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Dear Friends and Colleagues, Members of the ESEH:As I write this letter, the program committee for the 7th Biannual ESEH Conference in Munich are meeting next door. The committee is made up of scholars from across Europe—from Portugal to the far north of Norway, from Great Britain to Hungary—and the members each represent very different research interests. The group, led by Peter Coates (Bristol), has a difficult task ahead of them, for more than 600 people applied to come to Munich to present papers or posters, take part in panels or roundtables, or to chair an event. The number of applications far surpasses any seen before in the history of the ESEH, and we are eagerly anticipating what promises to be a very exciting conference program. (The committee will let all applicants know about the selection and program no later than December 21, 2013.)It is encouraging to report that we have had 100 new members sign up to the ESEH in the last months. Members can now pay their membership fee directly and easily via paypal from anywhere in the world. Anyone who joins the ESEH at the end of 2012 will automatically have their membership extended through 2013.The vitality of our society in the last few years can be measured by many notices of programs and initiatives in environmental history that we have received in the last few weeks alone—the number is such that I can only list them in bullet points:&#160;-          Catherine Ashcraft of Middlebury College in Vermont is organizing a conference from 13-16 March 2013 on the topic of “The Politics of Freshwater: Access and Identity in a Changing Environment.” She has just extended the deadline for submission of abstracts until the end of November (with apologies for the late announcement). She is hoping to receive abstracts, in particular from environmental history or, more broadly, from humanities perspectives. If you wish to apply, you can get in touch with cashcraft@middlebury.edu.&#160;-          ESEH member Ulrike Plath (Tallinn University) invites papers for a conference titled "From Instants to Eons: Time in Environment and Environmental History" to take place in Tallinn from 25-26 March 2013. The conference is being organized by the new Centre for Environmental History in Estonia (KAJAK). Deadline for proposal submissions is 20 December 2013.More information about the conference and about a doctoral seminar in Estonia on the same topic (to be held from March 27-28, 2013) will soon be posted on the ESEH website. At this point the organizers in Estonia are looking for advanced scholars who would like to serve as mentors. Those who are interested should contact Riin Magnus: Riin.Magnus@ut.ee.&#160;-          Sylvie Nail, Professor of British Studies at the Université de Nantes in France, is organizing a conference that will conclude a three-year research project on the complex relationships between humans and nature in France and the British Isles between the eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries, entitled “Nature(s): concevoir, vivre, représenter (18e-21e siècles).” The conference will be held from 6-8 June 2013 in Nantes. Proposals should be sent to Sylvie Nail at Sylvie.Nail@univ-nantes.fr, no later than December 2013.&#160;-          A workshop will take place in the newly founded Center for Ecological History at Renmin University of China from 23-26 May 2013 on the topic of "Disasters Wet and Dry: Rivers, Floods, and Droughts in World History." The call for papers for this conference runs until 1 January 2013.&#160;-          Alexei Kraikovsky (European University in St. Petersburg) is announcing an education project on Russian culture in Baltic nature titled Российская культура в природе Балтийского побережья: на стыке культуры, ландшафта и культурного наследияon. Part of the program will be a tour through the Eastern Baltic region from Finland to St. Petersburg and Estonia. For details see http://www.eu.spb.ru/research-centers/ceth/projects/5040-baltic2013 and https://www.facebook.com/Baltic2013or contact the project coordinator Olga Malkina (omalkina@eu.spb.ru).&#160;-          Our Australian member Thom van Doren (University of New South Wales) has alerted us to the launch of a new open-access journal in the environmental humanities. You can check it out at http://environmentalhumanities.org/.&#160;-          Hrvoje Petric (University of Zagreb), the ESEH regional representative for Croatia, invites proposals for article submissions for a special journal issue on the topic of “History and Sustainability” for Ekonomska i ekohistorija (Economics and Eco-history). The deadline for article submissions is 1 July 2013. More information can be found on the ESEH website.&#160;-          Hrvoje Petric is also the author of the new ESEH notepad that informs members about developments, both organizational and historiographical, in the field of environmental history. The notepad is part of the journal Environment and History: thanks to White Horse Press, the most recent issues can be accessed online by ESEH members free of charge. Please get in touch with ESEH Secretary Phia Steyn (m.s.steyn@stir.ac.uk) if you have not received the password.&#160;-          Finn-Arne Jørgensen, our representative for the Nordic Region, invites students to attend a PhD course on “Comparative Forest Histories of the Global North.” It will be taught by Professor Nancy Langston and take place at Umeå University, Sweden, 15-19 April 2013. Students can be awarded 7,5 CTS points for this course. It will be particularly relevant for students in history, ecology, archaeology, and forestry. More information will soon be available on the ESEH website.&#160;-          Finally, all positions on the Board of the European Society for Environmental History are to be filled by election (or re-election) in the next year. Neither the current President nor the Secretary will stand again for office. Over the next few months, the Chair of the Nominating Committee, Martin Schmid: Martin.Schmid@uni-klu.ac.at would like to receive your suggestions for nominees to the Board.&#160;This may well be the last newsletter for 2012. Along with my greetings to all of you across the world, I add my wishes for a happy and successful new year 2013.&#160;With kind regards,Christof Mauch, President, ESEH