Lars Erik Anton Sveding

• Sveding, Lars Erik Anton (2026). ‘Some places should be kept tapu against the car’: Roads, conservation, and wilderness in New Zealand, 1920–80. International Review of Environmental History. ISSN 2205-3204. 12(1), p. 55–76. doi: 10.22459/ireh.12.01.2026.03. Full text in Research Archive
• Sveding, Lars Erik Anton (2025). 100% toxic: A review of the environmental history of toxins and toxicity in Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of New Zealand Studies. NS40, p. 36–49. doi: 10.26686/jnzs.ins40.10441. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Over the last three decades, scholars have produced a large body of work showcasing how people have engaged with the environments of Aotearoa New Zealand culturally, politically, intellectually, and economically. This diversity in perspective is perhaps best exemplified by the 2002 anthology Environmental Histories of New Zealand edited by Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking, and of which a new edition, Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, was published in 2013.[i] Nevertheless, there remain perspectives largely absent in New Zealand environmental historiography. Foremost among them are matters of toxins and toxicity. Indeed, while the Waitangi Tribunal has shed light on the impacts of toxins in some of its reports, for example how sewage discharge and industrial waste have polluted traditional fishing grounds, scholarship conducted outside the Waitangi Tribunal has been largely limited to expose the hypocrisy of marketing slogans like “100% Pure New Zealand” by showcasing how agricultural and industrial practices have polluted and continue to pollute lands, lakes and rivers.

• Sveding, Lars Erik Anton & Beattie, James (2024). Japanese Nature Protection and Forest Acclimatisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1900–1940s. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies. ISSN 1174-8915. 26(2), p. 37–52. Full text in Research Archive
• Sveding, Lars Erik Anton (2023). Timber, money, and shelter: The promotion of private tree planting in New Zealand during the 1920s. Journal of Historical Geography. ISSN 0305-7488. 81, p. 123–131. doi: 10.1016/j.jhg.2023.06.007. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article examines the promotion of private tree planting, in particular by farmers, by the New Zealand State Forest Service (SFS) as a solution to a timber shortage in the 1920s. While previous research has detailed the SFS’s efforts to ensure a stable supply of timber by placing New Zealand’s native forests under a system of sustained yield management and through the establishment of exotic plantations, it overlooks the importance the SFS placed on private tree plantations as a source of timber, expecting it to supply a third of New Zealand’s timber demand. In its propaganda, the SFS portrayed tree planting as a mean to improve the productivity of the farm and as a financial investment. To assist farmers, the SFS also sold trees and seedlings to farmers, a practice that met with major resistance from private nurserymen and political lobby organisations. By exploring the SFS’s promotion of private tree planting to farmers, this article demonstrates how the SFS built upon a tradition of experimental tree planting and promotion of exotic afforestation. Moreover, by examining the opposition to the policy of the SFS selling trees and seedlings to farmers, the article highlights the contesting notions of the state’s role in promoting private tree planting; whether it was a responsibility of the state, or an invasion on the private market. On a broader scale, this paper demonstrates how local environmental and political conditions shaped responses to a perceived global timber shortage.

• Sveding, Lars Erik Anton & Beattie, James (2023). ‘A lesson from China’: Soil menace stories in New Zealand conservation, 1910s-1940s. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies. ISSN 1174-8915. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA