A Research Agenda For Global Environmental Politics

In a world confronted with escalating environmental crises, are academics asking the right questions and advocating the best solutions? This Research Agenda paves the way for new and established scholars in the field, identifying the significant gaps in research and emerging issues for future generations in global environmental politics.

This book provides authoritative and up-to-date research for anyone interested in the study of international environmental politics. It demonstrates how the field of international environmental politics has evolved and identifies key questions, topics and approaches to guide future research.

Palgrave Advances in International Environmental Politics provides a state of the art review of the major theoretical approaches and substantive debates of the field. The first section reviews the historical development of international environmental politics as well as the theoretical and methodological approaches used in its study. The following chapters each review the trajectory of a key research area within international environmental politics and elaborate on current approaches and debates. Case studies in each chapter illuminate the main theoretical questions that emerge from the review.

The second edition of this Handbook contains more than 30 new and original articles as well six essential updates by leading scholars of global environmental politics. This landmark book maps the latest theoretical and empirical research in this energetic and growing field. Captured here are the pioneering and lively debates over concerns for the health of the planet and how they might best be addressed. The introduction explores the intellectual trends and evolving parameters in the field of global environmental politics. It makes a case for an expansive definition of the field, one that embraces an interdisciplinary literature on the connections between global politics and environmental change. The remaining chapters are divided into four broad themes – states and cooperation; global governance; the political economy of governance; and knowledge and ethics – with each section covering key emerging issues. In-depth explorations are given to topics such as climate change, multinational corporations, international agreements and UN organizations, regulations and business standards, trade and international finance, multilevel and transnational governance, and ecological citizenship. Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, Second Edition is a comprehensive review of the field and offers cutting-edge ideas for further research. As such, scholars, students and policymakers will find themselves looking to it for many years to come.

Climate change will bring great suffering to communities, individuals and ecosystems. Those least responsible for the problem will suffer the most. Justice demands urgent action to reverse its causes and impacts. In this provocative new book, Paul G. Harris brings together a collection of original essays to explore alternative, innovative approaches to understanding and implementing climate justice in the future. Through investigations informed by philosophy, politics, sociology, law and economics, this Research Agenda reveals how climate change is a matter of justice and makes concrete proposals for more effective mitigation.

Challenging the mainstream view of the environment as either threatening or valuable, this book considers how geographic knowledge can be applied to offer a more nuanced understanding. Framed within geopolitics and using a range of methodologies, the chapters encapsulate different approaches to demonstrate how selective forms of knowledge, measurement, and spatial focus both embody and stabilize power, shaping how people perceive and respond to changing features of human-environment interactions.

The understanding of global environmental management problems is best achieved through transdisciplinary research lenses that combine scientific and other sector (industry, government, etc.) tools and perspectives. However, developing effective research teams that cross such boundaries is difficult. This book demonstrates the importance of transdisciplinarity, describes challenges to such teamwork, and provides solutions for overcoming these challenges. It includes case studies of transdisciplinary teamwork, showing how these solutions have helped groups to develop better understandings of environmental problems and potential responses.

How can a divided world share a single planet? As the environment rises ever higher on the global agenda, the discipline of International Relations (IR) is engaging in more varied and transformative ways than ever before to overcome environmental challenges. Focusing in particular on the key trends of the past 20 years, this volume explores the main developments in the global environmental crisis, with each chapter considering an environmental issue and an approach within IR. In the process, adjacent fields including energy politics, science and technology, and political economy are also touched on. Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics is aimed at anybody interested in the key international environmental problems of the day, and those seeking clarification and inspiration in terms of approaches and theories that decode how the environment is accounted for in global politics. It will be an essential resource for students and scholars of global environmental politics and governance, environmental studies and IR.