, and Thomas P. Hughes, eds. The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989); Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds. Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). For an important contribution to include gender in analysis of technical systems, see Judith A. McGaw, Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making , 1801–1885 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I987). For subsequent analysis that stresses the importance of users in changing a technology, see Ruth Schwartz Cowan, A Social History of American Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); David Nye, Technology Matters: Questions to Live With (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), 21, 33–47. 20 Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France. Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II, revised edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009). On “technopolitics of altitude” see Edwards (2010), 138. 21 Pritchard (2011). For earlier arguments to expand system analysis towards including the environment, see Eva Jakobsson, Industrialisering av älvar. Studier kring svensk vattenkraftutbyggnad 1900–1918 [Industrialization of rivers. Studies in Swedish hydro power development 1900–1918], dissertation (Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 1996), 45. 22 Edwards (2010), 8–9, 17–23, especially n12. For earlier treatments of thinking about large technological systems as infrastructures, see Arne Kaijser, I fädrens spår : Den svenska infrastrukturens historiska utveckling och framtida utmaningar [In the footsteps of fathers: The Swedish infrastructure’s historical development and future challenges] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1994); Pär Blomkvist and Arne Kaijser, eds. Den konstruerade världen: Tekniska system i historiskt perspektiv [The constructed world: technical systems in a historical perspective] (Eslöv: Symposion, 1998), 21–25.
histories of national agencies, international collaborations, and other organisations
working with monitoring systems, as well as influences from warfare, politics,
economic development, and societal movements.23 The endurance of infrastructures
contributes to the taken-for-grantedness of the technoscientific expertises involved,
such as remote sensing, as well as the knowledge these provide. Together, Edwards
argues that these conditions explained why, and how, people produced knowledge
about the global environment.24
In another study of knowledge infrastructures, historian of science William
Rankin argues that the emphasis has to shift from the intentions for building a system
to a study of its use. In studying global mapping and navigation projects, he
demonstrates how people became aware of, or paid attention to, new aspects in the
environment as part of using the technology. Over time, this activity changed the
user’s relationship to both the navigation technology and the mapped environment.25
Rankin’s argument is a relevant addition that shifts the focus toward how systems
developed as an unintended outcome of changing attentions, or ideas, among its users.
Both Edwards and Rankin see the Cold War competition as a driver for
these global infrastructures. They also argue for the importance of US initiatives
for present-day uses. I want to understand how and why Swedish satellite remote
sensing experts contributed to such infrastructures and focus on the activities of
local, national, and transnational actors in building them. This history illustrates
more diverse reasons for using knowledge infrastructures than previously known.26
23 Edwards (2010), xvi. For earlier versions of this argument, see Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards, The Technopolitics of Cold War : Toward a Transregional Perspective (Washington, DC: The American Historical Association, 2007), 3–4. See also Paul N. Edwards, “The World in a Machine: Origins and Impacts of Early Computerized Global Systems Models,” in Systems, Experts, and Computers. The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering , World War II and After, ed. Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 221–54. For other examples of knowledge infrastructures, see Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Network (Sign, Storage, Transmission) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 15; Lisa Parks and James Schwoch, eds. Down to Earth. Satellite Technology, Industries and Cultures (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 2; David Mindell, Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy (Viking, 2015), 12. 24 “Technoscientific” is a term used to address how science involves technologies to practice and produce knowledge. See Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@ Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (NewYork: Routledge, 1997), 8, 35. For additional literature and quote, see Edwards (2010), 19. 25 Rankin (2016), 29–32, 296. For a similar approach to map-making, see J. Nicholas Entrikin, “The Unhandselled Globe,” in High Places. Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science, ed. Denis Cosgrove and Veronica della Dora (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2009), 216. 26 For other studies of models and data gathering, see Matthias Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony, eds. Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-based Modeling and Simulation (London: Routledge, 2017); Lisa Gitelman, ed. Raw Data is an Oxymoron (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012); Anna Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
22
23
Environmental history, by contrast, is full of stories about unintended effects
as a result of human activities. In reaction to dichotomous descriptions that separate
environment and humans, environmental historian Richard White has argued that
nature is known through labour – “it is our work that ultimately links us”.27 Similarly,
anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup argues that the environment is not a force outside of
or set against humans. Both as individuals and as a society, “people have shaped the
circumstances under which that outer pressure is supposed to work on them”.28
Environmental historian Joachim Radkau argues that by treating the environment as
“nature turned social”, one can also understand how human practices gave rise to new
perceptions about the environment. He calls on historians to look for “the
environmental” as something emerging at the margins of human intention. It is to be
found in everyday, institutionalised, practices. Environmental history in this sense is a
history of the obvious. It demands both source criticism and theory to be discernible
for readers of history.29
Institutions that work with sensing, documenting, and describing the
environment have historically been important for articulating contradictions in
concepts like ‘labour’ and ‘nature’, ‘society’, and ‘environment’. The shifting
definitions or demarcations illustrate that environmental ideas have several motives.
The love of nature is always a selective love. For this reason, environmental ideas can
be found in numerous societal movements and be used to justify a host of political
ends.30 Nationalism is in this respect also an expression of environmental ideas about
27 Richard White, The Organic Machine (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995), x. For further analysis of the term “environment” and related terms, like “wilderness” and “nature”, see William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: Norton, 1996), 69–90. 28 Kirsten Hastrup, “Destinies and Decisions: Taking the Life-World Seriously in Environmental History,” in Nature’s End. History and the Environment, ed. Sörlin and Warde (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 331–48. Landscape architect Anne Spirn offer similar perspectives in urban studies on how people shape land and over time the land changes the people in it, see Anne Whiston Spirn, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (New York: BasicBooks, 1984). For more recent work, see Kenneth Olwig, “Landscape, place, and the state of progress,” in Progress: Geographical Essays, ed. Robert David Sack (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 22–59, especially 52–53. 29 Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power. A global history of the environment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), xii, 35, 87. 30 Radkau’s perspective is here influenced by Max Weber who warns the scholar against making value judgments, especially regarding environmental history, see Radkau (2008), 227, 234–35, 239, 301, 307, 323–24. See also Mark Fiege, The Republic of Nature. An Environmental History of the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012), 283–302. For more recent work, see also Sverker Sörlin, “Reconfiguring environmental expertise,” Environmental science & policy 28 (2013): 14–24, especially 16.
who has access to land or natural resources. National institutions are places where
these ideas have been articulated to inform activities.31
Historian of technology Sara Pritchard has synthesised studies in both
environmental history and history of technology to demonstrate how each field tends
to “black box” either technology or environment. 32 As a remedy, she proposes
expanding the theory of technological systems to also include the environment – to
write envirotechnical histories. Her study of French river management of the Rhône
demonstrates how technologies changed breadth, width, and water course until the
technological system became part of the river itself. According to Pritchard, this
unsettles dichotomous thinking about technology being what nature is not. Pritchard
therefore argues for history-writing that illustrates hybridity between what is
considered environmental as opposed to societal.33
Inspired by William Cronon’s seminal study Nature’s Metropolis, envirotechnical
historical studies have analytically approached technology as producing a second nature
that takes the place of the previous, first, nature.34 Cultural scholar McKenzie Wark
pushes this further by arguing that knowledge infrastructures have since the late
nineteenth century established a third nature consisting of information where the
aggregate outcomes include visualisations of environmental change on a global scale.35
31 See, for example, Jonas Anshelm, Det vilda, det vackra och det ekologiskt hållbara: om opinionsbildningen i Svenska naturskyddsföreningens tidskrift Sveriges natur 1943–2002 [The wild, the beautiful and the ecologically sustainable: on advocacy in the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation’s journal Sveriges natur 1943–2002] (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2004), 100, 118, and 128 for example of shifts from national to international environmental concerns. See also Lars Lundgren, Staten och naturen. Naturskyddspolitik i Sverige 1869–1935 Del 2: 1919–1935 [The state and the nature: Environmental protection policy in Sweden 1869–1935. Part 2: 1919–1935] (Brottby: Kassandra, 2011), 457–58. 32 Pritchard (2014), 227–58, in particular 228–29. 33 Pritchard consider terms like “network”, or “assemblages” as useful for describing the envirotechnical but still relies on the concept of “system” in recognition of its importance in the history of technology, see Pritchard (2011), 8–22. See also Richard White, “From Wilderness to Hybrid Landscapes: The Cultural Turn in Environmental History,” Historian 66 (2004): 557–64. 34 William Cronon. Nature’s Metropolis. Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton & Company, 1991), xvii–xviv, 19, 56, 62, 267. For earlier attempts, see Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). For later use with relevance for envirotechnical analysis, see Pritchard (2011), 22, 102, 184. See also Christopher F. Jones, Routes of Power : Energy and Modern America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 7–8. 35 McKenzie Wark, “Third nature,” Cultural Studies 8, no. 1 (1994): 115–32, especially 120, 123, and 124; McKenzie Wark, “Antipodality,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 2, no. 3 (1997): 17–27, especially 25–26; McKenzie Wark, Telesthesia: Communication, Culture & Class (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012). For later work that incorporates Edwards’ term “knowledge infrastructure” into “third nature”, see McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (London: Verso, 2015), 316–19.
24
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Historian of technology Rosalind Williams, however, cautions against
differentiating between different types of nature.36 This idea has a longer intellectual
history that involves seeing humans as separate from their surroundings,37 and it has
continued to influence thinking about humans and the environment since Antiquity
until the modern period. 38 Instead of reproducing such dichotomies, humanist
research can illustrate how humans continuously reshape the environment and, in so
doing, also change perceptions of what the environment is. To do this, Williams
advises the historian to think about technology not as things but as processes.39 When
studying built environments, this means looking at the relationship between peoples,
practices, and places – between work and life, technology and ecology – to understand
how new perceptions emerged. Previous studies of built environments have too easily
referred to intentions of architects behind the system to explain its outcomes. Rather,
it is the adaptations, ad hoc solutions, and changes in attention that historians should
be looking out for, Williams argues.
36 Rosalind Williams, The Triumph of Human Empire. Verne, Morris, and Stevenson at the end of the World (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013), 17; Rosalind Williams, Retooling. A Historian Confronts Technological Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 23; Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground. An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination, second edition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 19–21. For critique that “second nature” is too hybrid, see Paul S. Sutter, “The World with Us: The State of American Environmental History,” Journal of American History 100, no. 1 (June 2013): 96; For critique that Cronon’s use of “second nature” is not Marxist enough, see Steven Stoll, “A Metabolism of Society: Capitalism for Environmental Historians,” in The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 376. For earlier similar critique, see Richard Walker, “Editor’s Introduction,” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 26, no. 2 (April 1994): 113–15. 37 In particular, these ideas were developed by Aristotle and later by the Roman Cicero in De Natura Deorum. See Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, transl. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum (The Nature of the Gods), transl. Horace C. R. McGregor (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). For a history of ideas on nature from antiquity until the late eighteenth century, see Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). For a study on the concept of nature between the sixteenth and late nineteenth century, see Paul Warde, The Invention of Sustainability. Nature and Destiny, c.1500–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 38 Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx are among the influential thinkers seeing humans as superimposing a constructed environment unto a given environment of the earth. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, transl. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially §9 and §33. See also Adam Blazej, Second Nature in Kant’s Theory of Artistic Creativity, master thesis (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, May 2013); W. G. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). On Marx’s intellectual debt to Hegel and Kant for a concept of second nature, see Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space, third edition (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2008 [1984, 1990]), 33, 41–42. 39 For this argument, Williams builds on the phenomenology of Hanna Arendt and of Martin Heidegger. See Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Basic Writings. Revised & Expanded Edition, ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1993 [1977, 1953]), 311–41; Hanna Arendt, The Human Condition, second edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1958]), 261. See also Hannah Arendt, “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man,” The New Atlantis. A Journal of Technology and Society (Fall 2007 [1963]): 43–55, especially 52.
Any expert working on satellite remote sensing could define at a fixed point in
time both what the technology was as well as what the sensed environment was. For
the historian, however, it is more productive to perceive of these not as fixed things
but as processes. This encourages us to write about activities and changes in
attention, rather than only the actors or their intentions in performing those
activities. Instead of putting scare quotes around our analytical categories,40 history of
technology and environment should look beyond how to preserve a first nature, or
how to perfect a second nature, or how to avoid having a third nature enshroud the
two. To this aim, I think of technology as processes of environing, and the analysis
serves to identify how different peoples, practices, and places were involved in the
making the environment.
Remote Sensing and Environmental Knowledge – Sensing and Shaping
from Above
I here describe previous studies of remote sensing and how these technologies have
long played a role in how people perceive of the environment from above.
Cartography has been central to state-making, as well as for establishing
particular expert groups conducting the cartographic enterprises or developing
tools for monitoring. Historian of science Sven Widmalm demonstrates how
Swedish field cartographers in the eighteenth century used earlier tropes about
Sweden’s unique environment to attract interest from European scientists, most
notably from France, which in turn enabled them to secure money and mandate
from the Swedish Government to conduct geodetic surveys. Important to note is
that the resulting maps had initially been planned for military or scientific purposes
but eventually found civilian applications, especially with reference to their role in
forging bonds between humans and nature.41
40 For a discussion of environmental studies that contends with speaking about “nature” or the “environmental” as something that is always social or only exist in relation to culture, see Pritchard (2011), 16, 19, n 69. 41 Sven Widmalm, Mellan kartan och verkligheten. Geodesi och kartläggning , 1695–1860 [Between the map and the reality. Geodesy and mapping, 1695–1860], dissertation (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1990), 35–36, 167, 343–45, 363, 390. Widmalm’s work on Sweden corresponds to a growing international interest in the late 1980s on how social conditions influenced map making, see David Woodward, Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Josef W. Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660–1848. Science, Engineering , and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); J. B. Harley and David Woodward, in The History of Cartography. Volume One: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
26
27
As historian Paul Warde notes, these surveying technologies had more political
influence than actual practical uses in shaping the land. They were a means for
translating, not so much transforming, nature. Furthermore, the intended use
concerned not the environment but the ambition of increasingly proactive European
states to regulate resource use. The irony of sensing technologies, historically
deployed to extract resources, was to produce records that made evident to decision-
makers the degradation of certain environments.42
Historian of science Gunnar Eriksson similarly argues that environmental
purposes developed alongside enterprises conducted for other purposes. In his study
of Swedish mapping projects during the late nineteenth century, Eriksson
demonstrates how engineering programs, journals, and institutions expanded in
several European countries. The map-making by these experts served the exploitation
as well as the preservation of nature, both of which became important in societal
writings to establish a national identity in Sweden as a remedy for the upheaval
experienced by large groups of people who moved from the countryside into cities,
working under poor labour conditions, or experiencing regional environmental
devastation.43 The institutionalisation of engineering and sensing technologies meant
that both technology and practical uses were standardised, further increasing their use
for societal planning.44
During the nineteenth century, map-making became increasingly connected to
technological means of sensing from above. Based on their early use in Napoleonic
warfare, where balloons allowed cartographers to gain altitude and survey the
battlefield, the French photographer Félix Nadar developed balloons for aerial
photography.45 It was with Nadar that sensing from above was articulated as a practice
42 Warde (2018), 9. For translating, or making nature “legible”, see James Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1998), 9–52, especially 25–33. 43 Gunnar Eriksson, Kartläggarna: Naturvetenskapens tillväxt och tillämpningar I det industriella genombrottets Sverige, 1870–1914 [The Growth and Application of Science in Sweden in the Early Industrial Era, 1870–1914] (Umeå: Acta Universitatis Umensis, 1978), 12. For a similar argument on how technological experts contributed to formulating new societal goals during periods of upheaval, see Williams (2013), 11–22. 44 Widmalm (1990), 389–90. See also Gunnar Eriksson, Platon och smitaren: Vägar till idéhistorien [Plato and the evader: Routes to the history of ideas] (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1989), 42–59; cf. J. B. Harley, “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe,” Imago mundi 40 (1988): 57–76. For more on this type of standardisation, see William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power : Technology, Armed Forces, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 306. 45 Alan Belward, “Europe’s relations with the wider world – a unique view from space,” in European Identity through Space. Space Activities and Programmes as a Tool to Reinvigorate the European Identity, ed. Christophe Venet and Blandina Baranes (Wien: Springer-Verlag, 2013), 121. Before Nadar mounted photography on balloons, the French cartographers Daguerre and Niepce had also developed methods
that could guide policy for societal planning. Instead of aiding war, so he assumed, it
would make warfare redundant. Geographical knowledge from above would,
according to Nadar, display the Earth’s surface as a “quilt” of “harmonious pieces put
together by the patient needle of the housekeeper”.46 Nadar believed that minute
geographical knowledge would in time resolve the bases for conflict, since these arose
due to misunderstandings and lack of information in the management of resources.
“No more disputes, no more litigation – not even in Normandy”.47 By reaching new
heights, several practitioners began to formulate hopes that mapping would become a
means for achieving societal unity, at least in Europe.
But war continued from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and alongside
emerged the practice of aerial photography. Whereas Nadar belonged to a small elite
of balloonists, airplane photographers came from many backgrounds and worked
within a setting of interdisciplinary expertises. Military training standardised aerial
images and put them to use in monitoring the surface of the battlefield surface and
direct artillery fire.48 Historian of technology Hanna Rose Shell demonstrates that
sensing from above in turn shaped how people on the ground adapted, using
camouflage to blend their position into the rest of the environment. Although the
surface was fully observed, it became uncertain what could actually be seen on the
ground. This shifted monitoring from providing information about the surface of a
territory to tracing changes in the state of an environment – past and present – that
could suggest enemy movements.49 The need to know the enemy gave rise to the need
to know the environment.
Historian of science Jeanne Haffner argues that aerial photography until mid-
twentieth century institutionalised as an expertise for societal planning. Notably, these
experts were put to use in managing the vast territories of colonies, exploring remote
regions, and eventually shifted back to Europe as part of rebuilding European cities
following the end of the Second World War. Policy-makers were optimistic that aerial
imagery could provide a synoptic or holistic view, a vue d’ensemble that safeguarded
for photography in mapping topography, see Charles Elachi and Jakob van Zyl, Introduction to the Physics and Techniques of Remote Sensing, second edition (New Jersey, US: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 5. 46 Félix Nadar, When I was a Photographer, transl. by Eduardo Cadava and Liana Theodoratou (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2015), 58. 47 Nadar (2015), 60. 48 Haffner (2013), 12–14. See also Judy Baker et al., Celebrating a Century of Flight (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, 2002). 49 Hanna Rose Shell, Hide and Seek. Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2012), 11, 23, 195.
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objectivity in planning social spaces. Haffner also suggests that this privileged role of
aerial imagery in planning policies also influenced ideas about overviews from outer
space as holding an apolitical, ecological meaning,50 an argument elaborated in great
detail by geographer Denis Cosgrove.51
Historians of the Cold War have demonstrated that, as part of the East-West
polarisation in the post-war era, both the Soviet Union and the US invested heavily in
expertise for aerial surveillance, including rocketry and computing power. These new
expert communities pushed the aerial frontier beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, making
imagery from outer space a continuation of aerial imagery.52 The US, in particular, was
committed to advocating the scientific and civilian benefits of space imagery, for
example when mapping environmental changes.53 By the 1960s, the US government
made available military computing technology for scientists to analyse data from
satellite programmes as part of finding new uses.54 Monitoring was promoted as a
means to later manage, or alter, environments in desirable directions. To illustrate the
ambition of finding civilian applications for satellite imagery, US academic institutions
coined the term ‘remote sensing’, which became widely used to denote civilian satellite
imagery until the end of the twentieth century.55
In addition to the intended use of surveillance technology, recent historical
research argues that other uses for the data took off as part of the technoscientific
communities having satisfied the initial purposes.56 Importantly, this corresponded to
50 Haffner (2013), 139–41. 51 Denis Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For subsequent analysis relying on Cosgrove’s work, see Robert Poole, Earthrise. How Man First Saw ‘the Earth’ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008); Denis Cosgrove and Veronica della Dora, eds. High Places. Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science (New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2009). 52 Matthias Heymann, “The evolution of climate ideas and knowledge,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change 1, no. 4 (2010): 581–97; James R. Fleming, Fixing the sky: the checkered history of weather and climate control (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); David H. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance. How the Military Created the U.S. Space Sciences After World War II (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992), 146. 53 Ronald Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (2003): 635–66; Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Oceanographers and the Cold War : disciples of marine science (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005). 54 Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996); Paul N. Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism,” Osiris 21 (2006): 229–50. 55 Joseph Masco, “Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis”, Social Studies of Science 40, no. 1 (2010): 18; James R. Fleming, “Fixing the Weather and Climate: Military and Civilian Schemes for Cloud Seeding andClimate Engineering,” in The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems, ed.Lisa Rosner (New York: Routledge, 2004), 176; Fleming (2010), 223.56 Matt Dyce, “Canada between the photograph and the map: Aerial photography, geographical visionand the state,” Journal of Historical Geography 39 (2013): 69–84, especially 82.
a growth in microelectronics for military surveillance and contributed to the
digitisation of data.57 Historian of science Sebastian Grevsmühl has shown that by the
late 1960s, these developments had resulted in the digitisation of satellite data that
made the reproduction of electro-optical data prevalent and global. This surplus of
data was crucial for stimulating the shift of remote sensing from its military origins
to becoming a tool for visualising the Earth’s environment. Well-known examples
include the overview images – depictions of the whole Earth as a planet. The
environmental applications of satellite images developed as a serendipitous side effect
of a Cold War surveillance imperative. 58 Grevsmühl’s argument connects satellite
remote sensing back to previous examples about standardisation of practices or
products to make them prevalent. In order for overview images to become relevant
for society, satellite remote sensing data had to be distributed not just for other experts
to read but readily produced as images, actual global visions, for people to see.
While balloons, along with studies of atmospheric physics, can be said to have
opened up the aerial dimension as a new frontier for humans to experience life
in,59 I wish to present satellite remote sensing less as a technical novelty and more as part
of a long-term enterprise in sensing and shaping the Earth from above. As I have
detailed here, scientific enterprises have long deployed technologies to separate the
knower from the known, decreasing people’s dependence on the bodily experiences
of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, or tasting from the phenomena under study,
both in terms of time and space.60 This is important when considering the role of
satellite remote sensing as an environing technology that is part of a longer history
of environing.61
57 Gregg Mitman, “When Nature Is the Zoo: Vision and Power in the Art and Science of Natural,” Osiris 11(1996): 117–143, especially 139–40. 58 Sebastian Grevsmühl, La Terre vue d’en haut. L’invention de l’environnement global (Paris: Le Seuil, 2014a); Sebastian Grevsmühl, “Serendipitous Outcomes in Space History: From Space Photography to Environmental Surveillance,” in The Surveillance Imperative, ed. Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014b), 186. 59 Williams (2013), 28. 60 This is also the focus of a research project that this thesis was part of, see Höhler and Wormbs (2017). 61 For arguments on views from above as a collective effort inherited from, and connected to, previous efforts at land surveying, see Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser and Erik van der Vleuten, Europe’s Infrastructure Transition. Economy, War, Nature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 238–41.
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Swedish Technoscientific Expertise and Space Activities
How was it possible for satellite remote sensing to develop in a relatively small, non-
aligned, country like Sweden? To understand this, I place the history of this
technology within the larger context of Swedish technoscientific expertise in the post-
war period starting in the mid-twentieth century.
Several academic studies have demonstrated how this small country aimed to
build big things. The Swedish government invested heavily in several advanced
technologies. The most striking examples were missile and radar defences in close
collaboration with member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO), maintaining the fourth largest air force in the world, and establishing a
nuclear power programme, initially with the ambition to also develop nuclear
weapons. 62 These studies have contributed to explaining how national experts
operated as part of transnational networks, linking Swedish expertise to that of other
countries and how the technological systems grew opportunistically, even informally,
by including new groups of experts as part of securing mandate and money.63
Historian of science and technology John Krige demonstrates how similar
transnational, informal, technoscientific collaborations between leading natural
scientists in the US and Western Europe were central to rebuilding European research
institutions in the mid-twentieth century,64 and how such technoscientific experts later
established Europe’s joint space enterprise – the European Space Agency.65
What research on transnational technoscientific expertise suggests is that
Sweden after the Second World War built a military-industrial complex on the
ambiguous notion of neutrality, presuming Western support in the event of war, and
62 Johan Gribbe, Stril 60: Teknik, vetenskap och svensk säkerhetspolitik under det kalla kriget [Stril 60: Technology, Science and Swedish security politics during the Cold War], dissertation (Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag, 2011); Mikael Nilsson, Tools of Hegemony. Military Technologies and Swedish-American Security Relations 1945–1962, dissertation (Stockholm: Santérus Academic Press, 2007); Maja Fjaestad, Visionen om outtömlig energi. Bridreaktorn i svensk kärnkraftshistoria 1945–80 [A vision of inexhaustible energy: The fast breeder reactor in Swedish nuclear power history 1945–80], dissertation (Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag, 2010). 63 In particular, see Gribbe (2011), 94–95. See also Niklas Stenlås, Den inre kretsen: Den svenska ekonomiska elitens inflytande över partipolitik och opinionsbildning 1940–1949 [The inner circle: The Swedish economic elites influence over party politics and public opinion 1949–1949], dissertation (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 1998). Ylva Hasselberg, Leos Müller, and Niklas Stenlås, “Åter till historiens nätverk [A return to the networks of history].” In Sociala nätverk och fält [Social networks and fields], ed. by Håkan Gunneriusson (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2002), 7–31. 64 John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). 65 John Krige, Fifty Years of European Cooperation in Space. Building on its past, ESA shapes the future (Paris: Les Editions Beauchesne, 2014).
hoping to act as bridge-builder between the West and East to preserve peace.66 With
the Cold War détente in the late twentieth century, the Swedish
government acknowledged the declining importance of its impressive military
capacity with successive cuts in the defence budget while instead promoting a non-
aligned activist role in foreign policy internationally.67
Historian of technology Edward Jones-Imhotep argues that transnational
history of countries caught in the crossfire of Cold War geopolitics is relevant for
understanding the effects of politics by the superpowers. Canadian experts
identified and promoted technologies specific to the nation’s environment as a
means to position Canada internationally.68 With regard to Swedish space activities, as
noted by the historian of ideas Fredrick Backman, technoscientific experts were able
to establish technological collaborations with both the US and the Soviet Union, often
by focusing on natural phenomena specific to the Swedish Arctic regions.69 It is
important to note that although the brunt of space activities were conducted by
the vying superpowers, studies of relatively small countries, like Sweden,
contribute to understanding the transnational uses of technology, especially with
regard to environmental knowledge, that developed during this period.
Another aspect of Swedish technoscientific expertise during the late twentieth
century is how it served to promote Sweden as a non-aligned state, decolonising
66 The terms ‘neutrality’ and ‘non-aligned’ are used interchangeably in this thesis but on closer inspection they do carry different analytical connotations. Chronologically, Swedish foreign policy emphasised ‘neutrality’ until the 1970s and thereafter shifted towards being ‘non-aligned’. For further discussion, see Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Non-aligned to what? European neutrality and the Cold War,” in Neutrality and Neutralism in the Global Cold War : Between or Within the Blocs? ed. Sandra Bott, Jussi Hanhimaki, Janick Schaufelbuehl and Marco Wyss (London: Routledge, 2016), 17–32; Nikolas Glover, “Neutrality unbound: Sweden, foreign aid and the rise of the non-aligned Third World,” in Neutrality and Neutralism in the Global Cold War : Between or Within the Blocs? 161–77. 67 Niklas Stenlås, “Military Technology, National Identity and the State: The Rise and Decline of a Small State’s Military Industrial Complex,” in Science for Welfare and Warfare: Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden, ed. Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås and Johan Gribbe (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Watson Publishing Company, 2010), 61–84; Hans Weinberger, “The Neutrality Flagpole: Swedish Neutrality Policy and Technological Alliances, 1945–1970,” in Technologies of Power : Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes, ed. Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), 295–331, especially 299, 304–6, and 325. 68 I should add that Jones-Imhotep makes a case for using the term ‘machine’, which is more specific than ‘technology’. For the purpose of this brief summary, however, I contend that the terms are synonymously viable. See Jones-Imhotep (2017), 8, 13–15. For other examples on technology as a means for adapting to and averting geopolitical limits of the Cold War, see historian of industrialisation Saara Matala’s The Finlandisation of Shipbuilding. Industrialisation, the State, and the Disintegration of a Cold War Shipbuilding System, dissertation (Espoo: Aalto University publication series, 2019). 69 Fredrick Backman, Making Place for Space. A History of ‘Space Town’ Kiruna 1943–2000, dissertation (Umeå: Umeå University, 2015), 72–80. See also Martin Emanuel, Politiken kring svensk rymdverksamhet. Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium på Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 17 januari 2018 (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2018).
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developing countries one aid project at a time. This development aid also exported
Swedish expertise abroad. 70 Development historian Joseph Hodge suggests that
expertise among European imperial powers became further institutionalised as part
of multilateral organisations for financial aid, thereby prolonging their influence on
development aid well into the late twentieth century despite earlier failures during the
colonial era.71 Historian of technology Suzanne Moon argues that former European
empires in turn used their institutional linkages to the colonies to promote new
technoscientific expertise for humanitarian purposes.72 Historian Nil Disco argues
that such development projects allowed institutions, like the Dutch International
Training Centre for Aerial Survey (ITC), to export its aerial survey, and later satellite
remote sensing, expertise as a form of aid abroad, including to former Dutch
colonies.73
Parallel to the role of technoscientific expertise in aid is the development
during the late twentieth century of new forms of international political collaboration,
what political scientists call ‘environmental diplomacy’. 74 Sweden is one of the
countries recognised as promoting international regulations against environmental
pollution. But while Swedish environmental diplomacy was part of Sweden’s foreign
policy during the late twentieth century, 75 little is known about which technoscientific
70 Karl Bruno, Exporting Agrarian Expertise. Development Aid at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Its Predecessors, 1950–2009, dissertation (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Sueciae, 2016); May-Britt Öhman, Taming Exotic Beauties: Swedish Hydropower Constructions in Tanzania in the Era of Development Assistance, 1960s–1990s, dissertation (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2007). See also Tomas Kjellqvist, Biståndspolitikens motsägelser om kunskap och tekniköverföring: Från konkret praktik till abstract policy [Contradictions on knowledge and technology transfer in the politics of Swedish Aid: From concrete practices to abstract policies] (Karlskrona: Blekinge Institute of Technology, 2013); Corinna R. Unger, “Development in the Context of Decolonization and the Cold War,” chapter 5 in International Development. A Postwar History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 79–102. 71 Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007); See also Stephen J. Macekura and Erez Manela, The Development Century: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 72 Suzanne Moon, Technology and Ethical Idealism: A History of Development in the Netherlands East Indies (Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2007). 73 Nil Disco, 60 years of ITC. The international Institute for Geo-Information of Science and Earth Observation (Eindhoven & Enschede: Foundation History of Technology, ITC Foundation, 2010). 74 Political scientist John Carroll is one of the influential thinkers to have coined the term “environmental diplomacy”. It later received wider use in the UN. See John Carroll, Environmental diplomacy: an examination and a prospective of Canadian-U.S. transboundary environmental relations (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1983). For earlier argument similar to Carroll’s, see Lars Lundgren, Birgitta Odén, and Sverker Oredsson, The use of nature as politics (Lund: University of Lund, 1982). See also Mark Lytle, “An Environmental Approach to American Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 20 (1996): 279–300. For a synthesis, see Kurk Dorsey, “Environmental Diplomacy,” in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy. Vol. 1 E-N, ed. Alexander DeConde, Richard D. Burns, and Fredrik Logevall (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2002), 49–62. 75 For an influential account by one of the Swedish diplomats who participating in Swedish environmental diplomacy during the late twentieth century, see Lars-Göran Engfeldt, From Stockholm
expertises were considered relevant for Sweden’s international environmental
commitments. This thesis provides answers to how and why satellite remote sensing
became an arena for the development of Swedish technoscientific expertise,
environmental diplomacy, and aid.
The technoscientific experts, technologies, and their interventions involved a
wide range of activities and institutions. For this reason, studies of these activities and
institutions have to go deeper and look at the projects, participants, and practices,
rather than make do with an analysis of discourse, policies, or intentions of decision-
makers.76 For example, in his study of British colonial rule in Egypt, political scientist
Timothy Mitchell demonstrates how the politics of technology are not possible to
control. Expert knowledge comes at the price of ignoring other things, other agencies.
A map, for instance, is relevant not only for its representations but because of how it
shifts power from communities and customs toward centres of expertise. This has
historically led to abstraction of geographical knowledge that omits relationships
between map-makers and the land that they map. The map is not only producing
knowledge but also distributing it, for example to its owners or users. To understand
redistributions of knowledge, one has to study both the technical operations as well
as the social structure in which they are conducted, along with other practices or
customs of the community. Without recognising these conditions, Mitchell argues,
there will be other outcomes than those envisioned by the experts.77
Research literature on technoscientific expertise has in turn stimulated
criticism against treating governments as homogenous or monolithic structures.
Sociologist Donald MacKenzie demonstrates how in the US government technological
and political developments influenced each other, most notably by forming
new positions for US security politics in the Cold War. Numerous
independent processes influenced each other, with effects not planned by any of the
to Johannesburg and beyond. The evolution of the international system for sustainable development governance and its implications (Stockholm: Government Offices of Sweden, 2009). See also Roger Eardley-Pryor, The Global Environmental Moment: Sovereignty and American Science on Spaceship Earth, 1945–1974, dissertation (Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, 2014); Stephen J. Macekura, Of Limits and Growth. The Rise of Global Sustainable Development in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 76 Joseph Morgan Hodge, “Writing the History of Development (Part 2: Longer, Deeper, Wider),” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 7, no. 1 (spring 2016): 125–74. 77 Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 10, 53, 78, 90, 119.
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governmental agencies taking part in these activities.78 Another aspect, relevant at least
for studies of the Swedish political system, is the role of policy professionals in
shaping political priorities. Anthropologist Christina Garsten and colleagues have
demonstrated how experts in policy are able to influence what should be considered
a political priority. 79 I do not argue that technoscientific and policy-professional
expertises are one and the same. They are not. Rather, my study underscores that
technoscientific expertise also influences political priorities.
Swedish satellite remote sensing activities involved people from a number of
vocations, from science and technology to policymaking and politics. To name the
most prominent, these included university researchers, engineers, surveyors,
cartographers, journalists, development consultants, lawyers, diplomats and civil
servants. In my analysis, I will refer to them as experts, particularly with regard to their
influence over remote sensing.80 This is not to say that these actors used the term
‘experts’ to describe themselves or each other – they often came from very different
backgrounds or training and conducted different activities, sometimes without
knowledge of each other. All the same, they often competed in claiming or disclaiming
who had the right expertise to influence Swedish satellite remote sensing. I find the
general term ‘expert’ useful for emphasising their part in contributing to the
technology.
78 Donald MacKenzie, Inventing accuracy: a historical sociology of nuclear missile guidance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). On the importance of transnational relations as opposed to international or bilateral relations, see Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977). 79 Christina Garsten, Bo Rothstein and Stefan Svallfors, Makt utan mandat: de policyprofessionella i svensk politik [Power without mandate: the policy-professionals in Swedish politics] (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2015). On collaborations between different group of experts, as well as their role as national representatives in international policymaking, see Åsa Vifell, Enklaver i staten: Internationalisering , demokrati och den svenska statsförvaltningen [Enclaves in the state: Internationalisation, Democracy and the Swedish public administration], dissertation (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 2006), 224–26, 359–61. 80 The literature defining “experts” and “expertise” is vast. Terms like “technologists” or “technocrats” are used to signal different interpretations of the role that experts have as intermediaries between the technoscientific and the political. See Gabriel Söderberg, Constructing Invisible Hands. Market Technocrats in Sweden 1880–2000, dissertation (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2013); Thomas Kaiserfeld, Beyond Innovation. Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2015), 27–33; Hecht (2009), 15–17, 344. With regards to environmental knowledge, see Paul Warde and Sverker Sörlin, “Expertise for the Future: the Emergence of ‘Relevant Knowledge’ in Environmental Predictions and Global Change, c.1920–1970,” in The Struggle for the Long Term in Transnational Science and Politics during the Cold War, ed. Jenny Andersson and Eglë Rindzeviciūtë (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 39–62. For similar terms and meanings, see literature on intermediaries and technocrats, cf. Thomas Kaiserfeld, From Royal Academy of Science to Research Institute of Society: Long term policy convergence of Swedish knowledge intermediaries (CESIS, Electronic Working Papers Series, Paper no. 121, 2008).
Previous research has provided insight into how Swedish space activities
involved many different groups of people, practices, and places and how the activities
were influenced and shaped by institutional struggles, regional identities, as well as
geopolitical considerations. Notably, Swedish space activities developed as part of
neutrality with respect to the Cold War superpowers, aims for pan-Nordic
cooperation, and increasingly European integration.81 What this study of Swedish
satellite remote sensing illustrates is the importance technoscientific expertise played
for Sweden as a non-aligned supporter of developing countries, both through
environmental diplomacy in international debates and negotiations and through
specific aid projects around the world. These activities were important for the self-
understanding and identity of the Swedish state apparatus, shared to a degree by large
segments of Swedish society, but increasingly renegotiated since the end of the Cold
War.82 For this reason, a study of Swedish satellite remote sensing is also a history
about Sweden in a larger sense.
Important for my work is a concise periodisation of Swedish space activities
by Nina Wormbs and Gustav Källstrand, organised according to a systems analysis of
technology described earlier. Swedish space activities underwent their “establishment”
between 1957 and 1972; this state was followed by a “professionalisation” of its
experts from 1972 to 1989; the period from 1989 until 2006 constituted the system’s
81 For previous studies of Swedish space activities as part of institutional struggles and pan-Nordic collaborations, see Nina Wormbs, Vem älskade Tele-X? Konflikter om satelliter i Norden 1974–1989 [Who Loved Tele-X? Conflicts on Satellites in the Nordic Countries 1974–1989], dissertation (Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag, 2003). For Norwegian and other Nordic space activities, see John Peter Collett, ed. Making Sense of Space: The History of Norwegian Space Activities (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995). For regional narratives about Swedish space activities, see Backman (2015). On geopolitical considerations, in particular for European space collaborations, see John Krige and Arturo Russo, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987. Volume I: The Story of ESRO and ELDO, 1958–1973 (Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division, 2000); John Krige, Arturo Russo and Lorenza Sebesta, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987. Volume II: The Story of ESA, 1973–1987 (Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division, 2000). 82 For a study on environmental consciousness in Sweden, conducted at the end of the Cold War, see Andrew Jamison, Ron Eyerman, Jacqueline Cramer, Jeppe Læssøe, The Making of the New Environmental Consciousness: A Comparative Study of the Environmental Movements in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 13–64. See also Andrew Jamison, The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental politics and cultural transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 116. With regards to aid, and Norbert Götz and Ann-Marie Ekengren, “The One Per Cent Country: Sweden’s Internalisation of the Aid Norm,” in Saints and Sinners: Official Development Aid and its Dynamics in a Historical and Comparative Perspective, ed. Thorsten B. Olesen, Helge Ø. Pharo, and Kristian Paaskesen (Oslo: Akademika forlag, 2013), 21–49. On Nordic identity as part of European integration, see Anders Wivel and Peter Nedergaard, “Introduction: Scandinavian Politics between Myth and Reality,” in The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, ed. Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel (London: Routledge, 2017), 1–9.
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“mature steady-state”, characterised in part by the dismantling of some its previous
activities, in particular remote sensing projects.83
The central role of experts is also described in an earlier, unprinted work by
historian of technology Jan Annerstedt, in which he argues that Swedish space
activities since their beginning lacked any strong national long-term strategy. Instead,
experts and enthusiasts operated in a grey zone between the state and industry,
adapting to numerous shifting targets, to influence politicians and other companies to
support the development of new applications, like remote sensing.84 The Swedish
government’s lack of a long-term space policy is an often-repeated trope among
experts interviewed for this thesis. It has informed how they viewed their own role in
influencing policymaking so as to maintain governmental money and mandate for
Swedish space activities.85
This thesis, like previous studies, focuses predominantly on the activities of
SSC and on providing a detailed analysis of politics and planning surrounding the
Swedish space activities. 86 I address a gap in the research literature regarding
the transnational character of satellite remote sensing. In particular, I study how
Sweden participated, together with Belgium, in the French satellite programme
Système Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre (SPOT). 87 Swedish uses of SPOT
83 Wormbs and Källstrand (2007), 5–20, 32–34 in particular. 84 See Email correspondence with Jan Annerstedt, 3 October, 2018. For a summary, see Jan Annerstedt, “Den svenska trestegsraketen” Ny Teknik (January, 1986), 34–35. 85 Lennart Lübeck, one of SSC’s CEOs, recalled an illuminating meeting between him and an undersecretary for the Ministry of Finance who reacted against the claim that Sweden should develop a ‘space politics’. “What do you mean with ‘space politics’? There are plenty of things we do every morning, but that does not mean that we need to have ‘morning politics’. Original in Swedish: “Vadå rymdpolitik? Rymdpolitik? Det är massor med saker vi gör varje morgon men för den sakens skull har vi ingen morgonpolitik!” Cited in Johan Gärdebo, Martin Emanuel, and Nina Wormbs eds. Politiken kring svensk rymdverksamhet. Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium på Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 17 januari 2018 (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2018), 18. 86 My perspective is related to that presented by historian of technology Jan Annerstedt in an unprinted work where he argues that Swedish space activities since their beginning in the 1960s have been conducted without any strong national long-term strategy. Experts and enthusiasts operating in a greyzone between the state and industry have instead adapted to numerous shifting targets to influence politicians and other companies to support the development of new applications, like remote sensing. See Email correspondence with Jan Annerstedt, 3 October, 2018. For a summary, see Jan Annerstedt, “Den svenska trestegsraketen” Ny Teknik (January, 1986), 34–35. 87 For previous research on the role of Sweden in SPOT, see Cathy Dubois, Michel Avignon, and Philippe Escudier, Observing the Earth from Space: Space Data – Social and Political Stakes (Paris: Dunod, 2014), 25. See also Krige (2014), 226–27, 294–95. For other studies on the transnational character of French remote sensing, see Gemma Cirac Claveras, “Satellites for What? Creating User Communities for Space-based Data in France: The Case from LERTS to CESBIO,” Technology and Culture 59, no. 2 (April 2018): 203–25, especially 206–8 and 212; On competing visions for the use of French remote sensing, see Etienne Benson, “One infrastructure, many global visions: The commercialisation and diversification of Argos, a satellite-based environmental surveillance system,”Social Studies of Science 42 (2012): 843–68. For more on writing transnational, and environmental, history of satellite
illustrate that building or owning a technology is not the same as determining its use.
Swedish ownership in SPOT was relatively modest, amounting to no more than four
percent. What is important, however, is how this small ownership allowed gathering,
and access to, data that in turn enabled subsequent uses by SSC of the technology. It
is necessary to approach SPOT as a transnational enterprise to understand not only
Swedish uses but also how these influenced subsequent French, European, and US
applications as well as societal debates about space technology and the sensed
environment.
Theoretical Framework: Environing Technology
Environment is what happened when people in history were busy making other
things. 88 This means that environing can occur as an unintended side effect of
activities that people were engaged in for other purposes. For example, SSC developed
satellite remote sensing as part of expanding the Swedish space activities into one
more area of expertise. In this thesis, these “other things” are primarily activities
carried out by organisations like SSC that were motivated by their own survival.
Swedish satellite remote sensing is a means to that end, and environing is therefore
considered a side effect. The making of environment was not primarily a question of
intention, sincerity, knowledge, or ethics, but something that emerged alongside other
concerns.89
What does this mean for a history of environing technologies? Firstly, one has
to clarify a way of finding environment not as a thing out there but as emerging as a
result of an activity. In historical research, traces of activities are to be found by
studying words in documents, paying attention to shifts in language to demarcate and
distinguish, in my case, how the environment is sensed, shaped, or written about
programmes, see Neil Maher, “Bringing the Environment Back in: A Transnational History of Landsat,” in How Knowledge Moves: Writing the Transnational History of Science and Technology, ed. John Krige (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 201–24. 88 I formulated this idea after reading Radkau (2008), visited his presentation in the seminar series Mind and Nature at Uppsala University, October 2012, and after I listened to a verse in John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy), “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. See John Lennon and Yoko Ono, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy),” In Double Fantasy (New York: Geffen Records, 1980). In addition, historian of science Sebastian Grevsmühl’s work on serendipitous environmental purposes for space technology has influenced my thinking on chance and coincidental, or accidental, findings and developments in satellite remote sensing, see Grevsmühl (2014b), 171–2. For a similar point, see Gabrys (2016), 62. 89 For similar arguments on how organisations developed satellite remote sensing for maintaining institutional survival, see Black (2018), 13–14, 183–86, 195–96.
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differently. I approach these words as activities of making the environment, for which
I use the term ‘environ’.
That environing precedes environment builds on Heidegger’s argument that
‘technology’ is a verb, not a noun.90 This perspective is also shared by actor-network
theorists Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law,91 although as philosopher of
technology Kasper Schiølin points out, these have yet to acknowledge that intellectual
debt. For example, Heidegger talks about technology as a thing made from activities
of “gathering”, and Latour talks about “black boxing” technology.92 Usually, you
discover the verbs when a technology breaks down or something disturbs its use. It is
the endless stream of activities (verbs) that fixes technologies as things that can then
be referred to by name (nouns).
To illustrate the world as activities, instead of as actors or their things, Schiølin
argues for approaching nouns as verbs. This can be done by giving nouns verb-like
meaning or adding the suffixes -tion or -ing.93 For example, rather than use the word
‘hammer’ to name an object, we can use the verbal noun ‘hammering’ to conjure up
the construction underway, the material hammered on, the hammerer using the
hammer. Saying ‘hammering’ makes visible humans, wood, metal, and movement. ‘A
hammer’, by contrast, only connotes a thing without its doing, detached from any
practical history. To understand this process, one has to shift one’s attention from
actors toward activities. In paraphrasing the actor-network’s motto “Follow the
actors!”, Schiølin suggests instead that we “follow the verbs!”.94
90 Heidegger (1993 [1977, 1953]), especially 335–36. 91 Bryan E. Bannon, From Mastery to Mystery: A Phenomenological Foundation for an Environmental Ethic (Ohio: Ohio University Press 2014). See also Søren Riis, “The symmetry between Bruno Latour and Martin Heidegger: The technique of turning a police officer into a speed bump,” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 2 (2008): 285–301; Graham Harman, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (Melbourne: re.press, 2009); Jeff Kochan, “Latour’s Heidegger,” Social Studies of Science 40, no. 4 (2010): 579–98; 92 Kasper Schiølin, “Follow the Verbs! A Contribution to the Study of the Heidegger-Latour Connection,” Social Studies of Science 42, no. 5 (2012): 775–86; cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996 [Oxford: Blackwell, 1927]), 64–65; Michel Callon, “Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay,” in Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? ed. John Law (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), 222; Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (London: Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1993); John Law, Organizing Modernity. Social Ordering and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 103. 93 Schiølin (2012): 776, 783. 94 To ‘follow the verbs’ is a means to find where activities go beyond the group of actors initially studied, which critics of actor-network theory argue that it tends not to. See Susan Leigh Star, “Power, Technology, and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions,” in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination, ed. John Law (New York: Routledge, 1991): 26–56. For later critique of actor-network theory, see Steve Fuller, “Review of ‘Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies’ by Bruno Latour,” Isis 91, no. 2 (2000): 341–42. Steve Fuller, “The New
Thus, the historian should treat verbs in the source material as indications of
activities.95 The addition of these activities over time then have aggregated outcomes,
sometimes not perceived by the actors involved in conducting them. The aim here is
not to set up a formulaic schema, for example tracing how one set of verbs add up to
a noun. Rather, it is an approach to environing that is less dichotomous with respect
to the environment that is being sensed, written about, and shaped.96
‘To environ’ is a verb that leads questions away from what the environment is
to how it becomes. Etymologically, it is derived from the thirteenth century French virer,
meaning to turn. The word entered English in the late sixteenth century as to environ,
meaning to encircle something. 97 Warde suggests that environing had a common and
practical emphasis for the expansion of a household’s land to neighbouring territories,
using tools to cultivate new resources. In time, people perceived these changes to be
natural, separated as it were from the practices that had produced the new
environment.98 Political scientist Timothy Luke focuses on the role of environing as a
means of exerting power, by surrounding a town or territory with fences. He also
Behemoth. Review of ‘Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy’ by Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, Yannick Barthe, Graham Burchell,” Contemporary Sociology 39, no. 5 (2010):533–36.95 For a discussion on the relationship between words and ideas, see Warde (2018), 355–58. 96 I see a potential analytical tension in the concept of environing technology regarding intended and unintended effects, which I have pointed to earlier regarding first and second nature. Anthropologist Timothy Ingold proposes one of the most intriguing, and elegant, ways of solving this tension, for example by treating all activities, all things and all life, as lines. As lines are drawn across a surface, the aggregated effect is that these lines end up remaking that surface. Ingold makes clear a relationship that all things are part both of making the environment as a surface and, in so doing, of bringing about new perceptions of the environment. My adaptation of Ingold’s argument would be to think of satellites as drawing lines in orbital space, as part of sensing the Earth below. These activities remake a digital surface of the Earth, while also contributing to making a new orbital environment, filled with space debris as a residue of previous orbital lines. Over time, people become aware of changes both in the sensed digital environment and in the orbital environment. In this thesis, I do not explicitly describe satellite remote sensing using Ingold’s lines since I argue that the concept of environing technology gets at much of the same thing. Regardless, I wish to stress both my intellectual debt to Ingold’s argument and that future studies of environing technologies can make clearer use of it. 97 Vin Nardizzi, “Environ,” in Veer Ecology. A Companion for Environmental Thinking, ed. Jeffre Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 184–85. 98 Farmers would work in the field, adjust their tools to weather patterns and the soil, gather produce from the land and trade it for other goods and services in society. Such agricultural practices stimulated ideas about the environment that where institutionalised as part of training experts and, for example, the formulation of scientific principles such as ecology. Policy-makers then reapplied these principles in the planning of agriculture, which changed the practices of farmers. See Paul Warde, “The Environmental History of Pre-Industrial Agriculture in Europe,” in Nature’s End: History and the Environment, ed. Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 70–92; Paul Warde, “The Environment,” in Local Places, Global Processes, ed. Peter Coates, David Moon, and Paul Warde (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2016), 32–46. Radkau have also demonstrated that agricultural crisis in Roman farming during the second century motivated writings about preserving soil fertility. These would later serve as models for agrarian reforms in Western Europe during the eighteenth century. See Radkau (2008), 154.
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traces a re-emergence of the use of the word environing in the nineteenth century
that denoted changes in the landscape caused by human industrial activities, for
example the polluting of land, water, and air.99 By the late twentieth century, people
had shifted from using the verb ‘environing’ to the noun ‘environment’ in reference
to phenomena spanning from the local to the global, often with connotations of crisis
regarding environmental changes.100
Warde’s and Luke’s examples illustrate the changing meaning of the concept
of environing. They also suggest that technology, whether belligerent or benign, had
a central role as an aid when people environed. ‘Technology’ has etymological roots
in the Greek words techne and logos in reference to the learning of arts or craft. It can
also be traced to the Indo-European root of the word teks, meaning to weave or to
fabricate. By the mid-nineteenth century, ‘technology’ still referred to practices of
making, rather than to objects in themselves.101 Historian Leo Marx suggests that the
word ‘technology’ increased in use in the early twentieth century as one of many new
terms to express an emerging perception of the world as a human-built
environment.102 Historian Eric Schatzberg further argues for a concept of technology
as a value-laden human practice, that includes many different groups of people and
creative uses.103
Depending on time and place, words carry different meanings or may become
replaced by other words. For example, although influential nineteenth century writers
like George Perkins Marsh and Thomas Carlyle used the words ‘machine’ and
‘landscape’ to describe processes of technological and environmental change, these
meanings were later subsumed under, or became part of, the words ‘technology’ and
‘environment’. 104 By the twentieth century the use of ‘environing’ as a verb and
99 Timothy Luke, “On environmentality: Geo-power and eco-knowledge in the discourses of contemporary environmentalism,” Cultural Critique 31 (Fall 1995): 60–64. For earlier versions of this argument, see Timothy Luke, “Beyond Leviathan, beneath Lillput: Geopolitics and glocalization,” in Papers presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (Atlanta: Association of American Geographers, April 1993). 100 For example, see Warde, Robin and Sörlin (2018), 125–30. 101 Thomas P. Hughes, Human-Built World. How to Think about Technology and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 2–3. See also Nye (2006) 8–9; cf. Elspeth Whitney, Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Arts from Antiquity through the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1990), 5–7, 129–30. 102 Leo Marx, “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept,” Technology and Culture 51, no. 3 (2010): 561–77. 103 Eric Schatzberg, Technology: Critical History of a Concept (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 1–8. 104 Warde (2018), 3–5; Eric Schatzberg. “‘Technik’ Comes to America: Changing Meanings of ‘Technology’ before 1930,” Technology and Culture 47, no. 3 (2006): 486–512. See also Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times,” Edinburgh Review 49 (June 1829): 438–59. Cited in G. B. Tennyson, ed. A Carlyle
‘technology’ as the name of a practice had fallen out of favour, and the words instead
re-emerged as the nouns ‘environment’ and ‘technology’, where the latter now referred
to objects. In returning to the verbal roots of these nouns, I illustrate processes
whereby humans are part of making, and making sense of, the environment.
Environmental historian Sverker Sörlin and historian of technology Nina
Wormbs argue that although the terms ‘technology’ and ‘environment’ have
historically referred to different things, both became more readily used in the
twentieth century as part of technology playing a growing role in environing on a
global scale. They suggest ‘environing technology’ as an analytical term for linking
environment and technology in describing specific practices whereby humans make
new environments. Sörlin and Wormbs propose three types of environing
technologies: writing, sensing, and shaping. These types are different from each other,
but, in practice, they are often related, without specific sequences for one or the other
type of environing. Importantly, they “comprise both environing through perception
and understanding and physical changes in nature”.105
The term ‘environing technology’ is not the first attempt at grappling with how
to describe human activities with respect to the environment: there is a specific,
external environment outside of human practice; but also a universal, and abstract,
conception of what is considered environmental, or natural. An alternative way of
understanding how humans relate to the environment would be to use anthropologist
Neil Smith’s term ‘production of nature’ to think of human activities as
coevolutionary with the surrounding environment. 106 Despite historicising
reader : selections from the writings of Thomas Carlyle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 [1969]), 31–54; George P. Marsh. Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965 [1864]). 105 Sörlin and Wormbs (2018), 11–13. 106 See Neil Smith (2008), 54–55. For kinship between ‘production of nature’ and Wark’s concept of third nature, see Neil Smith, “The production of nature,” in FutureNatural. Nature, science, culture, ed. George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim Putnam (London: Routledge, 1996), 35–54, especially 51. For arguments stressing the role of technology in understanding the production of nature, see Scott Kirsch, “Cultural geography II: Cultures of nature (and technology),” Progress in Human Geography 38, no. 5 (2014): 691–702. For additional attempts at re-conceptualising ‘production of nature’, see also Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus, “Revitalizing the productionof nature thesis: A Gramscian turn?” Progress in Human Geography 37, no. 2 (2012): 234–52; Michael Ekers and Scott Prudham, “The Socioecological Fix: Fixed Capital, Metabolism, and Hegemony,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 1 (2018): 17–34.
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relationships between nature and society, however, ‘production of nature’ retains the
dualistic framework of first and second nature that it sets out to criticise.107
Thus, environing technology is the theoretical framework for this dissertation.
I am interested in how environment is made through activities involving the use of
technology. However, in each and every chapter I also use other theoretical tools and
perspectives. I have already described some of these above, including technoscientific
expertise and environmental diplomacy, in the section on “Swedish Technoscientific
Expertise and Space Activities”. I have also made use of a spatial perspective in which
Swedish space policy can be understood in terms of regional politics that put
institutions in place and carried out activities for reasons that were not always
primarily concerned with remote sensing. Furthermore, I regard Swedish neutrality
and non-alignment as important dimensions both for understanding how Sweden was
perceived by its international partners and for the self-identification that could shape
an international agenda. This is also linked to the opportunities that aid could serve
in relation to technological goals. As I will discuss further in each chapter, environing
took place in the political context of a neutral country with high ambitions on many
levels.
Several of the interviewees for this thesis considered Swedish satellite remote
sensing a failure since it did not live up to the expectations that they and others had.
My perspective is different. It is not always relevant to think of technology in
terms of how it made systems function. Rather, one should consider the failure
of machines as a part of their condition. Importantly, historians should view the
fallibility of technology as central, not contrary, to how it stimulated unintended uses,
ad hoc solutions, or new political visions.108
Method: Emphasis on Activities
Theoretical choices can have methodological consequences. In order to answer how
Swedish satellite remote sensing contributed to making the environment, I needed a
method to follow the activities of environing. I have followed the verbs and not just
a specific group of actors conducting activities. When finding a noun, like
107 For a summary of critique on ‘production of nature’, see A. Loftus, “Production of Nature,” in The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology, ed. Douglas Richardson (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). 108 On this point about unintended effects and failing machines, see Jones-Imhotep (2017), 8–11.
‘environment’ or ‘technology’, I have asked what activities or relationships would be
implied if the noun was expressed as a verb or as a verbal noun. Among these verbs,
I tried to discern if the activity it names can be understood as a sensing, writing, or
shaping of the environment. Anyone interested in replicating a study on satellite
remote sensing as an environing technology should be able to revisit the historical
source material of written text and interviews and see how I followed these verbs, the
activities, the environing.109
To answer why the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts were engaged in
these activities, Edwards’ method of viewing activities within a knowledge
infrastructure with attention to how they were conducted, by whom, and why, has
been helpful. Edwards asks “how do you know?” and then continues to rephrasing the
question by shifting the emphasis, word for word.110
For example, there are techniques, instruments, and procedures involved in
how remote sensing produces data (how do you know?). In addition, there are
particular people who claim authority over remote sensing, who can collect the data,
or who can disseminate the data to users (how do you know?). Finally, there are cultural
receptions and norms that make sense of the images and weave them into social and
political priorities (how do you know?). By shifting the emphasis in the question,
different answers arise. I have used this when reading source materials or listening to
interviewees.111
In his own study of climate change models, Edwards demonstrated that the
Cold War arms race between the US and the Soviet Union motivated scientific
investments into global weather monitoring systems during the 1950s. This in turn
paved the way for several different applications of satellite monitoring, including
109 On criteria for revisiting source material to reconstruct or revise historical narratives, as well as on the debate among Swedish historians on reforming source criticism, see Arne Jarrick, “Källkritiken måste uppdateras för att inte reduceras till kvarleva,” Historisk tidskrift 125, no. 2 (2005): 219–31; Maria Ågren, “Synlighet, vikt, trovärdighet – och självkritik: Några synpunkter på källkritikens roll i dagens historieforskning,” Historisk tidskrift 125, no. 2 (2005): 249–62. See also David Ludvigsson and Henrik Ågren, “Workshop om metodproblem i historievetenskapen, Linköping, 19 mars 2015,” Historisk Tidskrift 135, no. 5 (2015): 569–70. 110 Edwards (2010), 3. Very similar schemata to that of Edwards has been developed also by historians of science Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer as well as by Peter Galison. I have nevertheless relied on Edwards description since I found it to be more pedagogical for developing my method. See Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 339–43; Peter Galison, How Experiments End (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), 243–57. 111 Edwards (2010), 6–9, also 22–23. For similar applications, see Pritchard who analyses debates about the Rhône river, tracking how groups of actors changed their definition of nature and technology in relation to changes in river management. She argues that ideas arise both from intended activities, like vested interests, and from unintended effects realised as part of managing the river (2011), 5, 18–20.
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remote sensing of the Earth’s land cover. The practices involved satellites, stations for
downlinking data, and organisations for sharing them. The people were scientists as
well as military personnel. They did this because large segments of society sought
peaceful cooperation between otherwise belligerent opponents. The result of these
activities, actors, and agencies was an infrastructure that provided environmental
knowledge as a collaborative side effect of the military competitive ambitions.112
I find it useful to ask “How do you know?” since it directs historical focus to
specific practices, people, and places, as well as the professed purpose at specific
points in time. Edwards is interested in understanding how the global knowledge
infrastructure functioned, how it produced and maintained global datasets. I am
interested in activities whereby Swedish satellite remote sensing contributed to
establishing knowledge infrastructures and why this was important to the experts.
Influenced by Edwards’ method of questioning processes of knowing, I put the
emphasis on activities rather than intentions of actors involved in satellite remote
sensing. When I do describe intentions, it is as part of demonstrating how these
shifted over time, often as an outcome of working with the technology.
This is a transnational history. In my study of Swedish satellite remote sensing,
I have been surprised by the number of activities that were conducted abroad in order
to achieve goals at home. Transnational history writing is a method in itself.113 In an
influential analysis of benefits and pitfalls of transnational history, historian of
technology Erik van der Vleuten argues that the studies are characterised by giving
112 Edwards (2010), 214, 220, 223–24; For similar arguments about the importance of military interest in environmental phenomena as a necessary condition for mid-twentieth century global monitoring, see Fleming (2010); Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). For a summary of these arguments, see Richard Staley, “Understanding Climate Change Historically,” in Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis, ed. Alexander Elliott, James Cullis, and Vinita Damodaran (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 436–38. 113 In the field of history of technology, the largest experiment to date in transnational history writing is the European research network Tensions of Europe that since early 2000s until present date has brought together hundreds of researchers for the study of numerous technologies. See Johan Schot, Thomas J. Misa and Ruth Oldenziel, eds., “Tensions of Europe: The Role of Technology in the Making of Europe,” special issue of History and Technology 21, no. 1 (2005). With regards to space technology, see Helmuth Trischler and Hans Weinberger, “Engineering Europe: big technologies and military systems in the making of 20th century Europe,” History and Technology 21, no. 1 (March 2005): 498; Nina Wormbs, “A Nordic Satellite Project Understood as a Trans-National Effort,” History and Technology 22, no. 3 (2006): 257–75. For critique on how a lack of transnational approaches in environmental history risk naturalising the nation as analytical category, see Libby Robin, “Educating the Activist: Natural and Unnatural Visions. Review of ‘Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature’ by William Cronon,” Social Studies of Science 26, no. 4 (1996): 857–62. For debates on transnational history in other fields of history, see Cristopher Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol and Patricia Seed, “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” The American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1441–64.
explanatory power to flows, connections, and relationships that exist between states,
rather than within them. One of the main benefits of transnational history, according
to van der Vleuten, is to better understand interdependencies, for example in politics,
economy, or technoscience, that reach beyond, or pass through, the nation-state. To
better understand the role of technology in European integration is a case in point.
Conversely, among the potential pitfalls of transnational history is mainly studying
source materials on interactions between experts, elites, and decision-makers, which
risks omitting local stories about places or people influenced by these activities. The
implication is that historians end up describing, even legitimising, processes such as
internationalism, global capitalism, or European integration.114
For my analysis of Swedish satellite remote sensing, I also used oral sources
to enable transnational history. Historian of technology Martin Collins argues in his
study of the satellite system Iridium that oral history can overcome the challenge of
periodisation in the history of the recent past.115 I found this a useful approach when
relating to previous periodisations of Swedish space activities. I reached out by phone
or email, presented my research interest to the interviewee,116 and asked questions for
five to ten minutes. For subsequent interviews, preferably in person but otherwise via
phone or email, I sent questions in advance and then held semi-structured interviews,
which often drifted into longer conversations. I asked about additional contacts
among people involved in practices that the interviewees mentioned. This snowballing
approach was crucial for accessing still more people and, importantly, their private
collections of texts gathered as part of their work on remote sensing.117
114 Erik van der Vleuten, “Toward a Transnational History of Technology: Meanings, Promises, Pitfalls,” Technology and Culture 49, no. 4 (2008): 974–94; For subsequent discussion on transnational methods in the history of technology, see Arne Kaijser, “The Trail from Trail: New Challenges for Historians of Technology,” Technology and Culture 52, no. 1 (January 2011): 131–42; Simone Turchetti, Néstor Herran, and Soraya Boudia, “Introduction: Have We Ever Been ‘Transnational’? Towards a History of Science across and Beyond Borders,” The British Journal for the History of Science 45, no. 3 (2012): 319–36. 115 Martin Collins, A Telephone for the World: Motorola, Iridium, and the Making of a Global Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Preface, and 2–4. See also Martin Collins, “One World ... One Telephone: Iridium, One Look at the Making of a Global Age”, History and Technology 21, no. 3 (2005): 301–24. 116 In Alessandro Portelli’s work on oral history, an interviewee is also described as “narrator” in recognition that not only the historian is involved in defining historical narratives. Although I am sympathetic to this view I will resort to the word “interviewee” that is more commonly used. See Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), 1. 117 For a description of “snowballing” interviews in the history of technology, see Hecht (2009), 19.
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Use and Critique of Sources
In this section I describe the particular sources gathered for this thesis and critique
their use. History has its constraints in terms of both what is held in archives and
which actors are willing and able to share their narratives. When you snowball from
one interviewee to the next, as I have done, you may end up talking to the usual
suspects or remaining within social networks that reiterate or share similar narratives
about the past.118 You have to define what and who you write about (or write for), how
to explain change, and also motivate why this particular history is relevant or
important at present. Although historians should seek to demarcate a plausible past
from a range of possible ones,119 oral history illustrates the inherently elusive quality
in all history writing.120
I have used interviews to identify practices or projects that can be regarded as
significant cases in describing Swedish satellite remote sensing as an environing
technology. This could also be regarded a methodological choice. Other than
identifying practices and projects, the interviewees served as a corrective to my initial
periodisation of Swedish space activities as well as a means of pivoting writing on the
chapter cases around specific moments, like the sensing of Chernobyl. Political
scientist Bo Rothstein proposes the term ‘formative moments’ to describe periods in
time when crisis embroils the routines of an institution so as to make it open, or
vulnerable, to change by individuals within it or by outside forces.121 In space history
there has been a tendency to identify such moments as ‘turning points’, which often
involve listing (national) events to explain how one got from the past to the present.122
118 See John Levi Martin, Thinking through methods: a social science primer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 85–89. For more on interviews as a source for historical content, see Lillian Hoddeson, “The conflict of memories and documents: Dilemmas and pragmatics of oral history,” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine. Writing recent science, ed. Ronald E. Doel and Thomas Söderqvist (London: Routledge, 2006), 187–200. 119 Cf. Carlo Ginzburg, “Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 79–92, especially 83. 120 Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County. An Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ix; cf. Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. Robert F McCort (New York: Random House, 1991). For similar reflections about working with historical text, see Carl L. Becker, “What Are Historical Facts?” in Detachment and the Writing of History: Essays and Letters of Carl L. Becker, ed. Phil L. Snyder (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), 41–64. 121 Bo Rothstein, Den korporativa staten: Intresseorganisationer och statsförvaltning i svensk politik [The corporatist state: Interest organisations and governmental administration in Swedish politics] (Stockholm: Norstedts juridik, 1992), 17–18. 122 Roger Launius, “What Are Turning Points in History and What Were They for the Space Age?” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. Steven J. Dick and Roger Launius (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 2007), 19–38.
Rather than pinpointing critical junctures in time, such as formative moments
or turning points, the chapter cases are meant to illustrate emerging practices and
perceptions with regard to the technology and the environment it sensed.
Transnational history writing may offer less assertive periodisation than if one studied
primarily national decision-making. At the same time, one is more likely to find out
how space technology related to other societal processes and to look in places
previously not considered relevant.123
To qualify my choice of cases, I have drawn upon different sources.
Agricultural historian Janken Myrdal describes this approach as “source pluralism”,
where sources from different locations are used to build aggregate interpretations
about societal changes of the time.124 When similar stories are found in different texts
or described by several interviewees, I have considered it fair to treat these as
representative of a more widespread phenomenon than I could otherwise substantiate
from the source materials available. One could also argue that a different set of
interviewees (or interviewer!) would have generated a different set of cases.125
My study of both written and oral sources relies on a working assumption by
Rosalind Williams that societal consciousness can also be found at the level of writings
by individual people who lived through the changes of the time.126 Geographer David
Lowenthal’s work likewise demonstrates how history has shifted from official to
unofficial records as part of making sense of the past.127 For this reason, personal
correspondence found in attics or basements is as important for my study as the
123 For similar arguments, see Siddiqi (2010); See also Asif Siddiqi, “American Space History: Legacies, Questions, and Opportunities for Future Research” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, ed. Steven J. Dick and Roger Launius (Washington, DC: History Division, Office of External Affairs, NASA, 2006); Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards, “The Technopolitics of Cold War: Towards a Transregional Perspective,” in Essays on Twentieth-Century History, ed. Michael Adas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); On the national bias of archives, see Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010); cf. Oliver Zimmer, Nationalism in Europe, 1890–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 124 Janken Myrdal, “Source Pluralism as a Method of Historical Research,” in Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, ed. Susanna Fellman and Marjatta Rahikainen (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 155–57, 185. 125 In general, these questions concern the reflexivity that researchers take with regards their own role and that of the interviewees in producing new knowledge. For an analysis of relevant theory, see Linus Salö, “Seeing the point from which you see what you see: An essay on epistemic reflexivity in language research,” Multilingual Margins 5, no. 1 (2018): 24–39. 126 Williams (2013), ix. For a similar approach, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). 127 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
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policies, protocols, and political statements kept in national archives. Sources
translated and cited from Swedish include the original text in the footnotes.
Oral History and Private Collections
I have used oral history to find, define, and refine the chapter cases. Firstly, I used
interviews to find cases that different interviewees considered important for Swedish
satellite remote sensing. These primarily concerned activities conducted in Sweden but
were often part of other, transnational processes. Secondly, I used written and oral
sources to balance each other’s shortcomings. Since written sources were closest in
time, I used these to assert details about practices that the interviewees might have
omitted or forgotten. I used the interviews to understand the context surrounding the
written source, for example, why a source had been produced or preserved, the
meaning of acronyms, as well as frequent mannerisms, frictions, or disagreements
common in correspondence between the remote sensing experts. Thirdly, I returned
to the interviewees with text drafts to refine the story. This meant that the people I
interviewed could respond to and discuss my interpretations and, if necessary,
anonymise sensitive personal information.
The interviewees provided me with source materials from their private
collections. They had kept these materials for reasons as varied as the interviewees
themselves: professional habit, affection, and in some cases for history writing at some
future date. In total, I have gathered sources from 62 private collections, which ranged
from a few documents to volumes of thousands of individual and diverse items. The
private collections consist of letters and postcards, drafts and revised copies of
reports, annotated protocols, handwritten notes from meetings, diaries, and telex,
telefax, and email printouts. There are several images, for example printouts of
satellite imagery, as well as project sketches, illustrations, and photographs. The result
is a new set of sources added to those already present in the archives. Most of the
sources are unpublished documents, but many were initially produced as part of
operations by organisations, like SSC. In several cases, documents could be found
both in archives and private collections. Importantly, private collections included
correspondence with people from various countries, which suggested the
transnational extent of Swedish satellite remote sensing activities. I balanced these
sources with traditional archival work described below. Where relevant, I discuss the
source materials in detail in the respective chapters.
The combination of written and oral history allowed me to generate a new
collection of sources, based on private collections of the interviewees, which
previously were difficult to use and of which there existed little prior knowledge. I
have put considerable time into accessing, digitising, and processing these sources.
The written sources, as well as oral history recordings, are now part of a new archive,
KTH Private Collections on Space History. I have also contributed to and used
materials now archived at the National Museum of Science and Technology (Tekniska
museet), established as part of the oral history project “50 Years in Space: A
Documentation Project on Swedish Space Activities”.128
Archival sources
I have examined collections from fourteen archives in Sweden, five archives in the US,
two archives in France and one archive in Italy. Most of these organised their source
materials on a national basis, although there are exceptions, such as the European
University Institute in Florence, which contains files for the European Space Agency.
I have sought sources from different countries in an attempt to lessen my dependence
on their national biases.
The archive documents detail national, bilateral, and transnational
correspondence. They primarily consist of meeting protocols, contracts and
agreements, annual reports and records of revenue. There are descriptions of remote
sensing projects and the gathering of satellite data, both formal accounts and more
informal meeting notes. There are also satellite images, reprinted on paper or
preserved as diapositive slides. I have used these to study preparations for decisions,
planning of strategies, and shifts in actors’ intentions and attention. I have also found
it useful to include marketing materials, magazines, newsletters, and newspaper articles
in my research.
Among the public Swedish archives, I have primarily relied on the Swedish
National Archives (Riksarkivet, hereafter RA) to access documents regarding SBSA,
in particular regarding the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee, first as part of the
Swedish Board for Technical Development (Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling, STU),
and then SBSA, later renamed SNSB. In addition, RA provided access to documents
128 Nina Wormbs, “50 år i rymden, dokumentation av svensk rymdverksamhet,” F62:1, National Museum of Science and Technology Official Archive (hereafter cited as TM).
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from the Swedish Commission for Technical Co-Operation (Beredningen för
Internationellt Tekniskt-ekonomiskt Samarbete, hereafter BITS), the Swedish
International Development Authority (Styrelsen för internationell utveckling, SIDA),
and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Utrikesdepartementet, hereafter UD).
For national and international newspapers, I relied on the National Library of Sweden
(Kungliga biblioteket, hereafter KB), in particular its archives for audiovisual material
and digital newspapers. I have also made use of the Swedish government’s official
public records, including Government bills, parliamentary documents, and the
Swedish Government Official Reports (Statens offentliga utredningar), also referred
to as governmental inquiries.
For documents about the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer
Space, I used Uppsala University’s Dag Hammarskjöld archive. I have also been given
access to the archives of the Swedish National Space Agency (Rymdstyrelsen,
hereafter SNSA) as well as numerous previously classified documents. In addition, the
Swedish Defence Research Agency (Försvarets forskningsinstitut) and the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs’ Legal Secretariat contributed by reviewing and declassifying
selected documents.
Among the private Swedish archives, I have focused on sources from SSC. These
are divided between two sites: Solna in Stockholm and Esrange near Kiruna. The
archives in Solna have recently been restructured by former senior SSC employees,
during which material became more accessible, but large portions were also put to the
torch or carried home as private collections. The archives in Esrange predate SSC, and
the area is generally restricted or difficult to access. However, thanks to the support
of former and current SSC personnel in Kiruna, I was able to visit Esrange and collect
complementary sources. In addition to the Solna and Esrange archives, there is a
private, unattended archive in what was formerly Kiruna’s Space House (Rymdhuset)
that contains records of SSC’s former subsidiary, Satellitbild. I was only made aware
of this archive through interviews with former employees of Satellitbild. SSC granted
me unrestricted access provided that they could review and react to the thesis
manuscript, which involved some negotiation with SSC’s legal advisors and former
senior employees about the content.
To study Swedish satellite remote sensing in transnational and international
settings, I have used ESA’s files in the Historical Archives of the European Union at
the European University Institute in Florence, the archives of the French space agency
Centre National d’Études Spatial in Paris, and the ITC University of Twente Archive
in Enschede, as well as digital access to and contact with archives of the United
Nations Archive in New York City and the United Nations Office for Outer Space in
Geneva. In addition to these, I have visited the following US archives and used
whatever materials they had relating to Swedish satellite remote sensing activities: the
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, the Institute Archives
& Special Collections at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the
NASA Headquarters Archive, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Archives, and the National Security Archive – all in Washington, DC. These latter
visits were made possible during a research exchange at MIT.
Thesis Disposition
Since my research questions concern the environment and Sweden, the chapters are
written to demonstrate both how satellite remote sensing functioned as an environing
technology and to answer why the Swedish experts contributed to these activities.
Each chapter focuses on one case of Swedish satellite remote sensing, for example a
project or a set of practices. The chapters are meant to be read chronologically, even
though they contain several activities that played out in parallel. In order to make the
historical analysis of these activities more succinct, I have limited descriptions to the
experts and expertise most significant for that particular chapter (Figure 1). Each
empirical chapter ends with a summary that also segues the story into the next chapter.
Chapter 2: From Sensed to Sensing State, 1969–1978
Chapter 3: Causes and Consequences of Sensing the Chernobyl Meltdown, 1976–1991
Chapter 4: Satellites as Aid, 1983–1994
Chapter 5: Swedish Environmental Diplomacy via Satellite, 1987–1992
Chapter 6: A Centre for Environing Europe, 1991–1999
Epilogue: A Swedish Space Odyssey, 1999–2001
1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Figure 1 . Overview of thesis chapters.
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In Chapter 2, “From Sensed to Sensing State, 1969–1978”, I describe how remote
sensing expertise was established in Sweden. Transnational collaborations and
growing international concern about the use of the technology were central to the
Swedish government’s institutionalisation of remote sensing. I focus on the activities
of the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee and its role in Swedish space activities as
well as in international negotiations. The central terms are technoscientific expertise,
environmental diplomacy, and non-alignment. A central question about environing is how
the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts contributed to defining the technology as
primarily a tool for environmental monitoring. Swedish expansion of a remote sensing
infrastructure and participation in the French SPOT programme are identified as
central to why Swedish foreign policy shifted in favour of satellite remote sensing
technology.
Chapter 3, “Causes and Consequences of Sensing the Chernobyl Meltdown,
1976–1991”, focuses on the meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet
Ukraine, April 1986. I describe how SSC built the subsidiary Satellitbild to
commercialise data from the SPOT satellite. Descriptions of plans to use SPOT to
secure a Swedish market for satellite remote sensing, which faced competition from
the Swedish National Land Survey (Lantmäteriet, hereafter the Swedish Land Survey),
are central to the chapter. I detail how SSC included new kinds of experts, including
journalists, to sense the Chernobyl meltdown and display the capacity of Swedish
satellite remote sensing. I then detail subsequent international debates about the
civilian, as opposed to covert, use of satellite remote sensing to identify a shift in the
Cold War rationale for space technology that increasingly motivated environmental
criticism of the superpowers. Here, the central questions are how the Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts used the French-Swedish infrastructure and why this was so
important. I argue that it was an adaptation of the technology to the Swedish foreign
policy of non-alignment and that it shifted the Swedish focus for satellite remote
sensing to uses and markets beyond Sweden.
In Chapter 4, “Satellites as Aid, 1983–1994”, I analyse why SSC began
exporting satellite remote sensing as a form of aid to developing countries. The central
questions are how the Swedish government exported Swedish expertise through
development projects, and how SSC began recruiting expertise to sell remote sensing
abroad. I focus on the mapping of the Philippines in Southeast Asia, 1987–1988, both
to illustrate how such work relied on development consultants and to describe the role
of the project in identifying satellite remote sensing as a tool for sustainable
development of the environment. SSC’s activities relied on generous funding from
Swedish development aid but also influenced where in the world this aid should be
used, most notably Southeast Asia. Central terms in this chapter are technoscientific
expertise, development aid, land reform, and sustainable development. I describe the activities
related to using SPOT data as well as the introduction of new groups of experts, in
particular the development consultants, in new uses of the technology. I also ask why
the mapping of the Philippines contributed to writing about satellite remote sensing
as a tool for sustainable development and suggest that it served foreign policy
ambitions of both the Swedish and Filipino governments, along with those of
multilateral financiers, like the World Bank.
Chapter 5, “Swedish Environmental Diplomacy via Satellite, 1987–
1992”, analyses how SSC sought to maintain its remote sensing infrastructure,
first by expanding its receiving capacity at Esrange and later by formulating plans for
making Kiruna a centre for environmental data. SSC built support for these
plans by positioning the centre as part of US, Soviet, and later European campaigns
to promote remote sensing as a means for replacing environmental regulations with
technological solutions. SSC’s strategy to shift the rationale for space technology
toward having explicit environmental benefits and assert SSC’s role in
demonstrating these uses in the Baltic region was central to these activities. I
detail how such plans received support after the Swedish Government changed
hands from the Social Democrats to the Liberal-Conservatives in 1991.
Importantly, the Government used SSC’s arguments at the UN Rio Conference
to identify satellite remote sensing as a tool for achieving sustainable development.
In Chapter 6, “A Centre for Environing Europe, 1991–1999”, I describe
attempts by SSC to maintain the remote sensing infrastructure in Sweden. Central
activities include avoiding privatisation of the subsidiary Satellitbild and the receiving
station Esrange, as well as strategising to secure European funding for establishing an
Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna. New technological developments, like
databases, are conceptualised as part of SSC’s activities in the re-independent Baltic
states during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Despite support from the
European Union, SSC increasingly experienced difficulties operating its various
remote sensing activities, which by the late 1990s were reorganised into one single
subsidiary. Central questions concern how the Swedish satellite remote sensing
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activities in the Baltic region contributed to conceptualising uses of the technology as
part of databases, and why SSC reorganised its remote sensing activities during the
1990s.
In “Conclusions”, I return to the research questions raised here in the
Introduction and answer them by synthesising the analysis of the empirical chapters.
I assess the theoretical framework of thinking about satellite remote sensing as
an environing technology. “Epilogue: A Swedish Space Odyssey, 2001”, rounds off
the thesis by describing the end of SSC’s remote sensing activities.
Delimitations
This is a study of Swedish satellite remote sensing from 1969 until 2001. This period
is relevant because it corresponds to the institutionalisation of the technology under
SSC. After the turn of the millennium, most remote sensing activities were dismantled,
and Swedish remote sensing entered a new phase. All studies need to be limited in
relation to the scope of the research questions, and here is where I discuss the
significant delimitations for this study.
The long period studied limits the detail with which events can be described.
A shorter period that focused on one particular project, like the building and launch
of SPOT-1 from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, could have illustrated more of the
technical alternatives, as well as institutional struggles and political concerns
surrounding the launch of the world’s first commercial remote sensing satellite. By
instead studying SPOT as part of a longer time period, the focus shifts from the
singularity of the SPOT programme toward its function in establishing a French-
Swedish remote sensing infrastructure of significance as an environing technology.
Although this is a transnational study, it is not a comparative study. I make no
attempt to systematically compare Swedish activities to French activities or compare
Sweden to other relatively small countries building space technology. Comparisons
could also have been made to initiatives in other Nordic countries or in the Baltic
region at large, assessing the degree of similarity between Swedish satellite remote
sensing and that of other countries.
Previous studies have primarily studied the space activities of the Cold War
superpowers to understand the technology of satellite remote sensing. By studying a
relatively small country, instead, it is possible to illustrate the many adaptations
involved in space activities, the relationship of those activities to governmental
agencies, and the reliance on transnational networks of technoscientific experts.
Compared to the gargantuan resources of the US or the Soviet Union, Sweden lacked
resources, which made paying attention to opportunities more important, and the
Swedes would seize upon them more urgently. I have not argued that Swedish satellite
remote sensing was unique, but rather that it contributed to the technology on the
transnational and international levels. This demonstrates that enhancing our
understanding of the greater space powers requires taking an interest in the activities
of the lesser ones.
This study has delimitations with respect to environing technologies. A related
approach would be to conduct ethnographic studies that demonstrate how remote
sensing technologies were used to mediate environments that are far away in both
space and time, for example in exploring other planets.129 I recognise that such work
is worthwhile, but it would also have required an ethnographic approach to the
interviewees. A contemporary study of environing technologies could include
spending time with the experts at the office, for example at Esrange and other sites
of the remote sensing infrastructure. For this historical study, however, I decided that
time was better spent in the archives and by treating interviewees as a source for oral
history.
Environing by the remote sensing satellites themselves, for example how their
orbits generate space debris, is also outside the scope of this dissertation. Since
launching the first satellite, Sputnik-1, in 1957, technoscientific experts have become
increasingly aware that the Earth’s environment extends to an orbital environment,
which satellites are part of shaping. 130 This thesis does not study the orbital
environment as such,131 but it is important to note that satellite remote sensing of a
129 For arguments and summary of literature on human-machine interaction, see Janet Vertesi, Seeing like a Rover. How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 7–10. For arguments and literature on the place-making of images, see Lisa Messeri. Placing Outer Space. An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2016), 9–19. For the role of remote sensing in making the planet “programmable”, and the “sensorisation” of the environment, see Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 4–9. 130 James Ormrod and Peter Dickens, The Palgrave Macmillan Handbook to Society, Culture and Outer Space (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Lisa Ruth Rand, Orbital Decay: Space Junk and the Environmental History of Earth’s Planetary Borderlands, dissertation (Pennsylvania: History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 2016). 131 For a study on orbital debris and its relationship to production of knowledge about a global environment, see Johan Gärdebo, Agata Marzecova, and Scott Gabriel Knowles, “The orbital technosphere: The provision of meaning and matter by satellites,” The Anthropocene Review 4, no. 1 (2017): 44–52.
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global environment corresponds to the satellites’ global orbital movements.132 Space
debris can be said to have been an unintended environing of how satellite remote
sensing environed the Earth below it. In time, environing the Earth’s surface will have
to adjust to environing by debris that is expected to remain in orbit for hundreds of
years. This, too, is the potential subject for future research as part of understanding
how technology environs the terrestrial as well as the orbital environment.
The dissertation is delimited in its study of economics. The literature already
includes estimates of costs for Swedish space activities, 133 and I do provide
descriptions of economic concerns that the actors had, as well as summaries of sales
and revenue from some of SSC’s remote sensing activities. Further studies, however,
could focus on this aspect of Swedish satellite remote sensing since it would enable
closer comparisons among different space companies of how the costs relate and
closer assessments of claims about how various US policies influenced international
uses of remote sensing.
I have refrained from including military collaborations for a number of
reasons. One reason is that I already rely on research that has detailed the military
origins of space technology, while my own aim is to illustrate how this technology
gained new uses. This is a historical process not analysed in detail beyond the US
context, an analysis that is necessary in order to understand aspects about remote
sensing that I consider more relevant than its role for military, or dual-use, purposes.134
Another reason for not studying military, covert uses of Swedish satellite remote
sensing is that the relevant source materials are declassified at a slower pace. Among
the activities studied but not described in this thesis are Sweden’s plans from the late
1970s until early 1990s for a “peace satellite” along with an International Satellite
Monitoring Agency (ISMA).135 That said, I do describe military aspects of Swedish
132 For a similar perspective on how lines form new surfaces, though not related directly to orbital lines, see Timothy Ingold, Lines. A Brief History (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), 43–45; Timothy Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London & New York: Routledge, 2000), 229–30. 133 See Wormbs and Källstrand (2007), 2, 44–45, 52. 134 For additional studies on military aspects of satellite technology, see James Robin Walker, Archimedean Witness: The Application of Remote Sensing as an Aid to Human Rights Prosecutions, dissertation (Los Angeles: UCLA, 2015); Stephan Graham, Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers (London: Verso, 2016), 108–20. 135 Swedish Defence Research Institute, Torleiv Orhaug. En forskargärning i försvarets tjänst, FOA Report C 30750-3.4, March 1994, Swedish National Defence Research Agency (hereafter cited as FOI). See also Sune Danielsson, “Space Memories by Sune Danielsson, 29 June 2018,” in Personal Memories of Swedish Space Activities, F62:1, TM.
satellite remote sensing when I consider the source materials sufficiently strong and
the aspects are related to satellite remote sensing as an environing technology.
This thesis treats satellite rather than aerial remote sensing,136 optical rather
than radar satellite data, activities by companies rather than research communities,
state-owned companies, like SSC, rather than other larger industrial companies, like
SAAB. Although relatively small in an international perspective, a study of Swedish
space activities still needs to make choices on what to include. 137 As stated, the
dissertation focuses on activities, rather than actors, of Swedish satellite remote
sensing. I have, for reasons described above, focused more on SSC than on national
and transnational competitors, since this actor’s projects also made visible the
influence of many of the other relevant actors and activities. Even when focusing on
SSC, a review of company history and personal memoirs demonstrates that activities
described in this thesis only involve a few of all the activities that took place.138 I could
also have chosen to include other branches of the Swedish government, governmental
agencies, and the research communities described by actors.139 A focus on the Swedish
136 One of the central differences between satellite- and aerial remote sensing is the resolution, which in turn affects what can be studied and tracked. I will touch upon these questions briefly in chapter 3 and chapter 4. 137 For recent attempts to capture this breadth and width in what constitutes Swedish space activities, see the oral history project by Nina Wormbs, 50 år i rymden: Ett dokumentationsprojekt om svensk rymdverksamhet [50 Years in Space: A Documentation Project on Swedish Space Activities] (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2018). In particular with regards to remote sensing, see Johan Gärdebo, ed. Bildens behandling och utvecklingen av digital fjärranalys: Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium på Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 14 juni 2017 (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2018a); Johan Gärdebo, ed. Svenska bidrag till europeisk radarfjärranalys: Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium på Kungliga Tekniska högskolan i Stockholm den 13 november 2017 (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2018b); See also Personal Memories of Swedish Space Activities, F62:1, TM. With regards to Swedish military satellite activities, see Interview with Anders Gustavsson, Staffan Jonson, Anders Nelander and Hans Ottersten, 12 May 2017, F62:2, TM. For recently declassified documents on earlier military activites, see Bertil Brusmark, Staffan Jonsson and Anders Nelander, “FOA rapport. DH30062-E1. Satellitburen syntetisk aperturradar en förstudie,” April 1983, FOI. 138 For example, see Nils G. Åsling, Maktkamp eller samförstånd. En studie i svensk realpolitik (Stockholm: LT:s förlag, 1983), 165; Nils G. Åsling, Skäl att minnas (Stockholm: Ekerlids, 1996), 363; Sven Grahn, Jordnära rymden (Stockholm: Instant Book, 2011); Bengt Hultqvist, Space, Science and Me. Swedish Space Research during the post-war period (Noordwijk, Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, 2003); Jan Stiernstedt, Sweden in Space. Swedish Space Activities 1959–1972 (Noordwijk, Netherlands: ESA Publications Division, 2001); Stefan Zenker, Space is our place: SSC 1972–1997: a personal memoir on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Swedish Space Corporation (Solna: Swedish Space Corporation, 1997); Stefan Zenker, SSC – fyrtio år i rymden. En minnesbok (Stockholm: Instant Book, 2011); Inger Stjernqvist, I rymden för Sverige. Berättelsen om Rymdbolaget (Stockholm: Sellin, 2004). Most recently, see Institut Francais d´Histoire de l’Espace, Earth Observation from Space. Optical and Radar Imagery: A European Success 1960–2010, 163–67. 139 Lars Ottoson, Carl-Olof Ternryd and Kennert Torlegård, Svensk fotogrammetri och fjärranalys under 1900-talet (Gävle: Kartografiska Sällskapet, 2004), 23–28, 87–93, 103, 160, 216; Sven G. Gustafsson, Reflektioner och reflexioner ur ett ingenjörsliv. Del 1: oktober 1961 – januari 1974 (Billdal, 2015); Jan Askne, ERS-1 och Chalmers (Göteborg: Chalmers, Remote Sensing Group, 2017); Leif Wastenson, Ulla Arnberg, and Mathias Cramér, “Sveriges Nationalatlas,” in Kartan och verkligheten (Ödeshög: YMER, 2008), 335–346.
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National Land Survey, whose efforts to expand aerial remote sensing paralleled those
of SSC regarding satellite remote sensing, could have been read as a struggle between
these two organisations and about two competing technologies, “satellites vs. planes”.
But that would have been a different thesis. Where relevant for my overall argument,
however, I describe activities conducted by the Land Survey.
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CHAPTER 2
From Sensed to Sensing State, 1969–1978
In November 1969, Gunnar Hoppe, Professor of Geography at Stockholm University,
organised Sweden’s first symposium on remote sensing. In his opening address at the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Kungliga vetenskapsakademien, KVA), Hoppe
argued that the term ‘remote sensing’ actually referred to a wide array of technologies.
Several of these had been developed at his institution, the Department of Physical
Geography at Stockholm University, since the 1930s, primarily using aerial
photography. During the 1960s, however, the use of new sensors and artificial
satellites as platforms meant that the technology had come to represent something
new.
I don’t think […] that anything has had and will ever have greater importance for
the expansion of remote sensing than the quick-growing consciousness of our
rapidly changing environment.140
With reference to how societies were intensifying their use of resources, Hoppe
argued for the urgent need to obtain information about the environment at a variety
of spatial and temporal scales. At the time, Sweden’s methods of gathering, handling,
and disseminating data were incompatible with addressing this environmental urgency.
New methods had to be explored.141
Hoppe had pursued this goal by founding the Swedish Remote Sensing
Committee, organised under the Swedish Board for Technical Development, which
hosted the symposium. He now aimed to involve Sweden in international projects.
Interest had grown rapidly, and more than 50 governmental agencies, universities, and
140 See Gunnar Hoppe, “Introduction,” in Remote Sensing Symposium. 24 November 1969 (Stockholm: The Remote Sensing Group “STURSK”, Swedish Board for Technical Development, 1970), 4–5, STURSK, RA. 141 These were not only Hoppe’s ideas but a summary of discussions and applications handled by the Swedish remote sensing group, most notably Nicke Jacobsson. Bengt Lundholm also promoted these arguments that had been developed by him and other Swedish ecologists. See Email correspondence with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2918. See also Thomas Söderqvist, The Ecologists. From Merry Naturalists to Saviours of the Nation: A sociologically informed narrative survey of the ecologization of Sweden 1895–1975, dissertation (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986), 238–40, 269–70; “STU”, in Sveriges statskalender (1972), 278.
industries had sent representatives to participate in the symposium. The reason for
this, as noted by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, was not only fascination
but also fear: Who was sensing and who was being sensed?
This chapter studies the role of Swedish remote sensing expertise as it
developed around the Remote Sensing Committee and alongside an international
debate on satellite remote sensing. In particular, I focus on how the Swedish
delegation to the United Nations (UN) debated technology in the Committee on the
Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) and, as I argue, negotiated its use.
Debates on remote sensing emerged during the late 1960s and reached a climax
in the mid-70s. Negotiations by and large ended when the UN General Assembly on
3 December 1986, after years of diplomatic stalemate, adopted the “Principles
Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space”.142 The Swedish government,
which sought to play a leading role in these UN negotiations, relied greatly on the
technoscientific expertise of the Remote Sensing Committee. For this reason, it
becomes relevant for me to consider, in particular, the intentions and
institutionalisation of Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise.
In addition to defining what remote sensing was, the Swedish Remote Sensing
Committee also shaped how to do remote sensing and who should do it. In the early
1970s, the Swedish government reorganised the Remote Sensing Committee under the
administration of SBSA, with a secretariat appointed by a state-owned corporation
for space activities, SSC. These two organisations then used the Committee to secure
the mandate as Sweden’s remote sensing experts. 143 The people involved in these
activities used a number of terms to define their roles. Here, I use the term ‘experts’
to emphasise how their activities contributed to defining the technology and asserting
their authority over it. Significantly, the technoscientific experts contributed to
establishing a Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure and gradually to shaping
Swedish foreign policy with respect to the technology.
During the period 1969–1978, the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee and
COPUOS were central forums through which Swedish experts could influence remote
142 United Nations General Assembly (hereafter cited as UNGA), “Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space,” 3 December 1986, Resolution 41/65, 95th plenary meeting, Bluebook of UN 41st General Assembly 1986, New Series 1.A 42; Bertil Roth, “Den svenska fjärranalysverksamhetens rättsliga grundvalar,” Lawful Use of RemSen, SNSA Archive, Solna. 143 Technoscientific experts are here assumed to promote the establishment of their organisations, secure funding, and assert authority over the knowledge they produce. In addition to literature cited in the previous chapter, see also Hans Weinberger, ‘The envy of Europe’: teknik och politik i det tidiga 1960–talets Sverige (Stockholm: Trita HST Working paper No 93/2, 1993), 1.
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sensing nationally, internationally, and transnationally. They were involved both in
developing the technology and notions about the environment that this technology
sensed. I address why remote sensing expertise became central for establishing a
Swedish space programme and how SSC obtained the mandate and the funding
to develop Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise. I then address how
Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise contributed to defining the concept of
environment. As I will demonstrate, these definitions were central issues in
international debates of the 1970s about what it was that the satellite remote
sensing technology was sensing.
I first describe how, by the late 1960s, European industrial
collaboration, American technoscientific symposia, and debates in the UN had
motivated the Swedish Government to establish a formal Swedish space
programme. Secondly, I detail how the Swedish Government during the 1970s relied
on the Swedish remote sensing experts in international negotiations, particularly in
COPUOS and its Scientific and Technical Subcommittee. Thirdly, I describe
how SSC asserted leadership over the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee
and collaborated transnationally, most notably with the French Government’s space
agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES).
The technoscientific experts and diplomats who participated in the Remote
Sensing Committee and COPUOS described the period from 1972 until winter 1978
as formative for defining what satellite remote sensing was and for determining how
and by whom it should be used. 144 I study the negotiations at the national,
international, and transnational levels to identify attempts at defining on the one hand
the technology of satellite remote sensing and on the other hand the environment
that the technology sensed.145 I draw parallels between how technoscientific
expertise defined the technology and environment with the ways in which these
definitions proved functional for what the experts aimed to achieve.
I have drawn upon protocols, working papers, and correspondence archived
by the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee under SBSA, SSC, and the Ministry for
144 Interview with Sune Danielsson, 18 May, 2015; Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016; Interview with Johan Martin-Löf, 5 April 2016; Interview with Kenneth Hodgkins, 5 December 2016; Interview with Peter Jankowitsch, 31 July 2017. 145 For the role of technology and transnational collaborations in shaping previously remote, inaccessible, environments, see Nil Disco and Eda Kranakis, ed. Cosmopolitan Commons: Sharing Resources and Risks across Borders (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2013). On the need to study these collaborations as increasingly entangled activities, albeit at different levels, see Erik van der Vleuten, “Review of Cosmopolitan Commons: Sharing Resources and Risks across Borders, ed. Nil Disco and Eda Kranakis,” Technology and Culture 55, no. 2 (April 2014): 518.
Foreign Affairs. In addition, interviews and private collections made it possible to
analyse interactions between the national, international, and transnational activities.
Between 1971 and 1977, COPUOS’ Subcommittee maintained uncorrected verbatim
records. That material has been central for a closer study of the debate around specific
agenda items.
Defining and Using Outer Space in the UN, 1958–1970
Not until after the launch of Sputnik 1 during the International Geophysical Year in
1957 did the US and the Soviet Union agree on the need for internationally defined
principles for the use of space technology.146 Earlier that year, the philosopher and
historian of science Alexandre Koyré had envisioned spacefaring as constituting an
epistemological break from a “closed world” toward perceiving the Earth as part of
the spaces beyond it. Now, international politics hurried to codify the orbital space
around the planet once artificial satellites had demonstrated that space could be
used.147
Technoscientific expertise had already contributed to sensing outer space as
an environment for satellites to move through,148 and also to reshaping it, physically
as well as judicially, with the US government arguing that the use of satellites leads to
a “right of overflight” above the territory of other states.149
As part of crafting laws for the use of outer space, both the US and the Soviet
Union suggested an ad hoc committee within the UN. Disagreement on the make-up
of this committee concluded with the UN General Assembly adopting the US
146 Stian Bones, “Science In-between: Norway, the European Arctic and the Soviet Union,” in Science, Geopolitics and Culture in the Polar Region. Norden Beyond Borders, ed. Sverker Sörlin (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 155–56, 159. For more on reactions and initiatives following the launch of Sputnik-1, see Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite, ed. Roger D. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith (Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000). 147 See Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957). See also Stephen Turner, “The Social Study of Science before Kuhn,” in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch and Judy Wacjman, third edition (Cambridge Mass., and London England: MIT Press, 2008), 41. 148 Callahan (2013), 129. 149 See Rand (2016), 6–10 and “Chapter 4”. On right of overflight, see Roger D. Launius, “Space Technology and the Rise of the US Surveillance State,” in The Surveillance Imperative: Geosciences during the Cold War and Beyond, ed. Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 147–70.
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proposal for the design of the committee. This also meant that decisions in the
committee would be reached by consensus, not by voting.150
In 1962, the Ad Hoc Committee reorganised into COPUOS, gaining more
permanence as part of specialising its work into two subcommittees for debates on
either legal or technical issues. The US sought to secure consensus by symbolically
balancing the leadership of COPUOS. Austria, as a non-aligned state, became the
chair for the parent committee. Poland and later Czechoslovakia as Soviet satellite
states headed the Legal Subcommittee, while the US ally Australia headed the
Scientific and Technical Subcommittee. COPUOS also acknowledged Brazil as
spokesperson for the developing countries. Once elected, the secretariat personnel
often retained their positions for decades. For example, the Austrian Peter Jankowitsch
and the Australian John Carver held the COPUOS and the Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee chairs, respectively, from the early 1970s well into the 1990s.151
COPUOS’ agenda would first be addressed by the Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee, convening in New York, then move to the Legal Subcommittee,
which alternated annually between New York and Geneva, and then be brought back
to the full committee in New York. Every year the UN General Assembly approved
the agenda for the work of COPUOS and the two subcommittees the following year,
effectively continuing the loop of discussing and delegating agendas until specific
proposals for space law had been drafted. If the subcommittees and COPUOS reached
consensus, a proposal mostly in the form of a draft resolution would be brought before
the General Assembly for adoption. In addition to these subcommittees, ad hoc groups
could be formed to discuss particular matters. The work of COPUOS and its two
Subcommittees were supported by the UN Secretariat, mainly the UN Office for Outer
Space Affairs, that gathered information for the negotiations at COPUOS.152
150 Walter A. McDougall, …the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 [1985]), 184–85. 151 Interview with Peter Jankowitsch, 31 July 2017. For more on Jankowitch and Carver, see Sune Danielsson, “Space Memories by Sune Danielsson, 29 June 2018,” in Personal Memories of Swedish Space Activities, F62:1, TM. For more on Australia’s alliance with and dependence on the US in the 1960s, see “William C. Battle, Oral History Interview – JFK#2, conducted by Dennis O´Brien,” 3 February 1970, John F. Kennedy Oral History Project, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (hereafter JFK-PL). See also Werner Balogh, “Europe as an actor in the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space,” in European Identity through Space. Space Activities and Programmes as a Tool to Reinvigorate the European Identity, ed. Christophe Venet and Blandina Baranes (Wien: Springer-Verlag, 2013), 60–61. 152 Eilene Galloway, “Space Law in the 21st Century,” Journal of Space Law 26, no. 2, 25th anniversary (1998): 187–92, especially 189.
Participants considered this a time-consuming process, repeatedly eclipsed by
new issues demanding attention. For the US, however, the aim was not so much to
reach decisions but to establish a “show-and-tell” organisation. Member states
informed about their activities in outer space, which provided opportunities for the
US to assert its expertise in space technology while professing the bilateral benefits to
other nations, in particular developing countries. 153 However, the US restricted
information about “observation satellites” for fear of international pressure and
legislation towards hindering such activities.154
The American delegation aimed to limit the role of the UN in space activities.
Differing views could be found in the US government on whether to use space for
diplomacy, public relations, or cooperation. But between 1958 and 1978, Arnold W.
Frutkin, Assistant Administrator of the US National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and technical expert in the American delegation, defined the
US position in COPUOS.155 Frutkin did not like the UN, considering it a “totally
unwise” effort allotted to NASA, and believed in limiting membership of COPUOS
to only the few countries currently capable of conducting their own space activities.
Outer space was for cooperation, not development aid or support.156 After opening
remarks by the US ambassador, Frutkin would be the one who participated in the
actual debates. For decision-making on outer space, he considered the Scientific and
Technical Subcommittee to be the most important arena. He only debated agenda
items if a potential regulation of space activities risked limiting US influence.157
Regulation of space, or space law, involved formulating principles both about
what space was and how it ought to be used. For example, US lawyer Wilfred Jenks in
1955 argued for outer space being a unique place. It belonged to all humans, so uses
should be transparent and the benefits shared universally. It also had unique
geophysical properties, like the Earth’s rotation around its axis, so that orbital space
and any objects in it, like artificial satellites, travelled across the sky and the surface
below. If one was to extend the territorial borders of the Earth upwards, as had been
153 Interview with Arnold W. Frutkin, conducted by Rebecca Wright 11 January and 8 March 2002 (NASA Headquarters Oral History Projects, 2002), NASA Headquarters Archive (hereafter cited as NASA HQ). 154 For example, see Dean Rusk, “Memorandum for the president. Disclosure of U.S. Satellite Reconnaissance Capability,” p. 10, 12 March 1963, NSAM 216, Box 340, National Security Files, Papers of President Kennedy, JFK-PL. 155 McDougall (1997), 196, 258–60. 156 See Frutkin interview 2002. 157 Frutkin interview 2002.
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done in aerial law, these satellites would be subject to laws of different countries
depending on the time of the day when they happened to orbit above them. Jenks
therefore proposed that principles had to be adapted to actual, practical, uses of outer
space.158
Jenks’ principles of ad hoc universalism became influential for space law due
to their ambiguity. He was cited both to regulate outer space “for the benefit of all
mankind” as well as to adapt law to activities already conducted by, and in the interest
of, the superpowers.159 Other contemporary thinkers in space law, like William A.
Hyman who argued for principles guided by humanitarian rights of people on the
planet as opposed to the co-existence of spacefaring nations, had close to no impact
on subsequent space law.160
Between 1959 and 1967, both the US and the Soviet Union suggested and
secured regulations that suited their ongoing or planned space activities while making
use of universalist rhetoric to codify these treaties. 161 Space historian Angelina
Callahan has demonstrated how both leadership and technoscientific experts in both
the US and the Soviet Union promoted bilateral trade of meteorological satellite data
since the late 1950s. The US thereby aimed to assert the global character of the data
both in terms of coverage and institutional reach. The US Government in 1966 even
anticipated a climax in the space race and that, after this, a new international debate
158 C. Wilfred Jenks, “International Law and Activities in Space,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly (1956): 99–114. See also J. E. S. Fawcett, “Review of Wilfred Jenks’ ‘Space Law’,” International Relations 2, no. 12 (1965): 849–50. 159 See Steven Freeland, “Chapter X. C. Wilfred Jenks,” in Pioneers of Space Law: A Publication of the International Institute of Space Law, ed. Stephan Hobe (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2013), 166–90. For example, COPUOS never settled on a definition on “peaceful use” of outer space, which safeguarded military, covert, and dual-use satellite projects. See John Krige, “Chapter 1. Introduction and Historical Overview: NASA’s International Relations in Space,” in NASA in the World: Fifty Years of International Collaboration in Space, ed. John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan and Ashok Maharaj (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 6–8. 160 William A. Hyman, Magna Carta of Space (New York: Amherst Press, 1966); William A. Hyman, The Magna Carta of Space, report, Conference XIII Conference of the Inter-American Bar Association (Panama City: Inter-American Bar Association, 1963); “Obituary: William Hyman, lawyer, is dead; Early Advocate of Rules for Outer Space Was 72,” The New York Times, July 11 1966; “Space law for man – and anybody else out there,” Life Magazine 61, no. 6. August 5 1966. In addition to Walter McDougall’s verdict about space law being an “extensive and highly repetitive” field, I add that it has often refrained from historicising its earlier works. See McDougall (1997), 409. Provocative contemporary contributors, like Hyman, have as a consequence been overlooked in the literature. For more on space law since McDougall’s summary, see Detlev Wolter, Common Security in Outer Space and International Law (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Publication, 2006), 113, 139, 174; Francis Lyall and Paul B. Larsen, Space Law: A Treatise (Farnham and Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), viii, 558; Frans von der Dunk and Fabio Tronchetti, eds. Handbook of Space Law (Chelenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015), xxv. 161 For a summary of treaties and principles relating to space technology adopted by the UN, see United Nations Treaties and Principles on Outer Space (New York: United Nations Publication, 2002).
could follow that focused on how both the “haves” and the “have nots” benefitted
from space technology. For this reason, it was crucial to formulate civilian, global uses
of American technology.162
And indeed, from the mid-60s onwards, developing countries began pointing
to incongruities in the universalist rhetoric. Increasingly, they began coordinating
claims that, so far, collaboration overlooked the technology gap whereby poorer
countries had no practical capacity to use outer space.163 Over time, negotiations in
COPUOS also shifted from the initial East-West dichotomy. The new power balance
concerned the haves and the have-nots of space technology.164
Outer space was not for universal use yet. And although it served as a bridge
between vying superpowers, it was a bridge built on the backs of those already down.
In the words of anthropologist Peter Redfield, outer space reflected a shadow of
empire in the sense that France expanded its space infrastructure on colonised land,
for example the launching sites at Hammaguir in Algeria and Kourou in French
Guiana.165 Satellites had not opened the world to an infinite universe, as anticipated
by Koyré, but had begun to surround it with technologies so as to actively close it,
again. The difference was that the outer environment was now explicitly shaped by
human affairs on the Earth’s surface. 166 Developing countries questioned how this
physical shaping of the orbital environment as well as the sensing of the Earth’s
surface should be conducted in the future. These questions by the developing
countries, and non-aligned countries like Sweden, eventually turned the debate on
162 See Callahan (2013), 3–4, 248–52, especially 248. 163 This critique corresponded to a continuous expansion of COPUOS to primarily include more developing countries. From 18 to over 80 countries, it is at present one of the larger committees of the UN. For a chronology of this expansion, see “Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space: Membership Evolution,” UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (hereafter cited as UNOOSA). 164 US representative Frutkin informally referred to American allies in Europe and elsewhere as the “Friendly Fifteen”. See McDougall (1997), 184–85, 404, 414–16. For arguments on gaps between developed and developing countries in the use of satellite remote sensing during late twentieth century, see Karen Litfin, “Environmental Remote Sensing, Global Governance, and the Territorial State,” in Approaches to Global Governance Theory, ed. Martin Hewson and Timothy J. Sinclair (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 73–96. See also Jocelyn Wills, “Satellite Surveillance and Outer-Space Capitalism: The Case of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates,” in Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture, and Outer Space, ed. Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 94–122; cf. Mariel Borowitz, Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2017). 165 Peter Redfield, “The half-life of Empire in outer space,” Social Studies of Science 32 (2002): 795. 166 Peter Redfield, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley: University of California Press), 123. See also Denis Cosgrove, “Moon,” in Patterned ground: entanglements of nature and Culture, ed. Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile, and Nigel Thrift (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 222–23; Fraser MacDonald, “Anti-Astropolitik: Outer Space and the Orbit of Geography,” Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 5 (2007): 594.
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remote sensing to issues about limits, regulations, and the rights of those nations that
so far lacked the means to use outer space or to own remote sensing data.
Swedish Space Activities are European Space Activities, 1963–1969
The technology gap was not only between the global North and South: European
countries also experienced constraints in making use of outer space. Except for
France and the UK, European countries lacked sufficient funds to initiate national
missions and instead relied on bilateral collaboration to pool resources.167 Initially, the
US assisted Western Europe with launching services, consultancy, and equipment as a
symbolic gesture. In turn, European governments informally accepted American use
of reconnaissance satellites.168 Occasionally the Soviet delegation reacted, for example
by condemning the Norwegian government’s installation of an American telemetry
station on Svalbard in the 1960s. 169 But as the US also limited its bilateral co-
operations, Western European countries increasingly pursued the institutionalisation
of a supranational European space agency.170
The Swedish space activities during this period developed alongside
increasingly ambitious state funding, including involvement in the UN,171 and several
successful bilateral collaborations with NASA.172 However, according to scientists,
engineers, and civil servants related to the Swedish Space Technology Group
(Rymdtekniska gruppen), the initial high hopes of the early 1960s were followed by
meagre “wilderness years” from 1964 to 1971.173 ‘Wilderness’ alluded to the Swedish
167 J. Krige and A. Russo, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987. Volume I: The Story of ESRO and ELDO, 1958–1973 (Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division, 2000), 387. 168 J. Krige, A. Russo and L. Sebesta, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987. Volume II: The Story of ESA, 1973–1987 (Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division, 2000), 378. 169 Collett (1995), 133. 170 Krige and Russo (2000), 335–43, 425–26. This can be contrasted to earlier US support to European institutions that served to close the technoscientific gap and also extended American influence over several European institutions, see John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). 171 Sweden had been part of establishing COPUOS in 1958. It remained the only Nordic member country until 2017 when Denmark and Norway also joined. 172 See NASA, “SW-0011-0. Bilateral Technical Document Exchange Program, 1962, Smithsonian National Air and Space Archives (hereafter cited as NASM). See also “U.S., Sweden Join in Space Projects,” Baltimore Sun, 15 December 1963,” Sweden – US, 014757, NASA HQ. 173 The Swedish Government agreed to support European space activities with infrastructure for sounding rockets near Kiruna in northern Sweden. But it dedicated no substantial governmental funding to the various projects where Swedish scientists or industry hoped to include experiments and instruments. See Hultqvist, Space, Science and Me. Swedish Space Research during the post-war period, 65–81; Stiernstedt, Sweden in Space. Swedish Space Activities 1959–1972, 165–75. For a synthesis of literature and accounts on the “wilderness years”, see Nina Wormbs, Vem älskade Tele-X? Konflikter om satelliter i Norden 1974–1989 [Who loved Tele-X? Satellite conflicts in the Nordic Countries 1974–1989],
Government’s unwillingness to finance large space projects as well as uncertainty
regarding how to organise the national space activities.174 Several Swedish companies
collaborated to form a joint Swedish space consortium to bid for European contracts
and also organised seminar series on space technology to build up national expertise.
It should be noted that the Swedish initiatives to enter into European space activities
were an attempt to also enter other sectors of the European market. However, low
levels of state funding limited the possibility of winning the space technology
contracts.175
This gradually changed as the Swedish Government in the late 1960s aimed to
increase its role in technological development. Swedish state investments emulated
policies in the US and other European countries to actively direct technoscientific
development.176 Thus, although European industries collaborated transnationally, they
depended on a principle of fair return, juste retour, whereby an industry received
contracts corresponding to the national funding provided by its government.177 One
part of this was to establish state-owned development-companies, 178 concentrate
disparate initiatives into new ministries or organisations for research and
development, 179 as well as exert influence over the technoscientific attachés that
Swedish industry had already established at Swedish embassies abroad. 180 Hans
Håkansson and Jan Stiernstedt were two influential civil servants involved in planning
this state-led technology development. They made use of technoscientific experts
dissertation (Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag, 2003), 10–16. In the first Swedish governmental inquiry supporting a Swedish space programme, the Swedish space committee had prioritised satellite systems for telecommunication, meteorology, and navigation. It also noted that visual satellite observation for geodesy would become important in the future, see SOU 1963:61. Rymdkommittén, Organisatoriska åtgärder för rymdverksamhetens främjande (Stockholm: Ecklesiastikdepartementet, 1963). 174 The original Swedish term ökenvandring, which literally translates as “desert wandering”, more aptly captures the sense of disorientation and fatigue that these people expressed regarding the future for Swedish space activities following the Swedish Government’s refutal in 1964 of the Swedish Space Committee’s proposal for a national space programme. 175 “Program för seminarieserie inom ämnet rymdkommunikation. Verksamhetsåret 1963–64,” Stencildokument från Svenska Aeroaplanaktiebolaget, Linköping, 1963, Sven G. Gustafsson Private Collection; Sture Nilsson, Ingvar Bengtson, Johny Andersson, and Gert Malmberg, “Rymdverksamheten i Linköping,” Saab-minnen 14 (2017): 141–42. For plans to continue expanding the Swedish space activities through a cooperative satellite project with the US, see NASA, “Swedish Proposal for a Cooperative Satellite Project,” 18 September 1968, Sweden – US, 014757, NASA HQ. 176 Hans Weinberger (1997), 6, 97, 208. 177 Historians of technology Helmut Trischler and Hans Weinberger have argued how the fair return-principle both enabled and hindered European integration, see Trischler and Weinberger (2005): 72. 178 Fjaestad (2010), 111–14, 146–50, 187–91. 179 Hans Weinberger, Nätverksentreprenören: en historia om teknisk forskning och industriellt utvecklingsarbete från den Malmska utredningen till Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling, dissertation (Stockholm: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 1997), 10, 260–69. 180 Museidirektör Sigvard Strandh/Tekniska Muséet, “Informationskurs om vetenskap och forskning 25–27 januari 1966,” 3 December 1965, IVA, Claës Pilo Private Collection.
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from the Space Technology Group, for example Lars Rey and Lennart Lübeck, to
expand Sweden’s participation in the European space activities. In addition, they had
close personal ties to the leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Government.181
I will return to describing the role of Håkansson and Stiernstedt for Swedish space
activities after I have detailed the importance of technoscientific experts in expanding
Swedish transnational space collaborations.
Since the 1940s, Swedish industry had financed the Royal Swedish Academy
of Engineering Sciences (Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien, IVA) to maintain
technoscientific attachés abroad. The Swedish Ministry for Trade now financed a new
attaché in Paris and placed one of its technoscientific experts, Claës Pilo, to provide
information on French technological developments.182 Pilo studied the local press and
specialised journals, followed up on contacts, arranged collaborations between French
and Swedish companies, and prepared reports for the Swedish representation from
the Swedish government and the Space Technology Group at meetings with the
European Space Research Organisation (ESRO).183 This was all part of the larger aim
to expand Swedish technoscientific expertise.
The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs used attaché reports to argue that
participation in French space activities offered opportunities for Sweden to enter
other European markets as well. It warned of the consequences if Sweden did not
seize this opportunity.184 “Sweden risked becoming a Western European backwater”,185
isolated from European industries, its markets annexed by US or European
competitors, unless the government financed space technology as a means to catalyse
other technoscientific expertise. The Ministry also endorsed the establishment of a
transnational association, Centre Industriel Franco-Suédois, to organise Swedish
181 Interview with Claës Pilo, 30 May 2017; Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018.; Interview with Lennart Lübeck, 9 October 2018. 182 Hans G. Forsberg and Per Stenson, Idéernas innovatör. Sven Brohult och IVA: en levnadsteckning och en bild av Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien 1960–1970 (Stockholm: Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien, 1995), 74, 77, 85. 183 Between 1964 and 1969, the Swedish government appointed Lars Rey as Swedish representative for negotiations with ESRO. See Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018. See also Interview with Claës Pilo, 30 May 2017. 184 C H von Platen/UD, “Det vetenskapliga arbetet inom OECD Svenska delegationen,” 12 November 1965, H 77, Chef Handels 1, Claës Pilo Private Collection; Claës Pilo/Teknisk-vetenskaplige attachén Paris, “Till UD. Verksamhetsberättelse för teknisk-vetenskaplige attachén i Paris. Första halvåret 1966,” 7 October 1966, Svenska delegationen. No 517. H 77. Royal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Claës Pilo Private Collection. 185 Original in Swedish: “Man kan nu fråga sig om Sverige och Norden….löper risk att bli ett västeuropeiskt utland”. See Claës Pilo, “PM. Rörande betydelsen för Sverige av Västeuropas rymdsatsning,” 18 April 1966, Claës Pilo Private Collection.
surveys, visits, and meetings with French space organisations.186 “Science and politics
go hand in hand”, Pilo stated with reference to how Swedish involvement in French
space policy had resulted in transnational consortiums that included the French Matra
(Mécanique Aviation Traction) and the Swedish SAAB (Svenska
Aeroplanaktiebolaget).187
The French-Swedish space collaboration illustrates significant means and motives
in transnational European projects of the 1960s. Regarding motives, the Swedish
Government focused on how Sweden was small as well as geographically peripheral
to mainland Europe and, correspondingly, distant from European markets. The
Swedish Government used this rhetoric to motivate investments in a few selected
areas of technoscientific expertise, which it argued would also stimulate development
of other industrial sectors, thereby averting a structural crisis. 188 As part of
participating in European space activities through ESRO, the Swedish Government
co-financed the European Space RANGE (Esrange) facility, outside Kiruna in
northern Sweden, which it also promoted as a governmental effort to catalyse further
development throughout the northernmost provinces.189 These lands were traditional
grazing grounds for reindeer herding by the indigenous Sami in Sweden but were also
central to the Swedish Government’s plan to use sparsely populated places to establish
infrastructure for space activities.190
186 Claës Pilo/Svenska ambassaden Paris, “Verksamhetsberättelse för teknisk-vetenskaplige attachén i Paris. Budgetåret 1 juli 1966 – 30 juni 1967,” 1 August 1967, Claës Pilo Private Collection. 187 Original in Swedish: “[A]tt Europa gör något på rymdsamarbetets område nu, innan det är för sent….vetenskap och politik alltmer går hand i hand”. See Claës Pilo, “ang. samtal om europeiskt rymdsamarbete,” p. 3, 26 April 1967, UD Pol 3, Claës Pilo Private Collection. For subsequent statements to that effect, see Claës Pilo, “Fransk rymdpolitik,” TVF. Teknisk-vetenskaplig forskning/ 38, no. 7 (Stockholm: IVA, 1967): 266–72; Claës Pilo, “Fransk rymdpolitik,” Veckans affärer, 7 December 1967; French press and television continued these discussions about French-Swedish space activities during spring 1968, cf. Claës Pilo, “Fransk aktivitet i skuggan av amerikansk utmaning,” Industriförbundets tidskrift, no. 5 (May 1968), Claës Pilo Private Collection. 188 Weinberger (1993), 11, 16. 189 Krister Wickman/Swedish Ministry of Industry, “Näringspolitiken och Norrland,” in Anförande vid Sundsvallsbankens bolagsstämma i Östersund, 17 March 1969, National Library of Sweden (hereafter cited as KB). See also Staffan Gorne and Staffan Sohlman, Prospects for Swedish exports 1970 (Stockholm: Kihlström, National Institute of Economic Research, 1967), 11–13. See also Lars Rey and Lennart Lübeck, “Esrange – europeiskt raketskjutfält i Kiruna,” in Teknisk tidskrift (1966): 1047–1052, KB. 190 This indicates that Redfield’s argument that space activities expand on colonised land deserve further study also in other countries. For earlier studies on this theme in Swedish activities, see Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormbs, “Rockets and Reindeers: A Space Development Pair in the Northern Welfare Hinterland,” in Science for Welfare and Warfare Science for Welfare and Warfare: Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden, ed. Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås, and Johan Gribbe (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Watson Publishing Company, 2010), 131–51; see Backman (2015), 108–111. See also Fredrick Backman, Från föhn till feu!Esrange och den norrländska rymdverksamhetens tillkomsthistoria från sekelskiftet 1900 till 1966 [From föhn to feu! Esrange and the origin of the northern Swedish space activities], master thesis (Umeå: Umeå University, 2009), 63–66.
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Swedish support of transnational European collaboration was motivated by
government interests, and the technoscientific experts were a means for making new
politics possible. The Swedish government’s use of the Space Technology Group and
technoscientific attachés to involve Sweden in transnational space activities is
indicative of blurred lines between foreign policy, trade, and technoscientific
development during the 1960s onwards. The technoscientific experts were also
contemporarily described as having “hybrid occupations” that so far had no accepted
name internationally. 191 Among diplomats, the rise of technoscientific experts in
diplomacy illustrated how governments adapted and contributed to a shift in foreign
policy away from embassies and toward representation in transnational and
international forums.192
These motives and means of technoscientific expertise led the Swedish
Government in 1968 to establish the Ministry for Industry, to unify numerous research
efforts into the Swedish Board for Technical Development, 193 and attempt to
incorporate the technoscientific attachés closer to the new governmental agencies in
Stockholm with hopes to also gain a greater share of contracts within ESRO.194
Swedish industry protested against these state-led technology developments. Although
the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences pointed out how the Swedish
Government had used technoscientific attachés and space activities to take over
191 See J. W. Greenwood, Canada’s Science Counsellor in Washington, “Scientists as Diplomats,” External Affairs (Stockholm: Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ Bulletin, 1970): 125–40, especially 126–27. Cited in Åke Malmaeus/Kungl svenska ambassaden Ottawa, “Insänder artikel om teknisk-vetenskapliga attachéer, no. 175,” 28 May 1971, Claës Pilo Private Collection. 192 For a Swedish diplomat’s account, see Carl Henrik von Platen, Strängt förtroligt (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1986), 44–46, 49–50. On the growing importance of technology and technoscientific expertise for embassy activities, see Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats. Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012), 116–20. On a longer history of this development, see David Paull Nickles, Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). On the growing importance of international forums, see Jeremy Black, A History of Diplomacy (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 223, 251. 193 Per Högselius, “Lost in Translation?: Science, Technology and the State since the 1970s,” in Science for Welfare and Warfare Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden, ed. Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås and Johan Gribbe (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Watson Publishing Company, 2010), 252; Weinberger (1997), 379–82. 194 Interview with Claës Pilo, 30 May 2017. For more on the role of Håkansson in these plans, see Weinberger (1997), 262, 268, 359. For examples of other Western European countries establishing state-funded technological development during the 1960s, see David Edgerton, “The White Heat Revisited: The British Government and Technology in the 1960s,” Twentieth Century British History 7, no. 1 (January 1996): 53–82. For examples from France, see Marie Demker, I nationens intresse? Gaullismens partiideologi 1947–1990 (Stockholm: Nerenius & Santérus förlag, 1993), 172, 183, 209, 274.
previous industry-led initiatives,195 it should be noted that the increase in government
activities, received support from nearly all Swedish parliamentarians at the time.196
Sweden’s state-led technology development coincided with American attempts
to collaborate with European countries on a new civilian space application – satellite
remote sensing. Frutkin and other representatives of NASA and the US Government
expressed hopes of developing practical remote sensing for “Earth resource
surveying” in the near future.197 The American presentations of these plans were
meant to maintain US cooperation with European space activities at a point in time
when European transnational and supranational collaboration expanded.198 It also
signalled a shift from military satellite reconnaissance toward civilian applications for
monitoring from orbiting satellites in which Swedish technoscientific experts had
begun taking an interest.199
Founding the Swedish “Remote Sensing” Group, 1964–1970
Swedish remote sensing expertise of the late 1960s took inspiration from efforts
begun in 1962 at the US Office of Naval Research to organise the first Symposium
on Remote Sensing of Environment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. While sponsored by the
US Army, Navy, and Air Forces, the symposium aimed to redefine numerous military
techniques for scientific, and civilian, applications.200
195 Forsberg and Stenson (1995), 58–59, 82, 86, 118, 147, 157. 196 Weinberger (1997), 309, 325, 375. 197 See Trevanion H. E. Nesbitt, Possibilities and Problems of Future U. S. – European Cooperation in the Space Field, Office of Space and Environmental Science Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC, Meeting of EUROSPACE Munich, Germany. Friday, 21 June, 1968, Claës Pilo Private Collection. cf. Arnold W. Frutkin, “The United States Space Program and Its International Significance”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 366, no. 1 (July 1966): 89–98, in particular 92–94. See also Frutkin, “International Cooperation in Space,” Science, New Series, 169, no. 3943 (July 24, 1970): 333–39, in particular 337–38. 198 On 1960s transnational space collaboration and competition between the US and Western European, in particular that of France, see John Krige, “Embedding the National in the Global: US-French Relationships in Space Science and Rocketry in the 1960s,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: MIT Press, 2014), 227–50. 199 cf. David Lindgren, Trust But Verify. Imagery Analysis in the Cold War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000). 200 For an overview of the first symposia on remote sensing, see Mack (1990), 37–39; Liverman et al., People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science, 29–30. For analysis of US military patronage to Earth sciences, see Ronald E. Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: the Military’s Influence on the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945,” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 5 (2003): 635–66. On how military satellite reconnaissance stimulated civil collaborations between geodesy, cartography, and geography, see John Cloud, “American Cartographic Transformations During the Cold War,” Cartography and Information Science 29, no. 3 (2002): 262–82.
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Various synonyms for the term ‘remote sensing’ were used,201 along with the
informal definition: the “measurement of some property of an object without having
the measuring device physically in contact with the object”.202 But since artificial
satellites began orbiting the Earth, the remoteness of sensing expanded to the
gathering of geophysical data of larger terrestrial environments. For remote sensing
to contribute to knowledge about the environment, the organisers of the symposium
argued that it had to be recognised as not being a precise term but one that enabled
new users and approaches beyond those of the military.203
The US Office of Naval Research described the symposium as “a beginning,
a stepping stone, a prelude if you will”.204 By organising subsequent symposia in Ann
Arbor throughout the 1960s, in addition to distributing their proceedings
internationally, the Office aimed to build momentum for the term ‘remote sensing’.205
That the US intelligence communities retained previous terms, like ‘imagery analysis’,
indicates both that early satellite technology was photo-based and had the aim of
producing and interpreting images. For example, several of the first American test
rockets that reached outer space were equipped with cameras to develop surveillance
techniques. Although many other aspects of the tests remained classified, the US
Government distributed images depicting the Earth from outer space.206
201 Among a variety of synonyms to remote sensing were “photo reading”, “photo analysis”, “photo interpretation”, “multiband sensing”, and “terranology”. In addition, it could be defined both as a “science” and as an “art”; Cf. Robert E. Frost, “Aerial photography; a reappraisal of the technology,” in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 13, 14, 15 February 1962, second revised printing (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Laboratory, April 1964 [March 1962]), 65, ITC Archive, University of Twente (hereafter cited as ITC). 202 See Dana Parker, “Some basic considerations related to the problem of remote sensing,” in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 13, 14, 15 February 1962, 7. 203 Parker, “Some basic considerations related to the problem of remote sensing,” 18; Walter Bailey/Office of Naval Research, “Statement of the problems to be considered by the working groups,” in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 13, 14, 15 February 1962, 85–86. 204 See Walter Bailey/Office of Naval Research, “Summary,” in Proceedings of the First Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 13, 14, 15 February 1962, 109–10. Laurence H. Lattman later described the first symposium as an attempt “to arrange a feedback situation” for experts of various fields interested in similar techniques of data gathering. See “Keynote address,” in Proceedings of the Second Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 15, 16, 17 October 1962 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Laboratory, February 1963). 205 Proceedings of the third Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment: 14, 15, 16 October 1964 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Laboratory, 1965); Proceedings of the fourth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, 12, 13, 14 April 1966 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Physics Laboratory, Willow Run Laboratories, Institute of Science and Technology, 1966); Proceedings of the fifth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, 16, 17, 18 April 1968 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Physics Laboratory, Willow Run Laboratories, Institute of Science and Technology, Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan, 1968). 206 Ryan H. Edgington, “Chapter 3 – Boundaries,” in Range Wars: The Environmental Contest for White Sands Missile Range (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 83–117.
As other, civilian, institutions took an interest in remote sensing, the emphasis
on physics-based theory, digitisation of data beyond the initial output of photographic
imagery, and development of platforms to gather these data increased, most notably
in the 1960s through the use of airborne multispectral scanners.207 Early definitions
of ‘remote sensing’, thus, served as an institutional demarcation of the technology for
civilian use.208 Historian of science Naomi Oreskes has also demonstrated how this
contributed to directing science, albeit under military patronage, toward new
environmental uses.209
In Sweden, aerial photography had since the 1930s developed remote sensing
technologies for military reconnaissance and later for mapping land use. With
geographer Carl Mannerfelt’s dissertation on Sweden’s landforms, the Department of
Physical Geography at Stockholm University became a leading institution in aerial
remote sensing methods, 210 which also resulted in practical and commercial
collaborations in Sweden. Starting in the late 1950s, Gunnar Hoppe, a student of
Mannerfelt’s, took a leading role in identifying new technologies for interpreting aerial
images. He also began expanding the university’s international contacts to develop the
technology. 211 Hoppe involved several students, most notably Leif Wastenson, in
spreading the university’s expertise to new users.212 As part of state-led technology
development, the Swedish Government shifted its mapping contracts from private
companies toward state-owned companies or governmental agencies in 1963.213 It is
207 Cirac Claveras (2015): 24–50, especially 28. 208 David Lindgren, an imagery analyst involved in American satellite reconnaissance, in the 1990s conducted hundreds of interviews with members of the intelligence community and found that nobody used the term remote sensing. See Interview with David Lindgren, 6 December 2016. See also David Lindgren (2000), 12. 209 Naomi Oreskes, “Changing the Mission: From the Cold War to Climate Change,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: MIT Press, 2014), 141–88. 210 It should be noted that Mannerfelt did not define his work as “remote sensing” and even after the term was introduced in the 1960s numerous experts continued to debate whether or not it applied to aerial photography. I mention this since Hoppe cited Mannerfelt’s work to argue that remote sensing, avant la lettre, had a longer history in Sweden. See Gunnar Hoppe, “Introduction,” in Remote Sensing Symposium. 24 November, 1969 (Stockholm: The Remote Sensing Group, Swedish Board for Technical Development, 1970), 4. 211 Interview with Leif Wastenson, 14 March 2017; Interview with Margareta Ihse, 11 December 2015. See also Gunnar Hoppe. “Flygfotografi som ett vetenskapligt redskap.” In Årsredogörelser för svensk naturvetenskaplig forskning med bilagor 1958–1964 (Stockholm: Statens naturvetenskapliga forskningsråd, 1965), KB. 212 Leif Wastenson, Landformer i Norden (Stockholm: Kartförlaget GLA – Generalstabens litografiska anstalt, 1967), Leif Wastenson Private Collection. 213 Staffan Helmfrid, “Esselte Kartor AB,” in The History of Cartography. Volume Six. Cartography in the Twentieth Century. Part 1, ed. Mark Monmonier (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 408–9.
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likely that the governmental reforms, at least initially, limited Stockholm University’s
remote sensing applications as these had depended on private companies. Hoppe,
Wastenson, and other Swedish university geographers were therefore in need of
finding new users for their expertise.214
The Swedish National Defence Research Institute (Försvarets
forskningsanstalt) was among the governmental agencies that the Swedish
Government entrusted to lead technological development. Head of research Bengt
Kleman reached out to Hoppe and the university geographers to begin collaborating
on remote sensing for image interpretation, most notably optical and radar
technologies, while also expanding Sweden’s international contacts. 215 In the US,
NASA had a particular interest in the participation of foreign experts, 216
which enabled several Swedes interested in space to study and work abroad.217
Torleiv Orhaug was the researcher at the Defence Research Institute most
closely involved with American experts on remote sensing and visited Ann Arbor for
the fifth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment in 1968.218 Orhaug’s report,
published in late spring 1968, summarised his experience at the symposium and his
visits to dozens of American industrial facilities, military research centres, and
universities. Orhaug’s report identified the need for Swedish agencies to build in-
house computers and train personnel in their use if they hoped to use and interpret
remote sensing.219
214 Among these geographers can be mentioned Harald Svensson and Ulf Helldén at Lund University. 215 “Bengt Kleman,” In Vem är det: Svensk biografisk handbok (Stockholm: 1993); Interview with Leif Wastenson, 14 March 2017. 216 NASA, “Chapter 3. Foreign proposals,” in Opportunities for participation in space flight investigations. NHB 8030, 1A, April 1967, John van Genderen Private Collection. cf. Arnold Frutkin, “Memorandum for Mr Herman Pollact, Acting Director, International Scientific and Technological Affairs, Department of State. Subject: Technical and security constraints upon cooperation with the USSR in space activities,” 22 December, 1966, AWF: dcg/I, Chron, RF. File: CP-I0, NASA HQ. 217 Interview with Kerstin Fredga, conducted by Nina Wormbs and Johan Gärdebo, 1 December 2017, F62:2, TM. 218 Swedish Defence Research Institute, Torleiv Orhaug. En forskargärning i försvarets tjänst; Proceedings of the fifth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, 16, 17, 18 April 1968 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Infrared Physics Laboratory, Willow Run Laboratories, Institute of Science and Technology, Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan, 1968). The symposium in 1969 was the first to formally host international presentations, see Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment. October 13, 14, 15, 16, 1969 (Ann Arbor: Center for Remote Sensing Information and Analysis. Infrared and Optics Laboratory, Institute of Science and Technology, University of Michigan, 1970). 219 Torleiv Orhaug/Defence Research Institute 2, “Rapport från resa till USA 1967 för studier av forskning inom bildbehandlingsområdet,” FOA 2 Report C 2255-52 (Stockholm, 1968), 3, 27, 42–43, 71, 74–77.
Orhaug’s report is interesting because it contributed to a debate over the large
data centres the Swedish Government had developed for general use but that agencies,
such as the Swedish Defence Research Institute, thereafter began to customise for
their own specific purposes.220 Besides this debate on general or specific computers, I
suggest that Orhaug’s report clarified to Swedish technoscientific experts that remote
sensing had to be conceptualised as several elements that were part of a larger system.
This system consisted of sensors, computer capacity, and expertise that were currently
spread over numerous industries, universities, and government agencies.
Hoppe took an interest in the Defence Research Institute’s computer
development for remote sensing. He suggested to Kleman that they, together with
other government agencies, organise a “Remote Sensing” Group to develop Swedish
expertise in the area.221 Hoppe established the Remote Sensing Group on 30 April
1969. 222 Although formally organised and funded under the Swedish Board for
Technical Development, the Group was given the space to shape its own agenda.223
When hosting Sweden’s first remote sensing symposium, mentioned earlier in this
chapter, Hoppe received support from the group at Ann Arbor. The Remote Sensing
Group also adopted the American mission statement of using remote sensing to solve
environmental protection problems.224
The US supported the Swedish Remote Sensing Group by sending Marvin
Holter and Dale Jenkins, two prominent developers of remote sensing, to give
keynotes at the Swedish symposium. 225 Holter and Jenkins also offered Hoppe
Swedish participation in US experiments to globally monitor the environment in
preparation for an American civil remote sensing satellite to be launched in the coming
220 Cf. Datacentralerna för högre utbildning och forskning. Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium vid Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 27 mars 2008, ed. Sofia Lindgren and Julia Peralta (Stockholm: Working Papers from the Division of History of Science and Technology, 2008), 8–9, 11, 15, 17–18, 21, 25, 29, 33, 35, 44, 47–51. 221 See STU “Remote sensing” grupp, “Protokoll nr 1/69,” 30 April 1969, Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling 1968–1969 (hereafter cited as STU), A1 B:1, STU, RA. 222 Hoppe recalled choosing 30 April because of the symbolic meaning this date, known in Sweden as Valborgsmässoafton (Walpurgis night), has for heralding the beginning of spring and of new things to come. See Gunnar Hoppe, “A century of continuous progress,” Remote Sensing, no. 29 (October 1997): 3–5. 223 This was not only true for the Swedish Remote Sensing Group. The Swedish Board for Technical Development retained decentralised leadership and allowed different sections to pursue its own projects. See Weinberger (1997), 432. 224 “Environmental protection problems” is my translation from the Swedish word “naturvårdsproblem”. See STU “Remote sensing” grupp, “Protokoll nr 4/69,” 6 October 1969, STU 1968–1969, A1 B:1, STU, RA. 225 For more on American remote sensing experts, like Holter, see Jirout (2017), 53–66.
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years. The Remote Sensing Group, however, declined the American offer. 226 This was
not because a Swedish satellite appeared inconceivable at the time227 but due to the
priorities of most member organisations that already had expertise in aerial mapping
and now intended to expand their practices using new remote sensing technology.
Establishing a Swedish Space Programme and Foreign Policy, 1970–
1972
In 1970, the Remote Sensing Group changed its name to the ‘Remote Sensing
Committee’ as part of making its activities more permanent. To that point, it had
borrowed the English word ‘remote sensing’, along with additional words, like
‘computer’, to describe components of the technology. Several Swedish proposals
were considered, for example the literal translation ‘fjärravkänning’. Eventually, the
Committee settled for ‘fjärranalys’, with reference to distance (‘fjärr’) and analysis
(‘analys’), which the committee members believed emphasised the sense of sight, as
opposed to other human senses, while also including the act of interpretation.228 This
definition did not favour any particular platform for remote sensing but implied its
role as a component in a larger system as related to subsequent steps of data handling.
The Swedish attempts at defining remote sensing coincided with a period of
growing interest for the Remote Sensing Committee’s work but also uncertainty about
its role. The number of representatives from industry, academia, and government
agencies increased, along with proposals to fund remote sensing experiments. At the
same time, the Swedish Board for Technical Development, which formally organised
the Remote Sensing Committee, began reorienting its activities from scientific pursuits
226 STU “Remote sensing” grupp, “Protokoll nr 2/69,” 12 June 1969, STU 1968–1969. A1 B:1, STU, RA; STU “Remote sensing” grupp, ”Protokoll nr 3/69,” 12 September 1969, STU 1968–1969. A1 B:1, STU, RA. 227 For example, NASA contracted the Swedish camera-company Hasselblad for the entire Apollo project. When astronaut Michael Collins during an orbital mission in 1966 lost his Hasselblad, Swedish media reported in jest but also seriously that this camera was Sweden’s first satellite, see Anders Houltz, “Månkameran,” Daedalus (2007): 70; The Swedish Space Technology Group in 1967 developed actual plans for a Swedish satellite, see Lars Rey, “Nr 67–48. Förslag till en första svensk satellite. PM utarbetad för Arbetsgruppen för rymdteknik,” October 1967, Lars Rey Papers, Sven Grahn Private Collection. 228 STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll nr 10–69/70,” 13 May 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA. In the early 1970s there emerged several national variations to the term “remote sensing”, for example the French term la télédétection des resources terrestres used by the French space agency CNES to indicate both the act of sensing and what was being sensed – earthly resources. See Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016.
toward practical uses and in the process decreased its funding to the Committee.229
Hoppe and the Remote Sensing Committee soon had to find a new host for the
technology.
The shift in emphasis from scientific to societal uses of space technology also
changed the Swedish space activities to more closely align with plans for state-led
technology. Håkansson, who had been central to state-led technology and state-owned
companies, and Stiernstedt, who had directed the Swedish technoscientific experts to
include Sweden in European space activities, now recruited Lars Rey, former chief of
the Swedish Space Technology Group, to work at the Ministry for Industry drafting
plans for a vastly expanded Swedish space programme.230 To get government support,
Håkansson, Stiernstedt, and Rey identified what they called observation satellites as one
of the space technologies that could be of interest to several ministries.231 Mapping
natural resources from space was a business opportunity. It was also a growing
concern for Swedish foreign policy, where Sweden could argue that gains from
observation satellite systems were, and should be, organised as beneficial to the
developing countries globally.232
They were successful in gaining support from the Ministries of Industry,
Communication, Education, and for Foreign Affairs. These ministries now jointly
requested that the Swedish Government expand Swedish technoscientific expertise in
the use of remote sensing satellites. In particular, they made reference to COPUOS
where debates shifted from legal toward technoscientific discussions on the
implications of remote sensing.233
Rey’s next proposal involved converting the Space Technology Group into “a
Swedish space corporation”. The corporation, together with an interim board for
space activities, would provide the Swedish Government with technoscientific
expertise in international debates concerning space technology.234 In spring 1972, the
229 See also Backman (2015), 158–61. 230 This period has been described by Stiernstedt using both private collections and public archives. My interpretations build on additional sources from private collections and interviews. See Stiernstedt, Sweden in Space. Swedish Space Activities 1959–1972, 143, 181–90, 193–98. 231 Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018; Interview with Lennart Lübeck, 9 October 2018. 232 Swedish Ministry of Industry, Promemoria rörande svensk och europeisk rymdverksamhet. Avgiven av Arbetsgruppen för rymdteknik (1969:3), 9, 11, 38, 40, 45, 46, 76–7, 96–97, Lars Rey Papers, Sven Grahn Private Collection. 233 Swedish Ministry of Industry, Aktuella ställningstaganden till det europeiska rymdsamarbetet. Promemoria utarbetad av en arbetsgrupp med företrädare för Industri-, Kommunikations-, Utbildnings- och Utrikesdepartementet (I-Stencil 1970:4), 10, Johan Martin-Löf Private Collection. 234 See Lars Rey/Swedish Ministry of Industry, Organisation och finansiering av rymdverksamhet. Promemoria utarbetad inom Utbildnings- och Industridepartementet, Ds I 1972:1, 34, 37–40; G. Stein/AB Teleplan,
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Swedish Government established the Swedish Space Corporation (hereafter SSC) as a
state-owned company, along with a new governmental agency – the Swedish Board
for Space Activities (hereafter SBSA) – as its governmental counterpart.235
Håkansson became the SCC chair and the executive member of SBSA, with
Stiernstedt acting as director-general of SBSA. They appointed the new chief of the
Swedish Space Technology Group, Fredrik Engström, to act as the first CEO of SSC.
While Rey had assumed that he would lead SSC, Håkansson and Stiernstedt intended
for him to stay at the Ministry of Industry to secure continued support for the
fledgling Swedish space programme.236
During this period, the Remote Sensing Committee increased its ties to
Swedish space activities. Stefan Zenker was one reason for this, since he had worked
for SAAB coordinating space activities, participated at the sixth symposium,237 and
increasingly taken part in the activities of the Remote Sensing Committee.238 After
Zenker took employment at the Space Technology Group, Hoppe also appointed him
secretary of the Remote Sensing Committee,239 thereby strengthening the institutional
ties between remote sensing and Swedish space activities.
As secretary for the Remote Sensing Committee, Zenker drafted a long-term
solution for its organisation. 240 All members argued that the remote sensing
technology should be owned by its users. One solution would be to reorganise the
Committee as a collaborative organisation owned jointly by Swedish industries.
Another would be to join an existing organisation, like the Committee on Natural
Resources, 241 which also received support from the Swedish Board for Technical
Framtida organisation av rymdverksamhet, 21 February 1972, Johan Martin-Löf Private Collection. See also Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018. 235 Swedish industry initially planned to be co-owners of the space corporation but when SAAB backed out in the final stage of planning, the other companies also abandoned the proposal. See Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018. 236 Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM; Interview with Lars Rey, 1 July 2018. 237 See Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment. October 13, 14, 15, 16, 1969. 238 STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll nr 7–69/70,” 13 February 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA; STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll nr 8–69/70,” 13 March 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA; STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll nr 8–69/70,” 13 April 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA. 239 STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll,” 14 December 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA; Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 4 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 25 januari 1971,”, 28 January 1971, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA. 240 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 4 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 24 januari 1972,” 16 February 1972, STU 1971–1972. A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA. 241 For earlier Swedish governmental inquiries proposing a natural resource committee, see SOU 1967:44, Miljövårdsforskning. Del II. Organisation och resurser, 49–56.
Development and worked well with the environmental purposes already formulated
for remote sensing. Zenker’s proposal, however, was to incorporate the Remote
Sensing Committee into a Swedish space programme. This institutional solution, he
argued, allowed for environmental uses but expanded these to an international level,
for example through ongoing negotiations in the UN, which were then more
important than national uses.242
Zenker’s argument, that environmental concerns were not only national but
also international, drew strength from a growing emphasis in Swedish foreign policy
to treat the environment on par with other political matters.243 Nowhere else was this
as clearly demonstrated as in the planning process for the first UN Conference on the
Human Environment, later known as The Stockholm Conference.244 Hoppe had been
involved with the Swedish National Committee for the Stockholm Conference
himself, advising on how remote sensing could benefit the environment.245
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs took note of these ideas and appointed Johan
Martin-Löf, another employee of the Space Technology Group, as Swedish
representative to the UN, to advise the Swedish diplomats on space technology.
Sweden had been among the first countries to raise the concern in COPUOS by
pointing to a technology gap with respect to remote sensing. Together with
representatives from Canada and Italy, the Swedish delegation thereafter proposed a
working group to study the technology, its relevance for different countries, and
propose how the UN could be part of organising it.246 Martin-Löf described to the
Remote Sensing Committee what the Swedish Government hoped to achieve in
COPUOS:
The task is to ensure that the new space technology can benefit the countries of the
world, provided that due consideration is also given to state sovereignty. The Swedish
242 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 5 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 4 februari 1972, 17 February 1972, STU 1971–1972. A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA; Stefan Zenker, “Bilaga 5. Den svenska remote-sensing-verksamhetens organisation (Utkast 2), 6 Februari 1972, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA. 243 Interview with Björn Skala, 17 February 2016; Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 1 February 2016 Interview with Bo Kjellén, 20 November 2015. 244 For a summary and analysis, see Engfeldt (2009), 44–88. 245 STU Remote Sensing-grupp, “Protokoll,” 4 November 1970, A1 B:4. 4E 33, STU, RA. 246 UN PO, “UN Meetings in May 1971,” 26 February 1971, PO 351 (7–1); “Sharing Benefits of Earth Resources Satellite Technology with LDCs,” 14 May 1971, PO 351 (7–1); UN PO, “Response from Kaj Sundberg, minister and Acting Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, to Franco Fiori, Chair of the UN working group on remote sensing regarding ‘Permanent mission of Sweden to the United Nations,” 24 April 1972, PO 313 (1–4), United Nations Archive in New York City (hereafter UN Archive-NYC).
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idea is that the working group shall give smaller and weaker states a chance to influence
the great powers regarding these matters.247
Although the UN General Assembly approved the Swedish proposal, and the UN
administration aimed to gather information on remote sensing from its member
countries, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs worried that it did not have
sufficient technoscientific expertise to lead this debate that Sweden itself had
initiated.248 Hoppe and Zenker used these demands by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
to secure support from the rest of the Committee to accept reorganising as part of
the Swedish space programme and, thereby, become indispensable to the Ministry’s
international negotiations on remote sensing.249
When the Swedish Government in April 1972 announced the establishment
of a Swedish space programme, this involved organising the Remote Sensing
Committee under the new SBSA. At the same time, the Space Technology Group and
personnel from ministries joined as staff of SSC.250 Having appointed Zenker, Pilo,
and Martin-Löf to serve as committee secretariat and international representative,
SSC controlled key positions in shifting the Remote Sensing Committee toward
increasingly space-related remote sensing activities.
So far, I have demonstrated the growing importance of remote sensing in
Sweden during the 1960s, and eventually its role in Swedish foreign policy towards the
UN in the early 1970s, as part of Swedish ambitions to support developing countries
internationally. Safeguarding Swedish technoscientific expertise in remote sensing also
motivated the Swedish Government to establish a Swedish space programme. Early
247 Original in Swedish: “På svenskt förslag har en särskild arbetsgrupp för jordresurssatelliter bildats. Dess uppgift är att se till att den nya rymdtekniken på bästa sätt kommer världens stater till godo under vederbörligt hänsynstagande till staternas suveränitet. Den svenska grundtanken är att arbetsgruppen ska ge de små och svaga staterna en möjlighet att påverka stormakterna i dessa frågor”. See Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 1 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 10.9 1971,” p. 2, 13 September 1971, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA. 248 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 3 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 6 december 1971,” 8 December 1971, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA; Janez Stanovnik/UN PO, “To Kutakov, Economic Commission for Europe. Convening of the Working Group on Remote Sensing of the Earth by Satellites,” 73, PO 321 (6), UN Archive-NYC. 249 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 5 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 4 februari 1972, 17 February 1972, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA 250 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 6 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté den 29 maj 1972,” 5 June 1972, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA.
on, the Remote Sensing Committee adopted the American arguments about the
environmental benefits of remote sensing. At this point, however, they had no specific
plans about developing satellites for these uses. I will next detail how SBSA and SSC
aimed to gain the mandate and money to further develop remote sensing, with
significant implications for both Swedish foreign policy and for framing why sensing
the environment was relevant.
Combining National and International Concerns, 1972–1974
Several events during summer 1972 made remote sensing central to narratives about
a common environment and to conflicts over its use. The Stockholm Conference in
June made reference to the view of the Earth from space in numerous speeches,
posters, and even as a backdrop on stage.251 But while developing countries viewed
advanced technology as a means to bridge gaps between rich and poor nations,
Western countries considered space technology an end in itself that eventually would
help all countries to better use the environment.252
In July, the US made this debate more pressing by launching the first civilian
remote sensing satellite ERTS-A, later renamed ‘Landsat-1’. Whereas US agencies
differed on whether to use the satellite to “benefit all people” or to commercialise
space industry, 253 developing countries in COPUOS discarded both approaches
arguing that if satellite sensing was performed only nationally, it violated the
sovereignty of others, further widening the technological gap between nations. Unless
satellite remote sensing was regulated internationally, it would divide the rich and poor
into the sensing and the sensed.254 These references to a North-South divide that had
entered COPUOS in the late 1960s had, by 1972, begun to fundamentally change its
agenda.255
The hosting of the Stockholm Conference is also indicative of attempts by the
Swedish Government to develop new areas of international politics. One such area
was international aid for developing countries,256 promoting a third-way politics in
251 Poole (2008). 252 Interview with Göran Bäckstrand, 31 July 2018; Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 1 February 2016; See also Engfeldt (2009), 77–85. 253 See Mack (1990), 182–84, 194. See also Jirout (2017). 254 Interview with Johan Martin-Löf, 5 April 2016. 255 Balogh (2013), 66. 256 For several examples, see Bruno (2016).
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support of weak states against that of stronger ones, like the US and the Soviet
Union.257 Another area was politicising the environment, which earned the epithet
“environmental diplomacy”.258 Environmental diplomacy relied on technoscientific
experts to give political arguments their rationale. Often these experts were directly
involved in and led the negotiations.259
For many Swedish political civil servants, the Stockholm Conference provided
a training ground in this environmental diplomacy.260 The Swedish Government sent
several of these civil servants to COPUOS with the aim to expand Sweden’s non-
aligned support for developing countries, and environmental diplomacy, to also
include debates on regulating the technology of remote sensing. This is important to
note also because historical research has yet to address outer space debates as being
part of the environmental diplomacy that developed in late twentieth century.
By autumn 1972, the Remote Sensing Committee had become the
organisational nexus between SSC, SBSA, and Sweden’s contribution to the
international debate about remote sensing. With Zenker leading the Committee’s
secretariat, Martin-Löf acted as its international spokesperson. For these reasons, the
international negotiations on how to define and use remote sensing were also closely
connected to the discussions on how to organise and apply the technology in Sweden.
SSC shifts Swedish Remote Sensing from Airplanes to Satellites
Although SBSA in 1972 initiated collaborations with NASA on remote sensing, as did
other Swedish governmental agencies and research groups,261 the Remote Sensing
257 Interview with Birgitta Dahl, Uppsala, 26 May 2015. See also Olof Palme, Hanoi Speech, 23 December 1972. On Swedish realpolitik, cf. Aryo Makko, Ambassadors of Realpolitik. Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War (New York & Oxford: Berghahn, Studies in Contemporary European History, 2017), 247. 258 Political scientist John Carroll is one of the influential thinkers to have coined the term “environmental diplomacy”. It later received wider use in the UN. See John Carroll, Environmental diplomacy: an examination and a prospective of Canadian-U.S. transboundary environmental relations (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1983). For earlier argument similar to Carroll’s, see Lundgren, Odén, and Oredsson (1982). See also Lytle (1996). For a synthesis, see Kurk Dorsey (2002), 49–62. For subsequent use in the Swedish context, see Engfeldt (2009), 35–36. 259 Olof Rydbeck, I maktens närhet: diplomat, radiochef, FN-ämbetsman (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1990), 240, 252–60. For later summaries, see Joachim Radkau, The Age of Ecology (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 79–86. For more on Swedish ambassador Rydbeck’s critique of satellite remote sensing, see Jirout (2017),107.260 Interview with Sune Danielsson, 18 May 2015; Interview with Bo Kjellén, 20 November 2015;Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 1 February 2016; Interview with Björn Skala, 17 February 2016;Interview with Göran Bäckstrand, 31 July 2018.261 See NASA, “SW-0030-0. Investigations Programs. Cooperation with SBSA,” 1972; NASA, “SW-0089-0. Investigations Programs. Cooperation with Defense Material Administration,” 1972, NASM.
Committee had so far declined American offers to shift from airplanes to satellites as
a platform for remote sensing. Since SSC aimed to change platform for remote sensing
it began by addressing the technology as an organisational problem that could be
solved by remaking the Committee as a part of the Swedish space activities. Like
remote sensing itself, the Committee would be an interdisciplinary enterprise
consisting of technoscientific experts who developed the technology and researchers
who tested new application areas.262
As the Remote Sensing Committee was moved from the Board for Technical
Development to SBSA, Engström used SSC’s function as committee secretariat to
revoke all existing memberships, except for Hoppe’s and Zenker’s, in order to pick
and choose who would be reinstated. He asked Hoppe for a “long list” of candidates
from which SSC then selected a “short list” of proposed new members for the new
Remote Sensing Committee under SBSA. 263 After SBSA established the new
committee, SSC in January 1973 informed other governmental agencies that SBSA
now was “the natural information and coordination centre [for remote sensing]”. All
dialogue relating to the technology should now pass through SBSA as part of
establishing collaboration between industry and academia.264
SSC’s shift from airplanes to satellites corresponded to when the European space
activities, after years of crisis, consolidated the various national commitments and
reformed ESRO and related organisations into the European Space Agency (hereafter
ESA).265 The US and the Soviet Union had by the early 1970s begun several collaborative
projects that lead to a détente in the Cold War. For non-aligned states like Sweden, this
meant fewer diplomatic repercussions for expanding rocket bases and receiving stations on
its territory. As part of incorporating national and European space activities into ESA, the
Swedish Space Technology Group had for years negotiated a transfer of the European
to .
262 SSC, “Den svenska remote-sensing-verksamhetens organisation [The Swedish Remote Sensing Activities Organisation],” 10 August 1972, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. Zenker sent this PM to Hoppe with assurances that it was drafted by SSC and not by himself or SBSA, see Stefan Zenker, “To Gunnar Hoppe,” 23 August 1972, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 263 Original in Swedish: “Jag har talat med prof Hoppe om en bantning av listan….Den ‘korta’ utgörs av de sex första namnen på den ‘långa’ listan”. Seee Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Till Hans Håkansson: RS-kommitténs sammansättning,” 6 October 1972, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.264 Original in Swedish: “Fjärranalyskommittén är] den naturliga informations- och koordinationscentralen”. See Hans Håkansson/SSC, “Till Gendir A. Nyberg, SMHI. Koordinering av svenska ERTS-projekt,” 17 January 1973, Stefan Zenker Collection.265 Apart from the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) was also reorganised. See the European Space Agency (hereafter cited as ESA), Convention of the European Space Agency (Paris: Publications Division of the European Space Agency, 1975), 1–2, Historical Archives of the European Union at the European University Institute, Florence (hereafter cited as EUI).
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Space Range to Swedish ownership. ESA now provided supportive funding to SSC
for taking over Esrange and SSC in turn ensured the continued development of
this space infrastructure for ESA’s future activities.266
Figur e 2 . Esrange Landsat Station Geographical Coverage. Undated sketch. Sven Grahn Private Archive.
Once SSC acquired Esrange, it also sought to expand its use as a receiving station for
remote sensing (Figure 2). In July 1973, Zenker contacted ‘American representatives
in the UN regarding the possibility of establishing a downlinking station in northern
Europe for Landsat data.267 They discussed several potential locations for the station.
No decisions were reached, but SSC had indicated to the US government that Sweden
was interested in satellite remote sensing data.268
Since the Swedish Government had taken a critical stance toward satellite
remote sensing internationally, SSC aimed to soften that stance with regards to the
technology. When the Swedish delegation to COPUOS in November 1973 made
266 Krige, Russo, and Sebesta (2000), 5–9, 21. 267 Stefan Zenker/Rymdtekniska gruppen, AB Teleplan, “F1/1. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 4 med STU:s Remote Sensing Kommitté, 24 januari 1972,” p. 3, 16 February 1972, STU 1971–1972, A1 B:6. 4E 33, STU, RA. 268 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Possible reception of ERTS-1 real-time data in northern Europe,” 30 May 1973, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; NASA, “Letter from James Morrison to Stefan Zenker, SSC”. 7 July 1973, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
preparations for next year’s UN session in New York, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs
wanted to make a case for how remote sensing could be organised to close the gap
between rich and poor nations. Martin-Löf and Zenker suggested that Sweden could
propose regional centres for distributing data, seeing as a national receiving station
could also have international uses, but remain ambiguous about how these stations
should be organised.269
In addition to these recommendations, SSC had produced a report for SBSA
that explored the concept of simpler forms of rockets for experimenting with remote
sensing. 270 Hoppe later approved of these proposals as a stepping stone toward
satellites. As the Swedish Government during the early 1970s prepared for a national
inventory of its natural resources at the regional and local levels,271 Hoppe sought to
influence the Swedish Geographical Survey Office (Rikets allmänna kartverk) to also
consider using satellites in performing future surveys. A natural resource inventory,
Hoppe asserted, would require “a continuous observation of the environment”.
Therefore, Sweden needed alternative platforms since aerial photography was both
costly and limited in access.272
Correspondence by Zenker, Martin-Löf, and Hoppe indicates that SBSA and
SSC, a year after taking over the Remote Sensing Committee, made arguments in
favour of satellite remote sensing that in some respect shifted Sweden’s foreign policy
regarding the technology. SSC also used the Committee to assert its role as leader of
the technology at the national level in Sweden. SSC retained the Remote Sensing
Committee’s environmental purposes but shifted these from a national debate about
aerial mapping and regulation of natural resources toward an international debate
about how satellites sense a global environment.
269 The Remote Sensing Committee, Swedish Board for Space Activities (hereafter cited as FAK), “Protokoll FAK 73/9,” 16 November 1973, FAK, SBSA, RA. See also SSC, “D3/1. FN:s frågeformulär, förslag till svar på tekniska frågor,” 15 November 1973, DFR Diariehandlingar Dnr 368–449, aug–dec 1973, E1:6, SBSA, RA. 270 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Anteckningar i anslutning till läsning av ‘Svensk fjärranalysverksamhet i långtidsperspektiv’,” PM FAK 73/4, AB Teleplan, 30 November 1973, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 271 For an analysis of inventories in Sweden as well as other countries during the latter part of the twentieth century, see Katarina Nordström, Trängsel i välfärdsstaten. Expertis, politik och rumslig planering I 1960- och 1970-talets Sverige [Congestion in the Welfare state – Expertise, Politics and Spatial Planning in 1960s and 1970s Sweden], dissertation (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2018), 31–32, 120, 131–32. 272 Original in Swedish: “I bilden finns också med behovet av en kontinuerlig miljöövervakning”. See Gunnar Hoppe/SBSA, “Till Generaldirektör Harry Wikström, Rikets Allmänna Kartverk,” p. 2–3, 12 December 1973, A1 B:2, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
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A Treaty on Remote Sensing to Close the Technological Gap
After the Swedish delegation proposed the establishment of the UN Working Group
on Remote Sensing, the US Government increased its efforts to promote American
expertise to the UN. Before the Working Group had even convened in 1972, NASA
hosted international training sessions for UN delegates, along with issuing a report,
“Remote Sensing of the Earth”, 273 that summarised the past five years of
technoscientific expertise on how satellites could promote a host of applications, for
example forestry, agriculture, geology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, and city
planning.274
However, when Martin-Löf summarised developments in COPUOS later that
year, he noted that the environmental debates of the Stockholm Conference, along
with US initiatives for remote sensing before and after, had not reconciled the
differing views. On the contrary, he anticipated that negotiations on the environmental
use of remote sensing would continue at the UN for years to come.275 It should be
noted that the developing countries, most notably their coordinated efforts in the UN
as “Group of 77” that grew out of the Non-Aligned Movement since 1961, did not
oppose industrial technology as such but rather unequal ownership and uses of
technology.276 Government officials, for example from Brazil, were for this reason not
interested in environmental arguments that limited their ability to strengthen national
economic production.277
273 See Janez Stanovnik/United Nations Office for Political and Security Council Affairs (hereafter cited as “UN PO”), “To Kutakov, Economic Commission for Europe. Convening of the Working Group on Remote Sensing of the Earth by Satellites,” p. 73, 7 February 1972, UN PO, PO 313 (1–4), UN Archive-NYC. 274 This report has been cited in technical literature on remote sensing as influential for the first conceptions on the use of remote sensing for the environment, see Arthur P. Cracknell and Ladson W. B. Hayes, Introduction to Remote Sensing (London: Taylor and Francis, 1991), 1; David A. Landgrebe, Signal Theory Methods in Multispectral Remote Sensing (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2003), 4–6; Elachi and van Zyl, Introduction to the Physics and Techniques of Remote Sensing , 4–5, 12. 275 Johan Martin-Löf, “NASA:s jordresurssatelliter samt FN:s aktiviteter beträffande fjärranalyssatelliter,” in Fjärranalys. Föredrag hållna vid sammankomsten onsdagen den 22 november 1972, ed. Gunnar Hoppe (Stockholm: Documenta KVA 6, 1973), 38. 276 See Hodge (2016), 157. On the emergence in the 1960s of G77 and development paradigms aimed at technology transfer, equitable resource use, and decolonisation of “the global South”, see Nils Gilman, “The New International Economic Order: A Reintroduction,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6, no. 1 (spring 2015): 1–16; Daniel J. Whelan, “‘Under the Aegis of Man’: The Right to Development and the Origins of the New International Economic Order,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 6, no. 1 (spring 2015): 93–108. With respect to demands by G77 relating to space technology, see Dubois et al. (2014), 22. See also Engfeldt (2009), 30–33. 277 Brazil initially led developing countries in the UN to include economic development as part of UN international environmental policymaking, see Roger Eardley-Pryor (2014), 19.
When the American delegation proposed that its NASA-reports be
reformulated as a set of principles for remote sensing globally, this marked the starting
point for a decade-long debate on the matter. In February 1974, Brazil’s delegation
drafted a “Treaty on Remote Sensing of Natural Resources by Satellites”. 278 In
opposition to the US proposal to sense the Earth globally, Brazil proposed remote
sensing as a tool for international collaboration. To benefit all people, the technology
had to be established on UN principles of “permanent sovereignty of people and
nations over their natural resources”. Sovereignty had previously been an argument to
shield territory from sensing by foreign airplanes. Brazil now argued that a similar
interpretation should be made with respect to sensing by satellites.279
Brazil’s treaty proposal for remote sensing had a number of implications.
Firstly, sensed states could resist sensing. Secondly, sensing states would refrain from
remote sensing until consent had been given by the sensed states. And thirdly, if
consent was given by the sensed state, that state was also entitled to participate in the
sensing activities in order to access the data gathered. Brazil’s proposal served to
transfer control over remote sensing from sensing states to sensed states. It also meant
international collaboration on terms dictated by the developing countries.
By the time COPUOS’ Scientific and Technical Subcommittee convened in
New York in March 1974, Brazil’s draft had received many reactions. The developing
countries and the UN secretariat were enthusiastic. They made reference to earlier
discussions in the Working Group on Remote Sensing, initiated by Sweden, to argue
that it was time for the UN Outer Space Affairs Division to take up the role of
coordinator and regulator of remote sensing so as to ensure its international use.
Firstly, remote sensing centres should be regional instead of national. Secondly, a UN
conference on space applications should be hosted, seeing that the last major
symposium had been in 1968. This conference would also include “non-space powers”
so as to reduce “the gap” and attain “indigenous” competence for space technology
278 See Sergio Armando Frazao, Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, “To Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the United Nations. ‘Treaty on remote sensing of natural resources by satellites’,” 1 February 1974, in UN PO, “Working Group on Remote Sensing of the Earth by Satellites,” PO 313 (1–4), UN Archive-NYC. 279 Brazil distributed the proposal to all UN member states. This signaled critique against how the US and Soviet Union had organised COPUOS to exclude former colonies that currently lacked means to participate in space activities. See “Treaty on remote senisng of natural resources by satellites,” 1. See also Brazil’s references to UN resolution 1803 (xvii), of 14 December 1962, and 2156 (xxi) of 25 November 1966. In UN Archive-NYC.
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to safeguard its use as “a resource for mankind”.280 And thirdly, the UN’s outer space
personnel would visit all European countries to assess how each could contribute to
this technology transfer.281
Optimism among developing countries and the UN secretariat was paralleled
by an equally great fear among the US and Western European delegations. The US
criticised the UN’s ability to assess current user needs. It cited earlier attempts by the
UN to gather information regarding remote sensing, which in the last two years had
received responses from no more than ten nations.282 Only through existing space
powers, the American delegation claimed, would it be possible to attain the necessary
expertise to use remote sensing for global needs.283
In COPUOS’ Legal Subcommittee, Brazil had managed to begin negotiations
to draft a treaty for the “judicious use of remote sensing”. The US and Western
European delegations were able to begin a similar negotiation in the Scientific and
Technical Subcommittee. This meant dedicating the coming years to preparing
technical reports so that “organisational and financial matters progressed along with
legal aspects of remote sensing”.284 While organisational and financial matters had
seldom been part of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee before this, Chair
Carver insisted that in order to reconcile varying views on remote sensing, the
question now had to be dealt with in “all its aspects”.285
Negotiations on these technical reports meant that the Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee postponed elaborations on UN coordination for remote sensing to the
next session in 1975. All delegations agreed that the Subcommittee would, for the
time being, remain as the UN arena where remote sensing would be debated and, in
the meantime, not pose any national restrictions on the use of remote sensing.286
280 See The Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Use for Outer Space (hereafter cited as “UN STSC”), “Review of the reports of specialised agencies and national reports,” 22 March 1974, A/AC.105/C.1, WG, WP, UNGA, Uppsala University’s Dag Hammarskjöld archive (herafter cited as DH). 281 UN STSC, “Status of the UN programme on space applications. Statement submitted by the Secretary-General,” 16 April 1974, A/AC.105/C.1, WG, WP, UNGA, DH. 282 The low response rate, in addition to demands from developing countries for a treaty on how to use remote sensing, suggest that American civial remote sensing remained a politically contentious issue during the early 1970s. cf. Jirout (2017), 105, 109. 283 UN STSC, “Examination of the United Nations programme on space applications,” 25 April 1974, A/AC.105/C.1, WG, WP, UNGA, DH. 284 See UN STSC, “Proposal for inclusion in the subcommittee’s report,” 24 April 1974, A/AC.105/C.1, WG, WP, UNGA, DH. 285 See UN STSC, “Eleventh session. Provisional agenda,” 19 March 1974, A/AC.105/526–533+Agenda, Calender, C.1/Agenda, C.1/1, INF, UNGA, DH. 286 UN STSC, “Eleventh session. Draft report,” 25 April 1974, DH.
It was at this point in the UN debate that remote sensing was explicitly
delineated as a judicial debate in COPUOS’ Legal Subcommittee on the one hand and
a debate on definitions in COPUOS’ Scientific and Technical Subcommittee on the
other.
Previous research has focused on debates in the Legal Subcommittee, which is
understandable given that this involved most explicit political statements and
positioning between the different delegations.287 By studying the Legal Subcommittee,
political ecologist Jason Beery detailed the process whereby developing countries
during the 1970s asserted their right to outer space, in particular through the Bogota
Declaration that claimed sovereignty over orbital space around the Earth’s equator
where spacefaring nations launched telecommunication satellites. The US and Western
Europe responded by conceptualising outer space as global “commons”, meaning an
environment free for all nations to use.288 Beery’s study on debates in COPUOS’ Legal
Subcommittee illustrates how discourse on “promises of use and benefit for all
humanity may just be smoke and mirrors”. The principles, the legal rhetoric, were
meant to mask uneven development of outer space technology,289 effectively dividing
the Earth’s surface into sensing and sensed states.
What is relevant here, however, is not the legal discourse on the environment,
nor its political backers,290 but its proximity to technoscientific expertise. It is for this
reason that Swedish environmental diplomacy involved experts like Martin-Löf in the
delegation to COPUOS. And therefore one has to look at the Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee, not the Legal Subcommittee, to see how the technoscientific expertise
of the former conceptualised sensing technology for the latter, which in turn
informed what the sensed environment was.
287 This condition has been described by several interviewees, see Interview with Sune Danielsson, 18 May, 2015; Interview with Björn Skala, 17 February 2016; Interview with Peter Jankowitsch, 31 July 2017. 288 Jason Beery, “Unearthing global natures: Outer space and scalar politics.” Political Geography 55 (2016): 92–101; Jason Beery, Constellations of Power : States, Capitals and Natures in the Coproduction of Outer Space, dissertation (Manchester: The University of Manchester, 2011), 106–23. See also Christy Collis, “The geostationary orbit: a critical legal geography of space’s most valuable real estate,” Sociological Review 57 (2009): 53–58; Isabel Diederiks-Verschoor and Vladimir Kopal, An Introduction to Space Law, third revised edition (New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2008), 76. 289 Beery (2011), 206. For later versions of this argument, see Jason Beery, “Terrestrial Geographies in and of Outer Space,” in Palgrave Handbook of Society, Culture, and Outer Space, ed. Peter Dickens and James S. Ormrod (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 47–70. 290 For a theoretical analysis of how law discourse frames what nature is, see David Delaney, Law and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). For specific focus on geography and interest of actors in changing it, see David Delaney, The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making: Nomospheric Investigations (London & New York: Routledge, 2010).
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SSC use Transnational Projects to Shift the Swedish Concept of Remote
Sensing
While the Swedish delegation supported the demands of the developing countries in
the UN, SSC continued its plan to disassociate remote sensing technology from
airplanes. As part of this, Zenker proposed that the Remote Sensing Committee
should reconceptualise remote sensing, discarding “primitive techniques” such as
airplanes, and focus on developing technoscientific expertise on satellites. This was
necessary, Zenker argued, in order for Sweden to play an international role for remote
sensing, seeing that the technology increasingly focused on satellites. The Committee
contributed to reconceptualising remote sensing by exemplifying how satellite
technology was not one particular thing but a series of “elements”. The organisation
of these elements involved not only the sensor and different types of platforms but
also subsequent steps: data processing, interpretation, and presentation.291
These ideas were not new. At the symposia in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US
researchers had long argued for viewing remote sensing as consisting of different
technologies, for example the sensors and platforms, and the Swedish Defence
Research Institute had detailed how image analysis required the development of a
system consisting of several elements. But SSC synthesised the ideas in a way that
unsettled the previous Swedish preference for airplanes and let SSC assert greater
ownership of remote sensing as part of a space programme.
Soon Swedish geographers would take a stand for aerial remote sensing. Later
in 1974, the Swedish Geographical Survey Office was reformed into the Swedish
National Land Survey (Lantmäteriverket, hereafter the Swedish Land Survey),
meaning that the numerous regional offices and consultancies had been consolidated
under one organisation effectively holding most of the Swedish experts, resources,
and institutional contacts currently involved with remote sensing. The Land Survey
set out to produce cases that demonstrated benefits of aerial surveys over satellite
sensing. In the process, the Land Survey also discarded “SSC’s plans” as unfit for
producing technology that could be considered useful for Swedish mapping.292 Instead
of directly challenging the Land Survey, SSC searched for projects that fell outside of
291 FAK, “PM FAK 74/6. Tre programalternativ för fjärranalysområdet under 1974/75,” p. 9, 25 April 1974, FAK, SBSA, RA. 292 Claës Pilo/SSC, “Några aktuella problem för svensk fjärranalys,” 11 June 1974, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
the Land Survey’s national mapping activities. These projects could then be used to
demonstrate SSC’s own technoscientific expertise.
An opportunity presented itself when a prolonged strike among Swedish air
pilots inflicted a loss of revenue on companies working with aerial remote sensing.
SSC used the strike to motivate leasing and administrating its own platforms and
remote sensing sensors.293 Lacking the necessary airborne equipment, SSC reached out
to contacts at the French space agency CNES. SSC had several contacts at CNES, for
example Pilo who during his time as technoscientific attaché in Paris developed
detailed knowledge of French remote sensing.294 SSC’s CEO, Engström, had also
informally proposed that SSC and CNES should work toward French-Swedish
collaboration on remote sensing.295
Since the Swedish Government had ratified the Baltic Sea Convention,
whereby all states bordering the Baltic vowed to promote research for its
environmental preservation, the Soviet Union had agreed that remote sensing of
environmental problems, for example oil and sea ice observations, should be
encouraged.296 Soviet interest in bilateral environmental collaborations corresponded
to a period in Soviet history when new groups of civil servants became involved with
international environmental diplomacy. These civil servants had little in common with
previous Soviet scientific communities of conservationists who at times opposed state
planning. Instead, the Soviet diplomats aimed to incorporate environmental diplomacy
to justify the ongoing conduct of the Soviet regime.297
Shortly after the Baltic Sea Convention, SSC managed to use the growing
Soviet promotion for environmental applications to initiate a transnational remote
sensing project in the region. With equipment from France and formal support from
the Soviet Union, SSC developed a use of the technology in the Baltic Sea, beyond
Sweden, where it could demonstrate its expertise without compromising Sweden’s
status as a non-aligned state. SSC primarily planned to use the transnational sensing
293 Claës Pilo SSC, “Några aktuella problem för svensk fjärranalys.” 294 Interview with Claës Pilo, 30 May 2017; Claës Pilo/SSC, “Långtidsplan för svensk fjäranalysverksamhet, Statens delegation för rymdverksamhet. PM FAK 73/4, Dl/6,” 13 April 1973, FAK, SBSA, RA. 295 Fredrik Engström/SSC, “E1. “Några reflektioner beträffande Esrange,” 26 October 1973, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; Pilo in turn drew upon his own French contacts to develop transnational projects for remote sensing. See FAK, “Protokoll FAK 73/8,” 15 October 1973, FAK, SBSA, RA. 296 Åke Blomqvist, Claës Pilo, and Thomas Thompson, Sea Ice-75. Summary report, Forskningsrapport 16:9 (Stockholm: Styrelsen för vintersjöfartsforskning, 1976). 297 Douglas Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom: Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 396–403.
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of the Baltic Sea as a stepping stone for future developments of “satellites and space
stations as instrument platforms”.298
The French-Swedish projects in the Baltic Sea allowed SSC to use its
transnational collaborations to demonstrate technoscientific expertise while avoiding
a confrontation with the Land Survey, whose mandate concerned mapping of Swedish
territory. It was one of the first non-military mapping operations in the Baltic region
since the post-war era began. SSC wrote about its remote sensing activities as a
contribution to the aim of the Helsinki Convention of managing pollution of the
Baltic Sea. I argue that the sensing projects contributed to a new thinking about the
Baltic Sea not as a demarcation line in the Cold War but as a shared environment. The
environing of the Baltic Sea developed alongside SSC’s intention to demonstrate its
remote sensing expertise on this part of the Earth’s surface.
Principles and Practice of Remote Sensing, 1975
SSC’s reconceptualisation of remote sensing in the Remote Sensing Committee had
developed into an attempt to deal with national competition, but it also influenced
arguments by the Swedish delegation in the COPUOS Scientific and Technical
Subcommittee the following year. In addition to Brazil’s initiative for a treaty on the
use of satellite remote sensing, NASA had signed a contract with the Italian Telespazio
to establish a Landsat receiving station in 1974. This meant that American satellite
remote sensing infrastructure expanded into Europe, further pressing the issue of
how to make use of the technology.299
Conceptualising Remote Sensing as a System
In spring 1975 in New York, the delegations were prepared to debate Brazil’s treaty
for remote sensing, proposed in the prior year. The delegations had requested more
agenda items than usual and that they be discussed in closer detail than in previous
years. These items included, most significantly, the “definition of remote sensing”,
the “organisation of all activities involved in the technique”, along with more
298 FAK, “PM FAK 74/6. Tre programalternativ för fjärranalysområdet under 1974/75,” 7; Claës Pilo/SSC, ”Pressmeddelande. Fjärranalys av havsis i Bottenviken,” SSC FU1/2 Press, Claës Pilo Private Collection. 299 See Krige (2014). See also Roger M. Bonnet and Vittorio Manno, International Cooperation in Space: The Example of the European Space Agency, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 73.
ambiguous items, like the “purpose” or “role” of remote sensing. All delegations
sought to demonstrate expertise in the technology and how their recommendations
aligned with the universalist ambitions for space technology codified in previous years
by COPUOS.300
The developing countries sided with Brazil’s earlier proposal for a treaty. The
Soviet delegation provided its own set of principles, as did the French. While the
French argued for settling disputes using technical definitions, for example for
“sensor”, “centre”, or “application” of remote sensing,301 Soviet proposals required
that the sensed countries’ own competence in remote sensing had to be developed
before definitions of the technology as a whole could be agreed upon. It cited recent
Soviet support in launching India’s own remote sensing satellite as an example of this
approach,302 along with several other co-operations in the socialist forum Intercosmos
that demonstrated the need to legally negotiate uses to ensure that satellites were used
for “the benefit of mankind”.303
The Soviet delegation summarised these remarks by offering a description of
remote sensing as “a big system”. Rather than only studying components, conclusions
about the technique had to consider the whole system. Applying a systems approach
to American satellite remote sensing, the Soviet delegation argued that it found
problems first with the space segment, where the financing of Landsat remained
uncertain, and secondly with the ground segment, where no UN coordination existed
for how to operate receiving stations or any principles for how to use the technology.
The result was an American system of “uncontrolled monitoring of other states’
natural resources” that would be detrimental to transnational relations globally.304
In response, Frutkin and the American delegation cited results from numerous
bilateral space projects to prove otherwise. The US Landsat programme had during
the last two years operated bilaterally with developing countries without provoking
“abstract speculation” on how the data should be used. For any developing country,
US representative Frutkin claimed, this was about the simple choice of whether or
not to commit to establishing a national centre as a ground segment for remote
300 UN STSC, “Session 12, Meeting 144,”, p. 88, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 301 UN STSC, “Session 12, Meeting 138,” p. 25, 22 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 302 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 139,” p. 13 and 31, 22 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 303 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 139,” p. 35–36 and 40, 22 April 1975; UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 140–41,” p. 55–58, 22 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 304 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 144,” p. 74–76 and 94, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH.
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sensing. The US would then cover the costs of the space segment. Frutkin’s model of
remote sensing progressed gradually through the national expansion of
technoscientific expertise and with continued reliance on American satellites that
eventually would benefit a whole region. He made reference to how communication
satellites had benefitted developing countries. And since the US had “explicitly
designed” Earth resource observation to benefit developing countries, it was likely
that a similar development could be expected with regard to satellite remote sensing.305
Frutkin stated that the US opposed any rationale for remote sensing that
presumed “a self-evident increasing gap in technology between the nations of the
world”.306 The Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, he argued, should focus on the
“facts” about remote sensing, which required patience. He compared remote sensing
with the “standardisation” of other novel technologies, like procedures for using
nuclear power. Frutkin noted that it had taken a generation of experts to develop and
adapt these standards to various national circumstances. Most remote sensing
expertise developed in and emanated from American universities or companies.
Frutkin argued that standards and principles should be developed by those who had
practical experience in the field, not through international negotiations about the
technology.307
As the debate raged on between the US, the Soviet Union, and developing
countries, Martin-Löf and the Swedish delegation proposed to define remote sensing
according to the set of elements drafted earlier by the Swedish Remote Sensing
Committee. These elements of remote sensing were:
• data acquisition,
• data reception,
• data processing,
• data storage and dissemination,
• data analysis, and
• the use of information.
For each of these elements, Martin-Löf argued, the Subcommittee could comment on
technology and training, financing and costs, organisation and management. Like the
Soviet delegation, Martin-Löf referred to the US satellite remote sensing programme
305 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 138,” p. 29, 22 April 1975; “Meeting 140–41,” p. 51–53, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 306 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 150,” p. 149–50, 30 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 307 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 147,” p. 128, 28 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH.
to illustrate how a discussion on each element helped to identify possible dilemmas in
need of negotiation: Currently all international data acquisition relied on the US
experimental Landsat programme. NASA managed the Landsat programme and
planned to expand data reception by launching additional satellites and to support the
establishment of more satellite stations.308 The satellite’s tape recorders were its weak
link, but this could be remediated by building more receiving stations globally.309
Martin-Löf continued detailing the elements, that all receiving stations were
nationally owned and could be used for processing, storage, and dissemination of data. All
stations, however, relied on bilateral agreements with the US to receive data.310 Analysis
of data, as well as use of the information, required photographic or computer-based
equipment and personnel trained in its use.311
Although the Swedish delegation supported these elements being organised by
the UN, Martin-Löf concluded by exemplifying how Sweden through bilateral remote
sensing projects had contributed to the “environmental observation” of oil spills in
the Baltic Sea.312 Regardless of whether the technology was coordinated nationally or
internationally, the unique role of remote sensing would be to provide repetitive
coverage of places like the Baltic Sea to fully understand phenomena in nature.313
Through his speech, which was unusually long for debates in COPUOS,
Martin-Löf aimed to strike a balance between the differing positions toward remote
sensing. As the session continued, the other delegations converged on the Swedish
delegation’s proposal, with the effect that the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee
adopted a technical description for remote sensing as “a system of elements”. It was
a compromise, then, that acknowledged the technology as consisting of both technical
and social parts – for instance, a sensor’s resolution and the ownership of that sensor
308 Apart from the stations already operating in the US, in Canada, and in Brazil, in 1975 more stations were built in Italy, Iran, and Zaire. NASA also had plans to establish more than twenty tracking stations, several of these in countries where the US did not hold military bases and in this respect were not directly subject to American influence. In addition, there was training in remote sensing for foreign personnel offered by various American universities, cf. McDougall (1997), 207. 309 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 144”, p. 85, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 310 Martin-Löf here cited Zenker’s earlier dialogue with NASA that had resulted in SSC securing Landsat data over Swedish territory at a nominal cost.311 Martin-Löf concluded by saying that apart from negotiating whether these elements should be coordinated nationally or internationally the key would be to educate people in the use of remote sensing. See UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 144,” 86–87, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 312 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 137,” p. 25–27, 27 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 313 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 144,” p. 86–87, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH.
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– and one that accepted continued national developments as contributions to future
international debates on the regulation of the technology.314
After additional debate over procedures for moving from defining to
recommending future action, the Subcommittee decided to postpone further
decisions. This meant that, once again, no decision was reached regarding UN
coordination of remote sensing, plans for regional remote sensing centres, or whether
to host a UN conference on space applications.315 Each of these initiatives posed a
potential threat to the position of the space powers; for example, a UN conference
could result in a treaty that regulated remote sensing, transferred technology, and
strengthened UN coordination on terms defined by the sensed states.
The Swedish definition of ‘remote sensing’, later agreed upon in COPUOS as
a system of elements, did not result in any tangible Swedish national gains with respect
to the technology. However, it allowed the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to
retain its good relations with developing countries while avoiding a set of remote
sensing principles that could cripple SSC’s national development of satellite remote
sensing. The writing done by the Swedish delegation had also identified a function
that allegedly only satellite remote sensing could provide – to regularly orbit above a
region that could then repeatedly be sensed. Using the case of the Baltic Sea, the
delegation argued that repetitive sensing allowed Sweden to understand new
environmental phenomena. This relationship, between sensing the Baltic Sea and
writing about that sensing as being about the environment, was central to defining the
environing done by satellites. The aggregate effect was that the making of this sensed
environment corresponded to, and depended on, the continued monitoring by
satellites.
Asserting a Role for Swedish Remote Sensing
Although the Swedish delegation had contributed to reaching an international
consensus on defining remote sensing, increased interest for the technology within
Sweden had instead increased tensions between different institutions. After European
ministers had formally ratified the operational establishment of ESA,316 the member
314 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 145,” p. 79, 93 and 99–100, 25 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 315 UN STSC, “Session 12. Meeting 140–41,” p. 64, 103 and 126, 23 April 1975, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 316 ESA (1975), 7.
countries set about increasing the infrastructural capacity for building, launching, and
using satellites.317 The Swedish Defence Research Institute planned to develop its own
computer systems for image interpretation and prepare for receiving satellite data.318
Since these plans were developed in the Remote Sensing Committee, the Defence
Research Institute sought to increase its influence there by appointing additional
representatives.319
SBSA and SSC aimed to avert these attempts by asserting their own role in
organising the Remote Sensing Committee. For example, members of the Committee
were chosen to represent the national interest in remote sensing, not that of their
respective institutions.320If additional user perspectives were needed, SBSA would
appoint experts to participate in the Committee’s work, but until then SSC would not
expand the number of committee members. SSC also discarded the Defence Research
Institute’s proposals stating that the Swedish Government had already granted SSC
funding to build a Landsat station at Esrange. In addition, SSC also mentioned
numerous experiments that it had begun as part of developing procedures for the
interpretation of satellite remote sensing images.321
Part of SSC’s success in maintaining control over the Remote Sensing
Committee was due to Hoppe continuously informing Zenker of any subversive
actions. Hoppe noted that just as the interest for remote sensing increased, so too did
ambitions of other members in the Remote Sensing Committee to define Sweden’s
remote sensing agenda according to their own interests. Hoppe also assured Zenker
of his personal support.
317 Krige, Russo, and Sebesta (2000), 38. 318 Interview with Sten Nyberg, 11 May, 2017; Interview with Ingvar Åkersten, 14 May 2017; See also Interview with Anders Gustavsson, Staffan Jonson, Anders Nelander and Hans Ottersten, 12 May 2017, F62:2, TM. 319 SSC, “D1/6. Organisation och arbetsfördelning inom svensk fjärranalys,” October 1975, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 320 This phrasing is reminiscent to that used in the ministerial debate to establish ESA. It emphasised that staff in the Agency would serve Europe and not its individual countries: “all concerned should be very, very clear that, once a person enters the Agency, he ceases to serve national interests” and “acts not as national ambassadors”. See Krige, Russo, and Sebesta (2000), 34. 321 SSC, “ D1/6. Organisation och arbetsfördelning inom svensk fjärranalys,” October 1975, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
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[N]umerous times [have I] pointed to the decisive role that our secretariat [SSC] played
in establishing remote sensing in Sweden. I consider it one of my tasks to “eliminate”
any tensions contrary to this view.322
In addition to defending SSC’s and SBSA’s national mandate over remote sensing,
Zenker and Hoppe guarded this position in regional remote sensing forums. One of
these had been initiated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
through its pan-Scandinavian research network, Nordforsk.323 While SSC promoted
transnational collaboration, for example with the French CNES, it had little patience
for regional coordination, like that offered by Nordforsk.324 After one of the meetings
between SSC and Nordforsk, Zenker reacted to the minutes in which the Nordforsk
secretariat implied that all participants agreed that Nordforsk should take on a
coordinating role for Nordic remote sensing. Zenker accused this “supranational
initiative” of posing a threat to already ongoing Nordic collaboration on remote
sensing. He responded that “no amount of additional funding from [Nordforsk] could
justify annexing this existing group”. It was SBSA, Zenker concluded, that
coordinated Sweden’s remote sensing activities and had several international and
bilateral projects that ran “smoothly, effectively and without problems”.325
While the Swedish delegation in COPUOS argued for regional collaboration
on the use of remote sensing, the stance taken by SBSA and SSC in the Nordic context
322 Original in Swedish: “Jag vet ju att man emellanåt sagt något hårt ord om Rymdbolaget, kanske särskilt i massmedia frågor, och det är väl angeläget, att FOA-folket behandlas med aktsamhet. Själv har jag aldrig haft anledning till några som helst klagomål, tvärtom otaliga gånger pekat på den avgörande roll som vårt sekretariat spelat i uppbyggnaden av fjärranalysen i Sverige; jag kan ju bättre än någon annan göra jämförelserna bakåt i tiden….Jag ser alltså saken som föga besvärande och därtill som min egen uppgift, att eventuella spänningar - som i och för sig måste vara naturliga - skyndsamt elimineras”. See Gunnar Hoppe, “To Stefan Zenker, SSC,” 17 November 1975, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 323 It should be noted that “Nordforsk” of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences ceased to operate in 1987 and is thus not directly related to later uses of the name. See Nordforsk Secretariat, “Prognose for Nordforsks Fagområder perioden 1977–79,” Nytt från Nordforsk 2 (1976): 4, 30. On the history of Nordforsk, see Per Stenson, Vidgade vyer : IVA:s tredje kvartssekel under Gunnar Hambraeus och Hans G. Forsberg (Stockholm: Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien, 2004), 67–68, 78, 135. 324 Gunnar Hoppe, “To Stefan Zenker, SSC,” 5 December 1975, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 325 Original in Swedish: “DFR driver ett brett internationellt samarbete inom fjärranalysområdet och har väl utvecklade kontakter med bl a de nordiska intressenterna inom området. Flera projekt har bedrivits i bilateral nordisk samverkan. De nar genomförts på ett smidigt, effektivt och problemfritt sätt. I detta läge har jag svårt att se hur samarbetet skulle kunna främjas av att den nordiska fjärranalysgruppen tar direktiv från Nordforsk, ‘tolkar sin arbetsuppgift’ eller rapporterar till Nordforsk. Protokollet från Oslo-mötet, där bl a en direkt missvisande bild ges av fördelningen av fjärranalysinsatserna i Norden, ger tvärtom anledning att befara, att allmän förvirring skulle uppstå om en organisation utan närmare kännedom om området gav sig på att försöka fördela och samordna insatserna”. See Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Till Jan Törnqvist, Nordforsk. Protokollet från Lyngby-mötet, 25 Februari,” 26 March 1976, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
was primarily to assert these organisations as national experts of the technique. This
stance was further emphasised alongside a growing interest for remote sensing among
various other user groups.
Defining the Nature of Data, 1976
The 1976 session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee repeated many of the
opinions and positions presented the previous year. After an extensive review of
national remote sensing projects, the Australian chair, Carver, argued that remote
sensing appeared to have become an integral part of many national economies but
that international efforts had limited importance for advancing the technology. He
drew the conclusion, supported by the US and other Western allies, that the UN could
not be expected to secure its own space or ground segment for remote sensing.326 The
Soviet delegation engendered some surprise by offering to lend spacecraft to the UN
to set up an international space segment.327 But to summarise these discussions, the
Soviet delegation continued to promote principles but little practice, while the
Americans professed that from practice came power to dictate principles for remote
sensing.
What did change, however, was argumentation about data. After the
Subcommittee reaffirmed the “technical and apolitical status” of the Swedish
definition for remote sensing as a system of elements,328 the debate shifted toward
how to define the data of remote sensing. What was it data about? It is important to
note that the COPUOS debate on remote sensing in 1976 shifted from what the
technology was, toward discussions on how to use its data, which led to assertions
about what the sensed Earth surface was.
The Soviet and American delegations initiated and dominated these debates.
The Soviet delegation suggested a technical classification that divided data into two
categories based on the resolution: the first concerned data whose resolution depicted
a local environment and could be used to derive information about economic
potential; the second concerned data resolution depicting global environments, such
as natural phenomena transcending national boundaries. Based on these technical
326 UN STSC, “Session 13. Meeting 170,” p. 5 and 13–14, 22 March to 7 April 1976, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.144, DH. 327 UN STSC, “Session 13,” 9. 328 UN STSC, “Session 13,” 8.
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classifications of data, the Soviet delegation proposed principles for how to define
data. Local data concerned the natural resources of a country and would thus be
subject to restrictions in dissemination. Global data did not affect the sovereign rights
of states but instead had importance for many or even all states.329
The American delegation discarded the Soviet division of data. Data were
technically impossible to divide in “the special field of remote sensing”, Frutkin
stated, and the division also had far-reaching discriminatory consequences for the
practical uses of remote sensing.330 According to the US, those practical uses should
inform any conceptual definition of the data.331
The Scientific and Technical Subcommittee postponed further definitions of
data, and what constituted the sensing of nature or natural resources, to next year’s
session.332 In the months following the Subcommittee session, ESA notified the UN
of its commitment to develop a launching rocket, the Ariane launcher, and
prophesised that it would play a significant role in subsequent deployment of
European remote sensing satellites in outer space.333
The European developments improved the prospects for Swedish satellite
remote sensing. The other members of the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee began
to take a greater interest in influencing the Swedish delegation to COPUOS and how
Sweden should relate to bilateral and multilateral European agreements. 334 The
committee members took note of SSC’s transnational projects, which had led to
further negotiations with the French CNES on a possible satellite project. The
members felt sidestepped by SSC and demanded from Zenker that continued
negotiations should include representatives from the rest of the Swedish Remote
Sensing Committee.335
Until 1976, the Swedish delegation to COPUOS sought to strike a balance
between supporting the sensed states through UN regulation and leaving room for
Swedish remote sensing to expand. With plans for Swedish participation in a French
329 UN STSC, “Session 13,” 15–16. 330 UN STSC, “Session 13,” 16. 331 UN STSC, “Session 13,” 14. 332 cf. UN STSC, “Session 13,” 17–18. 333 UN PO, “Letter from R Gibson, ESA, to Perek, UN Outer Space Affairs Division,” 13 September 1976, PO 321 (8); UN PO, “Letter from Perek, UN Outer Space Affairs Division to Gibson, ESA,” 9 August 1976, PO 321 (8), UN Archive-NYC. 334 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 76/5,” p. 5, 17 August 1976, FAK, SBSA, RA; FAK, “Protokoll FAK 76/6,” p. 5, 3 November 1976, FAK, SBSA, RA.335 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 76/7,” p. 4, 17 December 1976, FAK, SBSA, RA; Stefan Zenker/SSC,“Anteckningar från möte med FAK 76/7,” 17 December 1976, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
satellite, this stance shifted in favour of establishing Sweden as one of the sensing
states. Other members of the Remote Sensing Committee became aware that SSC’s
plans for satellites would also set the agenda for the committee’s work, as well as
Sweden’s stance in COPUOS. These plans were relevant for both the future of
Swedish satellite remote sensing and definitions of the sensed environment, the latter
of which would become the main focus both nationally and internationally in the
coming year.
Sweden Shifts from Sensed to Sensing State, 1977
At ESA’s ministerial meeting in February 1977, the Swedish Minister of Energy Olof
Johansson read a statement supporting the French proposal to build a remote sensing
satellite, Satellite Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre (hereafter SPOT-1).
I am able, here and now to state that the Government of Sweden is prepared to support
a European remote sensing programme. And having the general content in the French
proposal illustrated here, I hope, of course, that the other member countries will also
find it possible to give the programme their broad support.336
The other European ministers did not support the proposal, but France planned to
build SPOT anyway.337 Zenker had contributed to ghost-writing Johansson’s statement
as part of continued plans for SSC and CNES to collaborate on the satellite.338
When the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee convened in spring 1977,
Martin-Löf reiterated what had been said at ESA’s ministerial meeting, adding that
Sweden was now joining European efforts to establish satellite remote sensing
infrastructure. Sweden expanded the Esrange station in Northern Sweden to receive
data from remote sensing satellites, like Landsat, and would distribute these data
through a European remote sensing network, Earthnet. The Swedish delegation
vowed that it would use these elements of remote sensing to make a national
contribution to the long-term planning of a UN programme for remote sensing, for
example by financing workshops on environmental use of remote sensing in Africa.
336 See Swedish Government, “Excerpt from the statement by Mr Olof Johansson, Swedish Minister of Energy and Technology, at the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level,” 14–15 February 1977, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 337 Krige, Russo and Sebesta (2000). 338 Interview with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2015.
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For this reason, the Swedish delegation also supported a strengthened UN
Secretariat to achieve more UN coordination and make a “global point of view heard”.339 It was at this point that the Swedish delegation’s stance toward remote sensing changed. Until 1977, Sweden had argued that the UN should regulate remote sensing. This position now reversed. Instead of an obligatory transfer of technology to developing countries, from sensing to sensed states, Sweden endorsed national programmes. These could then, on a voluntary basis, support UN activities.
The Swedish delegation argued that it established a Landsat receiving station as part of the aim to provide regional access to satellite data.340 But as I have demonstrated, SSC influenced the Swedish delegation to make Sweden into one of the sensing states, asserting its own rather than regional or UN control of data. This move indicated shifting foreign policy goals from the prior support for regulation of sensing towards regulation through sensing.
As important as Sweden’s stance was for the Swedish remote sensing community,
it provoked no reaction from other delegations at COPUOS, who continued
to debate how to define what constituted environmental data. The Soviet
delegation further developed its claim to restrict data of a local nature to regulation and
coordination by the UN. Information about territory belonged among the “rights
of a sensed nation”, and hence data resolution at 50 meters or finer should be
restricted.341
The American delegation then went on to criticise the
Soviet definition as imposing “arbitrary limitations” on remote sensing. Resolution, in
and of itself, could not be considered to have detrimental implications for any nation.
Several Western allies also argued that the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee
should seek to reach technical, not political, definitions for the technology.342
As the Subcommittee concluded its session, again postponing decisions on a
potential coordinating role for the UN, Martin-Löf travelled back to the Remote
Sensing Committee to summarise and report on the Swedish contributions to the
international negotiations. The Committee recommended that the Swedish delegation
continue to emphasise the importance of UN coordination and regulation.343 But what
339 UN STSC, “Session 14. Meeting 176,” p. 4, 18 February 1977, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.94–222, DH. 340 Cf. Jirout (2017), 109. 341 UN STSC, “Session 14. Meeting 180”, p. 7, 23 February 1977, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.94–222, DH. 342 UN STSC, “Session 14. Meeting 180,” 5–6. 343 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 77/4,” p. 3, 10 June 1974, FAK, SBSA, RA; SSC, “Handwritten notes from FAK 77/4,” 10 June 1974, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
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Martin-Löf actually did was to argue for a stronger national role for satellite
remote sensing. In view of the then-ongoing negotiations between SSC and
CNES to establish a French-Swedish satellite, I interpret the changed stance of
the Swedish delegation as an expression of the intentions and interests of SSC. By
contrast, most of the other members of the Swedish remote sensing
community still promoted strong international coordination of remote sensing.
With the plan for the Landsat station at Esrange to be operational the
following year, 1978, SSC believed it had the leverage to begin negotiating additional
remote sensing collaborations.344 In particular, SSC planned to consolidate computer
image processing activities, previously organised by the Defence Research Institute,
and also negotiate a bilateral agreement on the SPOT satellite that would secure SSC’s
role as both producer and interpreter of satellite remote sensing data.345 To do this,
SSC had to maintain its role as the national representative for the Swedish remote
sensing community. Zenker also attempted to directly influence individual Committee
members to support SSC plans.346 SSC had also professed this national mandate in
1977 by establishing its own journal, Fjärranalys [Remote Sensing].347
SSC promoted its interpretation of how to use remote sensing and also profess
control over that technology’s infrastructure. It visualised several of these
components on the journal’s cover: a receiving station covering all the Nordic
countries; platforms of airplanes and satellites, i.e. Landsat, gathering data to be
processed on tapes and paper printouts; to be used for the monitoring and
management of society, surrounding nature, and species in it (Figure 3).
344 SBSA, “Consideration of Coordination for Sea resource activities. To the Ministry of Industry. DR 1664,” 28 October 1977, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 345 It should be added that SSC by the mid-1970s had begun developing a set of portable processing devices, Enkel BildBearbetningsApparat (EBBA), that SSC lent to research groups so as to enable use of its satellite images. For more on SSC’s development of EBBA and similar initiatives by other Swedish organisations, see Gärdebo, ed., Bildens behandling och utvecklingen av digital fjärranalys: Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium på Tekniska museet i Stockholm den 14 juni 2017. 346 SSC, “Utredning om utrustning för bildbearbetning,” 18 October 1977, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 347 SSC, “‘Fjärranalys’ – ett nytt informationsforum,” Remote Sensing, no. 1 (April 1977): 1. Pilo and Lars Backlund worked with SSC’s CEO Engström to developed the concept of the journal. See Lars Backlund, “Några korta notiser om läget,” 2 November 1976, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. This journal will be referred to as Fjärranalys until 1987, after which it changed language and adopted the English title Remote Sensing.
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Figur e 3. “‘Fjärranalys’ – ett nytt informationsforum,” in Fjär ranalys, no. 1 (April 1977): 1.
In November 1977, SSC and the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs met with CNES
and the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Paris to negotiate Sweden’s
participation in and commitments to SPOT. The French expressed hopes to gain
military funding for the SPOT satellite but recognised that a satellite with both civilian
and military instruments would be hard for a non-aligned Sweden to accept. The
French proposed a solution to keep SPOT civilian while its sibling, a similarly designed
satellite to be built later, could contain a “military payload”. Whether or not the
military would finance such a programme would ultimately depend on French
President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. If Sweden were not to agree, CNES would seek
other European partners.348
During the period in which SSC and CNES traded drafts on an agreement for
the SPOT satellite, members of the Remote Sensing Committee filed a request to
Hoppe and Zenker for an “unconditional” investigation into the roles and
responsibilities within Swedish remote sensing. The members claimed that SBSA and
SSC exerted too much influence over the Committee’s agenda. As part of weathering
the conflict, Hoppe remarked to Zenker that these were only signs that remote sensing
348 Sune Danielsson/Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, “Fransk fjärranalyssatellit SPOT,” 17 November 1977, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
was finally becoming established enough for practical use. Although the struggles of
the Committee during winter 1977 posed a challenge to SSC, the latter retained its
mandate over the secretariat and the agenda for Swedish remote sensing.349
Asserting Sweden’s Role as an Environmental Sensing State, 1978
When the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee convened in spring 1978, the
Swedish delegation was prepared to prioritise a national remote sensing infrastructure
over its previous aims of supporting UN coordination and the rights of sensed states.
To do this, the delegation argued that it would be best for the environment if remote
sensing remained unregulated.
Martin-Löf used SSC’s monitoring of oil spills in the Baltic Sea to argue that
Swedish remote sensing had contributed to environmental management. Like other
nations surrounding the Baltic Sea, Sweden had an interest in better monitoring of
the region’s environmental pollution, since that would allow for better management
of the problem. For this reason, the resolution of remote sensing data could not serve
as a demarcation between nature and society. Detailed resolution, he argued, allowed
for detailed management of the environment.350
[There is] nothing to show that scientific and technical criteria exist for dividing data
into classes based on sensor resolution. […] [T]he interests of the world at large are
best served by a free and open data distribution policy, not least because the sensed
State should in any case always have access to such data.351
The Swedish delegation had arrived at the same position as that of the US and its
other Western allies. It had done so, Martin-Löf explained, based on experiences from
national applications as well as from arguments raised within the Subcommittee
itself.352
The debate on the environmental uses of remote sensing data did not result
in consensus. It did, however, clarify that the Swedish delegation now sided with the
US and its Western allies. The Swedish remote sensing experts contributed to, and
349 Gunnar Hoppe, “Letter from Gunnar Hoppe to Stefan Zenker, SSC,” 21 December 1977, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 350 UN STSC, “Session 15. Meeting 194,” p. 4, 23 February 1978, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.94–222, DH. 351 See UN STSC, “Session 15. Meeting 195,” p. 5, 24 February 1978, A/AC.105/C.1/SR.94–222, DH. 352 UN STSC, “Session 15. Meeting 195,” 7.
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made possible, the gradual shift in Swedish foreign policy from supporting sensed
states toward endorsing sensing states, in effect becoming one as well. Crucial to that
shift was how SSC redefined sensing not as surveillance but as environmental
observation and, hence, subject to little or no restriction.353
Later in spring 1978, after the Subcommittee’s session, CNES and SSC met
several times with the French and Swedish Ministries for Foreign Affairs to finalise
their partnership in SPOT. They worried about persistent UN demands to regulate
the resolution of remote sensing. Both SSC and CNES hoped to find uses of
relevance for defence, industry, and the environment. They also hoped that Canadian
arguments for bilateral satellites could be used to promote the “peaceful use” of
SPOT, thereby preserving the Swedish foreign policy of non-alignment. President
d’Estaing would announce SPOT as a service to “the world community”, which CNES
planned to substantiate later with peaceful and environmental applications.354
As part of shifting from a transnational to a bilateral collaboration, all parties
agreed that specific agreements would be signed not with SSC but between CNES and
SBSA, which was the formal national representative of Swedish space activities,
whereas SSC was a company, albeit state-owned.355 The Swedish Ministry for Foreign
Affairs requested assurances whereby it could deny any military, or covert, use of
Esrange for SPOT data downlinked by SSC. By encrypting certain data, CNES
planned to technically “disassociate” SSC from the specific military, French, use of
SPOT data. If needed, however, CNES would provide SSC with codes to decrypt and
see what part of the Earth’s surface that SPOT had been programmed to sense.356
According to SSC, SPOT contributed to Swedish technoscientific expertise,
both in building and in using satellites, more so than an ESA-project of comparable
size would have done at the time.357 SPOT also meant that SSC’s receiving station,
Esrange, became a nexus for gathering and using data from different satellite
programmes. By being able to directly control what parts of the Earth should be
sensed, SPOT enabled SSC to increase the Swedish Government’s will, and capacity,
353 For a similar argument regarding US international collaborations on meteorological data, see chapter 2 in Callahan (2013), 86 in particular. 354 SSC, “SPOT Meeting between SSC and CNES,” 7 April 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 355 SSC, “Notes from CNES/SPOT meeting between CNES and SSC,” 3 May 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 356 SSC, “Notes from meeting between SSC, Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education,” 30 May 1978, Stefan Zenker Archive. 357 For example, SAAB had built the onboard computer for the Ariane launcher that brought European satellites into orbit, and now it would build the SPOT computer.
“to pursue an independent and farseeing outer space policy”.358 Here should also be
added that ESA had agreed to financially support SSC’s plans of establishing receiving
stations at Esrange for satellite remote sensing data.359
CNES and SSC remained concerned that a possible UN regulation against
remote sensing could impinge on their plans for SPOT. CNES proposed two modes
of sensing, one with multispectral [colour] images at twenty meters resolution and the
other with panchromatic [black and white] images at ten meters resolution. The
Swedish and French delegations agreed to jointly promote the twenty-meter resolution
as an international principle, even if it required making those images freely available
to sensed states. For ten-meter resolution, however, CNES believed such images
approached areas of “legitimate security aspects”. Data at ten meters resolution would
therefore not be delivered to a third party “without the observed countries
approval”.360 During spring 1978 the French Government also prepared and later
proposed an International Satellite Monitoring Agency that would enable the UN to
have non-aligned monitoring of disarmament agreements and of other issues of
concern to the international community.361 This posed a challenge to both the US and
the Soviet Union, 362 and indicated that France’s plans for SPOT could indeed be the
beginning of the end for the Cold War superpower hegemony in outer space. More
important for the transnational collaboration between CNES and SSC was that
France’s proposal for an International Satellite Monitoring Agency might lend political
and peaceful legitimacy to SPOT as well as pre-empt any critique that the satellite
programme served military purposes.
During summer 1978, representatives for the French and the Swedish
Government exchanged and confirmed a series of formal letters regarding the SPOT
agreement.363 After Minister of Energy Olof Johansson confirmed the agreement
358 Original in Swedish: “Man kan också öka respekten för den svenska viljan och förmågan att föra en självständig och framsynt rymdpolitik, och därigenom ge det svenska agerandet i det europeiska rymdsamarbetet ökad tyngd”. See SSC, “Politiska aspekter och finansiella konsekvenser av ett svenskt deltagande i SPOT-projektet,” p. 2, 10 May 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 359 ESA, “Earthnet Medium-Term Planning,” p. 5, 13 March 1978, 4029, IPB-RS, EUI. 360 It can here be mentioned that France in late 1970s believed in the need to restrict resolution of satellite data, whereas Sweden had begun to endorse as free resolution and access to data as possible. See Danielsson, “Space Memories by Sune Danielsson, 29 June 2018,” 23. 361 UNGA, “Address by His Excellency Mr Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, President of the French Republic,” UN Doc. A/S-10/AC.1/7, 1 June 1978, UN Archive-NYC. 362 For more on the International Satellite Monitoring Agency and internal struggles between the NATO countries on space technology, see Simone Turchetti, Greening the Alliance: The Diplomacy of NATO’s Science and Environmental Initiatives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 134–35.363 Sune Danielsson/Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, “PM SPOT,” 15 June 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
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with France to build a remote sensing satellite,364 the Swedish Ministry for Foreign
Affairs in October 1978 announced publicly that Sweden would contribute to the
bilateral SPOT project at four percent.365 What is important to note is not the small
percentage at which Sweden became a co-owner in SPOT but how this participation
enabled new uses of satellite remote sensing, for example the central role of Esrange
as main receiving station in a French-Swedish remote sensing infrastructure, the ability
to order SPOT data, and development of subsequent uses of these for new remote
sensing activities. In this respect, and for both the French and the Swedes, SPOT
meant access to data although the programme’s main ownership was and remained
French.
During spring 1978, when SSC and CNES negotiated SPOT, Zenker faced
growing resistance from the Remote Sensing Committee. Engström had instructed
Zenker to only allow committee discussions regarding future remote sensing projects,
not those already committed to, which meant cutting the Committee members off
from receiving further information regarding the SPOT negotiations. Even Hoppe,
who had defended SSC’s agenda, wrote to SBSA complaining that SSC’s “territorial
attitude” risked antagonising the rest of the Swedish remote sensing community.366
After some committee members presented alternative lists of agenda items,
Engström ordered SSC to pause all of the Remote Sensing Committee’s projects.
These would remain “fallow”, he added, until SBSA restored order. SSC would then,
as before, commission one of its staff to organise the Committee’s secretariat, draft
its agenda, and call upon its members to meet.367 Zenker also resigned as secretary.
[There is] large uncertainty regarding responsibility and work form […] Even if SBSA,
as I hope, take corrective measures on this point, I consider myself used up as secretary
due to the controversial role I’ve been forced to play.368
364 Swedish Ministry of Industry, “Överenskommelse med Frankrike om ett fjärranalyssatellitprojekt,” 24 August 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 365 The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, “Pressmeddelande om SPOT-överenskommelsen,” 16 October 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 366 Original in Swedish: “Rymdbolagets territoriella tänkande”. See Gunnar Hoppe, “Till Jan Stiernstedt, DFR, och Utbildningsdepartementet,” 10 April 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 367 SSC, “Planeringen av DFR:s fjärranalysprogram 1978/79,” 8 May 1978, Stefan Zenker Archive. 368 See Stefan Zenker/SSC, “D1-P12/SZ/CC. Dnr R2044,” 10 May 1978, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
The committee members had no plans for how to organise outside of SBSA, and SSC
was able to restore order over the Remote Sensing Committee. It had lost the support,
however, of the Defence Research Institute, the Land Survey, and to some degree also
that of the geographers at Stockholm University who, under Hoppe, had been
involved from the beginning with setting up the Committee.369 Later in autumn, Pilo
also left the Committee secretariat and his position at SSC. By then he had
collaborated closely with most Committee members in organising national remote
sensing projects but also sensed that the Space Technology Group that formed the
core of SSC primarily viewed these projects as having instrumental priority toward
the overriding goal of building space technology.370
Summary
Between 1969 and 1978, Swedish remote sensing activities moved from initiating
institutional collaborations involving the technology toward participating in a remote
sensing satellite together with France. This process involved the formation of the
Swedish Remote Sensing Committee, its role in the Swedish delegation negotiating
remote sensing at COPUOS, as well as the establishment of a Swedish space
programme under SBSA to finance the state-owned company SSC.
Central to these activities were technoscientific experts to which the Swedish
Government gave a central role as part of leading the country’s industrial
development. These experts enabled transnational collaboration, participated in
international forums and diplomatic negotiations, and organised state-owned
companies. They were able to identify remote sensing as a crucial technology, which
partly motivated the Swedish Government to finance and institutionalise Swedish
space activities.
After the establishment of SBSA and SSC, the technoscientific experts
reorganised the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee to promote primarily satellite
remote sensing, along with SSC as national developer of this technology. The
Committee had been formed to represent Sweden’s remote sensing community
369 Interview with Lars Ottoson, 20 June 2016; Interview with Leif Wastenson, 14 March 2017; Interview with Anders Gustavsson, Staffan Jonson, Anders Nelander and Hans Ottersten, 12 May 2017, F62:2, TM. 370 Interview with Claës Pilo, 30 May 2017.
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nationally. SSC then used its institutional power to shape the Committee’s agenda and
speak as its national representative at international debates and transnational projects.
I have demonstrated how SSC used its technoscientific expertise to influence
the Swedish delegation at COPUOS. Over time, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign
Affairs adopted this technoscientific expertise to continue supporting developing
countries but to do so based on national development of satellite remote sensing. This
meant a de facto change in Swedish foreign policy with regard to the technology.
When the Swedish government began negotiating remote sensing in 1971, it aimed to
give “smaller and weaker states a chance to influence the great powers” on the use of
this technology. In particular, this meant giving the UN power to coordinate and
regulate remote sensing, so as to assure the transfer of technology from sensing to
sensed states, from developed to developing countries. By 1978, the Swedish
government had turned around to advocate national remote sensing programmes. The
sensing nation could then, on a voluntary basis, support the UN in remote sensing
activities.
I have traced how SSC’s technoscientific expertise informed the activities of
the Swedish delegation regarding how to align priorities of Swedish foreign policy
with the ambition to develop Sweden’s remote sensing capacity. As Sweden expanded
its remote sensing projects, equipment, and eventually infrastructure, SSC used these
activities to shift the Swedish foreign policy to accommodate further expansion of its
remote sensing activities. Other members of the Remote Sensing Committee, by
contrast, made efforts to oppose SSC’s preference for satellite remote sensing and to
interfere in SSC collaborating transnationally. Thus, the changes in foreign policy –
from Sweden supporting sensed states to itself becoming a sensing state – reflected
the aims of SSC as it gained control of the remote sensing infrastructure.
Apart from the intentions of the technoscientific experts to strengthen their
institutions, I have demonstrated how their expertise contributed to powerful new
perceptions about the Earth’s surface. The Swedish delegation contributed first by
proposing a definition for remote sensing as constituting a whole system of differing
elements, ranging from the sensor to the user and passing through receiving and
processing facilities. As the UN adopted the Swedish definition, negotiations moved
on to debate what was the nature of remote sensing data. Did the data provide an
image of sovereign territory belonging to a sensed state? Or did the data provide an
image of the Earth’s environment? And if both, was it more important to view remote
sensing as a tool for power or as a means to perceive the Earth’s environment as
changing?
When Gunnar Hoppe founded the Remote Sensing Committee in 1969, he
stressed that remote sensing would become important for observing and protecting
the Earth’s environment. SSC used similar arguments to motivate transnational
projects for monitoring oil spills in the Baltic Sea. Arguments about environmental
protection became important for the Swedish delegation in the late 1970s as a means
to argue against the UN regulating or restricting satellite remote sensing. It cited SSC’s
projects in the Baltic Sea to illustrate how detailed sensing allowed for detailed
management, hence protection, of the marine environment. Here, environing
included writing about the moral mission remote sensing had to fulfil – monitoring
the Earth so as to protect its environment.
Satellite remote sensing environed the Earth in numerous ways: through the
shape of the satellite orbits; through sensing the surface below; and through writing
about what that surface was. These activities had lasting significance for international
agreements on subsequent uses of the technology, most notably by stressing a
relationship between monitoring and protecting the Earth’s environment.
COPUOS continued to debate and draft the “Principles Relating to Remote
Sensing of the Earth from Space”, until 1986, as it turns out.371 After years of
exhaustive critique, the oppositional developing countries and the Soviet Union
eventually agreed on a set of remote sensing principles, which the UN General
Assembly later adopted. These principles stated that remote sensing of the
environment also meant the protection of that environment, as argued by the Swedish
delegation and other sensing states.372 I have here demonstrated that this relationship
of monitoring and managing environment was not self-evident but a historical
outcome of negotiations by SSC and other states that involved both sensing and
writing about the environment.
Many commentators of space law considered the Principles to be an example
of how technological development had made regulation irrelevant – satellite remote
371 Frutkin described this continued UN debate against US satellite remote sensing after he left NASA and the American delegation but before any principles had been adopted, see Arnold W. Frutkin, “US Policy: A Drama in ‘N’ Acts,” IEEE Spectrum 20, no. 9 (September, 1983): 70–74. 372 From Principle I, “The term ‘remote sensing’ means the sensing of the Earth's surface from space by making use of the properties of electromagnetic waves emitted, reflected or diffracted by the sensed objects, for the purpose of improving natural resources management, land use and the protection of the environment”. See UNGA, “Principles relating to remote sensing of the Earth from space.”
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sensing could not be stopped. They claimed technology stood triumphant over
politics.373 This is more significant than saying that Brazil and the developing countries
failed to get a remote sensing treaty that could have remedied power imbalances
between sensing and sensed states. The division of sensing and sensed states ceased
to function in politics about space technology. Attempts by Western sensing states to
promote the role of satellite remote sensing for monitoring and managing the
environment were crucial to that change.374 In these activities, the Swedish remote
sensing experts played an active role by shifting Swedish foreign policy priorities as
well as asserting SSC’s national mandate over satellite remote sensing.
Environmental concerns remained just as important for Swedish foreign policy
from 1969 until 1978, and probably until 1986. The concept of ‘environment’,
however, had shifted from pertaining to the rights of people living in it to eventually
becoming a concept defined by people, and satellites, looking at that environment
from a distance.
The next chapter continues the study of how SSC together with CNES
established a French-Swedish remote sensing satellite infrastructure. In December
1978, the Swedish Government approved the bill that would bolster Swedish space
activities with funding to participate in the SPOT satellite and expand Esrange’s
receiving station near Kiruna in northern Sweden.375 With SSC’s growing ambition to
become Sweden’s main provider of geographical information, it would become
necessary to find and demonstrate uses of Swedish satellite remote sensing in the
coming years. The next chapter illustrates how these activities further shaped
perceptions about the role of remote sensing for environmental protection and
sparked new debates about whether and how to regulate uses of the technology.
373 Bertil Roth, “Den svenska fjärranalysverksamhetens rättsliga grundvalar”. See also interview with Bertil Roth, 30 October 2014; Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016; Interview with Skala, Björn, 17 February 2016; Interview with Johan Martin-Löf, 5 April 2016; Interview with Kenneth Hodgkins, 5 December 2016; Interview with Peter Jankowitsch, 31 July 2017; Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. 374 This conclusion is further supported by Beery’s study of subsequent US references to the Remote Sensing Principles in COPUOS’ Legal Subcommittee during the 1990s, see Beery (2011), 182–91; cf. Jirout (2017), 148–49. 375 Government Bill, “Prop. 1978/79:122,” om vissa åtgärder på informationsförsörjningsområdet, 8 February 1979.
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CHAPTER 3
Causes and Consequences of Sensing the
Chernobyl Meltdown, 1976–1991
At midnight Saturday April 26, 1986, operators at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
in northern Ukraine lost control of a reactor test. As the nuclear rods in the fourth
graphite-moderated reactor overheated, they pierced the reactor’s roof and spewed a
radioactive cloud into the night sky that would travel with northwesterly winds into
and across the Baltic Sea. 376 On Monday morning, April 28, Swedish authorities
detected the radiation and responded by establishing a crisis group. In the weeks to
come, the task of this group would be to make sense of three things, namely: What
had caused the nuclear radiation? Where was the source located? And, perhaps most
importantly, would the situation get worse?377
In the context of sensing technologies, most accounts of the meltdown have
focused on the role of the Swedish Crisis Group and the radiological measurements
with which its members were familiar.378 My aim is instead to illustrate the Chernobyl
meltdown as something brought into being through a series of activities involving
satellite remote sensing.379 The technology served as an environing technology by
sensing not radioactivity but the environment surrounding the nuclear power plant
(Figure 4). The subsequent writing about the meltdown used environmental terms,
376 Theories about the explosion(s), wind trajectories, and detection are subject of reinterpretation also in present time. For a recent influential study, see Lars-Erik De Geer, Christer Persson, and Henning Rodhe, “A Nuclear Jet at Chernobyl Around 21:23:45 UTC on April 25, 1986,” Nuclear Technology 201, no. 1 (2018): 11–22. 377 Interview with Lars Högberg and Jan Olof-Snihs, 22 November 2015; Lars Ehdwall, 13 November 2015; Lars-Erik De Geer, 22 November 2015. 378 Richard Francis Mould, Chernobyl Record. The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000), 49. See also Vladimir M. Chernousenko, Chernobyl: Insight from the Inside (Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1991), 53–54; Iurii Shcherbak, Chernobyl: A Documentary Story (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 97–99; Christopher Flavin, Reassessing Nuclear Power : The Fallout from Chernobyl (Washington, DC: The Worldwatch Institute, Paper 75, March 1987), 22; Grigori Medvedev, The Truth About Chernobyl (New York: BasicBooks, 1989), 19. 379 Although the Chernobyl meltdown is a recurring topic for scholarly work, which Zhores Medvedev prophetically described as “Chernobylogy”, few studies have addressed the role of satellite imagery in sensing the meltdown. For previous studies, see Zhores Medvedev, The Legacy of Chernobyl (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), ix–xii; W. Scott Ingram, The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2005), 82; Karena Kalmbach, Meanings of a Disaster : The Contested 'Truth' about Chernobyl . Brit ish and French Chernobyl Debates and the Transnationality of Arguments and Actor, dissertation (Florence: European University Institute, 2014), 42.
furthering this function. This became important for Sweden as a non-aligned state
using satellite remote sensing, a technology that until then had been dominated by the
Soviet Union and the US, and for the protest groups that mobilised in the Soviet
republics in the years following the Chernobyl meltdown.
Figur e 4 . Landsat-5 data visualising a meltdown and fires at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant. The satell ite Landsat-5 produced the data on April 29, 1986. On April 30, the Swedish company Satellitbild processed, interpreted, and distributed the data for the evening news on Swedish Television. Satellitbild claimed that the red coloured pixels, the hot spots, depicted heat drifting from Reactor 4 along with, less visibly, a trai l of smoke. 380 ©Satell itbild ©Space Media Network. Courtesy of Mikael Stern.
The sensing of the Chernobyl meltdown was a brief episode in April and May 1986.
However, it has relevance to a longer history of sensing technologies that influenced
perceptions of the environment and the politics of the late Cold War period.381
Swedish remote sensing experts were the first to produce satellite imagery that
380 Swedish Television (hereafter cited as SVT), Rapport, April 30, 1986. ALB86-2108, KB. 381 I will refer to the events at Chernobyl since April 26, 1986, as “the Chernobyl meltdown”. Scholars have frequently used terms like “disaster”, “accident”, and “catastrophe” to describe these events. Sometimes the epithet “Russian” has been added with reference to the nuclear power plant operators so as distinguish these from the location in Ukraine. For different epithets and emphasis, see Serhii Plokhy, Chernobyl. The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: BasicBooks, 2018); Adriana Petryna, Life Exposed. Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Richard Francis Mould, Chernobyl Record. The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2000).
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newspapers and other media could disseminate. For SSC, sensing the meltdown was a
means of show-casing and promoting Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise.382
The Chernobyl meltdown stood out because of the urgency with which the
technoscientific experts addressed uncertainties about what had caused the radioactive
fallout and assessed its consequences.383 Under these conditions, the satellite remote
sensing infrastructure, along with its intended uses, became salient. Had it not been
for the tensions involved in the sensing of the Chernobyl meltdown, historical
inquiries into satellite remote sensing would have a hard time discerning such
subtleties about infrastructures and their intended uses. 384 I use the Chernobyl
meltdown as a case to probe subtleties relevant for answering my two overarching
questions of how Swedish satellite remote sensing contributed to the making of
environment, as well as why the Swedish experts engaged in these activities. In
particular for this chapter, I address how the sensing of Chernobyl turned Sweden
into a central player for satellite remote sensing and how these activities influenced
debates about the use of the technology.
Several components of the developing Swedish satellite remote sensing
infrastructure have been presented in the previous chapter. By studying SSC’s sensing
of the Chernobyl meltdown, I aim to illustrate the many activities involved in making
that infrastructure work. This in turn illustrates how activities changed, which in turn
allowed new meanings of the remote sensing technology to emerge. The previous
chapter also described decisions by CNES and SSC to establish a French-Swedish
satellite remote sensing infrastructure. This chapter focuses on activities that use that
infrastructure. Firstly, I will describe the period from late 1970s until 1986 when SSC
established the subsidiary company Satellitbild in Kiruna in northern Sweden. This
was part of efforts to achieve a commercial breakthrough for Swedish use of the
SPOT programme. Secondly, I provide a detailed account of the activities in April and
May 1986 when Swedish satellite remote sensing experts aimed to sense the Chernobyl
meltdown. This involves activities not only of Satellitbild but also collaborations with
382 Several interviewees, irrespective of each other, country origin and organisation affiliations, identified the Chernobyl meltdown as an incident that was central to demonstrating the capacity of civil satellite remote sensing to governments, media and a wider public internationally. 383 For more on merits and perils of studying episodes in space history, or “turning points”, see Roger Launius, “What Are Turning Points in History, And What Were They for the Space Age?” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, ed. Steven J. Dick and Roger Launius (Washington, DC: NASA History Office, 2007), 19–27. 384 I have in Chapter 1 elaborated on the importance of tensions for understanding technological systems. See also Hughes (1983), 14–17.
journalists from the Space Media Network to disseminate images throughout the
Western world. Thirdly, I analyse how satellite images influenced the political fallout
of the meltdown. This last part concerns the role of users, specifically journalists and
non-aligned states using satellite remote sensing as a means to end Cold War secrecy.
Alongside these activities emerged a new environmental emphasis on satellite remote
sensing as a means to detect or even avoid environmental disasters.
Establishing the French-Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing
Infrastructure, 1976–1986
In the late 1970s SSC and CNES collaborated transnationally to establish a French-
Swedish infrastructure for satellite remote sensing. 385 National programs were
necessary but not sufficient for space projects; in developing satellite remote sensing,
SCC found support from CNES prior to receiving support from the Swedish
Government.386 ESA granted support and funding to France for establishing a facility
at Kourou in French Guiana, northeastern South America, from which Europe could
launch satellites into orbit.387 ESA also supported Sweden, more specifically SSC, in
maintaining Esrange as Europe’s northernmost space facility. SSC subsequently
expanded Esrange to receive remote sensing data from the US Landsat programme.388
Although SSC had asserted its mandate over Swedish satellite remote sensing,
obtaining more resources for using the data was proving difficult.
By contrast, the French Government entrusted CNES with sufficient funding
to build up the French space industry, relocating it to Toulouse in southern France,389
while also making efforts to strengthen France’s role in ESA.390 Eventually, funding
385 For an argument on the importance of transnational history of technology, see Kaijser (2011); Siddiqi (2010); Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards, The Technopolitics of Cold War : Towards a Transregional Perspective (US: American Historical Association, 2007), 3. For similar insights with regards to environmental history and a national scale of analysis, see Richard White, “The nationalization of nature,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 976–86. 386 Interview with Fredrik Engström. conducted by Nina Wormbs, 29 August 2006, in Oral History of Europe in Space (Noordwijk: ESA, 2006). Transnational collaborations were important not only for SSC but also for other Swedish industrial companies working on space projects, see Interview with Ivan Öfverholm, conducted by Martin Emanuel, 6 February 2018, F62:2, TM. 387 Redfield (2000) 140–41. 388 SBSA, “Petita 76/77,” September 1976, SNSA Archive, Solna. Also in SBSA, “Protokoll FAK 76/4,” 31 August 1976, FAK, SBSA, RA; SSC, “Till Industridepartementet. Rymdbolagets hemställan om investeringslån för svensk Landsat-station. Utkast,” 6 December 1976, DFR Protokoll, FAK, SBSA, RA; SSC, “D5-1. Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) mellan ESA och DFR avseende en svensk Landsat-station i Kiruna,” 6 December 1976, DFR Protokoll, FAK, SBSA, RA. 389 Haffner (2013), 139–41. 390Dubois et al. (2014), 24.
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for the European launcher Ariane began sapping resources from other projects, most
notably those for remote sensing satellites.391 By summer 1976, several of the CNES
projects had stalled, and the French engineering unions, who feared for the future,
organised 670 of the engineers at Toulouse into a general strike,392 forcing the French
Government to reprioritise. From then on, CNES would give French projects top
priority.393
For CNES to embark on its new satellite-programme, SPOT, it required
support from other ESA members.394 In 1977, SSC managed to convince the Swedish
Government to support SPOT.395 Sweden initially provided political legitimacy to
SPOT as being a European programme. CNES, however, soon realised the benefits of
Esrange’s near-polar position whereby it frequently had contact with polar-orbital
satellites, like SPOT. CNES and SSC soon agreed to make Esrange into one of the
main receiving stations for the SPOT programme (Figure 5). Belgium also joined the
programme in 1978 but would only later become interested in the use of SPOT data,
playing no significant role in the early development of SPOT-1, and will therefore not
be described further in this chapter.396
After France and Sweden had agreed to build SPOT-1, one of CNES’ leading
engineers, Gérard Brachet, drafted plans for setting up a subsidiary company, Spot
Image, for the purpose of commercialising the satellite’s data.397 Brachet initially made
a conservative estimate in the sense that Spot Image would primarily “test the market
[valoriser les images sur le marché]”.398
391 Email correspondence with Gérard Brachet, from 13 January to 5 April 2016. 392 Michel Avignon, “Problèmes de la Politique Spatiale Francaise,” p. 17–18, summer 1976, Michel Avignon Private Collection. 393 Interview with Michel Avignon and Fernand Alby, 9 January 2016. 394 Claes-Göran Borg recalled how he and others among the leadership of SSC knew about the regional importance that SPOT played for France, jesting that SPOT, an acronym for Système Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre, was by CNES-personnel informally referred to as “Satellite Pour Occuper Toulouse”, roughly translating to a “satellite to keep jobs in Toulouse”. See Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. 395 Email correspondence with Gérard Brachet, from 13 January to 5 April 2016; Interview with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2015. According to Stefan Zenker, the early demonstration of remote sensing was also crucial to securing substantial governmental resources through the “Space Bill” in 1979. See Government Bill, “1978/79:142,” Om svensk rymdverksamhet, 1 March 1979. For an analysis of this bill, see Wormbs (2003), 71–88. 396 Dubois et al. (2014). See also Krige, Russo, and Sebesta (2000), 8, 21. 397 Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016. 398 Email correspondence with Gérard Brachet, from 13 January to 5 April 2016.
Figur e 5 . SPOT-1 overpass pattern. The l ines spanning from pole to pole are calculations for the overpass pattern of SPOT-1 during a 36-hour period, with each orbit converging on the poles. 399 The circles in the figure indicate the reach of the ground stations for communicating with SPOT-1 and gathering its data. The black dots [author’s compilation] indicate the launch site Kourou in northeastern South America, the Toulouse Command Center in southern France, and the Esrange receiving station in northern Scandinavia.
SSC in turn had developed plans for how to set up its own subsidiary in Kiruna, with
proximity to the Esrange receiving station, which would then increase employment
opportunities in the region. 400 As part of shifting Swedish users from aerial
photography toward satellite remote sensing, SSC in 1981 promoted its subsidiary,
later named ‘Satellitbild’, as a means of making satellite remote sensing profitable.
SSC’s subsidiary would gain revenue firstly by receiving, archiving, and producing data
from the SPOT satellite for CNES, Spot Image, and Swedish customers. Secondly,
there were hopes to sell further enhanced data to a world market.401 The subsidiary’s
activities could then expand based on increasing demand from these additional
399 Spot Image and CNES, SPOT-1 Launching. Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre, translated from the French by S. Dyson (Toulouse: CNES Publications Department, November 1985), 11. 400 Interview with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2015. 401 SSC, “Svensk fjärranalysverksamhet inför 80-talet,” 27–29 December 1980, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Al7-2. Ny aktivitet vid Esrange – interaktiv, datorstödd analys av satellitbilder,” 30 May 1980, Zenker F27, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; SSC/Stefan Zenker, “F21-1. Projektplan för ‘Fjärranalyscentrum i Kiruna’,” 3 April 1981, Zenker F27, Stefan Zenker PrivateCollection.
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customers, hopefully employing one hundred people in Kiruna by the end of the
1980s.402
In 1982, SSC formally established Satellitbild and hired Svante Astermo, a
surveyor from the Swedish Land Survey, to manage it.403 By spring 1983, Astermo had
begun to rapidly expand the staff so that the subsidiary served not only as a remote
sensing factory for the French-Swedish infrastructure but also employed new and
different technoscientific expertises to sell enhanced data to specific sectors,404 for
example agronomists, physical geographers, and foresters.405
Those who applied for a job at Satellitbild perceived of the initiative as being
at the cutting edge of technology. It had a system for pre-processing SPOT data, work
station computers for digital interpretation, as well as the largest photo laboratory in
northern Europe for printing the satellite images. The Ampex magnetic tapes of
satellite data, driven every day in a Volvo 245 from Esrange to Satellitbild in Kiruna,
were said to be the single largest data transfer in the world at the time.406
While Spot Image entrusted Satellitbild with the routine task of gathering,
processing, and sending images to France, SSC also intended to enhance these images for
their own, subsequent, uses. Brachet noticed that SSC’s ambitions with Satellitbild could
soon lead to an overlap with CNES’ plans for Spot Image. As a remedy, he proposed
that SSC and CNES enter into joint ownership of both subsidiaries. The French-
Swedish joint ownership for SPOT clarified that Satellitbild had exclusive rights for
distribution of SPOT data in the Nordic countries, whereas Spot Image would sell
data to the rest of the world. Both subsidiaries were able to further develop SPOT
data, for example by adding additional information or making image interpretations.407
By spring 1983, CNES, Spot Image, and Satellitbild had reached an agreement
on common routines for gathering, interpreting, and disseminating the data. Spot
Image also fixed the number of SPOT images that Satellitbild could attain and
402 SSC/Stefan Zenker, “Fjärranalysbolag i Kiruna. Rapport utarbetad av Rymdbolaget,” p. 1, 65, 85, 109, and 114, 27 October 1981, Zenker F27, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 403 Svante Astermo/Skandinaviska Satellitbild AB, “Protokoll nr 2,” Skandinaviska Satellitbild AB, 10 December 1982. Svante Astermo Private Collection. 404 Svante Astermo/Skandinaviska Satellitbild AB, “Protokoll nr 5,” Skandinaviska Satellitbild AB, 22 March 1983. Svante Astermo Private Collection. 405 Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015; Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015; Interview with Marie Byström, 6 July 2018. 406 Interview with Ulf Ormö, 1 February 2016; Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015; Interview with Marie Byström, 6 July 2018; Conversation with Peter Holmgren, 18 September 2018. 407 Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016; Interview with Philippe Delclaux, 8 January 2016.
demanded that these indicate both CNES and Spot Image copyright when used.408
Also, in 1983, Spot Image opened additional offices in Washington, DC, as part of
finding American customers for SPOT data. 409 The French initiatives for SPOT
corresponded with the Reagan Administration’s attempts to commercialise the
Landsat programme.410
SSC’s hope to establish a Swedish market for Satellitbild soon faced
competition from the Swedish Land Survey. Since 1981, SSC was the national point
of contact for remote sensing development, but most applications of remote sensing
still relied on aerial photography conducted by the Swedish Land Survey. 411 The
Swedish Government had supported SSC in its attempts to use satellite remote sensing
for mapping projects and criticised the Swedish Land Survey in official reports for
not collaborating closer with SSC.412 There did exist several collaborations on satellite
remote sensing and many land surveyors were optimistic about the technology.413
However, these attempts were not able to sway the Land Survey’s overall preference
for aerial remote sensing. SSC hoped that Swedish users, like governmental agencies,
industries, and researchers, would recognise the relevance of satellite remote sensing
for cartographic applications that currently relied on aerial photography by land
surveyors. In the long term, SSC sought to gain a larger share of these services
together with, or from, the Swedish Land Survey.
Seeing its privileges threatened, the Swedish Land Survey responded by
pushing its aerial photography technique higher up than usual – from an altitude of
9,000 to beyond 13,000 metres – to simulate the kind of overview images that SPOT-
1 would be able to offer.414 The Swedish Land Survey considered these overview
408 CNES, Spot Image, and Scandinavian Satellite Image Corporation, “Agreement between CNES, SSC and Spot Image concerning the reception, archiving and preprocessing of SPOT data at the Kiruna station and the distribution of this data,” Toulouse, April 13, 1983. Silja Strömberg/SBSA, “The SPOT-collaboration Sweden-France: Treaty situation,” 11 January 1990, SNSA Archive, Solna. 409 Interview with Philippe Delclaux, 8 January 2016; “Spot Image Names New President,” The Washington Post, 15 September 1986. 410 Jirout (2017), 188–91. 411 SSC, Remote Sensing, no. 10 (November 1983); SSC, SSC, “Esrange Landsat Station (ELS),” Remote Sensing , no. 6 (May 1981): 2. 412 SOU 1981:73, Landskapsinformationen under 1980-talet. 413 Lars Ottoson/LMV, “Landsaldata för riksskogstaxeringen (projekt Dr 2228),” 12 March 1981; Agneta Green/LMV, “Kartering av hyggen i Västernorrlands län med Landsat data,” Lantmäteriet Kartavdelningen, 11 January 1983, Agneta Engberg [Green] Private Collection. For earlier studies, see Jüri Talts, Programutveckling för bearbetning av Landsat data vid LMV (Gävle: Lantmäteriverket, 1979). 414 Hans-Fredrik Wennström, “Allmän kartläggning – en översikt,” in Sveriges kartläggning. Tillägg 1978–1987 (Gävle: Kartografiska sällskapet, 1988), 9; Anders Morén, “Fotogrammetrisk verksamhet,” in Sveriges kartläggning. Tillägg 1978–1987 (Gävle: Kartografiska sällskapet, 1988), 22, 24, 28; Anders
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flights as their counter-move to SSC’s satellite remote sensing. They were also
perceived as such by employees of Satellitbild. 415 The overview flights did not
continue after 1986 but had by then achieved an increase in government financing to
the Swedish Land Survey, which was paid by the agencies using mapping services.416
Most significantly, the Swedish Land Survey saturated the immediate need for any
satellite imagery among users of the Swedish state apparatus.417 In 1985, the Swedish
Minister of Industry, Thage G. Peterson, pursued an investigation of Swedish space
activities. The Swedish Land Survey took this opportunity to criticise SSC for failing
to make satellite remote sensing data relevant for Swedish users.418
Since the early 1980s, SSC and Kiruna Municipality had promoted the concept
of Space Town Kiruna (Rymdstaden Kiruna). They considered satellite remote sensing
to be not only a growing business but also characteristic of the town’s future as a
technological centre in Sweden.419 With a combination of infrastructure and a near-
polar position, SSC described Kiruna as the natural centre for communicating with
satellites and gathering their data, not only for Swedish users but for all of Europe
and eventually the world.420 Kiruna Municipality supported the space-town hype with
suitable names for the surrounding area. It was fitting that staff like secretary Karin
Lindholm would go to work at Satellitbild’s newly established office The Space House,
return home to her house on Space Road 29 in a neighbourhood called Outer Space.421
Timner, “Kartor for orienteringssport,” in Sveriges kartläggning. Tillägg 1978–1987 (Gävle: Kartografiska sällskapet, 1988), 146. 415 I use ‘overview images’ and ‘overview flights’ as translation for the Swedish term överhöghöjdsbilder. See Interview with Lars Ottoson, 11 February 2016; Interview with Anders Boberg, 14 June 2017; Interview with Mats Rosengren, 6 April 2017; Interview with Anders Söderman, 15 February 2016. 416 Ian Brook/Swedsurvey, “Kartpolitik 85 – A Strategic Plan for National Mapping Activities,” undated 1983, Swedsurvey, Ian Brook Private Collection; Anders Boberg/LMV Flygfotosektionen, “Fotoflygplan för 80-talet. Utkast Upphandlingsunderlag,” 28 January 1985, Ian Brook Private Collection. 417 Interview with Anders Lené, 22 June 2016; Interview with Anders Söderman, 15 February 2016. 418 Swedish National Land Survey, “Yttrande. svensk rymdverksamhet 1985–1991,” in Kerstin Fredga/SBSA, Långtidsutredning, 1985, SNSA Archive, Solna; FAK, “Protokoll FAK 83/2,” p. 3, 25 March 1983, A4A/4, FAK, SBSA, RA; Interview with Lars Ottoson, 11 February 2016. 419 Kiruna Municipality was particularly eager to participate in SSC’s plans for space activities due to its position as a mining town, which had proven disastrous for employment when prices on ore decreased during the 1970s. See Ingrid Liljenäs, “From mine to outer space: the case of Kiruna, a town in Northern Sweden,” in Coping With Closures: An International Comparison of Mine Town Experiences, ed. Cecily Clare Neil, Markku Tykkyläinen and John H Bradbury (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). For a list of other employment initiatives in Kiruna at this time, see Backman (2015), 164–67. 420 Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015; SSC, “Satellitbild AB,” Remote Sensing, no. 9 (May 1983): 3; FAK, “Protokoll FAK 82/5,” p. 2, 27 September 1982; SSC, Remote Sensing, no. 10 (November 1983); SSC, Remote Sensing, no. 11 (June 1984). See also Lars Eriksson, “Esrange blir Europas rymdbas”, Ny teknik (January 1986). 421 Original in Swedish: “Jag jobbade för Satellitbild i Rymdhuset på dagarna och sen bodde jag på Rymdvägen 29 i kvarteret Rymden”. From Interview with Karin Lindholm, 17 December 2015.
Satellitbild had used the government’s regional funding to rapidly expand from
five to fifty employees in anticipation of meeting imminent commercial demands for
SPOT data, but the problem was that CNES took more time than initially planned to
launch SPOT-1.422 Launching satellites was a risk almost unique to the space industry.
CNES delayed the launch of SPOT-1 on several occasions due to failures with the
Ariane rocket. In September 1985, the French president, Francois Mitterrand,
witnessed from French Guiana how a test version of Ariane exploded during lift-off,
destroying the satellite payload on board.423 Contemporary reporters also described
how the launch of SPOT-1 had been a far-from-certain success.424 When describing
the business plan to Swedish newspapers, Satellitbild’s director Svante Astermo
emphasised that everything hinged on whether the SPOT programme would work.
“Kiruna has built its hopes for the future on this satellite. If it fails, a lot of jobs will
be lost up here. SPOT simply cannot fail.”425 As an illustration of this uncertainty, SSC
and Satellitbild had to hastily reschedule the launch celebration with only a few days’
notice and reinvite all the guests.426
On 22 February 1986, CNES finally launched SPOT-1 from Kourou in French
Guiana. SSC and Satellitbild celebrated by hosting Space Night at the Space House in
Kiruna and at Esrange.427 Hundreds of guests representing politics, media, and users
were invited to see how data from SPOT-1 would be gathered at Esrange and then
processed and interpreted at Satellitbild in the nearby town of Kiruna.428
Journalist Christer Larsson participated because he planned to use satellite
remote sensing for newsgathering from space. Larsson already had years of experience
422 SSC, “Proposal to the Swedish Board for Space Activities’ remote sensing program 1986/87,” p. 4, 21 April 1986, SSC Archive, Solna (hereafter cited as SSC-S); See also Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015. 423 Interview with Svante Astermo, 17 December 2015; “News Summary,” The New York Times, 13 September 1985. 424 Michael Isikoff, “Ariane’s Customers Unfazed by Fizzle: French Rocket’s 2nd Try May Be Next Week,” The Washington Post, 21 March 1986. 425 Original in Swedish: “Kring denna satellit har Kiruna byggt upp sin nya framtidstro. Om Spot havererar blir det permitteringar här uppe igen. Spot får helt enkelt inte gå fel”. See Christer Larsson, “SPOT. Öga i rymden – Hjärna på jorden,” Ny teknik, January 30 1986, Johan Martin-Löf Private Collection. 426 SBSA, SSC, SSC Esrange and Satellitbild, “Space Night in Kiruna 11–12 January 1986. Invitation,” Johan Martin-Löf Private Collection; Klas Råsäter/SSC, “Inbjudan 22 februari 1986. Till redaktionen. AAJ5-CG400/KR/HWE,” 6 February 1986, SSC Arhive, Esrange. 427 “Viking har lyft. Jubel i Kiruna,” Expressen, 22 February 1986.428 Satellitbild, “Gäster vid Space Night i Rymdhuset 21–22 februari 1986”, Press & Info Launch SPOT, SSC Archive, Esrange (hereafter cited as SSC-E); SSC Satellitbild, “Image material from Space Night at Satellitbild”, 21–22 February 1986, Space Night Bildmaterial, SSC Satellitbild Archive, Kiruna (hereafter cited as SB-K).
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reporting on “extreme technologies”, like nuclear weapons, seabed vessels, and
spacecraft. He had written about SSC’s remote sensing enterprise and collaborated
with some of its personnel on projects relating to space technology.429 Earlier in
February 1986, Larsson established the company Space Media Network with the aim
of using satellite remote sensing as a tool for making news headlines.430 Director
Astermo of Satellitbild agreed to collaborate with Space Media Network and allowed
one of the image analysts, Mikael Stern, to hold positions at both companies. Stern
would provide Space Media Network with technoscientific expertise in remote sensing
and access to data. In return, Space Media Network would seek to make news
headlines using Satellitbild’s images, thereby promoting Swedish satellite remote
sensing.431
After the successful launch of SPOT-1, CNES and Spot Image would continue
testing the system until May.432 Brachet gave staff at Spot Image a moment’s rest in
the period following the launch of SPOT-1. Symptomatically, the French had not
planned any missions for the satellite until early May at the earliest, although they had
begun to gather some images already for the purpose of showcasing the satellite’s
capacity.433 In the meantime, and by contrast, SSC and Satellitbild grew impatient and
held internal discussions on new means of commercialising their satellite remote
sensing expertise. The next few years appeared to be crucial for finding new users,
and Satellitbild did not expect customers to be rushing to the Space House in Kiruna
asking for satellite images. For SPOT data to replace conventional methods, like aerial
photography, Satellitbild had to actively seek out users and applications.434
429 Original in Swedish: “extrema teknologier”. See Christer Larsson, “Skottet som avgör Europas framtid i rymden,” Ny Teknik, January 1986; Christer Larsson/Space Media Network, “Space media network – utilizing new techniques for news gathering,” Remote Sensing, no. 17 (April 1988): 7–8. 430 Christer Larsson registered the company Space Media Network, “Number 816,” 10 February 1990, Patent- och registreringsverket, Christer Larsson Private Collection. 431 Interview with Svante Astermo, 17 December 2015; Interview with Christer Larsson, 30 January 2016; Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015. 432 Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015; Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015. 433 Interview with Philippe Delclaux, 8 January 2016. See also NASA, “Daily Activities Report,” 24–26 February 1986, SPOT French Earth Resources Sat. 14602, International Cooperation and Foreign Countries Series, NASA HQ. 434 SSC, “Förslag till utformning av DFRs fjärranalysprogram,” p. 8–10, 21 April 1986, SSC Fjärranalysprogram 1979–87, SSC-S.
Sensing Chernobyl in April and May, 1986
On April 28, 1986, the history about the French-Swedish satellite remote sensing
infrastructure shifted from years to hours and days as Satellitbild aimed to be the first
in the world to sense the Chernobyl meltdown. After a Swedish nuclear power plant
detected radiation around its perimeter 100 kilometres north of Stockholm that
Monday morning, members of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (Statens
kärnkraftinspektion, SKI) and the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority (Svenska
strålskyddsinstitutet, SSI) gathered to form what I call the Swedish Crisis Group, or
simply the Group.435
The Swedish Crisis Group briefed the Swedish Minister of Energy, Birgitta
Dahl, about a potential nuclear crisis. Dahl thereafter assumed the formal role of
leading the work of the Group, vesting it with authority to order and request
additional information from governmental agencies, municipalities, other ministries
and additional expert communities.436 The Swedish Defence Research Institute soon
provided samples from their continuous surveillance system for atmospheric
radionuclides and on an arrangement with the Swedish Meteorological and
Hydrological Institute (Sveriges meteorologiska och hydrologiska institut, hereafter
SMHI) that routinely every morning provided backward trajectory analyses for all sites
in the national surveillance network. These samples had detected radiation already on
Sunday, April 27, and by simulating wind and cloud trajectories had located the origin
of the radiation to one of the Soviet nuclear power plants southeast of Sweden, at
Ignalina in Lithuania, at Rovno or at Chernobyl in Ukraine.437
To verify the location of the radiation, Dahl’s administration reached out to
foreign governments and international agencies. While sharing what the Swedish
435 The term “Swedish Crisis Group” is not a historical name – I use it analytically to refer to a group of people considered relevant by the Swedish Government for gathering and reviewing information on nuclear radiation as well as provide commentaries to Swedish and international media. See Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, Redogörelse för SKIs agerande i samband med den ryska kärnkraftolyckan 1986-04-28. Handskrivna minnesanteckningar av Alf Larsson, May 1986, Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection;Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, Tjernobyl 1986, April 1996, Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection.436 Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson postum accepted Minister Dahl’s decision to exert ministerial rule,i.e. act as spokesperson for the Swedish Government when handling the crisis. This was in part dueto the political turmoil following the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme on 22 February1986. Carlsson had been appointed prime minister only a month earlier. In late April he was awayfrom Stockholm on the island of Gotland to prepare for the May 1st Workers Day festivities. SeeInterview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015.437 Interview with Lars-Erik De Geer, 22 November 2015; Jan-Olof Snihs, “Första dagarna på SSIefter Tjernobylolyckan,” SSI/SIUS Vattenfall Seminarium, 2006; Jan-Olof Snihs, “Tjernobylolyckan –20 år senare,” Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection.
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Crisis Group had already sensed, the Soviet Union provided no information.438 The
Soviet ambassador in Stockholm, Boris Pankin, stated that operations at the Soviet
nuclear program were normal,439 which was what most Soviet officials in Pankin’s
position thought at the time.440
By the afternoon of April 28, the Swedish Crisis Group had established an
improvised communication centre in Stockholm and held the first of many press
conferences informing Swedish media and the public. Most likely, the Group
announced, the radiation originated from a malfunctioning Soviet nuclear plant.441 The
Swedish Defence Research Institute also specified in an interview with Swedish
Television (Sveriges Television) that it was most likely the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant that had caused the radiation. 442 Later that evening, the Soviet authorities
confirmed that one of its reactors had suffered damage but added that the damage
was under control.443 At the end of the day April 28, the Swedish Crisis Group had
identified Chernobyl as the plausible origin for the radiation. Other than this, nothing
was known about the condition of the nuclear power plant or its surroundings. This
is where the activities of Satellitbild and the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts
became critical in producing knowledge about the meltdown and, in particular, images
whereby viewers could see changes in the environment surrounding Chernobyl.
People, Practices, and Places involved in Sensing Chernobyl by Satellite, April
to May 1986
The next question was: “What’s happening over there? They’re not telling us
anything”. We put together a [to-do] list…I added satellites and scooted over to the
Swedish Space Corporation to ask if they had any [satellites] that went by
Chernobyl.444
438 “U.S. believes 2nd Soviet reactor melting down – thousands flee. Official death toll 2 called ‘preposterous’,” Toronto Stars Newspapers Limited, 30 April 1986. See also Medvedev (1990), 191. 439 Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, Redogörelse för SKI:s agerande i samband med den ryska kärnkraftolyckan 1986-04-28. Handskrivna minnesanteckningar av Alf Larsson, 28 April 1986, Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection. 440 Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015. 441 SVT, Aktuellt, 28 April 1986, V53.547, Audiovisual Archive, KB. 442 SVT, Aktuellt, 28 April 1986, Öppet arkiv, Swedish Television. 443 Serge Schmemann, “Soviet Announces Nuclear Accident at Electric Plant. Power Reactor Damaged. Mishap Acknowledged After Rising Radioactivity Levels Spread to Scandinavia,” The New York Times, 29 April 1986. 444 Original in Swedish: “Nästa fråga var: “vad händer där borta? De berättar ingenting”. Vi satte ihop en lista, som vi checkade av…Jag la till satelliter och knatade över till Rymdbolaget och frågade om de har några [satelliter] som gick över Tjernobyl”. See Interview with Göran Mandéus, 3 December 2015.
The quote above is a recollection from when the Swedish Crisis Group reviewed
options for how to sense radiation at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate and SSC had collaborated in 1983 to assess the
risk and effects of the malfunctioning Soviet nuclear-powered satellite Kosmos-1413
crashing near Sweden. 445 They also shared information with the US Embassy in
Stockholm and later developed routines for dialogue in case future situations arose
that required their expertise.446 And so the Swedish Crisis Group had personal contacts
with staff at SSC in Stockholm to discuss how satellites could help give additional
information.
In parallel to the efforts of the Swedish Crisis Group, SSC’s subsidiary
Satellitbild and its collaborator Space Media Network made plans to sense Chernobyl.
Their aim was to make new headlines.447 Larsson, who had founded Space Media
Network, used his contacts at the Swedish Defence Research Institute and consulted
maps to approximate the position of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. He then
called Stern at Satellitbild who began preparing for use of both the Landsat
programme and the SPOT programme to sense northern Ukraine.448 In Toulouse,
Brachet also planned for Spot Image to sense Chernobyl using the SPOT
programme.449 By evening of April 28, several organisations had set in motion plans
for monitoring the nuclear power plant. The main goal for the satellite remote sensing
experts was to demonstrate the capacity of the French-Swedish satellite remote
sensing infrastructure, and for which the Chernobyl meltdown presented an
opportunity for gathering stunning imagery that media could then disseminate.
However, as it would turn out, the French and Swedish experts competed against each
other to be the first to do so.
Since Landsat and SPOT used optical sensors, both satellites relied on the
absence of clouds to sense the Earth’s surface. Ideally, the remote sensing experts
would request the satellites to gather data between 09:30 and 10:30 local time, when
the angle of the sun aligned with that of the satellite’s orbit and before clouds had
445 James Oberg, “The nuclear waste that fell to Earth,” The Christian Science Monitor, 29 June 1988. 446 Interview with Göran Mandéus, 3 December 2015; Interview with Gunnar Bengtsson, 10 December 2015. See also Grahn (2011), 426–31. 447 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016; Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015; Interview with Ulf Ormö, 1 February 2016; For a summary of these plans, see also Ny teknik, 19 May 1986. 448 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016; Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015. 449 Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016.
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formed to obscure the land below. 450 Despite adapting to such ideal sensing
conditions, more than half of the data gathered by Satellitbild consisted of images
covered with clouds. 451 These details illustrate that it was far from certain that
Satellitbild’s sensing of Chernobyl would be successful.
Late in the evening of April 28, Satellitbild prepared the receiving station
Esrange to gather imagery over Chernobyl from either of the two satellite
programmes Landsat or SPOT.452 Landsat’s orbital line had passed by Ukraine and
Chernobyl on April 26 and would do so again on April 29. SPOT’s orbital line would
be near Chernobyl on May 1, and by tilting its sensors there was a chance it could
sense the nuclear power plant. Within the next two days, Satellitbild hoped to have
new data from at least one of the two satellites.453
Both Landsat and SPOT used onboard tape-recorders, where data could be
stored and later transmitted to a receiving station, like Esrange. Processing the satellite
data involved several steps from manual to automatic analysis methods. The first
stages involved operators manually spooling the recorded data on to Ampex magnetic
tapes. After the tapes had been transported to Satellitbild in Kiruna, image analysts
like Stern would interpret the data using monitors and digital interfaces.454 In brief, the
process of sensing Chernobyl involved requesting, gathering, processing,
transporting, interpreting, and sampling satellite data as well as disseminating these in
the form of images.455
On Tuesday morning, April 29, as soon as the CNES Command Center in
Toulouse opened, Satellitbild sent its request for manual programming of SPOT-1 for
northern Ukraine on May 1.456 While CNES programmed SPOT, Esrange informed
Satellitbild that they would soon acquire data from Landsat as it orbited near the
presumed location of Chernobyl. By morning of April 30, the Esrange operators had
450 For a description of this relationship between the satellite and local weather conditions, see Floyd F. Sabins, Remote Sensing: Principles and Interpretation (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1978), 534; ArthurCracknell and Ladson Hayes, Introduction to Remote Sensing, 11; Landgrebe, A. Signal Theory Methods inMultispectral Remote Sensing, 18, 77, 443.451 Interview with Per Erik “PEX” Enbom, 4 July 2016.452 Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015; Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015.453 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016; Interview with GérardBrachet, 6 January 2016.454 For a more detailed description of this procedure, see Sabins, Remote Sensing: Principles andInterpretation, 4–5.455 Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “Telex till Leif Blom,” TT-Bild, 7 May 1986, Svante Astermo PrivateCollection.456 Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016.
gathered the data on Ampex magnetic tapes and transported them by car the winding
45 kilometres between Esrange and Satellitbild in Kiruna.457
The car with the magnetic tapes arrived at Satellitbild’s office in Kiruna at
10:30. Operators processed the tapes at the data division, known to image analysts as
the “Boiler Room” with reference to the loud noise from machines and spools
spinning the magnetic tapes, which contrasted with the tranquil rooms for image
interpretation one floor up. 458 Stern received the processed data and began
interpreting. No clouds appeared in the Landsat image over the Chernobyl region and
a happy roar escaped from the gathered analysts. 459 Landsat-5 had sensed the
Chernobyl nuclear plant.
With thermal infrared data, Stern highlighted the pixels around Reactor 4,
using red to communicate hot spots of concentrated heat.460 Since the scene displayed
a larger region of northern Ukraine, Stern magnified only a section for digital
amplification, resampling, contrast setting, and colour balancing. Through this
procedure, a selected area like the Chernobyl nuclear plant and the heat above the
reactors would be more easily recognisable as suitable for the format of a newspaper
article or the television screen.461
During the course of the day on April 30, Brachet received news of
Satellitbild’s manual request for northern Ukraine. He called the financial director Lars
Bjerkesjö at Satellitbild. Furious, he asked, “Lars, what the hell are you up to?”462
Bjerkesjö agreed that Satellitbild had omitted to mention why it manually programmed
SPOT, and that this broke the previous agreement not to use the satellite until later in
May. But, Bjerkesjö continued, “We should be thankful for Chernobyl”. If Satellitbild
managed to sense the meltdown using SPOT-1, it would serve as marketing for the
satellite for Spot Image’s purposes, too.463 Brachet conceded and agreed that the
manual programming should continue, secretly hoping that Spot Image would be able
to use the data first.464
457 Interview with Karin Lindholm, 17 December 2015; SSC, “Fjärranalysbolag i Kiruna,” p. 36, 27 October 1981, Svante Astermo Private Collection. 458 Original in Swedish: “Vi kallade data-avdelningen för Ångpannan. Det var där som man vispade ihop det som skulle användas”. See Interview with Anders Söderman, 15 February 2016. 459 Interview with Ulf Ormö, 1 February 2016; Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016. 460 Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015. 461 Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “Telex till Leif Blom,” TT-Bild, 7 May 1986. 462 See Interview with Karin Lindholm, 17 December 2015. 463 See Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015. 464 Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016.
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In the meantime, Satellitbild and Space Media Network sought to disseminate
the first image from the Landsat programme. By the time the image was ready for
transport at noon on April 30, the last flight had already left from Kiruna Airport.
Space Media Network contacted commanders of the Swedish Air Force (Flygvapnet)
and convinced them of the national importance in bringing these satellite images
southward. The Air Force dispatched planes to carry the images to Luleå Airport,
where they were transferred to a commercial plane for the flight to Stockholm.
Throughout, Satellitbild and Space Media Network kept continuous dialogue with the
Swedish Air Force, flight personnel, and Swedish Television to ensure the arrival of the
images in time for the Swedish news later that evening. 465 As Swedish
Television televised Satellitbild’s images (Figure 4), Stern provided answers to the
reporter on what could be seen in the Landsat images:
One can see the nuclear plant itself….in this area there is blue-grey
smoke…probably [something is burning]. In this image you only see
smoke….[However] there is also a thermal band….If there are two meltdowns
then we have two red points in this image….These [points] are significantly hotter
than the surroundings. That could be interpreted as meltdowns.466
For the following week, the media constantly called Satellitbild asking for more
information on satellite images of Chernobyl. International journalists and news
channels soon arrived at Kiruna Airport, asking to see the facilities at the Space House.
Satellitbild provided tours for reporters to show how the French-Swedish satellite
remote sensing infrastructure worked: Esrange gathered data, which it transported to
Satellitbild for interpretation and, eventually, dissemination to the outside world via
Kiruna Airport.467 Satellitbild had delivered the Landsat image to the Swedish Crisis
Group in Stockholm but also provided its own commentary on the state of the nuclear
power plant. “Two bright red spots are visible beneath a cloud of bluish smoke.
465 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016; Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015. 466 Original in Swedish: “Man ser själva kärnkraftsområdet...I det här området så finns en blå grå rök...Förmodligen [brinner det]. I den här bilden ser man bara rök.…Man har ju dessutom en termisk kanal...Och om det är så att det är två härdsmältor så har vi alltså två röda punkter på den här bilden….De [punkterna] är betydligt hetare än omgivningen. Då skulle man kunna tolka det som härdsmältor”. See SVT, Rapport, April 30, 1986. 467 Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015; Interview with Karin Lindholm, 17 December 2015.
Judging from contacts with nuclear power experts, it seems likely that these are two
separate meltdowns”.468
By noon May 1, Esrange announced that SPOT-1 had passed over Ukraine and
used both its sensors to gather data from the Chernobyl region. While one sensor
missed the target by a few kilometres, the second sensor gathered cloud-free data of
the nuclear plant and its surroundings (Figure 6). As soon as Esrange’s receiving
facility had spooled the data on Ampex magnetic tapes, personnel from Satellitbild
drove the tapes to the Space House. At 21:03, Swedish Television helped link the
images to the late evening news at 22:15.469 Satellitbild explained that the SPOT images
had finer resolution than Landsat and could observe that one of the reactors at
Chernobyl had a deformed geometric shape, suggesting it had been damaged.470
Figur e 6 . SPOT-1 data of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on May 1, 1986. The image uses panchromatic SPOT data with a 10-metre resolution. 471 ©Spot Image ©Satell itbild ©Space Media Network. Courtesy of Mikael Stern.
468 See “Second reactor may be afire radiation cloud heads west,” Montreal Gazette, Quebec, 1 May 1986. 469 Karin Ehrlén, “Första bilden från Spot,” NSD, 2 May 1986. 470 SVT, Magasinet, 1 May 1986, kl. 22:15, ALB86-2110, Audiovisual Archive, KB. 471 Christer Larsson Private Collection.
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In the early morning of May 2, Satellitbild put packages of high-quality images on
flights from Kiruna to Stockholm where Space Media Network sold these to
Newsweek and other international news distributors throughout the Western world.472
In France, it took until noon, May 2, for Brachet and Spot Image to produce similar
images.473 Brachet called Secretary Lindholm at Satellitbild to congratulate Satellitbild
on being the first to sense the Chernobyl meltdown.474
Satellitbild proceeded with combining Landsat data gathered both before and
after the meltdown. The result was an image that displayed the thermal infrared hot
spots also before the meltdown, suggesting that this was a normal phenomenon and
not a result of the disaster, but that the nuclear plant had indeed ceased to produce
heat in the cooling water. Satellitbild used the before-and-after image to argue that the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was no longer operational (Figure 7).475 SSC also
provided estimates that the heat in the Landsat data, if concentrated to the area above
Reactor 4, rose above 400 degrees Celsius.476
On May 3, Swedish Television produced a very positive coverage of
Satellitbild, stating, “Sweden became, during a few days, some kind of centre for
information transfer regarding the Soviet nuclear accident, in part because this was
where the radioactive waste was first noted but also because of a small company in
Kiruna.” The coverage asserted that satellite images had been important for national
security and had also aided the company’s commercial “lift-off ” following a period of
uncertainty.477
472 Bernard Gwertzman, “No firm answers: American officials think copters are dropping wet sand,” The New York Times, 2 May 1986. 473 CNES, “Exploitation de SPOT. Volume 3,” 2 June 1986. 474 Interview with Karin Lindholm, 17 December 2015; Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016. 475 Anders Söderman, Satellitbild har nu hamnat på världskartan över fjärranalysföretag, May 1986, SB-K. SSC had in 1975 developed a method for airborne scanners to study heat in the coolant water of Swedish nuclear power plants. See Backman (2015), 162. 476 See Dagens Nyheter, 2 May 1986. See also Interview with Mats Rosengren, 6 April 2017. For later interpretations of Landsat data to estimate temperatures at Reactor 4 during the meltdown, see David A. Rothery, “A re-interpretation of Landsat TM data on Chernobyl,” International Journal of RemoteSensing 10, no. 8 (1989): 1423–1427. See also Rudolf Richter, Frank Lehmann, Rupert Haydn and PeterVolk, “Analysis of LANDSAT TM images of Chernobyl,” in International Journal of Remote Sensing 7,no. 12 (1986): 1859–1867.477 Original in Swedish: “Ja, Sverige blev ju under några ett slags centrum förinformationsförmedlingen kring den sovjetiska kärnkraftsolyckan. Dels för att det var här som detradioaktiva avfallet först uppmärksammades men lika mycket på grund av ett litet företag i Kiruna.Satellitbild AB heter företaget och som namnet antyder så tar man ned o bearbetar bilder från satelliterDet var bilder därifrån som Rapport, först i världen, kunde visa häromkvällen, dom första bildernaöverhuvudtaget över olycksområdet i Tjernobyl. Och för Kirunaföretaget så har kärnkraftsolyckanbetytt rena lyftet”. See SVT, Aktuellt, 3 May 1986, Inslag 02-03, Audiovisual Archive, KB; SVT,Aktuellt, 3 May 1986, Inslag 04-06, Audiovisual Archive, KB.
Figur e 7 . Before-and-After Image juxtaposing thermal infrared data gathered by Landsat-5 on March 21 and April 29 as well as data from SPOT-1 on May 1 for greater resolution. Satel l itbild used all this data to make visible how heat previously emitted in the cooling water of the nearby basin later had cease, as well as a trai l of smoke and disfigured geometric shapes around Reactor 4. Note that heat above the nuclear plant remain visible in both the before- and the after-image of the Chernobyl meltdown.478 ©Satell itbild ©Space Media Network. Courtesy of Mikael Stern.
Satellitbild’s sensing of the Chernobyl meltdown was not about radiation but about
locating where it had happened. Satellitbild did this by locating heat emanating from
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant into the nearby cooling water basin and then
juxtaposing images suggesting that this heat emission had ceased. In addition, the
shape of the reactors had changed, which suggested that a meltdown had occurred,
that an explosion had resulted in fires, and that these seemed to be under control.
478 Mikael Holmström, “Bilden av en katastrof,” Ny teknik, 9 May 1986, Christer Larsson Private Collection.
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Satellitbild was interested in providing imagery that enabled subsequent analysis of
activities on the ground, about whether the Soviet authorities had told the truth so
far, and whether further meltdowns were to be expected. Space Media Network, in
turn, would adapt the analysis of the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts to
formats that worked for media in both Sweden and internationally.
So far, I have described numerous activities in the French-Swedish satellite
remote sensing infrastructure involved in sensing the Chernobyl meltdown.
Satellitbild’s gathering of satellite data for users like Space Media Network to write
about demonstrated the capacity of civilian satellite remote sensing in depicting events
like the Chernobyl meltdown that otherwise would be little known by the public at the
time. I now turn to the role this sensing technology played in how the Swedish
Government positioned itself with respect to the Soviet Union as well as the US.
The Role of Satellite Remote Sensing for the Swedish Crisis Group
While the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts considered the sensing of the
Chernobyl meltdown a demonstration of the capacity of the French-Swedish
infrastructure, the Swedish Crisis Group treated the technology with scepticism. The
Group had initially relied on simulations of radioactive fallout, based on
measurements collected in Sweden, using instruments with which they were already
familiar.479 The Group turned to the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts because
sensing the meltdown was not only about radioactive fallout but also about assessing
information from and about the two superpowers of the Cold War. Landsat and SPOT
did not see radioactivity could through their imagery translate red colour and the
deformed geometric shape of the reactor into indications of heat and an explosion
that located the origin of the meltdown and thus the nuclear radiation measured.
In the morning April 29, before Satellitbild had produced any imagery of
Chernobyl, the Soviet embassy’s technical-scientific attaché visited the Swedish Crisis
Group’s improvised communication centre in Stockholm. The Soviets inquired if the
Group, by any chance, happened to know how to extinguish fires in graphite-
479 Interview with Gunnar Bengtsson, 10 December 2015; Interview with Lars Ehdwall, 13 November 2015; Interview with Lars Högberg and Jan Olof-Snihs, 22 November 2015. As noted a few years later by the German writer Christa Wolf, Chernobyl involved a sensory uncertainty for most people following media coverage about the meltdown since radiation could not be seen. “If I remember correctly, the eyesight, that focal point of our perceptive powers, was hardly involved in my sensation [of Chernobyl], if at all”. See Christa Wolf, Accident: A Day’s News, translated by Heike Schwarzbauer and Rick Takvorian (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989), 39.
moderated nuclear plants. The Crisis Group found the request unsettling for several
reasons. Firstly, the Soviet Union had never before formally asked Sweden for
scientific advice regarding nuclear energy. Secondly, Sweden did not have any graphite-
moderated nuclear plants.480 And thirdly, the Soviet Union had made similar inquiries
to radiological experts in Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany, 481 while
consistently being reluctant to share its own information regarding Chernobyl.482
On April 30, Soviet state television released photographs of the damaged
reactor meant to appease international commentators. For the Swedish Crisis Group,
however, this only provoked more questions: Had the entire reactor roof blown off ?
Were fires still burning? If so, could they spread to other reactors?483 It seemed
increasingly relevant for the Group to find other means of sensing in order to
understand what had happened at Chernobyl.
US media, intelligence services, and satellite companies had already begun
referring to the satellite imagery produced by Satellitbild. On April 30, US newspapers
circulated Satellitbild’s analysis, and the three major US television networks – ABC,
NBC, and CBS – broadcasted the images. Satellitbild suggested that there were two
meltdowns at Chernobyl. US intelligence later claimed to have satellite data that
supported Satellitbild’s analysis. 484 It was understood, but not confirmed, that US
intelligence had attained information from US Keyhole-11 spy satellites. With
resolutions below one metre, Keyhole satellite images were detailed enough to
distinguish individual people.485
US media juxtaposed the Soviet state television’s photography with that of
Satellitbild’s Landsat image to argue that fires were indeed raging in a reactor and had
potentially spread to others.486 Newspapers in the British Commonwealth referred to
Satellitbild’s images stating that thousands of people had died so far as a result of the
480 Snihs, “Snihs diary notes from 1986,” 29 April 1986, Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection. 481 Interview with Lars Högberg and Jan Olof-Snihs, 22 November 2015. See also “Soviets downplay fire but seek help,” The Citizen, Ottawa, Ontario, 1 May 1986; “Second reactor may be afire radiation cloud heads west,” Montreal Gazette, Quebeq, 1 May 1986. 482 Hans Blix, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not receive official news from the Soviet Union regarding Chernobyl until April 29. See SVT, Rapport, 29 April 1986. 483 Interview with Lars Högberg and Jan Olof-Snihs, 22 November 2015. 484 See Boyce Rensberger, “Explosion, Graphite Fire Suspected: U.S. Specialists Differ,” The Washington Post, 30 Apr 1986; “Assessment of U.S. Intelligence sources say accident began days ago,” The New York Times, 30 Apr 1986. 485 Keith C Clarke, “Satellite Imagery and Map Revision,” in The History of Cartography, Volume Six. Cartography in the Twentieth Century. Part 1, ed. Mark Monmonier (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 1295. 486 ABC News, World News Tonight, 30 April 1986.
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meltdown.487 On May 1, US intelligence repeated Satellitbild’s claim that the meltdown
had spread to a second reactor, fearing that the Soviet authorities had lost control of
the entire nuclear plant.488
While concurring in part with Satellitbild’s analysis, US image analysts also
criticised it. The American Earth Observation Satellite Company (EOSAT), which
had access to Landsat data, argued that the Chernobyl hot spots did not have fine
enough resolution to make claims regarding a meltdown. US researchers in turn
criticised the Reagan Administration for referencing Swedish images instead of
declassifying its own material. For example, some of the objects believed to be debris
from an exploded reactor could very well have been additional buildings in the area.489
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in turn said it had disclosed spy satellite
imagery to members of the US Congress, but none of these images were displayed to
the media.490 As demands from various European governments for information about
the meltdown grew louder and louder, US Secretary of State Georg P. Shultz claimed
that the US had provided most of the information thus far available regarding
Chernobyl, whereas the Soviet Union remained more or less silent.491
The Swedish Crisis Group considered both the Soviet veil of secrecy and the
American reluctance towards sharing its reconnaissance imagery as indicative that
Sweden needed to rely on its own means of sensing the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant, for example to estimate traffic and thereby the scope of the Soviet operations
in the region to contain the meltdown.492 It should be noted that Swedish media had
at this point also begun to treat Satellitbild’s images and analysis on par with
information provided by the Swedish Crisis Group.493 This made it necessary for the
Group to deal with sensing by satellite in one respect or the other.
487 Michael White, Martin Walker and Alex Brummer, “US estimates up to 3,000 victims from satellite information,” The Guardian, 1 May 1986. 488 “U.S. Nuclear Experts Worry That Soviet Engineers Could Lose Control Over 3 Other Chernobyl Plants,” Wall Street Journal, 1 May 1986. 489 Jerry Ackerman, “Burning worse than a meltdown, specialists say,” Boston Globe, 1 May 1986. 490 William Beecher and Thomas Oliphant, “Keyhole’s satellites gives US detailed photos of Soviet disaster,” Montreal Gazette, Quebeq, 1 May 1986; “Washington US Says Nuclear Fire Still Raging: Casualty Estimates Put in Thousands,” Boston Globe, 1 May 1986. 491 James Gerstenzang and Robert Rosenblatt, “Trouble in 2nd Soviet Reactor, US Indicates,” Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1986; “May go on for weeks: more European nations report finding proof of meltdown,” The New York Time, 1 May 1986. 492 Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, Tjernobyl 1986; Interview with Lars Högberg and Jan Olof-Snihs, 22 November 2015; Interview with Lars Ehdwall, 13 November 2015. 493 SVT, Rapport, 2 May 1986, ALB86-2111, Audiovisual Archive, KB; SVT, Aktuellt, 2 May 1986, ALB86-1117, Audiovisual Archive, KB; Expressen, 2 May 1986; NSD, 2 May 1986, Årgång 68; Ny teknik, 9 May 1986.
Since May 2, Soviet authorities had claimed that, as a safety precaution, all its
nuclear power plants with a similar design to that in Chernobyl would be turned off.494
On May 3, the Reagan Administration stated that US satellites had verified that the
Soviets had indeed turned off reactors similar to those used at the Chernobyl Nuclear
Power Plant. 495 But the Swedish Crisis Group remained worried and planned to
conduct its own satellite remote sensing to assess the state of the Soviet reactors.
Since the US Embassy had already expressed an interest in the SPOT data, the Group
proposed to trade these in return for coordinates to other Soviet reactors designed
similarly to those in Chernobyl.496
Trading intelligence with the US was not a trivial matter for Sweden. In 1976,
journalists had disclosed how the Swedish Government had bought satellite images
from the US to monitor troop movements in the Soviet bloc. This affair hurt the
credibility of Sweden’s neutrality policy and served as one of many scandals during
the Swedish elections, in which the incumbent Social Democratic Government lost to
the Liberal Conservative opposition.497 For this reason, the Swedish Crisis Group took
precautions and met anonymously with a US agent in one of Stockholm’s many parks.
They exchanged the SPOT data for the reactor coordinates.498
The Swedish Crisis Group passed on the coordinates to SSC and Satellitbild,
requesting that they sense Ignalina – the nuclear power plant in Lithuania and closest
to Sweden.499 By May 7, Satellitbild had gathered Landsat data of the Ignalina Nuclear
Power Plant. After processing the data, the analysts identified heat in the waters
adjacent to Ignalina (Figure 8). Satellitbild interpreted this as a sign that the Soviet
authorities had kept the nuclear power plant operational, despite promises to turn it
off.500
The Swedish Crisis Group also asked Satellitbild to sense Chernobyl again in
order to assess the risk for a second meltdown. Satellitbild gathered new SPOT data
494 Dagens Nyheter , 2 May 1986. 495 Bernard Gwertzman, “U.S. Tells Women and Children To Shun Poland Over Health Risk,” The New York Times, 3 May 1986. 496 Interview with Göran Mandéus, 3 December 2015. 497 “Sweden Said to Be Secretly Buying U.S. Satellite Pictures of Troops,” The New York Times, 20 September 1976; “End of an Era in Sweden,” The New York Times, 21 September 1976. 498 Interview with Göran Mandéus, 3 December 2015. 499 Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, Tjernobyl 1986; Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015.500 Magdalena Nordenstam (1990), “Avslöjade rysk lögn och smyghuggna regnskogar,” Smålandstidningen, 2 January 1990.
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of the nuclear power plant and delivered these to the Crisis Group on May 9.501 With
the SPOT images, the Group assessed that a second meltdown seemed unlikely, which
it communicated to Dahl’s office and later also to Swedish media and international
nuclear experts.502 On May 10, the Swedish Embassy in Moscow was able to access
sources from within the Soviet Union that supported the analysis by the Swedish Crisis
Group that no further risk existed for a second meltdown.503 By now, the Group
believed it had dealt with the immediate crises and resolved most of its initial
questions.
Figur e 8 . Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, Lithuania. Satel l itbild used thermal infrared data from Landsat-5, gathered on 7 May 1986, to depict heat emitted in the cooling water adjacent to the power plant.504 ©Satellitbild. Courtesy of Mikael Stern.
501 Anders Söderman, “Satellitbild har nu hamnat på världskartan över fjärranalysföretag,” undated 1986, Christer Larsson Private Collection. 502 Original in Swedish: “Det mesta tyder på att kylningen av reaktor tre:s härd är under kontroll”. See Swedish Radiation Protection Authority, Situation assessment by Lars Högberg/SSI, May 7, 1986, cf. SVT, Rapport, 7 May 1986, ALB86-2115, Audiovisual Archive, KB. 503 Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015. 504 Mikael Stern Private Collection.
As the Group refrained from making further requests for satellite data and made no
use of the new imagery depicting Chernobyl or Ignalina, Satellitbild allowed itself to
pause to appreciate its achievements thus far. Bjerkesjö acknowledged how the
different parts of the remote sensing infrastructure had collaborated to produce and
distribute imagery swiftly. “the space enterprise in Kiruna has once again been placed
on the world map, drawing recognition from faraway continents. Hopefully, this leads
to our increased standing in the inner circle, i.e. other ground stations, and increased
interest for our more regular products among the customers.”505
Swedish satellite remote sensing influenced how the Swedish Crisis Group
provided information about the nuclear radiation. Initially, that influence grew. In part,
this was due to efforts by Satellitbild and Space Media Network to offer a proof of
concept for newsgathering from space. But the Group relied on the Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts because of the Gorbachev Administration’s unwillingness to
provide information about the meltdown, and the Reagan Administration’s refusal to
disclose its own satellite imagery. These conditions enabled Swedish satellite remote
sensing to provide imagery of how the Soviet nuclear power plants’ operated, first at
Chernobyl and then at Ignalina.
Writing about Chernobyl and the Access to Satellite Remote
Sensing, 1986–1991
So far, I have reviewed the critical activities involved in sensing the Chernobyl
meltdown and in how the Swedish Crisis Group used satellite remote sensing, hour
by hour. Now, I’d like to describe the relevance of the technology for debates in
subsequent years about environmental concerns and societal conditions in the Soviet
Union. This will demonstrate how commercial satellite remote sensing, along with
SSC’s use of it, was one of the initiatives challenging the state secrecy characteristic
of the Cold War. After describing the international debate among media and
politicians, I describe the continued activities of the Space Media Network until the
members disbanded at the end of the Cold War in 1991.
505 Original in Swedish: “Åter igen har rymdverksamheten i Kiruna placerats på världskartan och uppmärksammats på fjärran kontinenter. Förhoppningsvis leder detta till att vårt anseende i innekretsen, d v s bland andra ground stations förstärks samtidigt som intresset ökar för vårt mer reguljära produktsortiment ute hos kunderna. Good show old sports.” See Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “Till Operatörpersonalen, Esrange Satellitstation. Telex till operatörpersonalen, Esrange satellitstation,” 7 May 1986, Christer Larsson Private Collection.
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The Rise of Anti-Nuclear Movements and the End of Cold War Secrecy
Days after Space Media Network disseminated SPOT data of Chernobyl, President
Mitterrand sent a warning question to CNES and Spot Image, “What is a French
satellite doing on Swedish television?”506 This remark pointed not only to French
concerns about how Swedish remote sensing experts used the SPOT programme, but
also to fears within the French nuclear programme that a meltdown, albeit in another
country, could lead to rising fears over French nuclear power, too.
Whereas nuclear experts in numerous European countries had organised to
monitor changes in background radiation, the French nuclear experts responded by
denying that any French soil had been contaminated. On April 29 and 30, French
television used graphics of a red “STOP”-sign to signal that radiation had not crossed
France’s border. Later, they substantiated these claims by depicting how an anticyclone
had developed above France, which then met the winds carrying the radiation and
steered it southward in over Sardinia and back east across Italy, Austria, and
Yugoslavia.507 Historian Karena Kalmbach has shown how French journalists later
accused the French nuclear experts of misleading the French public, which led to
criticism of the close ties between these experts and the French government.508
A similar logic can be seen in how criticism of the Chernobyl meltdown led to
a criticism of the Soviet system as a whole. Western media commentators used and
reused Chernobyl as an analogy to describe other failing Soviet technologies. For
example, malfunctioning nuclear Soviet satellites acquired the nickname “Flying
Chernobyls”.509 The Swedish Government also described the meltdown not only as a
506 See Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015. For additional citations of Mitterand using different phrases but to a similar effect, see Interview with Svante Astermo, 15 November 2015; Interview with Gérard Brachet, 6 January 2016. 507 “Consequences nuclear power accident,” Program JA2 20H, 29 April 1986, Antenna 2, the Journal of 20H, INA; “Chernobyl and weather in Europe,” Program JA2 20H, 30 April 1986, Commentator Birgitte Simonetta, presenter Claude Sérillon, Antenna 2, the Journal of 20H, INA; “Chernobyl: THE FACTS,” Program Midi 2, 30 April 1986, Journalists Philippe Dumez and Pierre Lepetit, Antenna 2, the Journal of 20H, INA. 508 Kalmbach (2014), 89–94. See also Katrin Jordan, Ausgestrahlt. Die mediale Debatte um »Tschernobyl« in der Bundesrepublik und in Frankreich 1986/87 (Berlin: Wallstein Verlag, 2018). 509 Mary McGrory, “The Flying Chernobyls,” The Washington Post, 18 September 1988. For similar references, see also “Strengthening the case for disarmament,” Boston Globe, 2 May 1986; Robert E. Hunter, “Chernobyl Can Give Life to Arms Control,” Los Angeles Times, 5 May 1986; Tim Beardsley, “Stable Orbit: Space Reactors Cause Problems,” Scientific American, 260, no. 2 (February 1989), 14–15; Michael Isikoff, “Commercial Launchings Face Delays: Backlog of Grounded Satellites Blamed on Challenger Disaster,” The Washington Post, 6 July 1986; John Noble Wilford, “Technology’s False Steps: The Atomic Difference,” The New York Times, 5 May 1986; cf. James Gleick, “U.S. Rocket Destroyed by Ground Control,” The New York Times, 28 August 1986.
failure of Soviet technology but as a result of routines in the “Soviet security
culture”.510
Numerous historians have pointed to the importance of Chernobyl for protest
groups in the Soviet republics. For the Gorbachev Administration, the Chernobyl
meltdown became an issue of public relations with the West. For this reason, the
Administration also tolerated internal criticism relating to nuclear power.511 Protesters
subsequently organised in environmental advocacy groups, targeting issues about
radiation as part of asserting nationalist claims to power,512 what political scientist Jane
Dawson terms ‘eco-nationalism’.513 The severity with which these protesters targeted
the rule of the Soviet Union was often greater the greater the distance between them
and the contaminated areas. 514 Historian Serhii Plokhy has suggested that the
environmental debate around Chernobyl, at least in Ukraine, served as a tool of
nation-building,515 which explains why elements of ecological activism turned protest
groups into nationalist movements.
Satellite remote sensing added to the protests in the sense that it turned
Chernobyl into a place for subsequent international media debate, which held the
Gorbachev Administration accountable to other governments. Whereas the Soviet
Union could deflect criticism from the US as biased, it was harder to do so against
Sweden, which professed to be a non-aligned country. Sensing technologies were
central to why Sweden could hold this position of impartial informant. In particular,
510 Swedish Radiation Protection Authority, Situation assessment by Lars Högberg. In addition, contemporary journalists pointed out that nuclear power plants like that in Chernobyl was not characteristic of a Soviet technology but that these also existed throughout Western Europe, see Fredrik Lundberg and Sten Haage, “Dålig kylning och luftläcka,” Ny teknik, 9 May 1986, No. 19. For historical research on transnational relations between both Western and Soviet nuclear power communities, see Sonja D. Schmid, “Defining (Scientific) Direction: Soviet Nuclear Physics and Reactor Engineering during the Cold War,” Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press, 2014), 331–34. 511 It should be added that the Gorbachev Administration also tolerated other protest movements, such as networks for arms control and peace activism, see Black (2010), 251. See also Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). 512 Olga Kuchinskaya, The Politics of Invisibility. Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl (Cambridge Mass. & London: The MIT Press, 2014), 72–74; Sonja D. Schmid, Producing Power. The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear industry (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015), 150; Robert G. Darst, Smokestack Diplomacy: Cooperation and Conflict in East-West Environmental Politics (Cambridge,Mass.: & London: MIT Press, 2001), 152, 157.513 Jane I. Dawson, Eco-Nationalism. Anti-nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, andUkraine (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1996), 4–5.514 Susanne Bauer, Karena Kalmbach, and Tatiana Kasperski, “From Pripyat to Paris, from GrassrootsMemories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout,” in NuclearPortraits. Communities, the Environment, and Public Policy, ed. Laurel Sefton Macdowell (Toronto, Buffalo,London: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 149–76.515 Plokhy (2018), 20–22, 510, 582.
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satellite imagery was relevant to writing about Chernobyl, and to some extent also
Ignalina, as incidents that the Soviet authorities sought to hide. They turned into
environmental concerns later on as groups like Space Media Network and nationalist
movements made refence to defunct Soviet nuclear power as part of a larger
environmental degradation caused by the Soviet authorities.
Swedish satellite remote sensing, however, also initiated a debate
about surveillance that struck at the heart of the hegemony held by both superpowers of
the Cold War. While the debate in Western Europe focused on the role of nuclear power
in society, the US debate concerned secrecy relating to satellite remote sensing. This was
succinctly summarised in an interview with security analyst Bhupendra Jasani at the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Upon seeing the bright red
dot over Chernobyl, his first thought was “the iron curtain is being lifted”.516
Satellitbild’s images mattered to the prospects for commercial satellite remote
sensing but also to the idea of neutral, non-aligned countries, carrying out
monitoring, without relying on superpowers for information about a crisis.
Prior to the Chernobyl meltdown, media had only rarely used detailed satellite
images. When the US made them available for civilian use, this was primarily as a
means to legitimise and maintain more advanced, covert, satellite reconnaissance.517
In the early 1980s, ABC-News used Landsat data for a couple of stories about
the Soviet city of Murmansk.518 And in March 1986, The New York Times used a
leaked image from a US spy satellite to report about the Soviet construction of
tunnels for nuclear tests. The publication, however, did not include any imagery.519
Then, in April 1986, US Central Intelligence Agency Director William
Casey stated that the power balance for satellite remote sensing could soon change.
Casey believed that foreign nations, like France, would begin using civilian
satellites to monitor matters of national security, in which case he and the Agency
might consider stopping specific monitoring activities that posed a risk to the US.520
516 Gill Dwyer, “Peace spy in the sky”, Sunday Morning Post, 20 July 1986. 517 On declassification of US satellite imagery for civil use since the 1960s onwards, see James David, “The Intelligence Agencies help Find Whales: Civilian Use of Classified Overhead Photography Under Project Argo,” Quest: History of Spaceflight Quarterly 16, no. 4 (2009): 27–36. See also James E. David, Spies and Shuttles. NASA’s Secret Relationships with the DoD and CIA (Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, University Press of Florida, 2015), 103–9. 518 Laurie McGinley, “Satellites May Give Journalists Powerful Tool, Lead to Showdown on National Security Issue,” Wall Street Journal, 2 July 1986. 519 “New Summary: Tuesday,” The New York Times, 18 March 1986. 520 Eleanor Randolph, “Casey Says News Leaks Hurt Sources CIA Chief Offers To Advise Media,” The Washington Post, 10 Apr 1986.
When the Soviet Union on April 29 initially refused to disclose imagery of the
Chernobyl meltdown, a report from the Central Intelligence Agency predicted that
silence from the Soviets would in turn increase demands on the US to declassify some
of its own spy images that had been gathered using Keyhole satellites.521
One technical problem for the Agency was that it had lost most of its sensing
capacity when several planned Keyhole satellites failed to launch in 1985–86. With
only two satellites in orbit in April 1986, US intelligence in fact came to rely in part
on civilian satellites to gather intelligence about Chernobyl,522 professing that they did
not possess any information about the meltdown prior to the Soviet announcements
thereof.523 Referring to diplomatic sources, radiologist Francis Mould claims that US
early warning satellites had sensed the meltdown already on April 26, at 01:24:12 local
time in Ukraine, 28 seconds after Reactor 4 exploded.524 None of my archival searches
or interviews could support Mould’s claim about access to imagery from early warning
systems.
The main point about Swedish satellite remote sensing was that it made
apparent the unwillingness on the part of both the US and the Soviet Union to
disclose their own satellite imagery, which they were expected to have since they were
the hegemonic space powers at the time. What followed was a heated debate in the
US on who had the right to access or interpret satellite images. The intelligence
community and media commentators engaged in a debate on who had the expertise
versus who had the right to interpret satellite data. The US intelligence community
criticised the media for spreading what it considered to be sensational but erroneous
interpretations.525 Media in turn responded that the issue was that neither the US nor
the Soviet Union was willing to disclose its own imagery, in which case the public had
to resort to civilian satellites as the only source of imagery.526 Some US commentators
521 US Central Intelligence Agency, “Implications of the Chernobyl disaster,” 29 April 1986, NIO/USSR. 522 Interview with David Lindgren, 6 December 2016. See also Lindgren (2000), 165–67. 523 Stephen Engelberg, “Nuclear disaster: World is watching the cloud; U.S. says intelligence units did not detect the accident,” The New York Times, 2 May 1986. 524 Mould (2000), 48. 525 Although the US Central Intelligence Agency formally criticised civil satellite sensing for lacking expertise, image analysts working as liaison between the Agency and the US Reagan Administration later stated that civilian satellite images served to dampened the most sensational media. See Interview with David Lindgren, 6 December 2016. 526 Clair Balfour, “Change of bias in Chernobyl stories misses the point,” Montreal Gazette, Quebeq, 8 May 1986; Turner Stansfield, “The U.S. Responded Poorly to Chernobyl,” The New York Times, 23 May 1986; David M. Rubin, “Communicating Risk: The Media and the Public How the News Media Reported on Three Mile Island and Chernobyl,” Journal of Communication, 37, no. 3 (summer, 1987); William J. Broad, “U.S. Adds to Lead Over Soviet in Star Wars,” The New York Times, 14 February 1988.
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also argued that satellite data should be considered a civil right on par with free speech.
Restrictions by the intelligence community would only push American users toward
foreign satellite services developed in Europe or Asia.527
While the initial reporting had focused on a struggle between the West and the
East – the knowledge-gathering by the former would lead to the demise of the latter528
– the discussion in subsequent years increasingly focused on tensions between old and
new users of satellite data. In December 1987, The Washington Post remarked:
The satellite spy club has not yet recovered from the moment in February 1986
when France barged in the door and jostled the club’s founding members - the US
and the Soviet Union.529
The Gorbachev Administration sought to meet these developments and incorporate
them in the new policies for transparency. In Summer 1986 it proposed the
establishment of a World Space Organization to share information gathered from
outer space.530 These plans were drafted already in August, 1985, as part of redirecting
US efforts on a space defence initiative toward joint information sharing, from “Star
Wars” to “Star Peace”,531 and were now refurbished by the Gorbachev Administration
to demonstrate openness regarding satellite remote sensing.
In August 1986, Sweden and other countries proposed a third, neutral way for
transparent use of sensing technologies as part of a global peace alert system. The
system would consist of an international scientific research centre and a monitoring
centre equipped with “a seismic ear to the ground and a surveillance eye in the sky”.
As an example of these international, civil, activities The New York Times referred to
Space Media Network –a little brother watching big brothers. You needed “the Swedes
to tell the world”, the reporter stated, since superpowers tended to cover up also their
527 See Keith Schneider, “Hints of Crop Damage Roil U.S. Markets,” The New York Times, 2 May 1986; Laurie McGinley, “Satellites May Give Journalists Powerful Tool, Lead to Showdown on National Security Issue,” Wall Street Journal, 2 July 1986; W. Strobel, “Photo satellites for media worry intelligence brass”, The Washington Times, 11 August 1986, Svante Astermo Private Collection; “Private Eyes,” Los Angeles Times, 15 October 1986. 528 Nell Henderson, “Civilian Satellites Penetrate Soviet Secrecy, Photograph Plant,” The Washington Post, 2 May 1986; Irvin Molotsky, “Chernobyl and the 'Global Village’,” The New York Times, 7 May 1986. 529 Eliot Marshall, “Space Surveillance,” The Washington Post, 27 December 1987. 530 “Soviet Union Prepared To Launch Foreign Satellites,” The Washington Post, 13 June 1986. 531 Edward Shevardnadze/USSR, “World Space Organization. Draft Outline,” 15 August 1985, UN Archive, New York.
adversaries’ secrets. 532 By September, France had proposed another international
monitoring system built around the use of their SPOT programme. In a series of
media appearances, scientist and public speaker Carl Sagan supported CNES’ use of
SPOT for international monitoring and added that,
By far the most important kind of satellites have been military reconnaissance
satellites….It is a way to see what the other side is actually doing…and so it is
enormously stabilizing….And the French SPOT satellite, for example, was recently
used to see what is the state of Soviet preparations for resuming nuclear testing if
the US do not comply.…I think it is a very desirable thing to involve other
countries [in verification].533
Plans for transparent world monitoring were not new, and as I described in the
previous chapter these dated back to the UN debates of the 1970s.534 But the Soviet
and French plans were now presented in reaction to, or anticipation of, a world order
where the superpowers had lost their hegemony over satellite remote sensing. By 1989,
however, such plans had not resulted in any international agreements, except for
CNES selling SPOT data for both civilian and military uses, for example satellite
imagery of war along the border of Iraq and Iran, military operations around the
Golan Heights, and chemical warfare installations in Libya.535
The US Department of Defence had already begun outsourcing part of its
reconnaissance to Spot Image and its US subsidiary Spot Image Corporation
(SICORP).536 The American consultancy Arthur D. Little and the US Center for Space
532 See Lewis Flora, “A Third Eye and Ear,” The New York Times, 8 August 1986. For similar arguments, see Robert Healey, “Coming clean on Chernobyl,” Boston Globe. 9 May 1986; “Study Finds Unannounced U.S. Atomic Tests,” The New York Times, 15 January 1986; Ron F. Cleminson, “Multilateralism in the Arms Control and Verification Process—A Canadian Perspective,” Arms Control and Disarmament in Outer Space, Vol. II, ed. Nicolas Mateesco Matte (Montreal: CRASL McGill University, 1987), 43–44. Republished in The New York Times; cf. William J. Broad, “117 Secret U.S. Atomic Tests Are Indicated in Seismic Data: Data Hint Wider U.S. Nuclear Tests,” The New York Times, 17 January 1988. 533 Carl Sagan, The Risk of Nuclear War, National Press Club, 25 September 1986. cf. “Spotlight on Nuclear Conflict,” The New York Times, 8 February 1987. 534 In some respects, plans for international use of space can be said to have been formulated already in president Eisenhower’s open skies-policy from 1955. See W. D. Kay, Defining NASA. The Historical Debate over the Agency’s Mission (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 34–36; R. Cargill Hall, “Postwar Strategic Reconnaissance and the Genesis of CORONA,” in Eye in the Sky: The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites, ed. Dwayne A. Day, John M. Logsdon, and Brian Latell (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), 86–118. 535 William J. Broad, “Non-Superpowers Are Developing Their Own Spy Satellite Systems,” The New York Times, 3 September 1989. 536 William J. Broad, “Private Cameras in Space Stir U.S. Security Fears, The New York Times, 25 August 1987.
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Policy estimated that by the year 2000, revenues from satellite remote sensing would
reach two to three billion USD. Business journals on several occasions published price
lists for Landsat and SPOT data, along with information about the respective
advantages for users like farmers, urban planners, geologists, and also for journalists
interested in newsgathering from space.537 Advocates for commercial remote sensing
also argued against restrictions, like President Jimmy Carter’s directive from 1978, that
restricted non-military sensing to a ten-metre resolution. This limited the ability to
use satellites as “environmental watchdogs”, they argued, seeing as finer resolution
would be necessary to detect certain types of environmental degradation and
pollution.538
The debate on satellite remote sensing is symptomatic of an end to Cold War
secrecy after the sensing of the Chernobyl meltdown. Although neither the US nor
the Soviet Union substantially lifted restrictions on its military satellite imagery, media
commentators no longer considered superpower secrecy to be legitimate, given both
the commercial and environmental benefits that were said to come from a more open
use of satellite remote sensing. Media commentators, whether positive or sceptical to
more open use of satellite data, repeatedly referred to the sensing of Chernobyl as a
show-case for commercial satellite remote sensing.
Space Media Network and Ownership in the French-Swedish Satellite Remote
Sensing Infrastructure
Newsgathering from space served as a model for many of the commentaries, dreams
about, and fears regarding civilian satellite remote sensing voiced in the public
537 Laurie McGinley, “Satellites May Give Journalists Powerful Tool, Lead to Showdown on National Security Issue,” Wall Street Journal, 2 July 1986; Alex Montague, “Intelligence for Sale: A Satellite Company Gears Up for Recognition Wars,” Baltimore Business Journal, 28 July 1986; William Lowther, Reports from Outer Space, 99, no. 46 (Toronto: Maclean’s, 17 November 1986): 76; Romy Klessen, “Data Center Uses Photos to Battle Pests, Crop Disease,” Los Angeles Times, 20 December 1987; Peter Durantine, “Eye in Sky First to Spot Chernobyl Disaster,” Washington Business Journal 7, no. 46 (10 April 1989). 538 See “Detectives in space. Sensors mounted on satellites send a stream of invaluable scientific information back to Earth,” The Christian Science Monitor, Boston Massachusetts, 4 March 1987. For wording to a similar effect about the environmental benefits of remote sensing satellites, see “Now the US is in danger of losing its commercial lead just as important new applications are emerging,” The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts. 4 March 1987; Donald Rheem L., “News media push for own ‘eyes in the sky’,” The Christian Science Monitor; Boston, Massachusetts, 5 March 1987; Ernest Conine, “‘MediaSats’: Issue With No Easy Answers,” Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1987; Newton N. Minow, “Lessons from Chernobyl,” The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Massachusetts, 28 April1988.
discourse. This section describes the activities of the Space Media Network from its
rise, when sensing the Chernobyl meltdown, to its fall, at the end of the Cold War.
One week after sensing the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, the Network’s
images had been republished throughout the Western world by the Associated Press,
Reuters, and the Canadian Press, as well as The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The
Washington Post, and Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the Montreal Gazette, The Guardian, the Los
Angeles Times, Southam News, La Presse, The Globe and Newhouse News Service.539 After the
breakthrough, the Network spent the coming years sensing sites of political interest:
the construction of Soviet missile silos at Semipalatinsk, in what is now northeastern
Kazakhstan;540 the building of a space shuttle runway at the Baikonur Space Center in
Tyuratam, also in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic;541 and installations for a space
defence initiative at Nurek in the Tadzhik Republic. The Network also disclosed the
Soviet Union’s largest antimissile research centre, Sary Shagan, in Kazakhstan.542 In
addition, the Network observed the assembly of an atomic bomb in Pakistan,543
studied the mounting of Chinese ballistic missiles in Saudi Arabia,544 and lectured the
US Department of Defence on how to assess Soviet military strength.545
Space Media Network’s efforts earned it journalistic awards,546 the opening of
offices and collaborations in many cities internationally (Figure 9), and the publication
of numerous articles in The New York Times. These articles focused not only on the
information attained by Space Media Network but on newsgathering from space as
part of renegotiating power relations between, on the one hand, the media’s right to
access satellite images and, on the other, intelligence community’s need to classify
those images.547
539 Clair Balfour, “Change of bias in Chernobyl stories misses the point,” Montreal Gazette, Quebeq, 8 May 1986; Ny teknik, 9 May 1986, no. 19; Turner Stansfield, “The U.S. Responded Poorly to Chernobyl,” The New York Times, 23 May 1986. 540 William J. Broad, “Photos Said to Show New Activity at Main Soviet Nuclear Test Site,” The New York Times, 4 August 1986. 541 William J. Broad, “Satellite Photos Appear to Show Construction of Soviet Space Shuttle Base,” The New York Times, 25 August 1986. 542 William J. Broad, “Satellite Photos Offer Clues About Soviet Laser Site: New Clues on a Soviet Laser Complex,” The New York Times, 23 October 1987; Richard Halloran, “Describes Soviet Laser Threat,” The New York Times, 24 October 1987. 543 Space Media Network, “Välkommen till ett idéseminarium om Newsgathering from Space,” Stockholm,” 25 February 1988, Christer Larsson Private Collection. 544 “Satellite photos show Saudi missile sites,” Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, 20 September 1988. 545 Molly Moore, “Delay Seen for Soviet Shuttle Flight,” The Washington Post, 25 August 1986. 546 Bonnier, “En ny form av bildjournalistik,” Stora journalistpriset 1986, November 1986. 547 Flora Lewis, “Little Brother Watches: A surveillance system that is for the public,” The New York Times, 5 October 1988.
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Figur e 9 . Space Media Network logo and contact information. 1988.548
These matters were also debated in Sweden. For example, the Swedish Ministry for
Foreign Affairs investigated whether and how SSC should disseminate satellite images
if this risked bilateral tensions with other countries. The investigation was a result of
protests by Saudi Arabia against how Space Media Network worked with SSC’s
subsidiary Satellitbild to monitor Saudi military installations.549
Historian of space technology Jeffrey T. Richelson has described this debate
surrounding civilian satellite remote sensing, and discussed several demonstrations of
civilian surveillance.550 For the current purposes, it is noteworthy that these examples
of civilian surveillance illustrated the emergence of new – transnational – actors like
Space Media Network that challenged the secrecy until then maintained by the two
superpowers.
By 1988, Space Media Network concluded its successes so far and identified
challenges that seemed to be persisting in its activities. Newsgathering from space
faced difficulties concerning costs, time spent on research, and data ownership.
Regarding costs, only the largest media publishers were willing to buy satellite images,
548 Christer Larsson Private Collection. 549 Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. 550 Cf. Jeffrey T. Richelson, Commercial Satellite Imagery and National Security (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 404, November 27, 2012).
and they usually preferred media graphics produced in-house.551 When the sponsor
Swedish Engineering Press Limited (Ingenjörsförlaget) in 1988 expressed doubts about
Space Media Network ever becoming profitable, Larsson sought support from a
Swedish billionaire businessman.552 He agreed to provide monetary support primarily
because newsgathering from space was “fun and cool”.553 With this arrangement,
Space Media Network could remain operational, at least for the time being.
Regarding time spent on research, each story took approximately a year to
finish.554 The Network initially focused on other nuclear disasters in the Soviet Union,
most notably the Kyhstym plutonium reactors in Ural that in 1957 began leaking
radioactive materials. The Soviet authorities had responded by removing nearby
villages and covering the area with new soil, thereafter proceeding to rebuild the
facilities a few kilometres away from the contaminated site. Space Media Network
argued that the Soviet authorities had initially tried a similar cover-up strategy for the
Chernobyl meltdown but also pointed out that the US knew about Kyhstym since
before but refrained from disclosing its satellite images out of fear that an
environmental debate could have hindered American expansion of its nuclear
programme in the 1960s.555 Space Media Network also worked with Soviet dissidents,
like the historian Zhores Medvedev who received satellite images to document and
write about the Chernobyl meltdown.556
Space Media Network had already earlier begun to broadened its reporting by
focusing on environmental crisis areas. For example, it depicted vast forest fires in the
People’s Republic of China, mapped the expansion of cocaine plantations in the
rainforests of Latin America, and sensed the environmental effects of military
551 Space Media Network, “Välkommen till ett idéseminarium om Newsgathering from Space,” 25 February 1988; Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “SMS10-T2. Telex från Lars Bjerkesjö till Leif Blom, TT-Bild,” 7 May 1986, Christer Larsson Private Collection. See Interview with Leif Blom, 9 December 2015. 552 Flora Lewis, “Little Brother Watches: A surveillance system that is for the public,” The New York Times, 5 October 1988; William J. Broad, “Photos Said to Show New Activity at Main Soviet Nuclear Test Site,” The New York Times, 4 August 1986. 553 Original in Swedish: “Vi fick pengar mest för att det verkade roligt och kul”. See Interview with Christer Larson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016. 554 Most time was spent on corroborating the story using extensive contacts within think tanks, researchers, and intelligence communities. Interview with Mats Thorén, 22 January 2016. 555 Vincent Tardieu, Basil Karlinski and Joelle Stolz, “Den største atomulykke fandt sted i Ural i Sovjet i 1957,” Dagbladet Information, 24 February 1989; Miki Agerberg, “Avfallsproblemet orsakade kärnkatastrofen i Ural,” Ny Teknik (May 1989); cf. Ny Teknik (May 1988): 49–50. 556 See Medvedev (1990), xii, 108, 327.
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chemical plants in Libya and Syria.557 Space Media Network also produced before-and-
after images of the diminishing Aral Sea in Central Asia, arguing that the Soviet cotton
agriculture had committed “ecological murder” by using up most of the water from
the sea.558 It also studied the flow of pollutants from rivers in Poland to the Baltic Sea.
Space Media Network frequently referred to itself as a “Little Brother” in space,
forcing the superpower Big Brothers to speak out about hidden ecological
catastrophes.559
Regarding ownership of data, Spot Image was increasingly determined to
assert its control over the French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure.
Following the sensing of Chernobyl, Spot Image met with Satellitbild to express
dislike about the Swedish activities, which Spot Image considered a violation of the
French-Swedish agreements. 560 Officially, Spot Image pointed to Chernobyl as a
demonstration of how swiftly the infrastructure around SPOT could gather, interpret,
and disseminate imagery,561 but, de facto, Brachet and his colleagues at Spot Image
were troubled by Space Media Network’s access to SPOT data. This led to subsequent
demands that Space Media Network visit Toulouse to negotiate copyright issues.562
Space Media Network hoped to alleviate the dependence on SPOT data by
finding other sources for satellite remote sensing. As long as SSC expanded and
received data from new satellites, like the European radar satellite ERS-1, Space Media
Network could hope to combine different types of sensing and push its
interpretations further.563 The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs had also begun
drafting plans for a “peace satellite”, in which it had involved Space Media Network
as a consultant.564
557 Flora Lewis, “Little Brother Watches: A surveillance system that is for the public,” in The New York Times, 5 October 1988; William J. Broad, “Photos Said to Show New Activity at Main Soviet Nuclear Test Site,” The New York Times, 4 August 1986. 558 Original in Swedish: “Sovjetunion har begått ett ekologiskt mord på Aralsjön”. See Sverker Nyman, “Mordet på Aralsjön,” Space Media Network, 1988, Christer Larsson Private Collection. 559 “‘Scoop’ Satellites,” La Republica, 17 June 1989. 560 CNES, “Exploitation de SPOT. Annexe III-1,” 30 September 1986, CNES Archive, Paris. 561 CNES, “Reportages au cœur de la technique spatiale,” Espace information. Bulletin périodique d’information et d’éducation spatiales. Supplément a espace information, no. 36, (Juin 1987): 8; Afper Knudsen, “Svensk satellitbillede skod hul i Sovjets tavshed om Tjernobyl,” Moderne Tider, 24 February 1989. 562 Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview with Philipp Delclaux, 8 January 2016. 563 Flora Lewis, “Little Brother Watches: A surveillance system that is for the public,” The New York Times, 5 October 1988. 564 Original in Swedish: “Vi hade planer på att bygga en så kallad fredssatellit”. See Interview with Henrik Salander, 3 May 2016.
Through the environmental projects, Space Media Network had begun to
collaborate extensively with Greenpeace International. 565 In 1989, the Gorbachev
Administration had approached David McTaggart, the founder of Greenpeace
International, to offer the organisation control of a satellite system, consisting of at
least one satellite and a commanding station, to be remotely controlled by Greenpeace.
McTaggart involved Space Media Network as consultants on the basis of their
neutrality, deeming that other satellite organisations had governmental links that were
too biased, for example the Landsat programme’s links to the US and SPOT’s to
France. These plans came to a halt at the Greenpeace annual meeting in Switzerland,
1990. The grassroots of Greenpeace feared that collaboration with the Soviet Union
would turn the organisation into a state player and thereby risk its legitimacy. As the
Soviet Union at this time had begun to disintegrate, continued discussions about
access to satellite systems petered out.566 With the Cold War coming to an end, the
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs also scrapped its plans for a peace satellite.567
While Space Media Network had benefitted from acting as an independent and
impartial actor, by 1991 this also endangered its continued existence. It had always
relied on Satellitbild to access, or “sneak peek” at, SPOT data and then pay only for
what would be used in newsgathering.568 Sneak peeking allowed small enterprises like
Space Media Network to operate within, and expand the uses of, the French-Swedish
satellite remote sensing infrastructure to reach new users like media distributors. But
in doing so, they bypassed French copyright that, as President Mitterrand had
remarked, endangered the Frenchness of SPOT and eventually France’s position in a
world market for satellite remote sensing. Space Media Network’s continued success
in newsgathering from space only added injury to the insult of using SPOT when
sensing Chernobyl in the first place.
Spot Image’s problem with Space Media Network was that they were too
similar to the French ambitions in satellite remote sensing. When it came to
challenging previous satellite privileges of the intelligence communities, Spot Image
and Satellitbild shared a common philosophy on how to make satellite remote sensing
565 Christer Larsson, “Telefax Attention Steve Shallhorn, Greenpeace”, Undated 1989, Christer Larsson Private Collection. 566 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016. 567 Interview with Henrik Salander, 3 May 2016. 568 See Interview with Mikael Stern, 5 November 2015; Interview with Lars Bjerkesjö, 7 December 2015.
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more transparent.569 Satellitbild had gone one step further by including users directly
in the production of satellite images, often recruiting experts from different fields in
order to better sell satellite images to these fields of expertise: Satellitbild recruited
geologists to sell data to oil companies and agronomists when speaking to farmers.570
In the 1990 negotiations, Spot Image demanded that Satellitbild’s use of SPOT
data be restricted or else this could influence Swedish participation in subsequent
SPOT satellites. Only CNES would hereafter decide on the satellite’s operational
status, program its use, and issue copyrights for the data.571 Spot Image also decided
to make an example of Space Media Network, which was a third-party user of the
SPOT programme. Since Spot Image held the copyright to all images, it continued to
increase the royalties in relation to how successful Space Media Network’s use of
those images was. Financiers soon realised that it would be impossible to be profitable
under such conditions and, in 1991, cancelled the financing of Space Media
Network.572 In the end, the French forced newsgathering from space into a cul-de-sac
paved with copyright law.
Summary
On April 28, 1986, the Swedish Crisis Group posed a set of questions relating to the
radioactive fallout detected along Sweden’s eastern coast: What had caused the nuclear
radiation? Where was the source located? And, perhaps most importantly, would the
situation get worse? I have used this brief episode to concretise my overarching
research questions. It serves as a case for how the French-Swedish remote sensing
infrastructure operated, which activities and actors were or could become involved in
it, as well as its relationship to government and society at large.
It was SSC, its subsidiary Satellitbild, and the Space Media Network that
respectively conducted the activities necessary to gather, interpret, and disseminate
data about the Chernobyl meltdown to other users, most notably to the media and the
569 The term “philosophy” was used by Gerard Brachet, Philippe Delclaux, Svante Astermo and Lars Bjerkesjö when interviewed about the relationship between Spot Image and Satellitbild. 570 Interview with Håkan Olsson, 10 June 2016; Interview with Marie Byström, 6 July 2018. 571 Silja Strömberg/SBSA, “SPOT-samarbetet Sverige-Frankrike: avtalssituation,” 11 January 1990. 572 Interview with Christer Larsson, 2 November 2015 and 30 January 2016. It should be added that newsgathering from space was not an isolated episode in the use of satellite remote sensing. Civil surveillance is organised also in present time, for example monitoring of nuclear activiites in North Korea and Syria, includeingUS restrictions on what data not to disseminate, for example nuclear activities in Israel. See Institute for Science & International Security.
Swedish Crisis Group. The data and the images produced by Swedish satellite remote
sensing provided viewers worldwide with imagery of where the meltdown had
occurred and also stimulated subsequent writing about the importance of managing
environmental degradation, not only in northern Ukraine but in many regions around
the globe.
SSC’s development of a French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure
since the late 1970s had by 1986 resulted in Satellitbild but had also provoked
initiatives from both the French Spot Image and the Swedish Land Survey to limit the
market for Swedish satellite remote sensing. Under these circumstances, Satellitbild
felt compelled to collaborate closely with new users, like journalists at Space Media
Network, as part of swiftly finding new markets for the technology. The sensing of
Chernobyl and its subsequent dissemination to media throughout the Western world
illustrate the integration of the users in the production of satellite images.
During April and May of 1986, but also in subsequent years, Satellitbild and
Space Media Network promoted their activities as neutral surveillance by a non-
aligned country. This corresponded both to the Swedish foreign policy at the time but
also illustrated a wider debate in the US about the role of commercial satellite remote
sensing as challenging the previous secrecy characteristic of the Cold War and its
superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union.
In the political fallout following Chernobyl, protest groups in several Soviet
republics rallied around environmental issues, most notably relating to nuclear
contamination. Satellitbild and Space Media Network had until then not emphasised
Chernobyl as an environmental disaster. All the same, they used satellite remote sensing
to locate the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and depict how the meltdown had
changed conditions on the ground, for example deformed the plant and stopped the
emission of heat into the nearby water. These became environmental issues as media
and nationalist movements scaled up the criticism targeting especially contaminated
places to lay the blame on the Soviet system in its entirety. Satellitbild and Space Media
Network in turn adapted to this shift in the meaning of satellite remote sensing
technology. From 1988 onward, newsgathering from space was marketed as a means
not only to uncover secrets of governments but as a means to detect and even avert
environmental disasters globally.
By the time the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, support for newsgathering
from space as non-aligned surveillance dissipated. However, the direct ambition of
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Spot Image to assert its ownership of the SPOT programme, hence its power in the
French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure, was what brought an end to
Space Media Network.
The role of Swedish satellite remote sensing as non-aligned surveillance was
not an isolated instance but built on previous ideas about Sweden’s role in world
politics and would influence subsequent Swedish activities later in the 1980s and early
1990s. After the sensing of Chernobyl in 1986, SSC and Satellitbild had earned
international recognition as impartial brokers in satellite images. This would influence
how SSC and Satellitbild sought to find new uses for their remote sensing expertise
abroad.
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CHAPTER 4
Satellites as Aid, 1983–1994
SSC had long hoped to find users of satellite remote sensing within Sweden. While
the subsidiary Satellitbild hired different experts to define new applications, including
agronomists, biologists, and geologists, the idea had primarily been to sell services to
Swedish or Nordic users. 573 SSC leadership in turn assumed that the customer,
ultimately, would be the Swedish Government, as the newly appointed CEO Lennart
Lübeck reminded his staff, “[SSC] is a water tap, and our source is the Swedish Board
for Space Activities”.574 But by June 1986, despite the recent international recognition,
orders for data had not increased. It was time to look for uses of satellite remote
sensing beyond Sweden.575
In the previous chapter, I described how, in 1986, SSC and Satellitbild used
satellite remote sensing to sense the Chernobyl meltdown. This provoked a debate on
Cold War secrecy and demonstrated monitoring as a means of managing
environmental disasters. This chapter considers subsequent activities whereby SSC
sold satellite remote sensing data as part of development aid.
I first situate SSC’s attempts to sell satellite remote sensing abroad in the
context of exports of expertise, a growing enterprise for numerous Swedish industries
and governmental agencies from the late 1970s onwards.576 I demonstrate how SSC
and Satellitbild used development consultants to find, define, and fund projects in
developing countries, the most significant being the mapping of land cover in the
Philippines in Southeast Asia, 1986–1988. Secondly, I describe activities during the
573 Interview with Marie Byström, 6 July 2018. See also SBSA/SSC/Satellitbild, “‘Space night’. Press release no 3, Satellitbild AB – Rymdbolagets dotterbolag i Kiruna,” 20 February 1986, SSC Esrange Press & Info launch SPOT, SSC-E. 574 Original in Swedish: “i alltihopa det här så måste vi hela tiden komma ihåg att källan för allt det här är Rymdstyrelsen och vi är kranen”. See Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM. 575 Håkan Kihlberg/SSC, “FAA – 28. Lägesrapport Fjärranalysdivisionen efter 1:a tertial 1986,” 10 June 1986, SSC Board, SSC-S. 576I use the term ‘export of expertise’ although the Swedish terms in the governmental official reports were “konsultexport (exports of consultant services)” and “statlig tjänsteexport (governmental exports of services)”. This is to analytically indicate that exports of expertise not only included services, since satellite data were material products, and also involved training that transferred the expertise transnationally. For an English summary on these terms, see SOU 1980:23, Statligt kunnande till salu. Export av tjänster från myndigheter och bolag. Betänkande av konsultexportutredningen, 37–40.
Philippines project and subsequent efforts to define its meaning. Thirdly, and finally,
I describe how SSC continued to rely on aid for financing satellite remote sensing
expertise until, in the early 1990s, it began consolidating its international activities.
In this chapter, I address why SSC used development aid to become a central
player in satellite remote sensing. I study the effect that activities like development
projects had on the technology of satellite remote sensing and how these in turn
contributed to the making of new environments. I will focus on the sensing of
changes in land cover, on writings and descriptions about a changing environment
that made reference to remote sensing, and how these stimulated legislations on land
use that would become influential in shaping future uses of environments. I argue that
the development consultants became a significant source of expertise in selling
Swedish satellite remote sensing as a form of development aid. They contributed to
SSC’s activities by planning, participating in, and promoting the aid projects.577 The
crucial outcome of the development projects was an increased emphasis on Swedish
satellite remote sensing as a tool for the sustainable development of the environment.
Satellite remote sensing, I argue, served as an environing technology first in
sensing the Philippines with an emphasis on the classification of its forests. Secondly,
writings about the project increasingly emphasised satellite remote sensing as a tool
for the sustainable development of the environment, rather than other uses, most crucially
the land reform previously promised by the government of the Philippines. Thirdly,
the government of the Philippines shaped deforestation practices with reference to
SSC’s satellite remote sensing. The sensing, writing about, and shaping of forest cover
in the Philippines were also significant for subsequent uses of satellite remote sensing.
SSC, competitors like Spot Image, and financiers like the World Bank or the Swedish
government, referred to the Philippines as an example of how the Earth’s
environment could be monitored and thereby managed in new ways. The mapping of
land cover in the Philippines illustrates how satellite remote sensing contributed to
making a new environment.
This chapter adds to the growing literature on the political history of satellite
remote sensing in development aid.578 Like historian Timothy Mitchell, I seek
577 For a similar description on the role of development consultants, see Gerhard Anders, “Good Governance as Technology. Towards an Ethnography of the Bretton Woods Institutions,” in The Aid Effect. Giving and Governing in International Development, ed. David Mosse and David Lewis (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005), 53–55. 578 Cf. Black (2018; Jirout (2017); Thompson (2007), 9, 264; Disco (2010).
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to identify the conflicts from which a given development project emerged and
how, subsequently, the project expertise and ideas developed beyond the specific
project to inform development policy in general. 579 After illustrating the
intentions of the institutions involved, I demonstrate how the project activities
shifted institutional attention and changed its expertise. 580 Policies are important,
but so too are practices.581 This is also relevant for explaining the practical and
conceptual origin of technologies that by the end of the twentieth century have
become central for how people relate to environmental problems, such as
deforestation, and about a self-evident role for technology as a remedy to the
problem.582
When the World Bank in 1986 proposed satellite remote sensing of land cover in the Philippines, it promoted the project as a contribution to land reforms and the “sustainable development” of the environment.583 This is noteworthy since the term ‘sustainable development’ became paradigmatic in the 1987 UN report Our Common Future.584 I will return to analyse this report in the following chapter and here primarily point out that development aid projects and their financiers were central to the conceptual roots of sustainable development.585 Investigating these roots is important for addressing an area in the research literature that requires further analysis regarding
579 Mitchell (2002), 77–90.580 Institutions, like SSC, aimed to frame relationships between their technology and its uses, for example how satellite remote sensing contributed to sustainable development of the environment. This does not mean, however, that SSC could diffuse a technology “regime” that arrived from the outside and forced new users to think about or use satellite remote sensing in certain ways. For further arguments building on Mitchell, see David Mosse, “Knowledge as Relational: Reflections on Knowledge,” International Development, Forum for Development Studies 41, no. 3 (2014): 517–19. See also David Mosse, “International policy, development expertise, and anthropology,” in Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology, 52 (2008): 121; cf. James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: Development, Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). 581 For a synthesis on a scholarly shift from discourse, policy, and intentions towards the activities, attention and interactions between the experts, technologies, and receivers of aid, see Hodge (2016): 125–74. 582 Michael Curry, Digital Places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies (London: Routledge, 1998). For more recent work, see Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack. On Software and Sovereignty (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2015). 583 John H. Cleave, “Philippines. Proposed Forestry, Fisheries & Agriculture Resources Management (ffARM) Study: A Strategy for Conservation and Protection. For discussion only,” Manila, 7 March 1986, Records regarding technical collaboraiton 1987–1993, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 584 WCED, Our Common Future. 585 On other examples in the late 1980s of how satellite data contributed to connecting local development problems, most notably burning of forests, to global environmental problems, like deforestation, see Margaret E. Keck, “Planafloro in Rondonia: The Limits of Leverage,” in The Struggle For Accountability. The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements, ed. Jonathan A. Fox and L. David Brown (Cambridge Mass., and London, England: MIT Press, 2000), 185–86. On the environmental turn of development projects, see Robert Wade, “Greening the Bank: The Struggle over the Environment, 1970—1995,” in The World Bank: its first half century: Perspective. Volume 2, ed. Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis and Richard C. Webb (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), 611–734.
how development projects contributed to making satellite remote sensing into a tool
for the sustainable development of the environment. For satellites to manage the
environment in this way means that sensing asserts a role in defining what the
environment even is. This chapter studies the activities before, during, and after the
mapping of land cover in the Philippines. This allows for an analysis of the politics
of remote sensing in a development project as well as in the changing meaning of the
environment that the technology sensed and contributed to shaping.
In addition to gathering historical sources from governmental and company
archives I have also interviewed people who provided me with additional sources from
their private collections. These interviewees typically worked as technical experts,
diplomats, or consultants in developing countries. I used these sources to list
international projects conducted by SSC between 1979 and 1991 (Figure 10).
Figur e 10 . Number of projects conducted by SSC annually. The greater number of projects in 1983 relates to SSC consulting on a receiving station for remote sensing data in Pakistan. The increase in projects from 1986 onwards relates to SSC’s abil ity to show-case the mapping in the Phil ippines to secure additional projects abroad.586 Compilation by author.
This list suggests that SSC’s mapping in the Philippines 1986–1988 corresponds to an
overall increase in its international projects. Less visible but more significant in this
enumeration of projects completed by SSC is the increasing volume of data, referred
586 Ulf Kihlblom et al, “IFF. Remote Sensing Projects Undertaken by the Swedish Space Corporation, SSC, Reference list,” 21 June 1989, SSC Contracts, SSC-S; Satellitbild, “Urval av order samt utestående offerter,” 28 October 1992, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Satellitbild, “List of orders and pending proposals,” 31 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection.
0
5
10
15
20
25
1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991
No. of projects annually
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to as ‘scenes’, 587 that the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts used for their
projects and of which the Philippines was the first.588 This motivates a closer study of
the specific activities in the mapping of the Philippines to understand both why
Swedish technoscientific expertise contributed to development projects in the first
place and how satellite remote sensing functioned as an environing technology.
I have focused on the activities of a few people to illustrate a larger history.
These people were Claes-Göran Borg, the manager at SSC’s Remote Sensing Division,
who advocated for aid as a source of funding for satellite remote sensing projects; the
development consultant Ulf Kihlblom, whom SSC hired to find projects; Erik Emsing
at Swedish Projects Incorporated (hereafter Swedish Projects), who defined and
funded projects, and Hans Rasch, who performed them. In addition, the Swedish
government – the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Commission for
Technical Co-Operation (hereafter BITS), and the Swedish embassies – participated
in the mapping projects, for example by emphasising the Swedishness of SSC’s
satellite remote sensing development projects. I had hoped to include interviews with
remote sensing experts from the Philippines but was not able to locate them. As a
supplement, I have relied on private collections of texts and correspondence
belonging to Swedish experts to make visible the activities of these Filipino experts.589
I now turn to SSC’s earlier attempts to sell satellite remote sensing expertise abroad
as part of establishing the French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure.
587 According to CNES’ standard, a SPOT scene referred to organising remote sensing data from SPOT satellites into images that depicted a surface of the Earth 60 kilometres long and 60 kilometres wide. The scenes were the raw resource that experts could mould by enhancement, interpretation, and classification to yield further information for the end-user. The number of scenes that were required to observe, for example, a region of land defined how costly such a project would be. 588 Although SSC received data from SPOT-1 since spring 1986, it had regular access to Landsat data since 1979. 589 For a study on activities of different actors involved in technological development aid, see Richard Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts. A Parable of Development Aid (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), xiv–xvii. For a study of technology and environment in development consultancy, see Thomas Robertson, “Cold War landscapes: towards an environmental history of US development programmes in the 1950s and 1960s,” Cold War History 16, no. 4 (2016), 417–41. For a study of how US development projects in Asia also involved expanding knowledge infrastructures, here defined as material supports in the world, see Michelle Murphy, The Economization of Life (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2017), 6–7, especially n18, 79.
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing as Part of Swedish Exports of
Expertise, 1978–1983
Without exaggeration.…we will be swamped with image data, which we for the moment
have no practical means of exploiting. So, the access to data is turned from a problem
into an asset and an accelerating force for Swedish remote sensing.590
In spring 1978, SSC had taken several initiatives toward consolidating its hold on
Swedish remote sensing. Several projects had been conducted, ranging from
monitoring oil spills in the Baltic Sea and mapping forest damage throughout
Scandinavia, to measuring water quality in Zambia.591 While SSC had so far relied on
aerial sensors for these projects, SSC suggested that “more radical steps” had to be
taken to move from ad hoc to regular remote sensing activities.592
As demonstrated in previous chapters, SSC had begun to shift from aerial to
satellite remote sensing by establishing a Landsat station, 593 then by collaborating with
the French space agency CNES to build the SPOT programme’s French-Swedish
satellite remote sensing infrastructure.594 This in turn influenced the establishment of
the subsidiary companies Spot Image in Toulouse and Satellitbild in Kiruna for
commercialising the SPOT data.595
SSC planned to build Swedish commercial remote sensing “from grain-to-
bread”. 596 This referred to the vertical integration model, 597 where each stage of
590 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “FM4 – 4. Förslag till etablering av ett bildbearbetningssystem vid Rymdbolaget i Stockholm,” 3, 16 November 1977, SSC Board, SSC-S. 591 SSC, “RI3 – 23. Rymdbolagets roll inom fjärranalysområdet,” 28 April 1975, SSC Board, SSC-S; See also Stefan Zenker/SSC, “FUF1-2, Bidrag till historik över svensk fjärranalys,” 23 February 1986, Stefan Zenker Spot Image, Stefan Zenker Private Collection, Sollentuna; SSC, “VBB IR-scannar i Zambia,” Remote Sensing, no. 2 (May 1978): 6. 592 Original in Swedish: “[Det står] klart att vi måste ta ett radikalt grepp på flygplanssidan….Landsatstationen vid Esrange kan komma att spela stora roll”. See Fredrik Engström/SSC, “RB – 75. Lägesrapport maj 1977,” p. 1–2, 10 May 1977, SSC Board, SSC-S. 593 SSC, “A3 – 61. Årsredovisning för svenska rymdaktiebolaget räkenskapsåret 1977,” 9 March 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. 594 SSC, “G6/7 – 10. Diskussioner med CNES om svenskt deltagande i SPOT-projektet,” p. 11, 8 May 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. 595 Government Bill 1978/79:142,” 12, 17–18. 596 Original in Swedish: “Från ax till limpa”. See SSC, “All-8. Förslag till styrelsebeslut och etablering av ett bildbearbetningssystem vid RBS,” p. 13, 10 March 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. 597 Until the late 1970s, it was common for companies, especially in the mining industry, to seek a vertical integration of their activities. For example, the same company could gather ore and produce steel, as well as seek to keep these operations in relative proximity to each other. See Göran Bergström, Från svensk malmexport till utländsk etablering. Grängesbergsbolagest internationalisering , 1953–1980 [From Swedish Ore Export to Expansion Abroad : The Internationalisation of the Grängesberg Company 1953–1980], dissertation (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2009), 26, 107. It was also common-
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gathering, interpreting, and selling remote sensing data linked to form a whole chain
under SSC. Each step supported the next by building up expertise and consolidating
other Nordic national remote sensing efforts. This, SSC argued, would save the
Swedish remote sensing capacity from “the risk of Balkanisation”, which referred to
foreign companies taking over or dividing Swedish developers against each other and
against the interests of the Swedish government.598 By spring 1978, SSC’s leadership
felt confident it would achieve this vertical integration. But what was it good for?
As part of finding out, SSC sent questionnaires to potential Swedish users. To
SSC’s surprise, most responses were sceptical, and the positive responses were
unexpected. Governmental agencies and research institutions were discouraged by the
satellite data’s low resolution in comparison to aerial surveys by the Swedish Land
Survey.599
Development consultants, on the other hand, endorsed satellite remote sensing
as a tool for surveying natural resources in developing countries.600 However, the
consultants were concerned that SSC’s vertical integration, which meant not only
gathering but also selling data, risked outcompeting the Swedish consulting firms.601
SSC did not give up hope for a Nordic market, nor was it interested in only
gathering data that others would then be selling. It realised, however, that projects
abroad could be used on a larger scale to demonstrate satellite remote sensing for
users at home in Sweden, too. SSC hoped that being a Swedish company, as opposed
to an American one, gave an advantage when offering services to developing
countries, which could be used in order to find a suitable “test case” to demonstrate
for companies in the 1970s to diversify their activities, for example with exports to new markets abroad, see Alfred Chandler, Scale and Scope. The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990). 598 Original in Swedish: “Därigenom befäster man RB:s centrala ställning inom svensk fjärranalys för lång tid framåt. Risken för att någon konkurrent inom området bildbearbetning (t ex IBM) hinner etablera sig först i Sverige undanröjs. Risken för balkanisering minskar”. See SSC, “All-8. Förslag till styrelsebeslut och etablering av ett bildbearbetningssystem vid RBS.” 599 Klas Änggård/SSC, “All-4. Ekonomisk analys av IAS-projektet. Bilaga 5,” p. 4, 26 February 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S; Claës Pilo/SSC, “All-7. Marknadsenkät av bildbearbetningstjänster,” 8; Claës Pilo/SSC, “Sammanställning av yttranden rörande bildbearbetningstjänster,” p. 1–2, and 14, 9 March 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. Since 1977, SSC had expressed that it expected to be criticised by the Swedish Land Survey, see Fredrik Engström/SSC, “RB-75. Lägesrapport maj 1977,” 10 May 1977, SSC Board, SSC-S. 600 Klas Änggård/SSC, “All-4. Ekonomisk analys av IAS-projektet. Bilaga 5,” p. 4, 26 February 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S; Claës Pilo/SSC, “All-7. Marknadsenkät av bildbearbetningstjänster,” 8; Claës Pilo/SSC, “Sammanställning av yttranden rörande bildbearbetningstjänster,” 14. 601 Claës Pilo/SSC, “Sammanställning av yttranden rörande bildbearbetningstjänster. Bilaga 4,” 2.
its technoscientific expertise.602 In 1979, for this reason, SSC began planning how to
export Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise.603
SSC’s plan was ambitious but not unique for its time. As part of restructuring
Swedish industries during the late 1970s, the Swedish government had investigated
ways of increasing exports of Swedish expertise. The investigations identified an
excess capacity at governmental agencies that could be reorganised into the
consulting, education, and technical transfer that already formed part of Swedish aid
to developing countries. To export expertise, governmental agencies would establish
subsidiary organisations, perhaps even organised as companies, that would collaborate
with matching institutions in countries receiving Swedish aid. In addition, the
subsidiaries would recruit development consultants with experience of working
internationally and who had knowledge about projects, funding, politics, and military
matters in the region. Also, other Western European countries had increased their
exports of expertise. Here, aid directly served to help finance these exports, often in
collaboration with other financial institutions, such as the World Bank.604
Since the first Government bill on aid in 1962, also referred to as the “Aid
Bible”, the Swedish Government formally kept aid and trade separate.605 During the
1970s, however, Sweden reoriented its aid policy to benefit Swedish exports.606 The
Swedish International Development Authority had primarily given aid to a list of
countries that were also prioritised by Swedish foreign policy.607 By contrast, the
602 Original in Swedish: “…man var medveten om att svenska ·bolag hade fördelar marknadsföringsmässigt framför amerikanska på u-landsmarknaden. Så snart vi får ett lämpligt ‘test case’ kommer vi att undersöka denna möjlighet”. See Fredrik Engström/SSC, “RB-97. Lägesrapport december 1978,” 7 December 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. 603 Fredrik Engström/SSC, “RB – 103. Lägesrapport april 1979,”10 April 1979, SSC Board, SSC-S. 604 SOU 1980:23, 13, 18–20. In this chapter, I refer to the “World Bank” which is actually a group of organisations, mainly the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association. These organisations originated from American initiatives in the mid-1940s to rebuild post-war Europe and, later, in the 1960s of financing aid to former colonies. See Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli, Faith and credit: The World Bank's secular empire (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); Robert Goodland, Social and environmental assessment to promote sustainability: An informal view from the World Bank (Washington, DC: Environment Department paper no. 74, 2000). 605 Government Bill, “Prop. 1962:10,” angående svenskt utvecklingsbistånd, 23 February 1962. See also SOU 1962:12, Aspekter på utvecklingsbiståndet. Promemorior överlämnade till beredningen för internationella biståndsfrågor. 606 Christian Andersson, Lars Heikensten, and Stefan de Vylder, Bistånd i kris. En bok om svensk u-landspolitik [Aid in crisis. A book on Swedish development country-policy] (Stockholm: Liber förlag, 1984), 9–16; Ruth Jacoby, “Idealism versus Economics. Swedish aid and commercial interests,” in Swedish Development Aid in Perspective: Policies, Problems and Results Since 1952, ed. Pierre Frühling (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1986), 91–95. 607 For a recent overview of Swedish and Scandinavian aid from mid-twentieth century until present, see Bruno (2016), 43–45. See also project by historians Mattias Tydén, Urban Lundberg and Annika Berg, with funding from the Swedish Research Council, “Världen som arbetsfält. Svenskt bistånd
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Swedish Government in 1979 established BITS to explicitly support development aid
that also aimed at exporting Swedish expertise.608
In the early 1980s, BITS increased its collaboration with the World Bank.
Suffering from a decrease in member contributions, the Bank planned to continue its
activities through co-financing projects that gave investors, like BITS, more influence
in defining project aims and choosing contractors.609
BITS visited the World Bank in Washington, DC, on numerous occasions.
These visits resulted in smaller projects in African countries,610 which BITS hoped
could lead to larger operations later on.611 By February 1986, BITS and the World
Bank had settled on its procedures. By transferring funds through a joint account,
“Swedish Consultants”, they could now begin co-financing projects.612
While SSC and its subsidiary Satellitbild during the early 1980s continued to
promote satellite remote sensing as a means of exporting Swedish expertise, the
Swedish government’s official reports focused on the initiatives of their competitors.
Swedsurvey, a subsidiary of the Swedish Land Survey, was described as a role-model
for how governmental agencies could export their expertise to a developing country.
Swedsurvey conducted land surveys by collaborating with a sister organisation and
received funding from the Swedish International Development Authority, and
additional mandates or contacts from international aid organisations, like the UN.613
The Swedish governmental inquiries continually promoted Swedsurvey while
mentioning SSC’s satellite maps as potentially providing supplementary support to
ongoing mapping projects.614 Additional inquiries even cautioned the Government
under tre decennier,” and forthcoming book, preliminary title Improving the World? Swedish Development Assistance ca 1950–1975 (Stockholm: Ordfront förlag, 2019). 608 SOU 1984:33, Civildepartementet. Handla med tjänster. Betänkande av tjänsteexportutredningen, 35, 89, 90–93. On diversification of Swedish aid since the late 1970s, see David Nilsson and Sverker Sörlin,Research and Aid Revisited – A Historically Grounded Analysis of Future Prospects and PolicyOptions,” in Rapport till Expertgruppen för biståndsanalys, no. 7 (2017).609 Bjerninger and Karlén/BITS, “Rapport. Besök på Världsbanken 4 februari 1983. Bilaga ärende 7,”p. 8 and 16, February 1983, Development credits, the World Bank Group IBRD/IDA/IFC 1980–1990, F2A:73, BITS, RA; “David Buchan examines the role of co-finance in Third World aid. WorldBank seeks more partners,” Financial Times, 31 December 1981, F2A:73, BITS, RA.610 Ingvar Karlén/BITS, “Rapport. Besök på Världsbanken,” 4 February 1983, F2A:73, BITS, RA; PHorm/BITS, “Ärende 11. Samarbete med Världsbanken,” 19 April 1983, F2A:73, BITS, RA.611 Ingvar Karlén/BITS, “Co-operation between the World Bank and the Swedish Commission forTechnical Co-operation (SCTC). To Frank Vibert, Office of the Senior Vice-President, The WorldBank,” 22 April 1983, Dnr U1167/83, F2A:73, BITS, RA.612 BITS, “Use of Swedish Consultants by IBRD and IDA,” 4 June 1986, Dnr U1779. Doss 0.6.3,,F2A:73, BITS, RA.613 SOU 1980:23, 61–62.614 SOU 1981:73, Landskapsinformation under 1980-talet, 178, 434; SOU 1983:72, Kommunalt kunnande –ett stöd för svensk export, 27.
that sales of spacecraft technology, including imagery and interpretations, should be
prohibited in case these could be of any military use to foreign countries.615
Thus far, I have identified how SSC already in the late 1970s sought to export
its expertise abroad, which was increasingly supported by the Swedish Government at
the time. To do this, SSC increasingly realised, it had to rely on the use of development
consultants. Next, I will detail how these consultants became central to finding
applications for Swedish satellite remote sensing and how this in turn had implications
for the politics of developing countries and the environment being sensed.
Consultants Find, Define, and Fund SSC’s Development Projects,
1983–1987
The Swedish governmental inquiries in the early 1980s did not detail precisely what
“development consultants” were, only what they did. They served as intermediaries
between the Swedish exporter and relevant actors beyond the Swedish border. The
consultant would be loyal to the Swedish nation but, unlike a civil servant, not bound
to follow various governmental rules.616 Ulf Kihlblom was such a consultant.617 In
1971, he received his PhD from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg;
his dissertation was one of the first to apply remote sensing in development
projects.618
Kihlblom continued as a consultant for Sweco, one of Sweden’s largest
consultancy groups for development projects.619 Over several years, he built a network
consisting of aid financiers, civil servants, and local consultants in developing
countries, in addition to other consultants, for example Ian Brook who in 1978
established Swedsurvey, the subsidiary of the Swedish Land Survey.620
Kihlblom took great interest in SSC establishing a Swedish satellite remote
sensing infrastructure. He too believed that centralising Swedish remote sensing under
615 SOU 1981:39, Svensk krigsmaterielexport, 94–95. 616 cf. SOU 1980:23, 147. 617 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016; Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM; Interview with Peter Bolton, 18 January 2018. 618 Satellitbild, “Ulf Kihlblom Curriculum Vitae,” 8 May 1995, SB-K/Göte Rönnbäck Private Collection. See also Interview with Leif Wastenson, 4 March 2016. 619 Sweco formed as a subsidiary of the Swedish technical company Aktiebolaget Vattenbyggnadsbyrån (The Bureau for Water Building, VBB) when in the 1970s it began selling consultancy internationally. Sweco bought up additional consultancies and gradually reformed into a corporate group with several international offices; cf. Tidskrift Svenska förlag, VBB NyttStockholm 1965–1990, KB. 620 Interview with Ian Brook, 24 September 2017.
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one actor was necessary in order to build a national system and the expertise and
amount of data in order to compete internationally.621 Kihlblom kept close to SSC,
regularly publishing reports of his projects in its newsletter Fjärranalys. He also
established his own consultancy company for satellite remote sensing.622 Following the
launch of SPOT-1 in February 1986, SSC offered Kihlblom a position to build the
company’s capacity for regular collaborations with aid organisations, increase the
number of development projects, and involve additional consultants to lead those
projects.623
Claes-Göran Borg worked at the SSC Remote Sensing Division. which would
recruit Kihlblom. Borg had been involved in remote sensing since 1975 and had been
part of some of the international projects thus far, for example SSC’s instalment of
American image-processing equipment in Saudi Arabia and the building of Pakistan’s
Landsat receiving station.624 These projects, however, were not significant in terms of
secured funding or in using the volumes of satellite data that SSC gathered.
In spring 1986, Kihlblom began collaborating with the consultant Erik Emsing
as part of securing international financing for SSC’s remote sensing projects. Emsing
had done development consulting since 1983, when he had received a scholarship
from the Swedish industrialist Anders Wall to begin a traineeship at the Swedish
Chamber of Commerce (Sveriges handelskammare) in New York. He used his
position to organise interviews, luncheons, and drinks with dozens of new people
every week, creating a network of contacts involved with aid funders like the World
Bank, embassies, and intelligence officers. Together with Tomas Kollén, another
Swede working for the Swedish government in New York, Emsing established the
consultancy Swedish Projects Incorporated to function as a subsidiary of the Swedish
Chamber of Commerce (Figure 11). Swedish Projects would use Emsing’s network of
621 Claës Pilo/SSC, “All-6 Sammanställning av yttranden rörande bildbearbetningstjänster. Appendix 2.” 622 Ulf Kihlblom, “Satellitteknik – Ett värdefullt Hjälpmedel inom konsultverksamheten,” Remote Sensing, no. 9 (May 1983): 10–12 ; SSC, “satellitdata i konsultarbetet,” Fjärranalys, no. 11 (June 1984): 5; Ulf Kihlblom, Jan Larsson, Sven-Ola Svensson, “IMCO Vision AB, ett nytt konsultföretag för bildbehandling, satellitteknik, flygbildstolkning och informationsbehandling,” Fjärranalys, no. 13 (June 1985): 8. In 1987, SSC’s journal Fjärranalys changed language to English, along with the new title Remote Sensing. 623 Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016. 624 Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. See also Interview with Håkan Olsson, 10 June 2016.
financiers, embassy personnel from developing countries, and updates on world
politics to find, define, and fund projects.625
Figur e 11 . Logo of Swedish Projects Incorporated.626
In February 1986, Swedish Projects separated from the Swedish Chamber of
Commerce. The Swedish Government supported privatisation of Swedish Projects
since it promised to primarily work with Swedish clients, as its name implied, and
thereby serve the national aim to export Swedish expertise. 627 Through mutual
contacts at SSC, Kihlblom arranged a meeting with Emsing at Swedish Project’s new
offices on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, right across the street from the
World Bank.628
Swedish Project’s business model, Emsing explained, mirrored the planning
cycle of international development projects: It typically took the World Bank several
years to plan and implement a project. During that time, the country receiving aid
often changed leadership or priorities, and a cancelled project meant that unspent
funds went back to the Bank. Swedish Projects used its network of contacts to find these
cancelled projects, borrow unspent funds and reuse them in projects it defined
according to the interests of its clients.629 This was also the plan for how Swedish
Projects could find, define, and fund projects for Swedish satellite remote sensing.
Kihlblom presented the arrangement to Borg who in April 1986 agreed to a
two-year contract between SSC and Swedish Projects. Emsing and his colleagues now
625 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 626 Tomas Kollén, Christer Mansjö, and Ulf Kihlblom, Agreement between SSC and Swedish Projects Inc., New York, 24 April 1986, SSC Contracts, SSC-S. 627 Kollén, Mansjö, and Kihlblom, “§ 2 Plan for Swedish Projects Inc., dated 1985-12-19,” in Agreement between SSC and Swedish Projects Inc., New York, 24 April 1986. 628 For example, Kollén had already in 1983 supported SSC-employee Stigbjörn Olovsson in securing funding from the UN and the World Bank. See Interview with Stigbjörn Olovsson, 15 February 2018; Email correspondence with Stigbjörn Olovsson, 16 February 2018. 629 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016.
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began searching for projects that could be redefined according to the expertise offered
by SSC. Once financiers announced these projects, SSC would be there waiting,
proposals at the ready.630
The Role of Aid in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in 1986
The collaboration between SSC and Swedish Projects coincided with a regime change
in the Philippines in Southeast Asia (Figure 12). Aid organisations, most notably the
World Bank, were quick to initiate aid projects for another land reform, briefly
described below.
Since achieving independence in 1946, the Philippines had, after centuries of
colonial rule under the Spanish, the US, and lastly the Japanese, been
governed by presidents who combined aid, technocracy, and promises of land
reforms. The US continued to exert influence over the new republic by providing
most of this aid and expertise, for example by establishing the Asian Development
Bank in Manila in 1967. Filipino foreign policy aligned closely with American
interests in Southeast Asia,631 and numerous US military bases had strategic
importance for halting international communism in the region,632 although they also
symbolised US intervention, “a state within a state”, to Filipino nationalists.633
630 Tomas Kollén, Christer Mansjö, Ulf Kihlblom, Agreement between SSC and Swedish Projects Inc. 631 Frederic H. Chaffee et al., Area Handbook for the Philippines (Washington, DC: The American University, Foreign Area Studies, 1969), 202, 255–64; Paul M. Monk, Truth and Power : Robert S. Hardie and Land Reform Debates in the Philippines, 1950–1987 (Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 1990). See also Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War : Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 15, 23, 28, 191–94. 632 Robert Pringle, Indonesia and the Philippines: American Interests in Island Southeast Asia (1980), 62; Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Philippines Repression and Resistance (KSP, 1981), 9; Third World Studies, “Mindanao: Development and Marginalization,” AMPO Japan-Asia Quarterly (winter 1979): 24–40. See also William Chapman, Inside the Philippine Revolution. The New People’s Army and Its Struggle for Power (London: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1988), 40. 633 Walden Bello and Severina Rivera, eds. “US Military Bases in the Philippines: Do They Serve the Philippine Interest? in The Logistics of Repression and Other Essays (Washington, DC: Friends of the Filipino People, Anti-Martial Law Coalition, 1977), 135.
Figur e 12 . Map of the Philippines and position in Southeast Asia. In terms of geography, ethnic groups, and languages the country was one of the most diverse in the region.634
This combination of American aid and technocratic rule kept President Ferdinand
Marcos in power from 1965 until 1986,635 most notably with promises of land reforms
in favour of the landless.636 The US government supported Marcos’ land surveys with
consultants, aerial reconnaissance, and satellite images.637 The US organised symposia
634 Chaffee et al. (1969), v, see also 41–42. 635 Erich H. Jacoby, Man and Land. The Fundamental Issue in Development (Kent, UK: André Deutsch Limited, 1971), 128–30, 210–11. See also Erich H. Jacoby, Agrarian Unrest in Southeast Asia, second edition (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), 192, 219–25; Napoleon D. Valeriano and Charles T.R. Bohannan, Counter-Guerilla Operations. The Philippine Experience (London: Praeger Security International, 2006 [1962]), ix. 636 The UN at the time defined “land reform” as “an integrated programme of measures designed to eliminate the obstacles to economic and social development arising out of defects in the agrarian structure”. See United Nations, Progress in Land Reform, Third Report (New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1962), 93. 637 T. J. S. George, Revolt in Mindanao. The Rise of Islam in Philippine Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 241–45.
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on satellite remote sensing and developed plans for establishing a Landsat receiving
station in the Philippines, the first such station outside of the US mainland.638 In
return, the Philippines’ economic policy allowed US companies to use World Bank-
projects to exploit the country’s natural resources, causing deforestation, in particular
of its mangrove forests.639
The numerous aid projects and land surveys did not result in a land reform
but in increased corruption, along with violations of human rights, causing tensions
throughout Filipino society: landless against landlords; Catholics in the north against
Muslims in the south; Filipino nationalists against US supporters. 640 The Carter
Administration formally protested against abuses but continued to channel funds to
Marcos through institutions like the World Bank, 641 while expanding US military
presence. 642 In 1982, the Reagan Administration also reaffirmed the Marcos
Administration as “a recognized force for peace and security in Southeast Asia”643 and
continued funding aid projects aimed at halting separatist revolts.644
By the mid-1980s, nationalists, revolutionaries, and separatists challenged the
Marcos Administration’s hold on power, especially on the southern island of
Mindanao. 645 All land reforms and surveys thus far had failed to record land
ownership, and governmental agencies had neither the resources nor the expertise to
implement survey recommendations. 646 During elections in February 1986, mass
638 Interview with John van Genderen, 24 April 2017. 639 Centre for International Policy, International Policy Report: Aid to the Philippines – Who Benefits? (Washington, DC: October 1979), 219. See also Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed. The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 69. 640 Kathleen Nadeau, The History of the Philippines (London: Greenwood Press, 2008), xxi. 641 Virginia S. Capulong-Hallenberg, Philippine Foreign Policy Toward the U.S. 1972–1980: Reorientation? dissertation (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 1987), 203, 210. For analysis on World Bank lending and its relationship to US foreign policy from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, see Sharma, Patrick, “The United States, the World Bank, and the Challenges of International Development in the 1970s,” Diplomatic History 37, no. 3 (2013): 572–604. 642 People’s Permanent Tribunal. Philippines Repression and Resistance, 248–50; Third World Studies. “Mindanao: Development and Marginalization.” 643 Frederica M. Bunge, Philippines. A country study (Foreign Area Studies: American University, 1983), xxxiii, 119, 219. 644 W. Bello, D. Kinley, and E. Elinson, Development Debacle: The World Bank and the Philippines (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982). See also Dong J. Porter, “Scenes from Childhood. The homesickness of development discourses,” in Power of Development, ed. Jonathan Crush (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), 71–77. 645 Marcos had adopted some of his opponents’ nationalist critique to distance the country’s foreign policy from that of the US, for example in international speeches, voting at the UN, and in bilateral collaborations with other powers like the People’s Republic of China, See Capulong-Hallenberg (1987), 54, 73, 103. 646 World Bank, “Desk Review of Support Services for Food Production, Land Reform, and Settlement,” (Washington, DC, undated, 1978), in The Philippines: Human rights after martial law, ed. Virginia Leary et al. (The International Commission of Jurists, 1984).
demonstrations and military coups ousted Marcos, who with the aid of the US
government fled to the US mainland.647
The World Bank had hopes that the oppositional candidate Corazon Aquino
would form a new technocratic government in support of US aid and military
presence. 648 Early on, numerous US congressmen endorsed Aquino, 649 while the
Reagan Administration remained cautious. 650 After Aquino had been sworn in as
president, her administration had to balance many interests. She promised land
reforms to the landless to avoid revolution. She kept landlords in the state apparatus
to secure their support. She offered amnesty to political prisoners and rebels so as to
reconcile separatist groups.651 And, she was nationalist enough to renegotiate US
military presence but realist enough to seek US aid, in particular to finance her land
reform.652
By spring 1986, the Government of the Philippines had once more identified
the significance of conducting a land reform. Having reviewed the history of such
reforms and the role of aid in them, I now shift to describe what I interpret as SSC’s
remote sensing activities in the Philippines, which over time came to be described as
a means whereby Sweden supported the Aquino Administration’s land reform.
Developing a Project Involving SSC, the World Bank, and the Philippines,
spring – winter 1986
During spring 1986, Emsing learned that the World Bank planned a project in support
of a land reform by the new Aquino Administration in the Philippines. During the
ousting of Marcos, the World Bank drafted a Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture
Resources Management (hereafter FFARM) study as part of re-establishing a
relationship with the Philippines, this time in support of the new Aquino
647 Department of State, “Philippines sitrep 11. 24 February 1986,” PH03378 and “Sitrep 19, 25 February 1986,” PH03379, National Security Archive (hereafter cited as NS). See also John Bresnan, Crisis in the Philippines: The Marcos Era and Beyond (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), xi–xiii. 648 R. J. May and Francisco Nemenzo, eds. The Philippines After Marcos (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 46. 649 Chapman (1988), 23–27, 94. 650 Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a dictator. The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York: Times Books, 1987). 651 Department of State, “Sitrep 20. 25 February 1986,” PH03383, NS. See also Edith Hodgkinson, The Philippines to 1993. Making up lost ground. (London: The Economist Intelligence Unit, Economy Prospect Series, 1988), 3, 15. 652 Bresnan (1986), 256.
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Administration.653 John Cleave, an Englishman with a long career as an agricultural
expert in African and Asian countries and recently project advisor at the World Bank’s
Country Department for Asia, wrote the report.654 His first draft of FFARM stated:
Although sustainable development principles have been proclaimed, in practice
resources have been allocated by Government (All references to Government are to the
former administration) and exploited by the private sector for short term economic
gain. There is increasing evidence that environmental degradation is critical.655
The World Bank’s use of the term ‘sustainable development’ is noteworthy since
FFARM predates the paradigmatic use of the term in the UN report Our Common
Future, published in April 1987. In FFARM, ‘sustainable development’ initially meant
supporting Aquino’s land reform to redistribute land to the landless as well as
developing a conservation strategy to counteract deforestation caused by corruption
under Marcos.
Earlier in the 1980s, satellite remote sensing had been used to expose
environmental degradation caused by World Bank projects. This suggests that FFARM
and its use of satellite sensing belonged to a larger effort by the Bank to develop
environmental rhetoric.656 Previous research has also identified how the Philippines at
this time became a battleground for power relations between transnational financiers,
653 Cleave, “Philippines. Proposed Forestry, Fisheries & Agriculture Resources Management (ffARM) Study: A Strategy for Conservation and Protection. For discussion only.” 654 The Information and Public Affairs Division of the World Bank, “A Window on the World,” The Bank’s World 10, no. 4. (April 1991); John H. Cleave, Decisionmaking on the African Farm (Washington, DC: World Bank Reprint Series, no. 92, November 1977). Recent research has situated senior experts, like Cleave, in a longer history of aid interventions with the implication that failures of the late colonial era informed initiatives of the postwar period, for example support for ecological approaches to development aid. See Joseph Morgan Hodge, Writing the History of Development (Part 1: The First Wave),” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development (winter 2015), 435–36, 445; Hodge (2007), 262–71. See also Véronique Dimier, The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). For summary of a similar argument regarding how the New Deal experience informed initiatives of Cold War American aid programmes, for example to the Philippines, see Tiago Saraiva and Amy E. Slaton, “Statistics as Service to Democracy: Experimental Design and the Dutiful American Scientist,” in Technology and Globalisation: Networks of Experts in World History, ed. David Pretel and Lino Camprubí (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 217–55, especially 239. 655 Cleave, “Philippines. Proposed Forestry, Fisheries & Agriculture Resources Management (ffARM) Study: A Strategy for Conservation and Protection,” 6. 656 For arguments that the same institutions causing ecological crisis later became central to international environmental projects and spokesperson for mainstream environmentalism, see Andrew Ross, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature’s Debt to Society (London: Verso, 1994) 3. For an overview of a shift towards environmental projects in the World Bank, see Robert Wade, “Greening the Bank: The Struggle over the Environment,1970—1995,” in The World Bank: its first half century: Perspective. Volume 2, ed. Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis and Richard C. Webb (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), 611–14.
consultancies, and industries on the one hand and democratic movements in
developing countries on the other.657
When Cleave returned to Washington, DC, Emsing offered the services of
SSC for carrying out FFARM. Cleave initially planned to use US satellite companies,
like EOSAT, to map the Philippines using Landsat data. However, many members of
the Filipino state apparatus resented repeated US intervention in Filipino politics. By
contrast, Cleave believed that Swedish expertise could be promoted as impartial for
FFARM’s purposes and hence better serve the reconciliation between the World Bank
and the Philippines.658
Sweden had no colonial territories in Southeast Asia but had profited from
aiding other colonial powers in their trade and transportation. Throughout the
nineteenth century, the Swedish government supported numerous consulates in the
region,659 and since the late 1960s it maintained an embassy in Manila, whose daily
operations were closely affiliated to Swedish companies operating in the area.660 These
diplomatic networks supported development consultants interacting with the Aquino
Administration and offering Swedish expertise for various projects.661
While Emsing and Cleave planned SSC’s role in FFARM, Kihlblom used his
contact, Gunilla Olofsson, at the Swedish aid organisation BITS to secure additional
funding for the project. 662 Although the Swedish Government at this point was
declining aid projects to the Philippines,663 BITS saw FFARM as an opportunity to
enter large co-financed collaborations in what appeared to be a growing market in
Southeast Asia.664
Next, Emsing and Cleave turned to secure support for FFARM within the
Aquino Administration. In September 1986, the Aquino Administration and its US
657 Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, “Things Fall Apart: The Rise of Debt, the Fall of Marcos, and the Opportunity for Change,” in Unequal Alliance: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines, ed. Robin Broad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 202–30. 658 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 659 Aryo Makko and Leos Müller, “Introduktion,” in I främmande hamn: Den svenska och svensk-norska konsulstjänsten 1700–1985, ed. Aryo Makko and Leos Müller (Malmö: Universus Academic Press), 31–35. 660 Erik Edelstam, Janusansiktet: berättelsen om diplomaten Harald Edelstams liv och tid [The Janus face: the story about diplomat Harald Edelstam’s life and time] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2013), 343. 661 Interview with Inga Björk Klevby, 5 February 2018. 662 Interview with Dan Rosenholm, 23 October 2015 and 25 May 2016. 663 Turhan K. Mangun/UNDP, “To Ambassador Nettelbrandt, Report on Development Cooperation with the Philippines in 1985,” May 12 1986, UD, U11:577 Xf no 4-6, urtag ur V. U11:577, RA; Cecilia Nettelbrandt/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Utvecklingsbistånd till Filippinerna 1985,” 6 June 1986, nr 95, U11, UD, RA. 664 Carin Wall/ Swedish Embassy Manila, “Svenskt bistånd till Filippinerna,” 27 June 1986, Nr 34, U11, UD Bilaterala enheten, RA.
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supporters organised a ten-day visit to Washington, DC, to raise funding for its many
reforms.665 The US newspapers described the enormous American goodwill toward
President Corazon Aquino as “Corymania”. The World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the US Department of State all promised to make available over
a billion dollars in development projects, company investments, and materials for
military, medical, and industrial use.666
While Aquino spoke to Congress, pledging to follow the advice of the World
Bank,667 Cleave held meetings with members of her administration. He provided an
updated version of the FFARM study that clearly referenced the SPOT programme
as providing the data for satellite mapping. In order to support Aquino’s land reform,
it was agreed that FFARM would begin in January 1987 and finish only a year later. 668
Cleave managed to schedule a luncheon for Emsing with Aquino to discuss
how a satellite map could benefit the policies of her administration. This
demonstrated Aquino’s personal interest in the project and provided SSC with
leverage when collaborating with Filipino officials.669 FFARM would be conducted in
collaboration with land surveyor Ricardo Biña at the Philippine Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (hereafter DENR). Biña had benefited from
previous US initiatives establishing satellite remote sensing in the Philippines in the
1970s.670 His attempts at surveys, however, did not have the resources necessary to
conduct the land reform that past and present administrations had promised.671
Meanwhile, Kihlblom had by October 1986 found a suitable project leader for
SSC’s mapping of the Philippines: Hans Rasch. Kihlblom and Rasch had been
colleagues at Sweco.672 Hiring people like Kihlblom, Emsing, and Rasch was part of
SSC’s shift toward international projects. Borg, who by autumn 1986 led the entire
665 Bresnan (1986), 174. 666 Capulong-Hallenberg (1987), 233. 667 International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Survey,” 17 November 1986, in Hodgkinson (1988), 30–31. 668 John Cleave, “M-AC1029/AC-1029/09-15-86/dw. Philippines. Initiating Memorandum. Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture Resources Management (ffARM) Study: a Strategy for Sustainable Development and Conservation,” 19 September 1986, Part IV Revised 23 February 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 669 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 670 Interview with John van Genderen, 24 April 2017. 671 See Ricardo T. Biña, Wolfgang Zacher, Kent Carpenter, Robert Jara and Jose B. Lim, “Coral Reef mapping using Landsat Data: Follow up studies,” (Philippines: National resources management centre, 1980); Ricardo T. Biña, Application of Multi-level Remote Sensing Survey to Mangrove Forest Resource Management in the Philippines (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: University of Malaysia & UNESCO, 1984). 672 Rasch was also acquainted with some of SSC’s leadership, for example as tennis partner to Lübeck who in late autumn 1985 had been appointed CEO of SSC. See Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016; See also Hans Rasch, conversation with Lennart Björn, 26 April 2012, F62:2, TM.
Remote Sensing Division, described this shift through a series of status reports to the
Board of SSC:
Sales on RS products are considerably worse than planned….But the situation is
not all gloomy. Especially in Kiruna, a “crisis awareness” has developed that makes
it easier to reorganise to save money, but primarily there is an explicit fighting spirit
that I am convinced will carry Satellitbild through any additional crises.673
In order to alleviate poor sales of satellite data to Nordic customers,674 Borg replaced
Satellitbild’s director, Svante Astermo, with the financial manager, Lars Bjerkesjö, and
began promoting projects abroad.675 Satellitbild’s international sales did not breach
previous agreements with Spot Image but shifted the brunt of the Swedish remote
sensing activities from initial plans of a Nordic market towards seeking projects
abroad. Satellitbild named the new strategy “To win or Tou-louse”, with reference to
international competition with its colleague Spot Image in Toulouse.676 In the long
term, however, the international projects were meant to demonstrate for Swedish
users the power of satellite remote sensing, a “battering-ram”, that would break into
the strongholds of Nordic customers who currently used aerial surveying for mapping
services.677
It should be noted that Swedish Projects secured the FFARM study by selling
the Swedishness of SSC satellite remote sensing. 678 This is similar to how other
Swedish companies established projects in developing countries in the late twentieth
century. 679 Sweden’s foreign policy of neutrality and humanitarianism promoted,
rather than restricted, such exports. While the formal stance was to keep trade and aid
separate, ministries often collaborated, with the explicit purpose being to leverage
673 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FAA. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” p. 1–2, 10 October 1986, SSC-S. 674 Svante Astermo/Satellitbild, “Månadsrapport – Satellitbild – aug,” 31 aug 1986, Svante Astermo Private Collection. 675 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FAA. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” p. 3–4, 10 October 1986, SSC Board, SSC-S. 676 Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “Åtgärdsprogram, diskussionsunderlag,” 15 September 1986, Svante Astermo Private Collection. 677 Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “SASl –12. Status report,” p. 9, 1 October 1986, Svante Astermo Private Collection; Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “AAY styrelsesammanträde 1986-10-17. VD-rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 10 October 1986, SSC Board, SSC-S. 678 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FAA. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” 10 October 1986, SSC Board, SSC-S. See also Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FAA – 37. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” p. 1–3, 28 November 1986, SSC Board, SSC-S.679 Karl Bruno (2016), 43–45; Öhman (2007), 18.
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trade to support aid and vice versa.680 The World Bank may have initiated FFARM,
but, as I have shown here, clients, consultants, and financiers were keen to promote it
as a Swedish aid project.
While Filipino nationalists preferred Swedish to American satellite sensing, it
all the same involved World Bank funding, management, and similar technological
tools. The sensing, furthermore, resulted in supporting the same Filipino
governmental agencies as under previous administrations. Similar mapping
technologies were used to assert power over natural resources in the name of national
self-determination as had been used under colonial rule, a pattern explored in other
contexts by historian Raymond Craib.681 Furthermore, these efforts were not separate
from but existed in relation to, and on the conditions imposed by, the World Bank and
the US Government.682 Swedish satellite remote sensing, then, participated in these
growing transnational collaborations without actually changing the funding,
management, or technology of the projects.
Adapting the Mapping of the Philippines to Swedish and Filipino Interests,
winter 1986 – spring 1987
While the World Bank and the Aquino Administration planned to hire Satellitbild to
map the Philippines, numerous negotiations remained regarding the extent and cost
of the project. All parties agreed that the land reform had to achieve equity and
distributive justice for landless peasants in order to also solve environmental
degradation. The project’s emphasis on sustainable development also meant
supporting the implementation of the Aquino Administration’s land reform.683 But
how did this correspond to what Satellitbild would be doing in the Philippines?
680 Nikolas Glover, National Relations: Public diplomacy, national identity and the Swedish Institute, 1945–1970 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011), 101, 114–15; Martin Wiklund, I det modernas landskap: Kritiska berättelser och historisk orientering om det moderna Sverige 1960–1990 [In modernity’s landscape: Critical stories and historical orientation about modern Sweden 1960–1990] (Eslöv: Östlings Förlag Symposion, 2006). 681 Raymond, B, Craib, “Cartography and Decolonization,” in Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation, ed. James Akerman (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 29–32, 47. See also Jeremy Black, Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (London: Yale University Press, 1997), 186. 682 For a longer treatment of this argument, not related to Sweden, see Masao Miyoshi, “A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State,” Critical Inquiry 19, no. 4 (1993): 726–51. 683 John H. Cleave/World Bank, “Philippines. Initiating Memorandum. Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture Resources Management (ffARM) Study: a Strategy for Sustainable Development and Conservation,” p. 8, 15 September 1986, F2B:208, BITS, RA.
Swedish Projects mediated negotiations between SSC, the World Bank, and
BITS on how extensively, in what detail, and at what cost the Philippines should be
sensed. The mapping of land cover could be either extensive or detailed, but not both.
After numerous proposals, the World Bank agreed to fund SSC for the sensing of
most parts of the Philippines, with a more detailed analysis of selected images,
primarily as part of demonstrating the capacity of SPOT data and SSC’s expertise in
enhancing it.684 The World Bank reached an agreement with SSC, which it presented
to Biña and DENR, assuring that the speed and precision when using SPOT for
mapping would be “impossible [to achieve] by any other available technique”.685 The
Bank reiterated these arguments to BITS when asking for co-financing.
The SPOT satellite generated data and maps will be invaluable for our sector of work,
particularly in establishing an authoritative position on the state of the resource base.
[Mapping the Philippines] not only extends its usefulness as a study itself, but also
enhanced the prospects of early implementation of key recommendations.686
After Cleave and Olofsson concluded the co-financing agreement in Stockholm in
February 1987, Cleave travelled with Kihlblom and Rasch to the Philippines to prepare
for the project with Biña and DENR. Joining the project were three of Biña’s land
surveyors, Eriberto Argete, Feliciano Opena, and Ronilo Salac. They had experience
working with aerial photography in forest inventories,687 and had gathered an array of
cartographic materials consisting of topographic maps, regional surveys, aerial
photography, and Landsat images. These materials would support SSC’s fieldwork
when interpreting on the ground what SPOT-1 had sensed from above.688
Kihlblom explained that Satellitbild built satellite maps from a mosaic of
individual SPOT scenes (Figure 13). The scenes, each depicting a region of the
Philippines, would be gathered on different dates and stitched together to form a
whole image whose sum depicted the Philippines. Satellitbild erased overlapping data
684 Ulf Kihlblom/SSC, “IFG0-C11506/UKI/CK. Diarienr I451. To Gunilla Olovsson/BITS,” 29 January 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 685 John H Cleave, “Forestry, Fisheries and Agricultural Resource Management (ffARM) Study. Proposal for Satellite Mapping of Philippines Natural Resource Base,” 22 February 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 686 Ulrich H. Kiermayr/World Bank, “To Gunilla Olofsson, BITS,” p. 2, 26 February 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 687 Eduardo Salvador et al, Update of Forest Inventory and Mapping of Ilocos Norte Using Aerial Photographs (Quezon City: Research Monograph no. 2, Natural Resource Management Center, 1985). 688 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” p. 7–8, 30 April 1988, Hans Rasch Private Collection.
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at the edges of the scenes to render the mosaic smooth. The end result was a map of
land cover at a scale of 1:250 000 as well as regional maps at a scale of 1:100 000.689
Biña knew that SPOT data allowed for finer interpretation than would be
conducted during the project. He asked Cleave that DENR would receive not only the
mosaic maps but also the computer-compatible tapes (CCTs), which was the medium
on which Satellitbild stored SPOT. With the CCTs, Biña and his colleagues could later
carry out their own interpretations, which was very valuable to DENR. Cleave agreed
to these terms,690 and so all parties came to a mutual understanding that Satellitbild
would first deliver the CCTs to the World Bank and thereafter ship them to the
Philippines.691 Interpretation of SPOT scenes would use categories defined by the
World Bank when organising the map’s legend, for example “forest areas”, “coastal
reefs”, “silt erosion”, and “population distribution within forest areas”.692
689 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” 14–17. For a description of Satellitbild’s manual work to visually interpret the land cover, see Interview with Peter Holmgren, 23 August 2018. 690 John Cleave/World Bank, “To Fulgencio Factoran, Secretary for Natural Resources. Philippines: Forestry, Fisheries & Agricultural Resources Management (ffARM) Study,” 24 March 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 691 Hans Rasch/SSC, “To Thomas Wiens, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, East Asia and Pacific Projects Department. Subject: Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines. The inclusion of the satellite image CCTs and diapositives (1:400 000 and 1:100 000) of individual SPOT scenes (190 nos) in the Memorandum of Understanding, dated March 24, 1987, between the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the World Bank (“the Bank”) and Swedish Space Corporation (SSC). The proposed consequential addition of these image CCTs and diapositives, and of rastered land cover maps, to the Agreement between the Bank and SSC,” 11 March 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 692 Ulf Kihlblom/SSC and John Cleave/IBRD, “Filippinerna: kartering. Draft,” 12 March 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA.
Figur e 13. SSC’s Index of SPOT Scene Locations (top) and Index of Surveyed Maps (bottom).693
693 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report. Appendix 1.”
Appendix
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182
183
By spring 1987, Satellitbild had turned from having no orders to instead having more
to do than it could handle for the remainder of the year.694 Borg hoped aid financing
could serve as a continuous revenue stream seeing that it was not sensitive to
economic trends. “This is our core expertise. This is where we are going to expand in
expertise, volume, and with good profits.”695 The mapping of the Philippines would
be the apprenticeship exam both for the concept of development projects and the
ability of SSC staff and infrastructure to function across multiple places around the
world.696
Satellitbild’s mapping of land cover in the Philippines illustrates the first
attempt by SSC to use aid financing, large volumes of satellite data, and groups of
development consultants. It was also one of the first projects to map a country for
the specific purpose of supporting sustainable development. The next section
describes the activities involved in sensing the Philippines that subsequently informed
writings about the land cover.
Sensing the Philippines, 1987–1988
Satellitbild completed the mapping of the Philippines in three stages, which I will
briefly outline here before we delve into the details. Firstly, SSC used SPOT to gather
satellite data and print these as individual images. Secondly, the team brought the
SPOT scenes to the Philippines for fieldwork to ground truth the images, which
involved visiting places in the landscape that served as samples for larger areas as well
as taking photos with hand-held cameras while flying over the region. Thirdly,
Satellitbild would use fieldwork visits and photographs as reference data when, back
in Kiruna, interpreting what class of land a particular surface in a SPOT scene
belonged to.697
Both the sensing and fieldwork occurred at a time when the Aquino
Administration was under enormous international pressure. This put numerous
demands on Satellitbild’s project: finish on time in order to support the Aquino
694 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde. VD-rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 24 March 1987, SSC Board, SSC-S. 695 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-3. See also SSC. IFA-4. Satellitkartekonsortium i Kiruna,” p. 8, 25 March 1987, SSC Board, SSC-S. 696 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-8. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen, Maj 1987,” p. 8, l June 1987, SSC Board, SSC-S. 697 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” p. 9–12, 21 April 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. See also Interview with Peter Holmgren, 23 August 2018.
Administration’s reform; avoid fieldwork in areas plagued by warfare; provide DENR
with not only maps but the SPOT data itself; secure additional aid to pay for that
additional data; tolerate US censorship of that same SPOT data. In all these matters,
I will describe relationships and activities relevant for understanding the production
of environmental knowledge of the Philippines.
I illustrate how sensing activities shifted attention towards a new map
classification system. This, in turn, had implications for subsequent intended uses of
the project. As I detail in the following sections, satellite sensing of the environment
had to adapt to the expertise of Swedish researchers and Filipino surveyors on the
ground. In addition, the demand to finish the project swiftly, the risk of warfare
interrupting the fieldwork, and US security interest in censoring civilian surveillance
all played into the sensing of the Philippines.
The Sensing Begins, March – May 1987
In March 1987, SSC started intensive gathering of SPOT data at Esrange (Figure 14).
The data had to be available in the form of images for the fieldwork by late April, but
the cloudy rain season, which would obfuscate the Philippines from June until
November, added urgency.698 In the worst-case scenario, SSC had to sense a region
more than thirty times to obtain sufficiently cloud-free images.699
When CNES forgot to program sensing by SPOT-1, the Swedish experts were
reminded of their reliance on French work to receive SPOT data. Spot Image had also
initially failed to notify SSC about data of the Philippines previously recorded in the
SPOT catalogue.700 The French also demanded that Satellitbild’s international projects
include a section stating the CNES copyright for all SPOT data.701 After these initial
mishaps, SSC kept close vigil over SPOT-1 to keep the schedule for gathering data in
Esrange.
698 Interview with Per-Erik ‘PEX’ Enbom, 4 July 2016; Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016. 699 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” 5. 700 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-3. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen, March 1987,” p. 4, 20 March 1987, SSC-S. 701 Ulf G. Kihlblom, “Annex A. Special Conditions of Contract,” p. 16, 21 April 1987 in Agreement Between SSC – World Bank, SSC Contracts, SSC-S.
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Figur e 14 . SSC’s in-progress report from early May 1987, on the gathering of SPOT scenes at Satel litbild in Kiruna. Each rectangular box corresponds to existing regional maps. Numbers indicate how many scenes have been gathered so far, as well as the total number of planned scenes.702
In addition to SSC’s constraints on sensing from above, the political situation in the
Philippines made sensing from the ground difficult. Protests, coup attempts, and
terrorism mounted from several directions. The landless protested that reforms were
too slow.703 Landlords, instead, complained that Aquino’s reform was too extensive.
They protested by withdrawing bank deposits, refusing to pay taxes, and in some cases
even supporting separatists on the southern island of Mindanao.704 The military, in
turn, staged numerous coups, along with several attempts on Aquino’s life.705 Without
Aquino’s consent, the US Central Intelligence Agency launched strikes against rebel
702 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FGT11-Cl4146/HCR/FGA. To John H. Cleave (World Bank). Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines,” 31 July 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 703 Martin Wright, Revolution in the Philippines (Keesing’s Special-Report. Longman, 1988), 36–37, 43. 704 Wright (1988), 77–78. 705 Hodgkinson (1988), 17.
groups and several Filipinos as well as Americans were killed in attacks and in
subsequent retaliations, along with the kidnapping of personnel from the World
Bank.706 Mindanao, in particular, was deemed too dangerous for international staff to
visit.707
For the fieldwork, this meant that some of the ground truthing had to be
conducted using airplanes instead of visits on the actual ground. According to the
World Bank’s instructions, the map would consist of thirteen classes and be rectified
using the Filipino Earth reference system and map grid.708 For Rasch’s team, consisting
of twelve Swedes and the three Filipinos Argete, Opena, and Salac,709 the classification
meant reviewing the SPOT scenes, in combination with topographic maps and older
Landsat images. Visits to specific places served to compare what was seen on the
ground with signatures sensed by SPOT-1; subsequent signatures would be classified
similarly to the sample place. Through extrapolation, Satellitbild intended to use this
approach to classify all of the Philippines.710
Fieldwork from Manila Going Southwards, April – June 1987
We “classify” the different types of vegetation on the image….grass, bush vegetation,
forest and erosion that comes from regularly burning the soil to increase the growth of
grass. And then comes the hell-rain to erode [the soil].711
In his private correspondence back to Sweden, Rasch described part of the fieldwork
that Satellitbild conducted. This also involved the role of the map they produced with
706 Wright (1988), 80–81. 707 Interview with Bo Eriksson and Per Hallström, 27 May 2018; Email correspondence with Bo Eriksson, 27 May 2017. 708 Ulf G. Kihlblom, “Annex B. FGT11. Project Proposal for Mapping of the Natural Conditions in the Philippines,” 21 April 1987 in Agreement Between SSC – World Bank, SSC Contracts, SSC-S. 709 Rasch’s project team, apart from Kihlblom and him, consisted of Lennart Lidman, Eva Westman, Ulf Ormö, Andreas Oxenstierna, Sam Ekstrand, Peter Holmgren, Märta Hedin, Bengt Paulsson, Pär Åstrand, and Björn Kihlblom – the son of Ulf Kihlblom who was pursuing a master-degree at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In addition, Biña had included the Filipino land surveyors Eriberto Argete, Feliciano Opena, and Ronilo Salac both for work in the Philippines as well as in Sweden in Kiruna and Solna. For further detail regarding the project team, see Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report. Appendix 2.” 710 Interview with Ulf Ormö, 1 February 2016; Interview with Peter Holmgren, 23 August 2018. 711 Original in Swedish: Vi “klassar” de olika typerna av vegetation på bilden.…gräs, buskvegetation, skog och erosion (de bruna “hålen” i skogen på sluttningarna) vilken kommer av att man bränner marken regelbundet för att öka gräsväxten. Och så kommer störtregn och eroderar. In “Postcard from Rasch to the family Rasch, Manila 6 May 1987,” Rasch Picture Folder 1987, Hans Rasch Private Collection.
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respect to the slash-and-burn farming that he and colleagues identified as a cause of
deforestation.712 The fieldwork began in the north, where SSC had done most of the
satellite sensing so far, and then progressed southwards (Figure 14). In total,
Satellitbild’s team conducted five ground surveys and twenty air surveys.713 In some
parts of the Philippines, notably Mindanao, the government and rebel forces waged
outright war.714 Aerial surveys were conducted from a four-seat Cessna 172,715 at times
up to 450 metres. Flying at this height meant that Satellitbild avoided being fired upon
but also limited their view of the surface below.716
As the fieldwork progressed, the team members began questioning the original
classification. The Filipino team members asked for revisions of land-use descriptions
to match their own experience and that of locals whom the team interviewed while
visiting the sample spots.717 The Swedish researchers demanded additional revisions
on the basis that boundaries for the initial classification were too ambiguous. Not even
when walking in the landscape, knee-deep in the grass of the sample spots, could the
team members distinguish between some of the classes of land cover.718 The Filipino
team members in turn rejected other classes, like “Virgin Forest”, that presumed “a
forest absolutely untouched by man”. They pointed to numerous agricultural practices
712 The Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1987 used the term “slash-and-burn farmer”, in Tagalog called kaingeros, when describing upland communities of the Philippines to denote, in this case as a derogatory term, that the farmers were responsible for deforestation, soil erosion, and wildlife poaching. cf. Hans F. Grönwall/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Appendix 3. Project Proposals for possible Assistance from Sweden. Project Title: Program for the Development and Management of Logged-over Areas in the Philippines. Proponent: Department of Environment and Natural Resources, August 1987,” in PM. Bistånd till Filippinerna, 4 December 1987, Nr 5, U11 Xf, UD RA. 713 Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/Scandinavian Project Management, “Evaluation of the Satellite Based Mapping of the Natural Resources of the Philippines. Final report,” p. 8, September 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. Initially, Satellitbild planned for more land surveys and fewer air surveys, see Hans Rasch/SSC, To ambassador Hans F. Grönwall, Swedish Embassy Manila. Angående Rapport om pågående projekt och “projekt-idéer,” 11 February 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 714 Hans Rasch/SSC, “To ambassador Hans F. Grönwall, Swedish Embassy Manila. Angående Rapport om pågående projekt och projekt-idéer.” See also Jeffrey D. Simon/RAND, “Country Assessments and the Philippines. Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” March 1987, PH03453, NS. 715 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report. Appendix 3,” 10. 716 Interview with Lennart Lidman, 15 December 2017; Interview with Peter Holmgren, 23 August 2018. 717 Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “Filippinerna. SSCs kommentarer till Scandinavian Project Managers’ – SPM (Alm – Rylander) utvärderingsrapport av ’Världsbanksprojektet’ 1987/88,” p. 4, 17 August1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA; cf. Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of thePhilippines. Final Report,” 17.718 Interview with Peter Holmgren, 23 August 2018; Hans Rasch, conversation with Lennart Björn, 26April 2012, F62:2, TM.
during the past hundred years that in different respects had affected the character of
forests in the Philippines.719
The juxtaposition of interpretations by Swedish satellite remote sensing
engineers, the geographers, and the Filipino land surveyors illustrates differences in
what would otherwise have been a smooth and flat picture of Philippine environment.
The juxtaposition demonstrates both the history of agriculture, and subsequently of
society, in the making of land cover in the Philippines, along with the interests of the
World Bank in classifying that land.720 This is important because the classifications
suggest the financiers’ intentions for the use of the land and show how such
classification could be conducted in dialogue with prior experiences of using the
land,721 with both the intentions and the experiences shaping the land and informing
how to sense and perceive it. The dilemma was not whether there existed “virgin
forest” in the Philippines or not. The dilemma concerned the local consequences of
a classification like “virgin forest” becoming effective and the question what practices,
present or past, should be allowed to inform and determine such classification, first
in the form of its classification and later through its use in shaping the uses of the
land.
The fieldwork continued until early June when clouds filled the skies over the
Philippines and finally put an end to SPOT’s sensing from above and made it
logistically difficult to travel on the surface below. Satellitbild cancelled the last surveys
and departed for Kiruna in Sweden to begin production of the map.722 As part of this
process, Satellitbild also had to revise the classification system that would be used for
mapping land cover in the Philippines.
719 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” 19, 33. 720 For an excellent example of this approach in to ground truthing forest inventory projects, see Andrea Nightingale, “A feminist in the forest: Situated knowledges and mixing methods in natural resource management,” ACME: An International E-journal for Critical Geographies 2 (2013):77–90. See also David Demeritt, “Scientific Forest Conservation and the Statistical Picturing of Nature’s Limits in the Progressive-Era United States,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19 (2001):431–59; Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998). 721 From the vast literature on the politics of map-makers in map-making, I call attention to an early critique of satellite remote sensing that sought to identify the interests of financiers while also seeing the potential of other disruptive uses and meanings for the technology, see John Pickles ed. Ground Truth. The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), xii. 722 Hans Rasch/SSC. “FSF101. “Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report. Appendix 2.”
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Interpretation of Data Goes Northward to Kiruna, July 1987 – January 1988
The Swedish researchers had asked for more detail in the classification, and the
Filipino surveyors asked that the classes reflect customary uses and the history of the
land. Rasch agreed to these demands and negotiated a revised classification with the
World Bank (Figure 15). In addition, Satellitbild still lacked several SPOT scenes,
which meant that sensing had to continue after the rain period in November.723 The
Bank accepted a revised classification and extended the deadline to May 1988, since
the Aquino Administration had in turn been delayed, and hindered, in organising its
land reform.724
For the map production, Satellitbild drew upon the expertise of the Swedish
Land Survey, which in 1987 had established an office in the Space House at Kiruna.
Swedsurvey had also expressed interest in the joint production of cartographic
satellite maps.725 Borg and SSC hoped that this would, in the long term, “lead the Land
Survey down the right path” towards satellite remote sensing, with the rest of the
Nordic market soon following along.726
723 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FGT11. Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines Interim report no. 1,” 30 June 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 724 Hans Rasch/SSC, “ FGT11-Cl4146/HCR/FGA. Dear John, Re: Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines,” 31 July 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 725 Hans Rasch/SSC, “Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines,” Remote Sensing, no. 17 (April 1988): 8–10. 726 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-8. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen, Maj 1987,” p. 4, l June 1987, SSC Board, SSC-S.
Figur e 15 . Differences among classes used in the contract and in the final legend for SSC’s mapping in the Phil ippines.727
SSC spent all summer, autumn, and winter putting together the satellite data for
interpretation and did so according to a specific procedure. 728 First, the Filipino
surveyors provided official maps of the Philippines that were then scanned to create
a raster. Second, SSC delineated regional and provincial borders from existing
topographic maps. Third, the classes that SSC and the World Bank had agreed upon
were divided into polygons that would be placed on the map to cover it as a layer.
Fourth, the Swedish and Filipino team members calculated the area size of each class
province by province. Fifth and finally, SSC summed up the map sheets to form
727 See Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” 18. Cf. Annex B. Project Proposal for Mapping of the Natural Conditions in the Philippines,” 21 April 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 728 The procedure, called the Scitex system, originated from an Israeli company that since the 1960s had produced systems and equipment for graphics design, printing and publishing.
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statistical material, enumerating the extent of each class, for subsequent
interpretations.729 Areas that still lacked data, or contained land uses not included in
the classification, were assimilated into other classes to avoid “white dots on the
map”.730
Rasch sent continuous updates to the World Bank, for example on the
gathering of SPOT scenes.731 He also presented the work to DENR in Manila so as to
maintain good relations and plan for later projects in the Philippines.732
SSC Negotiates with DENR and the World Bank regarding the Purpose and
Completion of the Project, February – May 1988
When SSC in spring 1988 entered the hectic phase of finishing the mapping of the
Philippines, Biña reiterated demands to receive not only maps but also CCTs
containing the SPOT data.733 The Aquino Administration, he warned, felt “let down”
by the Swedes after learning the implications of not having a formal agreement on
this matter. In effect, Satellitbild worked for the World Bank and not for the
Philippines. However, Biña went on, this could be remedied if Satellitbild provided
the CCTs. In return, Biña ensured that Satellitbild would receive future projects in the
Philippines.734
For Rasch to accommodate Biña’s request he had to find additional funding to
produce copies of the CCTs and deliver them to the Philippines. He reached out to
BITS, the Swedish Embassy in Manila, and the World Bank, asking for additional
funds.735 After a round of discussions on who should pay, and Rasch vouching for the
729 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101. Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines. Final Report,” 12–13. 730 Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016; Interview with Göran Alm, 13 December 2017. 731 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FGT11-C14998/HCR/FGA. To John H. Cleave and Thomas B Wiens. Re: Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines,” 5 October 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA; Hans Rasch/SSC, “FGT11-C4/ 87102/ HCR/FGA. To Thomas B Wiens. Re: Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines,” 30 November 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 732 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF100-C4/8872/HCR/FGA. From Rasch to Thomas B Wiens. Re: Mapping of the Natural Conditions of the Philippines,” 31 January 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 733 T. Holmgren/BITS, “Filippinerna: Kartering av naturresurser, tilläggsanslag, Bilaga till ärende 6,” 8 March 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 734 Hans Rasch/SSC, “To ambassador Hans F. Grönwall, Swedish Embassy Manila,” 11 February 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. See also Hans Rasch/SSC, “To Ricardo Biña. Topographic base maps for Panay and Negros,” 10 February 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 735 Gunilla Olofsson/ BITS, “Till Karlén. Filippinerna: satellitbilder,” Undated, F2B:208, BITS, RA.
relevance of granting DENR the additional data,736 BITS provided the extra funds.737
Later, in March, US intelligence officers pressured Swedish Projects to ensure that
CCTs first be delivered to the US for inspection before being sent to the Philippines.
Emsing agreed to these terms since it did not interfere with Satellitbild finishing the
project on time.738
In April, Satellitbild worked hard to finish the project. It printed map sheets
in its photo laboratory and transported these, together with transparent overlays and
digital mosaics, to Solna in Stockholm where they were packed up for delivery by air
to the US. On April 29, Rasch and Lübeck left from Arlanda Airport to present the
project to the World Bank in Washington, DC.739 Rasch explained how the project had
been carried out, describing intense cooperation between experts from Sweden, the
Philippines, and the financiers. Lübeck spoke on the potential of remote sensing for
environmental protection in developing countries.740 Cleave and Emsing were present
but did not present.741
As for the CCTs that Satellitbild had promised DENR, Rasch informed the
World Bank these would be sent in the coming weeks. 742 After being sent from
Sweden, they were held up at Dulles Airport near Washington, DC, for a month before
being released to the Bank, which could then pass them on to DENR in the
Philippines. Although Emsing suspected this to be a result of US intelligence
inspecting the CCTs for scenes of potential military value, the delay did not cause any
736 Thomas B. Wiens/World Bank, “To Karlén, BITS. Amendment of the agreement between the World Bank and the Swedish Agency for International Technical and Economic Cooperation (BITS) dated May 15, 1987 to incorporate delivery of the following additional products,” 25 February 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 737 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101-C4/88214/HCR/GP. To Mrs Olofsson, Subject: Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines. Funding of a proposed addition to the contract between the World Bank and the Swedish Space Corporation,” 11 March 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA; Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF101-C4/ 88213/HCR/GP. To Mrs Olofsson, Subject: Mapping of the natural conditions of the Philippines. The inclusion of the satellite image CCTs and diapositives (1:400 000 and 1:100 000) of individual SPOT scenes (190 nos) in the Memorandum of Understanding, dated March 24, 1987, between the Philippines' Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the World Bank (“the Bank”) and Swedish Space Corporation (SSC). The proposed consequential addition of these image CCTs and diapositives, and of raster land cover maps, to the Agreement between the Bank and SSC. To Thomas B. Wiens/World Bank,” 11 March 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 738 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016; Interview with Dan Rosenholm, 23 October 2015. 739 Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM. 740 Hans Rasch, conversation with Lennart Björn, 26 April 2012, F62:2, TM. 741 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 742 Hans Rasch/SSC, “FSF100-C4/88380/HCR/GP. To Thomas B. Wiens. Re: Mapping of the Natural. Conditions of the-Philippines, delivery of chapter 4 of draft Final Report and of summary. Land Use Map,” 29 April 1988.
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problems between SSC and DENR.743 This incident is further indication of how SSC,
and perhaps also Spot Image, participated in international projects on terms set by
the US government at the time.
Writing and Shaping the Philippines, 1987–1991
Did satellite sensing support a land reform, as Aquino had promised, conduct spying
on military bases, as some in the US feared, or safeguard against the deforestation of
the Philippines, as the World Bank, the DERN, and SSC claimed? These questions
concern the meaning of Satellitbild mapping land cover in the Philippines. The question
is how activities relating to satellite remote sensing contributed to changing both the
technology of sensing as well as the environment being sensed. I have traced these
activities by studying how the Swedish government wrote about the project, and also
how the Aquino Administration legislated policies to shape the country’s forests and
inform subsequent sensing projects.
The Swedish Government Embraces Satellitbild’s Project as Bilateral Aid to the
Philippines, 1987–1988
When Swedish political interest in the Philippines grew in 1987, Swedish
parliamentary opposition criticised the Swedish Social Democratic Government for
not supporting democratic movements in the Philippines. 744 The Swedish
Government made reference to Satellitbild’s project, and the co-financing provided
by BITS, to demonstrate that Sweden was providing support by contributing satellite
data necessary for conservation of the environment in the Philippines.745
The Swedish Government focused in particular on “sustainable development”,
which was the central term used in the report Our Common Future. Correspondingly,
environmental concerns would henceforth be the main objective for Sweden’s
development aid 746 and would encourage other financiers to promote an
743 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 744 Ingemar Eliasson (fp), “Interpellation 1986/87: 192,” Om biståndssamarbetet med Filippinerna, 4 March 1987. U11 577 Xf nr 4-6, UD, RA. 745 Lena Hjelm-Wallén/UD, “Svar på interpellation av Ingemar Eliasson om biståndssamarbete med Filippinerna,” 26 March 1987, U11 577 Xf nr 4-6, UD, RA. 746 Birgitta Dahl/Ministry for Environment and Energy, “Statement by Mrs Birgitta Dahl, Minister of Environment and Energy of Sweden, at UNEP’s Governing Council,” p. 4, 8 June 1987, FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, Bilaga 3.1, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, Swedish International Development Authority (hereafter cited as SIDA), RA.
environmental approach to aid.747 As an example of this emphasis, the Government
mentioned the ongoing Swedish efforts to use remote sensing to monitor changes in
vegetation cover and to perform socio-economic analyses of such changes.748
Such data should be made available, freely or with a nominal charge, to the countries in
need….Such data collection and their socio-economic analyses should facilitate the
design and implementation of land-use and natural resource development plans and
improve international co-operation in the environmental management of
transboundary natural resources.749
Since developing countries continued to make decisions in “ignorance of the changing
state of the environment”, the Swedish Government would seek to produce, update,
and make accessible remote sensing data about these environmental changes.750
While the Swedish Government spoke up about its concern for the
environment of the Philippines, the Aquino Administration had by autumn 1987 sunk
further into crisis. Military coup attempts became more intense, 751 as did state-
sponsored persecution of political opponents. 752 Aquino’s ability to execute land
reform dissipated,753and the American “Corymania” of 1986 gave way to aid fatigue
among several of the US investors.754
It was at this time that the Swedish Government and the Government of the
Philippines increased formal collaboration. “With the help of satellites”, stated the
Filipino ambassador Honorario Cagampan in Stockholm, “millions of poor landless
747 Karl-Erik Norrman/Ministry for Environment and Energy, “Statement on Clearing-house,” 8 June 1987, FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, Bilaga 3.3, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA. 748 Lars Björkbom/Ministry for Environment and Energy, “Statement by the Swedish delegation, UNEP and IGBP,” 8 June 1987, FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, Bilaga 3.6, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA; Susanne Jacobsson/Ministry for Environment and Energy, “Anförande av Susanne Jacobsson om Desertification Control i Committee on the Whole 10/6,” 10 June 1987, FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, Bilaga 3.7, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA. 749 Swedish Government, “Swedish Proposals: Environmental perspective to the year 2000 and beyond,” FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, UNEP/GC.14/14/Add.1. Bilaga 4, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA. 750 UNEP, “Annex II. Environmental Perspective to the year 2000 and beyond. Text of the Environmental Perspective as adopted by the Governing Council and transmitted to the General Assembly for consideration and adoption (decision 14/13),” 113, FN:s miljöstyrelse, 14 sessionen, FN/Miljö, F 1AG2:123, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA. 751 Lars Ove Ljungberg, Filippinerna – Ett steg framåt och två steg tillbaka (Stockholm: Världspolitikens dagsfrågor, no. 11, 1988), 6–8; Hodgkinson (1988), 19. 752 Department of State, PH03459, March 1988, NS; Amnesty International, Philippines. Unlawful killings by military and paramilitary forces (Amnesty International Publications, 1988), 3, 12. 753 Wright (1988), 77. 754 Fred Greene, The Philippine Bases: Negotiating for the Future. American and Philippine Perspectives. (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988), 14, 21.
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will be allotted land when the plantations are divided up”.755 The Swedish Government
argued, like Cagampan, that Satellitbild’s project formed part of Sweden’s increasing
bilateral aid to the Philippines.756
The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs noted in internal correspondence
that Satellitbild’s project should be framed as part of Sweden’s aid to democracy in
the Philippines, since the maps supported Aquino’s land reform. This was also a form
of aid that could lead to subsequent projects, the funding of which could be
channelled through BITS, the Asian Development Bank, or UN organs and be given
to specific contractors cooperating with the Swedish government.757 These arguments
were reiterated in Manila when representatives of the Swedish state met with those of
the Aquino Administration. 758 All parties therefore had a stake in promoting
Satellitbild’s project as an example of how more Swedish companies could establish
themselves in the Philippines.759
In spring 1988, the Swedish Government approved new foreign policy goals
that increased the emphasis on Swedish support for “the dynamic and expansive
Southeast Asian region”. While Swedish aid was small compared to aid of other
countries operating in the region, it had successfully opened up new areas for
collaboration that were now to be expanded while support continued for those
actors/companies that had already become established, like Satellitbild.760
To commemorate the achievements thus far, Minister of Environment Birgitta
Dahl would visit the Philippines in May.761 The Ministry for Foreign Affairs believed
that the Aquino Administration was particularly pleased with the conduct of
755 Ola Säl “Sverige satsar på Filippinerna. Bistånd från rymden,” and, “Filippinska öar får svenskt bistånd via fransk satellit,” Svenska Dagbladet, 14 August1987, BITS. F2B:208, RA. 756 Folke Johansson, “Jordreformen i Filippinerna. Svensk bild kan ge hjälp,” Upsala Nya Tidning, 16 October 1987, F2B:208, BITS, RA. See also Oswald Söderqvist (vpk), “Fråga till statsråd. 1987/88:42. Om bistånd till viss hjälporganisation i Filippinerna,” 12 October 1987, U2, U11 577 Xf nr 4-6, UD, RA; Lena Hjelm-Wallén/UD, “Svar på fråga av Oswald Söderqvist om bistånd till viss hjälporganisation i Filippinerna,” 22 October 1987. 757 Tom G.R. Tscherning/UD, “Utvecklingssamarbete med Filippinerna,” 27 October 1987, U11 577 Xf nr 4, Svenskt utvecklingsarbete och bistånd, U2, UD, RA. 758 Rasmus Rasmusson/UD, “Förslag till landprofil för Filippinerna. Bilaga 1 Det svensk-filippinska besöksutbytet,” 15 October 1991, U11:579, Xf nr 10-12, U2 UD, RA. 759 Hans F. Grönwall/Swedish Embassy Manila, “To Sten Rylander, UD. Bistånd till Filippinerna,” p. 3–4, 9 December 1987, U11 Xf nr 5, UD, RA. 760 Hans F. Grönwall/Swedish Embassy Manila, “To Cederblad, UD. Bistånd utanför programländerna,” 16 February 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U3, UD, RA. 761 Hans F. Grönwall/Swedish Embassy Manila, “To Cederblad, UD. Biståndssamarbete Sverige – Filippinerna,” 22 February 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U3, UD, RA.
Satellitbild.762 On a more general level, the Ministry viewed the aid efforts to the
Philippines as a counterweight to US influence in Southeast Asia. In the long run,
Swedish efforts might enable Aquino to diverge from the path of policies that the US
would otherwise have laid out for her to follow, of which the US military bases were
the most striking example.763
Figur e 16 . Handing-over ceremony on May 2, 1988, between Minister of Environment Birgitta Dahl (left) and President Corazon Aquino (right) as representatives for the governments of Sweden and the Philippines.764 Photo credit: Hans Rasch.
The Swedish Government used the handing-over ceremony for Satellitbild’s mapping
of the Philippines to further underscore the national character of the collaboration
between Sweden and the Philippines (Figure 16).765 The newspaper Manila Bulletin
noted that the project, which had taken one year to complete, was “reputedly the first
of its kind in the world”. The maps would provide vital inputs for the land reform,
national policies on land use, and forest conservation.766
762 Carl Olof Cederblad/UD, “Inför Bengt Säve-Söderberghs resa till Filippinerna,” 29 March 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA. 763 Carl Olof Cederblad/UD, “Synpunkter på bistånd till Filippinerna,” 25 April 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA. 764 Hans Rasch/SSC, “Handing-over ceremony in the Philippines,” Remote Sensing, no. 18 (June 1989): 20. 765 Interview with Bo Eriksson and Per Hallström, 27 May 2018; Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015. 766 Casiano Navarro, “Satellite maps for CARP received,” Manila Bulletin, p. 29, Tuesday 3 May 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA.
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Land Reform for the Landless Becomes Survey for Sustainability, 1988–1991
At the handing-over ceremony, Aquino hinted to Dahl that the map would become
influential for surveying and safeguarding what remained of the forests in the
Philippines. 767 According to the Swedish Embassy in Manila, these plans by the
Aquino Administration were motivated by choosing a power balance similar to that
of the Marcos Administration preceding it that relied on landlords and the military.768
In addition to political uncertainty about the land reform, the Swedish Embassy noted
doubts about the technical feasibility of SSC supporting it.
One of the sexy motivations for this continuation is that topographic maps are needed
for the land reform. During conversations with representatives from the Department
of Agrarian Reform (DAR), and researchers on this topic, it has become clear that for
the land reform there is a need for maps at a scale of 1:10,000 to make it possible locally
to demarcate lines for land ownership….The interesting question is: can the Swedish
Space Corporation’s technique be used for this type of maps?769
The Swedish Embassy in Manila was aware that it would not be feasible to use SSC’s
sensing of the Philippines for the purpose of land reform. The Embassy still hoped,
however, to promote the export of Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise770 and
managed to convince the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs of this priority for
subsequent aid projects in South East Asia.771
The Aquino Administration had its own reasons to continue promoting
Satellitbild’s land cover map. It claimed that the Swedish satellite experts had made
possible for Aquino to monitor, manage, and sustain the country’s forests. Aquino
767 Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015. 768. Bo Eriksson/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Bistånd till Filippinerna – en summering,” 15 May 1988,in Hans Grönwall, Pro memoria. Bilaga 1, 23 May 1988, U11 Xf nr 4-6, UD, RA.769 Author’s translation from Swedish: En av de sexiga motiveringarna för denna fortsättning är atttopografiska Kartor behövs för jordreformen. Vid samtal med företrädare förjordreformsdepartementet (DAR) och forskare på området har det framkommit att man förjordreformen behöver kartor i skala 1:10 000 för att man lokalt verkligen skall kunna rita inägorna….En intressant fråga är: kan Rymdbolagets teknik användas även för denna typ av kartor? En av forskarna på området anser att det är opraktiskt och ekonomiskt ogörligt att producera nya kartor, utan att en bra lösning ofta är att förstora upp 50 000-delskartor till 10 000-del. From Bo Eriksson/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Bistånd till Filippinerna – en summering,” 7. 770 Bo Eriksson/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Bistånd till Filippinerna – en summering,” 8. 771 Bo Eriksson/Swedish Embassy Manila, “To Carl-Olof Cederblad. Bistånd till Filippinerna,” p. 2, 10 August 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA; Bo Eriksson/Swedish Embassy Manila, “To Carl-Olof Cederblad. Bistånd till Filippinerna,” p. 2, 9 September 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA; Carl Olof Cederblad/UD, “Underprotokoll A: Uppdrag att bereda biståndsinsatser i Filippinerna,” 20 October 1988-10-20, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA; cf. Carl Olof Cederblad, “Unofficial translation. Increased development assistance for the Philippines,” 20 October 1988, U11 Xf nr 5, U2, UD, RA.
issued an executive order against deforestation, making reference to the satellite map
as a new basis for defining, monitoring, and regulating the boundaries of forests in
the Philippines. Aquino also allocated resources to Biña and DENR to continue using
satellite data in their work. 772 In the following years, in addition to supporting
reforestation legislation, the government of the Philippines also funded more than 50
environmental projects based on the Swedish satellite maps and CCTs.773
The Aquino Administration used the mapping of land cover to argue that the
previous Marcos Administration intentionally distorted information on the state of
the environment. In this respect, Aquino redefined Satellitbild’s map to shift attention
from difficulties in pursuing land reform toward a project that successfully illustrated
environmental failures caused by the predecessor Marcos.774
Satellitbild in turn made reference to these policy changes through marketing
and academic journals. It promoted satellite remote sensing as the only practical
option for obtaining “objective information” regarding deforestation of the planet.775
With reference to the activities by DENR, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs
argued that Swedish satellites had helped the Philippines in the first step toward
stopping “unsustainable” land uses.776
BITS and the World Bank also made reference to Satellitbild’s land cover map
when arguing for a stronger environmental emphasis in aid.777 The mapping of the
772 John Cleave/World Bank, “To Mr. Ingvar Karlén, Director BITS,” 25 May 1988, F2B:208, BITS, RA; Government of Philippines, “Presidential executive order no 192, section 22,” 1987, in Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/Scandinavian Project Managers, “Evaluation of the Satellite Based Mapping of the Natural Resources of the Philippines,” 9. 773 By 1991, Satellitbild’s land cover-map and CCTs had been used to create over 700 additional maps, which in turn were sold in 3,400 copies. Over fifty agencies and institutions were listed as having used the data to monitor logging activities, evaluating reforestation projects, and mapping a permanent forest line. See Ricardo Biña/DENR, “To Marika Fahlén, BITS. Update on the utilization of products provided by the World Bank-SSC Project on Mapping of Natural Conditions of the Philippines funded by BITS, Sweden in 1987–1988,” 16 January 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. See also Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/Scandinavian Project Managers, “Evaluation of the satellite-based mapping of the natural resources of the Philippines,” 9; DENR, “Program for the Multilateral Aid Initiative/Philippine Assistance Program. The Philippine Agenda for Sustained Growth and Development,” July 1989, U11:580 Xf nr 13 samt 3 bilagor, UD, RA. 774 David M. Kummer, “The political use of Philippine forestry statistics in the postwar period,” Crime, Law & Social Change 22 (1995):163–80. See also David M. Kummer, Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 775 Marie Byström, “Kartläggning av regnskog med satellitfjärranalys,” in Regnskog (Ödeshög: YMER, 1989), Göte Rönnbäck Private Collection. For more on SSC’s imagery of rainforests in the Philippines, see Hodgkinson (1988), 67. 776 Svante Kilander/UD, “Landöversyn Filippinerna – riktlinjer för svenskt bilateralt bistånd,” p. 12–15, 2 November 1989, U11 Xf nr 7, U2, UD, RA. 777 BITS, “Filippinerna: Erfarenheter och inriktning av det tekniska samarbetet,” 6 December 1991, Bilaga till ärende 2, U11 Xf nr 11, UD, RA. For a contemporary elaboration on development aid being part of environmental goals, see SOU 1990:17 Organisation och arbetsformer inom bilateralt utvecklingsbistånd, 116–18.
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Philippines was in this case the basis and model for how the World Bank and other
development banks promoted reforestation, land surveys, and agricultural reforms in
other countries in Southeast Asia.778 It should be noted, however, that international
observers discarded Aquino’s land reform as a failure and a missed opportunity for
change.779 Surveys for sustainability did not carry the same political legitimacy as land
reforms for the landless.
The Swedish government and the government of the Philippines both
contributed, albeit for different reasons, to reinterpreting satellite remote sensing.
Here, I have focused on demonstrating how this contributed to shifting the meaning
of the term ‘sustainable development’ from its previous emphasis on equitable land
distribution in society toward being a tool for monitoring and managing the
environment. This is important because satellite remote sensing since the late 1980s
became crucial to international studies of changes in global forest cover and land use.
Classifications of land cover became more generalised, which allowed for
comparisons of land surfaces over time and between different parts of the Earth.780
While classification initially involved surveyors with knowledge of ecology and local
conditions, satellite remote sensing became one of the technologies to shift
assessments from local ecological studies toward the field of Earth sciences, which is
more abstract through its reliance on digitised data to communicate environmental
change. 781 Several researchers have later argued that the production of digital
environments in the Philippines served to shift the scale of analysis from the local to
778 BITS/CM, “Bil. 4. BITS samarbete med Filippinerna,” 14 November 1991, in BITS/MF, “Filippinerna: Erfarenheter och inriktning av det tekniska samarbetet”. See also BITS, “BITS tekniska samarbete med Filippinerna,” p. 1, 27 November 1991, U11 Xf nr 11, UD, RA. 779 Cf. David J. Steinberg, The Philippines: A singular and a plural place, Second edition (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1990), 147–83. 780 For numerous regional examples of satellite remote sensing in estimating “how much deforestation” there is globally, see Michael Williams, Deforesting the Earth. From Prehistory to Global Crisis: An Abridgement (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 312, 314, 430, 452–63. See also Tariq Banuri and Frédérique Apffel Marglin, eds. Who Will Save the Forests? Knowledge, Power and Environmental Destruction (New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd., 1993); Cf. Andrea Nightingale, “A forest community or community forestry? Beliefs, meanings and nature in north-western Nepal,” in Under the roof of the world: critical Himalayan environments, ed. A. Guneratne (London: Routledge, 2010), 196–240. 781 See Ola Uhrqvist, Seeing and Knowing the Earth as a System. An Effective History ofGlobal Environmental Change Research as Scientific and Political Practice (Linköping: Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences No. 631 , dissertation, 2014), 63, 75. On the shift from ecology to Earth system sciences, see also Gregg Mitman, “Hubris or Humility? Genealogies of the Anthropocene,” In Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene, ed. Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero and Robert S. Emmett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 61.
the global and, thereby, make claims about human activities being part of changing
the Filipino environment to a greater extent than previously visualised.782
The references to Satellitbild’s land cover map culminated with DENR’s
conference on sustainability hosted in Manila, February 1990, where the results of the
environmental mapping projects were put on display. The Swedish government
participated and supported the government of the Philippines in these efforts, stating
that, “This was the first time that a developing country had put so great weight on the
term ‘sustainable development’”.783
The shift from specific mapping projects to conference arenas for
international politics corresponded in time with Sweden’s ambitions to host a second
UN conference on the environment.784 The project in the Philippines is important to
note since it was one of the first practical applications of the term ‘sustainable
development’ and involved giving remote sensing a new meaning, legitimising
subsequent policies to shape land cover in the Philippines as well as Aquino’s
Administration enforcing these, as well as continued activities by Satellitbild, the
World Bank, and the Swedish state supporting it. I have in this chapter demonstrated
why the Swedish Government, which until the late 1980s took little interest in satellite
remote sensing, wrote about the environmental role of this technology. This role
contributed to Sweden’s role as spokesperson for sustainable development and the
export of its national expertise as aid.
782 It should be noted, however, that environmental arguments were used by non-governmental organisations in the Philippines as a critique against governmental failures to improve environmental conditions. See Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the Environment in the Philippines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). For a similar argument, see Nancy Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). For more on the role of digitised data in producing knowledge about causes and effects for environmental change, see Nils Hanwahr, “Marine Animal Satellite Tags,” in Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene, ed. Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero and Robert S. Emmett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 89–98, especially 89–90 and 97. See also Lino Camprubí, and Philipp N. Lehmann, “The scales of experience: introduction to the special issue ‘Experiencing the global environment’,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 70 (2018): 1-5. 783 Hans Grönwall/Swedish Embassy Manila, “Miljökonferens – Philippine Assistance Program (PAP),” p. 2, 19 February 1990, Nr 18, HP57, U11 Xf nr 7, UD, RA. 784 cf. Ambr Palme UD, “Nordiskt samrådsmöte om FN-konf om miljö och utveckling m m,” 28 August 1989, F 1AG2:123, Vol. 6, FN/Miljö, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA; Anders Bengtsén/UD, “Bidrag till 1992 års konferens om miljö och utveckling,” 10 August 1990, F 1AG2:123, Vol. 6, FN/Miljö, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA.
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SSC Seeks a Permanent Position in Southeast Asia, 1990–1994
In order to yield revenues as large as those earned by mapping the Philippines, SSC
aimed to establish a “permanent” position in the region for several years.785 This meant
that Satellitbild’s staff increased its time abroad to lobby aid organisations, visit
potential users, and recruit local consultants. In one of his reports, Borg lamented,
“People have to live with their suitcases packed to swiftly go to the project country”.786
Over time, long-term institutional ties developed with several project
countries,787 for example with Biña and DENR so as to conduct additional projects in
the Philippines. 788 Satellitbild entrusted a greater share of its marketing to local
consultants previously entrusted to development consultants. Importantly, SSC used
its consultants to build personal relations with the customers, mediate and negotiate
so that products and services were delivered in time, and that there existed financing
to cover for all the costs.789 And Satellitbild increased its promotional material, which
resulted in a steady stream of t-shirts, sweat bands, caps, and car stickers featuring
satellites, which accompanied the sales representatives on their travels around the
world.790
During the early 1990s, Satellitbild used its network of development
consultants to expand its operations to dozens of countries and planned for activities
in others. Satellitbild organised priority lists of projects based on whether BITS would
provide the funding, Sweden enjoyed any political benefits in the country, and there
were chances for subsequent, larger projects, like the one conducted in the Philippines
(Figure 17).791
785 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-29. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen, September 1988,” 11 October 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S. 786 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-32. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen, November 1988,” p. 7, 1 December 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S. 787 Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016. 788 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-22. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen, mars 1988,” 16 March 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S. 789 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-24. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen, Maj 1988,” 1 June 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S; BITS. “Rapport nr 2. “Swedish Consultant Trust Fund. Rosenholm to Indonesia for Supervision of Transmigration,” F2A:73, BITS, RA. 790 Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “Resultat från grupparbete ‘fjorton nya produkter’ i Riksgränsen, 30–31 Maj 1991,” 28 June 1991, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 791 By 1993, Satellitbild’s shortlist of countries prioritized for projects included (according to continent) Canada, the US, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, China, Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauretania, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Benin,
Figur e 17 . Hans Rasch (left) and Ulf Karström (right) presenting an overview of countries where Satell itbild planned projects at SSC’s Remote Sensing Conference in Luleå, 1990.792
Borg had feared growing competition as a result of the success of Swedish satellite
remote sensing. Indeed, during autumn 1988, Spot Image used the negotiation
between CNES and SBSA for a participation in SPOT-3, 4, and 5 as a means to raise
prices for Swedish use of SPOT data.793 As described in the previous chapter, this was
a part of the French efforts to control the Swedish use of SPOT data. In this last part
of the chapter, I will also demonstrate how SSC lost a large share of its international
projects. This was the result not only of increased competition but also of losing the
allegiance of the development consultants and the financiers’ interest in supporting
satellite remote sensing as a form of aid.
Togo, Zaire, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mocambique, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Botswana. See Eva-Lott Wiklund/SSC, “MG1. Eva-Lott Wiklund. Anteckningar förda vid marknadsavdelningens planeringsmöte i Tärendö, 8–11 November 1993,” 1 December 1993, DRO Lägesrapporter, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 792 Sven Grahn Private Collection. 793 Klas Änggård/SSC, “IAC – 45. Förslag till budget för Rymdbolaget 1989,” p. 3, 2 December 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S; Klas Änggård/SSC, “IRAO – 35. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen. October – November 1988,” 30 November 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S.
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BITS’ Evaluation of Satellitbild’s Mapping in the Philippines, 1990–1992
The Philippines Project is universally recognized as a major breakthrough in the
application of remote sensing technology. Before the Philippines….a project of this
scale would be considered to take 10 years, or even longer. Thanks to the development
of remote sensing technology and methodology during the past decade, and the
technical competence of the Swedish Space Corporation, this extensive project could
be carried out within one year.794
Satellitbild’s pitch always made reference to the land-cover mapping of the
Philippines. The business relied on getting “more Philippine-mappings”, meaning
mapping projects with aid funding using large volumes of SPOT data. But by the early
1990s, both Satellitbild and its financiers had begun to ponder why there had been no
“Philippine effect” – meaning no breakthrough for satellite remote sensing – as
initially anticipated.795
In October 1988, the Swedish government started expanding BITS aid to the
Philippines as part of supporting the country’s “recent democratic development” and
“good environmental policies”. 796 By December 1991, the Swedish Ministry for
Foreign Affairs assessed that BITS aid to the Philippines had grown steadily, from
SEK 5 million in 1988 to nearly SEK 40 million in 1991, making it the largest BITS
client.797
The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs noted that BITS had supported both
Satellitbild and Swedsurvey on land-mapping projects as well as in training Filipino
personnel.798 The two organisations relied on different technologies – sensing by
satellite and aerial surveys – costs and benefits of which should be evaluated now that
several years and plenty of resources had been spent in the Philippines.799
794 Dan Rosenholm, “IFS021/DRO/KSA. Pre-proposal for ESI Mapping Project,” 28 November 1990, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 795 Original in Swedish: “fler Filipinkarteringar…” and “Filippineffekt”. See Ulf Kihlblom, “IFS. Sammanfattning/Slutsatser New York – Washington 22–26 April 1991,” 26 April 1991, DRO Reserapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 796 Svante Kilander/UD, “Aktuella BITS- och Swedfund-frågor avseende Filippinerna och Indonesien,” 22 January 1991, Hemlig SekrL 2:1, U2, U11 Xf, UD, RA; Rasmus Rasmusson/UD, “Landprofil Filippinerna. Till Ambassadör Fälth, Manila” 8 November 1991, Hemlig, U2, U11 Xf, RA. 797 BITS/MF, “Filippinerna: Erfarenheter och inriktning av det tekniska samarbetet. 29 November 1991, Bilaga till ärende 2,” 6 December 1991, U11 Xf, UD, RA. 798 Kr E. Backman and R. Rasmusson/UD, “PM. Utvecklingssamarbete med Filippinerna; (landprofil),” p. 16–17 and 24, 19 November 1991, U2, U11 Xf, UD, RA. 799 BITS/CM, “BITS tekniska samarbete med Filippinerna,” 27 November 1991 and “Appendix. Technical cooperation in the Philippines: Commitments by BITS,” 19 November 1991, in BITS/MF, “Filippinerna: Erfarenheter och inriktning av det tekniska samarbetet.”
Since most resources had been spent on Satellitbild, BITS decided to primarily
evaluate these activities and cited several other reasons for this. Firstly, Satellitbild’s
mapping of the Philippines 1987-1988 had motivated numerous developing countries
to approach BITS with requests to fund similar satellite mapping projects. Secondly,
the project had been influential for DENR’s subsequent mapping projects, the Aquino
Administration’s reforestation policies, and the World Bank’s investment programme
for Southeast Asia.800 And thirdly, the project had been BITS’ first major financial
effort and had resulted in considerable increases in BITS’ expenditures on similar
subsequent projects. It was therefore relevant to assess the costs and benefits of the
project in order to plan future aid.801
BITS used a Swedish consultancy firm to carry out the evaluation.802 The firm
visited the Philippines to conduct interviews and reviewed Satellitbild’s CCTs that the
World Bank had delivered to DENR in the Philippines.803 The evaluation was not
appreciated by DENR, which saw it as a threat to its ongoing collaborations with
Satellitbild.804
DENR’s critique of BITS’ evaluation is indicative of the role played by SSC in
the Philippines not only instrumentally but relationally. SSC and DENR both benefitted
from and participated in a collaboration predicated on the former having the status
of developed and the latter that of developing. Swedish mapping projects, however,
not only fostered technology transfer but also built transnational
connections among the remote sensing experts.805 By studying the practices of such
projects, as I have done in this chapter, it is possible to assert that the distant, technical
view of satellite mapping did produce collegial, close relations. Sweden and the
800 Marika Fahlén/BITS, “Evaluation report. Konsult: Scandinavian Project Managers,” 11 June 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. See also Wilfredo Cruz and Robert C. Repetto, The Environmental Effects of Stabilization and Structural Adjustment Program. The Philippines Case (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1992). 801 Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/Scandinavian Project Managers, “Evaluation of the Satellite Based Mapping of the Natural Resources of the Philippines. Draft report,” p. 28, 8 July 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 802 Ricardo Biña/NAMRIA, “To Ms. Fahlen/BITS. Evaluation,” 16 January 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 803 Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/SPM, “Evaluation of the Satellite Based Mapping of the Natural Resources of the Philippines. Final Report. Appendix 3. Visited offices and companies during field visit to the Philippines 22–27 June 1992,” September 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 804 Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016; Interview with Göran Alm, 13 December 2017. 805 For similar arguments on the relationality of aid projects, see James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
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Philippines still collaborated on unequal terms, but the technology had supported
experts in both countries.806
The evaluation by BITS resulted in three critical conclusions. Firstly, the
evaluation stated that SPOT data was not adapted to sensing the cloudy conditions of
Southeast Asia. Secondly, the classification had only been partially completed due to
hasty fieldwork, and it had only accounted for dry season conditions. And thirdly,
Satellitbild had used most of the BITS funding to pay its own personnel to gather and
interpret volumes of SPOT data, not to train personnel from the Philippines or to
transfer knowledge about themselves using SPOT. The evaluators concluded that
according to Swedish policy for international cooperation, satellite mapping should
henceforth be used in small projects that focused on training that in the long term
would help improve “the beneficiary’s sustainable use of natural resources”.807
Both Satellitbild and DENR provided defensive comments on each point of
criticism. They mentioned the need in 1987 to swiftly produce a map and that mapping
projects using Landsat data, for example, had far longer delays than Satellitbild, which
could make its own orders of SPOT data.808 But most importantly, they implored BITS
to continue funding projects with large volumes of data809 that were relevant to
societal improvements in developing countries.810
806 For similar assessments on uneven, or hegemonic, use of technology in development aid, see Rottenburg (2009), 137–42. For a defence of transnational aid collaborations against critique that aid maintains North-South asymmetries, see A. Mallarangeng and P. van Tuijl “‘Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia’. Breaking new ground or dressing-up in the Emperor’s new clothes? A response to a critical review,” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 5 (2004): 919–33; cf. G. Crawford, “‘Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia’. Dancing to whose tune? A reply to my critics. Third World Quarterly 25, no.5 (2004): 933–41. 807 Göran Alm and Lars Rylander/Scandinavian Project Managers, “Evaluation of the Satellite Based Mapping of the Natural Resources of the Philippines. Draft report,” 5–6, 12. 808 Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “Filippinerna. SSCs kommentarer till Scandinavian Project Managers’ – SPM (Alm – Rylander) utvärderingsrapport av ‘Världsbanksprojektet’ 1987/88,” p. 2, 17 August1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA.809 Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “Filippinerna. SSCs kommentarer till Scandinavian Project Managers’– SPM (Alm – Rylander) utvärderingsrapport av ‘Världsbanksprojektet’ 1987/88,” 5.810 Ricardo Biña, “To Mellander, BITS. Comments on the draft report on the evaluation of thesatellite-based mapping of the natural resources in the Philippines,” p. 4, 11 September 1992, F2B:208,F2B.208, BITS, RA.
We argue arduously and believe us to be objective ‘although’ we profit from it, that
many countries are far less aided by pilot projects, which by necessity will have the
character of research, than of being full-scale projects.811
Despite these attempts by Satellitbild and DENR, BITS’ evaluation concluded that
future aid projects should focus not on producing data but on training personnel.812
BITS continued to give aid to Swedish projects in Southeast Asia813 and Satellitbild
acknowledged that this had “been generous and an important selling point in our
marketing activities in the third world”. But by autumn 1993, Satellitbild
acknowledged that other sources of funding had to be found soon.814
Consolidation with Spot Image, 1992–1993
Satellitbild sought to increase its efforts to lobby other financiers than BITS and for
this purpose hired additional consultants. 815 Until then, Satellitbild had relied on
Swedish Projects to find, define, and fund most of its projects.816 Emsing would
provide information to Satellitbild in Sweden as well as to sales representatives who
were out travelling.817 The operations also expanded beyond SSC’s satellite remote
sensing activities to include international projects for other types of Swedish space
technology, for example telecommunication.818
811 See Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “To Mellander, BITS. Filippinerna. SSCs kommentarer till Scandinavian Project Managers’ – SPM (Alm – Rylander) Final Report av sep-92 av “ Världsbanksprojektet’ 1987/88,” p. 2, 23 December 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA. 812. Marika Fahlén, “To Carl Mellander, Konsult: 541–3. Faktura: 92035. Projekt: 126. ScandinavianProject Managers. Evaluation report, 1992-06-11,” 14 October 1992, F2B:208, BITS, RA.813 Reinius/UD, “Till Ambassaden, Manila. Angående SS Samuelssons planerade besök i Manila,” [date redacted] March 1993, U11 Xf, nr 12, U2, UD, RA; Rasmus Rasmusson/UD, “To Ambassador Fälth, Manila. Filippinerna, NGO-stöd m m,” 5 July 1993, U11 Xf, nr 12, U2, UD, RA; Christer Nilsson, Swedish Embassy Manila, “Till Utrikesdepartementet. U/3. Nr 53. PM. Textförslag till faktabilagan om svenskt bistånd 1992/93. Filippinerna,” 7 September 1993, U11 Xf, nr 12, U2, UD, RA.814 Original in Swedish: “BITS stöd har varit frikostigt och är ett viktigt säljargument i vår marknadsföring gentemot tredje världen”. See Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AS1-8091. Status report October 1993,” p. 3, 10 October 1993, DRO Swedish Projects Inc., DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection.815 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ODG-8090. Verksamhetsrapport Division Earth Observation Juni–September,” 9 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection.816 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Contract between Swedish Projects Inc. and Swedish Space Corporation, The Remote Sensing Division. From November 1, 1988 to April 30, 1989,” 1 November 1988. SSC Contracts, SSC-S.817 Dan Rosenholm/Satellitbild, “Att: Tomas Kollén/Erik Emsing,” October 1991, DRO Diverse meddelanden, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection.818 Interview with Lars Backlund, 8 March 2018; Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016.
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But when Swedish Projects did not identify a sufficient number of suitable
projects to make the business profitable, SSC grew dissatisfied.819 Moreover, Swedish
Projects charged “a ridiculously high price”, as Satellitbild’s director Bjerkesjö put it.820
Emsing, in turn, had become accustomed to other clients who were willing to pay
more for the services of Swedish Projects than the Swedish clients. Serving Satellitbild
therefore appeared more like “some Nordic pro bono”.821 In winter 1993, Satellitbild
cancelled its agreement with Swedish Projects. It acknowledged that the consultancy
had “served as our ally targeting the World Bank”, but that its services had become
too expensive. Kihlblom and Emsing met to transfer all additional contacts to SSC’s
new lobbyist working in Washington, DC.822
Whereas Swedish Projects’ consultancy was expensive, the services of others
proved to be more elusive. To increase their profits, foreign consultants often served
many masters, and competitors even made direct attempts at swaying their loyalty.823
Spot Image had tried to do so with Swedish Projects, without any success,824 and would
continue to pursue part of the market that Satellitbild had managed to secure.
Spot Image sought to gain access to the networks established by Satellitbild
through the establishment of another subsidiary, Spot Asia, in Singapore.825 Borg had
planned for a similar office somewhere in Southeast Asia that would have been formed
around a group of local consultants.826 But as several of these consultants decided to
819 At times, Satellitbild and Swedish Projects only communicated information in Swedish so as to decrease the risk of competitors intercepting the message. Consultants often stayed at the same hotels when visiting project countries and, like SSC, hired lobbyists to monitor the exchange of information going on around the World Bank. See Dan Rosenholm/SSC Satellitbild, “Activity report – marketing department. Kiruna and Solna, September 1993,” 5 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 820 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ODG-8090. Verksamhetsrapport Division Earth Observation Juni–September,” 9 October 1993, DRO Swedish Projects Inc., DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. From 1988 to 1993, Swedish Projects successively increased annual fee from 13,000 to 30,000 USD, cf. Dan Rosenholm/SSC Satellitbild, “Contract between Swedish Projects Inc. and Satellitbild i Kiruna AB, hereinafter referred to as ‘SSC’ and marketed under the name SSC Satellitbild. From September 1, 1991 through August 30, 1993,” 1 September 1991, SSC Contracts, SSC-S. 821 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 822 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AS1-8091. Status Report October 1993,” 10 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Dan Rosenholm/SSC Satellitbild, “Status Report – Marketing Department,” 4 November 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Dan Rosenholm/SSC Satellitbild, “Activity report – marketing department. Kiruna and Solna, September 1993,” 5 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 823 Interview with Hans Rasch, 16 February 2016; Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016; Interview with Pierre Engel 29 November 2016. 824 Interview with Erik Emsing, 21 November 2016. 825 Lars Bjerkesjö, “AE2-6986. Comments and Considerations on the Establishment of Spot Asia,” 9 September 1991, Satellitbild, CNES Archive, Paris. 826 Torbjörn Westin/SSC Satellitbild, “Protokoll. Topsat ledningsmöte den 27 maj 1988,” Topsat-projektet, Mats Rosengren Private Collection; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-24. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen, maj 1988,” 11. 1 June 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S.
join the French,827 and in one case even blackmailed Satellitbild,828 it proved untenable
for SSC to maintain its own, permanent position in Southeast Asia.
To solve the recurring problem with local consultants, Satellitbild agreed to
previous offers from Spot Image to establish the subsidiary Spot Asia.829 The French
and Swedish, Spot Image proposed, would jointly offer SPOT products and together
rule the market of Southeast Asia.830 As of spring 1993, both companies had assigned
an employee to work at Spot Asia’s office in Singapore.831
The Rise of Spot Asia and the Dismantling of Swedish Expertise in Southeast
Asia, 1993–1994
Spot Image not only sold projects but also sought to establish local receiving stations
for SPOT data throughout Southeast Asia, in part with financial support from the
French government. Satellitbild, by contrast, focused on finding or creating mapping
projects relying on Swedish or international aid.832
With this said, Spot Image was still interested in also selling mapping projects.
Spot Asia became a means for outmanoeuvring Satellitbild, in part by exploiting the
Swedish projects, contracts, and consultants for other uses. Spot Image referred to the
mapping of the Philippines as being “recognised by all responsible authorities
throughout the world as a major achievement in the practical application of remote
827 Peter Bolton/World Asset Pte. Ltd, “To Dan Rosenholm, SSC. Agreement SBTSL and SSC,” 12 June 1991, DRO PJB, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AF1. Lägesrapport Satellitbild mars 1992,” 8 April 1992, SSC Satellitbild Board 1991–1992, SB-K. 828 One consultant refused to release SSC’s SPOT data until receiving an additional ransom for these. Kihlblom managed to illegally retrieve the data from the consultant’s house and complete the project but was also, as a consequence, thrown into Indonesian prison until the Swedish Embassy could escort him out of the country. See Interview with Pierre Engel 29 November 2016; Interview with Dan Rosenholm 23 October 2015; Interview with Claes-Göran Borg 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. 829 Claes-Göran Borg, “IFA-59. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen Februari–Mars 1992,” 10 April 1992, SSC Board, SSC-S. See also Lars Bjerkesjö, “AE2-6986. Comments and Considerations on the Establishment of Spot Asia.” 830 Philippe Renault/Spot Image, “To Lars Bjerkesjö, Satellitbild. Subject: Operation of Spot Asia,” 20 April 1994, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 831 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ASI-7890. Spot Asia Shareholders Agreement,” 26 February 1993, Satellitbild, CNES Archive, Paris; Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ASI-7889. Status report February 1993,” 28 February 1993, Satellitbild, CNES Archive, Paris. 832 Interview with Björn Ohlson, 22 February 2017; Interview with Pierre Engel, 29 November 2016.
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sensing satellite technology”,833 not so much to illustrate Satellitbild’s expertise but to
demonstrate the usefulness of SPOT data and the French satellite system.834
As part of setting up Spot Asia as a joint venture,835 Satellitbild had made
available its network of contacts and contractors as a “dowry” to the new subsidiary.836
Spot Image, by contrast, had no systematic network of its own in Southeast Asia but
used the Swedish one to recruit new consultants and sell French products. 837
Satellitbild’s employee at Spot Asia also back-channelled information of these events:
We are blue-eyed [naïve] if we think that information about our activities (both tactical
and strategic) is not of interest to nor used by “the opponent”. I think information that
is handled internally must stay in the company [Satellitbild].838
This marketing war indicated that Spot Image and Satellitbild incorporated their
previous competitions in the joint venture of Spot Asia. The overall outcome was that
Satellitbild continued to lose revenue (Figure 18). By October 1993, Satellitbild risked
laying off many of its employees.839 Spot Asia had been a disappointment for Swedish
satellite remote sensing,840 and insult added to injury as Spot Image managed to use
Spot Asia to secure new projects in Southeast Asia.841
833 Spot Asia, “To SSC Satellitbild K. Draft: Proposed technical assistance project. Department of environment and natural resources Philippines,” 23 March 1993, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 834 Pierre Engel/Spot Asia, “To Hans Rasch and Dan Rosenholm. Fax no: #468984975,” 14 December 1992, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 835 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AS1-7986. Minutes of the 50th Board meeting of SSC Satellitbild Aktiebolag,” 9 March 1992, Satellitbild, CNES Archive, Paris; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-61. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen Juni–September 1992,” 19 October 1992, SSC Board, SSC-S. 836 Dan Rosenholm/Satellitbild, “Status report – marketing departments,” 1 September 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 837Interview with Peter Bolton, 18 January 2018; Interview with Philippe Delclaux, 8 January 2016; Interview with Christer Colliander, 24 January 2018; See also Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AF2. Summarisk lägesrapport betr P Bolton resp Spotasia,” 9 July 1992, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Spot Asia, “Straits Borneo Technical Services and Spot Asia Letter of Understanding,” 4 February 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 838 Author’s translation from Swedish: “Vi är blåögda om vi tror att information om vår verksamhet (både taktisk och strategisk) inte är intressant och utnyttjas av ‘motståndaren’. Jag tycker det är ett krav att den information som behandlas internet också stannar i företaget.” In Björn Ohlson/Spot Image (SSC), “To Satellitbild Kiruna, Dan Rosenholm,” 8 November 1993, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 839 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “AF2. Åtgärdspaket m a a utfall T2 och Prognos 93,” 3 October 1993, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 840 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ODG-8090. Verksamhetsrapport Division Earth Observation Juni–September,” 9 October 1993, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection; Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “ASl-8167. Minutes of the 52nd board meeting of SSC Satellitbild Aktiebolag,” p. 3, 21 October 1993, Satellitbild, CNES Archive, Paris. 841 Björn Ohlson/Spot Asia (SSC), “To Danne, Satellitbild. Fax no: 4687548332. 1993-12-03. Brådis,” 31 December 1993, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection.
By spring 1994, Satellitbild concluded that its previous position in Southeast
Asia had come to an end. The staff expressed frustration at not being able to use Spot
Asia as initially intended.842 Further correspondence between Satellitbild and Spot
Image clarified that the French majority ownership indeed confined Swedish satellite
remote sensing to play only a minor role in the region.843
Figur e 18 . Satel l itbild annual result 1986–1993.844 Compilation by author.
Satellitbild not only had to deal with the increased competition from the French, but
had also failed to find any substantial sources of funding apart from aid. After BITS’
evaluation of the mapping project in the Philippines, development agencies grew
reluctant to use aid for financing satellite mapping projects. Satellitbild had used a
large portion of the funding to pay for producing data. Why had not more attempts
been made to educate personnel in the developing country, to transfer technology, or
to try aerial photography as an alternative to satellites? Paying for SPOT data, one of
the BITS consultants remarked, seemed “just like paying for a new car”. Instead,
Satellitbild should have taught people how to build and drive the cars themselves.
BITS had now, after years of collaboration, concluded that Satellitbild only offered
842 Karin Lindholm/SSC Satellitbild, “ODG. Ledningsmöte EO Divisionen 31 Januari 1994,” 1 February 1994, Ledningsgruppen, Mats Rosengren Private Collection. 843 Dan Rosenholm/SSC Satellitbild, “To Ohlson, vidarebefordrat. Philippe Renault. Subject: Operation of Spot Asia,” 20 April 1994, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. See also Interview with Björn Ohlson, 22 February 2017; Interview with Pierre Engel, 29 November 2016. 844Lars Bjerkesjö/Satellitbild, “Årsredovisning för Satellitbild i Kiruna AB. Räkenskapsåret,” year 1986–1991 and Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “Årsredovsning för SSC Satellitbild Aktiebolag. Räkenskapsåret 1992.” SSC Satellitbild Board, SSC Satellitbild, SSC-S.
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
MSEKSatellitbild annual result
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training of token value and as part of pursuing its true interest – producing and selling
satellite image maps.845
As BITS shifted its funds to other Swedish consultants and projects in
Southeast Asia, Satellitbild began downscaling its operations. It shrank from 74 to 55
employees, terminated several consultancy contracts and minimised development
activities. These were all adjustments to losing Southeast Asia to Spot Image,
decreased revenues from archiving SPOT data in Kiruna, and the difficulties of selling
satellite remote sensing as part of Swedish international aid to developing countries.
Bjerkesjö commented on these changes:
Despite extraordinary efforts from each and every one within the company, our
initiatives have not yet resulted in acceptable profits. The coming consolidation period
will require hard work.846
Bjerkesjö still hoped to continue Satellitbild’s basic business idea of enhancing satellite
images for users of landscape information. But either way, the opportunities had to
be found elsewhere than in Southeast Asia.847
Summary
Satellitbild’s land-cover mapping in the Philippines is relevant to understanding how
sustainable development came to emphasise technology as a solution to environmental
problems. The project was one of the first to stress, in practice, the relationship
between satellite monitoring and management of the environment, in particular
through reforestation policies in a developing country. In addition, both users and
financiers of the project promoted an interpretation of satellite remote sensing as a
tool for sustainable development. This matters to understanding how technologies
845 Björn Ohlson quoted statements made by Olle Holmertz and Gunnar Pihlgren from BITS during a meeting with Opena and other representatives for NAMRIA. In Björn Ohlsson/Spot Asia (SSC), “To Rosenholm, Manila 30/1 – 4/2 1994. Ref MNL0194,” 7 February 1994, DRO Spot Asia, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 846 Original in Swedish: “Trots utomordentliga insatser från var och en inom bolaget har vår offensiva satsning ännu inte burit ända fram till acceptabel lönsamhet. Under och efter förestående konsolideringsperiod krävs det fortsatt hårt arbete”. See Lars Bjerkesjö, SSC Satellitbild, “ODG. Anpassningsåtgärder vid Satellitbild,” 4. Lars Bjerkesjö, SSC Satellitbild, “ODG. Anpassningsåtgärder vid Satellitbild,” 9 May 1994, DRO Lägesrapport, Dan Rosenholm Private Collection. 847 Lars Bjerkesjö, SSC Satellitbild, “ODG. Anpassningsåtgärder vid Satellitbild.”
were taken for granted in subsequent international debates on the sustainable
development of the environment.
In this chapter, I have described these processes in various steps: the financing
of consultants for the project, the sensing by satellites, the sampling during the
fieldwork, the interpretation of the SPOT scenes, the continuous negotiation with
financiers and users, as well as the reinterpretation and delimitation of the project in
the Philippines as a result of the political and societal pressure experienced in the
Philippines at the time. The Philippines project eventually formed a basis for
knowledge about the country’s environment. What is more, the continued sensing by
satellites would be a means to safeguarding environments both in the Philippines and
elsewhere. This causal relationship between sensing and shaping an environment is an
important aspect of understanding satellite remote sensing as an environing
technology. Environing calls attention to the historical process whereby doings lead
to beings, verbs form into nouns, and the digitally sensed land cover becomes known
to the viewer as “the environment”.
Satellite remote sensing functioned as an environing technology by sensing,
writing, and shaping the land cover in the Philippines. Sensing resulted in a digital
environment mediated through maps and tapes that together formed a mosaic surface
of the Philippines. This mosaic in turn shaped legislation on how to use that surface,
in particular reforestation policies. Before, during, and after the project came writings
that interpreted the mapping in different ways, first as a means to support the Aquino
Administration’s land reform and then second with increasing emphasis on the
satellite map’s role in the sustainable development of the environment. Reformulating
the project as being about sustainable development should not be understood as
planned but the outcome of ad hoc adjustments made by several actors as part of
paying attention to political changes in the Philippines, and new priorities in Swedish
foreign policy. Satellite remote sensing was an activity both in terms of making and
naming the environment of the Philippines.
This chapter has illustrated that the activities involved in Satellitbild’s mapping
in the Philippines shifted the emphasis from land reform for the landless toward
sustainable development of the environment. Furthermore, the shift occurred when
an equitable land reform proved politically difficult to pursue. It should be noted that
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land reforms remain a bone of contention in Filipino politics also at present.848 My
point is not that mapping settles issues over land ownership once and for all. There
will never be an end to land reforms because people’s activities keep reforming the
land through acts of environing. 849 Over time, these acts of environing changed
people’s conception of the land or environment that then fed back into policies to
reform its use.850 My point is that satellite remote sensing became a significant tool for
environing the Philippines.
For SSC to begin exporting satellite remote sensing abroad, it came to depend
on development consultants as a new group of experts. In turn, it was through these
consultants that the World Bank, and then BITS, contracted Satellitbild to map the
Philippines. It was not until SSC’s project was well underway that the Swedish
Embassy in Manila, then the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm, and lastly the
Swedish Government described the mapping of the Philippines as a form of bilateral
aid between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Republic of the Philippines. The
knowledge derived from SSC’s satellite remote sensing was initially planned for the
World Bank’s implementation of the FFARM study in support of the Aquino
Administration’s land reform. When SSC finished the map in May 1988, the Aquino
Administration primarily used it to formulate a policy for sustainable development
focused on monitoring deforestation and managing regrowth.
The Aquino Administration and the Filipino state apparatus stuck to
describing the mapping of the Philippines as a tool for sustainable development in
the years to come. The Swedish Government also used this description, as did various
other governments, the Swedish BITS, the World Bank, and other aid organisations,
as well as SSC and its collaborators and competitors, like Spot Image. This established
satellite mapping as one of the tools to achieve sustainable development.
848 Ian Coxhead and Sisira Jayasuriya, “Environment and Natural Resources,” in The Philippine Economy: Development, Policies, and Challenges, ed. Arsenio M. Balisacan and Hal Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 399–402; Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso, State and Society in the Philippines (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 266–68; Barbara Goldoftas, The Green Tiger. The Costs of Ecological Decline in the Philippines (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 157–78; E. San Juan, Jr., U.S. Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 167–70. 849 For similar reflections with regards to the Philippines, see Erich H. Jacoby (1971), 349. On the relationship between squatting and changes in use and ownership of land, see Jesse C. Ribot and Nancy Lee Peluso, “A Theory of Access,” Rural Sociology 68, no. 2 (2003): 153–81. 850 For examples on agriculture informing concepts of “sustainability” or “durability” of environment, see Warde (2009), 84–90. For analysis of how technological changes also become an infrastructure for ideas about nature of, for example, river systems, see Pritchard (2011), 8–9. For subsequent synthesis of similar studies, see Pritchard (2014), 243–45.
Since SSC’s consultants operated beyond the Nordic countries, their activities
were difficult to control and assess. This led to uncertainty in costs, revenues, and
performance. Moreover, Spot Image sought to outmanoeuvre Satellitbild, and the
Swedish Government took less interest in using aid to fund Satellitbild’s data
production. By the early 1990s, Swedish satellite remote sensing began losing its
previous strong position in Southeast Asia.
In sum, development consultancy changed the activities of satellite remote
sensing by providing new use and meaning as a tool for the societal benefit of
developing countries and increasingly with an emphasis on the sustainable
development of the environment. This message was later repeated in hundreds of
subsequent international projects. In the following years, this connection with
sustainable development would move from the specific setting of mapping land cover
in the Philippines to become a dominant focus in international conferences and one
of the main governing policies for world politics after the end of the Cold War.
One aspect that I have not touched upon in this chapter is the decrease in
Swedish international development aid as part of a shifting interest towards
geopolitical changes closer to home and Europe. In the following chapters, I will detail
how SSC paid attention to these geopolitical changes as part of finding new
environmental uses for Swedish satellite remote sensing amidst the dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the redefinition of Europe’s territory in the early 1990s.
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CHAPTER 5
Swedish Environmental Diplomacy via Satellite,
1987–1992
In spring 1993, CEO Lennart Lübeck looked back on SSC’s activities of the past
decade. Paraphrasing Pharaoh’s Dream in Genesis, he claimed that 1979 to 1986 had
been seven “good years” for SSC, which were then followed by five “meagre ones”.851
Although SSC and Satellitbild during the period 1987–1992 managed to successfully
sell satellite remote sensing as aid to developing countries abroad, this had been an ad
hoc solution necessitated by the lack of interest from users at home. Lübeck used the
term “meagre” primarily in reference to the diminishing governmental support for
Swedish space activities, on which SSC’s satellite remote sensing activities depended.
Lübeck believed that the government’s support had been reaffirmed as a result of
preparations for and participation in the International Space Year 1992 (ISY-92).
Unlike preceding events – like the International Geophysical Year 1957, which
famously included the Soviet Union’s launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1
– ISY-92 contained no singular event of importance. Nevertheless, Lübeck remarked
that the numerous activities during 1992 marked a turning point for Swedish satellite
remote sensing.852
In this chapter, I revisit the meagre years of 1987–1992 to understand SSC’s
attempts at reformulating the rationale for Swedish satellite remote sensing, in
particular the efforts to expand the Swedish infrastructure and subsequent attempts
to assert and promote the technology as a tool for sustainable development. I will
focus on Swedish participation in international events, like ISY-92, and in the
infrastructural integration of European institutions at the end of the Cold War, and
how these events in turn informed Swedish policy on space activities and other
significantly related areas.
I will address how SSC sought to maintain its satellite remote sensing
infrastructure and also describe how these activities changed the uses of their
851 See SSC, “Annual report 92,” 2–3 and 8, 30 March 1993, SSC-S. cf. “Genesis 41:1–45: Pharaoh’s Dream,” The Bible (London: King James Version, 1611). 852 See SSC, “Annual report 92,” 30 March 1993.
technology. I then turn to describe why attempts to maintain the remote sensing
infrastructure shaped the Swedish Government’s policies. Importantly, these activities
are relevant for understanding how Sweden changed its environmental diplomacy and
sought a new role as part of an expanding European Community.
I begin by describing how, by April 1987, the international debate on
environmental issues had begun to shift. In particular, the World Commission on
Environment and Development published Our Common Future, which commissioner
Gro Harlem Brundtland presented at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in
London.853 Brundtland reminded the audience that their generation was the first to
have seen the Earth from space. “We see a tiny globe and we realise that it is upon
this closed vulnerable system that we all depend.” According to Brundtland, this
vision of the Earth from outer space had an impact on human thinking for how to
achieve sustainable development – the focus of the report.854
Our Common Future, along with promotional material distributed following its
publication, suggested that the ingenuity of humans viewing the Earth from space
also allowed for living in harmony with the earthly environment. Scaling between
whole Earth imagery and particular regions emphasised the interdependence between
seemingly disparate activities and environments: acid rain killing trees throughout
northern Europe; erosion turning African farmland into deserts; logging deforesting
the rainforest in the tropics. Satellite remote sensing served as a technological solution
that monitored the Earth’s surface on a planetary level, 855 helping to counteract
environmental degradation, build inventories of natural resources,856 and aid in the
management of their future use.857
Our Common Future did not come up with a novel definition of ‘sustainable
development’. 858 According to historian Iris Borowy, the Brundtland Report was
853 The UN hosted the publication event for Our Common Future in London since the US Reagan Administration refused to host the event in Washington, DC. See Iris Borowy, Defining Sustainable Development for Our Common Future. A Brief History of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) (London: Routledge, 2014), 156–58. 854 WCED, Our Common Future. Promotional film (Geneva: North South Productions, 1987). 855 WCED, “Chapter 1. From One Earth to One World. III. International Cooperation and Institutional Reform. 2. Managing the Commons. Statement 84,” in Our Common Future. 856 WCED, “Chapter 8: Industry: Producing More With Less. II. Sustainable Industrial Development in a Global Context (1987)”; “Chapter 10: Managing The Commons. I. Oceans: The Balance of Life. 2.1 National Action. Statement 22.” 857 WCED, “Chapter 10: Managing The Commons. II. Space: A Key to Planetary Management. Statement 56.” 858 Historian Paul Warde traces the definition of sustainable development back to 1607 when English cartographer John Norden formulated that “A commoditie present should not depriue future times
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innovative in that it provided an institutionally consistent effort by several decision-
makers to shift international environmental policy. Whereas the political debate since
the late 1960s had focused on drafting regulations to justly redistribute finite earthly
resources, Our Common Future suggested that world politics should use technology to
monitor, manage, and sustain the current societal development. 859 The shift in
international environmental politics can be understood by studying activities on the part
of spacefaring nations in framing a relationship between satellite remote sensing
and the means for achieving sustainable development. This relationship, I argue,
explains why the technology of remote sensing gained legitimacy beyond its
previous Cold War rationale.
Although the US and the Soviet Union were sceptical of Our Common Future,
they readily described their current satellite capacities as a means for achieving the
report’s aim of planetary management. Most notably, and with reference to the recent
UN-initiated International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), 860 the US
announced an international educational campaign, ISY-92, that would demonstrate
how outer space served to protect the Earth against environmental problems.861
NASA had proposed similar campaigns in the early 1980s but failed to gain UN
support.862
When the US in 1987 proposed ISY-92, however, NASA had a greater need of
defending its governmental standing following a series of mishaps, the recent
Challenger explosion being the most severe. For this reason, NASA was willing to
collaborate internationally on terms more favourable for new emerging space
of a better”. Norden meant that present society had a responsibility to provide means to satisfy wants also of future generations. Cited in Warde (2018), 92. 859 Borowy (2014). For more on how Our Common Future also influenced environmental history, see Sandy Irvine, “Brundtland Commission”, and Douglas Torgerson, “Environmentalism,” in Encyclopedia of World Environmental History. Volume 1: A–E (New York: Routledge, 2004), 172–73 and 479–80. 860 WCED, “Chapter 10: Managing The Commons. II. Space: A Key to Planetary Management. Statement 58, 61, and 62,” in Our Common Future. 861 Kathy Sawyer, “Moscow Session on Space Praised by US Scientists,” The Washington Post, 6 October 1987. 862 As I described in Chapter 2, the UN was at this time still embroiled in debates on the responsibilities of sensing states as well as the rights of sensed states. Even as these negotiations reached a consensus with the principles for remote sensing in 1986, they did not resolve underlying tensions between haves and have-nots. For more on US initiatives on promoting environmental uses of satellite technology during the early 1980s, see W. Henry Lambright, “The Political Construction of Space Satellite Technology,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, no. 19 (1994): 47–69; Chunglin Kwa, “Local Ecologies and Global Science: Discourses and Strategies of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme,” Social Studies of Science 35, no. 6 (2005): 923–50.
powers.863 Historian Erik Conway argues that the Mission to Planet Earth – the theme
of ISY-92 that continued to be used later in the 1990s – came at a point in time when
several states and institutions were interested in demonstrating the environmental
purpose of satellite remote sensing.864 The US was coordinating Mission to Planet
Earth but most of its activities were funded and led by other, more recent, space
powers and developers of satellite remote sensing, of which SSC sought to be a
leading example. This is why one has to study Swedish satellite remote sensing
activities in order to understand the international efforts to frame satellite remote
sensing as an environmental tool.
Following the international reports and campaigns mentioned above on how
satellite remote sensing could benefit a global environment, Claes-Göran Borg drafted
a plan for SSC’s role in all of this. He shared the plan with CEO Lübeck and Stefan
Zenker, SSC’s remote sensing strategist, as part of a larger discussion on how to
maintain Kiruna as a central receiving station for satellite data. To do this, Borg argued
that SSC should align satellite remote sensing closer to Swedish environmental
commitments internationally, since this made possible new sources of funding,
thereby securing permanent employment for remote sensing activities in Kiruna.865
Most notably, the European Community had begun financing an extensive
pilot project, the Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE),866
where satellite remote sensing mapped forest acidification throughout Europe.
Borg’s arguments about how remote sensing could serve as “a
Swedish contribution to the world’s environment”, that satellite data constituted
“Swedish aid in kind”, became central for how SSC in the coming years contributed
to shaping Swedish environmental diplomacy.867 Importantly, these arguments were
used by the Swedish Government in the early 1990s to shift emphasis in its
environmental diplomacy from the drafting of international regulations
towards promoting technology both as a means to define and to solve
environmental problems.
863 Erik M. Conway, “Bringing NASA Back to Earth: A Search for Relevance during the Cold War,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 260–62; Edward S. Goldstein, “NASA’s Earth Science Program: The Space Agency’s Missions to Our Home Planet,” in NASA’s First 50 years: Historical Perspectives, ed. Steven J. Dick (Washington, DC: NASA, 2010). 864 cf. Conway (2014), 263. 865 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Kiruna-förslag,” 22 January 1988, SSC-S. 866 cf. Eva Ahlcrona, “Nordic CORINE Land Cover Workshop,” Remote Sensing, no. 23 (January 1993): 15. 867 Original in Swedish: “Svenskt bidrag till världens miljö”, and “Svenskt biståndbidrag in kind”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Kiruna-förslag.”
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In this chapter, I draw upon written sources from public and company
archives, as well as private collections. These sources illustrate how SSC’s activities
mattered to the wider Swedish remote sensing community and why the Swedish
Government found the technology relevant for its policies. I collected several of the
written sources as part of conducting interviews, which in turn complemented and
contextualised these sources.
Preparing Swedish Space Activities for ISY-92, 1988–1991
By the late 1980s, several institutional changes had been carried out that would benefit
Swedish satellite remote sensing. IGBP established its main secretariat at the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and began formulating activities for ISY-
92.868 SBSA was already working closely with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
and had recently gained more resources to participate in international
collaborations. 869 At the same time, the Swedish Government had doubts about
whether, and how, to continue financing Swedish space technology.870
Back in 1972, the Swedish Government described the organisation of the
governmental branch SBSA and the state-owned company SSC as an interim solution.
SBSA funded SSC’s activities and also relied on SSC to draft recommendations for
SBSA’s, and Sweden’s, space programme. The SBSA even appointed SSC’s
technoscientific experts as national representatives in various international forums.871
In the mid-1980s, however, the Swedish Government began investigating this mutual
dependence between SBSA and SSC.872 After the Social Democratic Party regained
power in 1982, Minister of Industry Thage G. Peterson aimed to dismantle parts of
the Swedish space activities that the previous – Liberal Conservative – Government
had established. Peterson increased the staff of SBSA, so as to diminish its reliance
on SSC for expertise.873 Peterson correspondingly attempted to evaluate, and decrease
868 Uhrqvist (2014). 869 Interview with Kerstin Fredga, conducted by Nina Wormbs and Johan Gärdebo, 1 December 2017, F62:2, TM. 870 Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 1 February 2016; Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM. 871 Lars Rey/Swedish Ministry of Industry, Organisation och finansiering av rymdverksamhet. Promemoria utarbetad inom Utbildnings- och Industridepartementet, Ds I 1972:1. 872 Per Nobinder/SBSA, “DFR:s och Rymdbolagets roller i den svenska rymdverksamheten,” 24 October 1990, SSC-S. 873 Jan Stiernstedt/SBSA, “PM. Rymddelegationens interna organisation,” 21 January 1987, SSC-S.
funding to, SSC,874 while also replacing the corporation’s leadership with people more
loyal to himself. The board of SSC, however, counteracted these attempts in autumn
1985 by appointing its own candidate, Lennart Lübeck, as new CEO of SSC.875 These
manoeuvres illustrate diverging interests regarding Swedish space activities between
SSC and its owner, the Swedish state. The result was that Peterson was unable to
change the leadership of SSC as he had intended.
After SBSA’s Director General Jan Stiernstedt applied for retirement in 1988,876
astrophysicist Kerstin Fredga gradually took over his responsibilities as Director
General.877 Fredga continued the process of remaking SBSA into a more permanent
institution and, with more staff, renaming it the Swedish National Space Board
(hereafter SNSB).878 Nevertheless, Fredga continued to support a close collaboration
between SNSB and SSC. This support could be expressed in terms of SSC staff, like
Borg and Zenker, drafting plans for how to next develop Swedish satellite remote
sensing. Fredga then used these drafts to formulate national priorities for space
technology, 879 which in turn enabled SSC to gain money and mandate to develop that
technology and related activities. This way SSC influenced SNSB’s long-term plan on
Swedish satellite remote sensing for the 1990s.880
SSC noted plans for a growing number of remote sensing satellites as well as
harder European competition for who should control the infrastructure that received
all this new data. In particular, the Norwegian receiving stations at Tromsö and
Svalbard were situated closer to the North pole. This made them more suitable as
874 Lars-Göran Engfeldt, “Engfeldt Diary Notes,” 18 November 1985, Lars-Göran Engfeldt Private Collection; Bo C. Johansson/SSC, “AAY-7. Utredningar om Rymdbolagets verksamhet,” 3 December 1985. 875 SSC, “AAY. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 64 i Svenska rymdaktiebolaget,” 21 Augusti 1985, and SSC, “AAY. Protokoll från sammanträde nr 65 i Svenska rymdaktiebolaget,” 4 September 1985, SSC Board, SSC-S. See also Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM; Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM; Interview with Nils G. Åsling, 6 April 2017. 876 Jan Stiernstedt/SBSA, “Dnr: 118/89. Till: Civildepartementet. Ärende: Regeringsbeslut 1989-03-30 ang förordnande-pension åt överdirektören och chefen för statens delegation för rymdverksamhet Jan Stiernstedt,” 13 April 1988, SNSB, RA. 877 SBSA, Petita 1989/90, 24 August 1988. 878 SBSA was not formally renamed SNSB until 1992 but Stiernstedt and Fredga had requested the change since 1987. I will hereafter only use the acronym SNSB when referring to this organization. See Interview with Kerstin Fredga, conducted by Nina Wormbs and Johan Gärdebo, 1 December 2017, F62:2, TM. See also SBSA, Petita 1988/89 (1987), 6; SNSB, Petita 1993/94–95/96 (1992), 1; Patent- och registreringsverket, “Dnr: 277/90. Ärende: Förundersökning av kombinerat ord- och figurmärke –Rymdstyrelsen – Swedish National Space Board. Till Fjärranalyskommittén,” 20 November 1990, SNSB, RA. 879 Interview with Stefan Zenker, Stockholm, 10 December 2015. 880 SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 79,” 23 October 1998, SSC-S.
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places for gathering data from the polar-orbital remote sensing satellites than SSC’s
Esrange station near Kiruna.881
To gain funding for expanding Esrange, Zenker and Borg drafted plans for
SNSB to formulate a Swedish contribution to IGBP’s activities, in particular to the
upcoming ISY-92. Zenker suggested that financing could be secured by drawing up
some of the purposes for remote sensing formulated earlier by SSC, for example to
use the technology as aid to developing countries, to provide impartial monitoring of
the great powers, or to safeguard Europe’s position in outer space. Using the metaphor
of a railway junction, Borg stressed the importance of expanding Kiruna:
The 1990s will be swarming with remote sensing satellites. This is what all developing
organisations are pushing for. Today, Kiruna is the Krylbo of all remote sensing
satellites. If we are to keep our Great Power-position, we have to make sure that the
trains do not pass us by to stop in Bräcke instead. England, Norway, and others are
putting great effort into rebuilding the [train] tracks. It is vital that we push back,
through political decisions and investments on the ground. Remote sensing is the key
technology of the 1990s for essential questions about the Earth’s climate, environment,
and aid.882
“Krylbo” referred to a town in the middle of Sweden that the Swedish Government
in the late nineteenth century turned into a central junction for the country’s railroad
network at a time when this infrastructure rapidly expanded. There had been regional
struggles in which several towns claimed to be suitable as a railway junction, for
example the town Bräcke, before the Government eventually endorsed Krylbo. With
the railroads followed changes in the regional economy, for example the closing of
local mines and the opening of new businesses.883
881 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Avsnitt 6.2 om Fjärranalys till DFR Långtidsplan. Till LLU, CGB, DFR (Silja), JOG,” 7 November 1988, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 882 Original in Swedish: “På 90-talet kommer det att drälla av FA-satelliter. Detta är vad alla utvecklingsorganisationer satsar på. Idag är Kiruna FA-satelliternas Krylbo. Om vi ska behålla vår stormaktsposition måste vi se till att tåget inte går förbi och stannar i Bräcke. England, Norge och andra gör jättesatsningar för att lägga om spåren. Det är livsviktigt att vi håller emot. Genom politiska beslut och investeringar på backen. FA är 90-talets nyckelteknik för livsviktiga frågor som jordens klimat och miljö, bistånd”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “DFR:s långtidsplan. Till LL, SZ,” 23 November 1988, SSC-S. 883 Sweden’s Official Statistics (BiSOS), Five-year records 1856–1895 (Stockholm: Royal Printing Office, 1896): Karl-Rikard Holmlin, “Klart Krylbo. En järnvägsknuts tillblivelse [All-clear Krylbo: The making of a railroad junction],” Folkarebygden (1985): 21–27; Maths Isacson, “Järnvägsbygge och rallarliv. Striderna kring norra stambanans dragning genom By socken [Railways and yardman life. Struggles for the northern trunk line through By parish],” Folkarebygden (1985): 52–53. See also Johan Gärdebo and Daniel Löwenborg, “Smallholding travel in the agrarian revolution: using a farmer diary
Just as Krylbo had promoted itself as passage point for Swedish trains, so too
Kiruna now had to promote itself as passage point for many of the world’s remote
sensing satellites. Kiruna was located close to the North Pole where the lines of polar-
orbital remote sensing satellites converged and hence a suitable passage point for
downlinking their data.
Lübeck later used Borg’s metaphor to argue that SSC, and hence SNSB, had to
protect “the Swedish remote sensing infrastructure. Given that the SPOT programme
also faced increasing competition from new satellites, SSC had reached “the end of
the golden age” and now had to prepare for less favourable terms in its remote sensing
activities. Therefore, Lübeck argued, SNSB had to identify the infrastructure in
Kiruna, this Project Krylbo, as a national priority.884 Zenker and Borg had noted that
environmental research so far lacked funding to make it lucrative, but that it could
become increasingly important for future rationales for satellite monitoring. For this
reason, it was important to seek to combine Project Krylbo with plans of making
Kiruna into an international environment centre with satellite remote sensing as the
key technology for global environmental monitoring.885
Fredga and SNSB supported SSC’s strategies by adopting plans drafted by
Zenker and Borg. SNSB also allocated special financing to SSC for Project Krylbo –
SSC’s strategic planning – to develop proposals for Sweden’s contribution to ISY-92.886
Although most participants of ISY-92 were researchers, SNSB were primarily
concerned with using the respective research projects to promote SSC’s practical and
commercial remote sensing activities. By spring 1990, Borg could therefore
confidently state, “Never before had there been so much brewing within the remote
to map spatio-temporal patterns in late nineteenth century Sweden,” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10, no. 2 (2016): 179–204. 884 Original in Swedish: “Budgetförslaget för 1989 visar att vi har ytterligare ett bra år framför oss, men sedan är det förmodligen slut på de gyllene tiderna”. See Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Styrelsesammanträde 13 December 1988. VD-rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” p. 1, 5 December 1988, SSC-S. 885 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Kommentarer till DR 3-årsplan. SZ kommentarer samt förslag till ändring. Till J Stdt, Silja, MvG, LLü, CGB, KF,” 8 December 1988, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. See also SNSB, Petita 1990/91, 21 August 1989; SNSB, Petita 1991/92, 21 August 1990. 886 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Förslag. Delårsrapport för Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget. org.nr 556166-5836. perioden l januari – 31 augusti 1990,” 26 October 1990, SSC-S; SSC, “FUX-3. DFR:s Fjärranalysprogram – tillämpningsdelen: Lägesrapport samt förslag till insatser för budgetåret 1989/90,” 16 February 1989, 4, 39, 101, 105; SSC, “FUX100-5. DFR:s Fjärranalysprogram – tillämpningsdelen,” 6 February 1990, SSC-S.
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sensing area as now”. He was particularly hoping that ISY-92 could be “a tool for
reaching a little further on the road toward routine exploitation of remote sensing”.887
Securing Project Krylbo with a Multistation
As of winter 1988, SSC pursued Project Krylbo by laying out a strategy for expanding
the remote sensing infrastructure. Borg, Zenker, and Lübeck conceptualised this
expansion as a game of infrastructural connections. The goal was to maintain or
redirect as many organisational lines as possible to pass through SSC, Esrange, and
Kiruna, while isolating other organisations, stations, and satellites to prevent them
from connecting with each other. To succeed in this infrastructural game, SSC aimed
to make other remote sensing organisations depend on Esrange expanding as a
receiving station for satellite data – that others would benefit from making Kiruna
into a Krylbo for satellite data (Figure 19).888
SSC aimed to realise Project Krylbo through three strands in its strategic
planning.889 The first involved expanding SSC’s collaboration with the French CNES
and its subsidiary Spot Image,890 with other partnerships only serving as stepping
stones in negotiating future Swedish co-ownership in CNES’s next generation of
SPOT satellites.891
The second strand involved combining different types and sources of data, for
example collaborating with Glavkosmos, a Soviet ministry that under the Gorbachev
Administration’s perestroika programme had been entrusted with commercialising
space activities.892 SSC promoted the Swedish-Soviet agreement both to signal that
887 Original in Swedish: “Aldrig tidigare har så mycket varit “på gång” inom fjärranalysområdet som nu!” and “…ett redskap för att nå ytterligare en bit på vägen mot ett rutinmässigt utnyttjande av fjärranalys...”. See SSC, “FUX100-5. DFR:s Fjärranalysprogram – tillämpningsdelen.” 888 Interview with Jörgen Hartnor, 12 May 2016; Interview with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2015; Interview with Per-Erik Skrøvseth, 9 November 2017; Gärdebo, ed., Svenska bidrag till europeisk radarfjärranalys. Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium hos Kungliga tekniska högskolan i Stockholm den 13 november 2017. 889 The late 1980s was a lively period of satellite remote sensing collaborations. I describe only the directions most significant for SSC’s strategising in Project Krylbo. There were, however, several collaborations initiated with American, Canadian, and several Asian organisations. 890 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAA. Minnesanteckningar från samtal med G Brachet den 7 December 1988,” 9 December 1988, SSC-S. 891 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF. Några stolpar från ‘kickoff-mötet’ om multistation i Kiruna den 14 september 1989,” 12 October 1989, SSC-S. 892 Gunilla Persson/SSC, “Till Per-Olof Sjöstedt, Svenska ambassaden (Moskva). Eventuellt samarbete avseende mottagning av data från ryska fjärranalyssatelliter vid Esrange, Kiruna,” 14 December 1988, SSC-S.
Esrange no longer relied only on Landsat or SPOT for data and to technically explore
possibilities of combining data into new remote sensing products.893
Figur e 19 . Illustration of Project Krylbo, by CGB (Claes-Göran Borg), 2 October 1990. The acronyms refer to developers and distributors of remote sensing data. These were, from top-left to bottom-right, ‘RadarS’ (Radarsat, company for maintenance of the Canadian RADARSAT), ‘NASDA’ (National Space Development Agency of Japan), ‘EOSAT’ (the American company Earth Observation Satellites sending up and operating the Landsat satel l ites), ‘BA’ (British Aerospace), ‘NSC’ (The British National Space Centre), ‘T’ (the Norwegian Tromsö Satell ite Station), ‘NRS’ (Norsk Romsenter), ‘SB’ (SSC’s subsidiary Satel l itbild), ‘Sa’ (Salmijärvi , ESA’s receiving station 13 kilometres from Esrange), ‘RBE’ (Esrange), ‘GC’ (the Soviet company Glavkosmos selling satell ite data), ‘SICORP’ (Spot Image Corporation, American subsidiary to Spot Image), ‘CNES’ (the French Centre National d’Études Spatiales), ‘SI’ (Spot Image), ‘ESA HQ’ (The European Space Agency’s Headquarters in Paris), ‘ESOC’ (ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt), ‘RBS’ (SSC in Solna), ‘DE’ (Dornier, German co-owner in the subsidiary company Eurimage), ‘EPO’ (ESA’s Earthnet Programme Office in Frascati , nearby Rome), ‘EI’ (Eurimage, a joint subsidiary company distributing satel lite data within Europe, co-owned by Satel litbild, Ital ian Telespazio, German Dornier, and the British National Remote Sensing Centre), ‘Te’ (Telespazio, the Ital ian telecompany operating the receiving station in Fucino).894
893 SSC, “AUF-14. Förslag till investering i ny mottagningsantenn vid Esrange,” 23 December 1989, SSC-S. 894 Claes-Göran Borg, “FUN. Underlag för Krylbo-diskussion,” 14 June 1991, Zenker Krylbo, Stefan Zenker Private Collection, 10.
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The third strand involved SSC navigating the intricate politics of ESA to assert
Esrange’s role in Europe’s network of receiving stations, Earthnet. Until the late
1980s, Earthnet consisted of stations in Italian Fucino, in French Lannion, at
Maspalomas on the Spanish island Gran Canaria, and at Esrange near Kiruna. Tromsö
in Norway had joined Earthnet in 1988, and several other members of ESA had plans
for expanding or establishing new receiving stations throughout Europe.895
While SSC had secured an ESA contract to build a receiving station for the
European satellite ERS-1, ESA demanded that it not be added to other parts of SSC’s
receiving capacity but be built at Salmijärvi, thirteen kilometres from Esrange. As part
of delivering radar data to European users, Norway had also begun building
infrastructural connections between Salmijärvi in Sweden and Tromsö in Norway to
access the data gathered from ERS-1. ESA repeatedly referred to these infrastructural
commitments by Norway when negotiating with SSC, which Zenker suspected was
meant to play the two northern stations off against each other.896
In 1989, SSC formulated Project Krylbo as the establishment of a
multistation. This was also a way of making downlinking data more cost-effective
by not having to maintain separate stations for each and every satellite programme
that downlinked its data at Esrange.897 Ideally, SSC hoped to build this multistation
based on the funding and political support of the organisations whose satellite
data it gathered.898 The operators of satellites would help finance SSC’s
infrastructure while strengthening Sweden’s bargaining position in subsequent
contract negotiations.
In order to design the multistation, Zenker and colleagues met with very many
remote sensing experts internationally.899 After these trips and discussions, Zenker
returned not only with a technical proposal for the multistation, but with a growing
895 SNSB, “PM. Sverige och Columbus,” 9. 18 November 1988, SNSB, RA. 896 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “RGF1 – 20. Möte med Earthnet programme office om Earthnet optional programme,” 20 December 1988, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. See also ESA, “Considerations on Scale of Contributions for ERS-2,” p. 2, 21 May 1987, 12079, PB-EO, EUI. 897 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “RGKO. Informellt ESA-möte den 24 februari 1989 om överföring av fjärranalysdata,” 27 February 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 898 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF-1. Projektplan för “multistation” 1989, rev 1,” 15 mars 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. For examples of SSC’s negotiations with other organization, see Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF-1. Anteckningar från besök vid EOSAT och SICORP den 12–13 januari 1989,” 20 January 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. See also Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAA. Minnesanteckningar från samtal med G Brachet den 7 December 1988,” 9 December 1988, SSC-S. 899 Among the major visited were facilities in Washington, DC, Ottawa, Vancouver, San Francisco, London, and Münich. See Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Canada Centre for RS,” SSC, 29 September 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Letter to Logica Space and Defense Systems Limited. Proposed visit by SSC,” 3 October 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; Stefan Zenker/SSC, “MBB Space Systems Group,” 3 October 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
feeling that their vision for the “more or less real environmental problems” had been
affirmed by similar plans elsewhere.900 In spring 1990, Borg formalised the plans for a
multistation by establishing a steering group for Project Krylbo. The group held
monthly meetings to plan the multistation’s technical infrastructure and develop
strategies for securing funding.901
But SSC soon found itself competing against similar offers made by other
European receiving stations.902 By autumn 1990, Borg described the negotiations for
a multistation as having moved from harsh, to confusing, to a lull, but with no
substantial agreements signed. 903 Since SSC depended on others to finance its
multistation, it was vulnerable to ESA’s idea of what was “politically acceptable”,
namely avoiding having any single European receiving station asserting hegemony
over the others.904
As negotiations dragged on, SSC realised that Esrange’s central position had
gradually been undermined by other organisations expanding their data receiving
capacity elsewhere in Europe.905 SSC had not succeeded in gathering data from the
growing number of remote sensing satellites planned for launch in the 1990s. It had,
however, begun a process of reformulating what that data should be used for.
900 Original in Swedish: “De mer eller mindre reella miljöproblemen som diskuteras kommer att leda till internationella och nationella storsatsningar. Vi bör, som vi redan mulat om, ta till vara chansen att dra nytta av fjärranalystekniken inom detta område”. See Per-Georg Jönsson, Stefan Zenker, and Gunnar Larsson/SSC, “AUF-11. Rapport från de tre vise männens sökande efter multistation,” 14 November 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 901 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF. Proposal. Beträffande styrning av Projekt ‘Krylbo’ (‘Multistation’ I Kiruna för mottagning, arkivering, bearbetning osv av data från fjärranalyssatelliter),” 12 January 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 902 Per-George Jönsson/SSC, “IFU14. Invitation to budgetary proposal for contributions to a flexible multi-satellite, multi-project advanced satellite image production facility,” 2 March 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Sammanfattning av samtal med David Smith, BAE,” 24 April 1990, Archive, Solna. 903 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA–47. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen Juni – September 1990,” 18 October 1990, SSC-S. 904 Original in Swedish: “…det norska NORSAT B konceptet är att föredra ur teknisk synpunkt….det italiensk/svenska förslaget är det som är “politisk acceptabelt”. See Stefan Zenker, Lars Ag and Jörgen Hartnor/SSC, “EMA. Kortfattade mötesanteckningar från mötet med EPO på Esrin 5 – 6 november 1990. Konfidentiellt,” 16 November 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 905 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Krylbo-diskussion,” 26 November 1990, SSC-S. For public statements to this effect regarding the role of Esrange for ERS-1, see ESA, “Working Group on ERS-1 Data Policy, meeting no. 2,” p. 5, 28 August 1989, 13799, ERS Data, PB-EO, EUI.
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From a Multistation Idea to focusing on Environmental Data
In autumn 1990, following the inauguration of the Salmijärvi station near Esrange,
Zenker met with representatives from ESA to discuss the future of SSC’s multistation
idea. 906 ESA recommended SSC shift its plans from expanding its station toward
formulating plans for Kiruna as a centre for the European Community’s geographical
data. Instead of competing against other receiving stations over who could store and
sell the most remote sensing data, SSC could draw upon the data of others to produce
environmental databases. These could in turn be offered to the fledgling European
Environmental Agency (EEA),which was just about to be established and would be
responsible for monitoring Europe’s environment.907 ESA’s point was that if SSC
collaborated with the other European space powers, they could convince the EEA to
build its geographical information based on data from remote sensing satellites.908
When the European Community completed the pilot project CORINE in
autumn 1990, the main recommendation was to establish the means for a permanent
monitoring of the European environment. This recommendation informed the
Community’s decision to establish the EEA,909 which I will discuss further in the next
chapter.
Throughout winter 1990, SSC internally discussed the options for shifting the
business from producing data scenes toward building databases for environmental
purposes.910 Lübeck believed that the ongoing difficulties in achieving Project Krylbo’s
multistation warranted considering new uses for remote sensing.911 In January 1991,
the leadership of SSC and SNSB reached a new consensus for Swedish space activities.
Notably, the disintegration of the Soviet Union entailed that previous rationales for
the military importance of space technology diminished in importance, while the
906 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF. Notiser från kontakter med ESA/EPO, Telespazio och Norsk Romsenter,” 19 September 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 907 cf. Claire Waterton and Brian Wynne, “Knowledge and political order in the European Environment Agency,” in States of Knowledge. The co-production of science and social order, ed. Sheila Jasanoff (London & New York: Routledge, 2004), 87–108. 908 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF. Notiser från kontakter med ESA/EPO, Telespazio och Norsk Romsenter,” 19 September 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 909 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Bilaga 1. FUX100 – Utvecklingsprojekt för konsolidering av satellitdata-produktionen i Kiruna – arbetsplan 1990/91,” 9 October 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 910 Similarly to how Zenker gained insights on environmental uses of a multistation by speaking to American colleagues, several of the ideas on using databases for monitoring environmental change came from US articles, see Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF. Artikel om ‘The EOS Data and Information System’,” 9 October 1990, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 911 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Kallelse: ‘Framtidsdiskussion’ den 22 januari,” 17 January 1991, Stefan Zenker Private Collection.
European Community increased the emphasis on monitoring the new European
ground. SSC and SNSB agreed to formulate a new political vision for remote sensing
that could once again increase funding from the Swedish state. At the same time, they
were concerned that an environmental rationale for remote sensing risked backfiring
in the sense that people might wish to use but not pay for environmental monitoring.912
Instead of a multistation, SSC explored ways of setting up an infrastructure
for environmental databases,913 or what in the US was increasingly referred to as an
‘Earth observation system’. For a similar purpose, the European Community had
appointed ESA’s former Director General Roy Gibson to oversee that receiving
stations were reformed into processing and archiving facilities that made their satellite
data more available to the nascent EEA. The European Community had also adopted
rules allowing non-members, like Sweden, to participate in environmental projects.914
Borg paraphrased a quote that he felt resonated with the green spirit of SSC’s new
plan, “Do not hesitate to do the right thing, even when you profit from it”.915 EEA’s
plans to monitor Europe’s environment presented SSC with a new source of funding
and also appealed to those in the Swedish Government eager to integrate Sweden
more closely with the European Community.
Project Krylbo had taught SSC that in order to avoid provoking counter-
proposals, support and funding had to be secured nationally before seeking European
partners, like ESA, EEA, or the European Community. For this reason, SSC
elaborated plans to convince several Swedish ministries that Swedish satellite remote
sensing could offer a unique role for Sweden in the new European political landscape,
namely as a provider of knowledge about Europe’s environment. Once the Swedish
912 Original in Swedish: “Miljö och Global Change eventuellt en ny marknad, men med risk för rekyl”. See Stefan Zenker/SSC, “IAA. ‘Framtidsdiskussion’ den 22 januari. Edsbacka krog,” 3. 5 February 1991, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 913 Stefan Zenker/SSC, “IFU4. Beträffande upphandling av SPOT-4 CAP till Satellitbild,” 28 March 1991, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. See also Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FUN. Underlag för Krylbo-diskussion.” 914 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “En Puff (PAF) för Sverige: Vår nya vision?” 1–4, 27 August 1991, SSC Miljö PAF, SSC MDC, SSC-S. 915 Original in Swedish: “Tveka inte att göra det rätta, även om du tjänar på det”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “En Puff (PAF) för Sverige: Vår nya vision?” 8. This was a paraphrased quote from former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s when he in 1954 advised the Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander that “A statesman should not hesitate to do what is right, even if it benefits his own party”. See Email correspondence with Stefan Zenker, 10 December 2918. See also Dick Harrison, Jag har ingen vilja till makt: biografi över Tage Erlander [I have no will to power: a biography on Tage Erlander] (Stockholm: Ordfront Förlag, 2017), 428.
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Government believed in Earth observation as a tool for Sweden’s political agenda,
SSC could proceed with a proposal to EEA.916
By 1991, SSC’s plan for securing remote sensing activities had turned from
asserting Esrange as a passage point for many of the world’s satellite programmes
toward establishing Kiruna as a centre for Europe’s environmental monitoring. In the
process, they had contributed to reformulating remote sensing as constituting but one
technology in a larger Earth observation system. SSC’s infrastructure had begun to
change its emphasis from storing data, scene by scene, to providing users with access
to a database. This database contained sets of data that each depicted a surface – the
surface of Europe – and layers of datasets visualised changes on the surface.917 These
plans illustrated, in turn, how SSC at the end of the Cold War sought to adapt and
secure a role for Swedish satellite remote sensing in the new Europe. As I will describe
in the next section, SSC’s remote sensing activities in the Baltic states took place at a
time when political power, and knowledge about the territory, was being renegotiated.
Environmental Concerns in the Baltic Region, 1988–1991
From its origin in ninth century Latin, ‘Baltic’ referred to descriptions by inhabitants
that the sea stretched like a belt, from north to south. By the eighteenth century,
‘Baltic’ was also associated with trade relations, political enterprises, and linguistic or
cultural affinities among the peoples living along its shores.918
Struggles of domination increasingly played a role in demarcating the Baltic,
for example as a boundary region between Russia and Europe.919 During the late
nineteenth century, German-speaking minorities in Estonia, Livland, and Courland
916 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “En Puff (PAF) för Sverige: Vår nya vision?” 15–18. 917 I will return to describe these changes in the next chapter. 918 The numerous names by modern-day inhabitants also reflect different perspectives on the sea: Danes, Swedes, Finns, and Germans call it the Eastern Sea (Østersøen, Östersjön, Itämeri, and Ostsee respectively). Estonians call it the Western Sea (Läänemeri). Russians, Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians use a translation of the Latin Mare Balticum (More baltijskoe and Morze bałtyckie). Cf. B. Turner, “The Construction of Spatial Regional Identities: The Case of the Baltic in a Global Context,” Asia Europe Journal 8 (2010): 317–26. For an extensive summary of literature on the origins to the term “Baltic”, see Michael North, The Baltic. A History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), 2–6. 919 It should be noted that Russia’s role in Europe has shifted throughout history with importance for how historians have described political, economic, and cultural relationships. For more on Russia as constituting a part of Europe, see, Viatcheslav Morozov, “The Baltic States in Russian Foreign Policy Discourse: Can Russia Become a Baltic Country?” in Post-Cold War Identity Politics. Northern and Baltic Experiences, ed. Marko Lehti and David J. Smith (London & Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005), 217–20.
distinguished these regions as ‘Baltic’ in part to oppose Russification policies.920 After
the First World War, this cultural demarcation became the basis for claims of
independence in the three states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. During the Second
World War, these Baltic states shared tragedies of occupation under the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany.921 I will here use ‘Baltic states’ as a short-hand for Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania, although as this historical summary suggests the term could be more
inclusive, or less, than this.
Since the mid-twentieth century, the Soviet Union had referred to the Baltic
Sea as the ‘Sea of Peace’. Sweden initially challenged this epithet,922 but transnational
interactions in the region would be confined by vigilance from both the West and the
East, thereby mutually ensuring the sea’s peacefulness.923 The first major change came
with the Helsinki Convention in 1974, when all states bordering the Baltic Sea agreed
to counter environmental pollution by limiting the discharge of industrial pollutants
into the sea. 924 As demonstrated in Chapter 2, SSC could build on these formal
agreements to motivate transnational, technoscientific, projects for the sensing of the
Baltic Sea. By the mid-1980s, Western political commentators still believed the Sea of
Peace would remain a borderland in the larger Cold War.925 This prevented Baltic
collaborations from causing any major ripples across its politically still waters.
However, in 1986, Sweden and the Soviet Union began attempts to improve
relations. After state visits to both countries, they signed agreements on how to
regulate the economic zones passing through the Baltic Sea.926 Telecommunications
920 Nordisk Familjebok, Andra upplagan. Supplement. 1922, KB. 921 Lars Peter Fredén, Förvandlingar. Baltikums frigörelser och svensk diplomati 1989–1991 [Transformations: The Baltics’ emancipations and Swedish diplomacy 1989–1991] (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2004), 131–34. 922 Chester Bowles/Dept. of State, “Statement of Sweden’s position on international questions,” 25 March 1961, Box 161, National Security Files, Papers of President Kennedy, JFK-PL. 923 See Jörg Hackman, “Past Politics in North-Eastern Europe: The Role of History in Post-Cold War Identity Politics,” in Post-Cold War Identity Politics. Northern and Baltic Experiences, ed. Marko Lehti and David J. Smith (London & Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, 2005), 82. 924 Tuomas Räsänen and Simo Laakkonen, “Cold War and the Environment: The Role of Finland in International Environmental Politics in the Baltic Sea Region,” Ambio 36, no. 2/3 (Apr., 2007): 229–36. See also Thomas Lundén and Torbjörn Nilsson, eds. Sverige och Baltikums frigörelse. Tvåvittnesseminarier om storpolitik kring Östersjön 1989–1994 (Huddinge: Centre for Baltic and East EuropeanStudies, 2008).925 Küllo Arjakas, “Reflections on the Late 1980s and Early 1990s: An Opinion,” in Estonia. Identity andIndependence, ed. Jean-Jacques Subrenat (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 246–49; Ann-Sofie Dahl, “Securityin the Nordic–Baltic region. From Cold War to a unipolar world,” in Northern Security and Global Politics.Nordic-Baltic strategic influence in a post-unipolar world, ed. Ann-Sofie Dahl and Pauli Järvenpää (London &New York: Routledge, 2014), 67–71. On Soviet concerns about the Baltic Sea as possible escape routeto the West, see for example Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War, second edition (London:Verso Editions & NLB, 1986), 65.926 Bo Petersson, Sovjetunionen och neutraliteten i Europa (Sto2ckholm: Utrikespolitiska institutet, MHPublishing, 1989).
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and computers were also areas of early collaboration between Sweden and the Soviet
Union. Soviet planning had long considered the Baltic states as its “Little West” in
terms of having potential for high-tech industry,927 but it was not until the late 1980s
that industries expanded, partly as a result of greater autonomy and funding from
foreign joint ventures in the three Baltic states.928
In 1988, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs noted a rise in nationalist
movements in the Baltic states. The Swedish Government began speculating what this
meant for Soviet rule in the Baltic region as a whole and instructed its aid agency BITS
to plan projects to increase Swedish activities there.929 Since previous studies on
Swedish aid to the Baltic focused on other aspects than satellite remote sensing, I will
provide additional background on this technology to situate SSC’s activities in the
region.930
In October 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prime Minister
Ingvar Carlsson argued that geopolitical changes within the Soviet Union meant that
Sweden should increase its contact with the Baltic states. Sweden would at the same
time initiate a dialogue with the European Community for the purpose of increasing
Swedish participation in the European markets.931 It was not until autumn 1990 that
Carlsson declared Sweden’s support for independence of the Baltic republics. The
Swedish Government, he argued, should be an active partner in redrawing the political
map of Europe – most notably with respect to the Baltic region.932
927 See Eglë Rindzeviciūtë, “Internal transfer of cybernetics and informality in theSoviet Union: The case of Lithuania,” in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed. Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy (London & New York: Routledge, 2011), 121. 928 Per Högselius, The Dynamics of Innovation in Eastern Europe. Lessons from Estonia (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005), 79, 87–89. See also M. Bell, “Technology Transfer to Transition Countries: Are there lessons from the experience of the post-war industrializing countries?,” in The Technology of Transition. Science and Technology Policies for Transition Countries, ed. D. Dyker (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997), 63–93. For more on literature about contacts between peoples in the Baltic region during the Cold War period, see Lars Fredrik Stöcker, “Cracks in the ‘Iron Curtain’,” Baltic Worlds (May 2015): 75–85. 929 UD, “Material om de baltiska staterna,” Serie C1:2.C1, Volym 1110: (1988). Serial number: 175. Dossier: HP 12 CÖ. Date: 1988-04-21, UD, RA; UD, “Baltic conference in Stockholm, June 1989,” Volym C1:1118 (1989). Serial number: 506. Dossier: IN 18 AB. Date: November 1989, UD, RA. 930 For previous analysis of environmental monitoring in the Baltic region, see Björn Hassler, Science and Politics of Foreign Aid Swedish Environmental Support to the Baltic States (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 2003), 92–94, 145–46. 931 Swedish Government, “3§ Regeringsförklaring, 1989, Statsminister Ingvar Carlsson,” 3 October 1989; cf. Swedish Government, “Prot. 1988/89:2 Regeringsförklaring. 3§ Anf 4,” Statsminister Ingvar Carlsson,” 4 October 1988. 932 Swedish Government, “Ingvar Carlsson: Regeringsförklaringen,” 2 October 1990.
As stated above, Swedish collaboration across the Baltic region had been
limited and often strongly linked to environmental initiatives. For example, the annual
studies of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket,
hereafter the Swedish EPA), published since 1980, did not focus on the Baltic Sea
until 1988, and then only in relation to waters within the Swedish economic zone.933
The interest of the Swedish government in the Baltic countries increased after the Fall
of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. According to the Swedish Ministry of
Environment, the perestroika programme and the rise of nationalist movements in
various Soviet republics made it both possible and necessary to work on pollution
given that it affected “the peoples of Eastern Europe”. By alleviating pollution in the
Baltic Sea, these environmental efforts would have positive effects for Sweden as
well.934
The emphasis of these Baltic environmental projects differed from those of
the past. While Nordic and Baltic governmental commitments in the 1970s had been
to decrease pollution within one’s own territory, the environmental collaborations of
the early 1990s aimed primarily to expand activities between the sovereign territories.935
The Swedish Government often built these projects on pre-existing cultural
exchanges, like the exchange between the Swedish and Estonian towns of Uppsala
and Tartu, which had developed as a municipal initiative to recognise historical ties
across the Baltic but also involved environmental studies. 936 Baltic independence
movements often began as environmental advocacy groups, which were more
acceptable to the Soviet authorities than an outright demand for human rights.937 In
933 Swedish EPA, “Monitor. Östersjön och Västerhavet – livsmiljöer i förändring,” 1988. 934 Original in Swedish: “Ett trevande miljösamarbete har nu inletts mellan öst och väst. Från svensk sida finns ett starkt humanitärt intresse av att förbättra miljön för Östeuropas folk”. See SOU 1990:88 Sveriges internationella miljösamarbete: Nya mål och nya möjligheter, 73; For more on environmental projects with respect to the Baltic Sea’s marine environment during the late 1980s and the early 1990s, see Lundén and Nilsson, eds., Två vittnesseminarier om storpolitik kring Östersjön 1989–1994. 935 Michael North, “The Baltic Sea,” Oceanic Histories, ed. David Armitage, Alison Bashford and Sujiv Sivasundaram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 209–14. It should be noted that these policies stimulated collaborations between the East and the West also in the Arctic, often with reference to environmental aims. See Miyase Christensen, Annika E. Nilsson, Nina Wormbs, “Globalization, Climate Change and the Media: An Introduction,” in Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 14–17. 936 SOU 1990:88, 78. For examples of other cultural exchange programmes between Baltic cities, see Högselius (2007), 290; David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen, The Baltic and the North seas (London: Routledge, 2000); North (2015), 8. 937 Ecology- and peace movements may have opposed the Soviet Union but they often arose within the old regime. See Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 228–29; Cf. Per Högselius, Östersjövägar [Baltic Sea Routes] (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2007), 105–7; Roumald Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States. The Years of Dependence 1940–1990 (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 258, 304–7.
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brief, by the early 1990s many actors operated in the Baltic region under the banner
of environmental concerns.
Soviet and Swedish Initiatives for Sensing in the Baltic Region
SSC’s involvement in the Baltic Sea coincided with several other attempts to make use
of the term sustainable development. Our Common Future already provided various
examples of how technology in general and satellite remote sensing in particular could
serve as a tool for achieving sustainable development. However, its promoters had
very different interpretations of the meaning of the term and was repeatedly disputed
by critics.938 Whereas both the US and the Soviet Union had initially opposed the work
of the Brundtland Commission, they later sought to use its report opportunistically.
For example, the Bush Administration acknowledged Our Common Future as part of
promoting its own environmental initiatives,939 like ISY-92, but refused any debate that
could compromise US military satellite missions. Similarly, the Gorbachev
Administration referred to Our Common Future as inspiring new environmental
initiatives under the perestroika programme but were reluctant to how the Soviet
environmentalists also asserted greater autonomy from the Soviet authorities.940
In winter 1989, the Soviet ministry Glavkosmos hosted the conference Earth
Mission 2000, using the same venue in London where Our Common Future had been
presented (Figure 20).941 Glavkosmos announced plans to use the recommendations
of the Brundtland Report to turn Soviet military reconnaissance satellites into
“ecological satellites” for environmental uses. Glavkosmos cited agreements with SSC
and Sweden, along with other Western countries, as demonstrations of how the Soviet
938 Jon Pareles, “Review/Television: The Pop World Wrestles With ‘Our Common Future’,” The New York Times, 5 June 1989. 939 As demonstrated in the previous chapter, the World Bank had by the late 1980s promoted several of its activities as having environmental aims. President George Bush senior had also laid claim to the term by promoting himself as the “environmental president”, See Smith (1996), 40–41. This was not a new idea on part of the Cold War’s superpowers to rebrand their highest offices if one considers that the General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev during the 1970s labelled himself the “environmental general secretary”. Cited in Weiner (1999), 402. 940 Macekura (2015), 273. 941 Glavkosmos, “Earth Mission 2000 – A Soviet Commercial Blueprint for Planet Management,” Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London, 7 December 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection; “Soviet Union develops its commercial image,” New Scientist, Magazine, no. 1695 (16 December, 1989); “An eye for all nations: USSR unveils international remote sensing system based on Almaz,” Air & Cosmos Monthly (Jan/Feb 1990).
Union’s perestroika had already achieved several collaborations with Europe and the
West that would benefit the environment.942
Figur e 20 . Earth Mission 2000 – A Soviet Commercial Blueprint for Planet Management. Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Westminster, London. 7 December 1989. 943 ©Glavkosmos.
The Soviet Earth Mission 2000 can be understood as a response to the US initiative,
ISY-92. The Soviet conference was not only hosted in the venue used for Our Common
Future, it also spoke the same language and to a similar crowd of journalists.
To this point, SSC had drawn upon inspiration from the US to formulate a
vision of making Kiruna into a centre for environmental data. It also sent staff to
Earth Mission 2000 in the hope of collaborating with Glavkosmos in Soviet
programmes to promote the environmental profile of remote sensing satellites.944 The
question here is how SSC’s participation in international environmental projects, both
with the US and the Soviet Union, influenced how remote sensing technology would
be described and put to use in the Baltic region.
SSC Collaborates First with Soviet and Later with Re-Independent Baltic States
SSC began to seek commercial agreements with the Soviet Union in 1988, which was
around the time that the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs suggested Swedish
942 Original in Swedish: “Glavkosmos-representanten, Yaak Look, [sade] ‘Vi föreslår att ekologiska satelliter/miljöövervakningssatelliter ska etableras i internationell regi’”. See Ulf Karström/Satellitbild, “FME3/13. Soviet-Conference ‘Earth Mission 2000’ in London on 7 Dec 1989,” p. 2, 11 December 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 943 Stefan Zenker Private Collection. 944 Ulf Karström/Satellitbild, “FME3/13. Soviet-Conference ‘Earth Mission 2000’ in London on 7 Dec 1989.”
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involvement in the Baltic region.945 SSC’s agreement with Glavkosmos was part of the
Project Krylbo strategy to make Kiruna into “a remote sensing factory” for all the
world’s remote sensing data.946 SSC had reached out to the Soviets as a means to
emphasise Sweden’s non-aligned status with respect to other great powers, which
made Swedish remote sensing a non-aligned source for monitoring the Earth.947 In
winter 1989, Glavkosmos proposed to expand the Soviet-Swedish collaborations, in
particular as part of working with the Soviet Estonian Aerospace Agency “to put the
right remote-sensing tools in the hands of the people monitoring the Baltic Sea
environment and sea ice”.948
Parallel to SSC’s collaboration with the Soviet Glavkosmos, in autumn 1990,
SSC’s subsidiary Satellitbild began discussions with the Estonian National Land
Board.949 Although formally under Soviet rule, the Land Board had since the late 1980s
used the perestroika programme to conduct linguistic reforms that replaced Russian
names with Estonian ones.950 These linguistic reforms were later used to argue for
establishing new topographic maps of Estonia. Since the Soviet cartographic
administration obstructed access to previous map materials for the Baltic republics,
the Estonian National Land Board turned to foreign organisations for assistance.951
Estonian governmental agencies established informal collaborations with
Western developers of geographical information systems, for example through
personal contact with Jack Dangermond, CEO of the US company Environmental
Systems Research Institute (ESRI). Dangermond bypassed US export embargoes to
donate computers with geographical information software as part of supporting Baltic
945 The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs also supported SSC’s activities by having diplomatic personnel transport samples of satellite data through the ministry’s internal postage between Stockholm and Moscow. See Gunilla Persson/SSC, “Till Per-Olof Sjöstedt, Svenska ambassaden (Moskva). Eventuellt samarbete avseende mottagning av data från ryska fjärranalyssatelliter vid Esrange, Kiruna.” 946 Original in Swedish: “Vårt samarbete med Glavkosmos kommer att ge oss ännu en viktig råvarukälla för vår “fjärranalysfabrik” vid Satellitbild i Kiruna. Vi ser fram mot ett fruktbart affärssamarbete med vår sovjetiske partner”. See SSC, ‘To: Tidningarnas telegrambyrå. Pressmeddelande’,” p. 2, 1 December 1989, Stefan Zenker Private Collection. See also Stefan Zenker/SSC, “AUF-13. Pressrelease. Swedish Space Corporation to receive and sell imagery from Soviet satellites,” 30 November 1989. 947 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-41. Samarbete med Glavkosmos,” 5 December 1989, Borg Private Collection. 948 Original in Swedish: “…vill samarbeta med SSC för att sätta de rätta FA-verktygen i händer på Östersjöns havsis- och miljöövervakningsfolk”. See Ulf Karström/SSC, “FME3/13. Soviet-Conference ‘Earth Mission 2000’ in London on 7 Dec 1989.” 949 Peep Krusberg/Estonian Mapping Center, “Estonian Base Map Project,” 11 January 1995, SB-K. 950 Estonian Orthological Committee, “The Standardization of Geographical Names in Estonia,” 15 May 1992, Project folder Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, SB-K. 951 Peep Krusberg, “Estonian Base Map Project.”
re-independence initiatives. 952 In 1990, the Estonian Government also hosted
exhibitions for the purpose of expanding monitoring collaborations between the
Baltic states and the Nordic states.953 These consistent efforts on the part of the
Estonian Government allowed Western organisations, like Satellitbild, to expand
environmental monitoring in the Baltic region.
By autumn 1991, generally recognised as the time when Estonia attained re-
independence,954 Satellitbild and the Estonian Land Board drafted a plan for a base
map over Estonia. The new governments of Latvia and Lithuania were also interested
in such base maps of their territories.955 As Satellitbild increased its collaborations
with the re-independent Baltic republics, SSC indicated that it had “lain low” with
regards to its Soviet collaborations.956 In the following years, Satellitbild and SSC
continued planning the Baltic base map projects, and by 1993 they had secured
funding from BITS as a form of Swedish development aid.957
The Baltic base map projects, described further in the next chapter, illustrate
the initial importance of establishing collaborations as a means of increasing
environmental monitoring, but in time also contributing to reshaping the geopolitical
boundaries of Europe. SSC’s activities in the Baltic states was part of generating two
very different geopolitical demarcations for the Baltic Sea. From the early 1980s,
Soviet authorities had invited SSC to monitor the Baltics in an attempt to promote
perestroika and, so they hoped, to maintain Soviet rule. By the early 1990s, the new
Baltic governments asked SSC to continue and expand its activities but for the purpose
of asserting re-independence from Soviet, and later Russian, institutions. Controlling
data about the environment was part of controlling the territory at large.
I now return to how SSC at the end of the Cold War sought to formulate a
stronger environmental role for satellite remote sensing. The aim, in particular, was to
gain support from the Swedish Government and, later, from the European
Community.
952 Email correspondence with Peep Krusberg, 8 March – 18 June 2018. 953 Expoconsult, Environmental Protection 90, 25 October 1994, SB-K. 954 Högselius (2005), 80. 955 Peep Krusberg/Estonian Mapping Center, “Estonian Base Map Project.” 956 Original in Swedish: “Slutligen har vi av förklarliga skäl ‘legat lågt’ i våra kontakter med Sovjet/Ryssland”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-54. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen, juni – september 1991,” p. 11, 18 October 1991, SSC-S.957 Peep Krusberg/Estonian Mapping Center, “Estonian Base Map Project.”; Satellitbild, “Uteståendeofferter,” 30 April 1992, SB-K. For more on BITS role in shifting development aid towards EasternEurope and the Baltics, see SOU 1993:1, Styrnings- och samarbetsformer i biståndet, 165–67.
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The Swedish Social Democratic Government had since the late 1980s
increased its commitments to environmental regulations and monitoring.958 However,
public inquiries on environmental monitoring policies for the Baltic Sea primarily
emphasised aerial photography or on-site visits. 959 These inquiries stressed that
sustainable development in the Baltic region should be pursued through monitoring
along the coastline. 960 The Swedish EPA did state that future environmental
management might draw upon satellite surveillance for producing natural resource
inventories but currently preferred aerial photography. The report advised against
beginning any large-scale or long-term monitoring that demanded new training or
advanced technologies.961 Even as the Swedish EPA underwent reforms to include
more remote sensing technology, these would not come from SSC but from
rationalising practices previously organised under SMHI.962 The governmental inquiry
reports suggest a number of remote sensing initiatives with relevance for
environmental projects in the Baltic region but none that prioritised satellite remote
sensing. In order for SSC to expand its satellite remote sensing activities in the Baltic
region, it had to find to find stronger support for its environmental use.
Monitoring of the Baltic Region as a Swedish Contribution to ISY-92
In spring 1990, SSC began planning for the Swedish participation in ISY-92. As
described earlier, SSC had already drafted proposals for ISY-92 that SNSB then
included in a long-term plan for Swedish remote sensing. The specifics of that plan,
however, first had to be elaborated in SNSB’s Remote Sensing Committee.
Since the US Government began endorsing ISY-92, the campaign had also
acquired the character of a celebration marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher
Columbus landing in the Americas. Promotional material described how ISY-92’s
‘Mission to Planet Earth’ was part of a longer history of humanity’s lust for
958 Jonas Anshelm, Socialdemokraterna och miljöfrågan: en studie av framstegstankens paradoxer [The Social Democrats and the question of environment: a study of paradoxes in the idea of progress] (Stockholm: Symposion, 1995), 97–98, 152–57. 959 For example to verify that Swedish farmers provided correct information regarding their use of fertilisers, which by implication contributed to Swedish eutrophication of the Baltic Sea. See SOU 1990:59, Sätt värde på miljön! Miljöavgifter och andra ekonomiska styrmedel, 435, 502. 960 SOU 1991:37, Räkna med miljön! Förslag till natur- och miljöräkenskaper, 60–61. 961 SOU 1991:37, 36, 164–68. 962 SOU 1991:32, Naturvårdsverkets uppgifter och organisation, 37–38, 85–93, 133–36. See also Swedish Ministry of Environment, “Naturvårdsverkets uppgifter och organisation, Dir. 1990:67. Beslut vid regeringssammanträde,” 1 November 1990, in SOU 1991:32.
exploration. Remote sensing satellites had provided the most recent discovery – the
global environment itself. The US planned to use satellite data gathered between 1979
and 1989 to produce maps of global “land cover change”. By accessing the data
through computer files and software programmes, the public would be able to see
global changes in polar ice extent, rates of deforestation, and ocean productivity.963
While American marketing suggested that ISY-92 would be a massive
campaign for satellite remote sensing, SNSB argued that most contributions would be
made by other, new space organisations. If Swedish remote sensing was to be noticed
in this multitude of contributions, SNSB argued, there had to be strong coordination
to present a single face of Swedish efforts. It was this “Swedish face” of remote
sensing that the Committee now had to decide on.964 By spring 1990, the Remote
Sensing Committee had developed three different proposals: measure the extent of
polar ice, study the ozone hole, or monitor the Baltic Sea.965 SSC initially planned to
focus on Swedish forest monitoring but shifted to projects focusing on the Baltics
since the Swedish EPA offered to co-finance such projects.966
As the Remote Sensing Committee developed proposals for ISY-92, Sweden
underwent economic hardships.967 By spring 1991, the Swedish Government
informed SNSB and other agencies that state expenditures had to decrease, which
constrained Swedish participation in ISY-92. 968 The Remote Sensing Committee
discarded monitoring of polar ice and ozone holes since these would require
additional funding. 969 Eventually, sensing in the Baltic Sea region would be
Sweden’s main contribution to ISY-92.970
963 See FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/1. Bilaga 1. ISY (SEPT.89). ISY Activities under the theme ‘Mission to Planet Earth’,” p. 3, 12 February 1990, FAK, SNSB, RA. See also Daniel Goldin, “Celebrating the Spirit of Columbus,” in America at 500: Pioneering the Space Frontier (US National Forum, summer 1992), 8–9. 964 Original in Swedish: “Nationell koordination - Svenskt ansikte”. See FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/1. Bilaga 1. ISY (SEPT.89). ISY Activities under the theme ‘Mission to Planet Earth’,” 10. 965 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/1.” 966 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/2,” 6 April 1990, FAK, SNSB, RA; FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/1. Bilaga 1. ISY (SEPT.89). ISY Activities under the theme ‘Mission to Planet Earth’,” 8–10, 12 February 1990,FAK, SNSB, RA; For more on SSC’s forest monitoring applications, see FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/2.Bilaga 4. FUX400 Kartrevidering,” SNSB, 6 April 1990; FAK, “Protokoll FAK 90/3,” 15 August 1990,FAK, SNSB, RA.967 SOU 1993:16, Nya villkor för ekonomi och politik, See also Assar Lindbeck, Per Molander, TorstenPersson, Olof Petersson, Agnar Sandmo, Birgitta Swedenborg and Niels Thygesen, Turning SwedenAround (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 1–18.968 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 91/1,” 12 February 1991, FAK, SNSB, RA.969 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 91/3,” 10 June 1991, FAK, SNSB, RA.970 Kerstin Fredga, “Introduction”, Remote Sensing, no. 21, SSC, 1 June (1991): 2. See also SNSB, Petita1992/93. 22 August (1991), 3, FAK, SNSB, RA.
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The Remote Sensing Committee’s choice of a Swedish contribution to ISY-92
is important since the Committee followed SSC’s strategic preference for optical
satellite data, like that gathered by SPOT, rather than radar data. In 1991, there was
considerable Swedish research interest in radar data, along with infrastructure for
receiving such data at the Salmijärvi station and plans by ESA for subsequent radar
satellites following the planned launch of ERS-1. 971 Instead, the Remote Sensing
Committee’s recommendations and the Swedish contribution to ISY-92 continued the
preference for optical data in Swedish satellite remote sensing for several years to
come.
The choice of SSC’s activities as Sweden’s contribution to ISY-92 illustrates
how the close relationship between SSC and SNSB significantly influenced the policies
of the Remote Sensing Committee. The international campaign also served to
consolidate national support for SSC’s strategic planning, as in the case of Project
Krylbo, which the Committee continued to finance despite a decrease in governmental
funding for space activities during this period.972 By autumn 1991, the Remote Sensing
Committee formally endorsed SSC’s activities in the Baltic region as Sweden’s
contribution for the upcoming ISY-92. The question was how this contribution could
become a political priority for the government to motivate substantially increased
funding at a time when overall state expenditures were supposed to decrease.
The Swedish Environmental Agenda and the Rio Conference, 1990–
1992
Since the publication of Our Common Future, the Swedish Government had promoted
the report in an attempt to host a second UN conference on the environment. Part
of the delay in announcing such a conference was due to resistance by G77, which
claimed that the report avoided discussing inequalities between “the global North”
and “the global South”.973
Swedish Social Democratic Governments had since the late 1960s been
instrumental in establishing environmental diplomacy in the UN apparatus, marked
971 Gärdebo, ed., Svenska bidrag till europeisk radarfjärranalys. Transkript av ett vittnesseminarium hos Kungliga tekniska högskolan i Stockholm den 13 november 2017. See also Askne (2018). 972 FAK, “Protokoll FAK 91/2,” 15 April 1991, FAK, SNSB, RA. 973 For an elaboration on these terms as part of UN debates, see Engfeldt (2009), 114–22.
by hosting the Stockholm Conference in 1972, which had resulted in numerous
international regulations.974 After losing governmental power in 1976, and regaining it
in 1982, the Swedish Social Democrats set about making their party “a trusted and
respected partner to the environmental movement”.975 In particular, the Ministry of
Environment and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs were involved in establishing
informal international networks of policy-makers that could push for environmental
reforms in the UN,976 while also seeking to once again host a conference in Stockholm,
twenty years after the first one. 977 After demands from G77 for a venue in the
developing world, and due to insufficient Swedish funding, the UN decided to hold
the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992
(hereafter the Rio Conference).978
What role did satellite remote sensing play in the Swedish Government’s
agenda for the Rio Conference? As mentioned earlier, the Social Democratic
Government had decreased funding of Swedish space activities in the second half of
the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the Swedish Government had not committed to
participating in the next generation of European remote sensing satellites that ESA
and national space agencies were preparing for.979
The US and the Soviet Union had both proposed satellite remote sensing as a
means of achieving sustainable development. However, so far, Swedish space activities
had not influenced the Social Democratic Government’s priorities regarding
environmental monitoring. By contrast, the Parliament’s Liberal Conservative
opposition repeatedly demanded more ambitious Swedish participation in ESA’s
remote sensing activities. Only through new satellites, they argued, could Sweden
974 Macekura (2015), 91–133. See also Sabine Höhler, Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age, 1960–1990 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015); Eardley-Pryor (2014). 975 Original in Swedish: “När jag blev minister [1982] så sa Olof Palme, ‘glöm inte att se till att vårt parti är en pålitlig och respekterad partner till miljörörelsen’. Det var uppdraget jag fick”. See Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015. See also Anshelm (1995), 93–96. 976 Interview with Bo Kjellén, 20 November 2015; Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt ,1 February 2016. 977 Jan Eliason (Thomas Palme)/UD, “PM – Ny FN-konferens om miljön 20 år efter Stockholm’,” 30 January 1987, F 1AG2:123, Vol. 6, FN/Miljö, SIDA Centralarkivet, RA. 978 “första planerna på en andra miljökonferens, dvs Rio 1992”. In Email correspondence with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 7 November 2017, kl. 18:15; cf. Engfeldt (2009), 114; Macekura (2015), 265–68. 979 The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) has also been referred to as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Conference, the Rio Summit, and the Earth Summit. I use the term “Rio Conference” that most closely corresponded to the term used by the Swedish interviewees. See Swedish Ministry of Industry, “Instruktion för den svenska delegationen till ESA:s ministerkonferens i Haag. Dnr 225/87. Bilaga till regeringsbeslut nr 6,” 5 November 1987, SNSB, RA.
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safeguard Esrange as northern Europe’s space centre,980 promote Swedish industry
internationally,981 and involve Europe in the US ‘Mission to Planet Earth’,982 which was
the theme for ISY-92.
The Liberal Conservative opposition used arguments already elaborated by
SSC and SNSB regarding the environmental benefits of satellite remote sensing. For
example, the opposition argued that Satellitbild and Space House in Kiruna should be
granted more regional funding since satellite remote sensing had proven useful as an
instrument “in the monitoring of the global environment”.983 The opposition also
described infrastructural investments by Norway as a threat to Sweden’s role in
European remote sensing activities.984 These arguments found political support among
Social Democrats from northern Sweden who wished to see more governmental
funding to remote sensing as part of strengthening Kiruna’s role as Sweden’s space
town and defending Sweden’s position as northern Europe’s space power.985
Prior to the Swedish election of 1991, political priorities regarding Swedish
space activities also illustrated different visions regarding Swedish environmental
diplomacy. The Liberal Conservative opposition described technology as a solution to
environmental problems, claiming that with systems for monitoring and knowing the
environment came the possibility to care for the environment. 986 Subsequently,
Swedish environmental commitments, like that in the Baltic region, should seek to
980 Alf Wennerfors m.fl. (m), “Motion 1987/88:A41,” med anledning av prop. 1987/88:86 om särskilda regionalpolitiska insatser i Norrbottens län m. m., p. 16, 11 April 1988; Sonja Rembo och Erik Holmkvist (m), “Motion 1987/88:N315,” om svenskt deltagande i europeiskt rymdsamarbete, p. 10, 25 January 1988. 981 Gunnar m.fl. (c, m, fp), “Motion 1987/88:N259,” om svensk rymdpolitik, 25 januari 1988. 982 NU Betänkande, “1987/88:38,” om om särskilda regionalpolitiska insatser i Norrbottens län (prop. 1987/88:86), p. 6, 20 May 1988; Elver Jonsson m.fl. (fp), “Motion 1987/88:A40,” med anledning av prop. 1987/88:86 om särskilda regionalpolitiska insatser i Norrbottens län m. m., 11 April 1988. 983 Original in Swedish: “[D]e polära plattformarna är effektiva instrument i övervakningen av den globala miljön”. See NU Betänkande, “1988/89:NU22,” Vissa anslag inom industridepartementets område, p. 31, 19 January 1989. See also Per-Ola Eriksson (c), “Motion 1987/88:N260,” om rymdpolitikenslångsiktiga inverkan på Esrange, 25 January 1988; Per Westerberg m.fl. (m), “Motion 1988/89:N298,”Näringspolitiken, 23 January 1989.984 Jan-Erik Wikström m.fl (fp, m, c), “Motion 1988/89:N226,” Det europeiska rymdsamarbetet, 20 January1989.985 Åke Selberg m.fl. (s), “Motion 1988/89:N344,” Den svenska rymdpolitiken, 25 januari 1989. TheSwedish Social Democratic Government did increase its funding to ESA’s remote sensing activities,albeit at far lower levels than those proposed by the Liberal Conservative opposition. SeeRegeringsbeslutet den 21 juni 1989 (2103/87, 575/89), cited in the Swedish Ministry of Commerce“Bilaga till Protokoll vid regeringssammanträde. Instruktion för den svenska delegationen till ESAsministerkonferens i München den 18–20 november 1991,” 14 November 1991, E3B:1, SNSB, RA. cf.Per Westerberg m.fl. (m), “Motion 1989/90:N34,” med anledning av prop. 1989/90:90 om forskning, 19March 1990; NU Betänkanden, “1989/90:NU40,” Forskning, p. 50, in Riksdagens protokoll,“1989/90:134,” 6 June 1990.986 cf. Medborgarskolan, ”Framtidens idéer – om utvecklingen och miljöhänsynen. Bättre medmoderaterna!” 1 June 1989, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection.
include and increase the use of satellite remote sensing.987 As described earlier, the
ruling Swedish Social Democratic Government prioritised solving environmental
problems through regulations. 988 In preparation for the Rio Conference and the
election, Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and Minister of Environment Birgitta Dahl
acknowledged that technology had a role to play “in restoring the Baltic Sea’s
ecological balance” but did not specify how this related to sensing or monitoring of
the region.989
These differences became clearer after the Liberal Conservatives won the
Swedish election on 15 September 1991. They formed a coalition Government with
Carl Bildt as the new prime minister. Bildt thereafter pledged to support the re-
independent Baltic states in achieving sustainable development, and to apply for
Swedish membership in the European Community. These were also the priorities that
he would pursue at the Rio Conference.990 I now turn to the efforts by SSC and SNSB
to influence the new Government.
Change of Government – Change of Support
The governmental shift from Social Democrats to Liberal Conservatives changed
SSC’s prospects for promoting environmental monitoring and management by satellite
remote sensing. Earlier in 1991, SSC had secured a contract from ESA, related to
CORINE, to define how a future environmental data network should be built to
ensure that data from all Earth observation satellites would be received, archived,
processed, and made accessible to researchers and other users within Europe.991 With
987 Jens Eriksson m.fl. (m), “Motion 1989/90:N33,” med anledning av prop. 1989/90:90 om forskning, 13 March 1990. 988 Jonas Anshelm argue that the Swedish Social Democrats in the early 1990s had begun to consider technology as a solution for environmental problems. This thought had, however, not shifted priorities so as to replace the previous focus on environmental diplomacy and its reliance on international regulation as an environmental remedy. In this fundamental respect the Swedish Social Democrats and the Liberal Conservatives differed. Cf. Anshelm (1995). 989 Original in Swedish: “Regeringscheferna enades om målet att återställa Östersjöns ekologiska balans”. See SOU 1991:55, Sveriges nationalrapport till UNCED 1992. FNs konferens om miljö och utveckling, 49. The Green Party argued for dismantling Swedish participation in European space activitiesaltogether. See Inger Schörling m.fl. (mp), “Motion 1990/91:N317,” Anslag inom industridepartementetsområde, 24 January 1991; NU Betänkande, “1990/91:NU24,” Vissa anslag inom industridepartementetsområde, 12 February 1991.990 Swedish Government, “Regeringsförklaringen 1991. Statsminister Carl Bildt,” 4 October 1991.991 The contract, named Global Environmental Network Information and User System (GENIUS),involved an industry consortium with companies from Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK.GENIUS was part of efforts to build a ground segment for an increased amount of remote sensingsatellites intended for environmental use. For SSC, GENIUS was one of the latter efforts to achievethe Krylbo ambition to build a multistation.
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the Liberal Conservatives in power, SSC had hopes to make Kiruna into a centre for
Europe’s environmental data. 992 As part of emphasising these ambitions, Lübeck
stated to the Board of SSC that remote sensing henceforth would be referred to as
‘Earth observation’.993
The Liberal Conservative Government reformed the Ministry of Industry into
the Ministry of Commerce and announced increased expenditures on space activities,
which enabled SNSB to participate in ESA’s new satellite, Polar Orbit Earth
Observation Mission (POEM-1). 994 At ESA’s ministerial conference in Münich,
November 1991, Minister of Commerce Per Westerberg argued that increased
expenditures on satellite remote sensing would be Sweden’s contribution to European
environmental collaboration.995
I am convinced that it is in this area of global earthwatch that our cooperation will
prove the capability of Europe to meet one of the greatest challenges of our times; the
preservation of our home planet. ESA’s Earth observation programme will constitute
a substantial contribution to the monitoring of the environment and to the
identification of the processes which have vital consequences for all life on Earth.996
Minister Westerberg situated the environmental purpose of satellite remote sensing in
a longer list of Swedish activities during the recent years: development aid to
developing nations that led to regulations against deforestation, plans for an
environmental facility in Kiruna as a continuation of CORINE, and monitoring of
the Baltic region as Sweden’s contribution to ISY-92. “In the context of the coming
UN-conference on Environment and Development”, Westerberg argued, these
Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-53. Lägesrapport för fjärranalysdivisionen. Mars–Maj 1991,” SSC, 3 June 1991, SSC-S. 992 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-55. Affärsutveckling inom fjärranalysområdet,” p. 4, and 8–9, 22 October 1991, SSC-S. 993 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde 1991-10-28. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 21 October 1991, SSC-S. 994 Swedish Ministry of Commerce, “Utdrag Protokoll vid regeringssammanträde 2282/91. Instruktion för den svenska delegationen till det europeiska rymdorganets rådsmöte på ministernivå,”; “Bilaga till Protokoll vid regeringssammanträde. Instruktion för den svenska delegationen till ESAs ministerkonferens i München den 18–20 november 1991,” E3B:1, SNSB, RA. 995 SNSB, “Fjärde mötet med ESA:s råd på ministernivå 18–20 november 1991 i München, ESA-rapport. Beslut 91/117,” 21 November 1991, SNSB, RA. 996 SNSB, “Bilaga 3. Statement by the Swedish Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mr Per Westerberg, ESA-rapport. Beslut 91/117,” 21 November 1991, in SSC “IAY-30. Förslag till dagordning vid styrelsesammanträde nr 92 i Svenska rymdaktiebolaget den 9 december 1991, 2 December 1991, SSC Board, SSC-S.
activities demonstrated the potential of Swedish and European Earth observation for
the sustainable development of the environment.997
The Liberal Conservative Government’s statements strengthened SSC's and
SNSB’s shared vision of tying together numerous remote sensing activities. That
remote sensing more and more frequently was referred to as ‘Earth observation’ is
indicative of this reconceptualisation of the technology toward being an
environmentally oriented activity. With governmental support, SSC also shifted its
visionary horizon from preparing for ISY-92 toward influencing the Swedish
environmental agenda for the Rio Conference.
Despite these successes, Lübeck described to the SSC board how the
ministerial meeting indicated that a new, less certain era in space activities had begun.
Several ministers had asked for more synergies between ESA and other European
organisations to co-finance satellites. In addition, not only SSC but also most other
space organisations had noted a decreased interest for space technology in recent
years. For these reasons, he argued, SSC had to prove its usefulness to new users, most
likely on a European level. These efforts had to start by making 1992 into an
international space year indeed.998
ISY-92 demonstrated satellite remote sensing capacity from over 30 countries
and was displayed in venues all over the world. SSC and SNSB exhibited Sweden’s
contribution in Germany, Brazil, Mongolia, Japan, the US as well as in several Swedish
cities.999 Although often speaking to an international audience, SSC’s aim was primarily
to assert a national mandate over satellite remote sensing – to demonstrate to the
Swedish Government how the technology served as a tool for environmental
management. This was crucial if SSC hoped to secure funding to turn Kiruna into a
centre for environmental data.
997 See SNSB, “Bilaga 3. Statement by the Swedish Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mr Per Westerberg, ESA-rapport. Beslut 91/117.” 998 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde 1991-12-09. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 2 December 1991, SSC-S. 999 SNSB, “The Swedish ISY Contribution, By SSC, IVL, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Lund, and SNSB,” 1 December 1991; Åke Rosenqvist and Henrik Österlund/SSC, “The Swedish ISY Contribution,” in Asian-Pacific ISY Conference. Vol II, 1 November 1992, SNSA Archive, Solna.
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The Prime Minister’s Office Prepares for the Rio Conference
The Swedish Rio-delegation was led by a secretariat of diplomats experienced in
environmental diplomacy since hosting the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Several of
the members had known the late Prime Minister Palme personally.1000 During the past
years, the Swedish delegation’s secretariat had met with other delegations at the UN
Headquarters in New York to draft texts to be ratified at the Rio Conference as
international agreements for how to achieve sustainable development.1001 The Prime
Minister’s Office (Statsrådsberedningen) considered the preparations made by the
Swedish Rio delegation to be “tailored according to the previous Government’s
design”.1002 With only one preparatory meeting left before the Rio Conference, the
Prime Minister’s Office had to work swiftly in order to re-shape the Swedish agenda
for the Rio Conference.1003
Prime Minister Bildt aimed to reorient Swedish environmental diplomacy
toward favouring technological solutions to environmental problems, like satellite
remote sensing, instead of regulatory ones.1004 For this reason, Bildt had taken a
personal interest earlier that spring in Swedish space activities that could be promoted
as solutions to environmental problems.1005
The Prime Minister’s Office wove the Swedish space activities into an overall
argument that the end of the Cold War should mark a new consensus regarding
environmental problems. Poverty was what forced people to destroy their
environment, and only through economic growth could poverty be ended. Swedish
environmental diplomacy should promote free trade, democracy, as well as
1000 Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015; Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, 1 February 2016; Interview with Bo Kjellén, 20 November 2015. 1001 UD, ”Bilaga 10. Svensk nationalkommitté,” in Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992, Aktstycken utgivna av utrikesdepartementet, Ny series II: 47 (Stockholm: 1 September 1992). 1002 Original in Swedish: “…den befintliga [delegationen] kan nog betecknas som skräddarsydd enligt den tidigare regeringens ritningar….Många tjänstemän har dessutom mycket lång erfarenhet, flera deltog aktivt i arbetet med Stockholmskonferensen 1972”. See Ingela Blomberg/Statsrådsberedningen, “United Nations Conferences om Environment and Development. Rapport från fjärde förberedande kommitténs sammanträde i New York,” 1 April 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection. 1003 Interview with Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg], 18 April 2018. 1004 In chapter II, I described how the north-south dilemma informed the UN debate on satellite remote sensing as a means to divide the world into sensing and sensed states, which in turn informed subsequent regulatory debates about how to use the technology. 1005 Swedish Ministry of Commerce, “Vem gör vad?” 17 February 1992; Swedish Ministry of Commerce, “Fjärranalysprogrammet POEM-1. Enheten för teknologisk infrastruktur, Lena Falkman. Delas: Carl Bildt,” 13 April 1992, SNSB, RA.
environmental collaborations in regions formerly belonging to the Soviet Union. In
particular, satellite remote sensing should be put to new environmental uses.1006
When the Swedish delegation secretariat expressed reluctance toward
implementing these new instructions, fearing it would antagonise the G77, the Prime
Minister’s Office lost patience and sent staff to directly oversee preparations for the
Rio Conference in New York. Reports back to Prime Minister Bildt described the UN
system as “a sleepy dinosaur, since long outpaced by reality”. Instead of
acknowledging the fall of the Soviet Union, the environmental debate among the
delegates continued to focus on a North–South divide.1007
The Prime Minister’s Office realised the difficulty in pushing new views on
environmental diplomacy through the Swedish delegation and instead planned for
ways of bypassing the UN negotiations. To honour Sweden’s role in hosting the
Stockholm Conference, Brazil had given Sweden some influence in shaping the format
of the Rio Conference. The Prime Minister’s Office chose the format of a final
roundtable discussion, attended by all heads of state from all UN member countries.
This provided Prime Minister Bildt with a platform to stake out Sweden’s new view
on how to achieve sustainable development, irrespective of what the Swedish
delegation negotiated during the conference itself.1008
The Rio Conference was important to the Swedish Liberal Conservative
Government not only because it was a major UN conference, but because it was the
first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that all the leaders of the world met.1009
In the Swedish parliamentary debate prior to the Rio Conference, Minister of
1006 Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Synpunkter på utkast till förhandlingsinstruktion inför UNCED. Till Thomas Palme, Bo Kjellén (fk), Göran Persson (fk), Jonas Hafström (fk) (Version 1),” 11 February 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection; Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Synpunkter på utkast till förhandlingsinstruktion inför UNCED (Version 2),” 28 February 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection. 1007 Original in Swedish: “FN verkar vara som en stor och sömnig dinosarie; som för länge sedan har blivit passerad av verkligheten”. See Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “United Nations Conference om Environment and Development. Rapport från fjärde förberedande kommittén’s sammanträde i New York,” 1 April 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection. 1008 Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Vissa frågeställningar inför UNCED,” Till Carl Bildt, Jonas Hafström, Olof Ehrenkrona, Peter Egardt, Göran Lenmarker, 24 April 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection; Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Praktiska detaljer inför stats- och regeringschefernas deltagande,” Till Carl Bildt, Jonas Hafström (fk), Mona Jennel (fk), 8 May 1992, Ingela Bendrot Private Collection; Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Div ang UNCED,” Till Carl, Jonas (fk), 1992-05-21; Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “UNCED-Konferensen i Rio de Janeiro 3–14 juni 1992,” 27 May 1992, Ingela Bendrot Private Collection. 1009 Original in Swedish: “UNCED är det första jätte-toppmötet efter kommunismens fall. Denna möjlighet får inte rinna oss ur händerna!” In Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Funderingar kring UNCED-utspel,” Till Carl, Jonas Hafström (fk), Olle Ehrenkrona (fk), Göran Thorstensson (fk), 22 May 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection.
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Environment Olof Johansson presented how the government planned to use
technology to achieve sustainable development.1010
The parliamentary debates are important, as were prior preparations for the
Rio Conference, because they emphasised reliance by the Swedish Liberal
Conservative Government on arguments and plans formulated earlier in
correspondence with SSC. Their aims were also similar – to demonstrate
satellite remote sensing as a tool for sustainable development.1011 While Sweden
had long argued for the virtues of being a sensing state, as described in Chapter II,
the Swedish Liberal Conservative Government made use of these arguments to
distance Swedish environmental diplomacy from its previous support for
developing countries, international regulations, and aid, which I will detail next.
Swedish Interpretations of Sustainable Development at the Rio Conference
The Swedish delegation was one of the largest at the Rio Conference. The previous
government had appointed over 50 representatives from all parliamentary parties, the
research community, industry, environmental movement, youth organisations, and
governmental agencies. 1012 In addition, several Social Democrats participated
as members of the Socialist International, various informal environmentalist
networks, as well as at alternative events running parallel to the conference. Several of
these people, both inside and outside of the delegation, kept busy writing press
releases or leaked information to Swedish journalists.1013 These writings illustrated
differing perspectives on Sweden’s role in environmental diplomacy, and I will
here describe how that role in important respects related to the role of satellite
remote sensing.
The speech by King Carl XVI Gustaf Bernadotte of Sweden at the opening of
the Rio Conference on 3 June 1992 struck a balance between old and new ideas
about the environment. The King had alluded to a North–South conflict, and the need
1010 It should be added that some of these ideas were also raised by social democrat and member of parliament Maj Britt Theorin. “Protokoll 1991/92:117. Torsdagen den 21 maj. Kl. 12.00. 4 § Säkerhet och nedrustning,” Swedish Parliament, 21 May 1992. See also “Protokoll 1991/92:119 Måndagen den 25 maj. Kl. 12.00–14.41. Anf. 29 Miljöminister Olof Johansson (c),” Swedish Parliament 25 May 1992; “Protokoll 1991/92:112. Torsdagen den 14 maj, 1991, kl. 12.00,” Swedish Parliament, 14 May 1992. 1011 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Kerstin! Jag har talat med Birgitta Boström,” 26 May 1992, Claes-Göran Borg Private Collection. 1012 UD, “Bilaga. Svensk förhandlingsdelegation till UNCED,” in Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992. 1013 Ingela Blomberg/Prime Minister’s Office, “Lite summarisk info om delegationen vid UNCED,” 1 July 1992; Interview with Birgitta Dahl, 26 May 2015.
to transfer resources, but also emphasised the need to promote economic growth to
bring all peoples out of poverty.1014 Later, the King specified what this meant by
referring to Stephan Schmidheiny’s report drafted to advise the Rio Conference.1015
The report stated that humans should live off the interest on the global environment,
not its capital. To understand the environment’s capital, governments had to support
technologies for monitoring the environment, make inventories of its resources, and
assessments for its management.1016
Swedish media tended to favour descriptions of the Rio Conference in terms
of the interpretation of Swedish environmental diplomacy used since the 1970s,
namely the North–South conflict and the importance of drafting international
regulations.1017 Criticism was particularly harsh toward the US Government and people
like Schmidheiny, who were perceived to be lobbying for less regulation of businesses
and industry and more exploitation of natural resources when really they should be
doing the opposite.1018 The article published by Bildt before he departed for Rio
contrasted sharply with most of what was written about the Rio Conference in
Swedish media at the time. Bildt argued that international environmental diplomacy
had to rally around a new consensus of free trade. As part of this, monitoring
technologies would be crucial to providing the knowledge needed for industry,
societies, and governments to develop sustainably.
1014 UD, “Bilaga. H M Konungens anförande vid konferensens inledning,” in Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992, 126–28. 1015 In particular, Bernadotte referred to Stephan Schmidheiny and the Business Council for Sustainable Development that advised the general secretariat of the Rio Conference regarding business perspectives on sustainable development. See Stephan Schmidheiny/Business Council for Sustainable Development, Changing Course. Executive Summary (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, May 1992). 1016 Kristina Kamp, ”Kungens brandtal,” Aftonbladet, 3 June 1992. 1017 Lars-Ingmar Karlsson, “Urvattnade dokument kritiseras,” Dagens Nyheter, 3 June 1992; Anders Wijkman and Alf Svensson, “Rio verklig chans bryta dödläget Nord-Syd,” Svenska Dagbladet, 3 June 1992. 1018 For different aspects of this critique, see Jan Halldin, “Vändpunkt eller förförande show?” Göteborgs-Posten, 3 June 1992. See also Ewa Thibaud, “USA bromsar för att lugna industrin,” Dagens Nyheter, 4 June 1992; Jan Halldin, “Hopp inför framtiden,” Göteborgs-Posten, 4 June 1992; Lars-Ingmar Karlsson, “Svårt ändra i global plan,” Dagens Nyheter, 4 June 1992; Niklas Ekdal, “Rio de Kaos,” Expressen, ledarsida, 4 June 1992; K. J. Bondeson, “Omstritt skydd för arterna,” Göteborgs-Posten, 5 June 1992; Per Boström, “Vem vinner i Rio?” Göteborgs-Posten, ledarsidan, 6 June 1992; Per-Olov Lindström/TT, “USA och oljestater bromsar avtal i Rio,” Svenska Dagbladet, 6 June 1992; Kurt Mälarstedt and Erika Bjerström, “Brundtland öppet besviken på Bush,” Dagens Nyheter, 6 June 1992; Jan Halldin “Om de rika vinner spelet…” Göteborgs-Posten, 7 June 1992; Lars-Ingmar Karlsson, “Miljökrav tung börda för världens fattiga,” Dagens Nyheter, 7 June 1992; Kristina Kamp, “Bush dränker oss,” Aftonbladet, 11 June 1992.
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Among the most interesting contributions by Sweden to the global environmental effort
is its push for Earth observation satellites, which was initiated during the previous
centre-right Government in the late 1970s, then put to fallow, more or less, under the
Social Democrats, and is now given new strength. It is these environmental satellites
that have made possible many of the breakthroughs for global environmental policy in
recent years. And I am convinced that their importance will increase even more.1019
According to Bildt, Sweden’s environmental activities contributed to systemic change
in the former Soviet Union, to European integration, and to regional benefits in
Kiruna. Sweden’s contribution to global environmental policy relied on Sweden
becoming one of the leading nations for new generations of European environmental
Earth observation satellites as well as for the processing of their data.1020
Swedish media pointed out that Prime Minister Bildt’s argument diverged from
Minister of Environment Johansson’s pledge that Sweden would continue to give aid
to developing countries. Swedish media speculated that the Swedish Liberal
Conservative Government had conflicting environmental policies.1021 Instructions to
the Swedish delegation had also leaked to the press, which used the leak to make clear
how Prime Minister Bildt’s agenda differed from the earlier policy plans for
the conference.1022
1019 Original in Swedish: “Till de intressantaste bidrag som Sverige kommer att kunna ge det globala miljöarbetet hör också den satsning på jordövervakningssatelliter som inleddes under den förra borgerliga regeringsperioden i slutet av 1970-talet, därefter låg något i träda under socialdemokraterna och nu kommer att få ny kraft. Det är dessa miljösatelliter som möjliggjort många av de genombrott som skett i den globala miljöpolitiken under senare år. Och jag är övertygad om att deras betydelse kommer att växa än mer”; Carl Bildt, “‘Risk för misslyckande’,” Dagens Nyheter, 9 June 1992. 1020 Carl Bildt, “‘Risk för misslyckande’,” Dagens Nyheter, 9 June 1992. A handful of editorial- and debate articles, some of them written by ministry staff, supported Prime Minister Bildt, as well as his critique against treating environmental problems as “some form of international class struggle [Miljöproblem kan inte lösas genom en sorts internationell klasskamp]”. See Ledarsida, “Schablonerna i Rio,” Svenska Dagbladet, 7 June 1992; Ledarsida, “Frågorna som saknas i Rio,” Göteborgs-Posten, 3 June 1992; Ledarsidan, “Glömda miljömötet,” Göteborgs-Posten 7 June 1992; Hans Strandberg, “‘Konventionen urvattnad’,” Svenska Dagbladet, 10 June, 1992; Håkan Emsgård, Yvonne Fredriksson and Magnus Huss, “‘Svensk tystnad i Rio’,” Dagens Nyheter, Debatt, 11 June 1992. See also Ingela Blomberg/ Prime Minister’s Office, “Bidrag till Earth Summit Times,” 10 June 1992, Ingela Bendrot [Blomberg] Private Collection]. 1021 It should be added that minister Johansson did endorse Swedish satellite technology as a means for turning the Stockholm Conference’s ambition of “Only One Earth” into reality. See UD, “Bilaga 10. Svensk nationalkommitté,” in Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992,132–33. On additional arguments in favour of satellite observation by members of the Swedishdelegation, see Kristina Kamp, ‘“Miljösoldater ska rädda världen’,” Aftonbladet, 7 June 1992; Lars-Ingmar Karlsson, “‘Tam handlingsplan’,” Dagens Nyheter, 9 June 1992; cf. K. J. Bondeson, “Olof J lovarextra anslag,” Göteborgs-Posten, 9 June 1992; Ledarsidan, “Dubbla svenska miljöbudskapet,” Göteborgs-Posten, 10 June 1992.1022 Hans Strandberg, “Världen samlas för sin framtid,” Svenska Dagbladet, 4 June 1992.
Landing in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the conference, Prime Minister Bildt
planned to primarily participate in the roundtable discussion and hold individual
meetings with a set of other heads of state.1023 To limit opposition from the Swedish
delegation’s secretariat, Bildt refrained from presenting his draft speech until arriving at
the conference.1024 The Prime Minister’s Office had only sent earlier drafts to those
known to support Bildt’s environmental agenda for sensing technologies, like Fredga and
Lübeck,1025 only displaying a final draft to the Swedish delegation as a courtesy.1026
When Bildt spoke to the hundred or so heads of state the following day, he
emphasised the role that Earth observation technology played in
Sweden’s international environmental efforts.
We will make further efforts to develop our expertise and capabilities in the field of
Earth observation satellites. The knowledge gained from observation from space is
crucial to our understanding of the way our ecosystem works. Sweden aims at becoming
one of the world leaders in the field of Earth observation for environmental and related
purposes.1027
Just as the Brundtland Report’s concept of ‘sustainable development’ had done away
with contradictions between economic growth and development, Bildt’s Government
would use ‘Earth observation’ to dispel doubts about the role of technology for
solving environmental problems. The main difference during the period between the
Stockholm Conference and the Rio Conference was, according to Bildt, how Earth
observation technologies allowed insights into global environmental changes. In the
coming years, Sweden would use this technology close to home, in the former Soviet
Union, as part of integrating European knowledge about the environment.1028
The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs remarked that out of a hundred
speeches made by heads of state that day, few paralleled Prime Minister Bildt’s in
1023 Kristina Kamp, “Bildt får sju minuter,” Aftonbladet, 9 June 1992. 1024 This procedure was recorded and recalled primarily because it was customary for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to review international speeches held by representatives of the Swedish Government. See Interview with Ingela Bendrot, 18 April 2018. See also Interview with Lars-Göran Engfeldt, Stockholm, 1 February 2016. 1025 Prime Minister’s Office, “To SNSB. Statement by the Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, June 13, 1992,” 10/11 June 1993, SNSB, Solna. 1026 Lars-Göran Engfeldt/UD, “Dagboksanteckningar för 12 juni, 1992. Författade under semester 20e juni, 1992,” Lars-Göran Engfeldt Private Collection. 1027 UD, “Bilaga. Statsministerns anförande vid toppmötet,” in Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992, 135. 1028 UD (1992), 136.
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advocating for satellite remote sensing. Among the exceptions were the newly formed
Russian Federation, where Vice-President Alexander Rutskoy promised to put military
satellites to environmental use as part of “facing a painful ecological glasnost”.1029
At the Rio Conference, Prime Minister Bildt asserted a new Swedish vision for
environmental diplomacy that relied more on technology to be used globally than on
negotiating regulations internationally. The new vision would rely on openness in
every respect, from freeing markets to freeing geographic information, and as both
knowledge and capital grew, this would allow humans to sustain the environment on
which humans depended. These writings had been formulated by the Prime Minister’s
Office with support from SSC and SNSB, despite great opposition from the Swedish
delegation, a majority of Swedish media, and even members of the Liberal
Conservative Government. Prime Minister Bildt had presented a vision for environing
through technology that departed from how Swedish environmental diplomacy had
promoted UN regulations for the past 20 years, that is, since the Stockholm
Conference, and now focused on Sweden’s role within a new Europe. The next step
would be to turn these writings about Swedish environmental diplomacy via satellite
into practice.
After the Rio Conference – SSC Announces the Environmental Data
Centre in Kiruna, 1992
The outcomes of the Rio Conference for Swedish satellite remote sensing need to be
understood in the context of SSC, since autumn 1991, having expressed a growing
concern about the revenues from this technology. SSC’s leadership had been too busy
planning strategies to pay attention to the well-being of the subsidiary company
Satellitbild, described in the previous chapter. Amidst the manoeuvres of Project
Krylbo, SSC had “dropped one ball” (Figure 21), namely the financial results for the
remote sensing activities.1030 Attempts by SSC and SNSB to find environmental uses
for satellite remote sensing should be understood as part of, and informed by, an
increasingly difficult situation for Satellitbild.
1029 UD, Förenta Nationernas konferens om miljö och utveckling. 3–14 juni 1992, 24. 1030 Original in Swedish: “Det är många bollar i luften just nu och vi jagar frenetiskt för att ingen ska trilla i backen. Ändå tycks vi ha missat en – resultatet för Satellitbild, som blir betydligt sämre än vi budgeterat”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-54. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen Juni-September 1991,” SSC, p. 2, 18 October 1991, SSC Board, SSC-S.
Figur e 21 . Acronyms refer to remote sensing projects, operations, and players. The ball kicker labelled ‘RBS IF’, refers to SSC in Solna, in charge of initiating new projects. Distracted by so many different projects, the players drop the EKON ball , representing Satel l itbild’s f inancial results.1031 Il lustration by Malte Sjöqvist.
Leading up to and following upon the Rio Conference, SSC had raised the interest of
several Swedish governmental branches for an environmental centre in Kiruna. By
spring 1992, these plans had received support from Kiruna Municipality, the
Norrbotten County Board, the Swedish EPA, as well as from the Minister of
Environment Olof Johansson.1032 The board of SSC had also sought ways to influence
the Swedish Government to “promote satellite Earth observation at the Rio
Conference”.1033 As this was successful, SSC received increased support from several
ministries after Rio. Since SSC already participated in numerous European
1031 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-54. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen Juni-September 1991.” 1032 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-58. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” 10 February 1992; Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde, 1992-02-19. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan, 10 February 1992, SSC-S; Satellitbild, “Årsredovisning för Satellitbild i Kiruna AB. Räkenskapsåret 1991,” Kiruna, 22 April 1992, SSC-S. 1033 Original in Swedish: “…miljöövervakning är ett centralt tema för den internationella miljökonferensen i Rio….Rymdbolagets förslag borde föras fram starkt i det sammanhanget”. See SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde no 93 i Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget,” 19 February 1992, SSC Board, SSC-S.
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environmental projects, the Liberal Conservative Government hoped that its plans for
an environmental data centre would further integrate Sweden into the European
Community.1034 When SNSB requested governmental funding for this centre, it could
point to Prime Minister Bildt’s speech at the Rio Conference to argue for more
resources for Swedish space activities so that Sweden could become a world leader in
satellite Earth observation. It was at this point in time, when the Cold War abated,
that Sweden had a chance to draw up new lines for how to use the remote sensing
technology for a new and growing Europe.1035
Later in autumn 1992, the Swedish Government presented a bill explaining
how to implement the recommendations from the Rio Conference for pursuing
sustainable development in the coming years.1036 Apart from promoting democracy,
free trade, and economic growth, Sweden would seek to be part of increasing
environmental knowledge globally through Earth observation satellites, which the
Government considered to be a precondition for sustainable development. In
particular, Sweden would increase its collaborations in and around the Baltic Sea to
formulate the environmental development of the whole region.1037
The Government’s policies referred to Agenda 21, which had been ratified at
the Rio Conference, but did so without acknowledging its premises. Agenda 21
promoted Earth observation, but with the understanding that use of this technology
was part of a technology transfer from haves to have nots, in turn informed by a
North–South dichotomy in UN politics.1038 The Swedish Government’s interpretation
of the Rio Conference was more aligned with views expressed by Prime Minister Bildt
in his speeches, where Swedish satellite remote sensing served as an environmental
bridge builder between the Baltic region and the new Europe.1039
In winter 1992, with the Swedish Government fast at work formulating the
outcomes of the Rio Conference for the Swedish political landscape, SSC made
1034 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Styrelsesammanträde 1992-06-16. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” p. 3, 19 June 1992, SSC-S. 1035 SNSB, Petita 1993/94–1995/96, 27–28, and 58, 24 August 1992, SNSA Archive, Solna. 1036 Swedish Government, “Skr. 1992/93:13,” Regeringens skrivelse med redogörelse med anledning av FN:s konferens om miljö och utveckling år 1992 – UNCED, 8 October 1992. 1037 Swedish Government, “Skr. 1992/93:13,” 7–10. 1038 For this description with regards to satellite technology, see United Nations Conference on Environment & Development Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992, “Chapter 7, Section C, § 7. 33,” Agenda 21. For coordination of monitoring systems, see “Chapter 35, Section B, § 35.12,” and “§ 35.14,” For support to the UN system for transfer, access, and use of technologies in “bridging the data gap”, see “Chapter 40, Section A, § 40.13,” and “§ 40.14.” 1039 Swedish Government, “Skr. 1992/93:13,” 13–16.
several attempts to spread the results of ISY-92 to a wider audience. Together with
SNSB, SSC supported the installation of a planetarium, Cosmonova, at the Swedish
Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. They also helped organise the
planetarium’s first exhibition, Man in Space, and equipped halls with personal computer
screens – a novelty at the time – for visitors to interact with satellite imagery. SSC also
equipped a bus with a mobile exhibition, Eyes from Space, that toured Sweden for years
to come.1040 In January 1993, SSC described 1992 as having been a truly international
space year. This assessment was rounded off with news about the Swedish
Government’s decision to establish, in the coming years, a Swedish centre for
environmental data in Kiruna.1041
Summary
In this chapter I have demonstrated how SSC and SNSB attempted to reorganise
Swedish satellite remote sensing during the end of the Cold War. Under the name
‘Earth observation’, the technology was promoted as a tool for achieving sustainable
development of the Earth’s environment. This outcome was far from certain and
involved a great deal of adaptation on the part of SSC and SNSB to new political
realities, nationally as well as internationally.
Between 1988 and 1992, SSC struggled to maintain the centrality of its remote
sensing infrastructure in Kiruna. As new satellites were launched, SSC first attempted
a strategy of promoting Sweden as a passage point for many of the world’s remote
sensing satellites. Faced with similar ambitions among other European space
organisations, SSC eventually shifted to planning to make Kiruna into a centre for
environmental uses of satellite data.
SSC’s shifting strategies corresponded to initiatives by the US and the Soviet
Union to adapt satellite technology to recommendations in the report Our Common
Future, and in particular its concept of ‘sustainable development’. The US initiated an
education campaign, the International Space Year 1992 (hereafter ISY-92), to preserve
the rationale for the American space programme. The Soviet Union announced Earth
Mission 2000 as an invitation to environmental monitoring projects, for example in
1040 Håkan Hedberg/SSC, “Two Spectacular Opportunities for Space and Remote Sensing during late 1992,” Remote Sensing, no. 23 (January 1993): 27. 1041 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Centre for Environmental Data From Satellites,” Remote Sensing, no. 2. (January 1993): 19–21.
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and around the Baltic Sea, partly to maintain control of the Soviet republics in the
region. SSC would use the American ISY-92 and the Soviet invitations to support the
Baltic region as a place where they could demonstrate Swedish remote sensing
expertise.
SSC made these contributions to ISY-92 as part of gathering national support
from SNSB’s Remote Sensing Committee for SSC’s plans for an environmental data
centre. This was part of a strategy to first secure money and mandate from the
Swedish state before approaching the EEA and the European Community.
Importantly, this resulted in SNSB favouring optical over radar data, in much the same
way that SNSB in the past had favoured satellite sensing over aerial photography as
part of promoting SSC’s activities rather than those of the competing Swedish Land
Survey.
As the Cold war ended, and military justifications for remote sensing
diminished, SSC sought to adapt the technology for new users, new funding, and,
therefore, new aims. Subsequent environmental monitoring activities are important
due to the overall geopolitical transformations unfolding across Europe at this time.
SSC’s mapping in the Baltic states was therefore not only contributing environmental
knowledge, but also shaping the extent of the European territory, which I describe in
the next chapter.
When the Swedish Liberal Conservative Government came to power in 1991,
it quickly realised the potential of SSC’s satellite remote sensing activities as a means
for integrating Sweden into the European Community. Prime Minister Carl Bildt in
particular made use of the Rio Conference 1992 to launch a vision for Swedish
environmental diplomacy that relied on technology, like Earth observation satellites,
instead of international regulations.
SSC’s plans for making Kiruna into an environmental data centre were used by
the Government to fundamentally redefine Swedish environmental diplomacy.
Changes in terminology from ‘remote sensing’ to ‘Earth observation’ referred
primarily to societal changes, not changes in the technology itself, and they did not
just concern SSC’s activities but policies of the Swedish government at large. SSC
contributed to these changes as part of maintaining the Swedish remote sensing
infrastructure. This importantly added to environing the Baltic region as a European
environment – carved out amidst the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
In the next chapter I will detail how Earth observation corresponded to a new
type of technology user not interested in how to observe but what was observed. These
activities contributed to making ‘Earth observation’ into a term for what was seen,
namely the Earth, whereas remote sensing had referred to the technology and act of
seeing. This semantic shift from doing to being was important for formulating lasting
relationships between technology and knowledge about environmental changes.
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CHAPTER 6
A Centre for Environing Europe, 1991–1999
In 1993, the Environmental Data Centre was established in Kiruna. According to
SSC, the Centre held potential to combine other sections of the Swedish satellite
remote sensing infrastructure, to become something greater than the sum of its parts.
The development of remote sensing at SSC’s main office in Solna, the gathering of data
at SSC’s receiving station Esrange, and the processing facility at SSC’s subsidiary
Satellitbild – all these enabled the Environmental Data Centre to assert Kiruna’s role as
a centre for monitoring the European environment.1042 The European Community
had recently established the EEA to continue earlier projects, like CORINE, to
coordinate environmental information.1043 Although Sweden was not a member of
the European Community, EEA had recognised how SSC’s ongoing monitoring in
the Baltic region could serve as a Nordic expansion of information on the
European environment. SSC hoped that its monitoring in the Baltic region could
provide a central role for the Environmental Data Centre in EEA if Sweden later
joined the European Community.1044 Activities in the Baltic region would serve the
production of databases, eventually for all of Europe.1045
This chapter addresses why SSC established the Environmental Data Centre
in Kiruna and how these activities influenced and were influenced by activities to
establish Swedish remote sensing in the Baltic region. These activities illustrate and
were part of informing changing perceptions of the technology and had significance
for how satellite data came to shape the extent of European environmental
management. During the period 1991–1999 European environmental knowledge
1042 For an overview of prior activities, related to the Environmental Data Centre, see Jan-Olof Hedström and Staffan Borg/Norrbotten Space Group, “Ledamöter i Norrbottens Rymdgrupp,” 7 January 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1043 For more on the role of CORINE in providing a systematic overview of Europe’s territory by satellites, see Högselius, Kaijser, and Van der Vleuten (2015), 242. 1044 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Lägesrapport till den interimistiska styrelsen för MDC - Miljödatacenter för satellitinformation,” 25 January 1993, SSC-S. See also Eva Alhcrona/SSC, “Nordic CORINE Land Cover Workshop,” Remote Sensing, no. 29 (30 Jan, 1993): 15. 1045 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Verksamhetsinriktning för MDC-projektet under 1993 – diskussionsunderlag för presentation på mötet med den interimistiska styrelsen,” 28 January 1993, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Mötesanteckningar från 1:a mötet med den interimistiska styrelsen för MDC i Kiruna 28/1 1993,” 2 February 1993, SSC-S.
expanded in terms of institutional ties, access to datasets on environmental
interdependencies, and the establishing of political bodies for environmental
management. The Swedish remote sensing projects in the Baltic states illustrate new
practices, most notably in how to produce and access data, that influenced ideas on
what constituted the environment. This chapter also illustrates how SSC’s strategies
to establish the Environmental Data Centre resulted in institutional struggles that by
the turn of the millennium compelled SSC to reorganise remote sensing as a whole.
Environmental Centre in Space Town Kiruna, 1991–1993
As described in the previous chapter, SSC’s plans for an environmental data centre
grew out of strategic plans to maintain Kiruna’s role in a global infrastructure for
satellite remote sensing data. The new government was sympathetic to increased
environmental use of satellite data but likewise keen to privatise state-owned
companies, like SSC’s subsidiary Satellitbild. This was part of the policy to increase
commercial competition in Sweden.1046
SSC had opposed privatisation since 1991, in part by arguing that competition
was already so harsh that it would be difficult to find a suitable buyer for Satellitbild.1047
During this period, CEO Lübeck also initiated a reorganisation that more closely
integrated the different regional offices of SSC into five divisions, each centred
around one specific business. The remote sensing receiving station at Esrange,
Satellitbild’s interpretation facility in Kiruna, and the Development Unit in Solna all
constituted integrated parts in SSC’s new Earth Observation Division. Colleagues
working on Earth observation from different locations were supposed to have more
contact with each other. Satellitbild, rather than Esrange, would be responsible for
receiving satellite data. Importantly, management and finances were coordinated from
SSC’s main office in Solna.1048
1046 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 91 i Svenska rymdaktiebolaget den 28 oktober 1991 i Solna,” 3 December 1991, SSC-S. 1047 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Styrelsesammanträde 1991-12-09. VD-rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” p. 2, 2 December 1991, SSC-S. Low revenues were unique for Sweden but representatives from French, British, and American Earth observation companies expressed similar hardships. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Förslag om delägande i National Remote Sensing Centre, Ltd.,” 2 December 1991, SSC-S; SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 93,” 19 February 1992, SSC-S. For examples from the US, see Jirout (2017). 1048 SSC, “IAY. Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 93 i Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget,” 19 February, 1992, SSC-S; Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde 1992-06-16. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 10 June 1992, SSC-S.
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Although SSC’s reorganisation successfully stalled governmental attempts to
sell off Satellitbild,1049 the government continued by initiating an investigation into
how to commercialise Swedish space industry. 1050 The Ministry of Commerce
produced a report that recommended reducing SSC’s mandate as a state-owned
company and clearly separating SSC from the activities of SNSB, which had routinely
delegated tasks and assignments to SSC.1051 SSC and SNSB raised concerns that a
diminished collaboration between the two would have implications for Swedish
participation in European collaborations and for maintenance of the infrastructure,
on which many other companies and the research community depended. After
protesting that the Ministry of Commerce’s report endangered the well-being of all
Swedish space activities.1052 SSC and SNSB were able to convince the Ministry of
Commerce to classify the report’s recommendations of stronger separation between
state and space activities, including the plans to privatise Satellitbild. However, the
Ministry’s investigation had already fuelled dissent among the staff in Esrange who
for a long time had felt that SSC’s reorganisation of remote sensing threatened the
well-being of Esrange. Back in the late 1970s, Esrange had protested against SSC’s
plans to establish a processing facility for Landsat data in Solna. Arguing that this
would weaken Esrange’s position, the staff forced SSC’s leadership to negotiate with
the trade unions nationally. 1053 Similar issues resurfaced in the 1980s, when SSC
established Satellitbild in Kiruna.1054
When SSC in the early 1990s shifted Project Krylbo toward plans to make
Kiruna into a centre for environmental data,1055 Satellitbild proposed that the centre
1049 SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 94,” 22 April 1992, SSC-S. 1050 Swedish Ministry of Commerce, “Bilaga A. Uppdrag att sammanställa svenska företags synpunkter på svensk rymdverksamhet. Enhet -TI. B. Englund, UE,” 15 May 1992, SSC Board, SSC-S. 1051 Swedish Ministry of Commerce, “Rapport om svensk rymdverksamhet. Bilaga B. Anders Tollstén. ‘Rapporten Svensk rymdverksamhet: Förslag till förändring av verksamheten - Sammanställning av svenska företags synpunkter på svensk rymdverksamhet’. 1992-06-15.Till Bo C. Johanson, SSC,” 19 October 1992, SSC-S. 1052 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “Förslag till dagordning vid styrelsesammanträde nr 96 i Svenska rymdaktiebolaget den 26 oktober 1992,” 19 October 1992, SSC-S. 1053 SSC, “A4-54. Förhandlingsprotokoll från sammanträde den 8 mars 1978,” 9 March 1978. Appendix 7 in “All-8. Förslag till styrelsebeslut och etablering av ett bildbearbetningssystem vid RBS,” 10 March 1978, SSC Board, SSC-S. 1054 Börje Sjöholm, “Esrange’s historia sedd med Börjes ögon utan hänsyn tagen till vad gamle Alzheimer kan ha ställt till med…”, Esrange 1 February 1993, Esrange, Mats Rosengren Private Collection. Esrange’s trade unions were also skeptical towards Project Krylbo, see B Eriksson/SSC, “ESA-synpunkter på ‘Krylbo-projektet’, diskussionsunderlag,” Esrange 23 March 1990, SSC Esrange Archive, Solna. See also Email correspondence with Stefan Zenker, 2 February 2018. 1055 Per-Georg Jönsson and Stefan Zenker/SSC, “FUN100-1. Utvecklingsprojekt för konsolidering av satellitdataproduktionen i Kiruna – lägesrapport och arbetsplan 1991/92,” p. 4, 30 May 1991; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “FUN. Underlag för Krylbo-diskussionen,” 14 June 1991, SSC-S.
be led by regional actors under the name ‘Northern cap Environmental Working
Cooperation’.1056 SSC’s strategy had since the late 1970s been that “everything that
could be placed in Kiruna should be placed in Kiruna”.1057 This corresponded to the
Swedish government’s regional political ambitions, and financing, to allocate
industries to places like Kiruna so as to stimulate new employment opportunities.1058
However, this strategy also worried staff in Solna who felt, for example during the
early 1990s, that their efforts to establish a Swedish environmental data centre would
not only benefit Kiruna more than Solna, but perhaps even be taken over by other
actors in northern Sweden as a regional initiative.1059 These concerns informed SSC’s
leadership when reorganising the geographically separate offices for remote sensing
into the new Earth Observation Division.
By autumn 1992, the trade unions at Esrange attempted to gain more
autonomy.1060As information leaked from these internal SSC negotiations,1061 Swedish
newspapers regularly reported on conflicting interests between Esrange, Kiruna, and
Stockholm on how to organise Earth observation activities.1062 Politicians from Kiruna
Municipality sent invitations to the board of SSC to negotiate a regional solution for
Esrange and Satellitbild. Kiruna Municipality described Space Town Kiruna, see
Chapter 3, not as a product of SSC’s efforts but as sprung from a synergy among
1056 Lars Bjerkesjö/SSC Satellitbild, “LINFO-C BD Styrgruppsmöte. AE3-Miljöprojekt Nordkalotten – NEWCOOP,” 8 December 1991, SSC MDC, SSC-S.1057 Original in Swedish: “Engström [SSC], som var lyhörd för regeringens önskemål, myntade somslogan: ‘Allt som kan förläggas till Kiruna, ska förläggas dit’ (underförstått ‘rimligen’)”. See Emailcorrespondence with Stefan Zenker,” 7 January 2019. For similar accounts, see Gärdebo, Emanuel,and Wormbs eds. (2018), 19, 23, 27, 35.1058 For board documents referencing SSC’s strategy to plan and place activities in Kiruna, see SSC,“Dnr 1426. Till Industridepartementet. Mottagningsstation för satellitbilder. Hemställan om statligtlån,” p. 2, 6 December 1976, SSC Board. See also SSC, “T2-62. Nordsat – Industripolitiska aspekter,”p. 8, 12 April 1977, SSC Board. With reference to remote sensing, see also SSC, “IFA-14. UtbildningI användning av satellitbilder och geografiska informationssystem,” p. 15, 23 December 1987, inAppendix to Bo C. Johansson/SSC, “IAY. Rymdverksamhet i Regeringens Norrbotten-satsning,” 15March 1988, SSC Board, SSC-S. For a description of regional political motives for Swedish spaceactivities, see Government Bill, “Prop. 1985/86:127 om riktlinjer för industripolitik på rymdområdet,m.m.” p. 8, 6 March 1986, Swedish Government.1059 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “FTK149. ‘Miljö-PAF’ och fjärranalysverksamheten i Solna,” 4 May1992, Claes-Göran Borg Private Collection.1060 Magnus Andersson/SSC Esrange, “Till dagordningen, styrelsesammanträde 22 april 1992,” 13April 1992; ”Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 96 i Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget den 26 oktober1992,” 10 December 1992, SSC-S.1061 Interview with Mats Rosengren, 6 April 2017; Interview with Jan Englund, 18 January 2018.1062 Newspapers also got hold of the Ministry of Commerce’s classified report and itsrecommendations to privatise parts of SSC. See Håkan Zerpe, “Esrange tjänar på privat Rymdbolag?”Norrbotten-kuriren, 24 November 1992; See also Håkan Zerpe, “Bitterhet hos Esrange,” Norrbotten-kuriren, 18 November 1992; Folke Rantatalo, “Kommunstyrelsen stöder personalen vid Esrange,”Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 24 November 1992; Håkan Zerpe, “Kärv stämning på Esrange,”Norrbotten-kuriren, 27 November 1992.
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many companies, universities, and state enterprises that together formed an
innovation hub. This hub had then spawned additional initiatives, like the
Environmental Data Centre. For these reasons, Kiruna Municipality argued it was now
time for SSC to favour an autonomous Esrange that could prosper in Kiruna.1063
Lübeck did not accept these terms and instead sent staff to negotiate separate
terms directly with the trade unions.1064 Through these efforts, SSC convinced several
members of Kiruna’s research community, the Land Survey, the Swedish EPA, the
County of Norrbotten, and Kiruna Municipality to join SSC in establishing the
Interim Board of the Environmental Data Centre (hereafter the Interim Board).1065
While this meant formally recognising the centre as a regional initiative, and the role
of these other actors in influencing Space Town Kiruna, SSC de facto retained its
influence by collaborating closer with regional actors that otherwise could have chosen
to support the attempt at autonomy by Esrange’s trade unions.
By winter 1992, negotiations between SSC and Esrange’s trade unions had
moved to the national level, which resulted in an investigation, this time initiated by
the unions and focused on how SSC’s reorganisation would influence staff at Esrange,
Satellitbild, and Solna. 1066 The investigator concluded that SSC’s reorganisation
enabled it to move revenues from one business to compensate for losses elsewhere –
Esrange’s profits from receiving data would compensate for Satellitbild’s low revenues
from selling that data. Instead of giving more autonomy to Esrange and evaluating
why Satellitbild had low revenues, the investigation concluded, with scepticism, that
SSC’s strategy was to create synergies among the different Swedish remote sensing
1063 See Kiruna Municipality, “Till Rymdbolaget i Solna,” 7 December 1992, Appendix 1 in Olle Björklund/ROMB Quality Management, Konsultrapport i fråga om omorganisation av Rymdbolagskoncernen, 12 February 1993, SSC Board, SSC-S. For similar references to Space Town Kiruna as a regional initiative, see Håkan Zerpe, “Kirunapolitiker träffade toppnamn i Rymdbolaget,” Norrbotten-kuriren, 3 December 1992. These demands were also repeated in the Swedish Parliament, some even suggesting that SSC as a whole should be moved from Solna to Kiruna. See Peter Pääjärvi, “Oro för Esranges framtid,” Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 14 November 1992; Bruno Poromaa m. fl. (s), “Motion 1992/93:S5029,” Ev. utlokalisering av Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget, 21 January 1993; Bruno Poromaa m.fl. (s), “Motion 1992/93:N236,” Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget, 21 January 1992. 1064 SSC, “Förhandlingar enligt MBL Par 11 om ändrad organisation för Rymdbolagskoncernen,” 8 December 1992; Folke Rantatalo, “Information avslöjade motsättningar på rymdbasen,” Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 11 December 1992. 1065 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen,” 4 December 1992; SSC, “Förslag till budget 1993 för Rymdbolaget. Bilaga 2. Fjärranalysdivisionen,” 9 December 1992, SSC Board, SSC-S. 1066 Arbetsgivaralliansen Branschkommitté Tjänster & Service, “Förhandlingsprotokoll till Omorganisation för Rymdbolagskoncernen. Parter: Arbetsgivaralliansen Branschkommitté Tjänster och Service, Svenska Industritjänstemannaförbundet (SIF), Sveriges Civilingenjörsförbund (CF), 12 January 1993, SSC Board, SSC-S.
activities. 1067 Claes-Göran Borg as Head of the Earth Observation Division defended
SSC’s synergy ambitions, pointing out that Solna’s development and marketing of
remote sensing were part of securing new funding and contracts for Esrange and
Kiruna, too.1068 For Swedish remote sensing to survive it had to maintain a chain of
services – from communicating with satellites to delivering data as finished products,
for example satellite maps. SSC’s Earth Observation Division was an attempt to create
such a chain, from Esrange to Satellitbild, with coordination, development, and
marketing from Solna to keep it intact.1069
By March 1993, despite protests from Esrange’s trade unions, SSC had
completed its reorganisation. 1070 Having reached an agreement with Kiruna
Municipality to avoid struggles over Esrange’s autonomy and instead work together
toward establishing the Environmental Data Centre, SSC could now proceed with its
aim of establishing these new remote sensing activities.1071
Through its strategic planning, SSC had over the past decades secured
governmental funding for remote sensing by promoting a narrative about Kiruna as
Sweden’s Space Town.1072 But this narrative had also been used by Esrange’s personnel
to assert independence from SSC when the priorities of national and regional space
activities diverged. SSC persisted in making Esrange contribute to Satellitbild, because
all subsequent remote sensing developments depended on it, including SSC’s chances
of establishing the Environmental Data Centre. SSC’s activities in environing the
Baltic region were an important factor in understanding how SSC later promoted the
Centre’s role.
1067 ROMB Quality Management, Konsultrapport i fråga om omorganisation av Rymdbolagskoncernen. 1068 SSC had earlier described how Project Krylbo proved that leadership of Swedish space activities had to be organised in Solna, while “the factory” for space activities would remain in Kiruna. See Magnus Andersson/SSC Esrange, “Rymdbolagets omorganisation. Minnesanteckningar,” 2 May 2018, Magnus Andersson Private Collections. 1069 Claes Göran Borg/SSC, “Bilaga: Företagets bedömning. Bedömning av utveckling inom jordobservationsområdet, vilket ligger till grund för förslaget till omorganisation,” in ROMB Quality Management, Konsultrapport i fråga om omorganisation av Rymdbolagskoncernen. 1070 Unrelated to the trade union’s resistance, a fatal accident with a rocket killed and injured staff at Esrange, which also sapped the will to keep fighting the reorganization. See Interview with Mats Rosengren, 6 April 2017; Interview with Jan Englund, 18 January 2018. See also Klas Änggård/SSC, “Lägesrapport för Rymddivisionen December 1992-Februari 1993,” SSC, 15 March 1993, Mats Rosengren Private Collection. 1071 SSC, “Protokoll från extra styrelsesammanträde nr 98 i Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget,” 22 February 1993, SSC Archive Solna.; Mats Rosengren/SSC, “Möte med Kiruna kommun,” 22 February 1993, Mats Rosengren Private Collection. 1072 For more on Space Town Kiruna, see Backman (2015).
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Swedish Monitoring in the Baltic Region, 1991–1995
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, SSC had been involved in plans for sensing
the Baltic region. These Swedish space activities were part of a host of Nordic
initiatives to establish companies, governmental agencies, and research collaborations
in the Baltic states.1073 For example, Swedish telecommunication rapidly became a
major provider in Estonia, Latvia, and to some degree also Lithuania, and Swedish
banks became one large financial actor in the Baltic region after re-independence.1074
Transnational collaborations played a key role in identifying environmental
concerns. One of these collaborations, the Baltic University Programme, became one
of the world’s largest research programmes, involving over one hundred universities,
researchers, and thousands of students.1075 SSC became involved in the Baltic
University Programme to set up so-called “spacebridges” between universities around
the Baltic Sea.1076 By using SSC’s telecommunication satellite TELE-X, the Baltic
University Programme hosted regular joint courses that broadcasted and linked up
seminar conversations in multiple classrooms.1077 To underscore the importance of
SSC’s technology, the Baltic University Programme even replicated TELE-X as a
symbol to depict the reach of its academic affinity, also indicating cultural, economic,
and political collaborations (Figure 22).1078 Notably, the Baltic University Programme's
course materials identified the Soviet period as an interruption in otherwise close
1073 For a synthesis of these activities, in particular the maritime research collaborations, see Johan Cederquist, Susanna Lidström, Henrik Svedäng and Sverker Sörlin, with funding from Sweco’s Richertska Foundation, “Policies and practices that have shaped the Baltic Sea: An exploratory study,” and forthcoming article (in prep). 1074 Per Högselius, The Dynamics of Innovation in Eastern Europe. Lessons from Estonia (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005), 89–91, 110, for database services, see 132. See also Högselius, Kaijser, and van der Vleuten (2015), 304–7; Michael Karlsson, Transnational Relations in the Baltic Sea Region (Huddinge: Coronet, 2004); Fred Singleton, A Short History of Finland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 158; J. Andersson and K. Östberg, “Sverige och Nittiotalskrisen [Sveriges och Nittiotalskrisen],” in Sveriges Historia 1965–2012 [Sweden’s history 1965–2012] (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2013): 357–73. 1075 Uppsala University, and in particular professor Lars Rydén, played a leading role in organising this university programme and research network. For an overview on the Baltic University Programme, see North (2015), 318–19. 1076 The spacebridge concept had developed initially in 1986 by Tufts University and Lominosov State University as part of an American-Soviet academic collaboration that used telecommunication satellites to link up classrooms and students in Boston and Moscow for a joint course “the history of the atomic age”. See Interview with Lars Rydén, 27 March 2018. See also Interview with Lars Backlund, 8 March, 2018. 1077 Lars Rydén, The Baltic University and the course on The Baltic Sea Environment. Report from the Uppsala University Baltic Sea Project Planning Conference. Kalmar February 19–22, 1991, April 1991 Uppsala, Lars Rydén Private Collection.1078 Note: Several member universities in Germany, Ukraine, Poland, and Russia were not included by the satellite logo’s coverage. See Baltic University Programme, “Session 12: Spacebridge Helsinki - Warsaw. Environmental Economy, Technology and Health,” The Baltic Sea University. The Baltic Sea Environment, 1992.
relationships among the peoples around the Baltic Sea. Cultural affinities were further
articulated by combining academic discussions and lectures with sessions on folklore,
music, and dance from various places and periods in the history of the Baltic region.1079
Figur e 22 . Logo for The Baltic University, 1991–2019 (present date).1080
Each televised session began with the image of the whole Earth, gradually zooming
in on the Baltic region. SSC’s subsidiary Satellitbild also provided remote sensing
imagery to depict specific areas under study, for example to visualise how the Baltic
drainage basin stretched far beyond its rim, along tributary rivers, into Ukraine and
Belarus. This shared drainage basin served as a basis for shared environmental
monitoring, political collaboration, and responsibilities among the recently
independent societies. 1081 In a practical and symbolic sense, the environmental
1079 Baltic University Programme, “Session 1: Peoples of the Baltic - Meetingplace Baltic,” The Baltic University: Peoples of the Baltic, 1993. 1080 Baltic University Programme, “Logo: The Baltic University: A Regional University Network,” undated 1992, Lars Rydén Private Collection. 1081 Baltic University Programme, “Session 1: What it looks like – physical geography of the Baltic,” The Baltic Sea University. The Baltic Sea Environment, 1992.
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monitoring and management relied heavily on satellite tools provided by SSC. Sensing
was central to communicating any geographical relationship.
As I described above, Sweden increased its political attempts to assert Baltic
independence in 1991. 1082 Many European governments had also hoped for the
perestroika programme to be successful, to limit the influence of the Soviet military,
and for this reason were initially sceptical to Baltic independence.1083 In contrast to
independence struggles in other former Soviet republics, the European Community
and the US in the early 1990s still considered the Baltic states to be within the Russian
sphere of interest.1084
After the Rio Conference in June 1992, the Swedish Government
increased its emphasis on environmental concern for the Baltic region.1085
Government officials hoped that collaborations with the Baltic states could serve to
integrate Sweden into the expanding European Community.1086 For this reason, the
Swedish Government financed several mapping projects, training of personnel, and
institutional support to re-establish national land surveys in the Baltic region,1087
often including both civilian and military organisations.1088 Finland also provided
support for the development of geographical information services in the Baltic.1089
This is to say that SSC’s activities in the Baltic competed for attention both with
respect to other Swedish organisations, as well as against other Nordic countries
seeking to establish their organisations in the Baltic states. As demonstrated in the
previous chapter, SSC hoped that sensing activities in the Baltic region would
enable closer collaboration with the Swedish EPA as well as with the European
Community’s EEA. Swedish satellite remote sensing
1082 Lars Peter Fredén, Återkomster. Svensk säkerhetspolitik och de baltiska ländernas första år i självständighet 1991–1994 [Returns: Swedish security policy and the baltic states first years of independence 1991–1994] (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2006), 22, 47. 1083 North (2015), 313. 1084 Fredén (2006), 54, 419; Johan Matz, Constructing a Post-Soviet International Political Reality. Russian Foreign Policy towards the Newly Independent States 1990-1995, dissertation (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2001). 1085 This theme was used by the Swedish Government when it approved a post-stamp series together with the three Baltic states, “Mare Balticum”, that illustrated a shared environment and animal life around the Baltic Sea, see Torkel Jansson,“‘Svenskheten’ – tjockare än det Östersjövatten som omger och håller den samman? [‘Swedishness – thicker than the Baltic Sea water that surrounds and holds it together?],” in Sverige utanför – Svensk makt och dess spår i utlandet [Sweden abroad – Swedish power and its traces overseas], ed. Thomas Lundén (Ödeshög: YMER, 2015), 57. See also SOU 1992:104, Vår uppgift efter Rio. Svenskhandlingsplan inför 2000-talet, 46, 56–58. 1086 Carl Bildt/Swedish Government, Regeringsförklaringen 1992, October, 1992. 1087 Velta Parsova, Virginija Girskiene and Madis Kaing, Real Property Cadastre in Baltic Countries (Jelgava: Bova University Network 2012). 1088 Interview with Anders Wellving, 9 March 2017. 1089 Priit Pihlak/Estonian Mapping Center, “GIS in Estonia,” 11 December 1992, SB-K.
offered a means of producing geographic information without depending on Russian
cartography. I will now show how SSC developed a new approach to remote sensing
based on datasets, which would have implications for subsequent Swedish
environmental monitoring.
Baltic Base Maps in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
What SSC’s Baltic projects so far had in common was their environmental focus. As
geopolitical power began to shift in favour of independent Baltic states, SSC
increasingly emphasised how Swedish monitoring served to manage pollutants – for
example from open-cast mining in Estonia – caused by the Soviet Union in the Baltic
environment.1090 SSC also visualised the Baltic drainage basin, which involved sensing
pollutants in the waters of Latvian tributary rivers.1091 Since Soviet, and later also
Russian, authorities refused to provide cartographic material, the Baltic states had
sought help abroad to produce maps that would provide a basis for solving the
“environmental problems” inflicted during the Soviet era.1092
The largest of these collaborations was the base map projects. Initially planned
between Satellitbild and the Estonian National Land Board in 1990, Latvia and
Lithuania joined the planning in 1991. For the Baltic states, the base maps were an
important symbol that Russian cartography had come to an end and a new era of
Swedish, and European, mapping began – this time through the use of satellite
data.1093
The Estonian Ministry of Environment had requested that the maps not only
result in satellite imagery of the Baltic states but be organised as sets of data, or
databases, that staff could interact with digitally. The task was not only to produce a
map but to train the Baltic staff in how to interpret the satellite data gathered at
1090 SNSB, “The Leading Lights,” Remote Sensing, no. 21 (1991): 14. 1091 Kjell Grip (SNV) and Stigbjörn Olovsson (SSC), “Satellite Data in the National Swedish Programme for Environmental Surveillance” Remote Sensing, no. 22 (April, 1992): 11–13, SSC-S. 1092 See SSC, Remote Sensing, no. 22 (April 1992): 6–7. SSC-S. 1093 Estonian surveyor Heikki Potter described the base maps as part of a larger shift to integrate the Baltic Sea into Europe while also restoring older mapping collaborations between Sweden and the Baltic states, of which Swedish imperial mapping in the 17th century was one example. Under the periods of Russian rule, according to Potter, cartography had been controlled from Moscow, found little civil uses, and also intentionally distorted positioning of the territory. See H. Potter. “A new Swedish era is beginning in Estonia - in Mapping: A historical view by Mr H. Potter,” Remote Sensing, no. 24 ( November 1993): 19–20.
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Esrange and processed at Satellitbild in Kiruna as well as deliver these data to the
Baltic states for subsequent environmental analysis.1094
Satellitbild appointed its most experienced manager, Hans Rasch, to
coordinate the base map projects.1095 I list some of the challenges in completing the
projects so as to illustrate the complexity involved in introducing a Swedish satellite
remote sensing project in the Baltic region during this time. Firstly, Satellitbild lacked
sufficient satellite imagery to be used during training in Kiruna and for fieldwork in
the three Baltic states.1096 Despite the geographic proximity to Sweden, Satellitbild had
not begun routinely monitoring the area until BITS agreed in spring 1993 to fund the
projects. Satellitbild lacked certain cloud-free data, for example multispectral colour
data over forest areas, meaning that sensing had to wait until the vegetation began to
bloom in spring 1994.1097 In addition to clouds obstructing Satellitbild’s sensing, there
were delays in Finnish shipments of computers on which to interpret the data,1098
confusion over what software to use,1099 and even disputes with Baltic governmental
agencies who attempted to claim the copyright for the data gathered.1100 All these
factors meant a constant shuttling back and forth by Satellitbild’s project leaders
between Kiruna, Stockholm, and the capitals of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania so as
to keep the three projects progressing in parallel.1101
1094 SSC Satellitbild, “Utestående offerter 30 april 1992,” SB-K; Peep Krusberg, Estonian Mapping Center, “Estonian Base Map Project,” 11 January 1995, SB-K. 1095 Hans Rasch, “CV,” January 2001, Hans Rasch Private Collection; Dan Klang/SSC Satellitbild, “Vem gör vad och när i Baltikumprojekten, Estland,” 31 October 1993, SB-K; SSC Satellitbild, Down to Earth, November 1993, SB-K. 1096 SSC Satellitbild, “Estonian base map project. Training schedule,” 23 November 1993, SB-K; Marianne Orrmalm and Dan Klang/SSC Satellitbild, “Training material for Estonia Base Map Project. Section ‘Image interpretation’,” 1993, SB-K; SSC Satellitbild, “Section 2. Mapping/Interpretation,” SB-K; Marianne Orrmalm/SSC Satellitbild, “Certificate of Completion. Vitalijus Kalenda representing our Client, State Department of Surveying and Mapping of Lithuania,” 5 March 1994, SB-K. 1097 Marianne Orrmalm/SSC Satellitbild, “Agreed Minutes from Meeting at SSC Satellitbild in Kiruna on 4 March 1994,” 29 June 1994, SB-K. 1098 SSC Satellitbild, “From Viru, EMC, To Orrmalm, SB. Finish HP not sending computers,” 30 May 1994, SB-K. 1099 Hans Rasch/SSC Satellitbild, “Projektrapport för Sektion OPP, april 1994,” 2 May 1994, SB-K. 1100 Louise Norlin/LM Kartor, “Minutes from meeting at the Lithuanian State Department of Surveying and Mapping,” 5 July 1994, SB-K. 1101 SSC Satellitbild, “On-going Projects at Satellitbild,”; SSC Satellitbild, “Praktisk information inför Baltikum,” 1 February 1994; SSC Satellitbild, “From Orrmalm to Lithuanian State Department of Surveying and Mapping,” 1 November 1994, SB-K.
From Mosaic to Dataset
Satellitbild turned the Baltic region into a digital environment by systematically
surrounding it with satellite monitoring – environing it in the original sense of the term.
During one single orbit, a SPOT satellite could pass from the northeast to the
southwest over all three of the Baltic states. The same orbital line allowed sensing data
relevant for all three of the base maps (Figure 23).
Figur e 23. Orbital path for the SPOT satell ites going from northeastern Estonia orbiting to the southwest over Latvia and Lithuania. The southern coast of Finland is visible in the upper part of the image (north). 1102
By 1995, after using SPOT to perform a similar sensing of the same region repeatedly,
Satellitbild began to reflect on this remote sensing practice in new ways. The staff
used forestry as an analogue, where taking and re-taking measurements at regular
intervals allowed foresters to trace overall changes in that environment. Satellitbild
had until now focused on selling the takes, meaning individual satellite scenes or
1102 SSC Satellitbild, “CatEye Quicklook. Scale 1:3,000,000 Center E0244801 N583739,” 4 February 1994, kl. 07:18, SB-K.
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alternatively an assembled mosaic of satellite scenes, for example as satellite maps. By
continuously surrounding the Baltic region with sensing satellites, Satellitbild could
instead provide analysis of regional changes over time. If SSC systematised these re-
takes to always surround the region with data, it could serve several users, for various
purposes, and get paid many times for the same data. In addition, Satellitbild’s staff
hoped, this continued surrounding of Swedish satellite remote sensing could help
ward off competitors from the Baltic region.1103
The media for sensing also changed as Satellitbild delivered the re-takes of the
Baltic region not only as finished maps, or as a bundle of data tapes, but collected on
a Compact-Disk Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM). Several re-takes could be stored on
the same CD-ROM. Users accessed the data using software for geographical
information and interpreted it through the interface of a personal computer screen.1104
By digitally switching between different re-takes of sensing data, the Baltic
staff could visualise sequential changes on the surface. The base map projects
environed the Baltic states not only in the promotional writings but also in this
practical sense of creating and perceiving an environment. By producing a digital
environment that could be compared with subsequent digital environments, the Baltic
states gained a tool for asserting environmental knowledge. They now had a way of
asserting what the environment was by sensing whether and how the environment had
changed.1105
More importantly, Satellitbild’s practice of repeatedly sensing the Baltic states
shaped thinking within SSC on how to use remote sensing technology to continuously
sense a region. Analytically, the sensed data were the equivalent of the environment
because re-takes could be used to visualise changes from one set of data to the next.
This environmental knowledge – knowledge of what the environment was –
developed as a practical experience among the staff from their repeated environing
of the Baltic region with sensing data. Although the aim had been to produce a map,
the process of environing informed Satellitbild on how to use satellite remote sensing
to produce a continuous stream of data that depicted, and accepted, the world as
1103 Original in Swedish: “drev” and “omdrev”. See Mikael Stern/SSC Satellitbild, “‘Omdrev’ – Baltikum,” 13 February 1995, SB-K. 1104 Marianne Orrmalm/SSC Satellitbild, “‘Omdrev’ – Baltikum, production,” 7 March 1995, SB-K. 1105 For earlier analysis on the use of satellite data to demonstrate environmental change, see Nina Wormbs, “Eyes on the Ice: Satellite Remote Sensing and the Narratives of Visualized Data,” in Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks, ed. Miyase Christensen, Annika E. Nilsson, Nina Wormbs (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 52–69.
changing. This is illustrative of how Earth observation satellites contributed to new
means of perceiving the environment, of interpreting physical environmental change,
of what the word ‘environment’ referred to and, subsequently, new conceptions of
the environment.
Apart from asserting that Satellitbild’s sensing of the environment contributed
to a new sense of the environment, I want to make clear that how Satellitbild wrote
and described environmental monitoring was predominantly based on its marketing
ambitions. Satellitbild attempted to use the SPOT programme to continuously remake
a digital surface pattern to which all conceivable customers would turn – and return –
to gain environmental knowledge about changes in the region. However, it should be
added that Satellitbild did not reorganise its own operations overnight. Production of
satellite maps made from a mosaic of images put together scene-by-scene to form a
coherent whole continued. But the new means of making environments, bolstered by
the Swedish government’s motives for producing environmental knowledge over the
Baltic region, became relevant for how SSC established the Environmental Data
Centre in Kiruna, which I will now describe further. To summarise then, the Baltic
base maps enabled SSC, as well as the Baltic states, to strengthen environmental
monitoring in ways that used satellite remote sensing to make and re-make the region
into a part of the European environment.
Establishing the Environmental Data Centre, 1991–1996
The Environmental Data Centre developed alongside a new, growing, interest during
the early 1990s of finding technological solutions to environmental problems. One
reason the Swedish Liberal Conservative Government took an interest in the
Environmental Data Centre had to do with the Centre’s role in converting the Swedish
wage-earner funds (löntagarfonderna) into foundations for research and
development.1106
The previous Social Democratic Government had established these funds
during the early 1980s in an effort to transfer ownership stakes in Sweden’s largest
industries to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen i Sverige).
The wage-earner funds deeply polarised the Swedish political debate. Getting rid of
1106 Government Bill, “Prop 1991/92:92,” Anmälan till proposition om utskiftning av löntagarfondernas tillgångar m.m. Forskning för långsiktig kompetensutveckling. Bilaga 2, p. 3, 26 March, 1992.
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them was one of the Liberal Conservative Government’s main objectives after
winning the election in 1991. 1107 A free market think tank conducted polls that
identified allocating the funds to environmental research as the option that most likely
would be supported by the Swedish public.1108 The ministries administrating the funds
eventually proposed foundations as the organisational form since these would be
difficult for any subsequent Social Democratic government to dismantle. 1109
Furthermore, prior to the Rio Conference, Minister of Environment Johansson
had described how the conversion of wage-earner funds into research foundations
would make possible more Swedish environmental monitoring than before.1110
The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Stiftelsen för
miljöstrategisk forskning, hereafter Mistra) was created with money from the wage-
earner funds. It would become central to Swedish remote sensing activities. 1111
Historian of ideas Sverker Sörlin describes the emergence of Mistra and the other
research foundations as a volcano in the Swedish research landscape. The vast
injection of resources and the novel approach redirected Swedish research
priorities.1112 Since spring 1992, SSC had engaged several ministries in planning and
1107 Svante Nycander, Makten över arbetsmarknaden. Ett perspektiv på Sveriges 1900-tal, third edition (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2017), 414; Ilja Viktorov, Fordismens kris och löntagarfonder i Sverige [The Crisis of Fordism and Wage-Earner Funds in Sweden] (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Sotckholmiensis, 2006), 270. 1108 Carl Bildt et al. “Vi stoppar fondsocialismen”, Dagens nyheter, 29 August 1991; Mats Johanson/Timbro, Rapport. Nr 1/1992, Opinionsundersökning: Vad skall fondpengarna användas till? 15 January 1992, KB; See also Magnus Haglund/Timbro, Det gamla uppdraget, Rapport. Nr 12 (Stockholm: September 1994), 2. 1109 Lars Ekdahl, ed. Löntagarfondsfrågan – en missad möjlighet? (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2002), 40; Thomas Heldmark, “Mistra föddes mitt i krisen,” in Mistra 20 år : 1994–2014, ed. Andreas Nilsson (Stockholm: Mistra, 2014), 22–23; Lars Tobisson, Löntagarfonder. Så nära men ändå inte (Stockholm: Dialogos förlag, 2016), 207. See also Jamison (2004), 115. 1110 “Protokoll 1991/92:119 Anf. 29 Miljöminister Olof Johansson (c),” Swedish Parliament, 25 May 1992; “Protokoll 1991/92:112,” Swedish Parliament, 14 May 1992. 1111 Mistra is the research foundation that has been the focus of most historical research, partly to study the politics, policy, and media debates around the conversion of the wage-earner funds. See Malin Mobjörk, En kluven tid? En studie av idéer och föreställningar om vetenskap och kunskap i Stiftelsen för miljöstrategisk forskning , MISTRA [An Ambivalent Time? An Investigation of Ideas and Notions about Science and Knowledge in the Foundation of Strategic Environmental Research, MISTRA], dissertation (Linköping: Linköping University, 2004). See also Sverker Sörlin, ed. ‘I den absoluta frontlinjen’: en bok om forskningsstiftelserna, konkurrenskraften och politikens möjligheter [‘In the aboslute frontline’: a book on the research foundations, competitiveness and the possibilities of politics] (Nora: Nya Doxa, SISTER, 2005); Mats Benner, Kontrovers och konsensus: Vetenskap och politik i svenskt 1990-tal [Controversies and consensus: Science and politics in the Swedish 1990s] (Nora: Nya Doxa, SISTER rapport nr 1, 2001); Mats Benner, “En ny aktör söker sin roll [A new actor seeks its role],” in ‘I den absoluta frontlinjen’: en bok om forskningsstiftelserna, konkurrenskraften och politikens möjligheter [‘In the aboslute frontline’: a book on the research foundations, competitiveness and the possibilities of politics] ed. Sverker Sörlin (Nora: Nya Doxa, SISTER, 2005). 1112 Sverker Sörlin, “Konturer av kunskapssamhället - tidsläget I det tidiga 1990-talet [Contours of the knowledge society – the times of the early 1990s],” in ‘I den absoluta frontlinjen’: en bok om forskningsstiftelserna, konkurrenskraften och politikens möjligheter [‘In the aboslute frontline’: a book on the
preparing the Environmental Data Centre to be one of the seeds that could drift in
and exploit the new fertile soil created by the research foundations. 1113 These activities
are the focus of the next section.
The Interim Board Gathers Support for Environmental Databases
The ministries had indicated to SSC and the Interim Board that the government was
currently using the Centre as a bargaining tool in negotiating favourable terms for
Swedish entry and membership in the European Community. Prime Minister Bildt
emphasised this growing importance of the Centre with an official visit to Kiruna in
May 1993, and the Centre made assurances that it would provide Sweden with
technology relevant to achieving sustainable development in the Baltic region and
Europe.1114
As part of this promotional activity, it was important to demonstrate what new
products the Environmental Data Centre would provide. The Baltic base maps had
demonstrated the potential to develop databases, and there were other attempts in
Europe and the US to turn data into databases. Satellite data that had already been
gathered could be compiled into catalogues for use by many different customers.1115
New information technology, like the Internet, and additional sources of geographical
data could be utilised to build the databases, like aerial photography.1116
When SSC in autumn 1993 began marketing its database plans, these were
presented as a way for non-experts to use satellite data. Satellite systems, SSC
research foundations, competitiveness and the possibilities of politics], ed. Sverker Sörlin (Nora: Nya Doxa, SISTER, 2005), 42. 1113 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “IAY. Styrelsesammanträde 22 April 1992. VD-Rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan,” 13 April 1992, SSC-S; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “IFA-59. Lägesrapport för Fjärranalysdivisionen Februari-Mars 1992,” p. 6, 10 April 1992, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det tredje mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC, Bilaga 4 (8 juni 1993),” 28 May 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1114 These arguments on the importance of satellite data to achieve Agenda 21 were repeated also by the Swedish EPA. See Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “FUD500-3. Lägesrapport nr 3 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC. 28 maj 1993,” SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det tredje mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 7, 8 June 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. See also Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “FUD500-3. Lägesrapport nr 3 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” 28 May 1993, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det tredje mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 7, 8 June 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1115 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det tredje mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC, 8 Juni 1993,” 28 May 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1116 SSC agreed to adding aerial photography provided that it did not influence the profile of the Environmental Data Centre, since the Interim Board had already agreed to promote the Centre’s use of satellite data. See Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Bilaga 1. XFF510-1. Lägesrapport nr 4 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 3, 30 September 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S.
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explained, had historically required enormous resources, had been built for national
prestige, and had served the elites. According to SSC, the Environmental Data Centre,
could “really take care of the information that these satellites would pour down on us
from outer space”.1117 SSC also made reference to the ongoing activities in the Baltic
region as a demonstration of how Baltic users of data had been able to understand
environmental problems over a large geographical region. SSC asserted that as more
data became integrated into databases, the regional monitoring would over time add
up to visualisations of a globally changing environment.1118 As often with regards to
projects abroad, SSC levelled critique against the Land Survey for not being more
willing to consider increased use of that satellite data at home.1119
Prime Minister Bildt made use of these arguments in governmental bills on
how the Swedish Government would proceed to achieve sustainable development,
promote the geographical information industry, and offer Swedish environmental
monitoring to what was now the European Union. This meant governmental support
for the Environmental Data Centre and a slight decrease in funding to the Land Survey
as part of indicating to governmental agencies the political priority of more satellite
data.1120 From its outset then, the Interim Board in Kiruna had identified not only
satellite data but new approaches that saw the data as part of larger datasets, together
comprising a potentially global – digital – environment. These plans developed in
close dialogue with Mistra and with the Swedish Government’s plans for how
to promote Sweden joining the European Community.
1117 Original in Swedish: “….verkligen ta hand om den information som satelliterna kommer att vräka ned från rymden….” See Åsa Domeij/SSC Satellitbild, “Presentation av projektet ‘Miljödatacenter i Kiruna’ /Utkast 1/AD/,” p. 2, 1 December 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1118 Åsa Domeij/SSC Satellitbild, “Presentation av projektet ‘Miljödatacenter i Kiruna’ /Utkast 1/AD/,” p. 4–6, 16 December 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1119 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “FME1/02-C4/930098/AGE. Rymdbolagets yttrande över ‘Lantmäteriets förslag till inriktning av verksamheten under 1990-talet – LI94’,” 28 May 1993. See also Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Rymdbolagets yttrande över Lantmäteri- och inskrivningsutredningens principbetänkande ‘Kart- och fastighetsverksamhet i myndighet och bolag’. SOU 1993:99,” 31 January 1994, Agneta Engberg [Green] Private Collection; SOU 1993:99, Kart- och fastighetsverksamhet i myndighet och bolag, 81–82; SOU 1994:90, Kart- och fastighetsverksamhet – finansering , samordning och författningsreglering, 174–75. 1120 Government Bill, “Prop. 1993/94:111 Bilaga 1.1 till budgetpropositionen 1994, Miljö- och naturresursdepartementet (fjortonde huvudtiteln),” p. 23, 143 and 152, 9 December 1993, Swedish Government. See also Government Bill, “Prop. 1993/94:100 Bilaga 15 till budgetpropositionen 1994, Miljö- och naturresursdepartementet (fjortonde huvudtiteln),” p. 62, 22 December 1993.
Formulating a Research Profile for the Environmental Data Centre
The Interim Board soon came to the realisation that the Centre had to develop a
research profile in order to get support from Mistra. These plans were discussed with
various groups in the Swedish remote sensing community, resulting in the programme
proposal Remote Sensing of the Environment (RESE). SNSB provided further
support by organising a series of symposia and museum exhibitions that promoted
the Centre in the context of environmental research.1121 Mistra and several research
groups were positive to the Interim Board’s plans.1122 While they raised concerns
regarding the sources of data as well as the Centre’s means of coordinating research
activities, they agreed to join the RESE application.1123
In addition to gaining support from the research community for the RESE
application to Mistra, Olovsson gathered signatures from nine governmental agencies
for a show of support for the Environmental Data Centre.1124 This document made
reference to the recent governmental bill that identified a need for such a centre and
the role of satellite data in pursuing Agenda 21 and sustainable development in the
Baltic region.1125
It should be added here that the Swedish Government did not pursue plans
for the Environmental Data Centre as a means of supporting SSC but as an overall
strategy for creating regional synergies between research groups in the County of
Norrbotten. As part of joining the European Union, the Swedish Government would
1121 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFF510-5. Mötesanteckningar från 5:e mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC, 14/1 1994, Bilaga 2: academic groups meeting,” 1 February 1994, SSC-S. See also Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Interimstyrelsen för MDC i Kiruna. Minnesanteckningar,” 5 October 1993, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1122 Björn Englund/Mistra, “Lars-Erik Liljelund, Stigbjörn Olovsson, Åsa Domeij, GAP, BE, and JN, ‘Satellitdata för miljöövervakning,” 18 February 1994, in Englund Mistra Notebook [MSF Anteckningsbok] 93-08-11—94-02-02, Björn Englund Private Collection; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFF510, Möte med Mistra, 17 Februari 1994,” 18 February 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S; Åsa Domeij/Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna (hereafter MDC), “Inbjudan till möte om användningen av satellitbaserad information inom miljöforskningen - förberedelse för ansökan till Mistra,” 12 April 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1123 Stigbjörn Olovsson and Åsa Domeij/SSC, “XFF510-6. Lägesrapport nr 6 ti l l Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 6, 18 May 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1124 The letter to Mistra had been signed by the Swedish EPA, the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning, the Statistical Central Bureau, the Agricultural Authority, SNSB, the Land Survey, the Forest Board, SMHI and the Fishing Authorities. See Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Rapportering: Tillbakablick,” in Affärsplan för Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB, Utkast 1:1, 10 December 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1125 For references to governmental bills, see Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det femte mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” 14 January 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Dagordning för det sjätte mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 5–7, 26 May 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S.
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be granted regional development funds to the County of Norrbotten. While SSC
hoped to use these funds for the Centre,1126 the Ministry of Education’s investigator
Arne Jernelöv argued that the Centre would form part of a larger package of
innovative activities, jointly called the Environment and Space Research Institute in
Kiruna (Miljö- och Rymdforskningsinstitutet, hereafter the Institute).1127 Borg feared
that Jernelöv’s plan to include the Centre in a regional institute risked shifting
ownership away from the Interim Board and SSC in particular.1128 In addition, Mistra
had begun to question the need to finance the Centre if it would also receive funds
from the European Union. Furthermore, should the Centre and not the Institute
coordinate Mistra’s research programme? In addition, research groups not part of the
RESE application were concerned that a focus on satellite data and databases would
prove too expensive for potential users to adopt.1129
Shortly before the national elections in September 1994, and as a preamble to
the Swedish referendum on membership in the European Union, the three ministers
of communication, education, and environment jointly announced plans to establish
the Environmental Data Centre as a part of the Institute in Kiruna. They promoted
these plans as part of the European Union’s ambition to support new industry and
environmental research in northern Sweden, which would infrastructurally integrate
these rural areas into the rest of Europe.1130
The Liberal Conservative Government lost to the Social Democrats, but the
subsequent referendum ended in favour of Swedish membership in the European
Union by a very small margin. The new Government proceeded with the plans to
establish the Environmental Data Centre using European funds for the Institute in
1126 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Presentation för Utbildningsdepartementets utredare av EU-Glesbygdsstöd,” 9 March 1994, MDC, SSC-S 1127 The initial name in 1994 was ‘the Institute for Space- and Environment Research in Kiruna’, but since few changes occurred within the institutional framework, I will for simplicity use the new name Environment and Space Research Institute in Kiruna (hereafter cited as MRI) adopted from 1998 onwards. See Arne Jernelöv and Daniel Enquist/ Swedish Ministry of Education, “DNR. U94/1278/FS. Miljö- och rymdforskning på Nordkalotten. Utredning och förslag om inrättande av ett miljö- och rymdforskningsinstitut i Kiruna. Utbildningsdepartementet,” 6 May 1994, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1128 Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “XAI-7. Verksamhetsrapport för Strategy Division, Mars-Maj 1994,” 3 June 1994, SSC-S. 1129 Björn Englund/Mistra, “Lennart Lübeck, Rymdbolaget,” 21 June 1994, in Englund Mistra Notebook [MSF Anteckningsbok] 94-02-03—94-09-20, Björn Englund Private Collection; Björn Englund, “Inför Anders Östmans besök: Är MDC rätt huvudman för forskningen?” 21 November 1994, in Englund Mistra Notebook [MSF Anteckningsbok] 94-10-03—95-04-26, Björn Englund Private Collection. 1130 “Pressmeddelande från Utbildningsdepartementet: Utbyggnad av ett europeiskt miljö- och rymdforskningsinstitut i Kiruna,” in Rymdstoft, no. 2 16 September 1994), SSC-S.
Kiruna. These commitments by the former and the new Governments made it
increasingly pressing for SSC to secure its influence over, and ownership of, the
Environmental Data Centre.
When Lübeck summarised events to the SSC board that autumn, he outlined
how SSC had to “politicise” Earth observation through governmental inquiries in
order to secure further funding.1131 This was why SSC kept in close contact with
ministries, governmental agencies, the research community, and Mistra. This is not to
say that SSC influenced all aspects of decision-making regarding the Centre, only that
it intended to do so. Similarly, I contend that the Swedish Government participated in
this politicising of the Environmental Data Centre in an effort to bring Sweden
geopolitically closer to the European Union.
Uncertainty Regarding the Roles of the Centre and the Institute in Kiruna
From winter 1994 until autumn 1996, the Interim Board worked toward making the
Environmental Data Centre operational. As part of this process, SSC sought to
establish the Centre as its own subsidiary,1132 making plausible to the Interim Board
that this would result in numerous synergies with its other remote sensing activities.1133
Other members of the Interim Board, like the Swedish Land Survey and SMHI, also
aspired to assert ownership over the Centre, but, in adopting EU policies,
the Swedish Government had prohibited governmental agencies from setting up
new foundations for operative activities.1134 The Interim Board therefore agreed
to set up the Centre as one more of SSC’s subsidiary companies in Kiruna.1135
1131 Original in Swedish: “För Rymdbolaget innebär detta stora möjligheter till intressanta utrednings- och utvecklingsuppdrag och det krävs mycket ‘politiserande’ för att bevaka Sveriges intressen i allmänhet och Kirunas i synnerhet”. See Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “AYIO. Styrelsesammanträde. ‘VD-rapport med kommentarer till föredragningslistan’, 17 oktober 1994,” p. 4, 24 October 1994, SSC Board. For additional, similar, arguments, see Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “XAI-8. “Verksamhetsrapport för Strategy Division, Juni-September 1994,” p. 8, 14 October 1994, SSC-S. 1132 Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “AYI-50. Bolagsbildning för Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna,” p. 1–2, 6 December 1994, SSC-S; SSC, “AYIO. Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 108 i Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget,” p. 5–6, 12 December 1994, SSC-S. 1133 Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, “Minnesanteckningar. Interimstyrelsen för MDC i Kiruna, nr 9,” Länsstyrelsen i Luleå, 7 March 1995; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Bilaga 1. SSC. XFF510-9. Lägesrapport nr 9 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” 2. 24 February 1995, SSC-S. 1134 Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, “Minnesanteckningar. Interimstyrelsen för MDC i Kiruna,” No 9. Länsstyrelsen i Luleå, 7 March 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S.1135 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFF510. Mötesanteckningar från tionde mötet med Interimstyrelsenför MDC, 20 juni 1995,” 3 July 1995, SSC-S; Bo C. Johansson/SSC, “MDC. Protokoll, fört vidsammanträde med styrelsen för Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna Aktiebolag. Närvarande:styrelseledamöterna Bengt Hultqvist, ordförande, samt Lennart Lübeck, Claes-Göran Borg och Bo CJohanson,” 29 May 1995, 8 August 1995; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Lägesrapport nr 10 till
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Having settled the issue of ownership, Mistra supported SSC in endorsing the
Centre as a way for EEA to expand the previous pilot project CORINE to regularly
monitor the European environment. As one of several European centres specialising
in specific types of data, the Centre was granted the role of providing EEA with land-
cover data, which SSC could derive primarily from its archive of SPOT data.1136 Note
that EEA had raised concerns about the ability of the Environmental Data Centre to
function as a centre, considering its peripheral position at the edge of Europe, that
Sweden was a new member of the European Union with little experience navigating
the institution, its policies, or the intricacies required to access, share, and sell data.
Finally, no database infrastructure that relied on the Internet for access to sets of data
had ever been tested for real at that point.1137
When Mistra in spring 1996 announced that it would finance RESE, this meant
that the Environmental Data Centre became the leader of one of the largest
programmes organised by the Swedish research foundations. Apart from the prestige,
it involved responsibility for turning satellite data into databases of the European land
cover, as well as coordinating a dozen PhD students to use the satellite data.1138 This
last source of funding concluded years of strategic planning by SSC whereby it had
sought to claim a role for Swedish environmental data in sensing the new Europe now
being shaped.
By now, Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum expressed
support for the merits of the Centre. The Liberal Conservatives considered these
initiatives a means of integrating Sweden into the European Union. 1139 Social
Democrats from northern Sweden viewed the centre as a means of creating new jobs
based on geographical information technology, for example by producing European
environmental databases and continuing to monitor activities in and around the Baltic
Interimstyrelsen för MDC (1995-06-13). Bilaga 2. Tenth Meeting of the EEA Management Board,” 11 May 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1136 Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, “Minnesanteckningar. Interimstyrelsen för MDC i Kiruna. No 9,” Länsstyrelsen i Luleå, p. 1, 7 March 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Minnesanteckningar. Interimstyrelsen för MDC i Kiruna. 9:e mötet. Bilaga 2. EEA environmental monitoring advisory group: The space and spatial component,” 7 March 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1137 See Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFX410-2. Lägesrapport nr 12 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” 8 December 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Affärsplan för Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB, Utkast 1:1,” 10 December 1995, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1138 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFX410. Mistra stöder fjärranalysprogrammet RESE,” p. 6, 19 March 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S; Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Mötesanteckningar från trettionde mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC, 22 Mars 1996. Bilaga 1. Lägesrapport nr 13 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 2, 20 March 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1139 Olle Lindström (m), “Motion 1994/95:Jo618,” Miljö- och rymdforskningsinstitut, 20 January 1995.
Sea.1140 The Left Party argued that an expansion of space and environment activities
in time would allow the government to move all of SSC from Solna to Kiruna, which
would be a “natural development”.1141 Even the Green Party, usually suspicious of
Swedish space activities, supported the Centre since it contributed to regional
development, environmental monitoring, and Swedish information technology.1142
Similar views were repeated in additional parliamentary motions up until autumn 1996,
when the Environmental Data Centre was formally established.1143
As SSC began setting up a new board for the Centre, the Swedish Government
entrusted Jernelöv to oversee the operations of the Institute that the Centre would
formally be part of.1144 While the Institute had received funding intended for the
Environmental Data Centre, there existed no agreement on procedures for how to
funnel finances between the two organisations.1145 SSC had been able to use other
sources of funding to begin the Centre’s operations, employ staff, and produce reports
for EEA.1146 SSC had primarily recruited experts in remote sensing than in ecology or
Earth sciences.1147 This was meant as a precaution in case the Institute did not forward
European funding to the Centre, in which case SSC could redirect the employees to
other parts of SSC’s Earth Observation Division.1148
SSC’s recruitment procedure fuelled internal discussions about how to
delineate business areas between the Environmental Data Centre and other Earth
1140 Kristina Zakrisson m.fl. (s), “Motion 1994/95:N267,” Den svenska rymdverksamheten, p. 8–10, 25 January 1995. 1141 Original in Swedish: “Rymdverksamheten bedrivs i huvudsak i Esrange som är beläget i Kiruna kommun. Det vore en naturlig utveckling att även ledningen flyttade närmare denna verksamhet”. See Siv Holma (v), “Motion 1994/95:N232,” Rymdbolagets huvudkontor, p. 11, 23 January 1995. 1142 Birger Schlaug m.fl. (mp), “Motion 1994/95:N270,” Näringspolitiken, 25 januari 1995. 1143 Eva Goës (mp), “NU Reservation 1995/96:NU18,” Rymdverksamhet (mom. 5), p. 7, 12 March 1996; Kristina Zakrisson (s), “Motion 1996/97:N1,” med anledning av prop. 1996/97:5 Forskning och samhälle, 3 October 1996; Gudrun Schyman m.fl. (v), “Motion 1996/97:Ub7,” med anledning av prop. 1996/97:5 Forskning och samhälle, p. 9 and 16, 3 October 1996. 1144 Jernelöv’s formal role for the Institute derived from the Swedish Government earlier appointing him Secretary General for the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (Forskningsrådsnämnden). 1145 SSC, “Mötesanteckningar från trettionde mötet med Interimstyrelsen för MDC, 22 mars 1996. Bilaga 1. Lägesrapport nr 13 till Interimstyrelsen för MDC,” p. 1, 20 March 1996; Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Rapport till styrelsemötet 18 mars 1996 om MDC:s start i Kiruna,” 12 March 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S; Bo C. Johansson/SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 7,” 18 March 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1146 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “XFX410. Mistra stöder fjärranalysprogrammet RESE,” 19 March 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1147 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Styrelsemöte 15/5, 1996, Bilaga 4. MDC Affärsplan,” 14 May 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S; Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Styrelsemöte 15/5, 1996, Bilaga 5b. MDC personal,” 14 May 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1148 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 9, den 15 maj 1996,” p. 3, 16 October 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S.
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observation activities in Solna and Kiruna. Ulf von Sydow, who had served as interim
director to establish the Centre, warned SSC’s leadership about an overlap, or a “grey
zone”, in the activities of the Centre and those of the rest of SSC’s Earth Observation
Division.1149 This overlap would become particularly visible when the Environmental
Data Centre began developing its database services, the subject of the next section.
Operating the Environmental Data Centre, 1996–1998
Standing in high places often gives us perspective – and puts us close to the sky! This
is why the space-related activities in Kiruna, on “top of the world”, have grown so
strong. Kiruna, which during its history of nearly a hundred years has looked to the
Earth for its prosperity – in the rich ore – now turns its gaze in the other direction, into
empty space….Let us build a better world together and bear in mind the wisdom of the
Sami population here in Kiruna; Earth and space are connected!1150
This quote by Ulf von Sydow, as part of the inauguration of the Environmental Data
Centre in August 1996, illustrated contemporary attempts to define Space Town
Kiruna.1151 The role of the Centre would be to weave a global network of data that
made it possible to sense and serve the environment and, thereby, to help all the
citizens of the world. International agreements were necessary but not sufficient: Only
satellite information would give substance to political declarations about the state of
the environment.1152
Accompanied by a joik performed by members of a Sami village, the Swedish
Minister of Commerce Anders Sundström and the Norrbotten County Governor
Björn Rosengren installed the sign of the Environmental Data Centre – a globe
crossed by satellite orbits – at the Space House in Kiruna.1153 Like von Sydow, both
Sundström and Rosengren emphasised the natural role of Kiruna as Europe’s centre
for space activities, where the Centre manifested “a happy combination of
1149 Original in Swedish: Att MDC etablerar sig i en nisch, som till delar redan är besatt, är ingen nyhet och behöver inte vara ett problem när vi rör oss i en expanderande bransch. Dock måste den gråzon som här finns, öppet erkännas och hanteras”. See Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Styrelsemöte 15/5, 1996, Bilaga 4. MDC Affärsplan,” p. 1, 14 May 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1150 See Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “European Topic Centre on Land Cover, ETC/LC, RESE (Remote Sensing for the Environment),” Remote Sensing, no. 28 (November, 1996): 3. 1151 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 9, den 15 maj 1996,” p. 2, 16 October 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1152 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “European Topic Centre on Land Cover, ETC/LC, RESE (Remote Sensing for the Environment).” 1153 SSC, Remote Sensing, no. 28, (November, 1996): 22.
environment, remote sensing by satellite, and information technology”, as well as the
town’s continued progression “from mine to mind”.1154
Apart from arranging the festivities, organisers and financiers of the Centre
also met to discuss its activities. Jernelöv pointed out that the Centre, which
constituted one of several parts of the Institute in Kiruna, represented the
culmination of 25 years of activities involving dozens of research facilities throughout
the Kiruna region. With this long-term perspective in mind, Jernelöv believed it
advisable for the Centre to eventually be organised as something other than a
subsidiary to SSC.1155 In the following years, the different interests involved in setting
up the Environmental Data Centre would illustrate different interpretations of how
to sense the environment as well as why this was important.
Difficulties Filling All the Roles of the Centre
SSC had received support for the Environmental Data Centre from Kiruna
Municipality on the condition that the Centre’s director must reside in Kiruna. Borg
had initially considered people already working for SSC, like Olovsson, von Sydow, or
Bjerkesjö, but each one had for a variety of reasons declined the offer to lead the
Centre.1156 Instead, the board agreed to recruit an external candidate, Olle Nåbo, to
serve as managing director. 1157 Nåbo had a suitable background in meteorology,
business development, and geographical information. He also knew many leading
people in the Land Survey, in Metria, and in research groups participating in Mistra.1158
1154 Original in Swedish: “MDC är en lycklig kombination av miljö, fjärranalys med satellit och informationsteknologi”, by Björn Rosengren. Original in English: “Kiruna’s progression ‘from mine to mind’ is part of its grandeur,”by Anders Sundström. See Björn Englund/Mistra, “Möte med Bengt Hultqvist, Anders Sundström, Björn Rosengren, Arne Jernelöv, Lars Törnman, Claes-Göran Borg, Michael Östling, Ulf von Sydow,” 20 August 1996, in Englund Mistra Notebook [MSF Anteckningsbok] 960304—961217, Björn Englund Private Collection. 1155 Björn Englund/Mistra, “Möte med Bengt Hultqvist, Anders Sundström, Björn Rosengren, Arne Jernelöv, Lars Törnman, Claes-Göran Borg, Michael Östling, Ulf von Sydow,” 20 August 1996, in Englund Mistra Notebook [MSF Anteckningsbok] 960304—961217, Björn Englund Private Collection. 1156 Interview with Ulf von Sydow, 7 February 2018; Interview with Stigbjörn Olovsson, 15 February 2018; Interview with Marie Byström, 6 July 2018. 1157 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Protokoll per capsulam från styrelsesammanträde nr 11,” 18 September 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S; Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Kommentar till förslag till föredragningslista i MIDC styrelsesammanträde nr 6,” p. 2, 21 February 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1158 Nåbo had built this personal network partly through his active role in the Swedish sport orienteering movement, first as national champion and later as organiser, which served as a forum also for people working professionally with geographical information. See Interview with Olle Nåbo, 16 January 2018; Interview with Leif Wastenson, 14 March 2017; Interview with Lars Ottoson, 20 June 2016;. See also Svenska Orienteringsförbundet, “SM Långdistans H 21,” Accessed 4 June 2018, kl. 09:40; “SM Stafett H 21.”
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When Nåbo in October 1996 met with the Environmental Data Centre board,
he argued for the Centre to become a steward for Swedish environmental databases.
Its role would be to provide these databases for researchers in the RESE programme
and eventually establish a stronger position in Europe. However, in order to do so the
Centre had to learn from the Swedish Land Survey, which recently had worked with
researchers to produce a national atlas of Sweden.1159, The Centre could similarly hope
to produce a European environmental atlas to visualise both the historical and
contemporary land cover of Europe. SSC subsequently granted the Swedish Land
Survey and the Swedish EPA formal seats on the board of the Centre.1160
The board had decided that the Centre’s database production, as well as its use
by researchers in RESE, should focus on the Baltic Sea since the European Union had
recognised Sweden’s role in establishing environmental collaborations in this
region.1161 These priorities corresponded with the Centre’s need to deliver results to
the many hands that fed it, namely Mistra, who funded RESE; the Institute that
provided the European Union’s Regional Development Fund; EEA, which had
granted it specific responsibility for land-cover data; and SSC, which used the Centre
according to the needs of its other Earth observation activities.1162
By February 1997, several of the financiers noted that the Centre struggled
with serving its numerous roles. EEA remarked that whereas other European centres
for data produced what they had been asked to do, the Swedish centre seemed to
primarily plan activities of domestic relevance. When EEA threatened to decrease its
funding to the Centre, Nåbo interpreted this as an indication that the Centre had to
explore additional national sources of revenue to become less vulnerable to the
demands of the European Union. Nåbo proposed to the Ministry of Agriculture that
environmental databases could be used to monitor which farms were being cultivated
versus idle and thus were entitled or not to European agricultural subsidies.1163 This
agricultural surveillance of European farmers could potentially become a lucrative
1159 For an overview of work on the Swedish national atlas project, in particular by the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm University, see Wastenson, Arnberg and Cramér, “Sveriges Nationalatlas.” See also Interview with Leif Wastenson, 14 March 2017. 1160 Olle Nåbo, MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 12,” 17 October 1996, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1161 Stigbjörn Olovsson/SSC, “Swedish participation in the 4th Framework Programme of the European Union,” Remote Sensing, no. 28 (November 1996): 9. 1162 SSC, AEI-52, “Affärsplan 1997 för Rymdbolaget,” p. 3, 5 December 1996, SSC-S; SSC, “Annual report 96,” p. 6, 1 March 1997, SSC-S. 1163 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 14 i Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB,” 12 February 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S.
and regular stream of revenue for the Centre but was also considered controversial at
the time.1164
Another problem came from coordinating the research programme. RESE’s
eight research groups were spread all over Sweden but their PhD students were to be
trained part-time in Kiruna and make contributions to projects that used vastly
different approaches to satellite data.1165 Ironically, one recurring problem for the
Centre was shortage of data. SSC initially planned for the Centre to get its data from
Satellitbild. By spring 1997, no larger volumes of data had been purchased as the two
subsidiaries still negotiated data prices. Some research groups in RESE were not
affected by this, like the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm
University, which had stored satellite data since the 1970s. Other groups, like Uppsala
University’s Centre for Image Analysis (Centrum för bildanalys), depended entirely on
the RESE collaboration to access data. When Stockholm offered to lend its data in
return for royalties, this frustrated their programme colleagues in Uppsala.1166 As
the Centre could not provide more data of its own, nor successfully mediate
between the groups that had or did not have data, some of the researchers began
to look elsewhere for data and eventually lost interest in RESE altogether.1167
The difficulties with the database services could jeopardise the support
from Mistra.1168 Moreover, a conflict with the Institute materialised. Not being
allowed to shape the practical work of the Centre,1169 nor granted representation at
the Centre’s board meetings,1170 Jernelöv withheld the funds provided by the
European Union’s Regional Development Fund. Despite protests by SSC,1171 despite
EEA believing more in the Centre than in the Institute,1172 and despite attempts by
the Swedish EPA to mediate, no solution could be reached for transferring funds.1173
1164 Interview with Olle Nåbo, 16 January 2018. Agricultural surveillance was especially sensitive in France where SSC’s colleague and competitor Spot Image already conducted but classified such operations out of fear for the French farmers. See Interview Philippe Delclaux, 8 January 2016. 1165 Ulf von Sydow/MDC, “RESE – Remote Sensing for the Environment. Kvartalsrapport 1/97,” 11 April 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 15 med MDC. Resultaträkning,” 26 May 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1166 Interview with Tommy Lindell, 7 June 2016. 1167 Interview with Gunilla Borgefors, 31 May 2017. 1168 MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, november 1997,” 3 November 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1169 Interview with Olle Nåbo, 16 January 2018; Interview with Thomas Palo, 1 June 2018. 1170 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MDC. Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 16 i Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB,” p. 3, 17 September 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1171 Bo C. Johansson/SSC, “MDC i det byråkratiska systemet,” 14 April 1998, SSC MDC, SSC-S. 1172 Interview with Thomas Palo, 1 June 2018. 1173 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, november 1997,” p. 3–4, 12 November 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S.
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This sapped the Centre of resources that could have enabled further development
of its databases and necessitated its turning elsewhere for funding, which would put
it on a collision course with SSC’s other Earth observation activities.
Grey Zones and New Approaches to Earth Observation
Since the early 1990s when SSC began planning how to make Kiruna into a centre for
environmental data, people had been warning about the risk of creating a grey zone
with respect to SSC’s other Earth observation activities. Olovsson at Solna’s Remote
Sensing Unit, Bjerkesjö at Satellitbild, and von Sydow at the Environmental Data
Centre had all pointed to an overlap in staff, expertise, and business areas. Lübeck and
Borg initially promoted this overlap since it allowed staff to be shifted to other Earth
observation activities in case one of the subsidiaries lacked funding. But once the
Centre became operational in autumn 1996, the question of grey zones and
overlapping activities stirred internal debate. These discussions about the tasks of the
Centre with respect to the rest of SSC also concerned long-term questions about the
technology of satellite remote sensing and the role of Earth observation with respect
to the management of environment.
As chief of SSC’s Earth Observation Division, Borg sought to mediate
between the interests of its various activities and offices in Kiruna, Stockholm, and
internationally.1174 SSC expected the Environmental Data Centre to adopt its business
plan to fit into the general well-being of the Earth Observation Division. For example,
SSC expected the Centre to avoid bargaining over prices for data from Satellitbild and
avoid making marketing materials too similar to those of existing activities, so as not
to compete for the same customers.1175 Similarly to how the Swedish Government
owned SSC and expected it to generate commercial revenue, SSC owned the
Environmental Data Centre and expected it to generate revenue. In particular, it
should serve as a “value-adding player” by using SSC’s data to develop additional
products, for which new users would pay more.1176
1174 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 15 i Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB,” 6 May 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1175 Original in Swedish: “Ett möte har ägt rum mellan Claes-Göran Borg. Lars Bjerkesjö och Olle Nåbo för att diskutera samarbete och gråzoner”. See Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, juni 1997,” p. 1–4, 4 June 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; See also Olle Nåbo/MDC, “LOTS. Fokus på MDC!,” 10 October 1997, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-03-15—1997-10-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. 1176 Original in Swedish: “Ägaren: Rymdbolagets förväntningar på MDC: Uttryckt med ovanstående begrepp så är MDC en ‘Value Adding’-aktör. Förväntningarna är i första hand att bygga upp en
Nåbo and the staff of the Environmental Data Centre took the approach that
their work, over time, would in turn change how all of SSC’s Earth Observation
Division operated. Analysing environmental change through sets of data in a database,
as the Centre did, did not rely on training in remote sensing, or any particular expertise
in satellites for that matter. Interacting with databases required training in
geographical information systems and access to a personal computer and preferably
Internet infrastructure to access and shift between the digital sets of data.
According to Nåbo, differing perceptions on the technology of Earth
observation led to differing understandings of what was being sensed with regard to
the environment. Was the ‘environment’ synonymous to descriptive terms, like ‘land
cover’, or did it also connote prescriptive meanings, like management or sustainability
of the monitored land?1177
Convinced that they were part of building the future of Earth observation,
Nåbo and the Centre’s staff decided to develop their activities “without consideration
of whether this stepped on the toes of the Centre’s neighbours or ventured onto their
territory or into grey zones”.1178 They believed that SSC was primarily interested in
developing technology, which explained why it also relied on similar groups of
customers or markets rather than finding or defining new ones.1179 For example, SSC
was primarily interested in developing space technology, which explained why it relied
on similar customers and markets. 1180 It had then built subsidiary activities, like
Satellitbild, to find uses for the enormous data archive being amassed at Kiruna. By
contrast, the Environmental Data Centre would look beyond satellite data and space
technology when building its databases of geographical information and consider
other data sources that could be integrated in the database services. Satellite Earth
observation, the Centre argued, was just one component among many when setting
up information technologies for sustainable development.1181
långsiktig verksamhet med en växande omsättning”. See Nåbo/MDC, “LOTS-möte MDC-SB-RST, 9–10 oktober 1997,” 2 November 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1177 Original in Swedish: “Ej överens med SB om skiljelinje miljö. LC = Miljö?”. See Olle Nåbo/MDC “LOTS. Fokus på MDC!” 1178 Original in Swedish: “MDC ‘tar för sig’ utan att snegla på revir eller grannars gra ̊zoner”. See MDC, “MDC Styrelsemöte no 16,” 17 September 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; MDC, “MDC-möte på Vinterpalatset,” 29 October 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1179 MDC, “Möte, planering,” 25 October 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1180 MDC, “Möte, planering,” 25 October 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1181 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MDC-möte Vinterpalatset.”
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The Centre did not gather data, like Satellitbild did when mapping the
Philippines and the Baltic states, but instead relied on already-gathered data to build
sets of data for databases. This practice included its approach to the environment in
the data. Satellitbild assembled individual scenes of data into a mosaic to depict a land
cover. For the Centre, this mosaic already existed as one of many sets of land cover,
stacked one upon the other to create time-series. Whereas Satellitbild had visualised
the environment as a map, the Centre visualised environmental change. Nåbo’s notes
from meetings describe how these geographical databases, based on Landsat and
SPOT data, enabled subsequent questions about what had caused the change that they
had made visible. Using the example of agriculture, Nåbo argued that environmental
change could be considered “artificial” if caused by humans, which in turn presumed
that the previous “nature” had been a natural environment which humans had no part
in shaping. 1182 In correspondence with other organisations, like EEA, the Centre
referred to the database time-series as a visualisation of “the state of the
environment”, without further reference to data sources constituting the environment at
any particular point in time.1183
For users of Earth observation, who in the late 1990s were mostly found in
research organisations, governmental agencies, and development consultancies, the
development of geographical databases allowed for visualisation of environmental
change, but it came with a cost: losing sight of the production that had gone into
making that environment. Prior knowledge about satellites in orbit, the gathering,
processing, interpretation, and dissemination of data, was not necessary in order to
interact with the database that stored all these data. Interaction with the environment
visualised in databases did not require knowledge about the environing technology
making that environment. New perceptions of the environment would then have
corresponded to a shift in expertise needed to interact with the data, in particular from
that of gathering and interpreting satellite remote sensing to that of using
geographical information systems. These new activities of working with Earth
observation were made increasingly apparent when the Environmental Data Centre in
winter 1997 proposed to SSC how sensing could shape a sustainable future.
1182 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “LC& LU Eurostat Luxembourg,” 21–23 January 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. 1183 MDC, “European Topic Centre on Land Cover 1999–2001,” 1 February 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S. See also MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, mars,” 6 March 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S.
Rejecting an Environmental Policy and Embracing a Manifesto
By November 1997, the divergence in perspectives on Earth observation reached a
climax when Nåbo presented plans for an environmental policy to the board of the
Environmental Data Centre.
Environmental care is an integrated part of the business. Work at the Environmental
Data Centre is guided by challenges in the UN declarations on climate, biological
diversity, forest principles, as well as the action plan Agenda 21. In our work, the
contribution to sustainable development is of equal importance to that of the
company’s profitability. Environmental goals are part of the business goals.1184
With this policy, the Centre’s staff planned to prioritise sustainability in all aspects of
its activities: in the purchase of goods, in the choice of business partners, in travel
planning, in promoting other contributions to sustainable development, and in
“encouraging those [customers] who are heading in the right direction”.1185
The board could not accept such a policy. Contrary to the Centre staff ’s claim
that “environmental goals are business goals”, SSC argued that it was business goals
that determined how environmental goals should be pursued. After the board rejected
the environmental policy,1186 it remained an unresolved issue from one board meeting
to the next for the next year.1187 All Centre staff had been part of drafting the policy,
and now they had to fundamentally reconsider how to organise the activities toward
profitability.
1184 Original in Swedish: Miljöhänsyn är en del av affären. Arbetet vid MDC styrs av utmaningarna i FN-deklarationerna om klimat, biologisk mångfald, skogsprinciperna, samt handlingsprogrammet Agenda 21. I vår verksamhet är bidraget till en hållbar utveckling av samma vikt som företagets lönsamhet. Miljömål utgör en del av affärsmålen. See MDC, “Styrelsesammanträde no 16,” 17 September 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Förslag till miljöpolicy,” 15 November 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1185 Original in Swedish: “uppmuntra de som är på väg i rätt riktning”. See Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Förslag till miljöpolicy.” See also MDC, “Styrelsesammanträde no 16,” 17 September 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1186 Original in Swedish: “Konsekvenser av att följa policyn kan vara genomgripande….bidrag till hållbar utveckling är lika viktig som företagets lönsamhet”. See Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Förslag till miljöpolicy.” For discussions of this policy, see Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 17 i Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB,” 26 November 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1187 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Investeringsprognos,” 19 January 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Miljöpolicy för MDC,” 19 January 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Diary entry 980203,” 3 February 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo, MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 22,” 2 December 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 21,” 22 September 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S.
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SSC objected not to the promotion of Earth observation as useful for
sustainability but to those activities compromising profitability. In an attempt to
bridge the discrepancies, SSC prepared a conference in Baveno, Italy, together with
other European developers of Earth observation, to craft satellite data’s identity as
Europe’s main contribution to sustainable development.1188 Borg had been invited to
Baveno as one of the keynote speakers, and he included Nåbo in planning SSC’s
contribution.1189
In spring 1998, EEA cancelled the Environmental Data Centre’s contract as
provider of European land-cover data since EEA had not received compelling
answers on how to use the databases. For the Centre this meant a loss of funding and
increased competition from other European organisations. The Centre reacted by
holding crisis meetings to reconsider how to publish its results more frequently to
underline the political importance of its work.1190
In brochures for the RESE programme, the Centre had emphasised its role in
monitoring and managing Europe’s environment, stating that “the way to an
ecologically sustainable society is through knowledge”. This knowledge had to come
from satellites because of the urgency of environmental problems and only Earth
observation data could be gathered globally and quickly enough to inform and shape
the management of Earth’s resources.1191 To make this last argument, the Centre’s
marketing materials presented an analogy between bees and satellites – just as the
former symbiotically pollinated a flower to gather nectar, so too satellites pollinated
the Earth by gathering knowledge about its surface environment (Figure 24). This was
a conflating of the natural and the technical,1192 which aimed to draw connections
between seeing the world and shaping it in a certain direction, in this case towards a
sustainable society.
1188 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Föredrag Baveno,” 18 March 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1189 European Commission, “Invitation to Earth Observation Users Conference: Baveno, ltaly,” 4March 1998, Claes-Göran Borg Private Collection.1190 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “NV, ET-LC,” 4 May 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22,Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “EEA-CPM,” 13–14 May 1998, in Nåbo MDCNotebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1191 See MDC, Remote Sensing for the Environment – RESE (Kiruna: Fabricii Tryckery AB, 1997), GunillaBorgefors Private Collection.1192 For earlier arguments on conflating the natural and the technical in marketing satellite systemsduring the 1990s, see Collins (2005): 301–24, especially 303.
Figur e 24 . Remote Sensing for the Envir onment – RESE . Quote below reads: “Space: a key to planetary management” – From Our Common Futur e, World Commission on Environment and Development.1193
The conference in Baveno, May 1998, aimed to identify Earth observation as a
political priority. In the months thereafter, Borg and Nåbo, along with
representatives of other major European Earth observation organisations,
contributed to drafting a political statement – The Baveno Manifesto.1194 This
manifesto stated that European environmental monitoring was the basis on which
Agenda 21 could be implemented, thus a continuation of previous international
environmental commitments like the Rio Conference in 1992 and more recently
the UN conference in Kyoto, December 1997.1195
When Nåbo discussed earlier drafts with Guy Duchossois, who was leading
ESA’s work in writing The Baveno Manifesto, it became apparent why this political vision
had been proposed. Duchossois explained that although satellite data should be used
for environmental monitoring, ESA and other developers of the technology had to
1193 MDC, Remote Sensing for the Environment – RESE. 1194 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Baveno,” 30 June 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. 1195 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Baveno,” 30 June 1998.
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avoid ideas that ‘environmental data’ somehow meant access free of charge, as had
been discussed in the US. The purpose of the manifesto was to convince the European
Union of the necessity to continue funding satellite remote sensing due to its political,
rather than commercial, importance.1196
In September 1998, Nåbo presented a revised environmental policy to the
board of the Centre that thereafter accepted it.1197 The change in language was subtle
but fundamental – sustainable development did not conflict with but complemented
the goal of making profits.1198 These business ideas corresponded to arguments in The
Baveno Manifesto, jointly published weeks later by SSC and all the major players of
European Earth observation industry. The Baveno Manifesto declared:
Earth observation satellites represent a key source of information on global
environmental conditions. Progress made in Europe and abroad has shown that no
global surveillance can proceed without resorting to the use of satellite observing
systems. Furthermore, technological advances in information gathering and distribution
and the computing power available to individual operators will generate tremendous
progress in the potential for environmental information from satellites. Space is and
will increasingly be a prime site for data collection and information exchange.1199
The Baveno Manifesto explained that all political entities would need access to relevant
and timely information. This provided economic advantages for industrial
competitiveness, access to markets, and information when negotiating treaties and
planning development aid, crisis intervention, or mitigation of disasters. For this latter
point, a global monitoring system would be crucial to the independence and
“environmental security” of Europe.1200
The Environmental Data Centre had initially hoped that Earth observation
would lead to changed priorities among developers and users of the technology. This
was the argument of its initial environmental policy. Instead, SSC rejected these plans
1196 Original in Swedish: “Problem: EO-Industry Gratis miljödata”. See Olle Nåbo, MDC, “Guy Duchossois, ESA,” 30 June 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. 1197 MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 22,” 2 December 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S; MDC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 21,” 22 September 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1198 MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 21,” 22 September 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S; MDC, “Miljöpolicy för MDC,” 22 September 1998, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1199 European Commission, Global Monitoring for Environmental Security. A Manifesto for a New European Initiative (Ispra: Joint research Centre, November 1998). 1200 European Commission, Global Monitoring for Environmental Security. A Manifesto for a New European Initiativ.
and requested an approach to sustainable development that primarily generated
profits. After losing parts of its former funding, the Centre agreed to this approach
and contributed actively to formulating such a vision with SSC. This is significant
because all of Europe’s major Earth observation developers shared this sentiment
which The Baveno Manifesto, quite literally, manifested.
SSC Reorganises the Earth Observation Division, 1998–1999
By spring 1998, a new era approached for Swedish space activities. A year ago, SSC
and SNSB had celebrated their 25th anniversary of working together as a state-owned
company and governmental agency. 1201 Representatives from national and
international industries, research communities, and the state apparatus could be found
among the 400 guests participating in the celebrations with pomp and circumstance
in both Stockholm and Kiruna.1202 These people, several of whom have appeared here
and in previous chapters,1203 demonstrated the reach of SSC’s and SNSB’s network and
influence.
Gunnar Hoppe, former chair of SNSB’s Remote Sensing Committee, had
recently published an article in SSC’s newsletter commemorating the technology. Over
the past decades, Swedish space activities had contributed to producing global
coverage and a continuous flow of data into geographical information systems that
currently informed societies about the Earth’s sensitive environment. “It [remote
sensing] is part of man’s everyday life now”, Hoppe asserted and added, “even if he
is not always conscious of it”.1204
In his annual report for 1997, Lübeck described how SSC still held the
leadership of Swedish satellite remote sensing: SSC was still part of the French SPOT
“family” whose new SPOT-4 satellite had secured a future stream of data to Esrange;
Satellitbild continued with its mapping projects; and the Environmental Data Centre
1201 As part of the celebration, Stefan Zenker produced a book that constituted SSC’s official history and situated its origins with the Space Technology Group in the 1960s. See Stefan Zenker, Space is our place: SSC 1972–1997: a personal memoir on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Swedish Space Corporation (Solna: Swedish Space Corporation, 1997). 1202 Håkan Hedberg/SSC, Upprymd. Personaltidning för Rymdbolagskoncernen, no. 23 (1997): 10–13. 1203 These were, in alphabetical order, Lars Bjerkessjö, Claes-Göran Borg, Gerard Brachet, Fredrik Engström, Kerstin Fredga, Roy Gibson, Gunnar Hoppe, Hans Håkansson, Stigbjörn Olovsson, Lennart Lübeck, Johan Martin-Löf, Lars Rey, Mikael Stern, Jan Stiernstedt, Leif Wastenson, Stefan Zenker and Nils G. Åsling. See Christina Carinder/SSC, “Swedish National Space Board and Swedish Space Corporation, 25th Anniversary, Grand Hôtel Winter Garden. Seating Plan,” 31 May 1997, Håkan Hedberg Private Collection. 1204 Gunnar Hoppe, “A century of continuous progress,” Remote Sensing, no. 29 (October 1997): 3–5.
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was central to developing new database uses and was coordinating RESE – Sweden’s
largest remote sensing research project – and had also been contracted by EEA to
deliver data on Europe’s land cover.1205 With both Lübeck and Fredga retiring as
leaders of SSC and SNSB,1206 there was recognition that a period had come to an end
but also hope that the new initiatives, like those in remote sensing, gave Swedish space
activities a promising future.
To maintain the relationship between SSC and SNSB, the board of SSC
appointed Lübeck as its new chairman. Lübeck created the conditions for Per Tegnér,
a former colleague from the Ministry of Industry, to be offered the job as director
general for SNSB. Dan Jangblad, an employee of SAAB, was recruited as CEO of
SSC. The board of SSC hoped that SSC and SNSB would continue with business as
usual – participating in, and supporting, each other’s activities. Soon after Jangblad
and Tegnér took over leadership in SSC and SNSB, however, they agreed that their
respective organisations should work in new and different ways.1207 This marked the
beginning of changes that would have larger implications for Swedish satellite remote
sensing.
Evaluation of Old and New Uses of Earth Observation
Since spring 1998, the Environmental Data Centre had begun developing a new
database service, initially planned for internal organisation and transportation of data
between Kiruna and Solna. As a product, now named the ‘Environmental Catalogue’
(EnviCat), the database would make archived satellite data available to users through
internet connections.1208 The Land Survey’s subsidiary, Metria, had also stated interest
in EnviCat, which Nåbo interpreted as a sign that the Centre might hope to find
customers within Sweden, rather than abroad as had become one of Satellitbild’s
1205 See Lennart Lübeck/SSC, “President’s message: A New Era for SSC,” in SSC Annual report 1997, (Stockholm: SSC, 1998), 4–5. 1206 Interview with Lennart Lübeck, conducted by Lennart Björn, 10 December 2013 and 7 January 2014, F62:2, TM; Interview with Kerstin Fredga, conducted by Nina Wormbs and Johan Gärdebo, 1 December 2017, F62:2, TM. 1207 Interview with Per Tegnér, 8 October 2017, F62:2, TM. 1208 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MDC-Metria,” 30 March 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “LACOAST – Baltic,” 18 March 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Konferenser: 15–17/6 98 Baltic Meeting Point, Uppsala,” 20 March 1998, In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.
strategies for gaining more revenues.1209 Borg thought it meant that leadership in Earth
observation technology would soon shift from who produced the data toward who
provided access to sets of data.1210 Shortly thereafter, he began discussions with the
rest of SSC’s leadership on how to adapt the Earth Observation Division to the new
internet infrastructure.1211
EnviCat was part of Centre’s growing ambition to work with information
technology, or ‘IT’ as it was called by its apostles by this time. Nåbo had participated
in various conferences on the theme of IT and read literature on how IT companies
were on the right path of development as societies evolved from farming, to industrial,
to post-industrial practices. For companies like the Environmental Data Centre, IT
meant an increased reliance on the Internet as a new infrastructure for its products,
like the database services EnviCat.1212
As Jangblad visited each of SSC’s offices to meet the staff and hear about their
work, he reached the decision that the Earth Observation Division had to be
completely re-evaluated.1213 Bjerkesjö, who had been part of establishing Satellitbild
in 1982 and served as its managing director since 1986, also recognised these writings
on the wall. In October 1998, he gathered all Satellitbild’s staff, including the
international consultants and re-sellers, to address the “since long observed negative
trend in the acquisition of orders for products and projects”. Satellitbild’s meeting
asserted the need to fundamentally reassess its business idea.1214 Bjerkesjö described
1209 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MDC-Metria,” 30 March 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. It should be added that Metria and the Land Survey had been part of planning the Environmental Data Centre since the early 1990s but despite their involvement had taking little interest so far in the Centre’s products. See MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 15,” 4 June 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Statusrapport MDC,” 4. June 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S; MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 16,” 17 September 1997, MDC Board, SSC-S. 1210 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MDC-RSS,” 7 May 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Diary entry 980615,” in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1997-10-23—1998-06-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 20,” MDC Board, SSC-S.1211 Interview Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017.1212 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Niklas Lundblad, Uppsala. ‘Spanarna på Future Street’,” 4 October 1997, inNåbo MDC Notebook 1997-03-15—1997-10-22, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC,“Inspiration, Don Tapscott,” 6 November 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21,Olle Nåbo Private Collection; cf. Don Tapscott, Growing up Digital (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998).With reference to how society moved from an industry- to an information society, Nåbo argued thatSSC had to close its image factory and re-open it as an IT-based provider of geographical databaseswere customers did not buy products but licenses to access data about environmental changes. SeeOlle Nåbo/MDC, “Styrgrupp”, 28 October 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21,Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1213 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Dan Jangblad,” 1 September 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1214 See SSC Satellitbild, “Status report. The June-September period in summary,” p. 1, 7 October 1998,SB-K. For earlier, similar verdicts, see SSC Satellitbild, “Styrelsemöte no 71,” 12 March 1998,” SB-K.
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how production of satellite data had moved to the extremes of broader as well as
deeper uses: standardised satellite images could be accessed through electronic
networks or geographical information systems for users to do their own analysis, and
users could order even more advanced products for specific purposes. In either case,
distributors like Satellitbild had to find a new role to play. 1215
There were additional aggravating aspects for SSC’s revenue from Earth
observation. Firstly, the US data policy to make Landsat data very cheap served to
push down prices for similar data, like SPOT. Secondly, partly as a consequence of
this, Spot Image considered consolidating its physical data archives to France, further
decreasing the revenue that SSC’s Earth Observation Division received from
downlinking data at Esrange and also from the SPOT data available for subsequent
use for Satellitbild or the Environmental Data Centre. Thirdly, SSC had built up three
different Earth observation operations that were specialised but not profitable. For
these reasons, Bjerkesjö lamented, something had to be done.1216
In the following weeks, SSC began reorganising its Earth Observation
Division. Satellitbild dismantled its international commitments, for example its
activities with Spot Asia that had been central to the subsidiary’s Earth observation
market in Southeast Asia since the early 1990s.1217 Borg contracted Ulf Kihlblom, the
former development consultant who in the 1980s expanded SSC’s international
projects, to evaluate the Earth Observation Division and reorganise it into something
new.1218
Since the mid-1970s, SSC had formulated a business model for Swedish remote
sensing that presumed establishing an infrastructure and controlling each step in its
maintenance and production: from Esrange that gathered satellite data to Satellitbild
that processed the data into images. 1219 The investigation in 1992, requested by
Esrange’s trade unions regarding the reorganisation of SSC’s Earth observation
activities, had remarked that SSC was one of few industries persisting in maintaining
1215 SSC Satellitbild, “Status report. The June-September period in summary,” p. 2, 7 October 1998, SSC Kiruna Archive. 1216 SSC Satellitbild, “Styrelsemöte no 71,” 12 March 1998, SB-K 1217 SSC Satellitbild, “Styrelsemöte no 73. Minutes from the 73rd board meeting of SSC Satellitbild Aktiebolag,” 5, 15 October 1998, SB-K. 1218 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Ulf Kihlblom,” 21 October 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook, 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1219 Original in Swedish: “Från ax till limpa”; cf. Board of SSC, “RI3-23. Rymdbolagets roll inomfjärranalysområdet,” p. 15, 28 April 1975; Christer Andersson/SSC, “RYA7. TELLUS –Marksegmentet,” p. 7, 8 June 1988, SSC-S; SSC, “Rymdbolagets affärsplan,” p. 4, 19 January 1995,SSC-S.
a “grain-to-bread” principle.1220 In 1998, SSC had come to the conclusion that the
main problem with this principle was that there was no bread – there were too few
customers waiting to consume the Swedish satellite data, and they were not eager
enough to pay the price.
For SSC, abandoning the grain-to-bread principle meant splitting up parts of
the previous remote sensing infrastructure. The various subsidiary activities in Solna,
Esrange, and in Kiruna’s Space House, as well as co-ownerships in numerous foreign
companies, had resulted in overlapping expertises, internal competition for similar
projects, customers, and financiers but without reconciling different aims with how to
use Earth observation. These subsidiary activities were now consolidated into a single
organisation for Earth observation.1221 In this reorganisation, Kihlblom argued for
services similar to those of the Environmental Data Centre, which was to provide
users with databases of geographic information.1222 The reorganisation of SSC also
stimulated discussions on collaboration between the Environmental Data Centre and
Metria. Together they discussed means for setting up EnviCat as a new business idea,
potentially also as a new company.1223
The Environmental Data Centre as Basis for a New Subsidiary
In January 1999 Kihlblom presented the evaluation made by him and several of SSC’s
staff. In brief, it suggested that all of SSC’s Earth Observation Division be remade as
an IT-based company that provided users with information technologies. 1224 The
1220 Original in Swedish: “Principen ‘Ax till limpa’ innebär att en avdelning/division, eller ett bolag äger eller innehåller en hel produktionskedja från rå-material till färdig produkt….Från satellitbilds sida ser man fördelar med ax-till-limpa genom att det blir lättare att säkerställa rätt kvalitet på indata”. See ROMB Quality Management, Konsultrapport i fråga om omorganisation av Rymdbolagskoncernen, 22–23. 1221 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Styrgrupp,” 28 October 1998. 1222 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Ulf Kihlblom,” 21 October 1998. 1223 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Swedsurvey,” 18 November 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo, MDC, “Avtal återförsäljarroll – Metria,” 18 November 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo, MDC, “MDC-Metria Vision”, 19 November 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21 Olle Nåbo Private Collection; MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 23,” 16 February 1999, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “MLL. Organisations- och personalmeddelande,” 13 December 1998, In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “CLD Styrgrupp Gävle,” 3 December 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Metria-SB-MDC. Produktion-Utveckling-Marknadsföring,” 15 December 1998, in Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection. 1224 Ulf Kihlblom, “Översyn av Rymdbolags-koncernens fjärranalysverksamhet. Förslag till åtgärder för att öka lönsamheten,” 27 January 1999, SSC-S. See also Anders Lundgren/MDC, “EO-översyn: Marknadsförutsättningar inom miljö. Rapport 3.1,” 6 January 1999, SSC-S; Christer Kjörneberg/SSC Satellitbild, “Marknad Telecom: Analys av den ekonomiska marknadspotentialen inom användarområdet samhällsbyggnad/infrastruktur,” 6 January 1999, SSC-S.
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evaluation, in brief, argued that SSC reorganise Earth observation around the activities
currently conducted by the Environmental Data Centre.1225
By the late 1990s, the Environmental Data Centre had lost most of its initial
sources of revenue. The Institute continued to obstruct the transfer of funding from
the European Union to the Centre.1226 Mistra and the research groups had agreed that
the Centre should no longer have any role in coordinating the RESE programme. And
without support from Mistra, it became harder to gain contracts from EEA to map
Europe’s land cover.1227
SSC sought to redefine Earth observation toward new uses, which involved IT
infrastructure. For this reason, SSC planned to place its servers in Stockholm where
access to the Internet would be more regular than in Kiruna.1228 Discussions with
other European developers of Earth observation suggested that the Internet would
further shift the consumption of geographical data from specially ordered data to data
accessed as an integrated part of navigational services. The new issue would be, as
one presenter in these discussions phrased it, “I am here, show me environment”.1229
In September 1999, SSC launched its new subsidiary, Satellus AB, based primarily
around the business idea of providing IT-based geographical information services.
Satellus kept the Environmental Data Centre’s logo but without further references to
SSC, which also fuelled speculations that SSC eventually considered selling it.1230 Spot
Image and the French space agency CNES had its shares in Satellitbild converted into
corresponding ownership in Satellus, so as to retain the institutional ties to the French
SPOT family, which had served as a backbone for SSC’s aims to commercialise satellite
remote sensing since the late 1970s.1231
1225 Interview with Olle Nåbo, 16 January 2018; Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017, F62:2, TM. 1226 MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, november 1998,” 11 November 1998, SSC-S. 1227 MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 22,” 2 December 1998, SSC-S; MDC, “Statusrapport för MDC, november 1998,” 11 November 1998, SSC-S. 1228 MDC, “Styrelsemöte no 25. Ärenden föranledda av omorganisation av Rymdbolagets fjärranalysverksamhet,” 17 June 1999, SSC-S. 1229 SSC, “SAI: CEO EO Market,” p. 22, 22 April 1999, SSC-S. For more on this shift in geographical knowledge during the 1990s but with regards to geographical positioning systems, see Rankin (2016), 16, 20, 255–257. 1230 Hans Rasch, conversation with Lennart Björn, 26 April 2012, F62:2, TM. 1231 Satellus, “Protokoll från Styrelsemöte no 26 i Satellus AB (tidigare Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna AB),” 26 August 1999, SSC-S.
Summary
Throughout the 1990s, SSC pursued the establishment and maintenance of the
Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna. It did so as part of continuing its satellite
remote sensing activities, or Earth observation as these activities were increasingly
referred to as starting in the early 1990s.
Why did SSC establish the Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna? Although
SSC had been successful in writing about the environmental merits of satellite remote
sensing, governmental and regional forces wanted to break up SSC’s satellite remote
sensing infrastructure into several private, more local companies. These struggles also
illustrated differing views on the role of Kiruna as Sweden’s space town.
To counteract the disassembly of its remote sensing infrastructure, SSC
reorganised its different remote sensing operations into the Earth Observation
Division, which directly linked offices in Kiruna and Solna and enabled SSC to move
revenue from each business area according to its surplus to others according to their
need. By doing so, SSC used income at Esrange to strengthen its subsidiary Satellitbild
to maintain its infrastructural principle of grain-to-bread where each step of gathering
and disseminating satellite data depended upon and strengthened subsequent steps.
To gain regional support for this strategy, SSC actively sought to include various
regional organisations to establish the Environmental Data Centre as a collaborative
effort.
The Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna grew out of a growing recognition
internationally that satellite remote sensing had to find a new rationale beyond the
political struggles which had fuelled space technology until the end of the Cold War.
As the European Union took increasing interest in the technology, SSC and SNSB
wrote about Swedish satellite remote sensing as a means of monitoring and managing
Europe’s environment, in particular its land cover. The Swedish Government found
the technology useful for not only sensing Europe’s environment but also shaping its
boundaries, integrating the Baltic region closer to Europe through sensing and
institutional collaboration.
In particular, SSC’s monitoring of the Baltic region contributed to including
the Baltic region in EEA’s Coordination of the Information on the Environment
(CORINE). This in turn stimulated subsequent negotiations on political
collaborations between the Baltic states and the European Union from 1993 onwards.
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So how did Swedish satellite remote sensing in the Baltic region influence plans
for the Centre? SSC’s environing of the Baltic region was an intentional effort to
reassert the Baltics as a European region through environmental knowledge at a time
when the European Union was rapidly expanding in economic and geopolitical
importance. The Environmental Data Centre developed plans for its funding from
both national and European organisations where it emphasised the role that
environmental knowledge had for integrating the European territory. Since SSC and
other organisations supporting the Environmental Data Centre continuously argued
for it as a continuation of Baltic and European integration, it managed to secure
funding from both the European Union and research foundations that the Swedish
Government had recently established for environmental and technological
development.
SSC’s subsidiary Satellitbild also collaborated intensely with the governments
of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to produce base maps. In addition to severing Baltic
mapping from prior Russian cartography, the base map projects shaped the technology
of satellite remote sensing away from previous practices of assembling remotely
sensed data scene-by-scene toward establishing geographical information systems that
relied on continuously environing. Through re-takes of scenes, and by organising
these into numerous sets of data, it became possible to produce time series that made
visible environmental change of a region over time. These ideas about Earth
observation as a means of building geographical databases became influential for
plans on how the Environmental Data Centre would operate.
Although environmental concerns had worked to provide the Environmental
Data Centre with financing, it overlooked different perspectives on its use, which led
to numerous conflicts. The regional groups in Kiruna sought to influence the activities
of the Centre, the research communities had difficulties collaborating, and the staff
of the Centre pursued new uses of Earth observation than those intended by SSC.
Most notably, the relationship between monitoring and management in Earth
observation data illustrated discrepancies between the claims of how it served
sustainable development and SSC’s need to generate revenue from Earth observation
activities.
During the late 1990s, SSC evaluated its Earth observation activities and
reorganised these into one single subsidiary company, Satellus. By now the Earth
observation technology had shifted from selling data to providing access to a whole
database. Whereas satellite data had previously been prioritised, in the databases it
constituted but one of several forms of geographical information. Having initially
secured a central role for environing Europe, the Environmental Data Centre was
eventually discredited by the EEA as being both infrastructurally and institutionally
peripheral.
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Conclusions
This thesis addresses the role of technology in the making of environment, in
particular how Swedish satellite remote sensing functioned as an environing technology
through activities of sensing, writing, and shaping environments. ‘Environment’ refers
to the historical outcome of an activity – environing – that produces new environments
and contributes to new perceptions about what the environment is. I have studied the
role of Swedish satellite remote sensing as an environing technology used by experts
during the late twentieth century when sensing the Earth’s surface, when writing about
changes of the surface, and when using the sensing and writing to subsequently shape
that surface.
I have historicised Sweden’s role in developing this technology that now is used
both to manage environments on a global scale and to provide an understanding of
what the environment is. I have primarily focused on the activities of Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts that were part of national institutions, in particular the state-
owned company SSC and the governmental agency SBSA, later renamed SNSB. I have
studied SSC’s optical satellite data used to sense land cover, since it was the
specialisation that dominated Swedish satellite remote sensing activities during the
study period 1969–2001.
The chapters pivot around activities that illustrate intentions as well as
adaptations significant for establishing and maintaining Swedish satellite remote
sensing during the late twentieth century: the international negotiations on what
remote sensing is and how it should be used; the institutional establishment of
Swedish remote sensing as part of SSC’s activities; the infrastructural expansion to
gather, interpret, and disseminate satellite remote sensing data in northern Sweden;
the sensing of the Chernobyl meltdown and Sweden’s role as a neutral nation;
the mapping of the Philippines and Sweden’s role as an aid nation; the Rio Conference
and Sweden’s role in environmental diplomacy; the regional collaborations between
re-independent Baltic states with respect to an expanding European Union, and lastly;
the reorganisation of SSC’s remote sensing activities shortly before the turn of the
millennium.
In this concluding chapter, I reiterate findings of the previous chapters by
answering the two main questions of the thesis. Firstly, how did Swedish satellite
remote sensing activities contribute to the making of environment? And how were
these activities part of sensing, writing about, and shaping environments? Secondly,
why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these activities? For each
of the chapters, I refined the two main questions to address specific aspects of the
cases that I studied. After answering these questions, I discuss environing technology
as a theoretical framework and its contributions to the history of technology and
environmental history. The conclusions are followed by an epilogue to the particular
Swedish satellite remote sensing activities that I have been studying.
How did Swedish satellite remote sensing activities contribute to the
making of environment?
Swedish experts played an at times significant role in establishing a relationship
between satellite remote sensing and its particular uses, of which the environmental
uses are the main historical product. Different groups of experts have not only used
satellites and remote sensing data but also contributed to describing, in speech and
writing, how the technology should be interpreted. Due to those descriptions, sensing
was explicitly referred to as environmental and understood as a means for improving the
sensed environment.
In Chapter 2, I demonstrated how SSC used its technoscientific expertise to
aid the Swedish government in asserting Sweden’s role as a non-aligned state at
international forums. Importantly, SSC’s experts were able to influence definitions of
the technology that the UN General Assembly later adopted as the “Principles
Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space”. In particular, arguments about
sensing as environmentally beneficial, for example with respect to monitoring pollution
in the Baltic Sea, proved useful for both asserting unrestricted sensing of the Earth’s
surface and avoiding regulations about ownership of the technology. Swedish satellite
remote sensing played a significant role in shifting Swedish environmental diplomacy
in the UN debate from discussing sensed states towards focusing on sensed
environments, and how the use of satellites could be environmentally beneficial.
The relationship between how satellite remote sensing monitored and
managed the Earth’s environment was not self-evident to the Swedish satellite remote
sensing experts but a historical outcome of environing by SSC and others, of sensing
and writing about the environment. SSC’s activities contributed to defining the sensed
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surface of the Earth not as part of surveillance of a sovereign territory that belonged
to this or that state, but as a surface that was part of an environment shared by all
countries.
In Chapter 3, I demonstrated how Swedish satellite remote sensing of
the nuclear meltdown at t h e Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, April
1986, had significance for international debates about the technology. SSC and its
subsidiary Satellitbild managed to do this by including new expertise, most notably
journalists of the Space Media Network, to gather, interpret, and disseminate
data about the Chernobyl meltdown in a format adapted to international
newspapers and news channels. Their satellite imagery of the Chernobyl meltdown
became immensely influential for the international debate about the state of the Soviet
Union and also informed nationalist movements that began as environmental
advocacy groups and later scaled up the criticism of contaminated places to lambast
the Soviet system in its entirety.
Swedish satellite remote sensing marked the beginning of a new civilian use
of the technology and heralded an end to the superpower secrecy that had
characterised the technology’s Cold War space-race origins. From 1988 onward, SSC’s
subsidiaries promoted newsgathering from space as a means of uncovering secrets of
governments and detecting, even averting, environmental disasters globally.
Importantly, the Soviet Union used this rhetoric about its own remote sensing
satellites to leverage environmental monitoring as a tool for sustaining rather than
criticising Soviet rule.
In Chapter 4, I demonstrated how SSC’s mapping in the Philippines provided
one of the first explicit applications of the term ‘sustainable development’. What
began as a development project meant to aid the new government in conducting a
land reform gradually changed emphasis to promote satellite remote sensing as a tool
for sustainable development, in particular in the context of deforestation as an
environmental problem. The Swedish satellite remote sensing activities used SPOT
data to produce a mosaic surface of the Philippines as well as a series of maps of the
country. This in turn shaped legislation on how to use that surface, in particular as
part of reforestation policies.
In the following years, the relevance of satellite remote sensing for sustainable
development moved from the specific setting of mapping land cover in the Philippines
to international conferences that would influence policy after the end of the Cold
War. This is important for understanding how technologies came to be taken for
granted in subsequent international debates about the sustainable development of the
environment.
In Chapter 5, I demonstrated how Swedish satellite remote sensing activities
at the end of the Cold War adapted to new uses. Most notably, SSC explicitly
emphasised the environmental purpose of satellite remote sensing for the growing
European Community and participated in an international effort to rename the
technology ‘Earth observation’ – a shift in terminology related more to societal
changes than new technology or uses. SSC used both the American and the Soviet
ambitions to assert Swedish technoscientific expertise in the Baltic Sea, increasingly
writing about this region as a European environment. Since the European Union
opened environmental collaborations to non-members, SSC’s activities had
geopolitical importance for shaping the extent of the European territory and the place
of the Baltic region in it.
The new Swedish Liberal Conservative Government drew heavily upon the
Swedish satellite remote sensing activities for re-writing Swedish foreign policy. In
particular, the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office successfully attempted to use Earth
observation during the Rio Conference in 1992 as a new form of Swedish environmental
diplomacy via satellite. The new governmental support led to plans for the
Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna as one of the areas where Sweden
could develop new industries and commerce producing European environmental
knowledge.
In Chapter 6, I demonstrated how various Swedish satellite remote sensing
activities contributed to setting up databases of Europe’s environment, in particular
for changes in land cover. SSC participated in these activities through Satellitbild’s
collaborations with the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to
produce base maps as part of asserting the re-independent republics after the
Soviet rule. These projects contributed to shaping environmental and
cartographic information that institutionally became part of the EEA and
eventually the European Union, further demarcating the Baltic states from their
former Russian dependence. In the process, SSC expanded European environmental
databases to include the Baltic region as its new northern periphery.
Through Satellitbild’s base map activity, which involved re-takes upon re-takes
of satellite data over the Baltic states, SSC developed new ideas about how to use
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Earth observation to continually sense the same region, saturating users with data that
could be organised as sets of data to depict environmental change. These ideas
became influential for how SSC later established the Environmental Data Centre in
Kiruna and for promises to continually provide the EEA with databases of Europe’s
environment.
Why did the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts conduct these
activities?
The Swedish satellite remote sensing activities illustrate events on vastly varying scales
of both place and time. Acts of sensing the Earth’s surface, writing for international
debates, and shaping policy interacted with dreams of people in small Swedish towns
whose main hope was to maintain their jobs. My second question, therefore, concerns
why the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts were engaged in these activities. In
particular, I have illustrated different and differing intentions for the Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts as well as adaptations along the way to the unintended
outcomes of their activities.
In Chapter 2, I demonstrated how remote sensing developed from numerous
initiatives into state-led space activities. For the Swedish Government, satellite remote
sensing became one of the means for Swedish industry to integrate with European
markets. The Swedish Remote Sensing Committee, which mobilised researchers,
governmental agencies, and industrialists, was also greatly influenced by similar
activities in the US, which importantly inspired an initial emphasis on optical satellite
data, environmental applications, and American terminology to define ‘remote
sensing’.
During the 1970s, SSC and SBSA used their central positions in the Swedish
Remote Sensing Committee to outmanoeuvre other organisations developing satellite
remote sensing, for example the Swedish Defence Research Institute, and started
staking the technology’s claim against other sensing tools, in particular the Swedish
Land Survey’s aerial photography. When other national organisations obstructed SSC’s
plans, it used transnational collaborations to demonstrate its technoscientific
expertise, for example French-Swedish monitoring in the Baltic Sea. SSC also used the
recently nationalised European facility Esrange, near Kiruna in northern Sweden, to
establish a Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure, first for American Landsat
data and then together with the French space agency CNES for the French SPOT
programme.
During the 1970s, the Swedish Government also increased its interest in
remote sensing since the technology had become relevant for foreign policy, with
respect to environmental regulation. As part of the growing North-South resource
struggle between developed and developing countries, Sweden initially sided with the
developing countries, arguing that satellite remote sensing risked dividing the world
into sensing and sensed states. The Swedish remote sensing experts used Swedish
foreign policy to further strengthen the roles of SSC and SBSA, and secure more
mandate and money for the Remote Sensing Committee.
While the Swedish Government had intended to use these organisations to
develop stronger international regulations, the emphasis during the 1970s shifted to
strengthen Sweden’s national remote sensing capacity. Swedish environmental
diplomacy and foreign policy shifted from regulation of technology toward promoting
regulation through technology. Sweden’s shift in foreign policy to favour remote sensing
corresponded to Sweden itself gradually becoming one of the sensing states. It is
important to note that SSC’s technoscientific recommendations added arguments to
this effect until the judicial stance changed in favour of sensing. The Swedish
Government’s changing priorities for environmental diplomacy and remote sensing
during the 1970s can be traced to SSC’s cumulative national control of new activities
of gathering, processing, and eventually disseminating satellite remote sensing data.
In Chapter 3, I demonstrated how Swedish satellite remote sensing by the mid-
1980s had gained a central role in gathering, interpreting, and disseminating satellite
data but so far had only marginally found uses for the technology. SSC’s development
of a French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure had led it to establish the
subsidiary Satellitbild that also provoked initiatives from both the French subsidiary
Spot Image and the Swedish Land Survey to limit the market for Swedish satellite
remote sensing. Under these circumstances, Satellitbild felt compelled to collaborate
closely with new users, like journalists at Space Media Network, in order to swiftly
find new uses for the technology. The sensing of Chernobyl and its subsequent
dissemination to media throughout the Western world illustrates how new expertise
altered intended uses for satellite remote sensing.
Among various attempts to stir public debate about the technology, the sensing
of the Chernobyl meltdown in April 1986 stands out as the starkest demonstration.
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SSC promoted the sensing of Chernobyl as a way for a relatively small, neutral country
to use civilian satellites for surveillance of the superpowers. Swedish satellite remote
sensing experts adopted rhetoric from Swedish foreign policy about non-alignment to
promote their activities as a unique application of the remote sensing technology at
the time. The role of Swedish satellite remote sensing as non-aligned surveillance was
not an isolated instance but built on previous ideas about Sweden’s role in world
politics and would influence subsequent Swedish activities later in the 1980s and early
1990s. After the sensing of Chernobyl in 1986, SSC and Satellitbild had earned
international recognition as an impartial broker in satellite images. This would
influence how SSC and Satellitbild sought to find new uses for their expertise abroad.
In Chapter 4, I demonstrated how the challenges faced by Swedish satellite
remote sensing experts within Sweden influenced the nation’s use of satellite remote
sensing beyond Sweden. When Swedish governmental agencies did not increase their
use of satellite data, despite growing media coverage about the technology, SSC began
selling its expertise as a form of development aid.
SSC’s mapping of the Philippines from 1987 to 1988 was the first significant
project where SSC made use of new types of expertise, notably that of development
consultants, to find, define, and finance projects. As these development projects
brought new revenue to Satellitbild, it continued establishing an international network
of consultants for exporting Swedish satellite remote sensing expertise. Importantly,
the mapping of the Philippines was one of the first projects to sense an entire country
using satellite remote sensing. The Swedish Government, the Government of the
Philippines, and aid financiers all made subsequent references to the Swedish satellite
remote sensing projects in order to advance their own agendas. Thereby, new political
rationales developed over time for the technology, most notably arguments about
satellite remote sensing being a tool for achieving sustainable development.
In Chapter 5, I demonstrated how the Swedish satellite remote sensing experts
initially sought to maintain the centrality of the Swedish infrastructure by making
Kiruna a passage point for several of the new satellites being launched in the early
1990s. With the end of the Cold War, as space technology lost its previous military
rationale, SSC shifted its strategy toward increasingly promoting the
environmental benefits of remote sensing. It did so by promoting Kiruna as a
centre for environmental data and by promoting satellite remote sensing
activities in the Baltic region as a northern contribution to the growing ambitions
of the European Community to gather geographical information in the
management of Europe’s environment.
Swedish satellite remote sensing activities in the Baltic region built upon the
American and the Soviet initiatives by converting their own satellites from belligerent
to benign environmental uses. SSC contributed to these American and Soviet
campaigns by gathering national support for its plans to establish an environmental
data centre. This was part of a strategy to first secure money and mandate from the
Swedish Government before approaching the EEA and the European Community.
Importantly, this resulted in SNSB favouring optical over radar data, akin to how
SNSB in the past had favoured satellite sensing over aerial photography as part of
promoting SSC’s activities over those of the competing Swedish Land Survey.
SSC’s strategic planning became significant when a new Swedish Liberal
Conservative Government in 1991 adopted arguments about environmental uses for
satellites as part of reorganising Sweden’s role in environmental diplomacy. Instead
of international regulations, Sweden began promoting technology as a means of
solving environmental problems. This argument also became relevant for how the
Swedish Government reshaped Swedish environmental diplomacy prior to
and following the Rio Conference, 1992. Through adaptation to new political
realities, nationally and internationally, SSC was able to secure new financing for
its satellite remote sensing, which it increasingly referred to as ‘Earth observation’.
In Chapter 6, I demonstrated how SSC’s strategising served to maintain its
satellite remote sensing during the 1990s by expanding it toward more explicit
environmental purposes. This also illustrated how SSC primarily intended to gain
revenue from politicising its activities, rather than finding uses for the technology that
could have diminished its control over it.
One of the examples of this was the governmental attempts to privatise parts
of the Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure, first the subsidiary Satellitbild
and secondly the receiving station Esrange. SSC had to fight off subsequent attempts
by Esrange’s trade unions and Kiruna Municipality to assert autonomy over parts of
the Swedish space activities. Part of why this succeeded was because SSC could
appease proponents of an autonomous “Space Town Kiruna” by setting up the
Environmental Data Centre as a joint enterprise that primarily benefitted employment
in the Kiruna region.
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By late 1990s, the Earth observation technology had shifted from selling data
to providing access to whole databases. In these databases, satellite data constituted
but one of several forms of geographical information. This also marked the decreased
interest by SSC in the technology and hence the evaluation and reorganisation of all
its Earth observation activities into a new subsidiary, Satellus, which focused less on
space technology than its predecessors and more on the bright future of the Internet
and IT-based companies.
To Study Both Technology and Environment
How has the theoretical framework of environing technology contributed to
understanding the history of technology and environment? As Sara Pritchard notes,
historians’ analytical projects are also products of the historical context in which they
work. 1232 The theoretical framework of environing technology emerged alongside
historical research that challenges the boundaries between what is nature and
technology. I here contemplate how the thesis has contributed to that field of inquiry.
In the paper most seminal for my own work, Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormbs
propose that environing technology can be broken down and analysed as activities of
sensing, writing, and shaping the environment. Apart from how this methodologically
structures an analysis of environing, it is also an attempt to demonstrate why the
environment should not only be considered as a crisis concept but one that has a
productive history, often involving technologies. 1233 I demonstrate how Swedish
satellite remote sensing experts not only used satellites for sensing but also wrote
about the technology for the purpose of identifying it as a political imperative.
Politicising the technology – for example the role of remote sensing for achieving
sustainable development – was important so as to secure governmental support and
funding, but it also contributed to shaping perceptions about the environment. One
often repeated argument by the experts in this story is that satellite monitoring of the
environment led to better management of that environment. SSC contributed to such
statements in order to secure funding for its activities, but over time it also fed
expectations that environmental monitoring should also be free, which effectively
undermined commercial ambitions for selling the remote sensing data.
1232 Pritchard (2014), 244, n92. Similar to how Pritchard thank Djahane Salehabadi for this reminder, I pay my respects forward to Pritchard. 1233 Sörlin and Wormbs (2018), 16–17.
This has been important to analyse because it allows us to historically
understand that those who in the 1960s argued that remote sensing provided
knowledge about the environment also contributed to the perception of that data as
environmental data, as opposed to some other kind. Subsequent activities of writing
about the technology as a means not only of monitoring but also of managing the
environment were central to formulating a political imperative for doing both, where
previously this did not exist. Historical analysis can remedy the taken-for-grantedness
about monitoring and management by instead demonstrating how monitoring also
involved making environments, which had both intended and unintended
consequences.
Satellite remote sensing is a practice that also involves people in the making of
environments. I have demonstrated this by drawing connections between how sensing
is related to activities of writing about that sensing, which in turn is related to the
shaping of environments. According to David Lowenthal, this line of inquiry is
characteristic of historical work that sees knowledge of society and knowledge of
science as related. Finding and formulating this unity of knowledge is not a novel idea,
but it has gained renewed relevance since the Earth’s surface is increasingly recognised
to be impacted, even created, by human agency. For Lowenthal, remote sensing is
something that allows us to monitor how we humans and countless other living forms
are part of environing each other, in symbiotic and parasitic relations that make it
necessary to think of culture and nature as having blurred lines with respect to
knowledge-making. 1234 This study contributes historical examples that trace many
different motives for building, working with, and maintaining satellite remote sensing
that over time can be said to have added to knowledge-making about the environment.
It is relevant to see environmental knowledge-making as nourished by motives that
were not environmental but better understood as social, economic, political, or
ideological, because some human agencies are at play while others are not. In brief,
the historical setting illustrates that other ambitions are at play when environments
are made.
The Swedish satellite remote sensing activities depicted in this thesis illustrate
how, during the course of the late twentieth century, people were involved in various
activities of producing and using satellite data that over time added up to a global
1234 David Lowenthal, Quest for the Unity of Knowledge (New York: Routledge Earthscan, 2019), 192–95.
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digital environment. The activity, the verb of remote sensing, had given rise to the
digital planet, the noun. In the process, the activity and expertise changed from
producing remote sensing data about specific parts of the Earth’s surface toward
interacting with geographical information on an aggregated scale – literally, Earth
observation. The paradox of this process is that as satellite data became increasingly
ubiquitous and used, the data diminished in visibility for the people using it. Data
became synonymous with the environment. I contribute with examples of how
satellites, like SPOT, were used to repeatedly monitor certain parts of the Earth’s
surface, like the Baltics, and I demonstrate how practices in working with satellite data
changed, for example the shift from assembling mosaics of data towards re-taking and
adding data into databases to be accessed digitally from anywhere with an Internet-
connection. This shift not only makes for more efficient use, it changes the expertise
needed to use the data and thereby the perceptions about what the technology and
the sensed environment are.
Two implications can be drawn about media and satellites regarding
environing. As William Rankin points out, present-day interaction with geographical
information takes place at a personal level, for example through smartphones, and
where navigation in a global digital environment since the end of the twentieth
century has acquired a taken-for-grantedness.1235 At the same time, as Lisa Ruth Rand
demonstrates, the remote sensing satellites that produce the global digital environment
have shaped the orbital environment around the Earth where debris breaks off and
builds up to the point that it hinders new satellites from launching into that orbital
space.1236 If remote sensing satellites can no longer move in the environment that they
have environed through millions of orbits around the Earth, or can no longer be
interacted with by the humans below, this might also end a relationship to geographical
information that we at present have come to take for granted.
The centrality of remote sensing for twentieth century environmental
knowledge, according to Sabine Höhler and Nina Wormbs, present the historian with
the challenge of interpreting sensory data so as to situate how we know what we know.
They also argue that as you scale up from the local to the global, you do not just get
more environmental knowledge but at times also grasp a different, unintended,
1235 Rankin (2016), 295–96. 1236 Rand (2016), 13–20.
environment.1237 I observed this challenge when I studied how SSC’s staff interpreted
sensory data in large-scale mapping projects during the mid-1980s. Those
experiencing satellite remote sensing as part of fieldwork had to negotiate the
remotely sensed data with other expertises in ways that altered the mapping
classification. Other examples include the experiences of sensing the Baltic states
during the 1990s, which involved using SPOT to repeatedly gather data over the same
region. This in turn stimulated thinking about the Baltic region as a digital
environment that SSC should continually sense as part of producing datasets that
enabled non-experts to begin using the technology for understanding environmental
change. With these and other novel examples, my thesis contributes to understanding
how scaling between different levels of interpreting the data had historical significance
for new understandings about both the environment under study and the technologies
being used for the study.
The sources used for analysis were pieced together as part of this study on
Swedish satellite remote sensing. Addressing how to archive and interpret historical
sources about remote sensing activities, and other forms of work with sensed data, is
necessary for future studies of how perceptions of the environment shifted
historically. This is worthwhile because the history of making and perceiving
environments is the history about how we came to be who we are. And that historical
knowledge is one of the means by which we can hope to take future responsibility for
our environing.
1237 Höhler and Wormbs (2017), 272-73.
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Epilogue – A Swedish Space Odyssey, 2001
Most of the people interviewed for this thesis provided vastly differing insights about
Swedish satellite remote sensing, but they all shared perplexity over one question: “If
satellite remote sensing was so important, how come it was difficult to make money
off it?” This has not been the question driving this study, but I address it all the same
in closing this story, starting with a brief summary of how SSC’s remote sensing
activities ended.
After SSC in 1999 reorganised the Earth Observation Division into the new
subsidiary Satellus, it soon looked for options to sell it.1238 While providing Sweden’s
largest database of geographical data at the time, Satellus was deep in debt. 1239
Negotiations for selling Satellus, with bids from the Swedish Land Survey and the
Finnish IT-company Novo, focused on price but also on the buyer ensuring
employment for the staff in Kiruna after SSC dismantled its own Earth observation
activities.1240 However, as financial markets plummeted in spring 2000, the IT-based
Novo pulled out of negotiations and the Swedish Land Survey offered far less for
Satellus than SSC had initially hoped.1241
By autumn 2000, SSC faced two options for how to reorganise its Earth
observation activities. The first option had SSC dismantling its activities in Kiruna but
keeping Satellus personnel in Solna, who could continue working as they always had
with funding directly from the Swedish government and other agencies, although it
1238 Interview with Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017; Interview with Olle Nåbo, 16 January 2018. 1239 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “981113: R-LG,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23 - 1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “981217. FA-SG,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1998-06-23—1999-11-21, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Satellus, “Styrelsemöte no 27, Verksamhetsrapport för SatellusAB, juni- september 1999,” 8 September 1999, SSC-S.1240 Olle Nåbo/MDC, “2000-01-14. Meeting with Novo in Helsingfors,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “2000-01-28. RB-LG,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Dan Jangblad/SSC, “Annual meeting, 2000-03-12,Alliansdiskussioner m a p Satellus AB,” 2. 8 March 2000, SSC-S; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “Novo Group.Indicative offer. 2000-03-03,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26, Olle Nåbo PrivateCollection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, “2000-03-01. RB-LG,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; SSC, “Styrelsemöte no 134,” 16 March 2000, SSC-S; OlleNåbo/MDC, “2000-04-13. Meeting with LMV/Metria at Arlanda,” In Nåbo MDC Notebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26, Olle Nåbo Private Collection; Olle Nåbo/MDC, ”2000-04-25,” In Nåbo MDCNotebook 1999-11-22—2000-04-26, Olle Nåbo Private Collection.1241 SSC, “Styrelsemöte no 136,” 6 June 2000, SSC-S; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Measures regardingSatellus AB,” 8 June 2000, SSC-S; SSC, “Styrelsemöte, extra,” 27 June 2000, SSC-S; C,“Verksamhetsrapporter 1 juni - 15 augusti 2000,” 15 August 2000, SSC-S; Satellus, “Extramöte,” 25October 2000, SSC-S; Satellus, ”Minute meetings, no. 32 (2000-06-20),” SSC-S; SSC, “Styrelsemötenno 140,” 19 October 2000, SSC-S; SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsemöten no 139,” 5. 31 August 2000,SSC-S.
should be added that SNSB’s priorities had continued to diverge from those of SSC.1242
The second option had SSC selling all of Satellus to the Swedish Land Survey.
The first option meant leaving the Space House in Kiruna empty, which SSC feared
could lead to public debate about prioritising staff in Solna over those working in
Kiruna. The second option meant that the Land Survey could keep some of the
operations in Kiruna running but that it would also take over SSC’s earth observation
staff in Solna. To preserve the rest of its space activities, most notably those at Esrange,
the board of SSC considered it wisest to sell all of Satellus to the Land Survey.1243
SSC’s dismantling of the Earth observation activities turned out worse than
initially anticipated. Satellus’ debt continued to grow due to reduced sales of satellite
images, the cancellation of several mapping projects, and because the EEA rejected
Satellus’ bid for a new contract to function as a European centre for land cover data.
This was particularly humiliating not only because SSC’s Environmental Data
Centre had been one of the largest centres in Europe but also because Satellus was
the only applicant for the new contract.1244
SSC, the Swedish Land Survey, and Satellus signed their final agreement on
1 December 2000.1245 In the end, SSC would pay the Land Survey a large sum,
over SEK 43 million, as part of restoring the financial balance of Satellus.1246 In
the following weeks, SSC also presented a new business plan that was to guide Swedish
space activities during the first decade of the new millennium. Earth observation,
it stated, had been dismantled since these activities had been shown to be
“too far removed from the corporation’s main activity”, which was to
develop space technology.1247 “I feel confident”, Borg wrote in a conciliatory comment to
1242 See Håkan Olsson, Dnr 5.1–36/00. Till Generaldirektör Per Tegnér,” 24 March 2000, Håkan Olsson Private Collection. See also Interview with Per Tegnér, 8 October 2017, F62:2, TM; Interview Claes-Göran Borg, 28 November 2017. 1243 SSC, “Styrelsemöte no 141,” 11 December 2000, SSC-S; SSC, “Protokoll från styrelsesammanträde nr 140,” 27 October 2000, SSC-S. 1244 Satellus, “Board meeting no 34. Notes,” 16 November 2000, SSC-S. 1245 SSC, “Verksamhetsrapport okt-nov 2000,” 15 August 2000, SSC-S; Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “Verksamhetrapport för Satellus AB, 13 okt - 6 dec 2000,” 7 December 2000, SSC-S. 1246 Gierth Olsson/Satellus, “Status report on the transfer of the Business to the Swedish Land Survey. Strictly confidential,” 7 December 2000, SSC Board, SSC-S. 1247 Original in Swedish: “Under de senaste åren har Rymdbolaget avvecklat sina engagemang inom vissa verksamheter på tillämpningssidan (GP&C, Satellitbild/MDC/Satellus), som marknadsmässigt visat sig ligga alltför långt från bolagets kärnverksamhet”. See Stefan Zenker/SSC, “Affärsplan för Rymdbolagskoncernen t o m 2004. Version 3. Till styrelsemöte no 141,” 15 December 2000, SSC-S.
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the board of SSC, “that the [Earth observation] activities will receive a good start with
the Land Survey as well as a promising future”.1248
***
So how come it was so difficult to make satellite remote sensing profitable? While it
remains to be answered by some future study, I venture to offer
another question based on the findings of this one: “How was it possible for
Swedish satellite remote sensing activities to continue receiving support despite
not making any money?” The short answer to that question is the ability of actors,
like SSC, to formulate political imperatives for the technology combined with a lack
of any long-term plan on part of the Swedish government for the
Swedish space activities. Swedish satellite remote sensing became a means
for conducting environmental diplomacy, impartial surveillance, development
aid, as well as of monitoring and managing Europe’s environment.
Negotiating the UN principles for satellite remote sensing, the sensing of the
Chernobyl meltdown, the mapping of the Philippines, and the monitoring of the
Baltic Sea were all activities that served to turn SSC’s particular interest
in technoscientific expertise into a common societal interest, namely
understanding the environment.
SSC could maintain its satellite remote sensing activities for as long as
the financiers, most notably the Swedish government, deemed the technology a
political priority. For this reason, SSC’s politicising of remote sensing was a
strategy for adapting to a national context where there otherwise did not exist a long-
term strategy for Swedish space activities. Over time, however, it also led to
numerous overlapping subsidiary activities, competing against each other for similar
forms of funding. This became visible in how Satellitbild had to find users abroad
rather than within Sweden, in conflicts with Esrange on how to interpret the concept
of Space Town Kiruna, and eventually difficulties reconciling new activities, like the
Environmental Data Centre, with other ongoing remote sensing activities.
The lack of users does not mean that the technology developed by the Swedish
satellite remote sensing experts did not find its uses. Quite the opposite, many of the
1248 Original in Swedish: “Jag känner mig också övertygad om att verksamheten får en god start inom Lantmäteriet och där har framtiden för sig”. See Claes-Göran Borg/SSC, “CEO report to board meeting no 141, 21 december 2000,” 15 December 2000.
former employees of SSC moved on to work at numerous governmental agencies and
companies, bringing their remote sensing expertise into new sectors of society, and
some served as representatives in or advisors to international forums working on how
to further develop sensing technologies. Satellite remote sensing may not have been
commercially successful, but, all the same, it turned out to be critical for how present-
day society relates to the environment.
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Sammanfattning
I denna avhandling analyserar jag hur svensk satellitfjärranalys bidrog till att skapa
miljö under sent 1900-tal samt skälen bakom dessa aktiviteter. ‘Miljö’ (environment)
används som ett analytiskt begrepp för att förklara en historisk process av miljöskapande
(environing). Jag använder miljöskapande för att beskriva hur människors aktiviteter
har omskapat både miljön och vår uppfattning om vad miljö är. Teknik förekommer
ofta i miljöskapande och därför har jag valt att beskriva satellitfjärranalys som en
miljöskapande teknik, vilken i sin tur har analyserats med fokus på aktiviteterna observera,
skriva och forma miljö.
De experter som definierat ‘fjärranalys’ (remote sensing) menar att begreppet
innebär att samla in data om fenomen utan att vara i direkt kontakt med fenomenet. I
denna avhandling studerar jag de fjärranalyssatelliter som cirkulerar i omloppsbana
från Nord- till Sydpolen på 700–900 kilometers höjd. Satelliten samlar in data om
fenomen på jordytan genom att registrera den värme eller det ljus som strålar från
jorden ut i rymden. På några dagar har satellitens omloppsbana passerat över hela
jordytan och därmed genomfört en global datainsamling.
Den empiriska utgångspunkten för studien är den svenska
satellitfjärranalysverksamheten 1969–2001. Perioden börjar med etableringen av den
svenska Fjärranalyskommittén, det statliga företaget Svenska rymdaktiebolaget (SSC)
samt Delegationen för rymdverksamhet (SBSA). Då SSC övertog ledningen av
Fjärranalyskommittén samt fick utforma och utföra SBSA:s rekommendationer om
svensk fjärranalys, har jag fokuserat på experter från dessa organisationer för att kunna
uttala mig om svensk expertis om satellitfjärranalys, såväl nationellt som
internationellt. Studiens avslut sammanfaller med SSC:s avyttring av operativ
satellitfjärranalys 2001 vilket även blev ett avslut för den tidigare verksamheten och
början på en ny tid i svensk fjärranalys.
Att studera satellitfjärranalysen som en miljöskapande teknik är ett sätt att
öppna upp frågor om vad miljö är samt undersöka varför vissa tekniker blivit centrala
för denna kunskap. Det är ett sätt att förstå varför miljöskapande ägt rum, vad som
utgjort möjligheter samt begränsningar i historiska föreställningar om miljö samt att
bli medveten om såväl avsiktliga som oavsiktliga effekter i denna process.
Studien är transnationell för att visa hur rymdteknik inte bara använts i kampen
mellan kalla krigets stormakter USA och Sovjetunionen, utan även av jämförelse små
länder som Sverige. Den svenska satellitfjärranalysen visar att teknologin var nära
kopplad till ett flertal andra historiska processer, exempelvis den internationella
utvecklingen av teknovetenskapliga nätverk, bistånd och avkolonisering i
utvecklingsländer samt utformandet av miljöpolitik på en global nivå. Genom att
fokusera på Sverige visar jag hur även mindre länder bidrog till att forma dessa
politiska processer snarare än att bara vara en förlängning av stormakternas strategier
och aktiviteter. Flera av SSC:s försök att säkra en position inom Sverige försökte man
uppnå genom aktiviteter bortom Sverige. Exempel på detta är transnationella
samarbeten, deltagande i internationella förhandlingar samt biståndsverksamhet.
Genom dessa aktiviteter utformade SSC nya användningar av tekniken samt bidrog
till att utforma svensk utrikespolitik, internationell övervakning och hur det svenska
biståndet utformades till utvecklingsländer.
Avhandlingen är den första omfattande svenska historievetenskapliga studien
av satellitfjärranalys. Vidare är den en av de första studierna som överbryggar historisk
forskning om teknik och miljö i en transnationell studie, vilket jag menar är helt
nödvändigt för att förstå en teknik som fjärranalys. Tidigare forskning om svensk
rymdverksamhet har bidragit med periodisering av händelser samt beskrivning av
centrala aktörer inom svensk rymdverksamhet. Jag har utgått ifrån detta arbete när jag
sedan genomfört intervjuer med personer som på olika sätt medverkade i svensk
satellitfjärranalys. Jag har även använt personliga samlingar som komplement till
arkivmaterial från Sverige, Italien, Nederländerna, Frankrike och USA. Utöver
forskning om teknik, miljö och svensk rymdverksamhet har jag sammanställt
forskning om svensk biståndsverksamhet och internationella insatser under det sena
1900-talet, samt historia om diplomati, teknovetenskapliga samarbeten, geopolitiska
förändringar vid kalla krigets slut och initiativ till europeisk integration.
Avhandlingen är avgränsad och begränsad i flera avseenden. Studieperioden
1969–2001 har definierats utifrån Sveriges institutionalisering av fjärranalys som i stor
utsträckning kom att definieras av SSC. Det finns emellertid ett antal andra aktörer
som gjorde betydande bidrag till svensk fjärranalys som inte behandlas ingående eller
alls i denna avhandling. Exempelvis kan här nämnas satsningar på
lantmäterikartläggning, flygfjärranalys, radar, samt mer vetenskapligt orienterade
jämte de militära samarbetena. Jag har inte heller beskrivit varje aspekt av fjärranalys
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som SSC ägnade sig. Mitt val att fokusera på SSC:s verksamhet, och mitt urval inom
denna verksamhet, fokuserar på den institutionaliserade rollen som SSC erhöll under
studieperioden för att koncentrera fjärranalys till ett fåtal aktörer. Detta hade stor
betydelse för svenska nationella såväl som internationella prioriteringar vad gäller
satellitfjärranalysens infrastruktur, typ av data, och användningsområden. Att studera
SSC har också motiverats av mitt intresse för transnationell verksamhet. När
frågeställningen krävt ett bredare angrepp har jag emellertid skiftat fokus till andra
relevanta aktörer.
Nedan sammanfattar jag avhandlingens empiriska kapitel. Efter det följer en
redogörelse av slutsatserna från denna studie. Jag diskuterar även kort betydelsen för
humaniora att historisera miljöskapande tekniker samt vad avhandlingen bidragit till
för att förstå svensk rymdverksamhet.
Kapitel 2 – Från observerad till observerande stat, 1969–1978
I kapitel 2 analyseras hur den svenska satellitfjärranalysen utvecklades från ett flertal
initiativ under 1960-talet till en grupp mer konsoliderade verksamheter. För regeringen
var konsolideringen ett sätt att integrera svensk industri på europeiska marknader.
Men man ville också profilera sig genom en miljödiplomati i samarbete med FN:s
utvecklingsländer. Fjärranalyskommittén blev snabbt relevant för dessa politiska och
användningsorienterade frågor. Genom samarbeten med motparter i USA fick
fjärranalys tidigt ett fokus på miljöanvändningar. Därifrån kom även tillämpning av
amerikansk terminologi, exempelvis ’remote sensing’, för svensk fjärranalys.
Under 1970-talet använde sig SSC av sin centrala position i
Fjärranalyskommittén för att överta utvecklingen av dess infrastruktur från Försvarets
forskningsanstalt samt inrikta verksamheten mot satellitfjärranalys. Detta blev en
utmanare till Lantmäteriets flygfotoverksamhet. Transnationella samarbeten och
internationella förhandlingar i FN:s rymdkommitté (COPUOS) var centrala för att
manifestera SSC:s expertis. SSC:s roll som nationell expert var avgörande för
utbyggnaden av mottagningskapacitet av satellitfjärranalys vid Esrange samt
deltagande i den franska rymdorganisationen CNES satellitfjärranalysprogram SPOT.
SSC bidrog till expertis som möjliggjorde att Sveriges utrikespolitiska hållning
skiftade från en reglering av tekniken till en reglering genom tekniken.
Frågeställningen var inte längre hur alla länder kunde kontrollera fjärranalys utan hur
fjärranalys kunde bidra till miljövård och naturresurshushållning. Sverige gick ifrån att
stödja observerade stater till att själv bli en observerande stat. Skiftet i Sveriges
miljödiplomati kan spåras till ökad kapacitet hos SSC att bedriva satellitfjärranalys,
framförallt genom SPOT-samarbetet.
Kapitel 3 – Orsaker och konsekvenser av att observera härdsmältan
i Tjernobyl, 1976–1991
I kapitel 3 visar jag hur den fransk-svenska infrastrukturen för satellitfjärranalys fick
en central roll för att samla, tolka och sprida satellitdata internationellt. SPOT-
samarbetet ledde i början av 1980-talet till etableringen av ett franskt samt ett svenskt
dotterbolag, Spot Image och Satellitbild AB. SSC:s ambition var att öka den
begränsade användningen av satellitfjärranalys i Sverige, vilket mötte motstånd från
Lantmäteriet som genomförde satsningar på överhöghöjdsbilder för att simulera
satellitperspektiv. Satellitbild sökte därför samarbeten med nya användare, som
journalister från Space Media Network, i ett försök att nå ut till nya marknader. En
möjlighet för detta uppenbarades våren 1986 då Satellitbild använde satellitfjärranalys
för att insamla och sprida bilder från härdsmältan i ukrainska Tjernobyl.
Observationen av Tjernobyl illustrerar både hur svenska satellitexperter sökte
finna användningsområden för sin teknik och hur tekniken möjliggjorde för små
länder att övervaka stormakterna. Detta budskap spelade svensk utrikespolitik i
händerna men ledde även till en växande debatt i USA om hur kommersiell
satellitfjärranalys utmanade den maktbalans som präglade kalla kriget. Observationen
av Tjernobyl ledde till fler journalistiska uppdrag för Space Media Network men
framförallt innebar det att SSC skiftade fokus från Sverige till att hitta tillämpningar
för sin teknik internationellt.
Kapitel 4 – Satelliter som bistånd, 1983–1994
I kapitel 4 studerar jag SSC:s försök att hitta användningsområden utanför Sverige.
När svenska myndigheter inte ökade sin användning av satellitdata, trots medial
exponering och tillgång till den nya SPOT-datan, så försökte SSC finansiera sin
expertis som en form av bistånd till utvecklingsländer. Genom att anlita
utvecklingskonsulter kunde SSC hitta och definiera projekt som passade deras egen
expertis. Kartläggningen av Filippinerna i Sydostasien, 1987–1988, var ett avgörande
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projekt, både nationellt och internationellt, för att illustrera hur satellitfjärranalys
kunde användas i biståndssyfte.
SSC:s kartläggningsprojekt kom i sin tur att tjäna politiska syften för såväl
Sveriges utrikespolitik som för den filippinska regeringen, först i samband med en
landreform och senare för bevarande av landets naturresurser. För både SSC och dess
konkurrenter fungerade kartläggningen av Filippinerna som ett av de första projekten
att demonstrera satellitfjärranalysens bidrag till att uppnå hållbar utveckling. SSC
utökade sin utlandsverksamhet fram till början av 1990-talet, vilket resulterade i ett
omfattande nätverk av konsulter över hela världen för att finna nya biståndsprojekt.
Det franska dotterbolaget kom emellertid att begränsa möjligheterna för Satellitbild
att använda den fransk-svenska infrastrukturen för att konkurrera om projekt, och
tvingade därmed SSC att konsolidera delar av sin verksamhet till ett nytt samägt
företag, Spot Asia, som kom att fortsätta under 1990-talet med en fransk-svensk
fjärranalysverksamhet i Sydostasien.
Kapitel 5 – Svensk miljödiplomati via satellit, 1987–1992
I kapitel 5 visar jag hur SSC sökte säkerställa den svenska fjärranalysinfrastrukturens
roll genom att göra Kiruna till en mötespunkt för flera av de nya satelliter som
planerades i början av 1990-talet. Med kalla krigets slut förlorade rymdtekniken en del
av sin tidigare betydelse för nationell militär beredskap. SSC, tillsammans med stöd av
SBSA som under samma period ombildades till SNSB, bemötte utvecklingen genom
att framhäva fjärranalys som en miljönytta och Kiruna som ett centrum för miljödata.
Dessa planer utformades parallellt med ett ökat intresse från Europeiska gemenskapen
(European Community) för geografisk information, vilket SSC bidrog till genom att
lansera projekt för att observera Östersjöregionen som en del i miljövården av Europa.
Man arbetade också med att utforma nya baskartor för de nya staterna i Baltikum.
Svensk satellitfjärranalys i Östersjöregionen utformades i relation till initiativ
från både USA och Sovjet som sökte omforma sina omfattande
satellitfjärranalysverksamheter till fredliga, miljövänliga användningsområden. SSC:s
kampanjer bidrog till regeringens stöd till ett miljödatacenter, som senare även stöddes
av den Europeiska gemenskapen, framförallt Europeiska miljöbyrån (European
Environmental Agency, EEA). Den regering som tillträdde 1991 anammade flera av
SSC:s argument för satellitfjärranalysens miljönytta med syfte att omforma Sveriges
miljödiplomati från reglering till tekniska lösningar på miljöproblem. Denna nya
inriktning blev tydlig genom en rad utspel från statsminister Carl Bildt i samband med
Sveriges deltagande vid FN:s miljökonferens i Rio 1992.
Kapitel 6 – Ett center för miljöskapande i Europa, 1991–1999
I kapitel 6 undersöks hur SSC sökte säkra sin egen fortsatta roll i svensk
satellitfjärranalys under 1990-talet. Detta ledde till en ombildning av diverse
fjärranalysverksamheter till SSC:s nya Earth Observation Division och även till
etableringen av ett nytt dotterbolag – Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna. Den databasteknik
som Miljödatacentrum kom att inrikta sig på utvecklades från de projekt som SSC
bedrev i Baltikum innan och efter självständigheten i Estland, Lettland och Litauen.
Dessa projekt bidrog till att inkludera Östersjöregionen i europeiska miljösamarbeten
för att upprätta databaser om Europas miljö. År 1996 lyckades SSC upprätta
Miljödatacentrum som ytterligare ett dotterbolag, med centrala uppdrag för såväl
forskning med satellitdata som operativ utveckling av EEA:s databaser om Europas
landyta. Denna mångfald av uppgifter, och intern konkurrens om liknande kunder,
blev över tid svårhanterlig för SSC:s olika fjärranalysverksamheter. Mot slutet av 1990-
talet utvärderade och omorganiserade SSC all sin satellitfjärranalysverksamhet till ett
nytt dotterbolag, Satellus. Fokus var inte längre på rymdteknik utan på Internet och
möjligheterna att verka som ett IT-företag.
Slutsats
Svensk satellitfjärranalys har fungerat som en miljöskapande teknik genom aktiviteter
som observerade, skrev om och formade miljö. Olika grupper av experter har bidragit
till detta genom att arbeta med fjärranalysdata samt hänvisa till dem i tal och skrift.
Dessa aktiviteter har bidragit till att satellitfjärranalys blivit ett redskap för att bevara
eller förbättra jordens miljö. Denna relation mellan teknik och miljö är en historisk
produkt av satellitfjärranalys som svenska experter bidrog till att utforma.
Jag summerar här de projekt och aktiviteter där svensk satellitfjärranalys bidrog
till miljöskapande. Dessa innefattar förhandlingarna och utformandet av FN:s
”principer för fjärranalys från rymden” som debatterades i COPUOS under 1970-talet
och antogs av FN:s generalförsamling 3 december 1986. Framförallt bidrog Sverige
till argumentationen om hur satellitfjärranalys ska betraktas som en miljönytta, varför
inga begränsningar bör göras i användningen eller ägandet av teknologin. Detta
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argument var inte entydigt accepterat inom Fjärranalyskommittén utan resultatet av
SSC:s aktiviteter och prioriteringar.
Satellitbild och Space Media Network bidrog under slutet av 1980-talet till en
internationell debatt om miljönyttan i satellitbilder för att avslöja miljökatastrofer
förorsakade av stormakterna, framförallt Sovjetunionen. Dessa argument användes
och förstärktes senare av flera proteströrelser mot Sovjet som började med miljökritik
mot kärnkraft men senare växte till att kräva nationellt självbestämmande i de
sovjetiska republikerna. De svenska satellitfjärranalysexperterna bekände sig till den
svenska neutralitetspolitiken och hävdade att tekniken var opartisk. Fjärranalys kunde
nu användas av andra än stormakterna och det förändrade maktbalansen och flyttade
också fokus för teknikens användning. Även USA och Sovjet tog initiativ för att
premiera satellitfjärranalysens roll som miljönytta.
Kartläggningen av Filippinerna började som ett bidrag till en landreform men
kom senare att framhållas som ett bidrag till hållbar utveckling av landets
naturresurser. Detta budskap upprepades av flera länders regeringar, multilaterala
organisationer samt konkurrenter till svensk satellitfjäranalys, vilket bidrog till att
stärka teknikens roll för miljöfrågor.
SSC beskrev satellitfjärranalysens miljönytta som ett sätt att göra sin expertis
användbar för den Europeiska gemenskapen och då under namnet ’jordobservation’
(Earth observation). Användningen av jordobservation i Östersjöregionen bidrog till
att beskriva denna region som en europeisk miljö, vilket under kalla kriget snarare
hade beskrivits som ett neutralt gränsland. Detta hade betydelse för samarbeten med
de baltiska staterna inom ramen för ett nytt, mer administrativt sammansvetsat,
Europa. Budskapet om jordobservationens nytta för europeisk miljö anammades av
den nya liberalkonservativa regeringen i såväl inrikes- som utrikesdebatter, framförallt
vid Riokonferensen 1992 där Sveriges regering profilerade svensk satellittekniken som
ett bidrag till hållbar utveckling. Det politiska stödet möjliggjorde SSC:s etablering av
ett Miljödatacentrum i Kiruna.
Flera av de tekniska lösningar som Miljödatacentrum kom att arbeta med hade
utformats som en del av Satellitbilds projekt i Baltikum. Genom produktion av
satellitdata för regionen utvecklades idéer om att svensk satellitfjärranalys borde bidra
till att kontinuerligt utforma databaser över Östersjöregionen snarare än att göra
kartor. SSC omformulerade detta till en affärsidé för Miljödatacentrum som skulle
komma att bidra med databaser över Europas landyta, vilket EEA bidrog med
finansiering till fram till slutet av 1990-talet. När SSC:s olika verksamheter inom
satellitfjärranalys allt tydligare konkurrerade om liknande medel samtidigt som SNSB
omprioriterade det statliga stödet även till andra aktörer, började den process av
omstrukturering som år 2001 resulterade i nedmonteringen av SSC:s satellitfjärranalys.
De fem kapitlen illustrerar var och en hur svensk satellitfjärranalys bidrog till
att skapa miljö samt analyserar varför de svenska experterna genomförde dessa
aktiviteter. De projekt som svensk satellitfjärranalysexpertis bidrog till att utforma var
från början inte tänkta att ha en specifik miljönytta. Det blev en biprodukt av andra
övergripande prioriteringar, framförallt SSC:s strävan att säkra sin organisations
överlevnad, att experter i Kiruna skulle få behålla sina jobb, och att Sveriges regering
skulle kunna förverkliga industripolitiska, utrikespolitiska och miljöpolitiska
ambitioner där satelliterna erbjöd en teknisk lösning. Dessa avsikter utformades ibland
som strategier för att få finansiering men ofta som rena anpassningar till hotbilder
från andra svenska organisationer med vilka SSC tävlade om anslag och
användningsområden för sin teknik. Avhandlingen visar, genom att använda
begreppet miljöskapande teknik, hur satellitfjärranalys blivit ett kraftfullt redskap för att
forma människors uppfattning av vad som är miljö.
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Sources and Literature
All references beginning with the Swedish letters ÅÄÖ have been sorted under “A” for ÅÄ and “O” for Ö. All sources are digitised, recorded, and stored with author unless stated otherwise.
Archives
National Archives of Sweden (RA), Arninge, Sweden
Swedish Board for Space Activities (SBSA) 1972–1992 and the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) 1992–2018:
Main registry 1972–1991, E1 and C2 Programme Board for Earth Observation, 1997-2001 Reports 1972–1991, F2:3 and F4:2 Secret records 1981–1991, E3B:1 Remote Sensing Committee (FAK)
Protocols, drafts and reports 1972–2001, A4A/4
Swedish Commission for Technical Co-Operation (BITS) 1978–1994:
Records regarding technical collaboration 1987-1993, F2B:208 F2BA:292, 1988-1994 F2BA:294, 1988-1989 F2BA:295, 1989-1993 F2BA:296, 1993-1994 F2BA:302, 1990-1992 F2BA:307, 1991-1992
Development credits, the World Bank Group IBRD/IDA/IFC 1980-1990, F2A:73
Swedish International Development Authority Central Archive (SIDA) 1985–1998:
F 1AG2:123
STU Swedish Remote Sensing Group (STURSK) 1969–1972:
A1 B:1 4E 33 A1 B:2 4E 33 A1 B:4 4E 33 A1 B:6 4E 33
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (UD) 1972–1995:
Main registry 1975–1992, Serie C1:2.C1, Vol. 1110: (1988), Serial number: 175, Dossier: HP 12 CÖ
Vol. C1:1118 (1989), Serial number: 506, Dossier: IN 18 ABU11: nr 7, 11–12, and 34-95 U11:577 Xf U11:579, Xf nr 10-12 U11:580 Xf nr 13 and appendices
National Library of Sweden (KB), Stockholm, Sweden
Nytt från Nordforsk Helsingfors 1969–1978 Teknisk tidskrift, 1966–1968 Timbro rapport, Stockholm 1992–1994 VBB Nytt/Vattenbyggnadsbyrån, Stockholm 1965–1990 Anförande vid Sundsvallsbankens bolagsstämma i Östersund, 17 March 1969
Audiovisual Archive:
V53.547 ALB86-1117 ALB86-2108 ALB86-2110 ALB86-2111 ALB86-2115 Inslag 02-03 Inslag 04-06
National Museum of Science and Technology (TM) Tekniska museet
Stockholm, Sweden
F62:1 Memories F62:2 Interviews
Swedish National Defence Research Agency (FOI), Linköping, Sweden
Report DH30062-E1, Satellitburen syntetisk aperturradar en förstudie, 1983 Report C 30750-3.4, Torleiv Orhaug. En forskargärning i försvarets tjänst, 1994
SSC Esrange Archive (SSC-E) Kiruna, Sweden
Press & Info Launch SPOT Space Night Bildmaterial
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325
SSC Satellitbild Kiruna Archive (SB-K), Kiruna, Sweden
Satellitbild Board protocols and meeting notes 1983–1990 Project folders List of pending offers, 1986–1996
Swedish Space Corporation Solna Archive (SSC-S), Stockholm, Sweden
Board protocols and annual reports 1972–2001 Contracts and Agreements Drafts and PM Fjärranalys. Information från Rymdbolaget 1977–1986 and Remote Sensing. Information from the Swedish Space Corporation 1987–2000 Internal correspondence MDC Interim Board protocols, 1993–1996 MDC Board Protocols, 1995–1999 Satellitbild Board protocols 1984–1999 Satellus Board protocols, 1999–2000 Rymdstoft, Informationsblad RBS 1991–2000 Upprymd. SSC staff newsletter, 1990–2004
Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA Archive), Stockholm, Sweden
Folder: Lawful Use of RemSen Folder: The SPOT collaboration Sweden-France: Treaty situation Investigations and long-term strategies for Swedish space activities Petita 1972–2001 Material for the Swedish contribution to the International Space Year
Uppsala University’s Dag Hammarskjöld archive (DH), Uppsala, Sweden
The Scientific and Technical Subcommittee (UN STSC) of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Use for Outer Space (COPUOS):
In Verbatim Summaries, 1970–1979A/AC. 105/C. 1/SR. 1–93 A/AC. 105/C. 1/SR. 93–222 A/AC. 105/C. 1/L. 1–61 A/AC. 105/C. 1/L. 61–185
Review of the reports of specialised agencies and national reports, 1970–1979 A/AC. 105/C.1, WG, WP A/AC. 105/526–533+Agenda, Calender, C.1/Agenda, C.1/1, INF
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ESA Oral History Project (ESA), Paris, France
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Historical Archives of the European Union at the European University
Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy
ESA, Convention of the European Space Agency. Paris: Publications Division of the European Space Agency, 1975 Earth Observation Programme Board (PB-EO), 1986–1991
Working group on ERS-1 data policy Interim Remote Sensing Programme Board (IPB-RS), 1978
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UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Geneva, Switzerland
Meeting summaries for the UN Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the UN COPUOS, 1962–1987 Meeting summaries for the UN Legal Subcommittee of the UN COPUOS, 1962–1987
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United Nations Archive (UN Archive-NYC), New York City, US
Exchange and disseminiation of information PO 321 (6). 1975-5-1–1978-12-31. Signature: S-0442-0393-04
PO 313 (1-4) 1971-12-1–––1972-6-30. Signature: S-0442-0381-06, S-0442-0382-02 and S-0442-0382-03 PO 321 (8) PO 351 (7-1) 1970-9-1–––1971-11-30. Signature: S-0442-0397-05 PO 351 (7-2) 1970-10-1–––1971-10-31. Signature: S-0442-0397-07 PO 321 (8) 1976-7-1–––1978-12-31. Signature: S-0442-0393-06 PO 321 (9) 1977-3-1–––1978-12-31. Signature: S-0442-0393-07
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archive, Cambridge, MA, US
Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Collection 1970–1999
Agricultural & Environmental Science Database 1970–1999
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Wall Street Journal 1960–1999
The Washington Post 1960–1999
NASA Headquarters Archive (NASA HQ), Washington, DC, US
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Håkan Hedberg Private Collection Peter Holmgren Private Collection Lars Högberg Private Collection Margaretha Ihse Private Collection Bengt Josefsson Private Collection Larsson Christer Private Collection Tommy Lindell Private Collection David Lindgren Private Collection Karin Lindholm Private Collection Johan Martin-Löf Private Collection Nancy Theodor Private Collection Nelson Clark Private Collection Sten Nyberg Private Collection Olle Nåbo Private Collection Björn Ohlsson Private Collection Stigbjörn Olovsson Private Collection Håkan Olsson Private Collection Ulf Ormö Private Collection Hans Ottersten Private Collection Claës Pilo Private Collection Hans Rasch Private Collection Rey Lars Private Collection Mats Rosengren Private Collection Dan Rosenholm Private Collection Lars Rydén Private Collection Göte Rönnbäck Private Collection Jan-Olof Snihs Private Collection Nikolai Steinberg Private Collection Mikael Stern Private Collection Ulf von Sydow Private Collection Mats Söderberg Private Collection Anders Söderman Private Collection Per Tegnér Private Collection Leif Wastenson Private Collection Anders Wellving Private Collection Ludkiewitz “Ludde” Wladyslaw Private Collection Stefan Zenker Private Collection
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Forskning för långsiktig kompetensutveckling. Bilaga 2, 26 March, 1992 Prop. 1993/94:100, Förslag till statsbudget för budgetåret 1994/95. Bilaga 15 till
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insatser i Norrbottens län m. m., 11 April 1988 Motion 1987/88:N259,om svensk rymdpolitik, 25 januari 1988 Motion 1987/88:N260, om rymdpolitikens långsiktiga inverkan på Esrange, 25 January 1988 Motion 1987/88:N315, om svenskt deltagande i europeiskt rymdsamarbete, 25 January 1988 Motion 1987/88:A40, med anledning av prop. 1987/88:86 om särskilda regionalpolitiska
insatser i Norrbottens län m. m., 11 April 1988 Motion 1988/89:N226, Det europeiska rymdsamarbetet, 20 January 1989 Motion 1988/89:N298, Näringspolitiken, 23 January 1989 Motion 1988/89:N344, Den svenska rymdpolitiken, 25 januari 1989 Motion 1989/90:N33, med anledning av prop. 1989/90:90 om forskning, 13 March 1990 Motion 1989/90:N34, med anledning av prop. 1989/90:90 om forskning, 19 March 1990 Motion 1990/91:N317, Anslag inom industridepartementets område, 24 January 1991 Motion 1992/93:N236, Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget, 21 January 1992 Motion 1992/93:S5029, Ev. utlokalisering av Svenska Rymdaktiebolaget, 21 January 1993 Motion 1994/95:Jo618, Miljö- och rymdforskningsinstitut, 20 January 1995 Motion 1994/95:N232, Rymdbolagets huvudkontor, 23 January 1995 Motion 1994/95:N267, Den svenska rymdverksamheten, 25 January 1995 Motion 1994/95:N270, Näringspolitiken, 25 januari 1995 Motion 1996/97:N1, med anledning av prop. 1996/97:5 Forskning och samhälle, 3 October
1996 Motion 1996/97:Ub7, med anledning av prop. 1996/97:5 Forskning och samhälle, 3 October
1996
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331
NU Betänkande 1987/88:38, om om särskilda regionalpolitiska insatser i Norrbottens län (prop. 1987/88:86), 20 May 1988
NU Betänkande 1988/89:NU22, Vissa anslag inom industridepartementets område, 19 January 1989
NU Betänkande 1990/91:NU24, Vissa anslag inom industridepartementets område, 12 February 1991
NU Reservation 1995/96:NU18, Rymdverksamhet (mom. 5), 12 March 1996 Riksdagens protokoll 1989/90:134, 6 June 1990
Swedish Government Official Report Series (Statens offentliga utredningar)
SOU 1962:12, Aspekter på utvecklingsbiståndet SOU 1963:61, Organisatoriska åtgärder för rymdverksamhetens främjande SOU 1967:44, Miljövårdsforskning. Del II. Organisation och resurser SOU 1980:23, Konsultexportutredningen. Statligt kunnande till salu. Export av tjänster från
myndigheter och bolag SOU 1981:39, Svensk krigsmaterielexport SOU 1981:73, Landskapsinformation under 1980-talet SOU 1983:72, Kommunalt kunnande - ett stöd för svensk export SOU 1984:33, Handla med tjänster. Betänkande av tjänsteexportutredningen SOU 1990:17 Organisation och arbetsformer inom bilateralt utvecklingsbistånd SOU 1990:59, Sätt värde på miljön! Miljöavgifter och andra ekonomiska styrmedel SOU 1990:88, Sveriges internationella miljösamarbete. Nya mål och nya möjligheter SOU 1991:32, Naturvårdsverkets uppgifter och organisation SOU 1991:37, Räkna med miljön! Förslag till natur- och miljöräkenskaper SOU 1991:55, Sveriges nationalrapport till UNCED 1992. FNs konferens om miljö och
utveckling SOU 1992:104, Vår uppgift efter Rio. Svenskhandlingsplan inför 2000-talet SOU 1993:1, Styrnings- och samarbetsformer i biståndet SOU 1993:16, Nya villkor för ekonomi och politik SOU 1993:99, Kart- och fastighetsverksamhet i myndighet och bolag SOU 1994:90, Kart- och fastighetsverksamhet – finansering, samordning och författningsreglering
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Life Magazine
Los Angeles Times
Moderne Tider
Montreal Gazette
Norrbotten-kuriren
Norrländska socialdemokraten (NSD)
Ny Teknik
Ottawa Citizen
La Republica
Science
Scientific American Smålandstidningen
Svenska Dagbladet (SvD)
Teknisk tidskrift
Teknisk-vetenskaplig forskning (TVF)/Journal of Scientific Technical Research
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Interviews
This list includes all interviews conducted for the research project. Subsequent
conversations with the interviewees, in person or by telephone or email, are cited
directly in the footnotes – not all interviews are cited as sources. Recordings of the
interviews are stored and in the possession of the author.
Interviewee Place and time of interview
Ag, Lars Stockholm, 14 December 2017
Alby, Fernand Toulouse, 9 January 2016
Alm, Göran Stockholm, 13 December 2017
Andersson, Magnus [telephone], 10 May 2018
Askne, Jan [telephone], 7 November 2017
Astermo, Svante Bromma, 15 November 2015
Avignon, Michel Toulouse, 9 January 2016
Åkersten, Ingvar Linköping, 14 May 2017
Åsling, Nils G. Stockholm, 6 April 2017
Backlund, Lars [telephone], 8 March 2018
Bäckstrand, Göran [telephone], 31 July 2018
Bendrot [Blomberg], Ingela Stockholm, 18 April 2018
Bengtsson, Gunnar [telephone], 10 December 2015
Bjerkesjö, Lars Hässelby, 7 December 2015
Blom, Leif [telephone], 9 December 2015
Boberg, Anders Stockholm, 14 June 2017
Bolton, Peter [telephone], 18 January 2018
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341
Borg, Claes-Göran Stockholm, 28 November 2017
Borgefors, Gunilla Uppsala, 31 May 2017
Brachet, Gérard Paris, 6 January 2016
Brook, Ian Sandviken, 24 September 2017
Byström, Marie Knivsta, 6 July 2018
Colliander, Christer Stockholm, 24 January 2018
Cronström, Eva Stockholm, 5 April 2017
Dahl, Birgitta Uppsala, 26 May 2015
Danielsson, Sune [telephone], 18 May 2015
De Geer, Lars-Erik Täby, 22 November 2015
DeChassy, Antoine Washington, DC, 8 December 2016
Delclaux, Philippe Toulouse, 8 January 2016
Edmark, Pelle [telephone], 21 March 2017
Ehdwall, Lars [telephone], 13 November 2015
Emsing, Erik [telephone], 21 November 2016
Enbom, Per-Erik ‘PEX’ Esrange, 4 July 2016
Engberg, Agneta Gävle, 8 September 2015
Engel, Pierre [telephone], 29 November 2016
Engfeldt, Lars-Göran Stockholm, 1 February 2016
Englund, Björn Stockholm, 22 May 2018
Englund, Jan Sigtuna, 18 January 2018
Engsäll, Rutger Stockholm, 11 December 2017
Eriksson, Bo
Eriksson, Mats
Forsgren, Jörgen
Fredga, Kerstin
Gustavsson, Anders
Hallström, Per
Hartnor, Jörgen
Hjort, Kjell
Hodgkins, Kenneth
Holmgren, Peter
Högberg, Lars
Ihse, Margaretha,
Jankowitsch, Peter
Jonson, Staffan
Josefsson, Bengt
Karlsson, Åke
Kjellén, Bo
Klevby, Inga Björk
Krusberg, Peep
Larsson, Christer
Lené, Anders
Lidman, Lennart
Stockholm, 27 May 2017
Kiruna, 13 June 2016
Kiruna, 11 June 2016
Stockholm, 1 December 2017
Linköping, 12 May 2017
Stockholm, 27 May 2017
[telephone], 12 May 2016
[telephone], 13 July 2018
Washington, DC, 5 December 2016
Stockholm, 23 August 2018
Uppsala, 22 November 2015
Stockholm, 11 December 2015
[telephone], 31 July 2017
Linköping, 12 May 2017
Kiruna, 13 June 2016
Kiruna, 14 June 2016
Stockholm, 20 November 2015
[telephone], 5 February 2018
[Email corr.] 8 March – 18 June 2018
Stockholm, 2 Nov 2015 & 30 Jan 2016
Stockholm, 20 June 2016
[telephone], 15 December 2017
342
343
Lindell, Tommy Uppsala, 7 June 2016
Lindgren, David Washington, DC, 6 December 2016
Lindholm, Karin [telephone], 17 December 2015
Ludkiewitz, Wladyslaw ‘Ludde’ Stockholm, 10 April 2017
Lübeck, Lennart Stockholm, 9 October 2018
Mandéus, Göran [telephone], 3 December 2015
Martin-Löf Johan Stockholm, 5 April 2016
Nåbo, Olle [telephone], 16 January 2018
Nancy, Theodor ‘Ted’ Washington, DC, 8 December 2016
Nelander, Anders Linköping, 12 May 2017
Nelson, Clark Washington, DC, 10 December 2016
Ohlson, Björn Solna, 22 February 2017
Ollén, Joakim Stockholm, 19 June 2018
Olovsson, Stigbjörn Stockholm, 15 February 2018
Olsson, Gierth Kista, 14 November 2017
Olsson, Håkan Stockholm, 10 June 2016
Ormö, Ulf Stockholm, 1 February 2016
Ottersten, Hans Linköping, 12 May 2017
Ottoson, Lars Gävle, 20 June 2016
Öskog, Alf Kiruna, 11 June 2016
Palo, Thomas [telephone], 1 June 2018
Persson, Göran A. Stockholm, 4 May 2018
Pilo, Claës
Rasch, Hans
Rey, Lars
Rönnbäck, Göte
Rosengren, Mats
Rosenholm, Dan
Rydén, Lars
Salander, Henrik
Skala, Björn
Skrøvseth, Per-Erik
Snihs, Jan-Olof
Söderman, Anders
Steinberg, Nikolai
Stern, Mikael
Tegnér, Per
Thorén, Mats
Van Genderen, John
Von Sydow, Ulf
Wastenson, Leif
Wellving, Anders, 2017
Zenker, Stefan
Stockholm, 30 May 2017
Bromma, 16 February 2016
[telephone], 1 July 2018
Kiruna, 14 June 2016
Täby, 6 April 2017
Märsta, 23 Oct 2015 & 25 May
[telephone], 27 March 2018
[telephone], 3 May 2016
Stockholm, 17 February 2016
[telephone], 9 November 2017
Uppsala, 22 November 2015
Stockholm, 15 February 2016
Washington, DC, 6 December 2016
Stockholm, 5 November 2015
Stockholm, 8 October 2017
Stockholm, 22 January 2016.
Enschede, 24 April, 2017
[telephone], 7 February 2018
Stockholm, 14 March 2017
Linköping, 9 March 2017
Täby, 10 December 2015
344
345
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371
Appendix A: List of Organisations
English name Local name (if applicable) Acronym – EOSAT
– –
– –
– ADB
– –
– –
– BA
– –
– Radarsat
– COPUOS
– CORINE
– LSC
– STSC
– DAR
Institutionen för naturgeografi, Stockholm universitet
–
– –
– ITC
Miljö- och Rymdforskningsinstitutet
MRI
– EnviCat
Miljödatacenter MDC
– ESRI
– EPO
– ESOC
Earth Observation Satellite Company
(American)
Ann Arbor Michigan
Arthur D. Little
Asian Development Bank
Baikonur Space Center
Baltic University Programme
British Aerospace
British National Space Centre
Canadian Radarsat
Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space
Coordination of Information on the Environment
COPUOS’ Legal Subcommittee
COPUOS’ Scientific and Technical Subcommittee
Department of Agrarian Reform
Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University
Dornier
Dutch International Training Centre for Aerial Survey
Environment and Space Research
Institute
Environmental Catalogue
Environmental Data Centre
Environmental Systems Research
Institute
ESA’s Earthnet Programme Office
ESA’s Space Operations Centre
Estonian National Land Board – –
European Community – EC
European Environmental Agency – EEA
European remote sensing network – Earthnet
European Space Agency – ESA
European Space Agency’s Headquarters
– ESA HQ
European space infrastructure company
Telespazio –
European Space RANGE – Esrange
European Space Research Organisation
– ESRO
European Union – EU
French Aviation Company Mécanique Aviation Traction MATRA
French Ministry for Foreign Affairs – –
French-Swedish Industrial Association
Centre Industriel Franco-Suédois
–
Government of the Philippines – –
Greenpeace International – –
Group of 77 – G77
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
– IGBP
International Monetary Fund – IMF
International Satellite Monitoring Agency
ISMA
International Space Year 1992 – ISY-92
Kiruna Municipality Kiruna kommun –
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
– NASA
Swedish National Archives Riksarkivet RA
National Centre for Space Studies Centre National d’Études Spatiales
CNES
National Library of Sweden Kungliga Biblioteket KB
National Space Development Agency of Japan
– NASDA
Nordic research organisation Nordforsk –
Norrbotten County Board – –
372
373
North Atlantic Treaty Organization – NATO
Norwegian Space Centre Norsk Romsenter –
Novo – –
Philippine’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources
– DENR
Polar Orbit Earth Observation Mission
– POEM-1
Prime Minister’s Office Statsrådsberedningen –
Remote Sensing of the Environment – RESE
Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien IVA
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Kungliga vetenskapsakademien KVA
Satellus AB – –
Socialist International – –
Soviet ministry Glavkosmos – –
Soviet Union – USSR
Space Media Network – –
Spot Asia – –
Spot Image – –
Spot Image Corporation – SICORP
SSC Development Unit in Solna – –
SSC Earth Observation Division – –
SSC Remote Sensing Division – –
SSC Satellitbild Satellitbild –
Swedish Aeroplane Company Svenska Aeroplanaktiebolaget SAAB
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
SIPRI
Swedish Board for Space Activities Delegationen för rymdverksamhet
SBSA
Swedish Board for Technical Development
Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling STU
Swedish Chamber of Commerce Sveriges handelskammare –
Swedish Commission for Technical Co-Operation
Beredningen för internationellt tekniskt-ekonomiskt samarbete
BITS
Swedish Committee on Natural Resources
Naturresurskommitté –
Swedish Crisis Group – –
Swedish Engineering Press Limited Ingenjörsförlaget –
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
Naturvårdsverket Swedish EPA
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research
Stiftelsen för miljöstrategisk forskning
Mistra
Swedish Geographical Survey Office Rikets allmänna kartverk –
Swedish International Development Authority
Styrelsen för internationell utveckling
SIDA
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
Sveriges meteorologiska och hydrologiska institut
SMHI
Swedish Air Force Flygvapnet –
Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs Utrikesdepartementet UD
Swedish Ministry for Trade Handelsdepartementet –
Swedish Ministry of Agriculture Jordbruksdepartementet –
Swedish Ministry of Commerce Näringsdepartementet –
Swedish Ministry of Education Utbildningsdepartementet –
Swedish Ministry of Environment Miljödepartementet –
Swedish Ministry of Industry Industridepartementet –
– –
Försvarets forskningsinstitut FOI
Försvarets forskningsanstalt FOA
Lantmäteriet LMV
Swedish National Committee for the Stockholm Conference
Swedish National Defence Research Agency
Swedish National Defence Research Institute
Swedish National Land Survey
Swedish National Space Agency/Board
Rymdstyrelsen SNSA/SNSB
Statens kärnkraftinspektion SKI
Statsrådsberedningen –
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate
Swedish Prime Minister’s Office
Swedish Projects Incorporated – –
Swedish Radiation Protection Authority
Svenska strålskyddsinstitutet SSI
Swedish Remote Sensing Committee Fjärranalyskommittén FAK
Swedish Space Corporation Svenska rymdaktiebolaget SSC
Swedish Space Technology Group Rymdtekniska gruppen RTG
Swedish Television Sveriges Television SVT
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375
Swedish Trade Union Confederation Landsorganisationen i Sverige –
Swedsurvey – –
UN General Assembly – UNGA
UN Office for Outer Space Affairs – UNOOSA
United Nations – UN
United States of America – US
Uppsala University’s Centre for Image Analysis
Centrum för bildanalys –
US Center for Space Policy – –
US Central Intelligence Agency – CIA
US Department of Defense – –
US Office of Naval Research – –
US Department of State – –
World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
– IBRD (WB)
World Commission on Environment – WCED
377
Appendix B: List of Key Actors
The information below, and corresponding unreferenced biographical information in
the thesis have been compiled using Sveriges statskalender, Svensk biografisk handbok,
newspaper obituaries, webpages, and curriculum vitaes sent to the author. When
information on birth, death, and employment was missing, I have approximated by
drawing upon information from other interviewees. The result is an account
describing the person’s role with regards to Swedish satellite remote sensing – it is
not a complete summary of that person’s activities during the period of study.
Name Short biography
Aquino, Corazon (1933–2009) Filipino politician; President of the Philippines, 1986–1992; commissioned the FFARM-study as part of pursuing a land reform, 1986–1988.
Astermo, Svante (b. 1938) Swedish land surveyor; employed at the Swedish Land Survey, 1964–1982; Managing Director for SSC’s subsidiary Satellitbild, 1982–1986.
Bildt, Carl (b. 1949) Swedish politician; Member of Parliament for the Moderate Party, 1979–2001, leader of the party, 1986–1999; Prime Minister, 1991–1994.
Biña, Ricardo (ca 1940–2015) Filipino land surveyor; employed at DENR, 1975–2005; contact person for collaborations with Satellitbild for the FFARM-study and subsequent projects, 1986–1994.
Bjerkesjö, Lars (b. 1940) Swedish Managing Director of Satellitbild AB; Head of administration at Esrange, 1977–1982; Financial Director of Satellitbild, 1982–1986; Managing Director of Satellitbild, 1986–1999.
Borg, Claes-Göran (b. 1945) Swedish remote sensing expert; expert at TUAB, 1969–1974; project leader on remote sensing for SSC, 1974–1986; Head of SSC’s Remote Sensing Division; 1986–1999; CEO of SSC, 2000–2007.
Brachet, Gérard (b. 1944) French remote sensing expert; employee of CNES 1969–1982; developed the SPOT programme and Spot Image, 1978–1982; Chairman and CEO of Spot Image, 1982–1994; formulated space policy for the European Union, 1991–1992; Director at CNES, 1994–1997.
Brundtland, Gro H. (b. 1939) Norwegian politician; Member of Parliament for the Labour Party, 1977–1979; Prime Minister, 1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1996; Chairman for the World Commission on Environment and Development, 1984–1987.
Dahl, Birgitta (b. 1937) Swedish politician; Member of Parliament for the Social Democrat Party, 1969–2002; Deputy Minister of Environment, 19872–1987; Minister of Environment and Energy, 1987–1990; Minister of Environment, 1990–1991.
Emsing, Erik (b. 1956) Swedish development consultant; Trainee at the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, 1983–1985; Co-founder of Swedish Projects Incorporated, 1985–2001; Contracted by SSC to find, define, and fund projects, 1986–1993.
Engström, Fredrik (b. 1939) Swedish space technology expert; participated in activities of the Space Technology Group during the early 1960s; Head of the Space Technology Group, 1970–1972; CEO of SSC, 1972–1985; Director of ESA’s space station programme, 1985–1994.
Fredga, Kerstin (b. 1935) Swedish Professor in Astrophysics at Stockholm University, 1973–1986; Head of Division at SBSA; Director-General of SBSA 1989–1995; Director-General of SNSB, 1995–1998.
Frutkin, Arnold W. (b. 1918) American Deputy Director of NASA, 1957–1978; Associate administrator for external relations, 1979; expert in COPUOS.
Gorbachev, Mikhail (b. 1931) Soviet politician; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1985–1991.
Hoppe, Gunnar (1914–2005) Professor in physical geography; co-founder of the Swedish Remote Sensing Group (later Committee) in 1969; Vice-Chancellor of Stockholm University, 1974–1978; President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1979–1981; Executive Member of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, 1981–1991.
Håkansson, Hans (1922–2005) Swedish civil servant; employee at the Ministry of Trade, later Ministry of Industry, 1963–1972; Executive Member of SBSA, 1972–1985; Chairman of SSC’s 1972–1985.
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379
Jernelöv, Arne (b. 1941) Swedish professor in genetics; Principal Environment Advisor to the Council of Ministers, 1991–1994; Secretary General for the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research, 1994–2000; Director of the Environmental and Space Research Institute in Kiruna, 1995–1997 and 1999–2000; Board Member of Mistra 1997–2000.
Johansson, Olof (b. 1937) Swedish politician; Member of Parliament for the Centre Party, 1971–1976, 1978–1979, 1982–1998; Minister of Energy, 1976–1978, of Personnel- and Wages, 1979–1982, and Communication, 1981; leader of the party, 1987–1997; Minister of Environment, 1991–1994; Committed Sweden to the French SPOT programme, 1977; Head of the Swedish Delegation to the Rio Conference, 1992.
Kihlblom, Ulf (1937–2007) Swedish remote sensing expert and development consultant; PhD in Remote Sensing at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1971; Engineer at Sweco, 1971–1975; Principal Engineer at Sweco, 1976–1985; International Marketing Manager at SSC, 1986–1993; Evaluator of SSC’s Earth Observation Division, 1989–1999.
Larsson, Christer (b. 1948) Swedish journalist; special reporter at Ny Teknik, 1980–1986; founder and CEO of Space Media Network, 1986–1990; received the Swedish Grand Price for Journalism, in recognition of newsgathering from space of the nuclear meltdown, 1986.
Lübeck, Lennart (b. 1938) Swedish space technology expert; graduated from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology 1960; employed at the Swedish Defence Research Institute, 1958–1960; The Royal Flight Management, 1961–1963; Space Technology Group, 1963–1969; Ministry of Industry, 1969–1978; Ministry of Communication, 1978–1979; CEO for the Industry Fund (Industrifonden), 1979–1986; CEO for SSC, 1986–1998; Chairman for SSC, 1998–2006.
Marcos, Ferdinand (1917–1989) Filipino politician; President of the Philippines, 1965–1986; ruled as dictator under martial law from 1972–1981; fled the Philippines after snap elections, February 1986.
Martin-Löf, Johan (b. 1937) Swedish civil engineer; graduated from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 1962; employed at the Space Technology Group, 1961–1972, and at SSC, 1972–1985; Expert in COPUOS’ working group for remote sensing satellites, 1971–1981; Expert at Ministry of Industry, 1976–1985; Board Member of SBSA, 1985–1991.
Nåbo, Olle (b. 1956) Swedish company manager; Licentiate degree in weather systems from Stockholm University, 1982–1985; Project Manager at Alfa Laval Separation AB, 1985–1996; Managing Director of SSC’s subsidiary the Environmental Data Centre in Kiruna, later for Satellus, 1996–2000.
Orhaug, Torleiv (1929–2001) Norwegian/Swedish remote sensing expert; Assistant Professor at Chalmers, 1962–1966; Researcher on image processing at the Swedish Defence Research Institute, 1966–1969; Research Leader for computer-based image-processing of satellite images, 1969–1988; Adjunct Member of SBSA’s Remote Sensing Committee and Chairman of the under-committee for Data Processing, 1972–1978.
Pilo, Claës (b. 1935) Swedish science-technical expert; attaché in Paris on space questions, 1966–1972; employee at SSC on numerous remote sensing projects for environmental applications, 1972–1978.
Rasch, Hans (b. 1938) Swedish development consultant; master of science in civil engineering from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 1960; Principal engineer for Sweco, 1976–1987; International Projects Manager for Remote Sensing projects at SSC, 1987–1990, at Satellitbild, 1991–1999, at Satellus, 1999–2000, and at Metria, 2001.
Reagan, Ronald (1938–2004) American politician; Governor of California, 1967–1975; President of the US, 1981–1989.
Rey, Lars (b. 1935) Swedish space technology expert; Head of the Swedish Space Committee’s Technology Group, 1962–1965; Head of the Space Technology Group, 1965–1970; Swedish Delegate in ESRO, 1961–1972; Research and development expert at the Ministry of Industry, 1970–1972.
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381
Stern, Mikael (b. 1955) Swedish remote sensing expert; PhD in remote sensing from Lund University, 1986; employee at Satellitbild 1984–1988; Co-founder and member of Space Media Network, 1986–1991; Business Development Manager at Eurimage, 1988–1991; Employee of SSC, 1991–2012.
Stiernstedt, Jan (1925–2008) Swedish civil servant; civil servant at the Ministry of Education, 1959–1965; Head of the Ministry of Education, 1965–1969, and Permanent Undersecretary, 1969–1979; Director General of SBSA, 1972–1989; Chairman of ESA, 1979–1981.
Von Sydow, Ulf (b. 1950) Swedish physical geographer; President of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, 1990–95; acting CEO of the Environmental Data Center, 1995–6; Head of Programme for RESE, 1997–2003.
Zenker, Stefan (b. 1940) Swedish remote sensing expert; Civil engineer graduate from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 1963; Military service on anti-air missiles, 1965–66; System-Engineer at SAAB, 1965–1970; Secretary of the Swedish Remote Sensing Committee, 1969–1978; engineer at the Space Technology Group, 1970–1971 and then at SSC, 1972–2005; Swedish Delegate in ESA’s programme committees on remote sensing, 1972–2005; Board Member in Spot Image and Satellitbild as part of establishing these subsidiaries during the 1980s.
383
INDEX
Acidification, 218.
Aerial: imagery, 28–29; photography, 27–29, 61, 76, 88, 122, 124, 127, 180, 210, 237, 255, 273, 303, 306; surveillance 29.
Affinities, 17, 229, 264.
Africa, 105, 167, 175; African farmland, 216.
Agenda 21, 253, 275, 286, 289.
Agriculture, 89, 153, 174, 188, 282, 285.
Agronomists, 123, 155, 159.
Aid: development, 18, 33, 54, 66, 159–161, 167, 193, 214, 236, 243, 290, 305, 313; bilateral, 193, 195, 213; role of, 171, 174; satellites as, 159.
Airplanes, 28, 85–86, 90, 93, 106, 186.
Algeria, 68.
Ampex magnetic tapes, 123, 131–134.
Anti-Nuclear Movements, 143.
Aquino: Administration, 174, 176, 179, 183, 189, 191, 193–195, 198, 204, 212–13, Corazon, 174, 177, 194, 196.
Archiving, 122, 211, 228.
Ariane, European launcher, 103, 121, 126.
Arthur D. Little, 148.
Assemblage, 24 n33.
Astermo, Svante, 123, 126-127, 178.
Atomic bomb, 150.
Austria, 65, 143.
Baikonur Space Center, 150.
Balkanisation, 165.
Baltic: base maps, 236, 266, 270, 272; sea, 18, 94–95, 98–99, 108, 114, 117, 153, 164, 230, 232–33, 235–238, 242, 253, 255, 263–266, 278, 281, 300, 302–3, 313; drainage basin, 264, 266; Little West, 231; University Programme, 263; monitor the, 236, 238: see also Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania.
Baveno Manifesto, 289–90.
Belgium, 37, 121.
Bildt, Carl, 242, 245-246, 248-251, 253, 255, 272–
273, 320.
Biña, Ricardo, 177, 180-181, 191, 198, 201.
Biological diversity, 286.
Biologists, 159.
Bjerkesjö, Lars, 132, 142, 178, 207, 211, 278, 281,
290-291.
Black box, 24: black boxing, 39.
Bogota-declaration, 92: See also G77.
Borg, Claes-Göran, 163, 169-70, 177-78, 183, 189,
201-2, 207, 218, 220-24, 226, 228, 262, 275,280, 283, 287-88, 292-93, 312.
Boundary region, 229.
Brachet, Gérard, 121, 123, 127, 130, 132, 135, 153, 291 n1204.
Bräcke, 221.
Brazil, 65, 89–91, 95–96, 115, 244, 246, .
British: Aerospace, 224; National Space Centre, 224; Commonwealth, 138; colonial rule, 34.
Brother(s): Big, 147, 153; Little, 147, 153.
Brundtland, Gro H., 216.
Camouflage, 28.
Canada, 32, 82, 98 n308, 202 n791: Canadian RADARSAT, 224.
Carlsson, Ingvar, 128 n436, 231, 242.
Carter: Administration, 173; Jimmy, 149.
Cartographers, 26–27, 35.
Cartographic, 26, 124, 180, 189, 235, 266, 302.
Carver, John, 65, 91, 102.
Casey, William, 145.
Censorship, 184.
Centre for Image Analysis at Uppsala University, 282.
Centre Industriel Franco-Suédois, 72.
Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), 52, 63, 94, 101, 103–4, 106–7, 109–11, 119–24, 126–27, 131, 143, 148, 155, 164, 184, 202, 223–24, 296, 304.
Chain of services, 262. See also Vertical integration model.
Challenger explosion, 217.
Chalmers Institute in Gothenburg, 168.
Chernobyl: Meltdown, 53, 117–19, 128, 135–37, 142–46, 149–50, 152, 155, 159, 301, 303, 306, 315; Nuclear Power Plant, 53, 117–18, 130, 132, 134–36, 139–40, 156, 303; Flying Chernobyls, 143.
City planning, 89.
Civil servants, 35, 69–70, 85, 94, 168.
Classification, 186–89, 191, 199, 205, 310: system, 184, 188.
Climate, 21, 44, 221, 286.
Closed world, 64.
Cloud, 117, 128, 130–34, 188, 269: -free, 134, 184, 269; cloudy, 184, 205.
Coastal reefs, 181.
Cold War, 17–20, 29–30, 31 n 62, 32, 34, 36, 44, 53, 55, 86, 95, 110, 118, 137, 142–45, 149–50, 154, 156, 159, 214, 217, 229–30, 236, 245, 253–55, 297, 301–2, 305: détente, 32, 86.
Colonies, 28, 33, 90 n279, 166 n604: colonial era, 33, 175 n654; colonised land, 68, 72 n190; decolonizing, 32, 89 n276; postcolonial, 17.
Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space (UN) (COPUOS), 51, 62–66, 68, 80, 82, 84–85, 87, 89–92, 95–96, 98–99, 102–5, 112–14: See also Scientific and Technical Subcommittee; Legal Subcommittee.
Compact-Disk Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM), 271.
Computer-Compatible Tapes (CCT), 181, 191–92, 198, 204.
Computer, 77–79, 231, 235, 238, 267: -based, 98; image-processing, 106; personal, 254, 269, 284; systems, 100; work station, 123.
Coordination of Information on the Environment(CORINE), 218, 227, 242–43, 257, 277, 296: See also EEA.
Cosmonova, 254.
County of Norrbotten, 252, 261, 274–75, 279.
Dahl, Birgitta, 128, 141, 195-97, 242.
Data: cloud-free, 134, 269; electro-optical, 30; flow of, 293; geographical, 227, 274, 297, 313; optical, 239; land cover, 281, 287, 312; reception, 97–98; volumes of, 205, 282; See also Landsat; SPOT.
Databases, 54–55, 227–28, 257, 267, 272–73, 275, 277–78, 281–87, 295, 298, 302–3, 307, 309.
Datasets, 45, 229, 258, 266, 274, 310.
Decision-makers, 46, 48, 66, 276.
Decrypt, 109.
Democracy, 195, 245, 253.
Department of Physical Geography at Stockholm University, 61, 76, 282.
Development: consultants, 35, 53–54, 159–60, 162, 165–69, 172, 176, 179, 183, 201, 203, 209, 211–14, 293, 305; projects, 33, 53, 160–63, 168–70, 183, 301, 305: See also Aid, development.
Digital, 40 n96, 51–52, 123, 131–32, 192, 200, 212, 267–70, 274, 284, 309–10; digitisation, 30, 50, 76, 200.
Diplomacy, 18, 33, 52, 66, 73, 230 n922: environmental, 33 n74–n75, 34, 36, 43, 53–54, 85 n258, 92, 94, 215, 218–19, 239, 241, 242 n989, 245–48, 251, 255, 299–300, 302, 304, 306, 313.
Diplomatic, 62, 86, 112, 146, 176.
Discourse, 34, 92 n290, 150, 161 n581, 173 n644.
Dornier, 224.
Downlinked, 45, 87, 109, 222, 225, 293.
Earth, 14–15, 29–30, 40 n96, 45, 56–57, 62, 64, 66–67, 74–75, 84, 89–90, 92, 97, 109, 160, 199, 216–18, 221, 235, 243, 254: Earth’s climate, 221; Earth’s surface, 13–15, 28, 57, 68, 95, 102, 109, 113–14, 130, 216: See also Earth observation.
Earth Mission 2000, 233–35, 254.
Earth Observation Satellite Company (EOSAT), 139.
384
385
Earth observation, 14 n7, 229, 242–44, 249–50, 252–56, 270, 276, 281, 283–90, 292, 294–96, 298, 302–3, 306, 309, 311–314; -system, 228.
Earthnet, 104, 224–25.
Ecological, 29, 199, 242, 289: activism, 144; catastrophes, 153; glasnost, 251; murder, 153; satellites, 233.
Ecology, 25, 40 n98, 199, 200 n781, 232 n938, 279.
Eco-Nationalism, 144–45, 156.
Economic, 57, 89, 102, 173, 175, 183, 238, 265, 292, 299, 310: development, 22, 172 n636; growth, 245, 248, 250, 253.
Emsing, Erik, 163, 169-70, 174, 176-77, 192, 206-7.
England, 221: See also UK; British.
Engström, Fredrik, 81, 86, 94.
Environing, 13, 17, 26, 39–44, 53, 57, 95, 99, 114, 213, 251, 255, 264, 270, 272, 299–300, 310–12; -technology, 13, 19–20, 30, 38, 42, 44, 47, 52,55–56, 58, 117, 160, 163, 212, 216, 286, 299–300, 307; Europe, 54, 257, 298.
Environment and Space Research Institute in Kiruna, 275 n1128, 276, 278, 280–82, 295: See also the Environmental Data Centre.
Environmental, 14–15, 17, 20, 26 n40, 27, 30, 53–54, 61, 76, 78, 82, 84, 88–89, 94, 99, 105, 108–9, 114–15, 117, 120, 142, 152, 154, 161 n585, 175 n656, 192–94, 198–201, 203, 211, 214, 216–19, 222, 226, 230, 232, 268–69, 291, 298, 304, 307–12: advocacy, 144, 232–37, 239–56, 259, 262, 267, 303; boundaries, 18; bridge-builder, 253; change, 16, 24, 29, 41, 194, 200, 250, 256, 284–85, 293 n1213, 298, 303, 310; concerns, 145, 229, 263, 265, 298; crisis, 152; databases, 227–28, 272, 278, 281–82, 302; degradation, 145, 149, 156, 175, 179, 216; disasters, 120, 156, 159, 301; history, 19–20, 23–24, 42, 45 n113, 120 n385, 163 n589, 300; ideas, 23–24; interdependencies, 258; knowledge, 16, 17 n13, 20, 26, 32, 45, 184, 253, 255, 257, 269, 297, 302, 308–9; policy, 286–88, 289–90; rationale, 228; security, 290; tools, 2018; watchdogs, 149. See also Diplomacy, environmental.
Environmental Catalogue (EnviCat), 292–93, 295.
Environmental Data Centre, 54, 251, 253, 255, 257–59, 260–62, 270, 272–81, 283–87, 292–298, 302–303, 306, 312–13.
Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), 235.
Environmentalism, 175 n656.
Envirotechnical, 21, 24 n33 n34.
Erosion, 186, 216: silt, 181.
d’Estaing, Valéry Giscard, 107, 109.
Estonia, 229–32, 263, 266, 268, 297, 302: Government, 235–36; high-tech industry, 231; Ministry of Environment, 267; Estonian National Land Board, 235–36, 266.
Eurimage, 224.
Europe, 18, 28, 54, 72, 87, 95, 120, 123, 125, 147, 214, 216, 218, 221,225, 227, 229, 234, 236, 241–43, 251, 253, 255, 257, 272, 276–78, 280, 287, 290–91, 297–98, 302–3, 312–13: Eastern, 232; political map of, 231; Western, 31, 69, 92, 145.
European, 28, 38, 41, 54, 63, 73, 107, 139, 220, 228, 244, 261, 267, 298: agricultural subsidies, 284; countries, 27, 69–70, 74, 91, 143, 166; empires, 33; environment(al), 227, 243, 250, 252, 255, 257–58, 270, 277, 281, 287, 289, 302; funding, 276, 279; institutions, 215; integration, 20, 36, 46, 249, 297; land cover, 277, 287, 312; mapping, 266; market(s), 70–71, 231, 303; territory, 255, 297, 302; receiving stations, 226; scientist(s), 26, 31; space activities, 70–71, 72, 74, 80, 86, 254;: See also European Community; EEA; ESA; EU.
European Community, 216, 218, 227–28, 231, 236, 242, 253, 255, 257, 265, 272, 274, 302, 305, 306: See also EU.
European Environmental Agency (EEA), 227, 255, 257, 266, 277, 281, 287, 298, 303, 303, 306, 312; See also EU.
European Radar Satellite-1 (ERS-1), 153, 225, 239.
European Space Agency (ESA), 31, 50, 69 86, 99, 240; Headquarters in Paris, 224; ministerial meeting, 104, 244: See also Esrange; ESRO.
European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), 71–73, 86: See also ESA.
European Space RANGE (Esrange), 51, 54, 72, 87, 100, 109–11, 115, 120–24, 126, 131–34, 184, 221, 223–27, 229, 241, 257–62, 278, 291, 293–94, 296, 303, 306, 312–13: Esrange Landsat Station, 104, 106; Esrange Landsat Station Geographical Coverage, 87.
European Union (EU), 51, 54, 273, 275–78, 282, 289, 295, 297, 299, 302; Union Regional Development Funds, 281, 283: See also European Community, EEA.
European University Institute in Florence (EUI), 50–51.
Expert(ise), 20–21, 27–28, 35, 37, 45–46, 52, 76, 102: community, 29; interdisciplinary, 28; knowledge, 34; technoscientific, 18, 20, 22, 31–36, 53–54, 56, 64, 66–67, 70–74, 77–78, 80, 83, 85–86, 89, 92–97, 100, 109, 112–13; remote sensing, 13–15, 18–19, 22, 26, 30, 38, 43–44, 49, 53, 62–63, 74, 77, 79, 91, 94–95, 108, 115.
Eyes from space, 254.
Factory, 262 n1069: remote sensing, 123, 235; image, 292 n1213.
Fallout: radioactive, 119, 137, 155; political, 120.
Filipino: foreign policy, 171; nationalism, 173, 179; surveyors, 163, 184, 186 n709, 187–90, 203.
Finland, 267, 270, .
Forest, 186–87, 193, 288: areas, 181, 267; classification of-, 160; conservation, 197; cover, 160, 199; damage, 164; deforestation, 160, 173, 175, 187, 193, 197–98, 213, 216, 238, 243, 301; fires, 152; forestry, 89, 123, 268; inventories, 180; monitoring, 238; rainforests, 152; reforestation, 199, 204, 211–12, 303; mangrove, 172; Virgin forest, 187.
Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture Resources Management (FFARM), 174–79, 213.
France, 26, 50, 68–69, 94, 104, 110–12, 120–21, 122–23, 135, 143, 145, 147–48, 154, 293.
Fredga, Kerstin, 220, 222, 250, 291.
French, 24 38, 40, 55, 96, 104, 124, 143, 148, 155, 184, 202, 207–10, 223–24, : engineering unions, 121; Frenchness, 154; government, 63, 110, 120–21, 143, 208; Guiana, 68, 120; Lannion, 225; Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 106, 108; nuclear power, 143; space activities, 71–72; space industry, 71, 120: See also CNES; SPOT, Spot Image.
French-Swedish, 72, 92, 94, 106, 123, 303; agreements, 153; remote sensing infrastructure, 53, 55, 111, 115, 119–20, 123, 149, 153–57, 163–64, 168, 306.
Frutkin, Arnold W., 66, 74, 96–97, 103.
Fucino: Italian, 224–25.
Group of 77 (G77), 89 n276, 239–40, 246.
Geographical: information, 115, 227, 235, 265, 269, 273, 277, 280, 284–85, 290, 293, 295, 297–98, 306–7, 309; knowledge, 28, 34; relationship, 266. See also Databases.
Germany: Federal Republic of, 137, 242 n992, 244, 263 n1079; Nazi-, 230.
Gibson, Roy, 228, 290.
Glavkosmos, 223–24, 233–35.
Global: capitalism, 46; changes, 238, 275; commons, 92; coverage, 292; earthwatch, 243; environment(al), 14, 16, 17, 57, 88, 103, 218, 222, 238, 241, 248–50, 291; forest cover, 199; imagery, 15; infrastructure, 260; knowledge, 45; level, 13; monitoring, ; monitoring system, network, 281 ; peace alert system, 147; scale, 14, 200, 301; North, 69, 239; South, 69, 239; surveillance, 289; weather monitoring systems, 44: See also Climate; GENIUS.
Golan Heights, 148.
Grain-to-bread principle, 164, 293–94, 296: Vertical integration model.
Graphite-moderated reactor, 117, 137–38 : See also Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
Green Party (Sweden), 242 n990, 280.
Greenpeace International, 154, .
Ground truth(ing), 183, 186, 188 n720 n721; fieldwork, 180, 184, 186–88, 205, 212, 267, 310.
Håkansson, Hans, 70–71, 73 n194, 80, 290 n1204.
Hammaguir (Algeria), 68.
Holter, Marvin, 78.
Hoppe, Gunnar, 61, 76–77, 80–83, 86, 88, 100–1, 107, 111–12, 114, 292.
Humanitarian(ism) 178: purposes, 33 ; rights, 67. See also Aid.
Hybrid(ity), 24: occupation, 73.
Hyman, William A., 67 n160.
386
387
Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (Lithuania), 128, 140–42, 145.
Imagery analysis, 75, 76 n208.
Imperial: mapping 268 n1094; powers, 33.
India, 96.
Indigenous Sami (Sweden), 72, 281.
Information technology (IT), 272, 277–79, 280, 285, 292, 294–295, 306, 311.
Infrastructure, 21–22, 44–45, 53, 105–6, 108, 111, 113, 119, 120, 127, 142, 153–57, 168, 183, 216, 220–23, 226, 228–29, 239, 241, 254, 260–61, 279, 295–96, 298, 300–1, 307; infrastructural capacity, 100; connections, 223, 225; game, 223; integration, 215, 275; Internet-, 284, 292; IT-, 295; knowledge-, 22, 24, 44–45; passage point, 125: See also Databases; French-Swedish remote sensing infrastructure; Vertical Integration Model.
Intercosmos, 96.
Interface, 131, 271. See Computer.
International(ism), 46, 82, 102, 147, 160: collaboration, 90, 194, 205, 217, 219; communism, 171; debate, 142, 144, 305; definitions, 18, 64; negotiations, 18, 36 53, 62–63, 68, 80, 83, 85, 88, 97, 106, 112–13, 301, 301–2; regulations, 19, 33 66, 99, 110, 114, 148, 245, 247–48, 251, 255, 279; technoscientific networks, 17, 73.
International Geophysical Year, 64, 25.
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), 217, 219, 221.
International Monetary Fund, 176.
International Space Year 1992 (ISY-92), 215, 217–19, 221–34, 237–39, 241, 243–44, 254–55: See also IGBP; Mission to Planet Earth.
International Training Centre for Aerial Survey (ITC), 33.
International Satellite Monitoring Agency (ISMA), 57, 110.
Jankowitsch, Peter, 65 n151, .
Jenkins, Dale, 78.
Jenks, Wilfred, 66.
Jernelöv, Arne, 275, 278, 280, 282.
Johansson, Olof, 104, 110, 247, 249, 252, 271.
Juste retour, 70 n177, 77: See also ESA.
Kihlblom, Ulf, 163, 168-70, 176-77, 180, 207, 293.
Kiruna Municipality, 125 n419, 252, 260–62, 280, 306: See also Space Town Kiruna.
Kleman, Bengt, 77–78.
Kosmos-1413, 130.
Kourou, 68, 120, 122, 126: See also CNES.
Koyré, Alexandre, 64, 68.
Kyhstym plutonium reactors in Ural, 152.
Land reform, 54, 160–61, 171–75, 177, 179, 189, 193–95, 197–99, 212–13, 301.
Landsat, 96: Landsat-1, 84; Landsat-5, 118, 131, 136, 141; data, 87, 135, 139–40, 145, 175, 204, 259, 293, 305; ERTS, 84; station, 87, 100, 106, 164; See also Satellites.
Larsson, Christer, 126-27, 130, 152.
Latvia, 202, 230, 236, 263, 266–68, 297, 302, : See also Baltic.
Left Party (Sweden), 277.
Legal Subcommittee, 65, 91–92: See also COPUOS; Scientific and Technical Subcommittee.
Libya, 148, 202.
Limits to growth, 15.
Lindholm, Karin, 125, 134.
Line(s): orbital, 40 n96, 57 n132, 122, 131, 222, 267.
Lithuania, 128, 140–41, 230, 236, 263, 266–68, 297, 302: See also Baltic.
Lübeck, Lennart, 71, 159, 192, 215, 218, 220, 222-23, 227, 243-44, 250, 258, 261, 276, 283, 290-91.
Mannerfelt, Carl, 76 n210.
Map: map’s legend, 181, 190; topographic-, 28 n45, 180, 186, 190, 197, 235.
Marcos, Ferdinand, 173 n545, 174–75; Administration, 197–98.
Martin-Löf, Johan, 82–83, 85, 88–89, 92, 97, 98, 104–6, 108.
Maspalomas (Gran Canaria), 225.
Matra (Mécanique Aviation Traction), 72.
Meteorology, 67, 70 n173, 89, 282.
Metria, 282, 293, 296.
Mosaic (of satellite data), 180–81, 192, 212, 268–70, 285, 301, 309.
Military, 28, 32, 74–75, 77, 133, 149, 150–52, 166, 177; base(s), 171, 173–74, 193, 196; industrial complex, 31; purpose(s), 26, 30, 45, 57, 76, 107, 109–10, 148, 168, 192, 227, 255, 306; technology, 19, 29. See also Satellites.
Mission to Planet Earth, 218, 237, 241.
Mitterand, Francois, 126.
Multilateral: financiers, 18, 54; organisations, 33: See also World Bank.
Nåbo, Olle, 280-81, 284-89, 291-292.
Nadar, Félix, 27 n45, 28.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 66, 69, 74, 77.
National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), 224.
Nature, 16, 22–23 n27, 25–27, 42–43, 98, 103, 106, 108, 285, 307–9: First, 24, 26, 43; Production of-, 25 n38, 42–43; Second, 24, 26, 43; Third, 24, 26: See also Environing.
Near-polar position, 121, 125, . See also Esrange; French-Swedish satellite remote sensing infrastructure.
Neutral(ity), 31, 32 n66 36, 43, 140, 145, 147, 154, 156, 178, 299, 305. See also Non-aligned.
Newsgathering from space, 126, 142, 149–52, 154–56, 303.
Non-aligned: -state, 31, 32 n66, 65, 69, 86, 94, 107, 118, 120, 144–45, 156, 235, 300; non-alignment, 43, 53, 108, 306; Non-Aligned Movement, 89; support, 36, 84–85; surveillance, 18, 110, 156–57, 235, 305; See also Diplomacy; Neutral.
Nordforsk, 101.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 31.
Northern cap Environmental Working Cooperation, 262.
Norway, .
Norwegian: government, 69; receiving station(s), 69, 220; Norsk Romsenter, 224.
Novo, 313.
Nurek (Tadzhikistan), 150.
Oceanography, 88–89.
Oil spills, 98, 108, 114, 164.
Orhaug, Torleiv, 77–78.
Our Common Future, 8 n15, 161, 175, 193, 216–17, 233–34, 239, 254, 288: See also WCED.
Pakistan, 150, 162, 169, 202.
Palme, Olof, 128 n436, 240 n976, 245.
Pankin, Boris, 129.
People’s Republic of China, 152, 173, 202.
Perestroika, 223, 232–36, 265: See also Soviet Union.
Peterson, Thage G., 125, 219–20.
Phenomenology, 25 n39, 39 n94.
Philippines: Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), 177, 179–81, 184, 191–93, 198, 200–1, 204–6.
Pilo, Claës, 71–72, 83, 94, 112.
Pixels, 118, 132.
Planet(ary), 15, 30, 56, 64, 67, 198, 243, 311; boundaries, 15; level, 216; management, 217, 234, 288. See also Our Common Future.
Polar Orbit Earth Observation Mission (POEM-1), 243,
Prestige: national-, 273, 277.
Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space, 62 n142, 114, 300.
Project Krylbo, 221 n883, 222–28, 235, 239, 251, 259.
Radar, 31, 58, 77, 153, 224–25, 239, 255, 306.
Rasch, Hans, 163, 177, 180, 189, 191-192, 196, 202, 267.
388
389
Reagan Administration, 124, 139–40, 142, 173–74.
Re-independent (Baltic states), 54, 236, 242, 299, 302.
Re-take, 269, 297, 302.
Remote Sensing of the Environment (RESE), 274–75, 281–82, 287, 290, 295: See also Environmental Data Centre.
Research foundations, 271 n1112, 272, 277, 297: See also Mistra; Swedish wage-earner funds.
Rey, Lars, 71, 80–81.
Rio Conference, 239–40, 242, 244–48, 250–53, 255: See also UNCED.
Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademin), 71, 73, 101 n323.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Kungliga vetenskapsakademien), 61, 219.
Russia, 229, 235–36, 251, 265; Russian cartography, 266, 297; dependence, 302. See also Soviet Union.
Sagan, Carl, 147, .
Salmijärvi, ESA’s receiving station, 224–25, 227, 238.
Sardinia, 143.
Sary Shagan (Kazakhstan), 150.
Satellitbild (SSC), 51, 53–54, 118–19, 122–42, 145, 151, 153–57. See also SSC; Spot Image.
Satellite(s): artificial, 61, 65–66, 75, 215; covert, 53, 57, 67 n159, 109, 145; early warning-, 146; imagery, 14 n5, 15, 18, 118, 125, 130, 136, 137–38, 141, 145–46, 148, 153, 155–57, 167, 172, 180, 183, 210, 254, 264, 266–67, 270; maps, 167, 177, 180, 189, 198, 212, 262, 268, 270; meteorological-, 67; military, 149, 251; monitoring, 44, 211, 222, 268, 307; observation-, 66, 80; peace, 57, 153–54; polar-orbital-, 121, 221–22; reconnaissance-, 139, 233 ; spy-, 138–39, 145–146; surveillance-, 237, 284. See also SPOT; Landsat.
Satellus, 295, 297, 307, 311–12.
Saudi Arabia, 150–51, 169.
Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, 63–66, 90–92, 95, 97–99, 102–5, 108–9: See also COPUOS; Legal Subcommittee.
Sea of Peace, 230: See also Baltic Sea.
Semipalatinsk, 150.
Shultz, Georg P., 139.
Simulated trajectories, 117 n376, 128: See also Chernobyl.
Singapore, 207–8.
Social: Democrats, 54, 240–42, 247, 249, 275, 277; Democratic, 71, 140, 193, 219, 236, 239, 240, 242, 270–71.
Source pluralism,48 .
South America, 120, 122.
Southeast Asia, 171–73, 176, 195–96, 199, 201, 204–11, 214, 293.
Soviet: authorities, 129, 137, 139–40, 145, 152, 233, 236; cartographic administration, 235; era; Gorbachev Administration, 144, 146, 154, 223, 233; military strength, 150; rule, 231; security culture, 144. See also Soviet Union.
Soviet Union, 17–19, 29, 32, 44, 54, 56, 64, 67, 85–86, 94, 97, 110, 114, 118, 129, 137–39, 141–42, 144, 146–47, 149–150, 152, 154, 156, 214–15, 217, 227, 230–1, 233–34, 240, 246, 249–50, 254–55, 266.
Space: debris, 56–57, 139, 311; law, 65–66, 67 n160, 114, ; power, 17, 56, 90–91, 99, 145, 217–18, 227, 241; race, 17, 68.
Space House, 125–27, 132–34, 189, 241, 279, 294, 311: See also Satellitbild; Space Town Kiruna.
Space Media Network, 118, 120, 127, 130, 133–37, 142–43, 145, 147, 149–57, 300, 304.
Space Town Kiruna (Rymdstaden Kiruna), 35 n81, 125–26, 241‚ 249, 259, 260–61, 279, 306, 313.
Spacebridges, 263 n1077.
Satellite Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre (SPOT-1), 38, 53, 55, 104, 106, 107, 115, 121–24, 126 n425, 127, 131–32, 134, 155, 169, 180, 184, 186, 188, 311: SPOT-3, 4 and 5, 202, 223, 268, 291; See also Satellites; Système Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre (SPOT).
Spot Asia, 207–10, 296.
Spot Image, 121–24, 127, 130, 132, 135, 143, 148, 153–57, 160, 164, 178, 184, 193, 202, 206–11, 213–14, 223–24, 293, 296, 304.
Spot Image Corporation (SICORP), 148, 224.
Sputnik-1, 56, 64 n146.
Star Wars, 147: See also Reagan Administration.
State: sensed-, 53, 61, 90, 92, 99, 104–5, 108–10, 113, 115, 217 n862, 245 n1005, 300, 304; sensing-, 53, 61, 90, 104–5, 108–9, 113–15, 304; secrecy, 142.
Stern, Mikael, 118, 127, 130–34, 136, 141.
Stiernstedt, Jan, 70-71, 80-81, 220.
Stockholm: -International Peace Research Institute, 145 ; -University’s Department of Physical Geography, 61, 76–77, 112, 282.
Sustainable development: 15 n8, 18, 20, 54, 160–61 n580, 162, 175, 179, 183, 193, 197, 199–201, 211–17, 233, 237, 240, 242, 244–47, 253–54, 272–73, 285, 289–90, 297, 301–2, 305, 307; ecologically-, 287; future, 286; use, 205; develop sustainably, 248 n1016, 250, sustainability, 284, 287: See also WCED; Our Common Future.
Svalbard, 69: See also Norwegian receiving station(s).
Sweco, 168 n619, 177.
Swedish: exports of expertise, 159 n576, 164, 166; space programme, 63, 79–83, 112; Swedishness, 163, 178;
Swedish Board for Space Activities (Delegationen för rymdverksamheten, SBSA), 14, 18, 50, 62–63, 81, 83–86, 88, 100–2, 107, 109, 111–12, 202, 219–20, 299, 303–4. See also SNSB.
Swedish Board for Technical Development (Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling), 50, 81.
Swedish Chamber of Commerce (Sveriges handelskammare), 169–70.
Swedish Commission for Technical Co-Operation (Beredningen för internationellt tekniskt-ekonomiskt samarbete, BITS), 51, 163, 167, 176, 180, 191–92, 199, 203–6, 210–11, 231, 236, 267.
Swedish Crisis Group, 117, 128–30, 133, 137–42, 155–56: See also Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate; Swedish Radiation Protection Authority.
Swedish Engineering Press Limited (Ingenjörsförlaget), 152.
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket, Swedish EPA), 231, 237–38, 251, 261, 265, 281–82.
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra), 273, 273–77, 280–82, 295: See also Research foundations.
Swedish Geographical Survey Office (Rikets allmänna kartverk), 88, 93: See also Swedish National Land Survey.
Swedish Government (Regeringen), 14 n6, 69 n173, 70, 72–73, 76–78, 80–83, 84–85, 87–88, 94, 100, 109–10, 112–13, 120–21, 124, 136, 140, 143, 159, 166–68, 170, 176, 193–96, 200, 213–15, 218–19, 221, 228–29, 231–32, 236, 238–40, 244, 253–54, 267 n1086, 275–76, 278, 280 n1145, 285, 298–99, 305–8: government, 71 n183, 73, 85, 113, 115, 160, 162, 164–65, 167, 169, 176, 193, 199, 200, 203, 252, 255, 260, 270, 300, 311, 313; Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 51, 62–64, 71, 82–83, 88, 99, 107, 109, 111, 113, 151, 153; Ministry of Agriculture, 283; Ministry of Commerce, 243, 259; Ministry of Communication, 275; Ministry of Education, 277; Ministry of Environment, 232, 240; Ministry of Industry, 81, 243, 291.
Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), 51, 166.
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), 128, 237, 276.
Swedish Military Air Force (Flygvapnet), 133.
Swedish National Atlas Project, 281 n1160; See also Wastenson.
Swedish National Defence Research Institute (Försvarets forskningsanstalt), 77–78, 93, 100, 106, 112, 128–30.
Swedish National Land Survey (Lantmäteriet), 53, 59, 93–95, 111, 123–25, 156, 165, 167–68, 189, 255, 261, 273, 276, 280–81, 291, 303–4, 306, 311–13.
Swedish National Space Board (SNSB), 50, 220–21, 227–28, 237–39, 241–44, 251, 253–55, 259, 273, 290–91, 296, 299, 306, 311, 319, 322.
Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (Statens kärnkraftinspektion), 128, 130: See also Swedish Crisis Group.
Swedish Projects Incorporated, 163, 169–70.
390
391
Swedish Radiation Protection Authority ( Svenska strålskyddsinstitutet), 128; See also Swedish Crisis Group.
Swedish Remote Sensing Committee (Fjärranalyskommittén), 14, 17, 53, 61–63, 97, 102–5, 112, 114, 238–39, 255, 303.
Swedish Space Corporation (Svenska rymdaktiebolaget, SSC): Development Unit in Solna, 260; Earth Observation Division, 260, 262, 264, 281, 285–86, 292, 294–98, 313; SSC’s Remote Sensing Division, 163,169, 178: See also Satellitbild; Esrange; Swedish Space Technology Group; SBSA.
Swedish Space Technology Group (Rymdtekniska gruppen), 69, 71, 73, 79–83, 112.
Swedish Television (Sveriges television), 118, 129, 133–35, 142.
Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen i Sverige), 270.
Swedish wage-earner funds, 270–71: See also Research foundations.
Swedsurvey, 167–68, 189, 203 : See also Swedish Land Survey.
Switzerland, 154.
Syria, 152, 155 n572.
System: large technological-, 20.
Système Probatoire d’Observation de la Terre (SPOT), 37–38, 40, 104, 110–11, 121 n394, 137, 239, 270 ; data, 54, 109, 123–24, 127, 131, 136, 140, 143, 148–49, 153–54, 164, 184, 191, 205, 210–11, 224, 269, 277, 285, 293, 301, 310; family, 291, 296; images, 134, 141, 202–3; products, 208; programme, 53, 55, 119, 121, 126, 130, 148, 155, 164, 177, 205, 222, 270, 304; scenes, 180–81 n691, 182–183, 185–86, 189, 191, 212: See also SPOT-1; Spot Image.
Tadzhik Republic, 150.
Tartu, 232.
Techne, 41.
Technical transfer, 166.
Technique, 44, 74–75, 93, 95–96, 102, 124, 180, 197.
Technocratic rule, 172.
Technological system, 21 n22, 119 n384, 24, 31.
Technologies, 68, 76–77, 80, 93, 117–18, 143–44, 147, 161,179, 199, 204, 211, 237, 248, 250, 285, 295, 302, 207, 310, 314: See also extreme-, 127, new-, 76, 97.
Technology gap, 68–69, 82.
Technoscientific, 43, 53–54, 56, 62–64, 67, 69 n170, 70–74, 78, 80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 92–95, 97, 109, 112–13, 119, 123, 127, 165, 219, 230, 300, 302–4: attachés, 70–71, 73, 94.
Teks, 41.
TELE-X, 263, .
Telemetry station, 69: See also Esrange.
Telespazio (Italian), 95, 224.
Territory, 28, 40, 64, 86, 90, 95, 105, 113, 214, 229, 232, 236, 255, 284, 297, 301–2.
Thermal infrared, 132, 135–36, 141.
Third World, 206.
Topographic maps, 180, 186, 190, 197, 235.
Toulouse, 121 n394, 122, 130–31, 153, 164, 178.
Trade, 73, 166, 176, 178–79, 229, 245, 248, 253: bilateral-, 67,
Transnational, 35 n78, 37 n87, 38, 45 n173, 46, 48–51, 53, 55–56, 58, 63 n145, 64, 70–74, 74 n198, 93–96, 101, 103, 109–10, 112–13, 120 n385–386, 151, 179, 204, 205 n806, 230, 263, 303: -financiers, 175.
Treaty on Remote Sensing, 89–90, 91 n282, 95: See also G77.
Tromsö (Norwegian), 220, 224–25: -station, 224.
Turning point, 47–48, 119 n383, 215: See also Formative moments.
Tyuratam, 150.
Ukraine, 53, 117, 118 n381, 128, 130–32, 134, 144, 146, 156, 266 n1079.
United Nations (UN), 62–66, 82, 87–92, 96, 99, 102–10, 112–14, 148, 161, 175, 195, 200, 217, 239–40, 245–46, 251, 253, 286, 300, 313; -General Assembly, 62, 64–66, 83, 114, 300; -Outer Space Affairs Division, 65, 90; -Working Group on Remote Sensing, 89–90.
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 240 n780; See also Rio Conference.
United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (the Stockholm Conference), 82, 84–85, 89, 240, 245–46, 250–51.
United States of America (US), 17, 19, 29, 31–32, 34, 44, 50, 56–57, 64–66, 69–70, 78, 84–86, 87, 90 n279, 92, 97, 98 n308, 102–3, 108, 110, 118, 137, 144, 145, 147–49, 152, 154, 156, 171–73, 193–94, 196, 217–18, 228, 233–35, 238, 240, 244, 254, 265, 272, 289, 293, 303; Air Force, 74; Army, 74; Center for Space Policy, 148; Central Intelligence Agency, 75, 139, 145–46, 185, 192; Congress, 139; Delegation, 66, 90–91, 96, 102–3, 105; Department of Defence, 148, 150; Department of State, 177; Embassy in Stockholm, 130, 140; Government, 67, 74–75, 89, 179, 237, 248; Navy, 74; Office of Naval Research, 74–75; spy satellite, 138–39, 145.
Universalist: -rhetoric 67–68, -ambitions, 96.
Vertical integration model, 164–65 n597: See also grain-to-bread principle.
Vigilance, 230, .
Virer, 40.
Visualise(d), 14, 106, 200, 229, 264, 266, 269, 281, 285–86; -isation, 24, 273, 285; -ising, 30, 118.
Von Sydow, Ulf, 279-80, 283.
Vue d’ensemble, 29.
Warfare, 22, 27–28,148, 184.
Washington, DC, 5, 7, 52, 124, 167, 170, 176–77, 192, 207.
Wastenson, Leif, 76–77.
Western world, 120, 135, 150, 156, 304.
Wilderness years, 69–70.
World Bank, 54, 160–61, 166–7, 169–71, 173–81, 186, 188–93, 199–200, 204, 207, 213.
World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 216, 288.
World Space Organization, 147.
World War(s), 28, 31, 230.
Zambia, 164.
Zenker, Stefan, 81–83, 86–88, 93, 100–1, 103–4, 106–7, 111, 218, 220–23, 225, 227.
392
ENVIRONINGTECHNOLOGY
Swedish Satellite Remote Sensing inthe Making of Environment 1969–2001
EN
VIR
ON
ING
TE
CH
NO
LO
GY
Swedish Satellite R
emote Sensing in the M
aking of Environm
ent 1969–2001
The cover is based on remote sensing data gathered above northern Ukraine by the French satellite SPOT-1 during its orbit around the Earth on May 1, 1986.
JOHAN GÄRDEBO
JOH
AN
GÄ
RD
EB
O
Johan Gärdebo is a historian at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Environing Technology is his doctoral thesis.
Environing-Technology-Cover.indd 1 2019-03-07 12:01
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