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Paper short abstract

The landscapes of Latvia, reshaped by the Second World War and Soviet rule, gave rise to environmentalism as an eco-social agency. Nature became a symbol of belonging and resistance, meaning that caring for the environment became inextricably linked with caring for home and nation.

Paper long abstract

The Second World War and subsequent Soviet military, economic, and industrial policies profoundly reshaped Latvia’s economic, demographic, and social structures. These shifts also transformed the environment and landscape in both rural and urban areas. Today, the legacy of war and the Soviet regime persists in impersonal, standardized urban landscapes; abandoned rural areas; and degraded, militarily contaminated sites. These upheavals altered the physical landscape and reshaped people’s emotional bonds to their surroundings, raising questions of place identity, eco-social agency, and eco-national processes. As Katrīna Schwartz has argued, environmental threats were often reframed as threats to the nation itself.

Latvia’s experience shows that environmental engagement cannot be understood without reference to place, memory, and identity. Whether in national protests against hydroelectric dams or neighbourhood-based activism, environmentalism functioned as a deeply embedded form of eco-social agency. These actions responded not only to ecological harm but also to threats against cultural continuity, lived landscapes, and community autonomy. Eco-nationalism thus evolved as both a reaction to and an expression of identity, where nature became a symbol of belonging, loss, and resistance. Analysed case studies demonstrate how caring for the environment is inseparable from caring for one’s home and nation. These struggles reveal a convergence of political, ecological, and emotional geographies. Environmentalism becomes a medium through which people assert their right to place, reclaim agency, and narrate continuity in the face of imposed change, protecting nature as a resource, national symbol, and socially embedded space.