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This exciting new textbook introduces students to the ways in which the theories and tools of International Relations can be used to analyse and address global environmental problems.
Kate O'Neill develops an historical and analytical framework for understanding global environmental issues, and identifies the main actors and their roles, allowing students to grasp the core theories and facts about global environmental governance. She examines how governments, international bodies, scientists, activists and corporations address global environmental problems including climate change, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion and trade in hazardous wastes.
The Environment and International Relations represents a new and innovative theoretical approach to this area, as well as integrating insights from different disciplines, thereby encouraging students to engage with the issues, to equip themselves with the knowledge they need, and to apply their own critical insights. This will be invaluable for students of environmental issues both from political science and environmental studies perspectives.
Preface
1. Introduction: the environment and international relations
2. International environmental problems
3. Actors in international environmental politics
4. State-led global environmental governance: international cooperation and regime formation
5. The impacts and effectiveness of environmental treaty regimes
6. Global economic governance and the environment
7. Non-state global environmental governance
8. Conclusions: the environment and international relations in the twenty-first century
Kate O'Neill is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Waste Trading among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (2000), which won the 2002 Lynton Caldwell Prize for the Best Book in Environmental Politics, and is an Associate Editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics.
"An extraordinarily important book presenting, in one place, a comprehensive review of the key themes and controversies governing the environment and international relations [...] must reading for students, scholars, practitioners, and anyone who cares about the future of our planet."
- Ben Cashore, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University
"The Environment and International Relations provides a clear, intellectually coherent introduction to one of the key issues of our times. This will be a very useful text for undergraduate students and those who want to understand the political complexities of environmental challenges."
- Lorraine Elliott, Australian National University
"How can we grasp the unprecedented challenges posed by environmental issues to the world as we know it? Kate O'Neill steers us with a firm hand through such questions, providing a series of robust analytical frameworks that bring clarity to a subject-matter so complex it can sometimes seem intractable. This is a precious guide for students, policy-makers, and anyone interested in either the environment or international relations."
- Charlotte Epstein, The University of Sydney
"O'Neill provides a thorough and easily accessible tour d'horizon of global environmental politics. She provides theoretical, historical and critical insights into how well the international community is coping with problems of global and transboundary environmental threats, and the prospects for a broader shift to a more sustainable future. If readers don't come away far better informed and concerned about global environmental threats they simply weren't paying attention."
- Peter M. Haas, University of Massachusetts
"Comprehensive, authoritative and accessible, with this book Kate O'Neill deftly manages to guide the reader, whether new to the area or not, through the dense maze of literature on the environment and International Relations. It deserves to be widely read."
- Professor Peter Newell, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University and School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia
"An accessible and up to date introduction, designed to invite further reading and research. Readers will be indebted to Kate O'Neill for the way in which she has read and summarised such a wide range of literature. In my view there is nothing available that gives such comprehensive coverage."
- John Vogler, Keele University
"[...] an excellent text for studying the mainstream of global environmental politics [...]"
- Acta Politica
