Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics

TRADITIONS AND TRENDS IN GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
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 poli-
tical economy are also touched on.
Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics is aimed at anybody inter-
ested in the key international environmental problems of the day, and those seek-
ing 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.
Olaf Corry is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. His research is

on global environmental politics, climate change and security, and International
Theory. He is currently working on the security politics of geoengineering
technologies.
Hayley Stevenson is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the Uni-

versity of Sheffield, UK. Her research crosses the areas of global governance, global
environmental politics, green political economy and democratic theory.
ROUTLEDGE RESEARCH IN GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL
GOVERNANCE
Global environmental governance has been a prime concern of policy-makers since

the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Yet, despite
more than nine hundred multi-lateral environmental treaties coming into force
over the past forty years and numerous public-private and private initiatives to
mitigate global change, human-induced environmental degradation is reaching
alarming levels. Scientists see compelling evidence that the entire earth system now
operates well outside safe boundaries and at rates that accelerate. The urgent chal-
lenge from a social science perspective is how to organize the co-evolution of
societies and their surrounding environment; in other words, how to develop
effective and equitable governance solutions for today’s global problems.
Against this background, the Routledge Research in Global Environmental Govern-
ance series delivers cutting-edge research on the most vibrant and relevant themes
within the academic field of global environmental governance.
Series Editors:
Philipp Pattberg, VU University Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Global Change
Institute (AGCI), the Netherlands.
Agni Kalfagianni, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Research-in-Global-Environmental-Governance/book-series/RRGEG
Environmental Politics and Governance in the Anthropocene

Institutions and legitimacy in a complex world
Edited by Philipp Pattberg and Fariborz Zelli
Grassroots Environmental Governance

Community engagements with industry
Edited by Leah S. Horowitz & Michael J. Watts
Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics

International Relations and the Earth
Edited by Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson
Regime Interaction and Climate Change

The Case of International Aviation and Maritime Transport
Beatriz Martinez Romera
TRADITIONS AND
TRENDS IN GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
POLITICS
International Relations and the Earth
Edited by Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson

First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,
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infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Corry, Olaf, 1971- editor. | Stevenson, Hayley, 1982- editor.
Title: Traditions and trends in global environmental politics : international
relations and the earth / edited by Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Routledge research in global environmental governance
Identifiers: LCCN 2016058109 | ISBN 9781138633872 (hb) |
ISBN 9781138633889 (pb) | ISBN 9781315206967 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmental policy--International cooperation. | Climatic
changes--Political aspects. | International relations--Environmental aspects.
Classification: LCC GE170 .T73 2017 | DDC 363.7/0561--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058109
ISBN: 978-1-138-63387-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-63388-9 (pbk)
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CONTENTS
List of contributors vii

Preface x
1 IR and the Earth: societal multiplicity and planetary singularity 1

Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson
2 International climate politics between pluralism and solidarism:
an English School perspective 26
Robert Falkner
3 Problematising the unitary actor assumption in IR: insights from
the climate change literature 45
Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou
4 Green states and global environmental politics: beyond
Western IR? 63
Carl Death and Paul Tobin
5 Environmental science and International Relations 81
Silke Beck and Tim Forsyth
6 Post-humanism and geoengineering 100
Stephen Hobden
7 Justice discourses and the global environment: diverse
perspectives on an uneven landscape 120
Ross Gillard, Lucy Ford and Gabriela Kütting
vi Contents
8 IPE and the environment in the age of the Anthropocene 136

Peter Newell and Richard Lane
9 Security politics and climate change: the new security dilemma 154
Hugh C. Dyer
10 Energy security in an age of environmental change 171
Jonna Nyman
11 International Relations as if the Earth matters 187
Index 197
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Silke Beck is a Deputy Chair at the Department of Environmental Politics,

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany. Her research
focuses on the relationship between expertise and decision-making in global
environmental politics, mainly climate change and biodiversity. She is Senior
Editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Climate Science and member of the
Governing Council of the Science & Democracy Network at Harvard University.
Olaf Corry is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of

Political Science, University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Constructing a
Global Polity and the Open University textbook International Relations: Continuity
and Change in Global Politics as well as journal articles on the politics of climate
change, the role of environmentalism in social revolutions and environmental risk
and security logics.
Carl Death is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University

of Manchester. His books include The Green State in Africa, Critical Environmental
Politics and Governing Sustainable Development: Partnerships, Protests and Power at the
World Summit. He is Co-Editor of African Affairs and an Associate Editor of Inter-
national Relations.
Hugh C. Dyer is Associate Professor of World Politics in the School of Politics &
International Studies at the University of Leeds. His publications include the book
Coping and Conformity in World Politics, and the article ‘Climate Anarchy: Creative
Disorder in World Politics’ in International Political Sociology.
viii Contributors
Robert Falkner is Associate Professor of International Relations at the London

School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the editor of The Handbook
of Global Climate and Environment Policy.
Lucy Ford is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford Brookes

University, founding member of the think tank Green House and fellow at the
Schumacher Institute. Prior to lecturing she worked in Brussels as parliamentary
researcher and assistant to Green MEP Caroline Lucas.
Tim Forsyth is Professor of Environment and Development at the London

School of Economics and Political Science. He has written on the politics of
environmental science and expertise, with particular reference to the relationships
between expert organisations and debates about international development.
Ross Gillard is a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds. His thesis focuses on
the role of the state in the governance of climate change and social transformations.
He is also a Research Associate at the University of York, working on energy
justice in the UK.
Stephen Hobden is Reader at the University of East London. His publications

include ‘Posthumanism’ in Critical Environmental Politics, co-author of Posthuman
International Relations and ‘Of Parts and Wholes: International Relations Beyond
the Human’, Millennium, and ‘The Posthuman Way of War’, Security Dialogue.
Gabriela Kütting is Professor of Global Politics, Department of Political Science,

Rutgers University, Newark. Her research focuses on critical global environmental
politics. She critically examines the concept and processes of a globalising political
economy in relation to environmental justice and also social concerns.
Richard Lane is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Global Political

Economy, University of Sussex. He focuses on political economy and the envir-
onment, and is the editor (with Benjamin Stephan) of The Politics of Carbon
Markets. His articles have appeared in Environmental Politics, and Le Monde
Diplomatique.
Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex.

His research focuses on the global political economy of climate change and energy.
He is author and co-author of numerous books on environmental politics including
Climate for Change, Governing Climate Change, Climate Capitalism and Globalization
and the Environment.
Jonna Nyman is Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield.

Her research centres on the politics and ethics of security, with particular interests
in energy security, climate politics and China. She is co-editor of Ethical Security
Contributors ix
Studies: A New Research Agenda, and author of The Energy Security Paradox
(forthcoming).
Hayley Stevenson is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the Uni-

versity of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the democratic quality of global
environmental governance. She is the author of Institutionalizing Unsustainability:
The Paradox of Global Climate Governance, Democratizing Global Climate Governance
(with John S. Dryzek) and Global Environmental Politics: Problems, Policy, and Practice.
Paul Tobin is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, where he

researches comparative, European and environmental politics. His PhD thesis –
which won the UACES Thesis Prize – analysed German and Swedish climate
policy. Currently, Paul is researching the impact of the economic crisis on European
environmental policy.
Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou is a Lecturer in International Organisations at

the University of Birmingham. She is the author of Environmental Governance:
Regime Displacement in Space, Time, and Across Issue Areas. She publishes on climate
change policy and diplomacy in the US and the UK.
PREFACE
The BISA Environment Working Group, responsible for this volume, has its origins
in 1990. Two years previously Margaret Thatcher had surprised both friend and foe
by espousing the cause of environmental policy in speeches before the Royal
Society and at the UN General Assembly. These events were not unconnected
from the setting up by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of
its Global Environmental Change Programme, then and probably still its largest such
enterprise, operating from 1991 to 2001. The case was made then for supporting
International Relations (IR) research alongside disciplines, such as economics,
sociology and especially geography, that had already staked out their territory in
the environmental field. What could IR offer to the programme, what were its
potentially distinctive theoretical and substantive contributions to the joint
enterprise?
This book aims to update our answers to these questions. Previously the dis-
cipline had always been concerned with international cooperation and as such it
was thought it could make a specialist contribution to understanding the way in
which new international environmental agreements could be constructed and
made effective. Second, given the discipline’s extensive knowledge of disarma-
ment and arms control, it was argued that its members could undertake research
on the important question of the monitoring and verification of such agreements.
With the 1992 Earth Summit in prospect, the Montreal Protocol having entered
into force in 1989 and Climate Change and Biodiversity Conventions under
active negotiation, this approach appeared to make sense. But even then it was
clearly inadequate and the ESRC was persuaded to fund a series of BISA Envir-
onment Working Group seminars over two years. From these meetings, held
with the assistance of Peter Willets at City University in London, The Environ-
ment and International Relations (1996), edited by John Vogler and Mark Imber,
emerged.
Preface xi
The present volume was designed as a successor after an interval of two decades
to re-examine how IR could contribute to global environmental politics – and
how global environmental politics was changing IR.
Before considering how the two volumes compare and how academic efforts have
changed or even progressed, it is worth considering the context. The point that IR
writing inevitably reflects but may become excessively close to policy concerns was
made in the 1996 volume (1996: 6). In the early 1990s and in the context of a rapidly
changing international system, consequent upon the ending of the Cold War, global
environmental concerns were gaining new prominence. They have gained yet more
prominence today, and the present volume indicates the dominant position of the cli-
mate issue in global environmental matters. Global warming loomed large in 1995/96
too, as the Berlin Mandate negotiations for what was to become the Kyoto Protocol
got under way. It was also a time of rapid growth in the international organisation of
environment issues in general with scores of multilateral environment agreements
(MEAs) being concluded. The European Union was assuming the leadership role
abdicated by the presumed hegemon, the United States. It could not have been pre-
dicted that the Kyoto Protocol, championed by the EU, would turn out to be five
times less effective in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases than the Montreal
Protocol as a by-product of its removal of ozone-depleting chemicals. Neither were
the course and implications of economic globalisation clear. Yet by the first years of
the twenty-first century globalisation was rapidly driving shifts in the economic and
political structures of the world system, yielding new congeries of forces that would
lead both to the ‘failure’ at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) Copenhagen Conference of the Parties (COP) and the
emergence of a new comprehensive, but voluntary, climate regime in 2015.
In the meantime, frustration with a lack of progress at the international level
highlighted the growing importance of private sector arrangements in what was
increasingly termed ‘global environmental governance’. The broadening of subjects
and levels of politics is reflected in the new volume. A striking indication of change
since 1996 is that the present volume pursues themes and concepts that were
simply not at the forefront of discussion or had not been formulated two decades
ago – ‘Posthumanism’, geoengineering and the concept of the ‘anthropocene’.
There is also a chapter on the discourses of climate justice. Furthermore, in contrast
to recent scholarly preoccupation with non-state-based ‘global environmental
governance’, there is a willingness to engage with statehood and the international
dimension of global environmental politics. A common concern of the two
volumes, however, is whether a focus on managerial cooperation between states
makes any sense at all. Unreconstructed statism, in one view, missed the essential
point that the world was facing a socio-ecological crisis that arose from the pro-
cesses of capital accumulation under conditions of globalisation. Twenty years later
much the same issues are framed here in terms of the tensions between ‘societal
multiplicity and planetary singularity’.
At the time of writing there is again little certainty as to the future ‘international
relations of the Earth’ as the Obama administration is replaced by Trump, the EU
xii Preface
struggles with its various internal crises and many look to China as the dominant
global player. Unfortunately, except in some special cases such as the restoration of
the stratospheric ozone layer, the one clearly identifiable trend is of increasing
environmental degradation and ecological destruction.
It is with the urgency of this backdrop that both this book and its predecessor
pursue the original aim of the ESRC: not only to take the social sciences to the
heart of the study of the environment, but also to take environmental questions to
the heart of the social sciences. More specifically, this volume, like its predecessor,
asks whether global environmental change is altering (or even subverting) the study
of International Relations. This is still a good question to bear in mind when
reading this excellent and stimulating new output form the BISA Environment
Group.
John Vogler
Keele University
1
IR AND THE EARTH
Societal multiplicity and planetary singularity
If the basic problem of the international is societal multiplicity – the simple but
surprisingly consequential fact that the world is divided into distinct societies
(Rosenberg 2006) – the basic problem of the global environment could be said to
be planetary singularity; that we all inhabit, in the end, one finite interconnected
space. Together these two starting points make for the basic conundrum of Inter-
national Relations and the Earth: how does a divided world live on a single globe?
The discipline of International Relations (IR) has not always been considered
the appropriate place to take up the challenge of providing answers to this question.
To some, ‘the environment’ was a subject on the periphery of the practice and dis-
cipline of International Relations. Being ‘just another issue’ like race it would
demand a reaction but not ‘alter the mechanisms of international politics’ (Smith
1993: 32). The trans-border or global nature of many environmental problems sits
awkwardly alongside concepts such as the national interest, sovereignty and terri-
toriality. Likewise the normative dimensions of some conceptions of envir-
onmentalism arguably go against more materialist and interest-based approaches to
IR. For example, why should the basic idea of sustainable development – ensuring
that meeting the needs of the current generation does not compromise the needs
of future generations – have traction in a world plagued by competition even
within the current generation?
Yet, IR is in a sense the obvious home for considering how humanity (divided
as it is) deals with the challenge of sharing a singular and finite space. The raison
d’être of International Relations as a subject is to grapple with problems of coex-
istence: societal multiplicity is a challenge precisely because multiple polities have
to share the same spaces. For Hedley Bull the international system was a ‘system’
only in so far as the individual units interacted enough to have to take each other
into account (Bull 1977). The environment is now a major sphere in which the
many different actors of the world have to take each other into account.
2 Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson
This book takes stock of and explores the ways in which International Relations
has confronted and contributed to understanding how a divided world deals with
and manages the environment; but it also aims to provide an overview of how IR
as a discipline has itself changed and developed as a result of doing so, particularly
over the past two decades. Which perspectives have been conceived and/or shaped
through analysis of environmental problems? Which actors, processes and images
have become part of the IR tapestry as a result of environmental political analysis?
Which approaches, theories and concepts have, due to environmental themes, been
imported from other disciplines and to what effect, tugging the focus and perhaps
even the identity of the discipline itself in various directions? The broad argument
is that IR has impacted on the politics of the environment, but the reverse is also
true: IR is not what it hypothetically would have been without the international
politics of the environment.
This introduction first provides an overview of the recent rise of ‘the environ-
ment’ in international politics and offers an account of how this builds on older ways
in which the natural world has made up part of the stuff of international politics.
Second, it surveys the main traditions and approaches to studying International
Relations of the environment, painting a picture of diversification in two senses:
from the study of ‘environmental multilateralism’ towards a broader ‘global envir-
onmental politics’, and from ‘problem-solving’ to a greater diversity of ‘critical’
approaches, some of which originate in disciplines outside core IR territory. While
the traditional problem-solving approaches have tended to treat the environment as
just another issue for International-Relations-as-usual, critical approaches have
begun reflecting on the theoretical implications of taking environmentalism seriously
(see also Eckersley 2013). Third, the direction of enquiry is therefore reversed to
ask, in effect, ‘what has the environment ever done for IR?’, before the plan for
the rest of the book sketches the content and direction of the ensuing chapters that
explore the problematique of International Relations and the Earth.
The short and long history of international environmental politics

The politics of the environment is in some ways considered a somewhat marginal
theme in International Relations – one issue area among many, and of relatively
recent import. At the same time, the natural world is part of the foundations and
deep history of International Relations. Recently, the two perspectives – the
environment as an ‘issue’ on the one hand and nature as a fundamental condition
for the international system on the other – have gradually begun to align. But first
it is worth considering each in turn.
As a recognisable concept and political issue, ‘the environment’ is thought to have
emerged onto the international scene as a result of what is now sometimes called the
Great Acceleration: the dramatic post–Second World War surge in human impact on
the Earth in terms of population, resource use, pollution, energy use and the spread
of technology (Costanza et al. 2007). Environmental change caused by human
activity is as old as hunting and agriculture, but it became visible, eventually on an
IR and the Earth 3
international and later planetary scale, when the sheer scale and velocity of human
activity rose with the expansion of fossil fuel power and the spread of industrialisa-
tion. The post-war boom continued and accentuated earlier local and regional poli-
tics of pollution and/or resource management, lifting it to a new level of
prominence. Sometime around the 1960s the concept of ‘the environment’ itself
emerged (Vogler 1996: 7). In its simplest terms, ‘environment’ refers to whatever is
around or next to something of more central concern. In anthropocentric terms, the
environment referred to whatever is around humans and human societies. Key
ideational landmarks such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the 1972 Club of
Rome report on population and scarcity, and the rise of global environmental pop-
ular culture, fed by images of planet Earth taken from space in the late 1960s, all
pushed ‘the environment’ gradually up the political agenda. In contrast to earlier elite
notions of environmentalism (such as Manifest Destiny, wildlife management, and
conservationism) (Brulle 2000), modern environmentalism was more of a popular
movement, and more global. In particular it also became centrally concerned with
human development (see Falkner 2012).
By 1972, the idea of an environmental crisis had gained sufficient momentum to
prompt the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE)
held in Stockholm. This saw environment put explicitly onto the agenda of the
world’s central international institution and established 26 principles of environ-
mental protection within a framework of human rights and development. The
foundations of much of the world’s subsequent legal and political infrastructure for
conducting global environmental politics can be traced back to Stockholm and the
processes leading up to it. Multilateralism, international law and scientific guidance
were established as the cornerstones of international environmental negotiation and
governance. The UNCHE conference, the Club of Rome publication Limits to
Growth in 1972 (Meadows et al. 1972) and the global oil shock of 1973 meant that
debates about global resources, population and pollution filled out the environmental
agenda for at least a decade. The 1972 Stockholm conference had kicked off a flurry
of negotiations on issues ranging from the protection of birds and the control of
desert locusts to the prevention of marine pollution and the regulation of whaling
(IEA database, Version 2014.3). As a result, some 142 multilateral environmental
agreements were signed by the end of that decade. These were designed to address
problems of a trans-border or beyond-border nature and their geographical scope
was largely limited to specific regions rather than the entire globe.
The ensuing global recession in the 1970s and then the debt and development
crises of the 1980s, saw environmental concerns dampened somewhat, partially
predicted by issue attention-cycle theory (Downs 1972). But around the mid-
1980s, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the beginning emergence of
public concern about global warming and ozone depletion, the environment again
rose up the political agenda. Even many Eastern-bloc protest movements and the
subsequent revolutions of 1989–1991 began life as environmental or conservation
organisations and dissidents such as Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Rudolf
Bahro in East Germany fashioned themselves as ‘third way’ critics of unsustainable
capitalist and state socialist systems (Corry 2014a). Meanwhile the rise of green
parties and environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the West
also gained traction while at the top, leaders as different as Mikhail Gorbachev and
Margaret Thatcher put global environmental concerns on the geopolitical map.
Within the United Nations (UN) system, the 1987 World Commission on Envir-
onment and Development produced the Brundtland Report linking development
and sustainability formulaically in the term ‘ sustainable development’ (Brundtland
Commission 1987).
The last decade of the twentieth century can in many ways be viewed as the
golden age of environmental multilateralism. During this time, the international
community negotiated hundreds of new agreements, amendments to agreements,
and new protocols with global and regional scope (IEA database, Version 2014.3).
The 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) brought
the countries of the world together around ‘sustainable development’ and Agenda
21. Another mega-conference was arranged for 2002 in Johannesburg, continuing
the globalising and institutionalisation of sustainable development ideas, tying
environmental and social issues together within an international legal framework.
In addition, single issues such as ozone depletion and climate change were tackled
in separate processes and summits: the Montreal Protocol was agreed in 1987 and
the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. More recently climate change has taken a central and
leading role in global environment politics, and the 2009 Copenhagen COP15
summit and COP21 in Paris represent high watermarks of expectations and envir-
onmental regime-building activity. In this sense, as a discrete issue, the environ-
ment has a relatively short history behind it, albeit with a sharply rising profile in
international politics.
If, however, ‘nature’ rather than ‘environment’ is taken as the central concept,
international politics was already long ago deeply concerned with it: geopolitics is
embedded in the distribution, exploitation and management of natural resources –
what today might be termed ‘ecosystem services’. Since Thomas Malthus’ ideas about
scarcity met with Charles Darwin’s theory of competitive selection, population, terri-
tory, soil and other resources were thought to be central to politics between nations
and indeed to the cardinal issue of war and peace (Bashford 2014). The idea of
Lebensraum is most infamous for its use by Nazis to legitimate Eastern European
expansion, but the idea is considered an early contribution to geopolitics, and origi-
nated from a German geographer, Friedrich Ratzel, interested in human migration
and the impact of the physical environment on societies. The idea that war was caused
by population pressures and the requirement of ‘dynamic’ peoples to have access to
resources became a common theme in imperial capitals and at international con-
ferences and institution-building efforts from the nineteenth century onwards.
Even further back in history, geography and the climate itself was considered the
starting point for explanations of international politics. As Daniel Deudney has
pointed out, whereas ‘recent literature typically casts nature as a new factor in
politics, the idea that nature is a powerful force shaping human political institutions
is extremely old’ (Deudney 1999: 25–26). For Aristotle, climate and agricultural
IR and the Earth 5
aspects of territory were behind the rise and spread of empires and modern writers
such as Robert Kaplan or Jared Diamond have taken up similar themes, exploring
the importance of topography, oceans, land fertility and technological innovation
(Kaplan 2009; Diamond 1997). For Marxist thinkers, ‘material’ factors have always
been central to the trajectory of the capitalist system within which the modern
international system developed. Nature was not simply a factor of production
acquiring value when mixed with labour. It is fundamental to a historical materi-
alist view of human history (see Foster 2000). Even in the abstract world of game
theory during the Cold War, John von Neumann (1955) warned: ‘“The great
globe itself” is in a rapidly maturing crisis – a crisis attributable to the fact that the
environment in which technological progress must occur has become both under-
sized and underorganized.’ Whereas the spread of industrialism and world political
integration had provided the expansion of technology with a ‘geographical and
political Lebensraum’, the limits and finite nature of the Earth were now being felt,
von Neumann wrote.
Nevertheless, contemporary ideas about global environmental politics cannot be
understood simply as a continuation of earlier ones. They differ in part because
natural factors are no longer considered purely natural. That geography might be a
variable rather than a constant condition of geopolitics is one example of an
increasing awareness of an accelerated rate of change in Earth systems. With the
advent of climate change and the prospect that not only climatic conditions but
even territorial borders themselves may change as a result of human-induced sea
level rises, the variability of geophysical conditions has become an emerging theme
in global politics itself (Dalby 2014). Climate was once simply average weather, but
with the growth of a ‘vast machine’ of globalist infrastructures including satellites,
measuring stations, masses of data and models to process it (Edwards 2010), ‘the
climate’ has been rendered governable – it has become a global governance-object
with a potentially major structuring effect on the dynamics of the international
system (Corry 2013). President François Hollande of France declared that the
COP21 Paris Summit on climate change would ‘change the world’, either by securing
an agreement and transforming energy and climate technological economics, or by
failing and leaving the world open to radical climatic changes. It could be added
that the politics of the climate have already changed international relations as such,
with the Paris United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) summit in 2015 being the biggest gathering of state leaders in history.
Studying international environmental politics

IR has tackled environmental politics in a number of ways. If classical scholars studied
the impact of nature on humans, contemporary international environmental scholar-
ship began first with realist examinations of anarchy and environmental security, and
then with liberal examinations of environmental multilateralism. More recently
scholars have expanded their analysis to multilevel global environmental governance
and sought insights in a more diverse set of theoretical traditions.
Anarchy and environment

While international institutions and cooperation became core themes of post-Cold
War International Relations, for many ‘realist’ scholars the bread-and-butter of the
discipline throughout the 1990s and beyond continued to be power, conflict and
national security. Realist examinations of international environmental politics have
fallen largely into two camps: those focusing on environmental conflict, and those
exploring institutional environmental regimes established through hegemonic
power.
In the first camp, realist scholars analyse the potential for violent conflict over
natural resources, and observe environmental factors in existing inter-state conflict.
Realists assume that environmental change is more likely to lead to conflict because
states are driven to compete for scarce resources while maximising their relative
power and security. Notable early environmental realists include Robert Kaplan,
David Wirth and Thomas Homer-Dixon. Kaplan (1994) invoked a dystopian
vision of a ‘coming anarchy’ in which ‘surging populations, spreading disease,
deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising
sea levels’ would incite violent conflict and mass migration. Kaplan’s broadly
impressionistic argument was later partly supported by extensive empirical studies
carried out by Homer-Dixon and his teams of researchers (Homer-Dixon 1999).
Fresh water has attracted more interest from environmental realists than any other
natural resource. Considerable attention has been devoted to establishing causal
links between scarcities of fresh water and violent conflict. There is a very obvious
discrepancy between sovereign borders and fresh water resources, and the observa-
tion that some 145 states have territory within international water basins underlies
the assumption that water would increasingly become an object and instrument of
military strategy (Wolf 2007; Gleick 1993). However, despite the ubiquitous
rhetoric of ‘water wars’, empirical research shows cooperation over shared water to
be far more common than conflict (Wolf et al. 2003). Over the past decade, the
prospect of climate change conflict has attracted the attention of political scientists
working within a positivist framework (Hsiang et al. 2011). Drawing on the findings
of large-N studies using dozens of historical quantitative datasets, these scholars are
increasingly confident that there is a causal relationship between climate change
and conflict. However, others question such links and criticise this research agenda
as resting on ‘arbitrary and sometimes even untenable’ premises that ignore the
historical specificity of conflict and overlook the contingency of social structures
and forces (Selby 2014: 848). Jan Selby dismisses the assumption that quantitative
coding and correlational studies (methods that define the positivist toolbox) can be
used to explain or make predictions about conflict. Such blunt tools, he argues,
have no way of capturing ‘the wide-ranging political and conflict implications of
humankind’s transformation of the global climate’ (ibid: 850).
Limitations in realist theory can also be observed in scholarship informed by
hegemonic stability theory. Hegemonic stability theory is associated with Robert
Keohane’s examination of its central claim that institutions dominated by a
IR and the Earth 7
hegemonic state are most likely to command the durable compliance of other
states. ‘Hegemonic leadership’, he explains, ‘builds on the interests of states. The
hegemon seeks to persuade others to conform to its vision of world order and to
defer to its leadership’ (Keohane 1984: 137). Scholars have explored whether these
insights have any explanatory purchase for international environmental politics, and
have by and large concluded that the theory is of limited use (e.g., Young and
Osherenko 1993). In theory, hegemonic stability would explain advances and
obstructions in international cooperation on environmental problems by tracing
how a hegemon promotes or obstructs environmental agenda-setting and regime
formation. The emergence of the US as a sole superpower in the early 1990s can
be seen to coincide with a shift in its environmental foreign policy. Yet unlike in
the 1970s and 1980s when the US arguably played a leadership role in introducing
domestic environmental regulation, after 1992 its role in environmental multi-
lateralism oscillated between disinterest, hostility and obstruction (see Falkner
2005). Hegemonic stability theory would assume that both US environmental foreign
policy and developments in environmental multilateralism could be explained by the
broader structural context of unipolarity. But Falkner has argued that structural theory
has significant limitations and any simple and straightforward connections that are
drawn between global environmentalism, US foreign policy, and unipolarity are mis-
leading (ibid). The persistence of the Kyoto Protocol following US withdrawal also
presented a challenge to hegemonic stability theory. The US was not only the
world’s economic and political hegemon, but also one of the largest greenhouse gas
(GHG) emitters at the time. A realist perspective would assume the collapse of the
agreement, but as Depledge (2005: 21) observed, ‘a critical mass of supportive
countries was able to sustain, and indeed advance, the process’.
Environmental multilateralism
The environment made its way onto the international agenda at a time of renewed
optimism about multilateral cooperation. Given the context of UN conferences
and high-profile reports, it is unsurprising that international negotiations and institu-
tions captured the attention of IR scholars and dominated the study of international
environmental politics during the 1990s and into the new century. The over-
arching line of enquiry that emerged focused on which institutional features and
modalities would facilitate cooperation among almost 200 sovereign states and
increase their compliance with agreements (e.g., Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992;
Young 1999a, 1999b; Porter and Welsh-Brown 1991; Haas et al. 1993; Chasek
1999; Speth and Haas 2006). Theoretically, scholars tended to be guided by ‘liberal
institutionalism’ with its assumptions about absolute gains and international co-
operation. From this perspective, effective cooperation is possible because states are
primarily concerned not with improving their position vis-à-vis other states, but
rather with overall improvements in their economic wealth and national security.
Even in situations where states are guided by relative gains, institutions could
facilitate cooperation by providing transparency and side-payments to relative
losers. The key to success is therefore understood to lie in the optimal structuring
of incentives to facilitate agreement.
Analytically, this narrowed down global environmental politics to the processes
of bargaining through which states negotiate what they will give and what they
expect to get from an agreement. Our understanding of this process of regime
formation has been shaped most significantly by Oran Young, including his early work
on stages of formation (1983), bargaining and leadership (e.g., 1989, 1994, 1999a,
1999b), and the role of power, interests and knowledge (Young and Osherenko 1993).
As multilateral environment agreements began to mature, scholars began to com-
plement research on regime formation with research on regime effectiveness.
There is no single understanding of what the concept of ‘effectiveness’ entails;
Young and Levy identified no fewer than five conceptualisations: problem-solving
(resolving the problem for which it was intended); legal (domestic compliance with
agreements); economic (efficient); normative (fair and just); and political (affecting
interests, behaviour, policies, and performance) (1999: 3–7; also Levy et al. 1995).1
Early research on effectiveness focused quite heavily on legal compliance (e.g.,
Mitchell 1994), political effectiveness (e.g., Haas et al. 1993), and addressed meth-
odological questions of how effectiveness can be measured (Miles et al. 2002; Helm
and Sprinz 2000). More recently, an important and growing agenda has developed
on the normative effectiveness of regimes, addressing such issues as inclusiveness (of
states and non-state actors), and fairness of procedures and outcomes, themes that
are taken up below.
Transnational environmental regime complexes

Environmental multilateralism remains a central feature of international efforts to
address environmental change. But since the turn of the century, institutionalist
scholars have turned their attention to two important shifts in practices of international
environmental cooperation.
First, environmental institutions have become more ‘fragmented’. What were
once discrete and coherent environmental ‘regimes’ have now morphed into
‘regime complexes’: sets of interrelated and partly overlapping regimes that are
formally separate but that cannot be seen as functioning wholly autonomously of
one another (Keohane and Victor 2011). This is most evident in the issue of climate
change, which has implications for many other aspects of international politics such
as trade, human rights, migration, labour, development, food production and other
environmental problems. The various regimes and institutions responsible for each
of these issues (such as FAO, UNHCR, World Bank, IMO, UNCBD) began to take
climate change seriously in the early twenty-first century. The tapestry of climate
governance grows as these institutions integrate climate change into their existing
rules and practices. A further layer of complexity is added when informal institu-
tions such as the G8 and G20 take up the issue, or when ‘minilateral’ institutions
like the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate are formed. A
recent trend in the global climate governance literature has been to analyse the
IR and the Earth 9
reasons (functional, strategic and organisational) why regimes fragment, the advan-
tages and disadvantages of fragmentation for international problem-solving, and the
normative implications of fragmentation (addressing concerns of legitimacy,
accountability, etc.) (Keohane and Victor 2011; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and McGee
2013; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014; Zelli and van Asselt 2015).
Abbott (2012) has proposed the alternative analytical framework of the ‘trans-
national regime complex’ to capture a second shift that has taken place alongside
the fragmentation of environmental multilateralism. While the ‘regime complex’
captures the fragmentation of state-based institutions, the ‘transnational regime
complex’ captures the rise of new sources of authority and new forms of global
governance. In the twenty-first century, the importance of environmental multi-
lateralism is being partly eclipsed by the efforts of less formal and hierarchical net-
works of state and non-state actors. This signals a partial shift from environmental
multilateralism to global environmental governance. Whereas the former focuses on
cooperation among states, the latter concerns interactions among a broader range of
stakeholders alongside and in partnership with states. These can take a purely public
form (when states, cities or municipalities cooperate outside inclusive multilateral
regimes); a purely private form (when business or civil society actors cooperate
without the formal inclusion of public actors); or a hybrid form (when state and
non-state actors enter into cooperative arrangements).
This shift in practice from multilateralism to governance has triggered an analytical
shift in the discipline: as fewer and fewer multilateral instruments are negotiated, the
attention of scholars increasingly turns to networked environmental governance.
This has been particularly evident in studies of climate change politics where
scholars increasingly look beyond the UNFCCC. Harriett Bulkeley and Michele
Betsill have developed important research agendas focused on the role of cities in
creating transnational voluntary schemes for climate change adaptation and miti-
gation. These have proven particularly important in filling a regulatory vacuum in
states lacking national climate change policies (Bulkeley and Betsill 2003; Acuto
and Rayner 2016). Matthew Hoffmann (2011) has mapped dozens of ‘experiments’
in climate governance through which networks of actors aim to share knowledge,
disclose carbon profiles, increase energy efficiency, reduce GHG emissions, pro-
mote adaptation, mobilise finance, establish trading schemes, etc. Other scholars
have analysed the relations between these governance experiments and state-based
regimes with some suggesting that the UNFCCC ought to evolve into a ‘meta-
governance’ institution (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014) or ‘complexity manager’
(Zelli and van Asselt 2015).
Theoretical diversification: from problem-solving to critical analysis

This shift from environmental multilateralism to global environmental governance
has been accompanied by a theoretical diversification from problem-solving to
critical approaches, particularly from around the late 1990s. Liberal institutionalism
has maintained a strong place in the field, but not necessarily a dominant one.
Departures from this path are now more diverse and sophisticated. Dissatisfaction
with the traditional theoretical approaches and methodological tools of IR has
prompted many scholars to seek insights in alternative theories, including con-
structivism, Marxism, Foucauldian ideas, feminism and normative political theory.
This diversification can be understood, crudely, with references to Cox’s well-
known distinction between problem-solving theory and critical theory. Whereas
problem-solving ‘takes the world as it finds it’ and aims to make ‘institutions work
smoothly’ within this given context, critical theory questions how certain config-
urations of interests, identity and power came about and how they might change
(Cox 1981: 128–129).
Constructivist scholars stay focused on states but analyse how the interests that
actors pursue in environmental political contexts and the very identities of these
actors are constructed through a fusion of ideational and material elements. These
interests and identities are not fixed prior to political interaction; instead, they
are constructed and reconstructed over time. States may oscillate between good
international citizens and stubborn defenders of the ‘national interest’ depending on
how their domestic conditions align with the normative structures of global
environmental governance. This suggests that the environmental foreign policy of a
state cannot be simply predicted on the basis of its energy profile or broader economic
interests (Stevenson 2013). Another important concern of constructivist scholars has
been to explain changes within the normative structures of global environmental
governance, and particularly global climate change governance (Betsill 2000; Cass
2006; Eckersley 2007; Harris 2000; Hoffmann 2005; Pettenger 2007). An influential
contribution in this vein is Steven Bernstein’s analysis of ‘liberal environmentalism’,
which ‘accepts the liberalization of trade and finance as consistent with, and even
necessary for, international environmental protection. It also promotes market and
other economic mechanisms… over “command-and-control” methods… as the
preferred method of environmental management’ (Bernstein 2001: 7). Rather than
take this normative structure as a given (as liberal institutionalists do), Bernstein is
concerned with understanding how and why it became institutionalised.
Another rival approach can be found in Marxist contributions that bring structural
causes of environmental problems, including capitalism itself, into focus. Marxism is, of
course, a broad church with no single philosophical and political position. A central
idea, though, is that social organisation of material production and circulation shapes
human experiences. This has inspired two broad lines of recent inquiry. The first
draws on Marxist concepts such as ‘metabolic rift’ to understand how global and
local environmental degradation occurs in the first place. Marx argued that indus-
trialisation and capitalism ruptured the ‘metabolic interaction’ between humans and
the earth, leading principally to land degradation. Foster and his colleagues have
observed that this ‘metabolic rift’ has been globalised through colonialism, imperi-
alism and market forces that all aim to maximise capital accumulation at the core at
the expense of environmental degradation in the periphery (Foster et al. 2010).
The second line of inquiry in this tradition is inspired more by Antonio
Gramsci’s work on historical materialism and hegemonic blocs; it is concerned with
IR and the Earth 11
how ideological and strategic forms of power shape international environmental

politics (Rupert 2007: 40; Levy and Newell 2002, 2005; Paterson 1996, 2000;
Newell and Paterson 1998). Newell and Paterson, for example, analysed the climate
change negotiations of the 1990s through a neo-Gramscian framework that directs
attention to the political-economic dynamics that shape states’ negotiating positions.
The influence of the fossil fuel industry is shown to be important but not absolute
because capital itself is not a ‘homogenous bloc’ (Newell and Paterson 1998). A
similar framework informed Levy and Newell’s analysis of corporate strategies in
international environmental governance more broadly. This allowed them, together
with fellow contributors to the 2005 volume (Levy and Newell 2005), to dissect
corporate partnerships between industry and NGOs, private governance schemes
(like voluntary standards), and ‘wars of position’ whereby social groups seek to
challenge dominant arrangements for governing biotechnology, climate change,
water, and toxic waste (ibid).
One of the more recent innovations in theorising global environmental politics
has come from scholars drawing on Foucault, and in particular his concept of gov-
ernmentality (Death 2010; Methmann 2012; Oels 2005; Paterson and Stripple 2010;
Stripple and Bulkeley 2013). Governmentality refers to rationalities of government, or
‘how we think about governing’ (Dean 2009: 24) and how this guides and constrains
action by creating or shaping the subjects, objects and techniques that allow power
to be exercised. Authors inspired by governmentality aim to examine the actual
exercise of climate governance and the myriad techniques through which ‘climate’
shapes the world; for example, through carbon accounting methods and units such as
‘carbon footprints’ that allow regulation and self-governance in multiple forms (e.g.,
Eden 2013). Such studies have drawn attention beyond centralised governing insti-
tutions to ‘the many diverse sites in which a carbon-constrained world… is repre-
sented, categorized and ordered’ including ‘households, markets, forests, migratory
species and displaced persons’ (Stripple and Bulkeley 2013: xix). Others use ‘gov-
ernmentality’ to analyse climate change governance in terms of its overall advanced
liberal rationality, which ‘articulates climate change as an economic issue that requires
market-based solutions to facilitate cost-effective technological solutions’ (Oels 2005:
185). Carl Death has extended this line of thinking in his analysis of ‘sustainable
development’ revealing the ‘advanced liberal rationality of government’ that it pro-
motes. This form of government relies principally on ‘the voluntary and responsible
conduct of self-selecting partners operating at a distance from traditional centres of
power’ (Death 2010: 9).
Another obvious place to look for critical thinking about international environ-
mental politics is feminism. The feminist tradition has had a lot to say about the
environment (e.g., Plumwood 2004; Seager 1993, Shiva 1989). But, surprisingly,
feminist analyses of international environmental politics are thin on the ground.
Nevertheless, a small body of work has sought to sensitise IR to the gender
dimensions of global environmental change and global environmental governance
(Boyd 2009; Bretherton 1998, 2003; Foster 2011; MacGregor 2009). The feminist
agenda encompasses concerns about the representation of women, as well as deeper
masculinisation of the global environmental governance agenda. Rephrasing Cynthia

Enlow, Höne (2013) asks ‘where are the women in climate change negotiations?’
Equality in representation, she argues, is essential if more gender-sensitive decisions
are to be adopted. In recent years, less than one-fifth of UNFCCC heads of dele-
gations have been women, and women have made up only about one-third of
entire delegations (ibid). While the UNFCCC has taken steps towards improving
gender balance (as opposed to equality) in negotiations (ibid), Bretherton is less san-
guine about the impact this will have, pointing out that the ‘patterns of relations
between men and women’ will not change until ‘masculine values’ cease to be
privileged over ‘feminine values’ (1998: 85–90). This is echoed by MacGregor who
points to the masculinisation of environmentalism in which ‘[m]en dominate the
issue at all levels, as scientific and economic experts, entrepreneurs, policy makers
and spokespeople’. The effect is to render women and their concerns invisible
(2009: 128).
A final trend in theoretical diversification is the application of international
political theory. Theories of justice and democracy (especially deliberative democ-
racy) have provided frameworks for examining how international environmental
cooperation produces winners and losers, or responds to the concerns of some
people while ignoring the interests of others. Rejecting the realist assumption that
IR should concentrate on how the world is rather than how it ought to be, scholars
including Chukwumerije Okereke have shown how theories of justice are already
embedded in environmental regimes. Moreover, it is argued that bringing regimes
into line with a coherent set of justice principles could make the regimes both
fairer and more effective (Okereke 2007). Deliberative democratic theory has been
used to diagnose the deficits in representation, participation and accountability in
global environmental governance. This scholarship is infused with normative ideas
about how the international system should be governed to ensure that global
decisions reflect the preferences and interests of potentially affected people (e.g.,
Stevenson and Dryzek 2014; Bäckstrand et al. 2010).
What has the environment ever done for IR?

While IR has helped shed light on the international politics of the Earth, this has in
return left its own imprint on the discipline: grappling with the environment or
nature has changed existing IR theories and approaches and has contributed to
developing new theories and drawing other theories and approaches from outside
the IR discipline itself.
Most obviously, the rise of international environmental problems provided an
opportunity for theories of international cooperation and diplomacy to be developed
and tested (O’Neill 2009: 13). Current understandings of international institutions
and negotiations are to a significant degree forged through studies of environ-
mental regime-building. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that regime
theory is a child of IR’s analysis of environmental governance. As described above,
regime theory developed through analysis of the formation of numerous
IR and the Earth 13
environmental regimes created by varying numbers and sets of actors engaged in

‘institutional bargaining’ (Young 1989). Not only that, but subsequently the idea of
a ‘regime complex’ also developed out of analyses of the meshing of international
institutions in the environmental sphere (Raustiala and Victor 2004). Furthermore,
the recognition of regime complexity in the environmental domain has had a
theoretical and analytical impact on IR beyond global environmental politics. IR
scholars have drawn on the ‘regime complex’ idea to analyse the extent and effects
of regime fragmentation on other areas of international relations including trade,
migration, security and human rights (see Alter and Meunier 2009), while Drezner
(2009) has revisited the central institutionalist logic of regime theory in light of the
observed proliferation of rules, laws and institutional forms.
Meanwhile realism, while perhaps overshadowed by liberal leadership in envir-
onmental analysis, has not gone unchanged either. Realists were initially dismissive
of environmental concerns, which did not fit into ideas about distinct national
interests and tended to be classed as ‘low politics’ issues (Paterson 1996). Neorealist
abstraction from moral norms and domestic actors increased this tendency (Purdon
2014). However, some realists have been led through the rise of the environment
to re-examine the current realist agenda as well as its history. Concerns about
environmental security and the likes of Kaplan’s dystopian ‘coming anarchy’ helped
re-establish a link between classical realist interests in war and conflict and scarcity
and environmental change. ‘Environmentalist realism’ involves excavating the
deeper relationship between geopolitics and geophysical factors and its much
longer history (Deudney 1999). Post-war debates about the meaning and implica-
tions of the then dawning nuclear age, largely forgotten until recently, include
early signs of concerns about the overall impact of technology on the prospects for
survival and planetary security (van Munster and Sylvest 2016).
In addition, theoretical innovations in Security Studies such as Securitisation
Theory and some aspects of Critical Security Studies were in part driven by a
wish to understand how environmental problems were being understood in
security terms (Wæver 1995; Krause and Williams 1997). For the Copenhagen
School, focusing on the ‘grammar’ of security allowed various issues, including
the environment, to take the place of foreign enemies as the ‘existential threat’ in
security analyses. Instead of the security of the state, the object to be protected
through security practices has in some instances become sustainability, climatic
stability or ecosystems (McDonald 2013). In a recent development, climate
change has provided an occasion to consider ‘macro-securitisations’ where universal
rather than particular objects or values are securitised, directing attention to
security dynamics that transcend political communities (Buzan and Wæver 2009).
For the Aberystwyth or ‘Welsh’ School, environmental harm and resource scarcity
was part of the insecurity of crippling poverty and destitution that required
rethinking ‘security as emancipation’ (Booth 1991). Environment is in this sense
becoming a ‘central battlefield’ for normative questions in world politics (Booth
2007: 57) in core issues such as security politics. Such innovations allowed analysts to
study how planetary or ecological systems could have become the focus of ‘high’
security politics, and expanded the security studies repertoire of theories and
concepts as they did so.
Another of the most fundamental debates in contemporary IR, namely the one
concerning globality, also has green fingerprints on it. Early debates about globali-
sation in the late 1980s and 1990s were primarily driven by awareness of the
expanding and accelerating economic and technological flows and networks (Held
et al. 1999). But environmental problems and planetary issues also played a role in
stimulating interest in global politics, and questioning the paradigmatic idea of a
system of states locked in a structure of anarchy. The 1960s saw the Cold War-
driven space race that delivered images of the planet from space as a solitary and
fragile ‘Blue Marble’, giving added impetus to the emerging popular environmental
movement and the wider awareness of being on a precarious planet or ‘spaceship
Earth’ (Lazier 2011). The new social movements focused on peace and environ-
ment drew on this and became part of a rediscovery within IR of a ‘global civil
society’ (Kaldor 2003). Environmentalism played a role in the lead-up to and
ending of the Cold War and beyond (Corry 2014a). Older ideas about world
government, otherwise shelved during the partition of the Cold War, re-emerged
partly on the back of the environmental question and a growing global consciousness
after the Cold War stand-off had ended. Whereas a world state is still mostly deemed
off-limits (although see Wendt 2003), ideas about global state functions or a global
polity have been explored and also engage with environmental issues (Shaw 2000;
Ougaard and Higgott 2002). Whereas the globalisation debate stalled somewhat on
the idea that globality might somehow mean the end of the state system, the
emergence of global post-territorial objects such as ‘the climate’ have stimulated an
awareness among IR scholars of the constitutive importance of global objects.
What was once the weather has been rendered governable as ‘the climate’ and this
suggests an emerging global climate polity where carbon has become a new medium
of international interaction (Corry 2013; Methmann 2014; Allan 2016).
Meanwhile the sociological theory of Ulrich Beck has also entered the discipline
via risk-security analysts exploring, in no small measure, how environmental logics
may have spread into the security realm. For example, the precautionary principle
developed in environmental governance has been seen to have been applied to
terrorism and instability (Williams 2008). For Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen (2006: 25),
the precautionary logic of attacking Iraq before Saddam Hussein acquired weapons
of mass destruction was a mirror-image of the precautionary principle developed to
justify pre-emptory measures to deal with environmental risk. The links between
global capitalism and new ways of accounting and capitalising ecosystems has
similarly attracted attention in critical International Political Economy circles
(Newell and Paterson 2010).
Related to the risk literature, grappling with global environment politics has
forced IR to deal seriously and increasingly with the politics of science and knowl-
edge production. This most obviously included work on ‘epistemic communities’ –
practice communities of scientists and experts, pioneered though studies of global
environmental problems such as acid rain or ozone loss (Haas 1992), biodiversity
IR and the Earth 15
and lately climate change (Methmann 2014). While epistemic community literature
assumed a high degree of consensus among experts, or at least that knowledge
production took place exogenously to the policy process, other approaches allow
for science to be more conflictual and for policy and science to be more intimately
connected and foundational (Weiss 2005). Some have considered how scientists/
experts are dependent on, and joined by, other actors, transboundary advocacy
people, etc., partly from the environmental movement but also further afield
(Mai’A and Cross 2013). International environmental issues have thus brought with
them engagement also with Science and Technology Studies, including the work
of Bruno Latour and collaborators. The idea of assemblages has entered the dis-
cipline in various ways (see Acuto and Curtis 2013). Building on Sheila Jasanoff’s
ideas that technical, cultural and political features of order get articulated and
reshaped simultaneously, IR scholars point to the role of large-scale technical
infrastructure and scientific knowledge in global governance (Mayer and Acuto
2015). IR has similarly drawn on critical geography (e.g., Swyngedouw 2013) and
the so-called ‘new materialism’ critiquing anthropocentrism (e.g., Connolly 2013;
Mitchell 2014) has also impacted on IR studies (Cudworth and Hobden 2011) and
security; for example, bringing in issues such as extinction (Mitchell 2016).
Related to much of this, environmental concerns have also led IR to begin to
take ideas and concepts about complexity and complex adaptive systems on board.
The notion of ‘system’ is of course a very familiar one in IR theory, but in the
classical sense it simply referred to situations where units interact sufficiently to have
to take each other into account (Bull 1977). Complex adaptive systems theory, on
the other hand, suggests that complex systems can have emergent properties
themselves, and that they may have internal tipping-points within them, beyond
which they switch to new equilibria and ways of functioning (or collapse). Critical
security scholars have analysed the spread of such thinking into security politics
(Dillon and Reid 2009) and the international politics of critical infrastructure safe-
guarding (Lundborg and Vaughan-Williams 2011). Linked to this, ideas such as
resilience, originating in systems theories, biology and material sciences have made
their entry into both security policy and debates about environmental security
(Reid 2012; Corry 2014b). A whole approach to policymaking based on com-
plexity, emphasising experimental and non-directed decision-making has been
suggested to approach long-term, high-risk issues such as geoengineering the climate
(Chris 2015).
Finally, in normative theory, environmental questions have arguably expanded
the agenda of international theory in two ways. First, the potential for global
environmental problems to impact the lives of innumerable people across the
world bolsters the case for ‘global democracy’ (however understood). ‘The envir-
onment’ generates perhaps more stakeholders and discourse coalitions than any
other issue of international concern, and international theorists have begun to
reflect on what this means for the ‘all affected principle’ (Schaffer 2012). As we saw
above, some scholars of environmental governance have turned to democratic
theory to understand the challenges of producing legitimate and effective
agreements. But the direction of influence also runs the other way: consideration of
the environment is reshaping how global democratic theorists understand legitimate
global governance (Payne and Samhat 2004; Archibugi et al. 2012). Second,
environmental questions bring the future and future generations more centrally
into moral and ethical debates about rights and responsibilities. Cosmopolitan
Simon Caney (2005: 749) suggests that ‘an adequate theory of global environ-
mental justice must provide guidance on what duties to future generations those
living at present have. It must consider whether future people have rights.’
Outline of this volume

The contributors to this volume reflect on the various ways in which the discipline
of International Relations increasingly engages with – and is engaged by – envir-
onmental issues. Their contributions provide insight into important themes of
institutions and actors, science and values, development and security. Together,
these analyses build a picture of how the study and practice of international envir-
onmental politics has developed over the past two decades. Each chapter reviews a
particular body of work or debate, presents one or more key approaches, and takes
up a key issue related to IR and the Earth and the challenge of societal multiplicity
in the context of shared ecological space.
The chapters that follow do not provide an exhaustive and complete account of
the field of international environmental politics. Our selection of theories and
themes highlight important patterns in the field. They cover the significant IR
approaches that are engaging with environmental questions (neorealism/neoliber-
alism, English School/constructivism, non-Western IR, international science and
technology studies, post-humanism, securitisation, International Political Economy,
and political ecology). Thematically these chapters reflect important shifts in inter-
national environmental politics, in particular the strong focus on climate change,
the integration of energy into environmental concerns, and linkages to global
justice.
Falkner, Vezirgiannidou, and Death and Tobin’s chapters engage with debates
about the role of the state and international institutions in environmental politics.
Their contributions reveal the analytical value that has been – and can continue to
be – derived from different theoretical and conceptual frameworks and provide
a nuanced picture of the ongoing and changing relationship between global
environmental governance and statehood.
Drawing on the English School tradition, Robert Falkner argues in Chapter 2
that the arrival of global environmentalism has gradually but profoundly altered
international society, shifting it further from its pluralist Westphalian roots
and towards a solidarist future built on shared values of environmental stewardship
and international rules. But this shift has been challenged more recently by several
counter-trends. Taking the UNFCCC as his case, Falkner argues that great power
primacy and national sovereignty have reasserted themselves as primary institutions
of international society, with climate politics increasingly based on bilateral deals
IR and the Earth 17
and voluntary national emissions targets. In addition, a world society beyond the
state order has also gained prominence challenging the solidaristic international
climate regime from below.
In Chapter 3, Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou points to a ‘domestic turn’ in analysis
of global climate politics, examining rival realist, liberal and constructivist under-
standings of the role of the state and domestic politics in the international relations
of the Earth. Focusing on the formation of state interests and drawing on post-
classical realism and ‘two-level games’ Vezirgiannidou argues that climate change
negotiations best illustrate the inadequacy of structural theories in understanding
how states tackle common problems and deal with conflicts of interests in global
governance.
In Chapter 4, Carl Death and Paul Tobin consider the implications of transfor-
mations in environmental statehood for international politics and question whether
Western ideas of a green statehood have obscured a greater variety of environ-
mental development. Like the preceding chapters, Death and Tobin argue that
states remain central actors in global environmental politics and show how greener
state practices are constitutive of a greener international society. However, they
explore alternative theoretical and conceptual tools that problematise the Western-
centric character of the ‘green state’ concept and push this literature in a more
sophisticated direction. Considering a wider range of states than is usual within the
ecological modernisation literature, they show how transboundary formations affect
the greening of states and illustrate such non-Western ‘greening’ in the cases of
Rwanda and Ethiopia, revealing different assumptions concerning development,
ecology, justice and sustainability.
Contributions from Beck and Forsyth, Hobden, and Gillard, Ford and Kütting
shed light from various angles on the role of science and other forms of knowledge
production and values in international environmental politics. Knowledge and
values affect international environmental regimes and practices, just as the production
of environmental science itself is affected by international political and social factors.
The authors critically re-examine familiar concepts in IR such as epistemic com-
munities but also cover more recent cutting-edge contributions to the discipline
including Science and Technology Studies and post-humanism.
In Chapter 5, Silke Beck and Tim Forsyth examine the place of science, values
and knowledge-production in global environmental politics. IR was quick to take
up the idea of epistemic communities as relatively autonomous and cohesive groups of
agents feeding important knowledge and policy ideas into global governance.
However, through a critique of unrealistically sharp distinctions between knowledge
and politics, Beck and Forsyth argue that the influence commanded by science and
expertise is not just connected to the research itself, but also to the social and
political contexts in which knowledge is generated and communicated. Drawing
together recent Science and Technology Studies (STS) literatures and IR they
argue that scholars of global environmental politics must acknowledge the diverse
ways in which science and politics connect. The case of climate change ‘denialism’
and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides a focus for
examining these connections, and the possibility of moving beyond the notion that
the value of science depends on it providing unequivocal answers to complex
political questions.
Stephen Hobden focuses on the case of scientific and engineering plans for
geoengineering (intentional large-scale intervention into the climate system) in
Chapter 6 to exemplify how complexity thinking can advance understanding of
international environmental politics. His ‘post-human’ approach critiques the
implicit anthropocentrism of mainstream (and most heterodox) International
Relations theory and emerges from complexity thinking, which, in turn, is pre-
dicated on the unpredictable and dynamic nature of interacting adaptive systems.
Hobden argues that a post-human approach provides a way of bringing environ-
mental issues to the forefront of discussions of international politics by focusing on
the interactions between human and non-human and animate and inanimate sys-
tems. He illustrates how this can help us work through the practical and political
questions raised by geoengineering, which involves potentially taking control of a
complex adaptive socio-natural system of epic proportions.
Ross Gillard, Lucy Ford and Gabriela Kütting turn squarely to values and dis-
courses of justice in Chapter 7, arguing the latter have become an increasingly
central pillar in global environmental politics. Beyond state-based debates and
negotiations about justice, questions of inter- and intra-generational justice have
infused global environmental politics. The authors identify multiple discourses of
justice (state-centric, structural and ecocentric) and reflect upon how these have
developed and influenced global environmental politics. Taking the issue of land
rights as illustrative, and with some important cues from critical feminist analysis,
they show that it is at the intersections of multiple power dynamics and discourses –
for example, race, class, gender, place – that the most politicised and potent claims
about inequality can be found in environmental politics.
In Chapter 8, Peter Newell and Richard Lane assess the extent to which the
study of international environmental politics has engaged – and been engaged by –
the subfield of International Political Economy (IPE) over the past two decades.
They suggest that there is considerably greater scope for cross-fertilisation between
IPE approaches and studies of global environmental politics. The latter often loses
sight of the underlying links between socio-economic processes and environmental
degradation. Newell and Lane argue that
a critical, ecologically nuanced version of IPE can add to debates about global
environmental governance by showing how broader economic structures of
trade, production and finance impact upon the generation and distribution of
environmental harm and the willingness and ability of states and international
institutions to regulate it.
To illustrate their aim of placing social and socio-ecological relations in focus,

they analyse the phenomenon of the ‘Anthropocene’, which, devoid of a strong
IPE grounding, risks reinforcing a problematic technocratic and post-political take
IR and the Earth 19
on the rapid economic and environmental change wrought on the Earth particularly
since the ‘Great Acceleration’ after World War II.
Contributions from Hugh Dyer and Jonna Nyman discuss current approaches to
and accounts of how international environmental politics and questions of security
and insecurity are related. Dyer addresses the relationship between security and
climate change in Chapter 9. This builds on questions he began asking about
security and the environment in Vogler and Imber’s 1996 volume (Dyer 1996). He
considers how the rise of ‘climate security’ may reflect a shift in international
norms, a shift in assumptions about the structure of the international system, as well
as a shift in the political strategies of actors within that system. Dyer argues that
although the idea of climate security reflects the possibility of a shared normative
goal, it remains deeply connected to national interests and strategies. The chapter
locates the term ‘climate security’ within wider debates about security, and teases
out the normative significance of employing this term in national and international
discourses.
In Chapter 10, Jonna Nyman examines how energy security has become central
to the study and practice of International Relations. She observes how the issue of
energy has graduated from ‘low politics’ to ‘high politics’ due to increasing security
concerns relating to resource depletion and peak oil. The study of energy security
has long been resistant to debates about justice, human security and securitisation,
but a critical study of security and the environment is now beginning to emerge.
This development, Nyman argues, is important and necessary for challenging
mainstream debates that equate energy security with the supply security of energy-
importing states and ignore the environmental impact and limits to current energy
systems.
We conclude the book in Chapter 11 by summing up the contribution of the
volume; drawing attention to additional themes and theories that define the field;
summarising what we see as the most prominent shifts in the study and practice of
international environmental politics over the past two decades; and reflecting on
the challenges that remain for IR to fully appreciate the implications of societal
multiplicity and planetary singularity, not least if the Earth has entered a new
Anthropocene epoch – the ‘Age of Humans’.
Note
1 Andresen (2013) simplifies this in terms of three criteria: output (rules and regulations),
outcome (behavioural change) and impact (problem-solving).
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2
INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE
POLITICS BETWEEN PLURALISM
AND SOLIDARISM
An English School perspective
Robert Falkner
Introduction
The emergence of the international environmental agenda in the 1970s represents a
distinctive change in the normative basis of international relations. Until the 1960s,
most states treated environmental problems exclusively as part of domestic politics.
By the time of the first UN environment conference in 1972, international society
had come to accept a responsibility for the global environment (Falkner 2012).
Subsequent decades saw the creation of several international environmental insti-
tutions and the adoption of hundreds of multilateral environmental agreements (see
Corry and Stevenson, Chapter 1 in this volume). In many ways, the rise of global
environmental politics represents a distinctly progressive moment in the normative
development of international society – a move away from the pluralist origins of
the Westphalian system and towards a more solidarist international society. Yet,
despite the remarkable success in advancing the agenda of global environmental
sustainability, we have witnessed in recent years a series of setbacks that call into
question this progressive narrative. International efforts to halt global warming, in
particular, have shown the inadequacy of the current approach. Judging by recent
assessments of the state of the global environment (UNEP 2012), it would appear
that the march towards solidarism in global environmental politics has ground to a
halt.
In this chapter, I investigate international society’s response to global environ-
mental problems, focusing on the case of climate change. Building on insights from
the English School of International Relations, this chapter explores how the arrival
of global environmentalism has produced a normative shift in contemporary
international society, away from its pluralist roots and towards a solidarist future
built on common purpose, shared values and international rules, but also how this
International climate politics 27
shift has been challenged more recently by several counter-trends. By engaging

English School theory, this chapter seeks to connect the study of global environ-
mental politics with wider International Relations (IR) debates about normative
and institutional change. Although the English School’s first generation (Wight,
Butterfield, and to some extent Bull) largely ignored the emergence of the inter-
national environmental agenda, a new generation of English School theorists
(Hurrell, Jackson, Buzan) has recognised the significance of environmental protec-
tion as a separate international policy domain and site of progressive change.
Contemporary English School theory provides an important vantage point from
which to analyse the transformations that the rise of global environmentalism has
sparked, the traces it has left in the evolution of the international order, and the
barriers that persist in international society to a more successful greening of inter-
national relations.
The analysis proceeds in three steps. The next section introduces the English
School as a distinctive IR tradition, focusing on its approach to studying long-term
international change and the idea of normative progress. The English School is
divided on the possibility of such progress, as is evident in the debate between
pluralists and solidarists. The third section examines the nature of international cli-
mate politics through the lens of the pluralist–solidarist debate and shows the
extent to which the United Nations (UN) climate regime has been committed to a
solidarist vision of international environmental regulation. The fourth section then
considers more recent trends that suggest a weakening of the classic solidarist
ambition behind the climate regime. The current situation is ambiguous, if not
paradoxical: on the one hand, pluralist institutions of great power management and
national sovereignty are increasingly shaping the contours of climate negotiations,
suggesting a waning of state-centric solidarism and a strengthening of pluralism. On
the other hand, the crisis that has engulfed state-centric solidarism has also led to
the emergence of a different solidarist trend, one built around world society and
the growth of transnational governance mechanisms.
The English School, global environmentalism and progressive

change in international society
The English School, once considered to be a case for closure (Jones 1981), has
made a remarkable comeback in International Relations. Having been ‘recon-
vened’ in the late 1990s (Buzan 1999), it now counts a growing number of scholars
among its members. They make up a diverse field with wide-ranging theoretical
and empirical inclinations but share a common interest in the social dimensions of
international relations, and specifically the rules, norms and practices that govern
the interactions between states. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to offer more
than a brief review of its main theoretical tenets.1 Instead, I shall focus here on the
core conceptual ideas that underpin the English School’s approach to studying
long-term change in international society and how this can be applied to the study
of the transformative potential of global environmentalism.
28 Robert Falkner
The English School: key concepts and debates

The English School started out as a small group of scholars that met from 1959
onwards under the auspices of the British Committee on the Theory of International
Politics. Its early members came from different disciplinary backgrounds – history,
philosophy, theology and International Relations – and also included practitioners
of diplomacy (Dunne 1998). They all subscribed to a broadly defined sociological
perspective on international relations, focused on the core concept of international
society. By nurturing a conception of international relations as a social construction
with its own rules and norms, the English School stood in marked contrast to the
more mechanistic idea of an international system that North American IR approaches
work with. It would therefore be wrong to portray the former as merely a British
version of American realism, despite important conceptual and thematic overlaps
(e.g., focus on security, balance of power and great power management). Instead,
the English School is better seen as a via media between the then-dominant
approaches of realism and liberalism (Buzan 2014: 5–7), characterised by an onto-
logical and epistemological stance that is much closer to social constructivism than
any of the rationalist approaches that have dominated the discipline in North
America (Dunne 1995).
Two features make the English School a distinctive approach to studying inter-
national order and change: first, its historical focus, which conceives of interna-
tional society as being historically situated and subject to change; and second, its
embrace of an avowedly normative perspective, which provides a basis for evaluating
international change.
With regard to the first aspect, the study of the historical origins and evolution
of contemporary international society from Europe’s Westphalian order to its
expansion on a global scale has always been at the heart of the English School project
(Bull and Watson 1984). It gave rise to an investigation into how the Westphalian
states system established distinctive institutions (sovereignty, war, diplomacy, balance
of power, international law, great power management), how colonialism and other
forms of political and economic expansion led to the globalisation of these insti-
tutions and how the process of decolonisation integrated developing countries into
an essentially Western international society (Buzan 2014: Chapter 5). By identifying
different types of international societies within their specific historical and cultural
context, and by examining their change over time, the English School opened up a
perspective on contemporary international society that focused scholarly attention
on the malleable nature of its foundational institutions and on the tensions that
exist within its constitutional and normative order.
The English School’s second feature, its distinctive normative orientation, was
originally centred on the practice of diplomacy but is now more widely employed
to examine the legitimacy of international order or specific institutional features. In
what became known as the debate between pluralists and solidarists, English School
scholars discussed the right balance between the need to establish international
order and maintain stability, on the one hand, and the desire to promote global
justice and bring about international change, on the other. Armed with a historicist
understanding of International Relations, they examined particular instances of
normative change that (at least partially) challenge the existing order, be it the rise
of nationalism (Mayall 1990) or human rights (Vincent 1986). English School
theorists are far from united in their assessment of the consequences of such
normative change: solidarists embrace cosmopolitan values and welcome the his-
torical forces that are pushing international society towards promoting universal
norms. In contrast, pluralists express concern about the threat that norm-driven
change poses to the stability of international society; they defend a sovereignty-based
international order, pointing to the profound diversity of values and cultures that
divides humankind. In other words, solidarists consider order to be unsustainable if
the yearning for global justice is ignored, while pluralists are willing to sacrifice the
pursuit of universal values if that is what the maintenance of international order
demands.
Two caveats are worth mentioning. First, it would be misleading to portray the
pluralism–solidarism debate as being about two opposing camps that offer mutually
exclusive conceptions of international society. Instead, the English School invites
an analysis of the tensions between these two versions of international order, for
‘world order is and always has been both pluralist and solidarist’ (de Almeida 2006:
68). Second, the pluralism–solidarism debate is about both empirical and normative
questions. At an empirical/analytical level, it is concerned with identifying the
spectrum of possible states of affairs along which individual international societies
can be found. In the case of environmental politics, for example, we can con-
ceptualise the creation of ever-more international environmental agreements and
institutions as a move towards a ‘thicker’ level of institutional development in
international society, while considering the degree to which pluralist elements of
international order continue to shape this international policy domain. At a nor-
mative level, the debate functions as a framework for working out where on the
spectrum between thin and thick institutionalisation international society ought to
be. For example, in environmental politics we find calls for the strengthening of
central international authority to advance a global agenda of environmental pro-
tection alongside arguments for a more de-centralised and bottom-up approach
that acknowledges and protects existing differences in how individual societies
value and pursue environmental protection.
Because the English School keeps both empirical and normative dimensions
engaged in its theoretical and historical enquiries, it offers a more ‘holistic perspective
on international relations’ (Buzan 2014: 86). Applied to the environmental policy
domain, an English School perspective would ask how global environmentalism
relates to cosmopolitan versus national values; whether the protection of the global
environment necessarily involves a move towards a ‘thicker’ international society or
whether it can be achieved within a ‘thin’ set of international institutions; and
whether the growth in international environmental governance in itself represents a
solidarist development in international society or can be explained with reference
to a pluralist logic of limited cooperation. English School scholars are likely to be
30 Robert Falkner
found on both sides of this debate, with some identifying the rise of global envir-
onmentalism as a solidarist moment in history (Jackson 2000) and others interpreting it
as being consistent with pluralist international society (Buzan 2004) or considering
the persistence of sovereignty-based international order as the precondition for
successful environmental protection (Bull 1977).
In investigating the state of normative development in international society, the
English School focuses on deeper institutional change at the level of the constitu-
tional order of international relations. Its key conceptual innovation is the notion
of primary institutions (Buzan 2004: 161–204). In contrast to secondary institutions,
which are equivalent to the purposefully designed institutions as studied by regime
theorists, primary institutions comprise organically evolved social practices that are
constitutive of both international society and its actors, i.e., states. Primary institu-
tions are more fundamental than deliberately created secondary institutions; they
tend to last longer, even though they too can change, decline and even decay.
Change at the level of primary institutions is thus a good measure of profound
change of the foundations of international society (Holsti 2004; Buzan 2004).
Analysts will still want to examine change in secondary institutions as indicators of
deeper normative change, but the two levels should not be conflated. Secondary
institutions are derivative of primary institutions, representing not just the interests
of the states that have created them but also embodying the underlying norms that
make up international society’s constitutional order.
We can thus begin to understand the growth of global environmentalism within
international society as operating at different but closely related levels. On the one
hand, the idea of global environmental protection, or environmental stewardship,
has gained ground and has increasingly come to be defined as a core responsibility
for states and international society. In this sense, environmental responsibility has
emerged as a primary institution, although debate continues on the extent to
which it has established itself among other, and often competing, primary institu-
tions such as the market or national sovereignty (Falkner 2012). On the other
hand, international society has created a growing number of multilateral environ-
mental agreements that cover an ever-greater range of ecological issues, from
species extinction to ozone layer depletion, toxic waste trade and genetically
modified organisms. These regimes make up the secondary institutions of the
global environmental policy domain. They reflect the underlying commitment that
international society has made to the protection of the global environment.
Developments at the level of environmental regimes may be taken as a measure of
how strongly embedded the primary institution of environmental responsibility is.
Thus, the growing number of treaties and treaty ratifications may be seen as an
indication of the strengthening and globalisation of the underlying primary insti-
tution of environmental responsibility, while concerns about weak implementation
and growing fragmentation of environmental rules may indicate certain tensions
between the environmental responsibility norm and other, more firmly established,
primary institutions (sovereignty, market). In either case, distinguishing primary and
secondary institutions, and using the former as benchmarks of international social
change, helps us to gain greater purchase on the nature of international order and
how it is evolving.
An English School perspective on global environmentalism

How should we interpret the rise of global environmentalism and its consequences
for international society through an English School lens? Apart from Hedley Bull,
who devoted a brief passage in The Anarchical Society to environmental issues (1977:
293–295), the first generation of English School theorists largely ignored the rise of
global environmentalism. But a second generation of English School scholars have
started to recognise the significance of the environmental agenda as a potential site
of normative development in International Relations. Hurrell has developed
the most sustained interest in global environmentalism as a transformative force in
international relations. Following on from Bull, he reiterates the central role of
states in organising a global response to the environmental crisis but identifies a
solidarist trend in the emergence of an ever-more complex web of global environ-
mental governance (Hurrell 2007: Chapter 9). Coming from a more constructivist
perspective, Reus-Smit’s work on the changing normative constitution of interna-
tional society led him to proclaim the emergence of a green moral purpose of the
state in the late twentieth century, although he warned that the results of this
‘ideological reevaluation… remain unclear’ (1996: 119). Jackson is far less equivocal
in his assertion that the society of states has come to accept a general responsibility
for environmental protection, with state representatives assuming the role of ‘chief
trustees or stewards of the planet’ (2000: 176). Buzan takes up Jackson’s argument
and identifies environmental stewardship as an emerging element of the deeper
normative structure of international society, which ‘probably now registers as a
master institution’ (Buzan 2004: 233).
What is the underlying logic that drives the growth in global environmental
politics? For Jackson (2000), and to some extent also for Hurrell (2007), envir-
onmentalism is a distinctive area for solidarist development in international society.
For one, the environmental movement, which has played a critical role in elevating
environmental issues to matters of international diplomacy (McCormick 1989),
espouses a normative agenda of global political change that is rooted in universalist
green values. Environmentalism may come in different shades of green, but under-
lying it is a universally framed environmental ethics that expands humanity’s nor-
mative horizon beyond anthropocentric interests. In this sense, environmentalism
goes beyond the human rights-based solidarism in English School thinking to
include the planet’s health as a concern. In its more radical form, environmentalism
pushes beyond anthropocentric norms and demands that humans adopt an ecocentric
perspective, by recognising the rights of the non-human environment. Second, the
global environmental movement has emerged as a separate force behind the solidarist
transformation, playing a key role in mobilising for a global collective response to
environmental crises. Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
lobby states to engage in global collective action, constantly demanding a much
32 Robert Falkner
deeper level of international cooperation and even convergence between states

than would normally be expected in a pluralist international society. And third, the
activity of non-state actors, both as lobbyists and as partners in the creation of
global environmental governance, points to an extension of the global web of
environmental rules beyond the narrow confines of state-centric international
relations. Global environmental protection thus becomes the laboratory for a soli-
darist move that builds global governance involving a multitude of actors, from
states to NGOs and businesses and from international organisations to regional
bodies, municipalities and cities. It thus points to the possibility of moving beyond
the state-centric international society and towards a global polity built on world
society (Buzan 2004: Chapter 4).
Pluralists are generally sceptical of the solidarist vision behind global envir-
onmentalism. They point to the many weaknesses of international environmental
regimes, which frequently lack ambition and cannot be enforced. And they remind
us of the persistence of value pluralism even in a policy field that abounds with
universalist green rhetoric. Societies hold different views on the extent to which
environmental protection should be prioritised, particularly if it clashes with the
economic growth imperative, and profound differences also exist with regard to
the instruments that should be used to address ecological problems. States may
share a common interest in a healthy planet, but differences in power and ideologies
prevent international society from a deeper form of environmental cooperation.
Buzan sums up pluralist scepticism when he states that ‘environmentalism still
represent[s] the aspirational more than the empirical side of solidarism’ (2004: 150).
This is not to suggest that pluralists cannot envisage some form of intergovern-
mental cooperation on environmental problems. As Buzan (2004: 150) reminds us,
‘elements of environmentalism can develop, and have done so, within the pluralist
logic of coexistence’. Indeed, where environmental degradation poses a serious
threat to the survival of sovereign states, we should expect them to attempt to solve
the underlying problem through some form of international cooperation, even if
this is far from the solidarist vision of collective green action. In this context, one
can point to various transboundary forms of pollution, which have led to limited
developments in international law that seek to strengthen the harm prevention
principle (Elliott 2006), or the international regime to avert the depletion of the
stratospheric ozone layer, which posed a serious threat to human health especially
in countries close to the Arctic and Antarctic circles (Parson 2003). Both the reg-
ulation of transboundary air pollution and restrictions on ozone-depleting substances
required only a minimal level of intervention into domestic policy domains and
were compatible with a fairly strict stance on protecting national sovereignty and
non-intervention.
As we have seen, the English School provides a macro-perspective on the rise of
global environmentalism that allows us to work out its broader significance for the
development of international society’s normative structure. The following section
examines the international politics of climate change in order to shed further light
on how solidarist and pluralist logics shape global environmental politics in this
critically important area. This is not simply about deciding whether solidarism or
pluralism best captures the reality of international climate politics: solidarism and
pluralism are best thought of as two qualities of international society that are both
at work at the same time, often in tension with each other, sometimes working
in tandem.
Pluralism versus solidarism in international climate politics

This section engages the pluralist–solidarist debate in an analysis of long-term
trends in the international politics of climate change. It first explores the nature of
the climate change problem, asking whether it can be solved within the confines of
a pluralist international society, or whether it requires a more solidarist response. In
other words, is a logic of coexistence sufficient to organise effective collective
action at the international level, or is a deeper level of international cooperation,
based on a thicker set of international rules and institutions, needed to halt global
warming? The analysis then turns to the existing international climate regime and
asks where it can be found on the spectrum between pluralist and solidarist inter-
national society. Over twenty years of negotiations have resulted in a governance
system that is built around an international treaty-system and an ever-larger array of
regulatory instruments and institutions, but does this dramatic increase in international
institution-building amount to a shift towards solidarist cooperation?
The international climate response: coexistence or cooperation?

To say that man-made climate change is a ‘problem’ that requires an internationally
coordinated response hardly does justice to the severity of the challenge. Based on
current predictions of future greenhouse gas emissions and the additional global
warming that they are likely to produce over the course of this century, scientists
warn of devastating and irreversible impacts on human societies. Expected changes in
global temperatures, ocean chemistry, sea levels, weather patterns and agricultural
patterns all combine to make climate change ‘the global challenge of modern times’
(Hoffmann 2013: 3). While it is clear that the world needs to halt, and then greatly
reduce, the currently rising emission levels, we are far from having developed a
good understanding of how to mitigate climate change. Reducing greenhouse
gases will require unprecedented changes to the way societies and economies are
organised. To achieve the needed industrial transformation in a relatively short
timescale requires concerted efforts by nearly all major emitters. Climate change
has therefore emerged as one of the most intractable collective action problems in
international relations. Uncertainty about long-term trends, divergent interests and
endemic free-riding incentives all combine to make climate change a particularly
complex global problem.
Could the pluralist logic of coexistence on its own compel states to take the
required action on climate change? English School authors have traditionally
viewed international environmental cooperation as a form of solidarist cooperation
34 Robert Falkner
based on shared values and interests (Bull 1977: 70). In contrast, Buzan (2004) has
argued more recently that some form of international environmental cooperation
should be expected even in a pluralist context, particularly if core state interests are
at stake and if effective measures are available. As was the case with the Montreal
Protocol to protect the ozone layer, leading industrialised countries can come
together to avert an environmental crisis that poses a direct threat to the health of
their citizens. Climate change is increasingly seen as such a threat, both to large
numbers of vulnerable people and states. Furthermore, climate change may pose a
threat to international security where it acts as a threat multiplier in failing or failed
states (Gemenne et al. 2014). It is telling in this context that military organisations
in the United States and other Western powers have already devoted considerable
efforts to studying the security implications of climate change. Unlike many
environmental problems, therefore, climate change could be viewed as an existential
threat to the core interests of the society of states, potentially giving rise to a
coordinated response based on the logic of coexistence.
Whether or not climate change poses an immediate and urgent security risk for
most states remains contested, however, and in fact some of the most powerful
states face only comparatively weak security threats from a warming climate. It is
therefore far from clear whether a pluralist solution would come about through
collective action by the great powers. Furthermore, mitigating climate change is
likely to be expensive and, unlike in the case of ozone layer protection, no easy
technological solutions are available. Again, it is fair to conclude that the high costs
of taking action, combined with uneven levels of security threats, will reduce the
likelihood that a predominantly pluralist logic of coordinating national policies to
avert dangerous global warming will suffice. Some great powers may simply choose
to adapt to a warming climate rather than invest in mitigation measures. Of course,
if a dramatic increase in the severity of climate change or some catastrophic event
triggered by global warming were to happen, then that might jolt the major
powers into collective action. Alternatively, a dramatic worsening of the situation
might produce a different reaction. Rather than seek to cooperate with others,
which could prove time-consuming and costly, the most powerful states might
respond by taking unilateral measures, for example by deploying geoengineering
technologies. This option would raise the question, apart from its feasibility, of
how to govern the use of such unilateral interventions on a global atmospheric
scale (Bodansky 2013).
It is fair to conclude, therefore, that a logic of coexistence is unlikely to generate
a comprehensive and timely collective response to global warming. Faced with a
slowly rising threat of climate change that affects countries differently around the
world, international society would need to develop an international response based
on a higher degree of normative convergence around the objective of global climate
protection. Viewed through an English School lens, climate change thus represents
a global collective action problem that requires a solidarist development in inter-
national society. There are several reasons for why an unusually high degree of
international cooperation is needed to tackle the climate change problem: it is
partly a reflection of the complexity of the mitigation task, which involves

de-carbonising the global economy, including entire energy systems, supply chains
and urban infrastructure. Climate mitigation also produces severe distributional
conflicts, which makes cooperation more difficult to achieve unless leading emitters
share a normative commitment to global climate stabilisation. And to counter the
inevitable free-riding incentives that multilateral forms of climate cooperation
create, strong international institutions are needed to make mitigation commitments
stick and create trust among the major emitters. Furthermore, as it is unlikely that
states alone have sufficient steering power to bring about a global green transfor-
mation on the scale required to halt global warming, a wide range of non-state
actors will need to be involved in the global collective response, again pointing
towards a more solidarist framework of global climate governance.
The solidarist ambition of the UNFCCC regime

The English School concept of solidarism is a label that captures a profound change
in International Relations along four dimensions:
the move to institutions and expansion of global rule-making; changes in the

making, development, and justification of international law; the increasing
emphasis placed on the enforcement of international norms and rules; and a
changed understanding of the state and of state sovereignty.
(Hurrell 2007: 58)
Global environmental politics can be said to have made big strides in a solidarist
direction. It has led to the comprehensive institutionalisation of international
environmental policy; it has resulted in a deepening of international environmental
law and its expansion to cover ever-more issues of global concern; it has sparked
greater interest in mechanisms to promote compliance with international environ-
mental rules; and it has contributed to a rebalancing between the state’s sovereign
rights and global responsibilities, prompted not least by shifts in domestic societal
values and a growth in transnational networks that increasingly circumvent or
complement the state’s authority. Such solidarist ambition has also been a strong
current in the international politics of climate change from its origins in the 1980s.
Scientists, campaigners and diplomats have routinely appealed to states’ responsibility
towards the global environment, urging leaders to agree legally binding interna-
tional agreements that would mandate greenhouse gas emission cuts. They have
argued for the creation of strong international institutions, including for the dis-
tribution of climate aid to support mitigation and adaptation policies worldwide.
And they have urged international society to base climate action on strong notions
of international equity and burden-sharing.
The timing of the emergence of the international climate change agenda helped
to reinforce a broader solidarist agenda. The end of the Cold War opened up the
possibility for considerable normative expansion in international society. It also
36 Robert Falkner
gave rise to a more expansive approach to global rule-making, focused on the

United Nations but also involving non-state actors such as NGOs and scientific
organisations in novel governance approaches. United Nations Framework Conven-
tion on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations also coincided with a dramatic
increase in attention to global environmental problems, culminating in the 1992
UN Conference on Environment and Development. The threat of global warming
seemed to confirm the findings of the influential Brundtland Report, which con-
cluded that environmental trends exist ‘that threaten to radically alter the planet,
that threaten the lives of many species upon it, including the human species’
(World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 2). In terms of both
its ambition and potential scope, climate protection was thus a prime example of
the ‘new world order’ ambition that characterised international relations after the
end of the Cold War.
Many of the UNFCCC’s core elements confirmed the solidarist ambition
behind international climate politics in the early 1990s. At the heart of the climate
regime is a multilateral process of agreeing international rules for reducing greenhouse
gas emissions. From the beginning, the UNFCCC negotiations followed a strictly
multilateral model, with consensus-based decision-making and a bargaining process
that gave weaker nations more ‘voice’ than was common in other multilateral
regimes. The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, the regime’s
chief decision-making body, meets every year for a two-week session, and additional
negotiation sessions are held in between COPs with increasing frequency. Over
the years, the negotiations have attracted growing numbers of observers, with
separate forums for non-state actors now being convened alongside the inter-
governmental COP. Despite complaints by some observers about lack of transpar-
ency and access, the climate negotiations are a far cry from the exclusive nature of
traditional diplomacy. Thousands of climate scientists, legal experts, diplomats and
campaigners now routinely gather for annual negotiations, making the UNFCCC
one of the largest and most accessible forums for debating and deciding global policy.
The UNFCCC’s early emphasis on developing legal agreements and instruments
that regulate greenhouse gas emissions also marks it out as a predominantly solidarist
regime. Following the model of the successful ozone negotiations, the climate
process was designed to agree a succession of legally binding protocols that add
regulatory specificity and clout to the framework convention’s climate protection
norm. All nations were meant to be bound by legally enshrined obligations, with
industrialised countries carrying the main mitigation burden. And further international
institution-building was needed to support the implementation of the legal obliga-
tions. The Clean Development Mechanism led to the development of an elaborate
international bureaucracy that assesses and approves proposals for investment in
emission-reducing projects, while the global system for emissions trading required
the creation of a system of international property rights in emissions (so-called
emission permits) that can be traded in specially designed international markets.
The UNFCCC regime is also based on strong equity norms that apportion the
greatest burden for climate mitigation to the most advanced industrialised
countries. The framework convention’s principle of ‘common but differentiated

responsibilities’ (CBDR), which is also anchored in the Rio Declaration of the 1992
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), came to be interpreted
as providing for a strict distinction between developed and developing countries in
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, with the latter being exempted from any legally binding
emission reductions. By basing the mitigation burden on the historical responsi-
bility of industrialised countries, the climate regime adopted a strong climate justice
principle with considerable distributional consequences, which would later be
contested by the United States and other industrialised countries (Hurrell and
Sengupta 2012).
A crisis of solidarism? International climate politics between great

power politics and transnationalism
While the scale of solidarist ambition in the climate regime is indeed striking, it is
far from clear how much of this ambition has been realised. This section analyses
recent trends in international climate politics that cast light on the ongoing tensions
between solidarist and pluralist logics of international cooperation. Three develop-
ments, in particular, signal a fundamental and potentially lasting shift in the nature
of global climate governance: first, the repeated failure to negotiate a successor
agreement to the Kyoto Protocol has revealed both the limitations of the current
multilateral approach and the ability of the great powers to scale back the regime’s
original solidarist ambition. Second, some of the largest emitters, which also
happen to be the most powerful states in international society, have forced through
a change in the regulatory approach, replacing top-down regulations à la Kyoto
with the Paris Agreement’s new bottom-up approach based on voluntary pledges.
And third, the apparent failure of the intergovernmental regime to rein in rising
greenhouse gas emissions has created space for other actors to step in and create
new forms of climate governance, pointing to an enhanced role of non-state actors
and more complex and hybrid forms of authority in global climate politics. Intrigu-
ingly, therefore, just as the state-centric solidarist vision of the UNFCCC has been
called into question, a new cosmopolitan solidarism based on greater involvement
of world society is emerging as a potentially more radical alternative in the form of
transnational climate governance.
The crisis of multilateralism: a case for great power management?

The UNFCCC’s strong version of multilateralism was originally seen as one of the
regime’s main strengths. This is no longer the case. Failure to agree strong and
legally binding emission reduction targets has led to growing criticism of the
UNFCCC’s burdensome and slow procedures. Basing decisions on the consensus
principle and allowing every state a say in the crafting of mitigation policies may
have ensured a high degree of procedural legitimacy for the regime, but this has
come at high costs in terms of ineffective bargaining and political inertia.
38 Robert Falkner
The experience of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, in particular, was a

watershed event in this regard. Parties had spent two years preparing for the con-
ference, which was meant to adopt a new treaty, and negotiators from more than
190 countries spent a further two weeks in Copenhagen going over a heavily
bracketed text without resolving the underlying differences. It took a small group
of powerful heads of government to break the impasse and draft a compromise
agreement in the final hours of the conference. The resulting document, the
Copenhagen Accord, was not based on the official negotiation text, leading to
protests among developing countries who objected to being presented with what
amounted to a great power fait accompli. In the end, the conference merely ‘noted’
the text, although the subsequent COP later adopted it as part of the Cancun
agreements in 2010 (Falkner et al. 2010). Copenhagen had laid bare the ineffi-
ciencies of a strict multilateral approach and for the first time introduced a different
negotiating process in which the great powers play a leading role in hammering
out the core deal that forms the basis for a broader multilateral agreement. It was
thus at Copenhagen that the pluralist institution of great power management
emerged as a potential alternative to, or modification of, climate multilateralism.
The debate about alternative forums for negotiating climate change goes back
well before the Copenhagen conference. Existing institutions such as the G8 and
G20 have provided a platform for high-level political dialogue on climate change,
and new forums (Asia-Pacific Partnership; Major Economies Forum) were created
by the US alongside the UNFCCC to promote minilateral cooperation on energy
efficiency and low-carbon technology transfer. There is now a burgeoning debate
on the benefits of minilateral climate clubs, which are either seen as providing a
more effective means for agreeing mitigation policies among a select group of climate
powers or as offering a better framework for enforcing such agreements (Falkner
2016a). As recent bilateral agreements between the US and China have shown, the
main players in the climate negotiations increasingly seek to discuss cooperation on
mitigation strategies outside the multilateral framework. As climate change has
gained in political salience, the great powers have increasingly relied on traditional
channels for communication and negotiation among them.
The intensification of great-power dialogue reflects in part growing dissatisfac-
tion with climate multilateralism. However, we are still far from a situation where
minilateralism and great power management could replace the multilateral process.
The UNFCCC’s legitimacy remains high, particularly among developing countries
and environmental campaign groups, and even if minilateral climate clubs were to
emerge in the future it is just as likely that they would want to work with the
multilateral regime and the services it provides (e.g., emission reporting and
accounting systems) than seek to replace it. None of the existing minilateral
initiatives has gained sufficient support among negotiators and campaigners to make
it a viable alternative to the core regime (Hjerpe and Nasiritousi 2015).
What we are witnessing, therefore, is not a full-scale replacement of the
UNFCCC process with a minilateral alternative but a rebalancing between the
solidarist and pluralist logics of climate cooperation. Great powers are increasingly
unencumbered by the conventions of multilateralism, seeking out opportunities for

bilateral and plurilateral side-deals, even though they feel compelled to continue to
work within the multilateral framework.
The Kyoto Protocol: state solidarism in decline

One of the main consequences of the return of great power diplomacy in climate
politics has been a shift in the international regulatory approach away from
the international law-based model of the Kyoto Protocol and towards a more
flexible and voluntary approach. The United States has long argued against top-
down and legally binding emission reductions targets. But while the other major
emitters have until recently advocated Kyoto Protocol-style regulations, this is no
longer the case. Several major powers that had ratified the Kyoto Protocol are no
longer willing to be bound by it in its second commitment period (Canada, Russia,
Japan). And while the European Union and most developing countries continued
to advocate legally binding targets, the negotiations on the Paris Agreement saw a
big shift towards a bottom-up approach (Falkner 2016b). The traditional solidarist
solution of tying the main emitters into a legally defined system of obligations is no
longer at the heart of the emerging mitigation regime.
It should be noted, of course, that the UNFCCC always combined top-down
and bottom-up regulatory elements: Article 4.1 expected all parties to develop
national policies in a bottom-up fashion while Article 4.2 expected developed
countries to reduce emissions according to a specific deadline, an aim that was later
legally enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol (Bodansky 2011). But it was the Kyoto
Protocol, with its internationally agreed emission reduction targets, that embodied
the solidarist ambition behind the climate regime. National targets were to be
negotiated multilaterally and established in a treaty framework, rather than chosen
according to domestic policy priorities. In this sense, the climate regime followed
very closely the example of the Vienna Convention on ozone layer depletion,
which led to the legally binding chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emission reductions
scheme in the Montreal Protocol. By creating international legal obligations for
mitigation, international society would gradually and collectively reduce green-
house gas emissions. Enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol was never a realistic sce-
nario, but the emphasis on legal obligations signalled that collective responsibility
and common purpose informed the international response to global warming.
In the new regulatory approach of the Paris Agreement, national pledges reflect
domestic willingness to act rather than international obligations. The parties to the
agreement have committed to submitting national pledges, so-called ‘Nationally
Determined Contributions’ (NDCs), that can then be added up to establish the
collective effort, allowing negotiators to establish the gap that exists between
existing mitigation policies and the effort needed to keep global warming to below
2°C. This is not to suggest that what is happening is a complete hollowing out of
the solidarist nature of the existing regime. Several international institutions that
were created under the auspices of the UNFCCC will continue to play an
40 Robert Falkner
important role: the Green Climate Fund, which is to distribute a large part of the
international climate finance promised by donor countries; a new technology
mechanism, which will facilitate greater technology transfer and diffusion; and the
framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
(REDD), which is intended to support the protection of forests in developing
countries. But it is clear that the outcome of the Paris COP in 2015 signals a
retrenchment of solidarist ambition and a reassertion of a pluralist logic of decentralised
coordination that protects national sovereignty.
New forms of climate governance and the rise of

transnational solidarism
Partly in response to the weakening of state-centric solidarism as the dominant
response to climate change, a different global approach has emerged in recent years
that is based on greater involvement of non-state actors and reliance on private or
hybrid sources of global authority. So-called private environmental governance has
been on the rise since at least the 1990s (Falkner 2003), and from the early 2000s
onwards, more and more private and public–private initiatives have sprung up that
focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation. As the sense of dissatisfaction
with the contributions of the intergovernmental regime has grown, so have new
transnational actors sought to experiment with novel approaches to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions (Hoffmann 2011). There now exists a lively field of
transnational climate governance with a multitude of actors (municipalities, cities,
corporations, NGOs) advancing new governance solutions at local, regional and
transnational levels (Bulkeley et al. 2014). Whether these new initiatives will be
effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and can therefore be seen as a
viable alternative to state-centric climate governance – remains to be seen. But it is
becoming clear that the growing interest among non-state actors in taking action
on their own, or in partnership with state authorities, suggests at least the beginning
of a profound shift in the international politics of climate change.
The emerging field of transnational climate governance is characterised by con-
siderable diversity, overlap and fragmentation. A myriad of actors have created
initiatives that seek to disseminate information, coordinate voluntary efforts of
emission reductions, set regulatory standards or create certification schemes to
promote low-carbon technologies or products. They include, to name but a few,
the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure
Project), Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
and various carbon offset or accounting schemes. Some of these initiatives are
created and maintained by a single type of actors (e.g., NGOs or business) or by
alliances of different types of actors, also including state authorities. In some cases,
transnational initiatives respond to intergovernmental developments or seek to assist
with the implementation of internationally agreed objectives. In other cases, they
aim to fill governance gaps left by international organisations or states, thereby
enlarging the field of global governance.
Viewed from an English School perspective, the growth in transnational govern-

ance approaches gives rise to a different scenario in the evolution of international
society. Whereas greater reliance on great power diplomacy and management and
the decline of international law-based regulation indicate a weakening of state-centric
solidarism, the growth of global governance rooted in world society suggests a shift
towards a multi-centric, transnational form of solidarism. What we are witnessing
here is a complex process of bypassing and redefining state sovereignty by non-state
actors that are assuming greater global responsibility themselves.
The increasing significance of non-state governance does not in itself signal a
decline of state-centric governance. International society and world society are not
trapped in some kind of zero-sum logic. They can augment and support each
other, performing complementary functions and contributing to the growth of
ever-more complex, multilayered global governance. Indeed, in the field of climate
change, states and international organisations increasingly seek to steer and orchestrate
transnational actors and networks (Hale and Roger 2014).
The rise in transnational climate initiatives thus points to a transformation in the
solidarist project of building global climate governance. We are witnessing a shift
from the statist version of solidarism, which focused on the creation of inter-
governmental regulatory authority to bring about a reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions, and towards a more hybrid model with greater involvement of other
actors and a more decentralised form of steering social and economic actors. National
sovereignty is not so much being eroded as it is being bypassed, supplemented and
shared with other actors at sub-national and transnational levels.
Conclusions
The rise of global environmentalism in the twentieth century has led to a profound
transformation of international society. As states have come to accept a responsibility
to protect the global environment, they have successfully expanded international
society’s normative basis to include a concern for the health and survival of the
natural environment. This development marks a distinctive solidarist moment in
the evolution of international society. Just as in the case of the rise of human rights,
the growth of the international environmental agenda has led to a dramatic increase
in international institution-building and rule-making, the creation of a growing
body of international environmental law, and a reinterpretation of what it means to be
a sovereign state with territorial control over a nation’s natural resources. In this sense,
the rise of global environmentalism represents a progressive moment in the move
from a pluralist Westphalian system towards a more solidarist international order.
As the empirical case study of climate politics has shown, however, the pro-
gressive narrative of environmental solidarism is not a straightforward one. Despite
a deeply ambitious international treaty that set off a long-running process of
international negotiation and institution-building, the multilateral climate regime
has never managed to develop the depth of commitment and strength of institu-
tional governance to rein in global greenhouse gas emissions. Well over two
42 Robert Falkner
decades after the UNFCCC’s adoption, the climate negotiations have failed to
produce the internationally agreed and legally codified emission reduction targets
that the original solidarist approach envisaged.
Viewed from an English School perspective, three trends can be identified that
suggest a profound shift in the international politics of climate change. First, as the
salience of the climate issue has increased, the great powers have increasingly
sought to break out of the multilateral straightjacket of the UNFCCC and
explored political compromises in bilateral and minilateral forums. Since the
Copenhagen conference in 2009, the pluralist institutions of great power manage-
ment has surfaced more clearly than ever before in climate politics, even though it
is far from replacing the solidarist norm of multilateralism. The great powers
remain committed to the UNFCCC process, even if they are not willing to let it
play the kind of role that solidarists envisage. Second, while all great powers are
conscious of their climate responsibility, most are unwilling to subject their miti-
gation policies to multilateral decision-making and are therefore seeking to change
the existing regulatory approach from a top-down to a more bottom-up system of
voluntary pledges. A pluralist logic of preserving national sovereignty and the
diversity of national preferences has prevailed over solidarist efforts to arrive at
common goals and internationally agreed policies that are enshrined in international
law. And third, the looming crisis of state-centric solidarism in climate politics has
mobilised non-state actors to experiment with new forms of global climate govern-
ance outside the intergovernmental realm. World society has become the site of a
growing field of governance experimentation, leading to reconfigurations of poli-
tical authority within and beyond national boundaries. The growing engagement
of non-state actors suggests a shift in the solidarist project away from its traditional
state-centric orientation in favour of a more cosmopolitan direction, even if the
multitude and diversity of transnational actors and initiatives is as yet far removed
from the visions of a global polity based on world society.
As this chapter has demonstrated, the rise of global environmentalism offers a
fruitful empirical field for the study of normative change in international relations.
For English School scholars, it provides a test case to examine the ways in which
pluralist and solidarist logics interact in given policy domains. At the same time,
environmental scholars in International Relations can benefit from engagement
with the English School, in that it offers a holistic theoretical framework for the
study of deep-seated and long-term processes of international change. The English
School has made a distinctive contribution to the study of progressive change in
international relations, distinguishing between primary institutions that make up
international society’s constitutional order and secondary institutions that are
purposefully built to regulate specific policy areas. If environmental responsibility
has indeed emerged as a primary institution in international society, as a growing
number of scholars has come to conclude, then future research should be directed
to examine in more detail how this particular primary institution relates to, and
often clashes with, more established institutions (multilateralism, sovereignty, great
power management) and how tensions between conflicting primary institutions can
be reduced. This would provide at least some insights into the conditions for making
further progress in embedding environmental norms in international society.
Note
1 Interested readers can consult a number of excellent reviews of the English School
tradition (Buzan 2014; Linklater and Suganami 2006).
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Change Regime. Arizona State Law Journal 43(3): 697–712.
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Climatic Change 121(3): 539–551.
Bulkeley, H., Andonova, L., Betsill, M.M., Compagnon, D., Hale, T., Hoffmann, M.J.,
Newell, P., Paterson, M., Roger, C. and VanDeveer, S.D. (2014) Transnational Climate
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Buzan, B. (2014) An Introduction to the English School of International Relations. Cambridge:
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World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 51–73.
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Oxford University Press.
3
PROBLEMATISING THE UNITARY
ACTOR ASSUMPTION IN IR
Insights from the climate change literature
Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou
Introduction
When The Environment and International Relations was published in 1996, the dominant
or ‘mainstream’ IR approaches were neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism
(Vogler and Imber 1996). In fact, one of the main objectives of the book was to
challenge these approaches and showcase alternative ways of thinking about inter-
national relations through the analysis of environmental issues. In that volume,
Paterson directly addressed several weaknesses of these mainstream approaches by
examining the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC). He pointed out that mainstream ontologies tend to privilege power
positions, and that they also tend to represent a ‘static’ international system, failing
to account for dynamic historical processes (Paterson 1996: 69–70). He also criti-
cises the two approaches for failing to account for domestic processes or attributes
of states that have a bearing on their international positions (ibid: 68).
This chapter expands on Paterson’s critique concerning domestic–international
interactions in order to showcase how IR theories have started to incorporate these
interactions. Paterson’s critique was not entirely new at the time, but over the past
20 years thinking about interactions between the domestic and international ‘levels’
has been a major interest of IR scholars. In fact, Kaarbo has recently spoken of a
‘domestic turn in IR’ (2015). This chapter will chart this ‘domestic turn’ in the
context of international climate change politics by discussing the different approa-
ches that engage theoretically and empirically with domestic–international interac-
tions. It will focus on how these different approaches have been used in the study
of climate change, but will at the same time draw more general conclusions about
how insights from climate change literature help advance the theoretical insights
we have gained from the different approaches.
46 Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou
The case of climate change is particularly suited to the task of understanding

domestic and international interactions. In the past, environmental issues have been
cast as ‘low politics’, and therefore of little consequence for power-based approaches
like realism and neorealism. Arguably, however, climate change, while an environ-
mental problem, has occupied the ‘high politics’ table significantly. Military depart-
ments are concerned over the security implications of climate change impacts, as
evidenced by a number of studies and reports (Campbell 2008; German Advisory
Council on Global Change 2008). Also, heads of state have attended climate con-
ferences, most notably in Copenhagen in 2009, indicating the considerable level of
attention the issue receives at high levels of government. Questions of ‘relative gains’
have also been raised in relation to international climate politics (Vezirgiannidou
2008; Purdon 2014). Climate change therefore represents a variety of concerns that
are relevant for IR literature in general (security; collective action problems; multi-
lateral negotiations; normative developments; justice and fairness; economic and
development concerns) and in that sense insights from climate change literature on
domestic–international interactions can help further our theoretical understanding
of such interactions.
This chapter proceeds with a discussion of the neorealist–neoliberal debate and
how early literature on climate change brought out significant criticisms of both
approaches in relation to their prioritisation of ‘systemic factors’. I then examine
the main theoretical developments on domestic–international interactions over the
past two decades. These comprise a significant ‘domestic turn’ in major IR
approaches, including liberalism, realism and constructivism, and also the development
of two-level games, which does not belong to a particular theoretical approach in
IR.1 Climate change scholarship has engaged in these developments to varying
degrees. This engagement is explored for each approach, outlining the ways in
which the climate change literature has contributed theoretically and empirically to
an understanding of the domestic–international interplay in international relations.
Neorealism, neoliberalism and the unitary actor assumption

Neorealism and neoliberalism are still considered ‘mainstream’ IR approaches.
Neorealism has been very influential in IR literature since the publication of
Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics in 1979. Waltz’s theory was systemic,
in the sense that certain attributes of the international system, particularly anarchy
and the distribution of power, were the main explanatory factors for state behaviour.
States in neorealism are conceived as unitary actors with given interests: since systemic
attributes are the main explanatory factors of state behaviour, one does not need to
look at state characteristics or domestic politics in order to understand patterns of
behaviour in the international system, such as war and peace, or international
cooperation.
Neoliberal institutionalism (referred to here as neoliberalism) is also a systemic
theory and accepts a lot of the assumptions of neorealism, including anarchy at the
international level, and states as unitary and rational actors. Neoliberals, whose
Problematising the unitary actor assumption 47
main proponent is Robert Keohane, accepted these neorealist assumptions in order to

show that the conclusions drawn from such assumptions were erroneous. Neoliberals
specifically disputed the fact that anarchy discourages cooperation among rational
unitary states (Keohane 1984). Both theories used game theory analogies to illustrate
cooperation problems and had a fierce debate in the late 1980s and early 1990s
around the likelihood of cooperation under anarchy (see Baldwin 1993).
The unitary actor assumption on which the two theories are based was motivated
by a preference towards parsimony. The aim of theory for those scholars was not to
create an accurate representation of reality, but to abstract as much as possible while
retaining explanatory and predictive power. Complex theories were assumed to
lose predictive power because they are too context-dependent. Thus systemic
theories are not meant to explain everything, such as ‘Why state X made a certain
move last Tuesday’ (Waltz, 1996) but are meant to explain general trends and
regularities, like the onset of war and peace, and the likelihood of cooperation.
Early studies on climate change applied structural theories to international climate
change negotiations and found them wanting. Paterson, in his contribution to The
Environment and International Relations (1996: 67), posited that neither theory could
explain why states set themselves targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions prior
to the negotiation of the UNFCCC, particularly since the negotiations were
ongoing and therefore there had been no agreement yet as to what constitutes
‘cooperative behaviour’. Ian Rowlands (2001: 47–48) looked at the extent to
which neorealist and neoliberal theories could account for the outcomes of climate
change negotiations in 1992 and 1997. In relation to realism, he found that,
although the US had (and wielded) significant power in the negotiations, in 1997 it
ended up agreeing a GHG reduction target significantly higher than its stated pre-
ference and concluded that a neorealist approach could not really account for the
influence wielded by ‘lesser powers’. In relation to neoliberalism, Rowlands found
that the stated interests of the negotiating parties diverged significantly both during
the UNFCCC negotiations and at Kyoto, and that given the large number of parties
to the negotiations, the resulting agreements reflect a higher level of cooperation
than what a neoliberal approach would allow for (ibid: 56–57). Rowlands offers
several critiques of mainstream IR, among which the privileging of the state system
features prominently: ‘the international system of states is but one set of social
relations that have global breadth’ (ibid: 63). Rowlands’ point is not specific to the
analysis of domestic–international interactions, but he flags up a need to look
beyond inter-state relations and towards complex patterns of social relations, to
which the domestic–international interaction belongs.
Of course, environmental literature was not the only place where the unitary
actor assumption was criticised. There are two main problems identified with
this assumption. The first problem is related to the predictive power of structural
approaches: the main reason to treat states as unitary is, as mentioned above, to
simplify the theory and make it more parsimonious in order to preserve its explanatory
and predictive power. However, many scholars pointed out that the predictive
power of structural approaches, particularly of structural realism, was not really
that potent (Martin and Sikkink 1993; Caporaso 1997; Fearon 1998). In parti-
cular, structural approaches seem to be unable to explain why states that are
similar in terms of power, and face similar structural incentives and constraints,
behave differently. For example, it is hard to understand why several EU member
states, and the EU as a whole, are so proactive in relation to signing binding and
ambitious climate change agreements, whereas most other industrialised countries
are lukewarm at best. Equally, the creation of a ‘security community’ in Europe
post–World War II and the setting aside of age-old territorial disputes in Europe
is also somewhat of a mystery for realists. Mearsheimer (1990), for example,
predicted a waning and even potential dismantlement of NATO after the end of
the Cold War.
The second problem is that not everyone agrees that a theory should be parsi-
monious and not sensitive to contextual factors. As Caporaso (1997: 565) argues:
‘Waltz’s levels of analysis are not theoretically innocent. There are other ways to
structure the possibilities for thinking about international relations.’ This criticism
against the idea of a strict separation between ‘levels of analysis’, which necessitates
the unitary actor assumption, has become widespread in IR literature over the past
two decades. Many scholars nowadays reject the idea of ‘levels of analysis’,
acknowledging that structure and agency are interconnected, and therefore the
actions of states and statesmen have an impact on the system and vice versa (Bueno
de Mesquita 2002; Gourevitch 2002; Caporaso 1997). The taboo about opening
the black box has thus been broken. But what exactly is the contribution of
domestic politics and/or characteristics to our understanding of international
politics? This question has been answered in several different ways by emergent
literature that tries to breach the domestic–international divide. The next section
overviews that literature and shows the extent to which climate change literature
has been actively engaged in all these strands.
Problematising domestic–international interactions: a ‘domestic

turn’ in IR?
Dissatisfaction with the prioritisation of ‘systemic level’ explanations in structural
approaches has created a large body of work on the interaction between the
domestic and international ‘levels’. In fact, authors who reject the priority of the
systemic level are likely to reject the whole ‘levels of analysis’ premise altogether,
instead arguing that complex social interactions cannot really be categorised as
either ‘domestic’ or ‘international’ (Moravcsik 2008; Fordham 2009; Kaarbo 2015).
These themes have been taken up by various IR theories, and realists, liberals
and constructivists have developed variants that do not accept the unitary actor
assumption. In addition to these approaches, the analogy of two-level games
has also provided an additional theoretical lens for analysing domestic–international
interactions. This section will look at all four theoretical developments in turn
and will showcase important climate change literature that engages with and
contributes to these approaches.
Neoclassical realism
Kenneth Waltz (1979) specified that neorealism is not a theory of foreign policy;
however, as Fearon notes (1998: 296), if the subject of neorealist theory is to
explain patterns in the international system, and these patterns are the result of
states’ foreign policies, then neorealism should also be able to explain foreign policy
decisions. Despite this, Waltz never specified a theory of foreign policy decision-
making, because his view was that ‘foreign policy is determined by hundreds of
highly variable and idiosyncratic factors that lie outside the ken of sparse structural
theory’ (ibid: 295). However, as pointed out by Moravcsik (1993), Kaarbo (2015:
194), and others, systemic theories, and particularly neorealism, often end up
commenting on foreign policy, and/or use domestic politics in an ad hoc fashion in
order to explain foreign policy decisions.
Neoclassical realism is an attempt to think more systematically about how the
domestic and international levels connect in foreign policy decision-making from a
realist perspective. Neoclassical realists contend that structural factors (particularly
the distribution of power in the system) are the main explanatory variables in states’
foreign policies, but that structural constraints and opportunities are filtered
through the perceptions of foreign policy decision-makers and this causes the foreign
policies of states to differ and/or deviate from what neorealist theory might predict
about ‘rational’ state behaviour (Rose 1998; Wivel 2005). What are the domestic
variables that may affect how systemic pressures are interpreted? Neoclassical realists
have offered a variety of possible ‘intervening variables’ (see Rose 1998; Kaarbo
2015) including leaders’ perceptions, states’ motives (revisionist or status quo states;
see Schweller 1998), political traditions and identities, as well as the ability of leaders
to mobilise resources (relationship between state and society). Most of the work by
neoclassical realists has focused on detailed case studies, and theory development
does not seem to have progressed much beyond the acknowledgement of the
importance of domestic-level factors in foreign policy decision-making. Another
criticism levelled at the approach is that the reason for prioritising structural factors
in explaining foreign policy behaviour is not obvious (Kaarbo 2015: 204); others
have suggested that the distinction between domestic and international factors is not
really helpful analytically in any case, as it is difficult to separate the two in
empirical analysis (Fordham 2009: 251).
There is little research on climate change anchored in the neoclassical realist
tradition. An interesting exception is Mark Purdon’s recent evaluation of the effec-
tiveness of carbon markets and climate funds. Purdon (2014) argues that climate
funds, which are drawn from official development assistance (ODA), are more
likely to be affected by states’ concerns with relative gains and therefore less likely
to be able to draw significant sums of money. Carbon markets on the other hand
create value and profits for private actors and therefore rely less on voluntary con-
tributions for member states for their longevity and success. Purdon argues that this
makes them more likely to be effective in attracting funding, and a comparison of
funds raised by both methods reveals that carbon markets have indeed raised more
funds for GHG reduction projects in developing countries. Another study that does
not directly identify with neoclassical realism but is consistent with the approach is
made by Vezirgiannidou (2008): the argument promulgated here is that the Byrd–
Hagel resolution of 1997 that ‘killed’ Kyoto in the United States was partly moti-
vated by relative gains concerns towards China. Vezirgiannidou examines the
debates over the Byrd–Hagel resolution in the Senate and finds evidence of con-
cerns over competitiveness in relation to China being one of the main objections
to an international agreement binding the United States to GHG reductions.
The reason for a lack of an extensive neoclassical literature on climate change is
likely found in the fact that realist scholarship is mostly motivated by research
questions around security and high politics, whereas environmental politics is often
viewed as ‘low politics’. Similarly, scholars interested in environmental politics
often find realists’ narrow conceptions of power and national interest less relevant
for environmental questions. A further problem with neoclassical realist approaches
is their prioritisation of the international system as the main factor driving states’
foreign policies. As Kaarbo (2015: 203) argues, there is no compelling reason why
the international system should take precedence over domestic factors in the
explanation of policy and many authors disagree with this theoretical assumption.
Despite this, the works cited here show that realist concepts such as relative gains
can be relevant for research on environmental politics, especially on climate
change, since the cost of GHG reduction policies is significant (Vezirgiannidou
2008) and the impacts of climate change will not affect all states equally, with some
more vulnerable than others (Purdon 2014). There is therefore further scope for
cross-fertilisation between the two literatures, but caution needs to be taken in
relation to how systemic factors are weighed against domestic ones. Relative gains
arguments definitely reflect prioritisation of systemic factors, but relevant literature
suggests that relative gains concerns are not ubiquitous in international politics, but
only matter for some states and under certain circumstances (Matthews 1996: 117).
Liberal internationalism
Liberal internationalism (referred to as liberalism in the following) is an extension
of liberal thinking inspired by Kant, Grotius and Locke. Liberalism does not accept
the unitary actor assumption made by structural approaches, instead considering the
main subjects of international relations to be individuals and groups. The state in
liberalism is not assumed to have fixed or exogenously defined interests; govern-
ments are rather conceived as ‘conveyor belts’ through which the interests of
dominant interest groups within society come to define their policy preferences as
the preferences of the state. This is akin to the ‘pluralist’ model of domestic politics
(Dahl 1961). Patterns of cooperation and conflict then depend on the extent to
which state preferences are compatible (Moravcsik 2008: 239).
There are several variants of liberal internationalism identified by Moravcsik
(ibid). The ‘ideational’ variant stresses preference creation through dominant social
identities and ideas, such as what constitutes the limits of political community
(associated with demands regarding ‘sovereignty’ and ‘autonomy’), dominant poli-

tical ideology (e.g., the struggle between capitalism and communism during the
Cold War), and conceptions of social justice around socio-economic regulation and
redistribution (which create different preferences among states on taxation, social
welfare, immigration, etc.). A second variant is commercial liberalism, generally
associated with the idea that benefits from trade can prevent conflict under certain
circumstances (i.e., preferences on free trade may vary if individuals and groups in
certain states have alternative and more cost-effective means of accumulating
wealth). A third variant is republican liberalism, commonly associated with the
democratic peace thesis. Moravcsik argues that democracies are not necessarily more
peaceful or cooperative, but that behaviour tends to be more cooperative in states
that provide the broader representation possible, which is more commonly found
in democracies (ibid: 244–245). Broad representation is associated with peace and
policies that benefit society as a whole because of the assumption in liberalism that
most individuals are risk-averse.
The liberal notion of a ‘pluralist’ model of the creation of state preferences has
been very influential in climate change literature. A number of studies on the
domestic–international interaction on climate politics have applied this model to
explain how (mostly developed) states come to define their domestic climate policies
and how these influence the respective states’ international negotiating position.
Early studies of state interests in environmental politics (not specifically related to
climate change) looked at whether the prevalence of ‘polluter’, ‘victim’ or ‘third-party’
interests within a state would cause the state to behave as a ‘laggard’ or a ‘pusher’ in
environmental negotiations (see Sprinz and Vaahtoranta 1994; Rowlands 1995).
Sprinz and Weiss (2001) find considerable support for the interest-based explanation
in their study of climate negotiations.
The above studies follow the model of ‘pluralist’ politics in the sense that the
state is conceived of as a ‘transmission belt’ between the interests of the strongest
domestic interest groups and the international level negotiations. However, more
recent work on the domestic–international interface combines commercial and
republican liberalist ideas when analysing domestic climate policies. These works
not only look at interest group preferences, but also consider the preferences of
policymakers, as well as the impacts of domestic political institutions (such as pre-
sidential or parliamentary systems) on climate policy choices. Because the number
of relevant ‘variables’ is higher in such studies, they also provide more contextual
and nuanced explanations. For example, Harrison and Sundstrom (2007) review
the decisions of four major industrialised countries (and the EU) to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol and to enact relevant legislation for its implementation. They consider
costs of implementation, electoral incentives, preferences of policymakers, as well as
political institutions as explanatory factors. Although all these factors played a role
and interacted in their cases, the two that are particularly emphasised by Harrison
and Sundstrom are implementation costs and the role of the electorate, particularly
when there was strong demand for action. These themes (estimates of costs and
benefits and the role of political institutions) feature in many other studies on
national and international climate policy (e.g., Michaelowa and Michaelowa 2012;
Lachapelle and Paterson 2013; Battig and Bernauer 2009).
Climate change literature has also followed up the theme of republican liberalism
and has produced some very interesting findings. Republican liberals argue that
more representative systems, like democracies, tend to be more risk-averse (Moravcsik
2008: 245), which results in more cooperative international attitudes of democ-
racies. Climate scholars have assessed whether democracies are indeed more co-
operative in climate negotiations, putting this liberal assumption to the test. Bailer’s
(2012) study of the use of soft and hard strategies in climate negotiations found that
democratic states tended to use hard strategies less frequently than non-democracies;
however, when subjected to strong pressure from domestic interest groups to use
hard strategies, democratic countries were more likely than non-democracies to
respond to such tactics and resort to hard bargaining. Bailer concludes that given
this tendency of democracies to function as ‘transmission belts’ for domestic interest
groups, increasing the number of democratic countries in the negotiations would
not result in more cooperation (ibid: 546). Battig and Bernauer (2009) also look at
the likelihood of democratic countries contributing to global climate change miti-
gation. They find that democratic countries are more likely to offer support to the
climate regime in the form of ‘political, legal, and administrative commitments to
the UN-based climate change mitigation process’ (ibid: 293). However, they find that
democracies are not more ‘cooperative’ in the sense of reducing emissions and
thereby contributing to problem-solving: ‘In climate change policy, democracies
are clearly more responsive at the political-commitment than at the problem-solving
level, not only in absolute terms, but also relative to non-democracies’ (ibid: 303).
Battig and Bernauer therefore signal caution on the effect of democracy on climate
change cooperation, although they are optimistic that democracies are likely to
play a more productive role in the long run (ibid: 304).
Battig and Bernauer’s conclusions about the likelihood of democracies limiting
their emissions more than non-democracies are mirrored in a more recent study by
Lachapelle and Paterson (2013), who find that the most important factors deter-
mining emissions trends in all countries are socio-economic conditions, and that
democracy does not seem to play a very significant role. However, when looking
at specific policy measures taken to limit GHG emissions, Lachapelle and Paterson
(ibid: 562) find that institutional/political variables did play a significant role in
explaining differences in preferred policy types among countries. In particular,
parliamentary systems seemed to be more capable of implementing stricter climate
policies than presidential systems; similarly, ‘liberal market’ economies, which are
less likely to intervene in markets, tended to apply measures like research and
development (R&D) and voluntary agreements with industry, whereas ‘coordinated
market’ economies were more likely to introduce regulatory measures and carbon
pricing (ibid: 564). Although this paper mostly assessed domestic policies of states,
the implication mentioned for the climate negotiations was that the different pre-
ferences of countries in relation to policy measures may prohibit the signing of a
treaty that is top-down and includes quantitative targets; ‘multitrack’ agreements,
or those based on ‘policies and measures’ may be more suitable and can exploit
commonalities in current patterns of climate mitigation policies (such as standards,
economic incentives and R&D; ibid: 566).
The literature on democracy and climate cooperation provides insightful contribu-
tions to the republican liberal approach. The most important conclusion is that we
cannot be too optimistic in relation to the potential of democracies to be more
cooperative than other regime types, especially when it comes to the implementation
of agreements. This is because, although democratic states in general are better than
non-democracies at representing larger sections of society, they are not completely
immune from special interests ‘capture’. Bailer (2012) shows this in relation to bar-
gaining tactics, and Battig and Bernauer (2009) on the delivery of climate change
programmes. Relevant case study research of the ‘pluralist’ domestic politics model has
indicated reasons for this: inattentive publics leave more room for the influence of
special interests (Harrison 2010); fossil fuel extraction creates powerful industries that
stand to lose from climate policy and who use their considerable resources to block or
water-down policy (Jones and Levy 2007); political institutions are organised in such
ways that the status quo is easy to maintain and climate change legislation becomes
difficult to introduce (Bang 2010). Other reasons can be added to these, but the
conclusion remains that a) democratic regimes differ in their ability to defend public
goods rather than private interests domestically; and b) democracies may be more
willing to commit to public goods internationally but are not better at delivering
promises made in international treaties. These insights build on and chime with
International Political Economy (IPE) research on democracy and the provision of
public goods, which has emphasised differences in political institutions (e.g., pro-
portional versus majoritarian systems) as well as the power of financially strong
interest groups in electoral systems (see, for example, Ehrlich 2007).
Constructivism
Constructivism also started as a systemic theory, at least as conceived of by Alexander
Wendt (1999). However, constructivist scholars also look inside states in order to
account for foreign policy decision-making and developments at the international
level. Constructivists do not really accept the unitary actor assumption; rather the
emphasis is on social interaction and the co-constitution of ideas and identities
through shared norms (Smith 2001; Houghton 2007; Haas 2002). Language and
framing are assumed to be important ways in which agents try to constitute social
reality, and language is treated as a powerful tool in that respect (Weldes 1996). A
clear contribution of constructivism in relation to realism and liberalism is the
addition of ideational factors in their analyses (Ruggie 1998). That is not to say that
constructivists do not acknowledge material interests, but they are more interested
in the interplay between material and ideational factors.
There is a large number of studies that use the constructivist approach to analyse
countries’ domestic and international climate policies. One interesting strand of
work on the domestic–international interplay looks at how and to what extent
international climate norms are adopted domestically in a variety of countries (Cass

2006; Stevenson 2012; Schroeder 2008; see also Pettenger 2007; Hoffmann 2005;
Bernstein 2002; Vieira 2013). Cass (2006) finds that the extent to which interna-
tional norms are internalised in his case studies (US, UK, Germany and the EU)
largely depended on how congruent they were with existing domestic norms; but
he also finds that material interests of particular groups mattered for whether and
the extent to which internalised norms were translated into policy. Stevenson’s
study goes one step further and argues that international norms were filtered and
often altered to fit existing domestic norms through a process of domestic ‘con-
gruence building’ (2012: 53). Stevenson argues that this process of congruence-
building in her case studies (Australia, Spain and India) led to the adaptation of
norms in ways that would not disturb existing domestic policy paradigms that are
ultimately connected to unsustainable outcomes. Schroeder (2008) looks at the
internalisation of the norm of climate change as a problem in China, and particu-
larly evaluates the role of Chinese and transnational NGOs in the process of norm
internationalisation. She finds that the process of internalisation was mostly aided
by scientists rather than NGO activism, and concludes that ‘complex learning’
would be the most fitting description for the process of norm internalisation in
China (ibid: 522).
Concomitant with norm diffusion, constructivist literature on climate change has
also been extensively applied to understand how climate change and climate policy
are ‘framed’ in different countries. Framing is of course important in studies about
norm internalisation mentioned above, but it has also been used extensively to
understand policy developments (or lack thereof) in domestic climate politics studies
(Fletcher 2009; McRight and Dunlap 2010; Vezirgiannidou 2013; see also
Grundmann 2007). Although these studies do not make an explicit link to inter-
national climate norms or the regime, they do delve in some depth into how climate
change is constituted in particular countries and the types of responses particular
‘frames’ contribute towards creating. McRight and Dunlap (2010) have charted
how the Conservative movement in the United States manipulated information in
order to create doubt about climate change science and thus to de-legitimise strong
action. Fletcher (2009) summarises three frames that have been used to define climate
change during the Bush Administration: scientific scepticism; climate change as a
security frame; and climate change as an economic opportunity. She argues that the
third frame has the most potential to motivate action, by presenting climate change
as an opportunity rather than a threat. Vezirgiannidou (2013) also assesses the possi-
bilities for strong climate action in the United States based on two framings of
climate change: energy security and economic opportunity. She argues contrary to
Fletcher that neither frame is likely to result in ambitious action: energy security
can be enhanced by maximising extraction of domestic fossil fuels, not only
through the promotion of renewable energy while action based on ‘win-win’
economic arguments has so far produced rather meagre results in areas where it has
been applied in the US. Vezirgiannidou argues that these framings recast climate
policy from an environmental priority to a positive ‘co-benefit’ of other policy
priorities; in this way the climate message loses its urgency and potency (ibid). This
analysis is consistent with Stevenson’s findings (2012) that ‘congruence building’ in
Spain, Australia and India ended up with climate change frames that lead to
perpetuating and legitimising unsustainable practices.
The various contributions to climate change literature from a constructivist per-
spective provide significant insights on the role of norms and language to the
evolution of climate policy, and add the important dimension of ideational factors
that liberal and neoclassical realist approaches leave out. The particular contribution
to climate change literature by constructivist approaches is to show how actors with
material interests either in favour (Schroeder 2008) or against climate action
(McRight and Dunlap 2010) use language and framing in order to present their
interests as universal, and/or to create wider support for their position. Perhaps the
main contribution of the constructivist climate literature to the evolution of ideas
around the domestic–international interplay relates to the process of norm diffusion.
Schroeder (2008) applies Risse, Ropp and Sikkink’s (1999) ‘spiral model’ of norm
diffusion, originally developed to account for norm diffusion in the area of human
rights, to Chinese acceptance of climate change as an environmental problem. She
argues that the norm in China did go through the various stages described in the
spiral model (denial, tactical concessions, prescriptive status), but she found sig-
nificant differences in the process through which norm diffusion took place: spe-
cifically, ‘norm entrepreneurs’ were more likely to be scientists than NGOs; also,
the process of norm internalisation was based on the sharing of knowledge rather
than on strategies of shaming (Schroeder 2008: 522). Stevenson’s (2012) study of
‘congruence building’ provides a compelling argument around the ‘malleability’ of
norms and the robustness of pre-existing domestic ‘policy paradigms’.
The insights provided by Cass (2006) and Stevenson’s (2012) studies around the
difficulties of norm diffusion in the climate regime build on existing constructivist
literature on norm diffusion, where the emphasis has shifted to how norms are
not simply contested but also reconstituted at the domestic level (Laffey and
Weldes 1997; Acharya 2004). These insights clearly have relevance for a variety
of international issues outside the field of climate politics. A prominent example
would be the ‘socialisation hypothesis’ about the effects of international institu-
tions on rising powers in the international system, articulated by Ikenberry
(2008). The socialisation hypothesis claims that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, South Africa), by virtue of their participation in global institutions, will
gradually be ‘socialised’ to the current international order, and become ‘respon-
sible stakeholders’ with a stake in the preservation of this order. There is an
underlying assumption in this account that rising powers will ‘absorb’ the norms
of the current order by being exposed to them repeatedly. However, insights
from constructivist literature suggest that international norms are not simply
adopted by states uncritically, but are filtered through domestic policymaking
processes. Indeed, the hope that a seat at the table for the BRICS will lead to
more cooperative behaviour has unfortunately not borne fruit in a variety of
issues, from world trade to arms control (see Hale et al. 2013).
Two-level games
The logic of two-level games, first articulated by Robert Putnam (1988), does not
belong to any particular theoretical approach in IR, although its assumptions of
rational actors and strategic behaviour make it mostly compatible with (liberal)
interest-based approaches. The logic of two-level games seeks to link the domestic
and international contexts in processes of inter-state bargaining, and its use of
concepts such as ‘win-sets’, ‘negotiation strategies’ and ‘zone of agreement’ are
borrowed from negotiation analysis literature. The main insight from two-level
games is that foreign policymakers face both domestic and international constraints
and opportunities at the same time, and they therefore need to pay attention to
both domestic and international pressures concurrently.
There is a lot of scope in the two-level game analogy for domestic and inter-
national factors to interact in a dynamic way, much more so than in some of the IR
approaches discussed in the previous section. For example, neoclassical realists take
the international structure as given and then use domestic factors to analyse how
foreign policy decision-makers react to that reality. Similarly, some constructivist
analyses of the norm-diffusion model tend to take international norms as given and
static and then assess the level of ‘fit’ between the international norm and pre-
existing domestic norms (see Cass 2006; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Finally,
liberal internationalist approaches of interest formation look primarily at the
domestic level to determine whether certain international agreements are likely to
succeed or fail according to the organisation of power and interests within each
state. Foreign policymakers, or negotiators, in the two-level games, however, are
considered to be cognisant and sensitive, not only of the preferences of their own
constituencies, but also of those in other countries; they acknowledge that there is a
domestic game on the other side, and may actually try to influence this game by
building coalitions with domestic groups in partner countries to promote their
preferred solutions (Putnam 1988: 454). However, negotiators’ level of knowledge
of the domestic game in other countries is often poor, since their negotiating
partners will attempt to manipulate the level of information that is available (ibid:
452–453).
The two-level game analogy presented by Putnam (ibid) provides a highly
complex way of viewing domestic–international interactions in international
negotiations. As Gourevitch notes (2002: 321), it is more of a metaphor than a
theory. However, the two-level game analogy has inspired a research programme
around the concept and other authors have further specified aspects of the model.
Expanding on the domestic model, Milner (1997) looks at which domestic actors’
preferences control the domestic ‘win-set’ and how the balance between the pre-
ferences of the executive, the legislature, and special interests can determine whether
an international agreement is accepted domestically; Mo (1994) examines whether
‘domestic constraints’ can enhance a negotiator’s bargaining position internationally.
He argues that domestic constraints can either help or hinder a negotiator inter-
nationally, and ultimately this depends on the distribution of power between the
negotiator and domestic constituencies. While these and other studies (Iida 1993;
Mo 1995) further specify the parameters of the domestic game, Mitchell (2001)
attempts to elaborate further on the impact of the international game, particularly
the effect of institutions, on the likely negotiating strategies of statesmen. Mitchell
considers how dependency on an alliance will shape how states respond to crisis in
combination with the domestic game (his case study was on the NATO alliance
members and their reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait), but the concept could
be applied in other contexts (for example on the dependence of borrower coun-
tries to IMF financing and how this influences the nature of conditionality in
structural adjustment programmes).
Climate change literature has shown a relatively low level of engagement with
the two-level game framework. Notable exceptions include a special issue in
Energy and Environment edited by Agrawala and Andresen (2001), a paper on US
repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol by Michael Lisowski (2002) and a more for-
malised paper by Kroll and Shogren (2008) that assesses the extent to which
domestic constraints affect the manner in which states decide their contributions to
public goods such as climate change. The edited volume by Agrawala and Andre-
sen (2001) includes case studies on the US, the EU, Canada, Japan, India and
China. The two-level games analogy is loosely applied, in the sense that the
authors in the case studies consider both domestic and international constraints and
opportunities to determine how the relevant countries define their positions in the
negotiations and whether/how these are likely to change in the future. Lisowski’s
study (2002) looks at how the newly elected President Bush narrowed the
domestic ‘win-set’ in the US by pursuing an energy policy based on oil and gas
extraction.
The studies by Lisowski (2002) and the edited volume by Agrawala and
Andresen (2001) are case study based and showcase how the two-level games
analogy can be applied for particular foreign policy decisions in a variety of coun-
tries. Kroll and Shogren’s (2008) article, on the other hand, provides insights that
theoretically develop the framework of two-level games. Their main insight is that
when state leaders face a ‘ratification game’ domestically (where the legislature
decides whether to ratify a treaty or not), states are unlikely to offer contributions
higher than if there were no domestic constraints. However, states facing an
‘election game’ (where an opposition and a median voter have lower costs from a
country’s contribution) are more likely to offer larger contributions than the ones
specified in their baseline non-cooperative model (ibid: 578–579). In essence,
countries that face electoral pressures from the opposition and the public are more
likely to opt for higher contributions in order to stave off electoral competition, a
finding that chimes with qualitative studies on the effect of public pressure on cli-
mate change policy (see Harrison and Sundstrom 2007). This could be applied and
further tested empirically on other studies of international public good provision
and can have broader impact on issues beyond climate change.
The studies mentioned above show that the two-level game analogy can be a
fruitful platform for analysing the climate positions of a variety of different
countries, and also that climate change literature can provide theoretically useful
insights for the framework itself. There is clearly scope for more cross-fertilisation
between the two literatures.
Conclusion
The attention given to the domestic–international politics interface in IR has
expanded significantly in the past 20 years. In many ways, the argument that
theories of international politics should only focus on systemic factors no longer
holds much purchase. This chapter has charted scholars’ interest in the role of
actors inside the state and on how ‘states’ come to define their roles and
interests through a process of contesting material interests, societal and idea-
tional factors, as well as through their interface with international forces (both
state and non-state).
This ‘domestic turn’ in IR has also meant a move from more parsimonious to
more contextual theories. The theoretical perspectives covered in this chapter are
sensitive to context and the more they are elaborated upon the more contextual
they become. Republican liberalism has moved from a simple dichotomy of poli-
tical systems from democratic to authoritarian, to assessing the effects of different
electoral systems on decision-making. Similarly, conceptions of norm diffusion in
constructivism have moved from a simple notion of ‘fit’ with domestic structures to
complex processes of ‘congruence-building’.
Climate change literature has actively contributed to the empirical and theoretical
developments in the field of domestic–international interactions. In neoclassical
realism and two-level games approaches, climate change scholarship has represented
more an additional empirical domain rather than an innovative area of theoretical
insight. Climate change scholars have been most active in the liberal and con-
structivist traditions. Important insights in these areas have been made around
interest-formation and the impact of material and institutional factors, as well as
around norm diffusion and the construction of the climate issue through framing
techniques at the domestic level. One of the most important insights offered to the
liberal tradition has been around the impact of democracy on international co-
operation, where climate change literature provides a warning against assuming that
democracies are always more cooperative. In the constructivist tradition, insights
around the processes of norm diffusion also give cause for caution in relation to
how processes of norm internalisation work in practice.
In conclusion, Paterson’s potent critique in 1996 around the rigidity of the
unitary actor assumption has been taken up and expanded on significantly, not
only in global environmental politics, but also in discussions around what the field
of IR includes and how scholars should conceptualise social interactions at the
international level. In these debates the unitary actor assumption has been ques-
tioned, as well as the ‘levels of analysis’ as a conceptual tool more generally. The
literature on climate change has in the past 20 years contributed significantly to
these discussions, both theoretically and empirically.
Note
1 This list is not exhaustive of approaches that consider domestic–international interactions.
Other typologies may also include negotiation analysis literature (here subsumed under
the Liberal approaches and two-level games), International Political Economy literature
(which is covered in detail in Chapter 8 of this volume), and Foreign Policy Analysis
(FPA) literature (this is partly covered here in the IR approaches, all of which attempt to
explain foreign policy decision-making; for more information on the difference between
IR approaches to foreign policy and FPA see Kaarbo 2015).
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4
GREEN STATES AND GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS
Beyond Western IR?
Carl Death and Paul Tobin
Introduction
In the 20 years since the publication of John Vogler and Mark Imber’s edited
collection, The Environment and International Relations (Vogler and Imber 1996), it
has become rather unfashionable among scholars of global environmental politics to
put the state at the centre of analysis. Julian Saurin stated this most bluntly in 1996:
‘a focus on inter-state relations is largely irrelevant to the explanation of global
environmental degradation’ (Saurin 1996: 85). For Saurin, as for many others at the
time and since, structures such as capitalism, industrialisation and globalisation
should be central; others have added patriarchy, anthropocentrism and modernity
(Klein 2014; Kovel 2007; Kuehls 2014; Mies and Shiva 2014; Newell 2012; Smith
2011). Even in more problem-solving or policy-focused literatures, the focus has
tended towards networks, partnerships, new public management, innovative
multilayered governance structures and public–private hybrids, rather than putting
states and inter-state negotiations at the centre of analysis (Baker 2014; Mol 2016;
Newell 2012: 9–10; Newell and Paterson 2010: 144–145). No doubt this focus has
been partly driven by disappointment with the limited progress achieved in formal
inter-state negotiations on issues such as climate change. Matthew Hoffman, for
example, is more interested in ‘how cities, counties, provinces, regions, civil
society, and corporations are responding to climate change independently from, or
only loosely connected to, the “official” UN [United Nations]-sponsored nego-
tiations and treaties’ (2011: 5). This position is typical of many who are dis-
appointed with the prospect of state-centric politics. Going even further, Thom
Kuehls (2014: 243) asks whether ‘a truly environmental politics’ might not mean
‘the end of the state?’
In contrast, this chapter emphasises the continued importance, even centrality, of
the state in analyses of global environmental politics, both in explanations of
64 Carl Death and Paul Tobin
environmental degradation, and in the struggle for political transitions and trans-
formations towards a more sustainable world (Scoones et al. 2015). In so doing, it
reflects a revival of interest in the state as an environmental actor (Barry and Eck-
ersley 2005; Christoff 2005; Davidson 2012; Eckersley 2004; Meadowcroft 2012;
Newell 2012: 57; see also the special issue of Environmental Politics on green states
and global politics in 2016). Interest in the green economy, the green industrial
revolution and green growth has become more prominent after the financial crises
of 2007–2008 and global economic slump, where states played a central role in
keeping banking sectors and entire economies on their feet (Jessop 2012; Tienhaara
2014). The state, we argue, is at the heart of analyses of contemporary environ-
mental politics, and should remain central to scholarly analysis.
In this chapter, we explore the primacy of the state through the work of a
number of prominent theorists of the ‘green state’, notably Robyn Eckersley
(2004), John Barry (2012) and John Dryzek et al. (2003), and consider the impli-
cations of transformations in environmental statehood for international politics.
The next section of this chapter reviews the existing literature on green states by
situating it within the context of International Relations (IR) debates on global
environmental politics. In particular, we argue that the role of international forces
and structures has tended to be underemphasised in explaining processes of state
greening, and that an international perspective highlights some of the limits of
focusing on national-level state policies and institutions. These two arguments are
then developed by looking at empirical examples of state greening in some quite
different contexts: pioneering states in Europe, primarily Sweden and Germany;
and low-income developing states influenced by very different green discourses in
Africa, including Ethiopia and Rwanda. These examples, we suggest, highlight
how states remain crucial actors in global environmental politics, and that greener
state practices are constitutive of a greener international society (Falkner 2012,
Chapter 2 in this volume). Moreover, by considering a wider range of states than is
usual within the ecological modernisation literature, these cases help to change
conceptions of what it means to be ‘green’, and to support the possibility of a less
Western-centric IR.
Green states and IR theory

The ‘green state’ is usually defined as a state that makes environmental protection a
central priority, in contrast to, for example, ‘welfare states’ that prioritise social
reproduction, health and education (Gough 2015). Varying forms of green states
have been theorised (see the typology of environmental states by Christoff 2005).
However, most scholars expect greener states to monitor and map the environ-
ment, assess risk, deploy effective policies and finance environmental activities
(Meadowcroft 2005: 5), deepen and extend democracy to include all those affected
(Eckersley 2004), and potentially even require compulsory ‘civic sustainability
service’ (Barry 2012: 257–267), in order to promote human flourishing in an
environmentally constrained world.
Green states and environmental politics 65
Many environmentalists – perhaps most – have been somewhat sceptical of

states, emphasising their role in causing environmental degradation rather than in
building a green future (see, especially, Bookchin 1974). Some of the origins of this
scepticism can be derived from major perspectives within IR theory, which cast
doubt upon both the potential for significant state greening, and the limited efficacy
of national policies in an international arena characterised by great power rivalry
and interconnected global production and consumption chains (see Falkner, Chapter 2
in this volume). In response, Eckersley (2004) articulates a normative defence of an
ideal green state against the critiques of statism from Realists (who emphasise the
constraints of international anarchy), Marxists (who emphasise the contradictions of
global capitalism), and Critical Theorists (who emphasise the inherently centralised,
hierarchical and bureaucratic structures of states). For Eckersley, a green state is a
post-liberal state that could ‘facilitate both more active and effective ecological
citizenship and more enlightened environmental governance’ (Eckersley 2004: xi).
This chapter revisits these debates more than a decade after Eckersley’s defining
text, and asks: will a society of greener states lead to a greener global politics?
Green states: a Western paradigm?

This conversation, however, must be broadened, and must respond to another
important line of debate within IR in recent years: whether IR is irremediably a
‘Western’ discipline, shaped by Western concerns and reflecting Western dis-
courses, norms and values, or whether IR has the potential to engage with and
accommodate non-Western regimes of knowledge and worldviews (Death 2013;
Hobson 2012; Shilliam 2011)? It is significant, we suggest, that the vast majority of
the existing literature on green states has focused on states in Europe, as well as North
America, Australia and Japan. The existing typologies (Christoff 2005), critiques
(Gould 2006; Meadowcroft 2005; Smith 2011; Vogler 2006) and empirical assess-
ments (Bäckstrand and Kronsell 2015; Dryzek et al. 2003; Mol 2016) of state
greening tend to engage primarily with variants of ecological modernisation theory
(Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000), and remain circumscribed by particular Western, liberal,
capitalist assumptions about development paths, technological innovation and
governance (Bernstein 2002). Indeed, the sextet of environmental pioneers of the
early 2000s comprised only European states (Börzel 2002; Liefferink and Andersen
1998).
Eckersley sees the European Union (EU) as the best hope for facilitating the
development of green states (although there are no actually existing green states in
her terms, see also Christoff 2005; Gough 2015; Tobin 2015), and she hopes that
pioneering examples may spread to the rest of the world through practices of
emulation (Eckersley 2004: 252–253). Such a model of global greening posits a
unidirectional pathway from institutions and practices in the West to ‘the rest’, and
leaves little room for alternative conceptions of non-Western green states or alter-
native paths to green development (Vogler 2006: 106–107). Such Eurocentric
models of influence have similarities to influential theories of IR, for example,
when Kenneth Waltz declares that states ‘imitate the behaviour of their most suc-
cessful competitors’, tending towards a world in which states are ‘like units’ or
fundamentally similar, driven by logics of survival and the ‘exemplary effect’ (Waltz
1979: 127; see also Hobson 2012: Chapter 8). A second key question for this
chapter is therefore: is state greening a process of Westernisation?
Explaining green states

There is a growing literature seeking to clarify what drives transitions towards
green states, or broader transformations in environmental governance (Bäckstrand
and Kronsell 2015; Gough 2015; Scoones et al. 2015). For Dryzek and con-
tributors (2003) – whose concept of a green state is defined in terms of environ-
mental considerations being attached to core imperatives of survival, maintenance
of domestic order, generation of finance, capital accumulation and political legitima-
tion –the inclusive or exclusive engagement with social interests by states, alongside
passive or active orientation towards selecting those who are represented, is of crucial
importance in explaining transitions. Here, ‘passively exclusive’ states – for example,
Germany and Sweden – are seen as being paradigmatic of the corporatist approaches
that are necessary for environmental ambition. Alongside corporatism (Scruggs
1999; Christoff and Eckersley, 2011), other factors including economic affluence
(Börzel 2002), membership of the EU (Liefferink et al. 2009), left-wing govern-
ment (Neumayer 2003) and state capacity (Jänicke 2005) have been identified as
important in explaining environmental ambition. Lachapelle and Paterson’s (2013)
article has been the most comprehensive attempt to explain variation in climate policy
ambition, assessing the impacts of governance regimes, fossil fuel dependence, systemic
differences (such as population density and per capita incomes) and variations in
traditions of economic interventions by states upon climate policy. In contrast,
Christoff and Eckersley (2011: 444) argue that it is ‘near-futile’ to find a single or
small set of factors that determine the ambition of climate policy, and it is clear that
explaining transitions in environmental governance in particular states will require
particular, often very different, combinations of factors. Nevertheless, the existing
literature has advanced our understanding of the factors that drive state greening.
However, the role of international forces and structures has tended to be
underemphasised. Ecological modernisation theory usually places greater weight on
domestic factors in explaining relative environmental performance (Ashford 2002;
Dryzek et al. 2003; Gough 2015; Mol and Buttel 2002; Mol and Sonnenfeld
2000). Key drivers include social movements, environmental resources, challenges
and constraints, political systems and bureaucratic traditions, technological innovation
and scientific progress, and cultural values. Eckersley, in contrast, advances a more
explicitly international perspective, discussing changing cultures of international
security discourse and Kantian and post-Westphalian cultures in international
society (2004: 44–47). She rejects the confident cosmopolitanism of ‘green
imperialism’ in favour of the ‘demonstration effect’ of exemplary green states that
inspire emulation in others (ibid: 201; Eckersley 2006: 136). This direction will
lead, she hopes, to the horizontal and vertical diffusion of environmental norms by
the greenest states, in particular those of the EU (2004: 251). In essence, this out-
line is a familiar idea to many scholars of global environmental politics, who –
whether approvingly or with some scepticism – see environmental norms, values
and practices as spreading from the West outwards, via international institutions,
regimes and epistemic communities (Conca 2005; Falkner 2012; Newell 2012;
Vogler and Imber 1996).
International influences on green states

This influence can be illustrated through recent trends in development discourse.
In the post-Washington Consensus world, the neoliberal myth of the retreat of the
state (which was always overemphasised) has been superseded by recognition of the
importance of states by figures as diverse as Jeffrey Sachs (2008), Joseph Stiglitz
(2010) and Francis Fukuyama (2005). Recent articulations of development theory
have emphasised the importance of ecological challenges to the next generation of
developmental states (Scoones et al. 2015; UNDP 2013; Williams 2014: 20–23),
further fuelling interest in the idea of a green state more generally. This shift has
coincided with the emergence of mainstream ‘green economy’ and ‘green growth’
discourses, championed by the UN Environment Programme, the World Bank
and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
These actors have called for massive public investments in ‘green’ projects and sectors
to curtail inefficient development paths and create new markets for economic
growth, at least in part in response to the financial crises of 2007–2008 as well as
the looming climate crisis (Death 2015; Jessop 2012; Tienhaara 2014). Further-
more, the post-2015 follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals, known as
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – agreed by states in September 2015 –
prioritise environmental objectives far more prominently than previous iterations of
development discourse. The agreed text is statist and apparently applicable to all
countries, ‘taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of
development and respecting national policies and priorities’, and it urges ‘all
member states to develop as soon as practicable ambitious national responses to the
overall implementation of this Agenda’ (United Nations 2015). To a greater or
lesser extent, such international agreements function as mechanisms for shaping the
conduct of all states in international society (Death and Gabay 2015; see also Conca
2005; Falkner 2012; Kuehls 2014).
As well as these formal international agreements, other aspects of international
politics and international political economy (IPE) also shape state greening in pro-
found ways. The significance of trade linkages and the proliferation of new stan-
dards for environmental efficiency and waste have often been emphasised by
ecological modernisation theorists (Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000). The forms that
national environmental governance take around the world are shaped profoundly
by the discourses of the World Bank, UN system and regional development banks,
as well as by donor–client aid relations, global production and consumption chains,
and even the legacies of colonialism (in terms of systems of law, property rights,
land usage, etc.) (Baker 2014; Harrison 2004). Yet, critical IPE literatures have also
drawn attention to the weakening of state institutions and capacity as a result of
neoliberal financialisation and globalisation in the 1990s, and the financial crises and
debt burdens of the late 2000s (Jessop 2012; Mol 2016; Newell 2012). Despite this,
whereas critical theorists like Matthew Paterson (2000) once listed ‘the state system’
as a primary structural driver of environmental degradation, he has subsequently
argued, with Peter Newell, that – given the urgency of the climate challenge – a
Keynesian-type public sector-led transformation of the economy away from cli-
mate capitalism, driven by social movements and financial markets but orientated
towards states, is necessary to avert crisis (Newell and Paterson 2010: 172–179).
Their conclusions mirror Eckersley’s assessment, which is strategic as well as nor-
mative: ‘there are still few social institutions that can match the same degree of
capacity and potential legitimacy that states have to redirect societies and econo-
mies along more ecological sustainable lines’ (Eckersley 2004: 7).
The assumption in most of this literature is that the states with the greatest
environmental capacity and legitimacy are most likely to be advanced, indus-
trialised countries. Ecological modernisation theorists have explicitly argued that
environmental transformations are most likely in societies that are wealthy, with
highly educated populations and market-based economies (Mol and Buttel
2002; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Mol 2016). For Dryzek et al. (2003: 7),
‘passively exclusive’ states such as Germany and Sweden became environmental
pioneers because environmental activists were neither actively marginalised, nor
co-opted within formal institutional structures.The assumption that state green-
ing is a form of Westernisation will be challenged below, but first, the next
section will consider the drivers of and obstacles to state greening in a Eur-
opean context.
Green states in Europe

According to Yale’s 2014 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), European
states occupied 17 of the top 20 positions (Yale 2014). This leadership reflects the
prevailing wisdom that Europe is the most advanced region for environmental
protection and ecological modernisation, as a result of high levels of public con-
cern, economic prosperity, and advanced state capacity in terms of technology and
governance (Ashford 2002; Barry and Eckersley 2005: 269–272; Christoff 2005;
Dryzek et al. 2003; Gough 2015; Karlsson et al. 2011; Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000).
Whereas most literature tends to focus on the explanatory power of either broader
processes of modernisation (economic growth, technological development, post-
material concerns) or the structure of the state and its relation with social move-
ments (whether inclusionary or exclusionary, active or passive), an international
perspective is important to situate state greening in the broader context of global
structures. This section first considers regional and international institutions and
regimes, and then looks at exemplary leadership.
The influences of international actors on European states

The EU is a particularly noteworthy example of how regional organisations can
drive state greening. For example, in order to become a member of the EU, an
acceding state must adopt all of the EU’s already-existing body of law, the acquis
communautaire. The ‘acquis’ comprises a significant number of environmental laws,
and has increasingly augmented the environmental policies of acceding states, such
as Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. The EU holds some supranational powers over
its members, possesses legal personality and retains exclusive competence for some
policy areas, leading Vogler (2006) to argue that Eckersley overlooked not just the
capacity of the EU to create green states, but to be one in its own right. While, in
response, Eckersley argues that ‘the EU is not itself a green state, although it is
made up of some of the greenest states in the world’ (2006: 135), the EU is an
excellent example of how international structures can drive the adoption of
environmental policies at the national level.
This argument is characteristic of many liberal IR theorists who tend to see
international politics as ordered through networks of interlinked and overlapping
norms, institutions, regimes and shared social values. Drawing on English School
theorists, Falkner identifies the greening of international society through the
‘creation of an increasingly complex set of international environmental institutions,
the expansion of international environmental law, and the emergence of a dis-
tinctive practice of multilateral environmental diplomacy’ (2012: 505; see also
Kuehls 2014). From a critical perspective, Bernstein (2002) interprets the 1990s as a
crucial period in which the ‘Rio Compromise’ led to the dissemination of liberal
norms and values, through policy entrepreneurs like the OECD. Institutions and
practices, such as free trade agreements, and the polluter pays and precautionary
principles, were enshrined in new multilateral agreements, for example, the Aarhus
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making
and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. For Eckersley (2004: 194), the
Aarhus Convention ‘must be regarded as a significant step toward transnationalizing
ecological citizenship’. Participation in such international and transnational pro-
cesses is a key feature of what it means to be a full and responsible member of
international society. As Falkner (2012: 514) notes, ‘[m]any key international
environmental treaties and institutions enjoy near-universal support and all major
powers now engage in environmental diplomacy as a matter of routine, whether or
not they intend to be bound by the resulting agreements’.
European green states as international leaders

Of course, the degree to which particular states commit to these processes, insti-
tutions, practices, norms and values varies considerably (Mol 2016). Some states are
seen as pioneers or policy entrepreneurs, whereas others are laggards or guilty of
free-riding. Leadership from proactive, inspirational states is an important element
of Eckersley’s notion of state greening, and she places considerable faith in the
‘demonstration effect’ of exemplary green states which can inspire emulation in

others (2004: 201; 2006: 136). Rather than green imperialism (or strong cosmo-
politan enforcement of green values on others), Eckersley argues that states have
primary responsibility to improve their domestic environmental legislation, and set
a good example internationally. This leadership would mean that ‘the resulting
international order would be variegated, made up of what might be clusters of
transnational green states operating within a larger, less green and more traditional
set of interstate relationships’ (Eckersley 2004: 201). In this picture, clusters of
transnational green states – such as in the EU – would grow or be copied by
others, leading to the gradual greening of international society.
As such, the identification and promotion of pioneering green states is a crucial
element for theorists like Eckersley. Although there are no actually existing green
states in her terms, most theorists look to states like Germany or Sweden as the best
emerging examples of states in which environmental protection is prioritised.
According to the 2014 Yale EPI (which grades states according to nine categories,
including air quality, water resources and biodiversity and habitats), Germany was
sixth in the world and Sweden was ninth (Yale 2014). In the OECD’s Better Life
Index (OECD 2015), Sweden is placed first (by some distance), while Germany is
in ninth position regarding air pollution and water quality. Germany and Sweden
have also tended to perform well in the Climate Change Performance Index (Trio
and Milke 2015). These impressive rankings are based on policies widely perceived
as world-leading, such as Sweden’s innovative carbon tax (Sarasini 2009) and
Germany’s ambitious Feed-In Tariff for renewables (Jacobs 2012), with both poli-
cies having been introduced in 1991 before being subsequently strengthened. Both
countries have committed to phasing out nuclear energy in the future, while
simultaneously committing to ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets
(both states have committed to a 40 per cent reduction, based on 1990 levels, by
2030). Moreover, the two states have shown leadership in conservation practices,
air and water pollution mitigation and sustainable development, as well as pushing
for greater environmental ambition at the EU level (Jordan 2005; Kronsell 1997;
Lundquist 2004; Weidner 2002; Wurzel 2004).
Explaining European green states

Explaining the pioneering behaviour of environmentally ambitious European
states, such as Germany and Sweden, involves accounting for a wide variety of
factors and historical circumstances. Dryzek et al. (2003) offer one of the most
systematic explanations, focusing on corporatist policymaking structures in states
that have a passively exclusive attitude towards social groups, such as envir-
onmentalists. These environmental movements have in turn facilitated the rise of
influential green parties, aided by proportional electoral systems that favour small
parties, and both states have seen their green parties become members of governing
coalitions at the national level. Public opinion in these wealthy, post-materialist
societies, and the jobs and profits to be made from early investment in new
technologies like wind turbines, are also important factors. Any explanation must
also acknowledge the importance of international dimensions, however: both states
regard international leadership on environmental issues as a crucial dimension of
their national identity, and have used EU structures to push for stronger multi-
lateral environmental agreements (Karlsson et al. 2011). Both use foreign aid to
support transitions to environmental sustainability in the developing world. Finally,
transboundary environmental threats, such as acid rain, nuclear radiation and
genetically modified organisms, have also shaped national policymaking and public
opinion.
Germany and Sweden are thus some of the ‘best cases’ of state greening (even if
they fall short of Eckersley’s vision of truly post-liberal states that facilitate ecological
citizenship and enlightened environmental governance) and they demonstrate the
importance of international and transnational politics in explaining the diffusion of
environmental policies. However, these cases also highlight some of the limits of
green states in greening global politics. Most obviously, decades of leadership by
countries like Germany and Sweden have failed to stimulate emulation in other
countries – even within Europe – on anywhere near the scale needed to tackle
transnational environmental problems. European leadership on climate change
negotiations was widely perceived to have failed at the Copenhagen climate con-
ference in 2009 (Hoffman 2011: 3; Karlsson et al. 2011: 94), and while the Kyoto
Protocol limped onwards and a new climate agreement was signed in Paris in
2015, most scholars acknowledge that the state of the intergovernmental negotia-
tions is well below the standard that climate scientists regard as necessary (e.g.,
Buxton, 2016). Moreover, the international community is increasingly looking to
leadership from the emerging economies (Brazil, China, India and South Africa) as
well as the reluctant hegemon of the USA, rather than old Europe (Karlsson et al.
2011: 95).
Critiquing European green states

An international or transnational perspective can also modify our assessment of
Germany and Sweden’s potential ‘greenness’. Tobin (2015) assesses the green state
credentials of Sweden regarding climate policy during 2006–2010, finding the state
to be a pioneer, but still not quite a green state. Sweden’s 40 per cent GHG
emissions target for 2030 is not as ambitious as it looks, as one-third of the target
may be achieved through flexible mechanisms that reduce emissions outside of the
state’s borders (Zannakis 2009: 118). After reducing the funding for its world-leading
Feed-In Tariff in 2013 (Morris 2013), Germany has imported increasing quantities
of coal, particularly from Russia and the USA. Germany has also been noticeably
tolerant of Poland’s resistance to ambitious climate targets, signalling a weakening
of European climate leadership. If one starts to consider: the embedded carbon in
European imports of products from the rest of the world (whether TVs and com-
puters from China, flowers from Kenya or coffee from Brazil); the devastation
caused by conflict minerals for European consumption in places like the Great
Lakes of central Africa; or the reliance on racialised, gendered and precarious labour
in the global recycling industry, then the claim that global environmental problems
will be solved through nascent green states like Germany and Sweden starts to look
more tendentious (Dauvergne and LeBaron 2013; Davidson 2012; Kovel 2007;
Newell 2012; Saurin 1996).
An even more profound question hangs over the global significance or relevance
of the particular mode of state greening visible in the European examples of Germany
and Sweden. Is the existing green state literature (including the ideal types and
typologies, and theories of social change and ecological modernisation) broadly
global and universal, or narrowly European and Western-centric? Eckersley is
reasonably clear on this. Her vision is explicitly democratic and Habermasian
(Eckersley 2004: 251–253), and her view is that a green state cannot emerge in a
non-democratic or authoritarian setting. She also argues that the burden – rather
than opportunity – for a transition to green statehood must fall on developed states
as they are most responsible for global environmental degradation, and have
enjoyed most of the benefits of development and global capitalism (Eckersley 2006:
136). It is therefore unfair to expect developing states to make a transition towards
green statehood: beyond that, she says, ‘it is for developing countries to find their
own green path in accordance with their own traditions’ (ibid: 136–137).
Thus, it is important to consider whether alternative forms of green state might
be emerging in other parts of the world. The New Economics Foundation’s
Happy Planet Index calculates ‘the extent to which countries deliver long, happy,
sustainable lives for the people that live in them’, finding the top ten countries
according to this index to be Costa Rica, Vietnam, Colombia, Belize, El Salvador,
Jamaica, Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guatemala (New Economics Foun-
dation 2015). The response of many Latin American countries to the political
stalemate of the Copenhagen climate negotiations in 2009 was to organise an
alternative conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, and
the ‘ALBA’ coalition has articulated a discourse of buen vivir and a challenge to
anthropocentric notions of development, which Stevenson (2014) recognises as a
form of green radicalism. While contradictions and tensions remain (as they do
in Sweden and Germany) it is plausible to suggest that an alternative path to green
statehood could be identified in states like Bolivia, Ecuador and Costa Rica (Klein
2014: 181). Therefore, it is no longer necessary to assume that, regarding envir-
onmental ambition, ‘most of the promising developments are emerging from the
developed world’ (Barry and Eckersley 2005: 272).
Green states in Africa

Africa is not only the poorest continent in the world, but it is associated with
extreme images of state failure, corruption, neo-patrimonialism and civil war. It
also faces some of the most severe environmental challenges, including changing
disease vectors, water shortages and desertification, flooding and rising sea levels,
deforestation and land degradation, urban overcrowding and slum pollution,
overfishing and the extinction of charismatic mega-fauna (Tubi et al. 2012). The
best African performer on the 2014 EPI is Egypt, in 50th place, and South Africa is
the highest-placed sub-Saharan country, at 72nd (Yale 2014). Of the bottom 20
countries on the index, 16 are African. Even on the Happy Planet Index, African
countries tend to score badly, despite their very low ecological footprints; Algeria is
the highest placed African country in 26th place, followed by Tunisia and Morocco,
and the highest placed sub-Saharan countries are Madagascar and Malawi in 49th
and 72nd (New Economics Foundation 2015). As such, the continent might be
considered a ‘hard case’ for state greening.
Despite this, as recent work shows, there are examples of state greening on the
continent (Death 2016a, 2016b). The Yale EPI also ranks those states that have
improved most over the past decade: in 2014 Niger came in first, Sierra Leone fifth,
Namibia sixth, and Congo seventh (Yale 2014). Sub-Saharan Africa has more than
1,100 national parks and reserves, 36 of which are designated as World Heritage
Sites (Brockington et al. 2008; Conca 2005: 199–202). There are ambitious new
renewable energy developments across the continent, and countries such as Rwanda,
Ethiopia and South Africa have developed high-profile interventionist national
‘green economy’ strategies, ostensibly designed to stimulate environmentally sus-
tainable and socially inclusive economic growth (Death 2015, 2016b). African
green parties have provided government ministers in Kenya, Burkina Faso, the
Congo and Madagascar, among others. As in Europe (and elsewhere), the explanations
for these transitions are complex and diverse, encompassing historical paths of state
formation in challenging environments; changing dynamics of agrarian development,
energy security and urbanisation; colonial legacies and trade relations; and post-
colonial and nationalist development discourses. State greening in Africa, however,
also requires a close examination of the role of international politics. As in Europe,
both regional and international institutions and regimes, and exemplary leadership
by particular states, are significant in explaining the course of state greening.
The influences of international actors on African states

In Europe, the EU is an important mechanism for driving stronger national
environmental policies. The African Union (AU) does not play the same role to
the same extent (at least in part because no new states are applying for member-
ship), and suffers from a near permanent crisis of resources and legitimacy. That
said, continental African groupings have played a significant role in various
environmental negotiations. In 1985, African governments established the African
Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) as a policy forum for
environment ministers to harmonise and coordinate their work, and African states
played a key role in negotiating the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
In 2008–2009 the ‘Common Position on Climate Change’, developed by the
Committee of the African Heads of State, was one of the first times a continental
position had become a major platform for climate negotiations (Vickers 2013:
687–688).
Even more significant than the AU or AMCEN, however, is the role of

international aid and development donors to the dissemination of environmental
policies and governance across Africa (Keeley and Scoones 2003; Mol and Buttel
2002; Newell 2012: 116–121). Ashford encapsulates the ecological modernisation
position when he suggests that developing countries ‘to an increasing extent
follow, copy, and adapt technologies from the developed world rather than
develop new ones’ (Ashford 2002: 1420). It has been argued that from 2000 to
2010, ‘[a]id targeting environmental sustainability as the “principal objective” grew
more than three-fold over the period, amounting to USD 11.3 billion in 2009–10’
(Development Assistance Committee 2012: 1). ‘Green conditionality’ can mean
that ‘[v]ery often – adopting wholesale the core narratives of the international
debates – is a basic requirement for gaining access to such funds’ (Keeley and
Scoones 2003: 170). Through such mechanisms it is possible to see the production
of increasingly similar ‘governance states’ in which Western experts, discourses and
practices are inserted into the institutions of developing states (Harrison 2004).
On the other hand, it is misleading to suggest that environmental governance in
Africa is a straightforward copy of Western models, or that the transmission of
influence is linear or solely one-way. Rwanda and Ethiopia, for example – both
held up as potential green states in Africa due to their prominent green economy
strategies and influence within environmental negotiations – have strong links with
non-Western donors and sources of finance and expertise, especially China, South
Korea, India and Brazil. Rwanda’s government is heavily aid-dependent, but it has
played the donor game with some skill and considerable agency, adopting some
donor priorities but explicitly rejecting others (Whitfield 2009: 339). The Ethio-
pian government is proudly independent and pays little lip-service to ‘Western’
priorities. Both Rwanda and Ethiopia have long and deeply embedded traditions
and cultural practices of nature–society relations, spirituality, ancestral land and
ecological taboos, which mean that even global environmental discourses, like climate
change, are inevitably filtered through local cultural worldviews (Brockington et al.
2008: 20; Mies and Shiva 2014; Shilliam 2011). As such, it is difficult to disentangle
the impact of ‘international’ versus ‘domestic’ drivers of existing green state prac-
tices. While it is crucial not to neglect the importance of international institutions,
donors, epistemic communities and power/knowledge relations, these must be
factored into ‘transboundary formations’ (Brockington et al. 2008: 13; Conca 2005;
Keeley and Scoones 2003; Kuehls 1996: 25–26), which are neither international
nor domestic, global nor local, but rather reflect hybridised and multifarious sets of
interlocking assemblages.
African green states: a different path

Africa’s leading green states are therefore very different types of state to Germany
and Sweden (Death 2016a, 2016b). Indeed, Ethiopia and Rwanda are indelibly
associated with some of the defining images of African catastrophe, namely famine
and genocide, and in both countries the state played a role in producing and
exacerbating these crises. Neither perform well on indices of environmental per-

formance: Ethiopia is 131st on the Yale EPI and 103rd on the Happy Planet Index,
and Rwanda is 146th and 110th respectively. Yet, in part, these scores reflect the
Western origins and expectations of the indices. Ethiopia has promoted its national
strategy for a Climate Resilient Green Economy since 2011, which aims to establish
food security, expand renewable energy (mainly through a huge hydropower pro-
gramme), stimulate reforestation (through mass public works campaigns of terracing
and tree-planting), and leapfrog to modern and energy-efficient technologies in
transport, industrial sectors, and buildings (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
2011). Rwanda announced a National Strategy for Climate Change and Low-
Carbon Development in 2011 (which includes a low-carbon energy grid), and
invokes traditions of local mobilisation of volunteers by government in the form of
compulsory litter clean-ups, tree-planting and other environmental initiatives
(Republic of Rwanda 2011). Attempts to reduce land degradation, pollution and
improve public transport have paid off in some respects: in the 2014 Yale EPI,
Rwanda was the second most-improved country overall, with a 9 per cent
improvement over ten years.
These two states fit rather uneasily with the picture of enlightened, post-liberal,
radically democratic green states imagined by theorists like Eckersley and Christoff.
Neither state is a liberal democracy; both have been widely criticised for human
rights abuses and political repression (Howden 2010; Human Rights Watch 2012).
Both are also promoting extractive models of development involving intensive
(export-orientated) agricultural modernisation, large-scale dam-building and rapid
urbanisation. Yet, both are also strong and relatively autonomous states, with long
histories of development projects aimed at managing more sustainable resource use,
securing accumulation and mitigating environmental threats. As such, they meet
Meadowcroft’s criteria of ‘a significant governmental focus on managing environ-
mental burdens’ (2005: 4). In both countries, the governance of environmental issues
is closely linked to core imperatives of survival (Ethiopian hydropower), maintenance
of domestic order (environmental volunteering in Rwanda), generation of finance
(aid projects, ecotourism and conservation), capital accumulation (green agricultural
modernisation) and political legitimation (invocation of the green economy discourse
as part of a modernisation drive).Thus we might suggest that emerging green states in
places like Rwanda and Ethiopia have family resemblances to the colonial or author-
itarian state. However, crucially, they also demonstrate not insignificant commitments
to environmental protection and conservation, mitigation of environmental risks and
provision for basic needs. These linkages suggest some quite profound challenges to
thinking about how states have historically integrated environmental considerations
into core political functions (Kuehls 2014; Meadowcroft 2012).
Conclusion
This chapter has examined the centrality of the state in analyses of global envir-
onmental politics. States play a crucial role in the governance of environmental
issues, extraction or conservation of natural resources, mitigation of pollution and

environmental degradation, and promotion of environmental values. We agree
with theorists like Eckersley, Barry, and Newell and Paterson that states are crucial
political sites and institutions for responding to the environmental challenges ahead
in ways which will be (hopefully) more secure, sustainable and just. As Eckersley
puts it, ‘states will remain the primary gatekeepers of the global order and the global
environment for the foreseeable future, for better or for worse’ (2006: 137; see also
Mol 2016). A closer consideration of international politics helps to explain trajectories
of state greening and political transformation through transboundary formations,
which have tended to be neglected by theorists of ecological modernisation.
The more profound challenge raised by IR theorists, however, is whether a
society of greener states is necessary or sufficient for a greener global politics?
Famously, Kenneth Waltz sought to find the causes of war within three levels of
politics: the three images of man, the state and the international state system (2001:
12). He found that neither human nature, nor the policies or structures of indivi-
dual states, were sufficient to explain war. For Waltz, the anarchic structure of the
international system ensured that ‘conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to
occur’ (ibid: 159). There is an analogy here to environmental degradation: whereas
some theorists focus on human nature, or the national policies of states, systemic
theorists focus on the inevitability of environmental degradation within an inter-
national structure compromised of anarchic states, capitalism, patriarchy and
anthropocentrism, etc. One implication of this stance could be to conclude that the
national policies and structures of states are unimportant or powerless in the face of
global structures of environmental degradation.
In this chapter we have pursued a different line of argument. There is no hard-
and-fast dividing line between national and international politics, nor between
structure and agency. States can be transformed by environmental movements and
actors, and states can impact upon and transform other states. State action is con-
stitutive of the practices and institutions of international society itself. As such, for
us, the crucial objectives are explaining how shifts and transformations in states’
character and behaviour take place, and examining their consequences. Furthermore,
focusing on the importance, even centrality, of states in global environmental
politics raises important questions about the dominance of Western assumptions
concerning development, ecology, justice and sustainability. Considering a wider
diversity of green state practices is one way to broaden ideas about ‘what green
might mean’, as well as focusing on the historic co-production of state structures
and the environments in which we live.
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5
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Silke Beck and Tim Forsyth
Introduction
Science is an emotive subject within international environmental policy. On the
one hand it has underpinned environmental concern and policymaking for decades
and many policy analysts worry when climate change deniers portray science as
flawed and politically motivated. On the other hand, many social and natural
scientists also acknowledge that environmental science – like all other social
activities – reflects some social influence and that environmental policy depends on
public trust in expert organisations. How can International Relations (IR) analyse
the politics of environmental science without diminishing the significance of
research-led policy?
This chapter first reviews different approaches to how environmental science and
politics relate to each other, especially in terms of International Relations and
global environmental governance. In particular, it examines the commonly made
claim that environmental science is separate from social and political influence
through trusted and clearly defined expert networks or epistemic communities.
Next the chapter considers alternative approaches to governing scientific knowledge
that recognise the social processes underpinning expertise and the need to study
science and society together. These debates include ideas developed within Inter-
national Relations but also from parallel disciplines such as Science and Technology
Studies (STS). Third, the chapter applies these debates to the example of climate
change including the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), public trust in climate science and the public debate about climate change
denialism. The chapter argues that becoming more aware of the social influences
upon scientific knowledge will increase public trust in environmental policy as well
as generate knowledge that is more diverse and useful. Acknowledging and governing
social influence upon authoritative knowledge is not the same as denying climate
82 Silke Beck and Tim Forsyth
change: it is a way to make environmental policy more effective and inclusive. But
there are still important challenges posed by current political debates for under-
standing the place of such expertise in international politics and for how scientific
expertise can be made more diverse and participatory.
Separating science and policy

Environmental science has often been presented as the justification for environ-
mental concern and policymaking (Beck et al. 2017). But just as environmental
policy is contested, scientific research can also be challenged. Famously at the time
when the USA withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 US Senator Chuck
Hagel said: ‘The summaries of [IPCC] reports are written not by the scientists but
by UN environmental activists […] The IPCC summaries aren’t science they’re
UN politics’ (Hagel 2001: 4). Unsurprisingly this encouraged policymakers to deny
that politics affected the science. Just some months after Senator Hagel’s comment,
the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) stated: ‘The science has driven the politics… if the science is
to continue guiding the politics it is essential to keep the politics out of the science’
(Cutajar 2001: 1).The assumptions underpinning this statement reflect the most
common response to discussing environmental science and politics: that scientific
research exists outside of political influence and hence provides a neutral and trusted
backdrop to political discussions.
Epistemic communities
In IR this assumption is most clearly found in the concept of ‘epistemic communities’,
which refers to the networks or collectives of scientists or experts who can provide
policymakers with consensual knowledge about complex problems (Campbell and
Pedersen 2014; Haas 2004). A defining element is that they operate in a different
domain to politics and should let their statements be governed by scientific research
and rigorous methods. Much early debate about epistemic communities in IR
comes from Peter Haas’ 1992 definition:
An epistemic community is a network of professionals with recognized

experience and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim
to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue area… What bonds
members of an epistemic community is their shared belief or faith in the verity
and the applicability of particular forms of knowledge or specific truths.
(Haas 1992: 3)
This definition contained three elements that were later questioned. The first is
that scientists and experts are clearly defined and exist separately from politics. The
second is that authority comes from the status of speakers as scientists or experts.
The third is that the desire for professionals to communicate policy-relevant
Environmental science and IR 83
knowledge comes from awareness of its implications rather than through normative
or politically motivated intentions. Accordingly, the concept of epistemic com-
munities was intended by Haas and others to allow science to ‘speak truth to
power’ (Wildavsky 1979).
The most commonly cited example of this type of epistemic community is that
engaging with the regime to regulate ozone-depleting substances such as chloro-
fluorocarbons (CFCs). Atmospheric scientists Mario Molina and Frank Rowland
began scientific research on the influence of CFCs on ozone during the 1970s.
Policy advocacy bodies such as the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) reported this work and eventually this information led to the Vienna
Convention (1985) and Montreal Protocol (1987) (Benedick 1991). Al Gore in his
documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) referred to this case as an outstanding
example of how scientific research can influence international agreements. Indeed,
according to Richard E. Benedick the chief US negotiator on ozone:
Unquestionably the indispensable element in the success of the Montreal

Protocol was the role of science and scientists. Without the curiosity and
courage of a handful of researchers in the mid-1970s the world might have
learned too late of the hidden dangers linked with rapidly expanding use
of CFCs.
(Benedick 2005: 6)
Moreover, Benedick emphasised that the knowledge provided by the ‘community

of scientists’ was ‘the prerequisite for a political solution among negotiating
governments whose initial positions seemed irreconcilable’ (ibid: 7). And in accor-
dance with Haas’ definition he noted that scientists were ‘dedicated to scientific
objectivity’ with ‘a mutual concern for protecting the planet’s ozone layer that
transcended divergent national allegiances’ (ibid: 7). Roger Pielke (2007) continued
this theme by referring to science as ‘the honest broker’ in policymaking.
Initial criticisms of epistemic communities

Various analysts have raised questions about this approach to epistemic commu-
nities (Brechin 1997; Jasanoff 1990; Lahsen and Nobre 2007; Litfin 1994). These
questions are not directed at the willingness or integrity of specific scientists or
expert networks but instead at the model of separating science and policymaking in
such clearly defined ways. At the heart of these concerns is the apparent tension
between epistemic communities as both politically engaged yet scientifically
objective. Haas’ initial definition of epistemic communities is often understood as
combining actor-oriented social constructivist approaches to IR and neoliberal
theories (Fierke 2007). Constructivism implies that significant aspects of world
politics are not just ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered; they are historically and
socially constructed through social interaction (Adler 1997; Barnett and Finnemore
2004; Elzinga 1996). Moreover, constructivist approaches tend to view
international expert organisations as autonomous actors in global politics, with their

own internationally accepted principles, norms and decision-making procedures for
producing expert knowledge (Biermann 2002; Siebenhüner 2008).
Given this, how far is it possible to have expertise that is not in some way
connected to social values? And what, in turn, determines the status of experts or
scientists within policy circles? One important example is the tension that occurs
when expert groups have an overt political objective. For example, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace Conservation International or the World
Wide Fund for Nature employ trained scientists and have demonstrable influence
on policymaking yet have also undertaken overt political activism. For some IR
scholars, these groups contribute significantly to new knowledge-based regimes
because they are ‘activists beyond borders’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Even though
such campaigning organisations communicate and use scientific knowledge, they
present a very different image to the kind of epistemic communities discussed by
Haas (1992) and Pielke (2007). Indeed, Benedick (2005:6) noted ‘it was not sufficient
for scientists merely to publish their findings’. Instead ‘in order for the theories
to… lead to concrete policies scientists had to interact closely with government
policy makers and diplomatic negotiators’.
For some scholars in STS, the suggestion that epistemic communities act in
apolitical ways can be called Mertonian after the sociologist of science Robert
Merton (1973). Merton argued that scientists operate most effectively when they
are cognitively apolitical but ethically driven. This perspective on science, however,
has been questioned as blind to the wider social influences that operate on the
generation and communication of knowledge (Hacking 1983; Pickering 1995). A
key objective for alternative models of science and politics in IR therefore is to
broaden analysis of non-cognitive social influences on scientific knowledge.
A further criticism of the early definition of epistemic communities is that it
exaggerates the impact of scientific knowledge alone. According to Haas (1992)
and Benedick (2005), scientific knowledge can transform previously irreconcilable
negotiating positions. But according to Litfin’s (1994: 186) analysis of the ozone
negotiations, ‘[e]pistemic community approaches underestimate the extent to
which scientific information simply rationalizes or reinforces existing political con-
flicts’. Analysing the documents and presentations made in the build-up to the
Montreal Protocol of 1987, Litfin challenged the common assumption that scientific
information facilitated the agreement. She argued that there were still (at the time)
important uncertainties about whether CFCs were linked to ozone depletion.
Instead negotiators used various themes to achieve agreement including the sense
of public worry about the ozone hole above Antarctica and the new availability of
patented alternatives to ozone-depleting substances. In other words, Litfin
demonstrated that expert knowledge did not simply gain political significance
because of its ability to settle apparent uncertainties, but by responding to concerns
that were unquestioned and taken to be certain. Accordingly, the epistemic com-
munities concept under-theorised both ‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’ in political
negotiations. Later work has questioned how ideas about certainty and uncertainty
co-evolve; and how expert organisations also produce knowledge in connection

with unquestioned public concerns and frameworks.
Integrating science and politics

Alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between science and politics
have been advanced. Since the 1960s, debates within STS have focused on how
science and society are connected. These debates do not imply that scientific
research is flawed or cannot be trusted but rather that scientific advice cannot be
treated as if it operated in a wholly separate field to political debate. Much early
work within STS analysed the construction of scientific facts and the settlement of
scientific controversies (Latour 1987; Latour and Woolgar 1979). Increasingly STS
also considers the relationship between knowledge-making and other social and
political phenomena, especially in the context of globalisation (Jasanoff 2004). Such
themes are becoming more apparent in debates in IR and global environmental
change (Corry and Jørgensen 2015; Hulme 2010; Jasanoff and Martello 2004;
Lövbrand et al. 2015).
Placing knowledge in context

One of the defining principles of early approaches to epistemic communities was
the belief that scientific knowledge could reduce political uncertainty and over-
come interests that had previously acted as barriers to environmental policy. This is
sometimes known as the ‘deficit model’ of science, according to which extra
knowledge can provide certainty and hence end political disputes (Jasanoff and
Wynne 1998). Social studies of environmental science, however, emphasise the
social context in which knowledge is made. As Litfin noted (1994: 186) sometimes
pre-existing political conflicts define which knowledge is useful rather than the
other way round. Some approaches to STS within environmental policymaking
therefore ask how different political positions influence the generation of knowl-
edge. These approaches are controversial because they turn the deficit model on its
head: rather than asking ‘what are the facts?’ they claim that the key question is
‘what would people like the facts to be?’
One early approach known as Cultural Theory argued that human societies
could potentially offer four ideal typical positions for understanding environmental
change and its potential meaning (Thompson and Rayner 1998): individualists
(who emphasised individual freedom and little communal responsibility); egalitar-
ians (worried about the risks posed by others’ behaviour); hierarchists (who wish to
establish rules to govern behaviour and risks); and fatalists (people with few options
outside of living with other people’s impacts). The point of this framework is to
indicate that different groups generate and draw upon scientific research to bolster
their worldviews. Rather than asking which group is correct, Cultural Theorists
acknowledge that all societies will contain representatives of these groups who wish
to make different claims. The point of this analysis is that certainty already exists in
the minds of different sectors of society and seeking to resolve the political differences
between these sectors by using knowledge (as under the epistemic community
approach) is to oversimplify how knowledge and society are linked. As Hulme
(2009) and Corry and Jørgensen (2015) have noted, the reason there is so much
dispute about climate change is not because of a lack of science but because of
diverse perspectives about how climate change (and its proposed solutions) might
be problematic.
Other analysts have criticised the deficit model in other ways. Thomas Kuhn’s
(1962) classic work on scientific paradigms argued that science underwent periods
of ‘normalisation’ in which scientists only generated knowledge that corresponded
to the rules and objectives of each paradigm. Sociologists of science later added to
this approach by arguing that normalisation was also achieved by social norms
closing down which questions are appropriate or allowed to be asked (Funtowicz
and Ravetz 1993). The existence of ‘certainty’ therefore was socially and politically
controlled – often by historical social trends – rather than the universal worldviews
proposed by Cultural Theory. But at the same time the generation of new research
through epistemic communities was unlikely to address ‘uncertainty’ outside of
narrow confines of what was considered normal.
Meaning and inclusion

In addition to being subject to social norms, ‘normal’ scientific knowledge is not
always meaningful or appropriate to everyone. Much debate within STS concerning
climate change, for example, has highlighted the reductionism within global climate
modelling and the challenges this brings for making an inclusive environmental
regime. A key challenge here is the question of how to represent the risks posed by
environmental changes such as climate change. Much climate science is based upon
atmospheric measurements of greenhouse gas concentrations, which are further
analysed in terms of physical criteria such as radiative signature and the evidence for
rising concentrations demonstrated by the ‘hockey stick graph’ (Mann et al. 1999).
Meanwhile the gathering of information about atmosphere and weather increasingly
rests on physical and organisational systems that are scaled up across the global or
regional level rather than on local and regional variations (Edwards 2010; Zehr
1994). For some STS scholars, these kinds of assessments of change do not
acknowledge local experiences of what additional greenhouse gas concentrations
mean for different societies (Demeritt 2001). Moreover, they obscure how global
assessments can level out important differences in the experiences of environmental
hazards, which can also be linked to social and political differences.
A classic example of this ‘flat-Earthing’ is the famous dispute between the
Washington, DC-based think tank the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the
Delhi-based NGO the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in the early
1990s. The WRI produced an index identifying the countries most responsible for
anthropocentric climate change based on current rates of fossil fuel use and defor-
estation (World Resources Institute 1990). It placed Brazil, China and India among
the top six countries. The CSE criticised this report because it was based on
national (rather than per capita) data; it ignored historic deforestation; and made no
distinction between fossil fuels used for basic needs versus high-consumption lifestyles
(Agarwal and Narain 1991). This case is considered to be an example of how
statistical analysis (by the WRI) presented an image of an apolitical survey with
strong policy implications but that avoided important normative questions about
the meaning and fairness of these statistics (Forsyth 2014).
These concerns persist in current debates about environmental science and climate
change policy. Analysts of social vulnerability in Africa have argued that many
projections of hazards arising from climate change place too much emphasis on
systemic atmospheric changes rather than on the social economic and political
contexts under which vulnerable people experience these changes (Ribot 2010).
Likewise the Kyoto Protocol’s policy proposals to reduce atmospheric greenhouse
gas concentrations through devices such as the Clean Development Mechanism
have been criticised because they lack meaning and appeal for people who are
expected to use them (Stevenson 2012). The implication for IR and global envir-
onmental policy is that epistemic communities or scientific knowledge alone are
insufficient to create necessary localised meaning. Indeed, uniform and non-localised
scientific analyses can sometimes alienate people who need to be involved in
environmental regimes.
Making epistemic authority

Thus, epistemic authority – or the influence commanded by science and expertise –
is not just connected to the research itself but also to the social and political con-
texts in which knowledge is generated and communicated. Moreover, there is
another difference from the approach advised by the early definition of epistemic
communities: Rather than understanding environmental science as a means of doing
environmental policy better, there is a need to understand the methods of making
and legitimising science as a means of ordering society (Jasanoff 2004; Lidskog and
Sundqvist 2011, 2015).
One early example of this so-called ‘co-productionist’ approach to science and
social order analysed the Limits to Growth report that predicted that current rates of
economic growth would lead to environmental collapse (Meadows et al. 1972).
Sociologists Taylor and Buttel (1992) criticised it on the grounds that its conclu-
sions could only be reached if one assumed that human societies acted in common
and undifferentiated ways – and in particular in a rational-choice way characterised
by individualism, economic maximisation of resource use and competition with
others. The projection of the report and the vision of society linked to it upheld
each other. But the act of world-making contained in the report was largely
ignored.
Some analysts have adopted the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to
demonstrate how the manner in which environmental problems are defined and
measured can also foreclose political debate about proposed policies. For example,
representing global climate change in terms of systemic greenhouse gas concentra-

tions legitimises solutions that are based on the principle of investing or acting in
faraway countries (where trees grow faster or where land and labour are cheaper)
than in emitting countries (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2007; Lövbrand et al. 2009).
Other analyses have applied actor-network theory as a means to identify how
scientific statements about cause-and-effect or appropriate policy responses are
based upon social assumptions that maintain the appearance of non-negotiable facts
(Stripple and Bulkeley 2013). For example, climate change policy based on different
spatial scales (such as ‘local’ action for ‘global’ change) can contain unchallenged
assumptions about who benefits and what actions are effective (Blok 2010;
Swyngedouw 2013).
These forms of analysis can explain how scientific ‘facts’ and assumptions remain
unchanged as frameworks for policymaking despite the potential array of values
and perspectives. Van der Sluijs et al. (1998) showed how numbers operate as
‘anchoring devices’ in political discussions. For example, the statement that
anthropogenic climate change represented an estimated increase of 1.5–4.5°C in
warming for a doubling of CO2 remained constant over a roughly 20-year period
until the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report, even though approaches and measurement
techniques had changed.
In turn the actions of expert organisations themselves have also become an arena
of analysis for epistemic authority. STS scholars have used the term ‘boundary
work’ to indicate the ‘ideological efforts by scientists to distinguish their work and
its products from non-scientific intellectual activities’ (Gieryn 1983: 782) – or more
prosaically who belongs within expert collectives and hence is entitled to speak for
it as well as who does not belong and hence lacks such authority (Jasanoff 1990).
Boundary work enacted through epistemic communities rarely occurs cognitively
or through the work of one active organisation alone. Rather, the processes of
making epistemic authority can be dynamic and emergent. Epistemic authority can
be influenced by current events relating to the persuasive power of the people and
institutions who speak for science, or ongoing relationships between experts and
the public, and a willingness on the part of responsible experts and institutions to
demonstrate why the public should trust them (Jasanoff 2013). ‘Civic epistemologies’
define the national (or sub-national) social codes and concerns that determine
which kinds of knowledge and speakers are considered authoritative (Miller 2008).
This suggests that not all groups and societies accept expert organisations in the
same way (Hajer and Versteeg 2005; Royal Society 2011). In effect, different civic
epistemologies have an important influence on boundary work between which
knowledge is considered scientific and authoritative and which is not.
Scholars within IR have also argued that epistemic authority is connected to
changes in the influence of different states. Constructivist IR scholars such as Haas
and Stevens (2011) have analysed how the influence of experts also defines state
interests. This form of analysis continues trends within IR research that focus on
national and institutionalist outlooks. Radical constructivists, however, have instead
looked at how social and political structures (such as alliances between states and
civil society organisations) reinforce the status of expertise (Bueger 2014). Indeed,
some analysts have argued that the rising status of expert organisations is part of a
reaction to a normative and institutional ‘void’ arising in the wake of a decline of
state authority under globalisation that makes way for alternative and transitional
sources of authority (Turner 2003). Some writers have called this condition the
‘post-national constellation’ (Zürn et al. 2012).
How do these themes relate to current debates about international science and
policy? The next section considers the relationship of science and policy concerning
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and public debates about
denialism.
Climate science and epistemic authority

According to the IPCC – the scientific network established in 1988 to present
policy-relevant information about anthropogenic climate change – there is strong
evidence that human activities are destabilising the climate and the risks of leaving
this interference unchecked will be dire. According to the Fifth Assessment
Report (IPCC 2014) anthropogenic climate change is already occurring. At the
same time the influence of the IPCC on climate regimes has been the subject of
scrutiny by IR and STS scholars alike while it has been criticised and rejected by
sceptics. How can political analysis shed light on the relationship between science
and policy?
Epistemic community: the IPCC

The IPCC is probably the best-known epistemic community in global environ-
mental policy. It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) in cooperation with the UNEP. It does not undertake scientific research
itself but organises synthesis reports of climate-related research for decision-makers
involved in the UNFCCC. The IPCC has had to create its own procedures, which
have sometimes challenged the classic conception of epistemic communities. In
particular there was a desire to include both policymakers and scientists from different
countries, especially developing countries. The IPCC’s first chairman Bert Bolin
stated: ‘Right now many countries especially developing countries simply do not
trust assessments in which their scientists and policymakers have not participated.
Don’t you think credibility demands global representation?’ (cited in Schneider
1991). Accordingly, the IPCC is composed of both government representatives
and invited scientists. Only government representatives participate and vote in
plenary sessions that approve the IPCC work programme and governance structure
and elect the IPCC Chair and Bureau Members. According to Haas and Stevens,
this design of the IPCC ‘is designed to keep science on a tight leash’ (2011, 147) –
where governments are the ‘principal’ and the scientific community is the ‘agent’
(ibid: 148). Unsurprisingly, however, this structure is one reason why climate
sceptics have criticised the IPCC as politically motivated.
The IPCC has also engaged in various practices to reinforce its epistemic
authority. In particular, it has sought to present unequivocal scientific statements
based on the principle of consensus. In 1990 it took the decision to no longer put
forward policy recommendations. Only peer-reviewed literature is considered.
These actions were intended to fulfil the IPCC’s mandate to provide policy-relevant
information without being policy prescriptive. Simultaneously the IPCC has
emphasised the methods and findings of climate modelling as the key source of
reference for its work and especially its Working Group I (on scientific evidence
for anthropogenic climate change). This approach has produced a standard frame of
reference for predefined spatial scales and where regional data are fed into globally
aggregated models (Edwards 1996).
Accordingly, the IPCC has fulfilled its role as an epistemic community by
building two forms of generalisation: representing scientific information in uni-
versal categories and justifying this information on the basis of neutral but policy-
relevant scientific advice. According to Walt Reid – the creator of the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, and vice-president of the World Resources Institute during
the 1990s – this mode of public reasoning ‘will result in the aggregate in a more
politically neutral assessment process’ (Reid 2004: 9).
Public criticisms and the narrowing of analysis

The IPCC’s approach to generating and disseminating knowledge, however, has
been questioned – and the IPCC has in part responded (Oreskes and Conway
2010). First, various academic observers have argued that the IPCC’s attempt to
achieve political neutrality involves important simplifications. Scientometric studies
show that the IPCC still displays a notable dependency on geophysical (rather than
social) sciences and on Western/developed countries that can assist with climate
models (Vasileiadou et al. 2011). The emphasis upon peer-reviewed research has
simultaneously excluded alternative forms of expertise – such as legal reports,
which as a rule are rarely published in these forums – along with more localised
and informal forms of knowledge. Indeed, Jasanoff (2013: 451) has argued that the
IPCC’s approach effectively is ‘de-skilling those outside their fields by their very
capacity to understand and assess risks responsibly’. More outspoken critics have
alleged that the IPCC only refers to those scientific findings that confirm dominant
views of climate change and thereby tending towards ‘dogmatism’ and ‘cartel
formation’ (Hulme and Ravetz 2009).
Second, the IPCC has been criticised by organisations and lobbyists seeking to
oppose climate change policy. In 1997 for example the fossil-fuel dominated
Global Climate Coalition funded a now-famous TV campaign arguing that the
proposed Kyoto Protocol was ‘not global and not going to work’. Campaigns like
these tended to reinforce political debates that the IPCC was either ‘for’ or ‘against’
business interests. The most notable challenge to the IPCC’s procedures and cred-
ibility followed the event known as ‘Climategate’, when emails from the climate
change research centre at the University of East Anglia were hacked and publicised
just months before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. Much discussion
focused on the statement in one email that suggested scientists were willing to
‘hide the decline’ in observed global temperatures. Taken out of context this
statement could be taken to imply scientists were colluding to deceive policy-
makers about observed temperature trends (an allegation not borne out by deeper
analysis of either the emails or the actions of scientists). A further controversy in
2009–2010 questioned how the IPCC used statistics to estimate melting of Himalayan
glaciers (Mahony 2013).
These controversies contributed to different outcomes. First these controversies
had the effect of representing the IPCC’s credibility in terms of its ability to
demonstrate the validity of its existing framework of research. In particular the
Climategate controversy focused public attention on whether the IPCC could
demonstrate that global temperatures were increasing and that human-induced
greenhouse gases were responsible. This reinforced the idea that the IPCC’s key
objective is to create certainty in climate science instead of more diverse objectives
such as explaining social vulnerability or defining appropriate uses of greenhouse
gases simultaneously with development (see Agarwal and Narain 1991). Indeed,
various analysts have argued that the IPCC would benefit from diversifying away
from its underlying framework of risk-assessment currently based upon the principle
of additionality whereby risks from climate change are stated in relation to incre-
mental atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Some critics have argued that
additionality narrows the conception of risk and consequently reduces the range of
appropriate adaptive responses to climate change (Lemos and Boyd 2010). Such
alternative forms of adaptation might include long-term development that reduces
social and political vulnerability in general rather than responding only to additional
greenhouse gases (Burton 2009).
A second effect of the controversies was to set in motion new debates about
public trust in the IPCC. Public scrutiny of the IPCC via blogs and popular discus-
sion increased (PBL 2010: 32). One internal assessment of the IPCC concluded
that ‘new expectations [for accountability] are not yet reflected in the current
governance and management structure of the IPCC’ (IAC 2010: 39). The
response to the IPCC varied between countries. India established alternative
expert networks whereas debate about denialism increased in the USA (Beck
2012a; Mahony 2014). Academics suggested that the IPCC’s reliance on peer
review was actually a form of boundary work designed to exclude alternative
views (Pearce 2010; Beck 2012b) or that the IPCC should disclose information
about its own disagreements publicly (Jasanoff 2012: 163; Miller 2009: 143, 159).
Indeed, it is worth noting that the framework of additionality is increasingly
questioned inside the IPCC. In the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report, authors in
Working Group II noted:
The rational-linear process that identifies potential risks then evaluates man-
agement responses… has been challenged on the grounds that it does not
adequately address the diverse contexts within which climate decisions are
being made, often neglects existing decision-making processes and overlooks

many cultural and behavioural aspects of decision-making.
(Jones et al. 2014:3)
Working Group II is the part of the IPCC that considers impacts of climate
change and includes a higher proportion of social scientists than Working Group I.
Co-production and the debate about denialism

The wider context of the IPCC and climate science also needs to be considered. As
reviewed above, debates in STS have discussed how authoritative knowledge con-
tributes to debates that are already characterised by predefined political positions.
Political positions might not influence the specific findings of individual acts of
research relating to climate change, but they will influence how their findings are
represented within political debates (Jasanoff 2004; Thompson and Rayner 1998).
Public discussions about climate change denialism are an example of how political
positions are co-produced with claims about scientific certainty. Denialism can be
defined simply as the desire of various industries, politicians and lobbying companies
to weaken the campaign for climate change policies by discrediting climate science
and accordingly the IPCC. Indeed, some analysts have traced a deliberate campaign
by conservative think tanks in a series of actions going back to the formation of the
Global Climate Coalition based on fossil-fuel industries (Jacques et al. 2008).
Both sides of the denialism debate, however, demonstrate predefined political
positions. For example, some public statements by companies have emphasised
individualism and economic reward: in a review of deliberately provocative adverts
for cars, Ford declared ‘Most people would prefer a hot climate’; Jeep stated ‘The
end of the world is never nigh’; and Hyundai simply quipped ‘Greed is good’
(Guardian 2008). Unsurprisingly, academics opposing these perspectives have argued
that climate science inherently ‘offers [an] imminent critique of the industrial base
of Western modernity… [and] the possessive individualistic ontology of the West’
(Jacques 2012: 15). But for scholars of STS, these two opposing positions demonstrate
ways in which pre-existing worldviews coexist with statements about ‘science’ or
epistemic authority. For Cultural Theory, the viewpoints above are examples of
individualism and egalitarianism respectively. Under a co-productionist analysis
(Jasanoff 2004), different knowledge claims co-evolve with visions of social order.
The cost of co-production is that it reduces attention to alternative and possibly
more useful and diverse formulations of knowledge. It can reinforce the tendency –
discussed above – to reduce the debate about climate change to whether there is
evidence for or against rises in global temperatures. It is not surprising that denialist
organisations such as the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation1 publicise
charts showing no clearly discernible warming since 2000. Yet reducing public
debate to this one factor overlooks the complexity of climate, science or the range
of other factors underlying human impacts on climate, as well as human vulner-
ability to these impacts and diverse options for changing energy use. Defending
‘climate science’ as though there is only one form – and that this form focuses only
on evidence for and against warming – therefore reduces the potential variety of
epistemologies that climate science can offer as well as the range of political strategies
that might follow from it (Forsyth 2012; Corry and Jørgensen 2015).
Yet despite these concerns it is also notable that much academic debate still tends
to refer to climate science in the singular. There is still a tendency for some
mainstream analyses of environmental politics to consider the barriers to adopting
climate science as ‘more or less given’ (Dryzek et al. 2013: v) – or to refer to the
climate system (ibid: 142) without acknowledging how different societies have
varying levels of vulnerability and adaptive capacity or indeed see industrialisation
as a key part of reducing this vulnerability. Alternative forms of political analysis do
not predefine how and for whom climate change poses risks. Hence there is a need
to problematise the ‘construction of climate change as one problem in need of one
global solution’ (Machin 2013: 2).
Climate denialism needs to be understood as an organised political force seeking
to manipulate the representation of climate science. But the response to denialism
should be more than an equivalent act of reductionism. For years STS debates have
argued that scientific knowledge is not just a representation of the physical world
but also a reflection of the social values and actors that create science. The debate
about climate change denialism is therefore more than a test of the IPCC’s tech-
nical ability. It is also an arena for longstanding disagreements about appropriate
economics and politics (Beck et al. 2014).
Conclusion
Environmental science within International Relations has historically been treated
within the frameworks of classic approaches to epistemic communities. This
approach has emphasised the distance between knowledge generation and policy-
making and the potential agency of scientific knowledge to reconfigure political
positions. In contrast, this chapter argues that this framework is increasingly out-
dated. Rather than believing in the efficacy and universality of scientific advice
there is a need to acknowledge the social contexts within which scientific knowl-
edge is generated and legitimated. Policymaking needs to devise new forms of
discussion and decision-making that can acknowledge these factors in open and
inclusive ways.
These words do not diminish the need for environmental expertise – still less to
offer support for the crude attempts of climate change deniers to characterise
environmental science as flawed or biased. Rather there is a need to become more
alert to how various social factors can combine to narrow down the objectives and
values driving environmental science. These factors can end up reducing the
diversity and meaning of knowledge that is used to justify or guide environmental
policies.
This chapter therefore argues there are two broad implications for International
Relations and the analysis of environmental science. The first refers to how to
understand the role of scientific controversies and the generation of scientific

knowledge in international relations. It is important not to reduce the political
significance of science to singular questions such as whether global temperatures are
rising or not. Scientific research is constantly evolving on such topics and analysts
can consider their own evaluation of the evidence. Instead there is a need to consider
what values or political positions are upheld or contested by adopting or resisting
different scientific claims about whether environmental changes are happening or not.
There might also be a need to ask what other questions can be asked by envir-
onmental science. Often the most meaningful political questions to ask about
environmental science concern not whether it is true or not, but which values or
political perspectives are currently excluded and how scientific information could
be diversified to include these. In the case of climate science, for example, the
common focus on evidence for or against warming simplifies the complexity of
climate change and draws attention away from asking how people are vulnerable
or how societies can live with climate change more sustainably.
The second broad implication concerns the nature of expert organisations. Scientific
authorities such as the IPCC are often defended or criticised as representatives of
climate science – as though science is a metaphor for a particular worldview – and
whether they can provide fast answers to simple questions such as whether the
world is warming. These concerns overemphasise the possibility for expert organi-
sations to resolve pre-existing political disagreements. Moreover, they fail to
acknowledge the social and historical contexts through which expert organisations
generate knowledge and the systems for generating and reporting science. Making
expert organisations more transparent and participatory is likely to make scientific
advice more diverse and meaningful and increase public trust in these organisations.
In order to undertake some of these challenges, the academic study of Interna-
tional Relations could benefit from parallel fields such as STS, which also include
the sociology and politics of knowledge. But rather than suggest that one discipline
can outbid another in the field of scientific advice, it is best to apply lessons from
both fields. Debates in STS have suggested that expert organisations rarely operate
in a vacuum and that science infrequently transforms pre-existing positions. IR on
the other hand offers ways to apply STS’s insights into global environmental
governance.
Note
1 www.thegwpf.org.
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6
POST-HUMANISM AND
GEOENGINEERING
Stephen Hobden
Introduction
This chapter introduces a post-human approach to understanding international
relations and the environment. It will argue that attention in political science with
regard to geoengineering has focused narrowly on the issue of global governance –
reflecting the anthropocentric bias of the discipline. By contrast, post-humanism
offers important insights into thinking about environmental issues, and that these
become particularly significant when the focus turns to geoengineering.
Geoengineering, or as some prefer ‘climate management’ (Michaelson 2013:
85–88) or ‘climate engineering’, has been on the fringes of thinking about how to
resolve anthropogenic climate change for some time. Thus far, policies to alleviate
the effects of climate change have focused on attempts to reduce the quantities of
greenhouse gases being discharged into the atmosphere. However, the apparent
incapacity of governments to take effective action to curb carbon dioxide emissions –
and the existence of reserves of carbon-based fuels far exceeding the quantities that
many feel it is safe to use – has prompted the view that alternative solutions need
to be sought. Some scientists, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, are considering
the possibilities that at some point humans may be forced to attempt to engineer the
climate as a way of averting the most serious side-effects of climate chaos. Because
of its global impact, and the uncertainties associated with its implementation,
geoengineering is likely to become a central issue in international politics.
Post-humanism is a relatively new approach within the social sciences, and thus
far has made comparatively little impact on International Relations. The term
‘post-humanism’ has been employed in a variety of different ways. The approach
here will advocate an approach derived from complexity thinking, although com-
plexity in turn also has a variety of perspectives. Post-humanism as will be used in
this chapter, points to the need to incorporate a ‘more than human’ view of the
Post-humanism and geoengineering 101
world, and to decentre the human from the central position it has occupied,
particularly in Western thought.
Geoengineering, as a technical fix to climate change, has moved from the margins
to the mainstream of policy options. The implementation of geoengineering schemes
would have both environmental and political implications. The purpose of this
chapter is to think through the implications of such a step. The chapter begins with
a consideration of various forms of geoengineering, including a discussion of concerns
raised by climate scientists about possible outcomes. The chapter then turns to a
discussion of the global political implications of geoengineering, in particular the
kinds of institutions that could oversee large-scale geoengineering projects. The
final sections introduce the recent emergence of a post-human approach to thinking
about global politics, and consider geoengineering from such an outlook.
Geoengineering as a response to climate change
What is geoengineering?
Geoengineering is increasingly being promoted as a means of averting large-scale
disruption resulting from anthropogenic climate change. A Royal Society (2009: 1)
investigation into the issue of geoengineering defined it as the ‘deliberate large-scale
manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate
change’. There are, as Gardiner notes, a variety of techniques associated with the term,
ranging from mirrors in space through to capturing carbon from power stations,
and ‘it is not clear that all of them should be classified together’ (2010: 285).
Approaches to geoengineering are usually divided into two groups: carbon dioxide
removal, and solar radiation management, and it is important to note that there are
significant differences in the practicality and implications of both general approaches.
Carbon dioxide removal methods involve trying to reduce the levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. Given the understanding that it is levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere that are the central cause of climate change, if the con-
centrations of that gas could be reduced then the worst effects of climate change
would be reduced. Carbon capture is one form of this approach – either by
attempting to install devices into gas and coal burning power stations that capture
the gas at the main points at which it is discharged, or by developing devices that
can suck and store the carbon. Both of these approaches would then require some
means by which the extracted carbon could be stored. An alternative method of
carbon dioxide removal that is seriously being considered involves ‘seeding’ the
oceans. This involves adding iron to the ocean to encourage the growth of plankton.
Plankton take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and when they die, they sink to
the bottom of the ocean taking the absorbed carbon dioxide with them.
Solar radiation management (SRM) approaches involve devising ways to reduce
and/or reflect the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth’s atmosphere. The idea of
launching mirrors into space to reflect the sun’s rays would be an example of this
approach. A possibly more realistic approach would be to pump sulphur particles
102 Stephen Hobden
into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, which would reflect the sun’s light. This
approach is based on reproducing the outcome of serious volcanic eruptions, which
also propel vast amounts of material into the atmosphere. For example, when
Mount Pinatubo, in the Philippines, erupted in 1991, 20 million tons of sulphur
dioxide were thrown into the atmosphere resulting in a fall in the Earth’s temperature
of 0.5°C for a period of 18 months (Nicholson 2013: 321).
Solar radiation management looks like a more feasible option currently because
of the sheer physical limits of carbon dioxide removal. Carbon dioxide removal
would be a very slow process. If done industrially it would require, in Hamilton’s
words, ‘a sprawling industrial infrastructure’ (2013a: 48). Nicholson (2013: 323)
points to the vast amount of material that would need to be stored underground
just to extract a proportion of the carbon dioxide emitted by power stations in the
United States.
While serious discussion of geoengineering is a very recent phenomenon,
humans and other species have been altering the atmosphere for billions of years.
As Thornes and Pope (2014: 2) note, ‘deliberate and inadvertent interventions, by
forms of life, into the composition and behaviour of the atmosphere are… not
new’. Without photosynthesisers there would be no oxygen, and humans started
adding carbon dioxide from the moment that they started using fire for warmth,
cooking and production (Lovelock 2010: 84). Furthermore, dreams of being able
to control the climate have a long history. Many cultures have traditions of practices
to placate the weather or encourage particular types of weather. Rain manipulation
programmes date back to the mid-nineteenth century (Schneider 2010: 4).
Attempts to encourage rain were used by the US military in Vietnam to attempt to
reduce the manoeuvrability of the Viet Cong, and possibly over Cuba to disrupt
the sugarcane harvest (Fleming 2007: 56).
While changes to the climate as a result of different species’ actions are generally
acknowledged, Keith (2000: 247) has sought to restrict the use of the term
‘geoengineering’ to actions that are both large-scale and intentional. Ornamental
gardening would not count as geoengineering because, while intentional, it is not
large-scale – likewise anthropogenic climate change associated with industrialisation
would also not be counted as geoengineering because, while large-scale, it is not
intentional. The introduction of sulphur particles into the upper atmosphere,
by contrast, would be geoengineering because it is intentional with large-scale
implications.
Why is geoengineering being considered now?

There are considerable concerns among scientists regarding the results and
implementation of geoengineering. The 2009 Royal Society report, for example,
concluded that:
The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to

take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No
geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative

solution to the problem of climate change.
(Royal Society 2009: ix)
Likewise Thompson and Sieber (2010: 51) argue that these are ‘risky procedures’
that should only be considered seriously if all other attempts to prevent climate
change occurred and that there was a consensus that without geoengineering there
would be a major catastrophe.
Given these concerns, why has geoengineering come to be a seriously con-
sidered option? A major change in perspective came with an article written by Paul
Crutzen (2006) evaluating the possibility of using sulphates to reflect sunlight. This
intervention was seen as particularly significant because Crutzen is a Nobel Prize-
winning scientist for his work on atmospheric chemistry, who, along with Eugene
Stoermer, first suggested the use of the term ‘Anthropocene’ to highlight global
human impact. Crutzen concluded that reducing greenhouse gases would be a
better option than the use of stratospheric sulphur, but that at the current time that
this looks like a ‘pious wish’ (ibid: 217).
Progress at an international level towards reducing greenhouse gases has made
little impact on behaviour. Global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise
despite calls for their urgent reduction. This is a particularly difficult collective action
problem requiring the cooperation of a large number of actors over a prolonged
time period, with high incentives to ‘free-ride’. Compounding the collective action
problems is the probable requirement for a ‘radical reframing of both the climate
change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society’
(Anderson and Bows 2010: 47). By contrast, geoengineering is less threatening to
status quo power relations (Virgoe 2009: 105).
That thinking about geoengineering has entered the mainstream is also con-
firmed by the consideration given by the Royal Society, and branches of the US
government. Furthermore, the most recent report from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes a substantial discussion of both carbon
dioxide removal and solar radiation management noting that both approaches
‘carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale’ (IPCC 2013: 29).
Amongst climate scientists there has been some concern that opening up the
possibility that geoengineering might be able to resolve problems related to climate
change presents us with issues of ‘moral hazard’: the existence of an apparent
solution to the problem might reduce pressure to resolve the cause of the problem –
unsustainable lifestyles. Rather than looking for ways that allow us to continue
living as we do, we should be seeking a solution that involves a radical reduction in
the production of greenhouse gases through a reduction in consumerism and a
move to renewable sources of energy. As Schneider notes:
The very knowledge of the potential of geo-engineering to offset some inad-

vertent global change disturbances could provide ammunition to those who
wished to ‘solve’ the side effects of indefinite expansionary consumption and
104 Stephen Hobden
population trends with a dubious technological fix rather than a fundamental

change in the political acceptability of the fossil-fuel-based growth paradigm.
(Schneider 2010: 18)
Burns argues that moral hazard might be at play (2013: 209–210) because the
estimated costs of geoengineering projects are unfeasibly low; it doesn’t challenge the
positions of the powerful in society; and it would imply that there is no need to
make other fundamental changes in our lifestyles.
Others have been more sceptical of the moral hazard argument. Bunzl argues that
moral hazard would only be an issue if the pursuit of geoengineering resulted in higher
levels of greenhouse gas emissions, an outcome that he regards as ‘far-fetched’ (2015:
157). Likewise, Reynolds (2015) suggests that the arguments regarding moral hazard
are far from conclusive, and that it is also possible that geoengineering might increase
mitigation efforts. For Michaelson, ‘the game is already over’ (2013: 108). The spe-
cies doesn’t need the excuse of geoengineering to postpone action on climate change
– it has already failed to take action. Likewise a balance has to be drawn between
the risks of taking action with little preparation compared to the risks of imple-
mentation following careful research and evaluation (ibid: 102). For Michaelson, ‘as
climate change becomes ineluctable, geoengineering becomes inevitable’ (ibid: 83).
While geoengineering might not be inevitable, it is increasingly being con-
sidered as a serious option. Were there to be a sudden deterioration in the climate
system, then geoengineering could potentially offer the possibility of a quick fix.
Various authors have pointed to the potential problems with geoengineering.
Robock (2008) has pointed to ‘20 reasons why geoengineering might be a bad
idea’. Here three issues will briefly be summarised before turning to issues of global
politics. Robock’s particular concern is with the possibility of using stratospheric
sulphate to reflect the sun’s rays. Among his concerns are that a rather benign
account has been drawn between the parallels between this approach and the
debris that volcanoes hurl into the atmosphere. Attempting to make stratospheric
sulphate appear as analogous to events such as volcanic eruptions, which happen in
any case, plays down the effects such events can have. He notes that attempts to
model the effects of the use of stratospheric sulphate have the potential of ‘con-
demning hundreds of millions of people to drought’ (ibid: 15). Another possible
side-effect would be to reduce the energy from the sun reaching the Earth and
thus reduce the effectiveness of solar panels. Also, not acting to reduce carbon
dioxide levels in the atmosphere will result in increased acidification of the oceans,
which ‘threatens the entire oceanic biological chain, from coral reefs right up to
humans’ (ibid: 15). Robock also points to the complexity of the climate system, a
point that will be returned to later. Additionally, there is what has become known
as the ‘termination problem’. If stratospheric sulphate injections were introduced in
a serious way, they would need to be maintained for hundreds, possibly thousands,
of years. If for some reason they were stopped, then, without action to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions, there is the possibility of a very rapid and disruptive rise
in temperatures, as the full effects of the sun’s rays become effective again. This
‘would produce much more stress on society and ecosystems than gradual global
warming’ (ibid: 17).
The global politics of geoengineering

Given the potential global impacts of geoengineering there is a surprising dearth of
work within International Relations addressing the issue (Keohane 2015: 19).
Geoengineering has the potential to become the most serious international political
issue of the twentieth century. It will, as various writers have pointed out,
benefit some groups more than others, and potentially will impose costs on other
communities – such as disrupting weather patterns resulting in higher levels of
flooding or drought. Geoengineering is ‘inherently political’ and potentially
incompatible with democratic governance (Szerszynski et al. 2013).
Discussions within IR have focused around three main issues: the problems
that need to be confronted at a global level with regard to geoengineering; the
possibility of using existing treaties to oversee the testing and implementation of
geoengineering; and the design of institutions to manage geoengineering
processes.
Issues confronting the global governance of geoengineering

There is support for the view that in order to pursue geoengineering, a global
institution and framework needs to be developed to oversee testing and potential
implementation. Such a framework would confront a number of political issues
that would require resolution. A first question would be at what point geoengi-
neering testing would begin, and at what point it should be implemented. Given
concerns over possible side-effects of testing, let alone implementation, it would
appear that there could be much room for discussion around the point at which
testing should begin. Likewise a decision to move towards full implementation
would also be one around which there could be much disagreement – would it be
necessary to await a major climatic disaster, or would forecasts of imminent cata-
strophe be the point at which implementation should occur? Who would decide
what constituted a climate emergency, and for whom would it be a climate
emergency (Robock 2014: 179; Hulme 2014: 23–24)? Given the uncertainty of
climate science, predicting a ‘tipping point’ into another climate position would be
filled with uncertainty. Humphreys (2011: 111) suggests trigger points such as:
when a global temperature mean has been reached; a certain concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: or sea rises above a certain level. Each of these
would be highly political calls, with the possibility of a wide range of opinions.
Countries with fewer concerns about these issues would have the possibility of
slowing down and blocking decisions (Lane 2013: 126). While an international
organisation containing most or all countries in the world would be more legitimate
with regard to geoengineering decisions, this would also slow decision-making
about development (SRMGI 2012: 56).
106 Stephen Hobden
A second point over which there could possibly be contention is the tempera-
ture at which the new global climate should be set. It would be conceivable that
some countries would settle for higher temperatures than others. How would this
issue be resolved? A third possible dispute would be about compensation for losers
of geoengineering. How would decisions be reached about who the losers were?
Given the uncertainty about the outcomes of implementing a geoengineering
project, could any destructive weather event potentially be linked to geoengi-
neering activities? How would decision be reached about which events could be
linked to geoengineering? As Hulme (2014: 21–26) points out, how and for whom
a climate emergency is constituted is a deeply political question. What would the
form of compensation be, and where would the compensation come from?
The existing legal and political framework

Given these issues, and the potential difficulties of establishing new global institu-
tions, some writers have considered whether the oversight of geoengineering might
be accomplished through existing institutions and treaties. There are at present,
however, virtually no controls over geoengineering within international law
(Parson 2014: 95).
There are three types of international legal instruments that would be relevant to
the implementation of geoengineering projects: those that would be relevant
regardless of what technique was used; those that might be relevant to specific
techniques; or general norms of state behaviour (Lin 2013). The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on the Prohibition
of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,
and the Convention on Biological Diversity might all be of general relevance to
the implementation of geoengineering techniques. The UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea and various regional treaties could be relevant to ocean fertilisation
techniques, while issues related to atmospheric techniques could come within the
remit of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, the Montreal
Protocol, and the Outer Space Treaty. Perhaps more useful could be various norms
of international behaviour such as the norm to avoid transboundary harm, and the
precautionary principle. As Humphreys (2011: 106) indicates, the precautionary
principle is open to different formulations, from a total ban on geoengineering
because the results are uncertain to an acceptance because the risk from catastrophic
climate change is greater than the potential risks from geoengineering. It would
appear that, thus far, the existing legal instruments are not well suited to a controlled
development of geoengineering.
Designing new global institutions

The analysis of existing institutions and legal mechanisms suggests that these are
unlikely to provide a comprehensive means of resolving the central international
political issues relating to geoengineering. As a result, consideration has been given
to the possibility of designing new institutions for providing global governance of

geoengineering. Given the difficulties in decision-making and dealing with the
outcomes, there would be a need for a global forum and institution to deal with
both the development, decision to implement and possible outcomes from climate
change. If this path is being seriously considered then, as Lin (2013: 199) argues,
there would be advantages for creating this framework sooner rather than later. As
Hulme argues, there is a need both for global oversight of research, but also ‘clear
and plausible strategy for how the technology would be governed before and after
deployment’ (2014: 81).
The use of stratospheric sulphate injection would be relatively inexpensive
compared to, say, placing mirrors in space and it is conceivable that an individual,
company or state could act unilaterally to implement such an approach. According
to Keith (2013: ix) the equipment to get the process started would be available ‘for
the price of a Hollywood blockbuster’. It is the relatively low cost of this approach
that, compared to the massive costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, makes it
comparatively attractive (Keohane 2015: 23). Given the potential side-effects this
would be a very destabilising development, with the potential for global conflict
(Parson and Ernst 2013: 319). Parson, for example, argues that it may become
extremely tempting for states with the capacity to develop geoengineering to proceed
unilaterally, in the confidence that they can persuade others of its utility. This,
however, is a temptation that should be strongly resisted, and instead a cooperative
approach pursued (Parson 2014: 103).
Currently there is very little in the way of a mechanism for overseeing the
introduction of geoengineering projects. Parson and Keith argue that it would be
preferable if states negotiated an agreement on the development and implementation
of geoengineering earlier, when the stakes are lower, than later when the issue will
be more ‘fraught’, and agreement more difficult to achieve (2013: 1279). As Lloyd
and Oppenheimer (2014: 61) argue, ‘an international regime for SRM is needed to
avoid diversion of resources from mitigation of climate change, remove decision-
making powers from nonstate actors, encourage transparency, and reduce the
likelihood of unilateral action’.
Discussions within political science so far have dealt with the technical issues
surrounding geoengineering. These are certainly significant questions; however, a
focus on the institutional questions overlooks many of the wider matters of con-
cern with reference to the subject, in particular questions related to our relations
with the rest of nature. In order to provide a deeper analysis of geoengineering we
need to develop a post-human perspective.
What is post-humanism?
Post-humanism is currently making a significant impact across the social sciences.
The term has been used in a variety of ways, however (Wolfe, 2010: xi), some of
which contradict the way in which it will be used here. The most direct reading
would perhaps be to see the ‘post’ as meaning after humanity, and there is a
108 Stephen Hobden
growing literature examining how the planet might develop were the human
species to become extinct (Cairns 2005; Zalasiewicz 2008). Certainly there appears
to be the possibility of a mass human extinction event, or a civilizational collapse.
However, post-humanism is not used in this sense in this chapter. Another use of
the term relates to what might be described as trans-humanism (or perhaps even
hyper-humanism): thinking about human modification in various ways. This
literature has certainly raised questions about the boundaries of what it means to be
human (Haraway 1985), and of the political implications of increased technological
interventions within the human body (Hables Gray, 2001). This literature, however,
is very focused on the human and the possibilities for transcending the current
human condition through technology – with all the ethical issues that such a
transcendence might imply (Savulescu and Bostrom 2009).
By contrast to an after-humanism and a trans-humanism understanding of post-
humanism, the term will be used here to signal that the world consists of ‘more
than the human’, and that our politics should reflect this. It is essentially a critique
of the notion of human exceptionalism, which has been summarised by Haraway
as ‘the premise that humanity alone is not a spatial and temporal web of inter-
species dependencies’ (2008: 11). The notion that the human stands outside of the
rest of nature is a peculiarly Western one, which can be traced to the Judeo/
Christian/Islamic origins myth described in the book of Genesis wherein God
imparted dominion over creation to the original humans. The Western ‘enlight-
enment’, while attempting to replace religion with reason, maintained a dualistic
view of the position of humans with nature, by positing the view that humans
were unique in possessing reason, and that all other creatures were essentially the
equivalent of machines.
As Haraway (2008: 12–13) notes, there have been various developments that have
challenged the viewpoint that the human is the centre of creation: the Copernican
revolution that revealed that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than the other
way round (a discovery that has been enhanced by a greater knowledge of the
cosmos, which locates our solar system on the remoter edges of what in itself is a
rather remote galaxy); the Darwinian theory of evolution that located the human as a
particular branch of the great ape family, and ultimately related to all that lives on the
planet; Freud’s work on the subconscious; and the appearance of the cyborg, which
as discussed above raised questions about the boundaries of the human.
A further way in which the centrality of the human might be questioned is
through the appearance of what has been called ‘Big History’ (Christian 2004). Big
History takes as its timescale the existence of the universe rather than human
experience. On a timescale of approximately 13.7 billion years, the existence of
humans as a separate species is a very brief interlude. The study of Big History also
points to a further element of the post-human approach as it is understood here:
namely that there is a tendency for matter to develop into increasingly complex
formations. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the transition from the soup of
elemental particles that came into existence at the time of the Big Bang through to
the architecture of the human brain.
As with post-humanism, complexity thinking has taken a number of different

forms, with competing ontological and epistemological assumptions. Edgar Morin
has suggested that there is a distinction between notions of ‘restricted’ and ‘generalised’
complexity. A restricted notion of complexity, for Morin (2007), implies that
complexity can be ‘tamed’, while a generalised notion of complexity suggests a
complete rethinking of the way we gain knowledge, and act in the world. In the
social sciences, it has been suggested that complexity thinking has been applied in
at least four different ways (Cudworth and Hobden 2011: 37–50), which can result
in very different forms of analysis and conclusions.
The post-humanism described here is based on an understanding of complexity
that draws in particular on Morin’s notion of generalised complexity, and is based
around the central notion of the complex adaptive system. While there is a long
history of systems thinking in IR (especially Waltz 1979; Buzan and Little 2000;
Albert and Hilkermeier 2004; also see Cudworth and Hobden 2011: Chapter 3),
the understanding of system here is somewhat different. In this understanding,
everything above the level of the most elemental particles is a system of some type,
and as such we live in a ‘world of systems’ (Bunge 1979). This extends through
atoms, molecules, bodies up to the level of galaxies and the universe. From this
perspective, all systems provide the environment in which any one system operates,
and developments in any one system can have implications for any other system.
System is used in this sense to indicate that a notional boundary can be drawn
around an interacting set of units, indicating that any particular system has an element
of autonomy. A system, such as the human body, can be understood as distinct from
its environment; however, it will be affected by the systems around it whether
societal (the education system) or material (the climate). It will absorb other systems
in the form of food, and be invaded by other systems such as viruses. The actions
of any one body will contribute to the development of the systems around, and
will eventually be reconsolidated into surrounding systems. Hence systems are
understood to be open and overlapping. To understand open systems we need to
analyse elements both within the system and its environment, whereas closed sys-
tems only require an understanding of the elements that make up the system.
Systems are therefore not understood to be fixed, but in a constant state of flux,
with periods of greater or lesser stability. One way in which these processes are
understood is through an analysis of feedback. In conventional systems thinking,
the understanding of feedback has focused on negative feedback; those processes
that take a system closer to equilibrium – for example, a central heating thermostat that
switches on when the temperature drops below a certain level and switches off
once the temperature has risen – thus keeping the temperature within a limited
range. Complexity theorists have also been concerned with positive feedback;
those processes that take a system further away from equilibrium, and potentially
lead a system into terminal levels of instability. The climate again provides an
example, with the claim that increasing temperature rises will lead to thawing of
Arctic tundra leading to the release of further greenhouse gases stored in the frozen
ground, and thus accelerating processes of climate change.
110 Stephen Hobden
A complexity approach understands these developments as contingent rather

than deterministic, and that developments within a complex system will be subject
to ‘time’s arrow’. In other words, systems only develop in one direction, as com-
pared to Newtonian systems, which can operate forwards or backwards. Historical
developments in any one system will have an impact on future developments.
Compare, for instance, the operation of a watch, to that of a rainforest.
Underlying the ideas of the complex adaptive system is the concept of self-
organisation. The claim of complexity thinkers is that there are self-organising
properties in matter. These properties account for the development from the soup
of particles at the time of the Big Bang through to the complex systems that we
now see around us, and as described by the proponents of Big History. For Morin
(1992: 127–132), these self-organising processes are vital for understanding not
only how systems come into existence, but also the ways in which they maintain
their existence.
In the study of the social world, complexity thinkers would make the claim that
we can observe the same processes of work in social systems that we can see in
matter, in terms of the development of systems and their tendency to become
ever-more complex. Significant here is the work of Gunderson and Holling
(2002), and their associates who have examined the interactions between social and
non-human nature systems. This is not to say that there are not particular features
of social systems which need to be taken into account, such as the human capacity
for abstract thought, which can contribute to the acceleration of processes of
increasing complexity (Westley et al. 2002).
Complex adaptive systems provide the cornerstone of complexity thinking, and
self-organisation points to the tendency of matter to form more complex combi-
nations, then the process that unites them is the idea of emergence. Emergence
suggests that the interaction of units will create system level effects. Crucial for
many complexity thinkers is the claim that these system level characteristics are not
predictable at the unit level. In other words novel and unexpected features appear
at the systems level. Consciousness is frequently cited as an example of emergence – it
would be hard to predict simply from an analysis of the human brain that conscious-
ness would be the product of the interrelationship of its parts – indeed even with a
knowledge of consciousness it has, so far, been hard to trace back the processes in
the brain that lead to consciousness.
Complexity thinkers suggest therefore that there is always more present at the
systems level than an aggregation of the parts, and as a result system level features
cannot be understood simply by analysing a combination of the constituent parts
(Bunge, 2010, 75). Emergent features also place constraints on the constituent
parts, hence in some ways the emergent features are both less than (in the sense
that they put limits on the constituent units) and more than the sum of the parts.
Furthermore, emergence is a transformative process. As Morin (1992: 112) notes,
‘everything which forms transforms’. There are complex processes of interactions
between unit and system levels in that the unit interactions create emergent features
which in turn have transformative effects on the units themselves.
A significant feature of complex systems is that interactions between systems and

within systems are considered to be non-linear. At times, small perturbations can
cause large impacts, while at other times very large occurrences can have minimal
impact. In complex systems there is the possibility for systems to ‘flip’ to an alternate
state in an unpredictable fashion. Climate scientists, for example, have raised concerns
that one of the possible outcomes of climate change could be for the climate to
undergo a massive and irreversible change with little or no forewarning (Alley et al.
2003). This in addition raises questions of agency, with actors unable to fully predict
what will be the outcome of their actions (Cudworth and Hobden 2013: 448).
Ultimately complex thinking rejects Newtonian models as the basis for analysis
(Homer-Dixon 2009). Within and between complex systems, cause and effect are
understood to be potentially non-local and simultaneous. As Morin notes, complex
systems operate in a ‘tangle of actions, interactions, and feedback’ (2008: 84).
Hence, to predict what the ultimate elements of causality are in a complex system
is incredibly difficult, and perhaps ultimately impossible. The implications are that
predicting the future trajectory of complex systems is probably akin to guesswork,
and attempting to gauge what impacts our actions will have on complex systems is
similarly problematic.
The post-humanism described in this chapter develops from this understanding
of complexity. Complexity is a feature that can be observed across a range of both
animate and inanimate systems, and the claim being made about complexity is an
ontological one rather than a normative one. Other understandings of complexity
can result in markedly different political programmes. Axelrod and Cohen (1999)
suggest that it is possible to ‘harness complexity’, by using the dynamics of complex
systems in productive ways. In a similar fashion Chris (2015) advocates releasing the
power of complex systems to develop the most effective forms of geoengineering – a
rather different conclusion from the more cautious one that will be suggested here.
Complexity thinking has been applied across a range of social science disciplines,
and has been particularly influential, for example, in business studies. However, it
can also be used to highlight the hierarchies of power and forms of exclusion both
within human systems and between human and non-human systems (Walby 2009).
What is particularly significant is that a post-human approach highlights the inter-
connectedness of systems and provides a way of highlighting how human systems
are totally immersed within a range of human and non-human systems. This post-
human viewpoint makes the claim that human activity can’t be separated from
interactions with the rest of nature, and has the ultimate aim of challenging
a human/nature divide. The human species is not just ‘in’ nature but is rather ‘of’
nature.
Given that we live in the world and have priorities about states of affairs that we
might consider more or less acceptable, we need to think about how to live with
complexity. In terms of thinking about policymaking, a post-human approach has
suggested three guiding principles (Cudworth and Hobden, 2011: 184–185). First,
a precautionary principle. Given the general unpredictability of the interactions of
complex systems, policy should be guided by the general principles that point to
112 Stephen Hobden
the potential hazards that our actions may cause. The fact that small actions in
complex systems can potentially have large impacts would suggest that all actions
should be considered very carefully, in particular with regard to their possible
negative effects. A second principle would be one of humility. In a totally inter-
connected world we need to consider how actions not only affect human systems,
but also the rest of nature. As Morin has noted, policymakers need to overcome
the ‘arrogant dogmatism which rules non-complex forms of thinking’ (2008: 97).
Finally policymakers need to take into account the resilience of systems in thinking
about developing policies. Are policies likely to increase or decrease the resilience
of particular systems? If they are likely to decrease the resilience of systems that we
want to maintain then this would be an argument for reconsidering particular
policy options.
Returning to Haraway’s point made earlier, the central contribution of post-
humanist thinking is to encourage a view of the world that sees the human species
within a web of co-dependencies on both animate and inanimate systems. Recent
analysis of climate change would suggest that the web of interdependencies is
becoming severely disrupted, with potentially disastrous consequences for the
human species. What also needs to be included is that climate change is already
proving disastrous for a number of other species (Kolbert 2014) and other systems.
How then might the post-humanism advocated here contribute to discussions of
geoengineering?
Geoengineering and post-humanism

If a geoengineering project goes forwards it will represent the largest human-
organised event, with the possible exception of the Manhattan Project. Solar
Radiation Management, which is being touted as the most effective and affordable
method, would affect every aspect of the lived environment of the planet with
implications for everything from the Earth’s geology upwards. A post-human
approach, built on a foundation of complexity thinking is an effective way of
capturing the extent of these effects. Post-humanism envisages a world of inter-
connected and overlapping systems where impacts in one system can have non-
linear reactions across a range of systems. There are numerous systems interacting
here, crossing from the climate to human and non-human systems, and on to
inanimate systems. Many analyses of the possible impacts of geoengineering have
stressed the sheer unpredictability of implementing such a system; a post-human
approach would anticipate such unpredictability when dealing with inter-
connected complex systems. So, for example, Thornes and Pope (2014: 18)
indicate that ‘the Earth is a highly complex non-linear system with numerous
feedbacks which are not fully understood’, while Fleming (2007: 48) argues that
there is an ‘inherent unknowability of what would happen if we tried to tinker
with the immensely complex planetary climate system’. Small-scale or incre-
mental testing won’t resolve these problems because it is only when full imple-
mentation has been achieved that it would be possible to gauge what the effects
have been, so ‘could we ever have a basis for proceeding to deployment at scale
with confidence?’ (Bunzl 2015: 159).
Additionally, geoengineering raises more direct questions about human relations
with the rest of nature. As Owen argues, a decision to implement solar radiation
management would reflect a decision to opt for a particular pattern of social orga-
nisation. It offers the potential for humans to continue their current development
path regardless of the other ecological costs. As such, it would imply a particular
view of human relations with the rest of nature, one that envisaged ‘science and
innovation as an endless frontier where nothing, including nature, is beyond
human understanding, use and control… A Baconian relationship with nature
defined in terms of mastery and even domination’ (Owen 2014: 214). Being pre-
pared to take such an action reinforces a view of the human as a ‘distinct subjective
entity that is separate from the world around it, a world on which, guided by its
cognitive abilities, it acts to pursue its own individual and collective interests’
(Hamilton 2013b: 42).
This could be viewed as the continuation, and perhaps apex of a particular view
of human–nature relations. For Hamilton, the implementation of geoengineering
represents ‘the culmination of the transition to the mechanical conception of
nature and the parallel philosophies built on the idea of the autonomous rational
subject exercising control over an inert environment’ (Hamilton 2013b: 56). Such
a viewpoint sees the human as separate from the rest of nature, with the environment
as a resource to be deployed in the pursuit of human interests.
While all sorts of issues have been raised regarding the potential problems that
implementation of geoengineering might encounter, questions might also be raised
regarding the effects on human conceptions of the world if geoengineering were
successfully activated. According to Davies (2013: 75), ‘if it solved global warming
it would do so by dominating nature, not submitting to it’. As Hulme notes ‘the
climate would become artificial in the literal sense of becoming an artefact – a
product of human endeavour’ (2014: 105). As such this would represent a perma-
nent rupture between humans and the rest of nature. According to Jamieson, ‘it
would still have a bad effect of reinforcing human arrogance and the view that the
proper relationship to nature is one of domination’ (quoted in Bunzl, 2015: 157).
A successful deployment might suggest that there were no limits to the possibilities
for the human domination of the rest of nature.
Questions of geoengineering reflect deeper questions about human relations
with the rest of nature and about the kind of planet we want to subsist on. As a
species we are likely to be confronted by a choice about whether to pursue
geoengineering as a solution to catastrophic climate change as opposed to pursuing
means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This decision, Nicholson (2013: 328)
argues, raises questions regarding ‘what kind of future do we craft’, and there exists
an alternative perspective that ‘would privilege shared sacrifice, directed toward
living well and meaningfully within ecological limits’.
If we consider systems beyond the human, then, given the potentially disastrous
impacts on other species of climate change, there could be an argument in favour
114 Stephen Hobden
of geoengineering despite the concerns raised. With other species dying out at a
rate far above the predicted background level, geoengineering could reverse some
of the impacts, possibly suggesting that this could be an argument to proceed.
However, as Ronald Sandler (2012) points out, there are various problems with
this argument. First, to consider the positive aspects of geoengineering leaves out a
number of its other possible impacts, in particular other ecological effects. Second,
there is a huge assumption that geoengineering would work as expected without
negative side-effects, and third, in the case of solar radiation management, nothing
would occur to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the
oceans with the associated impacts on marine life. In terms of our relations with
the rest of nature, Sandler concludes that rapid reductions in carbon dioxide
emissions would be the best option, followed by forms of carbon dioxide removal.
However, it is also possible that climate change disruption might become so
extreme for other species that solar radiation management might not make the
situation worse.
In the previous section of this chapter, three elements for gauging policy pro-
posals from a post-human perspective were examined. Looked at from this angle,
the geoengineering proposals, especially solar radiation management, would appear
to conflict with these guidelines. In the first instance it was suggested that policy
should be guided by a precautionary principle. While any policy option is subject
to uncertainty, the levels of complexity and unpredictability, as noted above, with
regard to geoengineering would appear to be extensive. While a point may be
reached where dramatic climate change could perhaps only be avoided through
geoengineering, the possible impacts suggest that other policy options (in particular
reducing greenhouse gas emissions) are not only preferable, but extremely
preferable.
A second guideline for policymaking was the view that the human species
should have more humility in terms of thinking about its relations with the rest of
nature. Geoengineering projects have been seen as the epitome of human hubris
(Owen, 2014; Thornes and Pope, 2014), and hence completely contrary to
humility. Geoengineering also reflects a particular notion of control, a human
belief in the species’ ability to dominate the rest of nature to its own ends. This
optimism in human capability appears to be somewhat at odds with the power of the
rest of nature to undermine and contradict that competence. As Hamilton notes:
Earth-system science has revealed that the earth as a whole, our living envir-
onment, is vastly more complex, enigmatic, and uncontrollable than we have
come to believe, and that taking in these facts causes us to cease thinking we
can master the earth and to scale back our ambitions.
(Hamilton 2013b: 48)
Embarking on geoengineering would indicate a human claim to take on a

commanding feature of the rest of nature and signal that the species had confirmed
a very specific understanding of its place within existence. Should geoengineering
occur and provide a successful resolution to climate problems, this would endorse
this specific understanding of human capabilities. A post-humanist perspective
would be sceptical, alongside Hamilton’s views, regarding the success of a potential
geoengineering project, given the high levels of unpredictability in the climate
system.
This leads into the third policy suggestion: a concern to maintain and improve
the resilience of systems or at least not to take actions that might undermine the
resilience of systems. Solar radiation management has the potential to undermine
the resilience of systems at all levels. At a climatic level, suggestions have been
made that it would disrupt rainfall patterns in different parts of the world – having
a knock-on impact on ecological, hydrological and food systems. Solar radiation
management also would not do anything to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere, and would thus contribute to increasing levels of acidification
of the oceans – reducing their capacity to support marine life. There are also sug-
gestions that solar radiation management, particularly if implemented outside of an
international institution could lead to conflict, either over the issue of temperature
levels, or related to the effects. It has been suggested that the great powers are
likely to introduce a system that prioritises their particular interests.
Geoengineering is therefore unlikely to fit within the parameters that have been
suggested for a post-human policy approach – the Earth’s climate system is too
unpredictable to be able to implement a geoengineering project without a very
high level of uncertainty about the long-term results. They suggest a view of
human–rest of nature relationship that assumes an ability to control nature, and is
likely to result in the undermining of the resilience of systems across a range of
situations.
Conclusion
In the debate over geoengineering it is easy to slip into presenting straw men
positions. Many of those that raise questions about the feasibility, outcomes and
cost of geoengineering acknowledge that at some point a form of geoengineering
may become necessary to avoid disastrous climate change, while a strong advocate
of further research and trials such as Keith (2013: 149) states that ‘no sensible
person advocates immediate commitment to large-scale geo-engineering’. How-
ever, as Victor notes, while ‘formerly a freak show in otherwise serious discussions
of climate science and policy, geoengineering today is a bedfellow’ (2008: 323).
Where the focus of debate seems to be is whether starting to develop ideas about
geoengineering and testing systems may lead to their inevitable deployment. Not
only that, but also that geoengineering may appear to offer a ‘get out of jail free’
card, which means that there is no need to address issues of overconsumption. For
example, Richard Branson (cited in Nicholson 2013: 324) has claimed that
geoengineering would allow us to ‘carry on flying our planes and driving our cars’.
The argument over testing is now one that is probably lost, and, following the
discussion of options in the 2014 IPCC report, geoengineering has entered the
116 Stephen Hobden
mainstream. While, as indicated in the last section, a post-humanist perspective

would caution against geoengineering, it is not unreasonable to acknowledge that
if it is going to be seriously considered then it would be better for a more tested
version to be taken forwards rather than a rushed implementation. What perhaps is
the best that can be hoped for in the current position is that full discussions and
perhaps limited testing will reveal how uncertain the geoengineering path would
be – that it offers an escape route that might bring considerably worse outcomes,
and in the light of that the human species might focus its energies on a non-
geoengineering solution to climate change – one that focuses on a reassessment of
the carrying capacity of the planet, and of our relationship with the rest of nature.
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7
JUSTICE DISCOURSES AND THE
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Diverse perspectives on an uneven landscape
Ross Gillard, Lucy Ford and Gabriela Kütting
Introduction
Discussions of justice in Global Environmental Politics (GEP) have taken on many
different hues. Questions of equitable access to clean environments and natural
resources are central to environmental justice discourses. They seek to expose the
unequal distribution of environmental degradation and challenge the uneven
recognition of different groups’ interests in governing environmental issues. Often
couched within traditional state-centric dichotomies of ‘North/South’ or ‘developed/
developing’ relations, a range of justice issues has emerged within international
debates about sustainable development, global environmental governance and
development entitlements.
Sociological considerations are essential to identifying the often racial, class-based
and gendered nature of environmental injustice; something feminist theory has
developed through the concept of intersectionality (Davis 2008; Kaijser and
Kronsell 2014; Lykke 2010). For example, the unequal access some groups have to
knowledge and power can affect the distribution of environmental ills within and
across state boundaries. Such procedural justice issues of access to power and voice raise
questions about inclusivity in environmental governance, inter-generational justice,
and the challenge of representing multiple concerns in complex environmental
decision-making.
Further, a deep green perspective has sought to move away from the anthro-
pocentrism of traditional social justice discourses by challenging nature/society
distinctions, relocating humans within a broadly ecocentric perspective and
extending the notion of rights to the non-human world. This ecological justice view
directly questions many of the fundamental principles of current environmental
politics and governance, thereby provoking critical reflection on how nature is
interpreted and represented in social institutions.
Justice discourses 121
This chapter engages with each of these social and environmental discourses in
turn and reflects upon how they have influenced GEP and International Relations
(IR) over the past twenty years. We illustrate our arguments with examples from
land-related environmental justice issues. First we introduce some entrenched
problematiques of power in IR.We then introduce the discursive diversity of envir-
onmental justice before tying the two together with a discussion of their relevance
to GEP studies. In particular, we draw lessons from critical feminism to argue that a
discourse of ecological justice and the theoretical notion of intersectionality provide
a sharper analytical edge to that offered by the focus on institutions found in much
mainstream IR.
Justice in global environmental politics

Twenty years ago, an explicit discourse of justice was largely absent from GEP
research. Although a distinct discourse of environmental justice has since emerged
at the international level, the themes of inequality and justice are not necessarily
new to the field. Precursors can be found in early textbooks, where questions of
justice and power are implicit in many critical discussions (e.g., Vogler and Imber
1996) and are even more explicit in later texts (Paterson 2000; Lipschutz 2004;
Kütting and Lipschutz 2009). In mainstream environmental politics, the discourse
of sustainable development did much to draw attention to questions of inter- and
intra-generational justice (Shue 1992; Thomas 1992; Vogler and Imber 1996). Key
textbooks are now reflecting the prominence of justice discourses around myriad
environmental topics (e.g., Parks and Timmons Roberts 2006; Acselrad 2008;
Ehresman and Stevis 2010).
When Vogler and Imber edited The Environment and International Relations 20
years ago, one of the key objectives was to determine how the environment fits
into IR. The main questions were about institutions and how environmental
norms developed, i.e., how international institutions rose to the challenge of
environmental problems but also how IR theory could incorporate the environ-
ment. Writers such as Williams (1996) and Saurin (1996) worked on integrating
the environment into international political economy, while Bretherton (1996)
made a connection between gender and the environment. Theories of justice and
questions of social power relations between various environmental actors were not
yet at the forefront of IR analysis. Since then, they have evolved through critical
engagement with an increasingly pluralising governance agenda.
Some have argued that the issue of climate change has been a key driver of
emerging discourses of justice in GEP (e.g., Parks and Timmons Roberts 2006:
329). This is true to an extent, but there has been a deepening engagement with
questions of justice in global environmental politics from various perspectives and
with regard to various environmental concerns. Some of this scholarship poses
troubling questions to IR and its assumptions. Many climate-related writings draw
on John Rawls and other moral philosophers, seeking to update and apply their
ethical principles for a just society (Ehresman and Stevis 2010: 89; Gardiner 2011).
122 Ross Gillard, Lucy Ford and Gabriela Kütting
For instance, the notion of ‘cosmopolitan justice’ has featured prominently in academic
GEP discourses. Here, the difficulties associated with nation-state regimes –
sovereignty, national interest, global competitiveness – are side-stepped by adjust-
ing the Rawlsian premise of equal rights and responsibilities for all ‘peoples’ (those
affiliated to a given state) to all ‘persons’ (regardless of their citizenry) on the planet
(Brock 2009; Harris 2013; Hayden 2005). This position challenges many of the
theoretical foundations of IR, making its applied institutions no longer the preferred
medium for governing global environmental issues. Ultimately, cosmopolitan justice
argues that the needs, capabilities and values of individuals are universal (although
culturally nuanced), and are thus better met through collaboration within and
across – as opposed to between – traditional state boundaries or political jurisdictions.
Broadly speaking, environmental justice refers to the application of principles of
social justice to understanding and managing human–environment interactions.
Environmental justice analyses and actions have focused on different dimensions
(distributive and procedural) and subjects (individuals, collectives and non-humans).
For example, contestation over changes in land use can be understood by asking:
who benefits, how is this determined, and does this differ for individuals, com-
munities or the environment? This conceptual diversity developed in conjunction
with a range of different real-world social movements and political discourses
(Schlosberg 2007, 2013); for example, indigenous communities speaking of cultural
representation in regard to land disputes in North America. This dialogue between
theory and practice has been fruitful for environmental justice and global environ-
mental politics alike, bringing together environmental policymakers and activists of
all stripes (Agyeman and Evans 2004; Schlosberg and Collins 2014).
The distributive dimension of environmental justice focuses on environmental
‘goods’ (access to clean and healthy soil, air, water, space, land) and environmental
‘bads’ (pollution, sites of industrial production, urban decay, lack of green spaces,
land appropriation). This often comes down to space and place, making critical
human geography and environmental justice close allies in GEP research (Walker
and Bulkeley 2006; Anguelovski 2015). Early environmental justice movements
sought to oppose the unfair distribution of environmental bads, drawing attention to
correlations between marginalised communities and the ill effects of industrialisation
(Shrader-Frechette 2005). These discourses focused on the tussle between margin-
alised communities and exploitative enterprises amid unequal governance arrange-
ments. Drawing on utilitarian principles, the distributional dimension of justice
takes an aggregated approach to the analysis of (environmental) costs and benefits
within society (Sen 2011), and this makes it readily transferrable to the study of
international relations and global governance.
Following this line of argument, much contemporary environmental justice dis-
course addresses the increasingly unequal distribution of various costs and benefits
associated with human–environment interactions in a globalised world. For
instance, where changes in land use occur as a result of agricultural intensification,
the costs (e.g., loss of common access and biodiversity) may be borne by the
already vulnerable (e.g., pastoralists and ecosystems) while the benefits (e.g., crops
and revenue) accrue to the already affluent (e.g., landowners and investors). Such
occurrences have met with numerous forms of resistance that can be collectively
described as an ‘environmentalism of the poor’ (Martínez-Alier 2003). Here, the
spatial-temporal disconnect between localised and delayed costs for distant and
immediate benefits is crucial, illustrating the truly global nature of many environ-
mental injustices. This mismatch in burden sharing and political recognition has
fuelled a remarkable growth in social and environmental movement theory and
practice (Martínez-Alier 1997; Martin et al. 2013). As rising trends in inequality
associated with land use change, biodiversity loss and natural capital depletion
become more prominent, questions are increasingly being asked of the procedural
– and power – dimensions of the political and governance arrangements that pro-
duce these effects.
The procedural dimension of environmental justice refers to both the recognition
of multiple actors and their participation in environmental politics and governance.
Arguably the latter cannot be meaningfully enacted without the former and this
interdependence is often at the heart of procedural justice discourses (Martin et al.
2015). For instance, at the site-specific level where socio-cultural identities are
intimately bound to the natural environment, the politics of contesting environ-
mental degradation and land rights may be as much about protecting ecosystems as
it is about certain values or ways of life (Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010). Recog-
nising the diversity of actors affected by environmental issues and including them in
efforts to govern are fundamental tenets of environmental justice that continue to
challenge the state-centricity of IR and much of GEP (Schlosberg 2007).
The more applied body of literature on global governance, specifically relating
to transboundary environmental issues, has also been forced to engage with pertinent
questions of justice, both in terms of defining what is just but also who has
the power to define just outcomes. In the field of GEP, this has primarily been
done through an institutionalist approach based on simple assumptions about the
involvement of multiple non-state actors and their behaviours. Superficially, this
could be described as more democratic and therefore potentially more just. How-
ever, pluralism by itself says little about the procedural aspects of these governance
arrangements and how they arrive at distributive outcomes. Clearly, notions of
power and justice are intrinsically linked, as the equity of distribution and recog-
nition cannot be evaluated without reference to power and politics. It is to these
discourses and their influence on environmental IR that we now turn.
Power, justice and the limitations of global

environmental governance
Much IR scholarship suggests that by bringing as many nation-states together as
possible, international institutions can address the increasingly globalised nature of
human–environment relations and the governance challenges they pose (e.g.,
Harris 2013). However, in recent times, the political assumptions and ethical
foundations upon which such institutions are built have been heavily criticised.
Not least for insufficiently challenging global power inequalities (procedural justice)
and for producing governance arrangements that do not protect – let alone
improve the position of – already vulnerable people and natural environments
(Gardiner 2011; Okereke 2007). For example, in the case of international biodi-
versity conservation and the protected land disputes it gives rise to, local livelihoods
and non-economic valuations of nature have frequently been shown to come
second to global capitalist priorities and logics (Holmes 2011; Okereke 2007; Sul-
livan 2013; Swyngedouw 2013). By adopting such discourses and endorsing biased
institutional arrangements, these approaches to environmental justice risk depoliti-
cising and disempowering their subjects.
Where power imbalances are explicitly invoked, it is primarily through the lens
of mainstream state-centric IR theory. As a general rule, scholarship on global
environmental governance and global environmental politics more widely, fails to
take account of inequalities in social power relations, within and between various
levels of analysis (for example, Breitmeier et al. 2006; Mitchell et al. 2006). Within
IR, power is operationalised as the ability to set rules (explicitly through formal
channels but also implicitly through social interactions and defining the terms of
debate), thereby making other actors do what they may not have done otherwise
(Lukes 1974). Thus, studies of power in global environmental governance are
largely about decision-making and agenda-setting, with only limited attention
given to the functioning of discursive power as well as intersectional denominators
of power, such as race, class and gender.
Arguably this latter, more social, form of power has fundamental repercussions
for the generation of all other types of power; from the material use of force, to
political agenda-setting. By normalising one way of living in the world over others,
it provides (and defines) the foundations and legitimacy that all other formal pro-
cesses rest on. There are numerous theoretical frameworks available that mobilise
concepts of discourse, knowledge and power to explain how social relations can
produce instances of inequality and processes of injustice – particularly with regard
to the politics of governing (see Wetherell et al. 2001; Dean 2010; Flyvbjerg 2001).
Yet their insights remain largely marginalised by the dominant institutionalist and
realist traditions of IR and GEP.
There are several reasons for this disregard of social power, particularly in studies
of justice and equity. In essence, mainstream IR literature is based on the neoliberal-
institutionalist assumption that multilateral institutions and their frameworks are the
best way to address transboundary problems and it is, therefore, concerned with the
fine-tuning of such arrangements. This prioritises the aggregated state level over
distinct social groups. As a result, scholarship on global environmental politics and
governance tends to be concerned primarily with relations between narrowly defined
political actors and the structures within which they operate. Such scholars regard
institutions as the most important social and political variable, both in terms of
causing change and prescribing solutions (Young 2002: 3). Normatively, they are
concerned with framing and solving environmental problems as political, institutional
or policy issues. Arguably this instrumentalist approach is symptomatic of political
science more generally: it is concerned with setting up institutional frameworks to

solve problems facing sentient actors with officially recognised standing (in both the
legal and political sense) (Cox 1981).
By contrast, we argue that environmental problems are unique in social science
analysis: not least because nature (our shorthand for the non-human environment)
must be represented and interpreted by interested parties (see Stone 2010; Latour
2004). This has fundamental implications for how nature is valued; for example,
culturally, politically and economically. Not only does it highlight the importance
of discursive power, it also makes nature vulnerable to unjust compromises; for
example, through the application of governance arrangements that may be robust
politically but ineffective ecologically. One only has to think of the inability of
agrochemical regulation to prevent biodiversity loss to see this in action. In com-
parison, the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) pays close attention to
issues of social and environmental justice (Martin et al. 2013). It recognises the role
of indigenous or traditional knowledge and communities in its groundbreaking
article 8(j), where knowledge and its uses are seen as important and worthy of
protection, and where it is stated that indigenous peoples should participate in
political processes and in mechanisms of benefit-sharing. Democratisation processes
in many countries involved the recognition of indigenous peoples, and it has
become clear that indigenous peoples and local communities play an important role
in the conservation of biological diversity. For example, it has become increasingly
obvious since the 1970s that traditional forms of agriculture have created an enor-
mous genetic diversity of seeds, a process that is undermined by modern
agriculture.
However, the political and legal recognition of indigenous peoples and local
communities is often constrained by the fact that their realisation is left to
national legislation processes (and their respective power relations). As mentioned
earlier, this can result in a prioritising of national economic interests and logics
ahead of local livelihoods and ways of life. Additionally, the principle of national
sovereignty in the CBD concedes national governments – and not local peoples –
the rights over genetic material. Ultimately the recognition and participation of
indigenous peoples and local communities is not backed up by legally recoverable
rights in international or national processes (e.g., in the negotiation of land access
agreements). Alternative approaches such as traditional resource rights or com-
munity rights demonstrate the presence of social and discursive power; however,
they do not as yet result in sufficient legitimacy to produce tangible outcomes for
the disadvantaged.
Such examples suggest that even highly critical GEP is constrained by the reali-
ties of transnational policymaking and dealing with the day-to-day business of
coalition-building, i.e., focusing on what is realistic and acceptable rather than on
what is necessary according to principles of justice. As a result of this, there is sig-
nificant disconnect between analyses and practices, leaving the discursive and
ideological roots of injustice in the shadows. Like all shadows, justice and the
environment are unavoidable themes that continue to trouble mainstream IR.
Multiple forms of environmental justice inquiry have evolved dialectically in

relation to the harsh realities of global power inequalities, resulting in an expansive
and diverse set of political discourses and movements. As Schlosberg (2013) points
out, environmental justice is about more than just clean air; it includes the every-
day experience of different types of injustice felt by different individuals and groups
at different levels of social life. It is about mobilising against a variety of social
structures through which injustices are expressed, thereby making the politics of
economy and ecology clear and contestable. As a result, there has been growing
acknowledgement of issues of power, knowledge and justice in GEP research. Yet
this acknowledgement continues to operate within the neorealist or neoliberal
frameworks of IR, clinging to the assumption that narrowly defined political
institutions and actors should be the primary mechanisms and architects of global
environmental governance.
This focus on international institutions or new forms of governance implies that
the inclusion of multiple actors is in itself an advancement of procedural justice and
thus political legitimacy. However, an increase in participation may not do anything
to address power disparities, particularly those of a social nature that operate outside
of, or go unnoticed within, a given institution. Environmental governance
approaches have stressed the importance of legitimacy and accountability, often
framing these concerns in the language of social and environmental justice (Pattberg
and Widerberg 2015). However, such research is framed with the normative aim of
making institutions more accountable rather than with justice concerns as the main
variable, especially at the international level. It is important to avoid mistakenly
equating increased accountability or representativeness with improved levels of
equity.
The progressive potential of environmental justice discourses has struggled to
flourish at the international level, where the reductionism of political realism continues
to dominate (Dietelhoff and Müller 2005; Manuel-Navarrette 2010). For example, in
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),
where responses to the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change for natural
resource-dependent communities are being negotiated, the resilience and adaptive
capacity of those with land-based livelihoods can get lost in an aggregate discourse
of ‘vulnerable people in need of top-down intervention’. Such discourses are pro-
mulgated and legitimised by the presence, but lack of influence, of non-indus-
trialised nation-states at the decision-making table (Thomas and Twyman 2005;
Paavola 2005). Despite – or precisely because of – this poor fit between local values
and international institutions (Paavola et al. 2009), environmental justice movements
continue to proliferate as alternatives to the UNFCCC (Jordan et al. 2015).
In the Coxian sense (1981), many global environmental governance arrangements
constitute a top-down approach to problem-solving, employed by powerful actors
in order to orchestrate and manipulate local communities within a hegemonic
system. Yet, this type of literature takes an uncritically positive view of civil society
engagement. For example, local ‘epistemic communities’ are seen as benign,
democratic and participatory antidotes. Within this view, communities have
transcended traditional forms of regulation, potentially signalling the beginning of a

transnational or cosmopolitan era in which the power of states and hegemonic
economic actors is undermined (Kaldor 2003). Indeed, such knowledge networks
are vital elements of an emancipatory global civil society, but we should be wary of
glorifying them as alternative forms of governance capable of challenging the
sclerotic power structures of traditional state-centric policymaking and diplomacy
(Wapner 1995; Paterson 2000; Jordan et al. 2015). For instance, as Holmes (2011:
1) argues in the case of national parks and protected areas, in a neoliberal world the
roles and responsibilities of states, non-governmental actors and corporate actors
alike are all still defined by the functioning of markets.
Further, through elite discourses of ‘Earth Systems Governance’ and ‘Planetary
Boundaries’ mainstream global environmental governance presents an instrumen-
talist principle of preserving ecological system states that are of value to humans.
Not only does this prioritise expert forms of ecological and socio-economic
knowledge, it also reinforces a technocratic approach to addressing human–
environment interactions. Such discourses are shining examples of how mainstream
IR has sought to respond to the pressures of complex environmental issues through
aggregated discourses, depoliticisation and top-down intervention. Within this con-
text, procedural and distributive justice concerns have been superficially addressed
at best, and the fundamental questions underpinning how a socially and environ-
mentally equitable society can be conceived of, let alone brought about, remain
unanswered.
Some environmental justice scholars such as Bullard (2005) and Timmons
Roberts and Parks (2007) go so far as to argue that true environmental improvement
or healthy nature–society relations can only exist in an equitable society. Yet it
does not follow that an equitable society is necessarily a sustainable society. In other
words, the relationship is not mutually causal. For instance, when an outside social
force can take on the role of environmental guardian in the absence of any (officially
recognised) local interest in the matter – would this be equitable? Put more generally,
does place have a global or a local environmental ethic and does the principle of self-
determination stand above environmental interests? Underlying these tensions is
the issue of who decides what constitutes desirable sustainability in a particular
context; in effect, social power. Discourses of political ecology and ecological jus-
tice argue that progressive agendas need to address both questions of justice and
sustainability.
Political ecology and ecological justice

Questions of power have long been the subject of green political theory (e.g.,
Laferrière and Stoett 1999). However, this has often implicitly separated economics
and politics. A political ecology approach reunites politics, economics and justice
with deep green thought to produce a new environmental justice discourse. For
example, Joan Martínez-Alier sees the clash between environment and economy as
the root cause of much ecological conflict. He argues that a social system based on
accumulation of wealth and unlimited growth is fundamentally incompatible with

the functioning of complex ecosystems (2002; see also Kütting 2000, 2010).
It is important to remember that the presence of social justice does not guarantee
environmental improvement, i.e., bads may be more evenly distributed between
different social groups rather than ceasing to exist. Social justice can be seen as
independent of environmental improvement. To reunite the two, an ecological
value base to society is needed, wherein the integrity of the natural environment is
seen as a prerequisite to human flourishing. That environmental justice discourses
such as political ecology have made this clear is perhaps their most fundamental
contribution to recent political thought. However, this is no easy task for IR as
there are multiple ways of valuing the environment and these must compete for
expression on an already unequal political landscape.
Broadly speaking, the existence of, and open contestation between, multiple
values can be seen as a sign of a deliberative society with the potential to achieve
equitable outcomes. Whether they find adequate expression in political processes
within that society – and in relation to others – is another matter. The social rela-
tions that form the basis of existing unjust political and economic systems are not
bound to cease, rather the opposite. In practice, it is likely that the bureaucratic
vicissitudes of global environmental governance are likely to continue to make life
difficult even under an ecologically defined political system. Evidence of this
unsettling conclusion can be seen in discourses of ‘ecological modernisation’ and
attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, wherein profit maximisation and economic efficiency
are still prioritised over equity or plural values.
Again, the UNFCCC is a clear example of how global environmental govern-
ance has struggled to fully respond to environmental justice discourses. At the heart
of this institution is the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’,
which acknowledges the need to distribute costs according to the historical and
contemporary particularities of all parties affected by climate change (Shue 2014).
However, the fact that an enormous number and diversity of actors are affected
and connected by climate change precludes the political legitimacy of any aggregate
technocratic solution.
Environmental justice discourses began by highlighting the socially situated
nature of environmental harm, fighting for greater recognition and participation in
the process. Unfortunately it is possible to interpret the increasing diversity of
actors in the environmental decision-making process as part of a wider neoliberal
trend in global governance. While pluralists offer a positive interpretation of more
voices bringing more equality and effectiveness to the global system, others see this
diversity as a drive for efficiency at the expense of accountability. Such critics are
not chiefly concerned with the institutions themselves, but rather with the power
relations within and beyond them.
Of all the strands of environmental justice discussed above, ecological justice is
the most ontologically inclusive. It is concerned with ‘a fair distribution of envir-
onmental goods and bads among different species’ (Parks and Timmons Roberts
2006: 332; see also Benton 1993; Low and Gleeson 1998). Discourses of ecological
justice have their roots in deep ecology. They offer links to eco-socialist and eco-
feminist discourses by: moving away from the anthropocentrism of social justice
discourses, challenging nature/society distinctions, and de-emphasising humans by
placing them within a more relational perspective. Further still, discourses of eco-
logical justice fight to extend the notion of rights to non-humans. Ultimately,
ecological justice is about challenging the unequal distribution of material condi-
tions for life on Earth and the recognition of the needs of different species and
ecosystems.
There are now diverse and explicit discourses of environmental justice in
GEP theory. In practice it has sought to broaden the range of actors and values
included in institutions and governance arrangements. However, it still does not
pay sufficient attention to social power relations or the wider social, economic
and cultural structures that perpetuate them. These shortcomings point to the
limitations of incremental change through current structures and indicate a
need to rethink the ontological and ethical foundations of much of global
environmental politics.
Some environmental justice discourses, such as political ecology, are doing just
this. While institutional understanding is important and policy frameworks need to
be developed, a critical, theoretical, emancipatory agenda must also have its place.
Perhaps the most important lesson here is that it is not enough to merely add the
marginalised in. In other words, it is not enough to rectify injustice by inclusion,
but dominant normative structures (such as patriarchy and anthropocentrism) also
need to be challenged (Peterson 1992). Likewise, with global environmental jus-
tice, it is not just about redressing inequalities in access to decision-making between
developed and developing countries, nor about creating new international markets
to offset environmental harm or to quantify the instrumental value of nature.
These agendas need to be supplemented by deconstructing the statist or capitalist or
separatist norms that reproduce systems of domination (Soper 2009).
Intersectionality and environmental justice

Feminist theory can offer vital and directly applicable insights for achieving envir-
onmental justice. Although not always explicitly couched in terms of justice, they
highlight the need for an analysis of power and for understanding how structures of
domination systematically reproduce environmental degradation (Merchant 1980;
Mies and Shiva 1993; Seager 1993; Bretherton 1996; Salleh 2009). Bringing together
intersections of power – race, class, ethnicity, gender, age, local, global as well as
society–nature relations – can help us to attain ‘an image of higher resolution of the
factors relevant to addressing power relations and injustices’ (Kaijser and Kronsell
2014: 421). This notion of intersectionality offers fruitful avenues for analysing
(environmental) injustices (Winker and Degele 2011; Kaijser and Kronsell 2014).
More normatively, intersectionality echoes the work of political ecologists by
focusing on geographically situated knowledge and alliances between marginalised
voices (Salleh 2009; Kaijser and Kronsell 2014).
Crucially, intersectionality calls for a reconciliation of some of the contradictions

among different disciplines and projects. For example, both liberal and Marxist
analyses of gender or class inequality rely on a discourse of economic growth as the
solution to overcoming various forms of domination (Kaijser and Kronsell 2014:
424). Critical voices remind us that ecological limits may require different kinds of
economic development rather than a narrow focus on growth or efficiency, calling
for equitable distribution within the planet’s limits (Daly 1992; Rockstrom et al.
2009). Thus, intersectionality offers a holistic framework that can analyse institu-
tional structures of injustice and dominant norms that frame policymaking; that will
investigate questions of representation in all stages and arenas of governance; and
that will examine how specific policies affect different communities on the ground
(Kaijser and Kronsell 2014). Ultimately, we argue that IR needs to engage with
intersectionality in order to fully understand the power dynamics of global environ-
mental politics; illuminate how structures and social processes systematically produce
injustices; and account for the way different communities and environments across
the globe experience different levels of justice.
By way of illustration, let us take a brief intersectional view of the environmental
issue of land. Land, at least in the ecological sense of the word, has been relatively
absent from mainstream IR scholarship, although it is implicitly central to territorialist
discourses in the politics among nations. Yet land is at the heart of the health and
wellbeing of both people and the planet. The continued degradation of soil
through industrial and chemical pollution, combined with the ecological impacts of
climate change (e.g., coastal erosion and rain variability), means that access to land
is a prominent theme of globalised injustice. The most obvious example is the
increasing prevalence of land-grabbing, wherein the capitalist logic of ‘accumula-
tion via dispossession’ is at its most environmentally malicious (Margulis et al. 2013;
Harvey 2007).
Land issues cannot be justly addressed without considering the competing priorities
of those affected at the local level, paying particular attention to the intersections of
different aspects of social power such as class, race and gender. It also requires analysis
of how the issues are articulated through the norms and practices of the political
institutions responsible for governing the problem. For instance, global environmental
governance arrangements such as the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) attempt to redress distributional issues between developed and
developing countries by promoting investment in the latter. But on the ground,
CDM projects are often far from just, sometimes harming local people and habitats
(Boehm and Dabhi 2009). For example, a CDM project in Costa Rica has led to
changes in national legislation that privilege the rights of forest owners and large-
scale farmers at the expense of the rights of local subsistence farmers, having a
particularly negative effect on women (Isla 2009: 205).
An intersectional analysis also requires us to analyse the procedural dimensions
of justice by scrutinising the negotiating process; looking at whose voices are
(un)heard and what influence they have over deliberations. Critical approaches
push us even further to question the surrounding political economy and norms,
asking how they affect the process, what kind of economic, political or cultural
assumptions are privileged, and what forms of understandings and knowledge are
side-lined? Paying attention to the intersections of power across economic, political,
cultural, geographical and ontological categories is not a silver bullet solution to
globalised environmental justice. But it is a necessary step toward painting a more
complete picture of the systematic processes that continue to create global inequality.
Conclusion
The environmental justice literature is rightly celebrated as a flexible and progressive
agenda capable of problematising existing approaches to IR and the environment.
Its conceptual richness can stimulate dialogue and collaboration between researchers
and activists alike (Walker and Bulkeley 2006). However, in practice there will also
be differences of opinion with regard to which dimensions and subjects of envir-
onmental justice are most important and how they are operationalised by interna-
tional institutions and environmental governance arrangements (Martin et al. 2015;
O’Brien and Leichenko 2003). As a result, fundamental ethical questions about the
relationship between ends (distribution) and means (procedure) remain philo-
sophically and practically open. These differences, as expressed in environmental
governance and politics, will involve various political, ideological and strategic (and
therefore power-laden) social processes that will require critical appraisal (Gardiner
2011).
Similarly, the increased attention to issues of justice in GEP is not merely co-
incidental, but is in fact symptomatic of the complexity of globalised environ-
mental issues. Social inequality and environmental degradation have a complicated
and longstanding relationship, many aspects of which have shaped environmental
politics theory and practices over the years. Having argued in this chapter that the
neoliberal institutionalism of mainstream IR neglects the nuance of social power
relations, we conclude by suggesting that any global efforts to govern the envir-
onment in a just manner will have to start from a more inclusive ontology; paying
closer attention to the ecological foundations of contemporary society as well as the
social processes that perpetuate their numerous inequalities.
Our brief tour of the various dimensions and subjects of environmental justice,
within the context of IR and GEP, has shown how inadequate many extant
environmental governance arrangements appear. This diversity of perspectives and
discourses of justice can enrich future research, guiding political analysis and practices
aimed at disrupting entrenched power relations. In particular, the most fundamental
challenge environmental (or ecological) justice poses to global environmental politics
emerges from those discourses where nature is afforded rights and valuations
beyond the merely economic or instrumental. Finally, by taking some important
cues from critical feminist analysis we have shown that it is at the intersections of
multiple power dynamics and discourses – such as race, class, gender, place – that
the most politicised and potent opportunities for exposing and redressing inequality
can be found.
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8
IPE AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE
AGE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
Peter Newell and Richard Lane1
Introduction
Twenty years after the book The Environment and International Relations (Vogler
and Imber 1996) laid out the contours of debate on the global politics of the
environment, what has changed? Specifically, how far and in what ways has the
study and practice of the International Political Economy (IPE) of the environ-
ment (IPEE) moved on from, evolved and responded to some of the critical lines
of enquiry spelled out in that volume? Here we argue that the concerns raised
regarding the need to develop a more convincing account of the production of
environmental change have yet to be fully developed. Indeed, the need for an
ecologically sensitive IPEE capable of conceptualising both the social and material
relations that enable and propel global environmental change is more pressing
than ever.
In the 20 years since the publication of The Environment and International Rela-
tions, not only has the pace of global environmental change intensified and ecolo-
gical catastrophes become ever-more frequent and violent, but there has been a
growing recognition that the Earth System itself has undergone an epochal change
(Hamilton and Grinevald 2015). The belated recognition of the Anthropocene era:
60 years (Zalasiewicz 2015), or 160 years (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen
2002), or even thousands of years (Ruddiman 2003, 2013) after its arrival, requires
an IPEE capable of taking seriously the profound transformation in human–nature
relations that a change in geological epoch presupposes. Our argument is that in
spite of important progress being made in the study and practice of IPEE, the
challenge of revealing and acting upon the intimate relationship between the
constitution and governance of the IPE and the ‘nature’ of contemporary patterns
of global environmental degradation continues. While the 2012 Rio+20 summit
helped obscure the underlying relationship between the global economy and the
IPE and the environment in the Anthropocene 137
environment, the formation and launch of Future Earth at the very same summit
reinforced the urgent need to interrogate precisely this relationship.2
In this chapter we first survey the evolution of the IPEE literature over the past 20
years. We then outline both the notion of the Anthropocene and the post-natural,
post-social and post-political commitments that it implies (Lövbrand et al. 2015) before
sketching the basis of a critical IPEE that is able to account for the newly diagnosed
Anthropocene condition. Overall, we argue that IPEE could (and indeed should) be
well placed to cast critical attention upon the question of what sort of society it is that
has produced the Anthropocene, and in which responses to it will have to be forged.
Plus ça change? The nature of IPEE

From the late 1980s onwards and with the end of the Cold War, the growing focus on
international governance and the rising influence of environmentalism resulted in the
incorporation of the environment into the discipline as a merely peripheral concern. It
was another in a parade of ‘issue areas’ unproblematically analysed under the ambit of
the discipline’s predominant frameworks, which were inherited from IPE’s parent
discipline of International Relations (IR). In this way the environment was not
thought to require a fundamental re-theorisation of either the discipline or under-
standings of the International Political Economy, as was neatly captured in Steve
Smith’s explanation of the environment’s status on the periphery of IR (Smith 1993).
In 1996, a framework of methodological nationalism dominated the study of the
IR of global environmental change and subsequently IPEE. This involved an
overriding concern with explicitly environmental international agreements and
regimes, and therefore overlooked the vast ‘non-environmental’ trade, production
and investment regimes causing environmental harm and undermining environmental
governance (Conca 2000b). The popularity of this framework at the time was
unsurprising, given the broad coverage and importance of the 1992 UN Conference
on Environment and Development in Rio (the Earth Summit), and the discipline’s
stated claim to address ‘real world’ problems. This focus allowed little room for
engagement with, and theorisation of, causation, social relations and the politics
and possibilities of transformation – questions that were vitally important to at least
one of IPE’s founding fathers, Robert Cox (1987).
It is interesting to observe, then, that 20 years after the original Rio summit,
many of these themes and debates were replayed at the Rio+20 summit. It generated
heated debates about what forms of institutional and governance reform are
required, but without regard to the systematic and structural drivers of environ-
mental degradation and social exclusion. This is reflected in recent overviews of the
IPEE literature (Clapp and Helleiner 2012; Kütting 2014), which underscore how
IPE analysis of the environment in the past two decades has remained largely
focused on the treaties, institutions and regimes that are concerned explicitly with
the intersection of the economy and the environment; while analyses of the
environmental implications of larger structural trends in the global political economy
have been neglected.
138 Peter Newell and Richard Lane
Within mainstream IPE and IR, many of the answers to questions about the
‘nature’ of environmental threats and how best to mitigate them have been
thought to be self-evident. It is the transboundary effects of pollution that are to be
governed, and the way to achieve this is through international law produced by
treaties negotiated by states on behalf of their citizens. Building on the notion of
collective action problems most famously given in Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the
Commons’ (1968) with its game theoretic assumptions, the key challenges are
the need to reduce information asymmetries between states, create a shadow of the
future and construct mechanisms that deter free-riding from global efforts to pro-
mote public goods (Ward 1996). It follows, then, that regime theory was seen as
best placed to answer questions about the formation, maintenance and (to a far
lesser extent) effectiveness of regimes because of its focus on the conditions in
which global institutions are able to construct cooperative outcomes. Power-based,
interest-based and knowledge-based theories have been invoked to provide com-
peting explanations for the drivers of cooperation – or the lack of it (Young 1998).
The appeal of regime theory for scholars of the environment endures in many
quarters (Kanie and Haas 2004; Vogler 2005; Young 2010), despite potent critiques.
These critiques have focused on the static nature of much regime analysis, the
state-centricity of the approach, and its neglect of many of the broader political and
economic forces that condition the context in which regimes emerge and evolve,
and the extent to which they are effective (Strange 1983; Gale 1998; Kütting
2004). In this sense, conventional theoretical approaches tend to misread who the
key actors are in the everyday practice of environmental governance, and overlook
the multiplicity of arenas where environmental politics occur. They do this by
predominantly focusing on (i) bargaining between states, assumed to be cohesive
rational actors with the resources, capacity and willingness to engage in environ-
mental reform; (ii) international public arenas, assumed to be the key arenas in
which decisions are made about the environment; (iii) the international level,
assumed to be the sphere in which ‘global’ politics occur and within which ‘global’
environmental change has to be addressed; and (iv) explicitly environmental
agreements. Thus Saurin (1996) claims that whereas the processes of global envir-
onmental change are subversive of both the theory and the practice of international
relations: ‘international political analysis continues to be conducted as if environ-
mental goods and bads are produced, accumulated and therefore regulated by
public organisations. They are not’ (Saurin 2001: 80). As he put it earlier: ‘Bluntly
stated, a focus on inter-state relations is largely irrelevant to the explanation of
global environmental degradation, nor is the elaboration of inter-state relations
likely to lead to any reversal of such degradation’ (1996: 85).
Understanding environmental problems and politics from the point at which
they enter the remit of global institutions is to neglect the prior political and
material relations that account for the production of environmental harm. Impor-
tantly, such a critique is not intended to downplay the importance of (some) states
or the power of (some) international institutions. Our point, rather, is twofold.
First, we ought to avoid taking states as cohesive and neutral entities that are
abstracted from the actors and processes that generate environmental harm. Second,
we should not assume that states are somehow divorced from actually existing
social and material relations that shape who the state serves and how and on whose
behalf international institutions operate to protect some public goods while
delivering others into private hands.
Since the mid-1990s, the IPEE literature on global environmental governance
has certainly responded to some of these critiques, by expanding the range of actors
and institutions subject to analysis (Falkner 2008; Levy and Newell 2002; Pattberg
2007; Newell 2000; Betsill and Corell 2001) and developing a broader focus on
transnational forms of governance (Bulkeley et al. 2014) and Earth System Govern-
ance (Biermann 2014). The panorama of actors in global environmental govern-
ance has been thickened and broadened, but without offering an account of the
critical relationship between ecology and economy. A critical, ecologically nuanced
version of IPE can add to debates about global environmental governance by
showing how broader economic structures of trade, production and finance impact
upon the generation and distribution of environmental harm and the willingness
and ability of states and international institutions to regulate it (Paterson 2001;
Saurin 1996, 2001).
Alongside work within liberal IR and IPE, there is now a huge literature on the
relationship between key elements of the global economy and their compatibility
or otherwise with different notions of sustainable development (Clapp and
Dauvergne 2011; Christoff and Eckersley 2013; Newell 2012). On trade, while
some critical work looks at the environmental or social impacts of trade in general
(NEF 2003), or specific types of trade (Clapp 2001), much of it focuses on the
institutional interplay between trade regimes and multilateral environmental treaties
and instances where trade rules and environmental regulations have to come into
conflict, drawing out lessons and implications about ‘whose rules rule’ (Vogel
1997; Barkin 2008; Gallagher 2008). With regard to production, there are fierce
debates about the extent to which there is evidence of the ‘greening’ of business, as
opposed to ‘greenwash’ and where there is evidence of change, which national,
regional, sectoral or intra-firm factors can explain this (Prakash 2000; Newell
2012). This then feeds into debates about the effectiveness of business regulation
and whether new forms of private governance are up to the job of encouraging
corporate responsibility and reining in or deterring corporate irresponsibility, as
opposed to nationally and internationally legally binding measures (Newell 2001;
Clapp 2005). This, in turn, gave rise to a debate about how to understand and
adequately conceptualise the role of business in global environmental politics (Levy
and Newell 2002; Falkner 2008; Meckling 2011). Finally, the relationship between
finance and the environment is perhaps increasingly the most critical one in terms
of flows and impacts, yet also the most neglected dimension of globalisation in
work on IPE and the environment (Helleiner 2011).
The evolving nature of the global political economy and the intensification of
specific patterns of production, exploitation and consumption in particular, neces-
sarily feature centrally in any explanation of the causation of environmental harm.
In particular, the globalisation of the world food economy (Clapp 2011) and
intensification of farming production and the timber trade (Dauvergne and Lister
2011) emerge as critical contemporary drivers of resource exhaustion alongside the
industrialisation of fishing, which has decimated ocean stocks (DeSombre and
Barkin 2011). Similarly an ecologically informed IPE that follows resources or
commodities through supply chains, networks of power and infrastructures
(Mitchell 2011; Bridge and Le Billon 2012; Labban 2008) allows for a richer
understanding of the practices and relations that produce ‘everyday degradation’.
Tracking shifting patterns of trade, production and finance in this way tells us much
about the sources and drivers of environmental change. Likewise, studying the
investment decisions of firms, banks and other financial actors and the political role
of these actors in environmental governance (broadly defined) will provide the
basis for understanding what forms of action are possible and practicable in the
contemporary neoliberal global economy. Both in terms of their influence finan-
cially and politically as well as their ecological footprint, they dwarf the role of state
environmental agencies that remain the point of reference for mainstream IPE
theorising. This is especially true given the increasing role of the private sector in
environmental governance: in particular the embrace of market-based mechanisms,
voluntary approaches and public–private partnerships.
While the ‘marketisation’ of environmental governance has perhaps gone
furthest in the area of climate change where ‘politics are increasingly conducted
by, through and for markets’ (Newell and Paterson 2010: 77; Stephan and Lane
2014), the trend has been widespread. This can be traced through the creation of
permit trading schemes for sulphur dioxide in the US and emissions trading
schemes in the EU, tradeable quota systems in fisheries policy, the development
of certification schemes for wood and fish products by the Forest and Marine
Stewardship Councils, and a wave of voluntary business commitments and part-
nerships either with civil society organisations or UN institutions (Gulbrandsen
2010; Lane 2012).
The study of particular resources within the global economy, and of trends in
environmental governance, is important and useful in advancing a more critical and
comprehensive IPEE, but it falls short of the more generic and wide-ranging
account of the global political economy of the environment necessitated and
simultaneously made possible by the Anthropocene debate. It is to this debate that
we now turn.
IPEE and the Anthropocene

The very notion of the Anthropocene is premised on a profound transformation in
human–nature relations having taken place: the idea that the influence of human
behaviour on the Earth’s ecosystems is so significant as to constitute a new geolo-
gical epoch (Crutzen 2002). The Anthropocene was first suggested by the Nobel-
winning chemist Paul Crutzen at a meeting of Earth scientists in 2000, where, as
Hamilton points out:
As the discussion progressed he became increasingly frustrated at the use of the

term ‘Holocene’ which he felt no longer described the state of the Earth
System, which he knew had been irreversibly disrupted and damaged by
human activity. Unable to contain his irritation he intervened, declaring to the
meeting: ‘It’s not the Holocene, it’s… it’s… it’s… the Anthropocene.’
(Hamilton 2014)
Crutzen elaborated on his irritation in a short statement later that year with the
marine scientist Eugene F. Stoermer (2000), and again in an article in Nature in
2002. Crutzen claimed that ‘[t]he Anthropocene could be said to have started in
the late eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the
beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane’ (2002:
23). The Anthropocene is dated here from the beginning of the Industrial Revo-
lution, with its widespread use of fossil fuels in the form of coal and the related
development of steam power (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Moore 2014a: 2). In
2008, the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
announced its acceptance of Crutzen’s proposal of the end of one geological epoch
and the beginning of another with even The Economist splashing ‘Welcome to the
Anthropocene’ across its front cover (The Economist 2011).
The Anthropocene is hardly a settled concept, however (Lövbrand et al. 2015).
In the first instance, there are ongoing debates over its precise timing (Hamilton
2015; Lewis and Maslin 2015; Steffen et al. 2007; Zalasiewicz 2015; Zalasiewicz et
al. 2015). After the initial dating at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
(Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002), attention moved to the immediate
post-war years and what has been termed the ‘Great Acceleration’ (Steffen et al.
2007), which saw a sudden shift in the relationship between humanity and the
global environment:
The human enterprise suddenly accelerated after the end of the Second World
War. Population doubled in just 50 years, to over 6 billion by the end of the
20th century, but the global economy increased by more than 15-fold. Pet-
roleum consumption has grown by a factor of 3.5 since 1960, and the number
of motor vehicles increased dramatically from about 40 million at the end of
the War to nearly 700 million by 1996. From 1950 to 2000 the percentage
of the world’s population living in urban areas grew from 30 to 50% and
continues to grow strongly.
(Steffen et al. 2007: 617)
Zalasiewicz et al. (2015) went further than simply attributing the arrival of the
Anthropocene to a particular period, but rather identified a specific day, time and
place: 16 July 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico – the site of the world’s first
nuclear bomb explosion. This does not exhaust possible placements of the
Anthropocene era, however. For example, the ‘early Anthropocene’ has been
proposed by numerous authors as occurring at some point between 2,000 years
before the present day to as far back as the beginning of, and essentially displacing,
the Holocene epoch (Ruddiman 2003, 2013; Wilkinson et al. 2014).
Questions raised by and about the concept of the Anthropocene extend far
beyond the dating concerns of geologists and stratigraphers, however. First, the
development of the concept within organisations such as the International Council
for Science has resulted in a largely technocratic, anti-political (Barry 2002), or
post-political (Malm and Hornberg 2014; Swyngedouw 2010) narrative. This
‘post-political ontology’ (Lövbrand et al. 2015: 214–215) of the Anthropocene is
most clearly visible in calls for ‘Earth stewardship’ (Steffen et al. 2015) and
strengthened systems of Earth System Governance (Biermann 2014). Governance
here is undertaken by expert international institutions, through the conclusion of
environmental treaties, and by seemingly objective economic mechanisms – such as
the development of green economies and green growth. The political and ideological
contestation over definitions, problem identification, desired outcomes and pro-
posed mechanisms to achieve these is replaced by techno-managerial planning and
decision making (Lövbrand et al. 2015: 214; Swyngedouw 2013) or what Hajer et
al. (2015) refer to as ‘cockpit-ism’: the illusion that top-down steering by govern-
ments and intergovernmental organizations alone can address global problems.
However, the post-politics of the Anthropocene is never entirely complete. It
cannot wholly close out the possibility of further debate and contestation of what is
taken to be merely technical, objective or factual.
Second, it is argued that there is a ‘post-social ontology’ implicit in much ana-
lysis of the Anthropocene. It has been argued that the notion of the Anthropocene,
while capturing something of the changed relation between humanity and the
global environment due to fossil fuel use and technological change, actually ‘creates
more fog than light’ (Moore 2014a: 2). By attributing epochal change to the
Anthropos – humanity in general – it becomes impossible to determine the motive
force driving the shift to coal and steam and then later to oil and internal com-
bustion during the ‘Great Acceleration’ (Malm and Hornborg 2014; Moore 2014a,
2014b). As Malm and Hornborg (2014: 65) put it: ‘transhistorical – particularly
species wide – drivers cannot be invoked to explain a qualitatively novel order in
history’, and the relocation of environmental impacts from natural causes to human
activities then falls back on generic and innate human traits, such as the ability to
control fire. What the notion of the Anthropocene misses here (at least with
respect to the coal-fired Industrial Revolution) is that ‘a clique of white British
men literally pointed steam-power as a weapon – on sea and land, boats and rails –
against the best part of humankind, from the Niger delta to the Yangtzi delta, the
Levant to Latin America’ (ibid: 64).
Third, by highlighting the fundamental interrelation of human and non-human
histories (Barry 2013), the Anthropocene undermines the basis for a separable and
settled human – the Anthropos – divorced from nature. This ‘post-natural ontology’
(Lövbrand et al. 2015: 212–213), is rather curiously self-negating; echoing the logic
of Latour’s claim that ‘we have never been modern’ (2012), the Anthropocene
implies that at the same time, we have never been human. This ‘decentering of
humankind’ (Clark 2014: 25) requires that attempts to interrogate the politics and
power driving the development of the new epoch recognise the inseparability of
society and nature, global political economy and environment. Thus, a broadly
Earth Systems (Hamilton and Grinevald 2015), or world ecological (Moore 2011a,
2011b) perspective needs to be brought to the analysis of environmental change in
the Anthropocene. As Moore suggests ‘coal is coal. Only in specific historical
relations does it become fossil fuel’ (2013), and it is towards the illumination of the
motive forces, identification of structural powers, and recognition and analysis of
new aspects of environmental politics that IPEE can be brought to bear.
Towards a global political economy of the Anthropocene

The ideological meanings and significance given to the environment are
embedded in the social expression of capitalism. The historical coincidence
between the rise and spread of capitalism and industrialism and the generation
of global environmental crisis needs explanation.
(Saurin 1996: 85)
International Political Economy of the Environment has to date been pre-

occupied with the institutional underpinnings of global environmental governance
and the relationship between globalization and the environment. In this section we
consider the possibilities for drawing on different theoretical resources to offer a
more historical and material account of the evolving nature of the relationship
between ecology and economy in the era of the Anthropocene.
The contributions from Williams, who looks at how key strands of IPE deal
with the environment, and Saurin back in the 1996 volume of The Environment and
International Relations offer some clues. Saurin called, first, for theory to address the
analysis of ‘empirical and historical experiences and the attempt to explain their
global manufacture, distribution and remedy’; second, for ‘accounts of the global
structures of power, articulations of capitalism and the distribution of consumption’;
and, third, for ‘analysis of the causes and diffused processes which engender envir-
onmental change’, in particular ‘the structured and systematic usage of sources and
sinks which is intimately bound up with the mode of production’, which should
not be seen as simply an external set of data or resource inputs for economic processes
(Saurin 1996: 78–81).
In terms of the broader social forces and relations of power that produce these
outcomes, David Harvey’s (2003, 2005) work on spatial and temporal fixes is
extremely useful. He highlights the ways in which capital is able to displace
responsibility for environmental problems and circumvent calls for regulation
(which represent limits to capital) by paying others to reduce pollution. This
reverses the logic of ‘polluter pays’ by allowing principal polluters to pay others to
reduce pollution on their behalf – a process likened by activists to the ‘new
indulgences’ where, in the Middle Ages, wealthy individuals could pay poorer
people to go to prison on their behalf (Smith 2006). It also helps to explain
phenomena such as the export of resource-intensive forms of production to the

Global South. As Roberts and Parks (2008: 169) show, these forms of ‘ecologically
uneven exchange’ mean that the responsibility for pollution, as well as the pol-
lution itself, is redistributed globally such that ‘[e]missions are increasing sharply
in developing countries as wealthy countries “offshore” the energy and resource
intensive stages of production’. It accounts for the export of toxic and hazardous
wastes to poor countries so that richer countries are not faced with the con-
sequences of their consumption (Clapp 2001). Such strategies both feed upon and
reproduce global inequalities, even if they clearly bring tangible benefits to some
social groups within host countries. While moving things around makes sense for
richer countries or social groups able to do so, and finds support from economists
who view it as a more cost-effective route to pollution control, from an ecolo-
gical perspective it serves simply to disperse rather than resolve environmental
problems.
Outside of IPEE, the eco-Marxist tradition has sought to emphasise that the
environmental impacts of the Anthropocene, particularly climate change, should
not be seen as anthropogenic per se, but as sociogenic (Malm and Hornborg 2014: 66).
From this perspective, the new geological epoch is more correctly named the
‘Capitalocene’ (Moore 2014a, 2014b). As Redclift puts it, ‘[t]he concentration on
“Growth” has served to obscure the fact that resource depletion and unsustainable
development are a direct consequence of growth itself’ (1987: 56); a growth that is
the imperative of fossil capitalism (Altvater 2006; Huber 2009; Malm 2013; Parr
2014; Wrigley 2010). Ecological limits, in this reading, are identified as the second
contradiction of capitalism: that its expansionist logic ultimately undermines its
ability to sustain itself over the long term. In other words, capitalism necessarily
undermines the ‘conditions of production’ needed to sustain the endless accumulation
of capital such as soil, water and energy (O’Connor 1998).
Altvater (2006: 41) maintains that capitalism and fossil fuels (particularly oil) are
fundamentally congruent: ‘In comparison with other energy sources fossil energy
fulfils almost perfectly the requirements of the capitalist process of accumulation. It
fits into capitalism’s societal relation to nature.’ First, fossil energy enables the
transformation of pre-capitalist space and place into capitalist ones. The local
availability of energy is no longer the overriding reason for the location of industry,
enabling the development of globe-spanning logistical chains. Second, fossil energy
enables the reconstruction of time: diurnal and seasonal rhythms no longer con-
strain production processes when energy is available on a constant basis. Fossil
energy also enables the acceleration of these processes and the compression of time
and space. Third, the flexibility in production, consumption and transportation
provided by fossil energy enabled the ‘mobilisation and acceleration of economic
processes and… a degree of individualisation of social life never before experienced
in human history’ (ibid: 41). Overall, Altvater explains:
No managerial decisions could follow the logic of profitability without needing

to take energy restrictions or spatial and temporal constraints into account.
Accumulation and economic growth, i.e. the ‘wealth of nations’, became

increasingly independent of natural conditions and their limitations.
(ibid: 41–42)
The challenge of addressing the global structures of power, articulations of

capitalism and the distribution of consumption has, to some extent, also been taken
up within the discipline of IPE by critical work on the role of the state (Conca
2000a; Eckersley 2004), global environmental justice (Sikor and Newell 2014;
Okereke 2010) and the everyday environmentalism of the poor (Martínez-Alier
2002; Dixon 2011). Using the lens of drivers, uneven impacts among social groups
and across scales (Newell 2005), these analyses seek to capture and describe the
everyday ‘routine and mundane processes of global economic and social change’
(Saurin 1996: 94).
As well as comprehending causation, critical political economy has also made an
important contribution in showing how powerful economic actors, institutions and
ideologies bring their power to bear upon the framing of solutions to environ-
mental threats by accommodating environmental problems and critiques of their
own role in accelerating environmental change. The growing commodification
and privatisation of resources has sparked a generation of literature seeking to
explain the phenomena of ‘Nature Inc’ across a wide range of ecosystem services
(Sullivan 2013; Büscher and Fletcher 2015; Lohmann 2006). What these literatures,
including those from ‘ecological political economy’ (Gale and M’Gonigle 2000),
analyse, is the ways in which capitalism seeks to create new opportunities for
accumulation even in the form of responses to the problems generated by its own
production and consumption. That is, the ways in which both nature and its
degradation are converted into accumulation strategies (Smith 2006).
Echoing the calls of others (Williams 1996; Saurin 1996), this reiterates the
necessity of incorporating the insights of ecology within IPE/IR disciplines as part
of a green IPE (Helleiner 1996). In part this is about taking seriously the insepar-
ability of the environment and economy, and is where ecological economics or
green economics might be well placed to make a contribution (Kütting 2014; Scott
Cato 2011). Ecological economics departs from the neoclassically informed dis-
cipline of environmental economics by critiquing its lack of attention to limits to
growth, the modes of valuation (of costs and benefits) and discounting employed,
and the values and interests that are downplayed by framing environmental pro-
blems in those terms (Constanza 1991; Söderbaum 2000). Here the assumption is
that the environment and the economy are inseparable and that the environment
provides key functions for economic systems (resources, sinks, amenities and life-
support mechanisms for consumption) reflected in concerns with ‘ecological debt’
and ‘ecological footprints’ and the abuse and exploitation of ‘free resources’ by
capitalist investors (Saurin 1996: 89). Attempts to map ecological flows have
immense value in highlighting issues of ecological debt, uneven development and
responsibility (Constanza 1991; Martínez-Alier 2007) and the long ‘shadows’ cast
by global patterns of consumption (Dauvergne 2008). Ironically, however, the very
metrics of valuation developed have formed part of the technical arsenal of market
liberals to price nature and as such have become the means through which the
marketization and commodification of nature have taken place (Gómez-Baggethun
et al. 2010; Gómez-Baggethun and Ruiz-Pérez 2011).
Hence while ecological economics usefully challenges policy orthodoxy about
growth and the valuation of natural resources, green economics is more resistant to
the idea of greening the economy through more appropriate pricing (Scott Cato
2011). The social ecology of Murray Bookchin (1994) broadens the analytical lens
still further by seeing environmental degradation as a product of the degradation of
humans, resulting from capitalist expansion and its associated regulation through
hierarchical forms of social control (for example, patriarchy and racism). There is
also an important difference, therefore, between thinking ecologically and the
articulation of a green IPE informed more explicitly by green political thought
(Dobson 1990). Work within this tradition is clearly more normatively driven
and explicit in its critique of globalisation (Woodin and Lucas 2004; Trainer
1996), and of the viability and sustainability of dominant ideas about growth
(Blewitt and Cunningham 2014) – strongly contesting the ecological viability of
post-Rio+20 ‘green growth’. Yet the further development of this perspective
would help to realise the ambitions of a social ecology of global environmental
change by offering a system-wide perspective on the social and economic
dimensions of environmental change, explicitly foregrounding questions of cau-
sation rather than institutional design and rooting them in the prevailing organi-
sation of the economy, albeit doing so in a way that targets industrialism in
general rather than capitalism per se (Porritt 1989) and in so doing challenging
some Marxist-inspired accounts.
These diverse literatures might provide the basis of a more comprehensive
account of the ‘routine and mundane’ ways in which environmental degradation
gets unevenly produced and globalised, a broader terrain in which formal, public
and international systems of governance are just one feature. But we still require an
account of consequences, impacts and contestation to check the sense in which
there are generic and unstoppable drivers of degradation operating in a homo-
geneous fashion and causing common impacts around the world. Falling outside of
most understandings of what constitutes IPEE, work within a political ecology
tradition yields important insights into the exercise of power in global environ-
mental politics. This literature derives in particular from Geography, Anthropology
and Development Studies (Robbins 2004; Forsyth 2003; Newell and Bumpus
2012). Because issues of access to resources, property rights and livelihoods are
affected by and enrolled in global circuits of capital, literature from political ecology
provides a useful way of understanding the uneven and socially situated con-
sequences of neoliberal forms of environmental governance. This contributes to
analyses of who wins and who loses from particular (global) environmental gov-
ernance arrangements (Newell 2008). Indeed the global political ecology that Peet,
Robbins and Watts engage in ‘emphasises global political economy as a main causal
theme’ (Peet et al. 2011: 23). For them:
Political ecology is predicated on an ecologically conceptualised view of politics:

it is attentive to the hard edges of capitalist accumulation and global flows of
labour, capital and information, but also attuned to the complex operations of
power-knowledge.
(ibid: 23)
It is a research agenda that coalesces around the impact of capitalist development

on the environment, as well as its emergence through particular ‘socio-natures’ or
society–nature relationships (Moore 2011b). Such lines of enquiry have been pursued
through work on the practices of commodification of ‘neoliberal natures’ (Castree
2003; Mansfield 2004; Bakker 2005), as well as through ‘classic’ political ecology
concerns with questions of access to material and natural resources, and issues of
resistance, equity and justice in the negotiation and distribution of social and
environmental benefits at multiple scales (Peluso 1992; Zimmerer and Bassett
2003). Such approaches have been used to show, for example, how the creation of
carbon markets through the UN Clean Development Mechanism impacts upon
questions of access, property and justice in communities in the Global South that
host carbon offset projects. Social relations shape the extent to which expected
environmental gains are possible, as well as who gets to capture the economic
benefits projects may bring, and who is excluded from them (Newell and Bumpus
2012). It does this by exploring the social relations and flows of power across scales
from the global to local and back again.
Conclusions
Environmental issues are produced by the same global political economy that
provides the ideological, institutional and material context in which responses to
the ecological crisis have to be forged. Recognition of this fact takes us to the heart
of the contradictions and opportunities that we observe in global attempts to
manage environmental crises. These are unsurprisingly shaped by the social relations,
institutional configurations and practices of power that we observe in other areas of
the global political economy. What is surprising, however, is that such connections
are not often explicit in mainstream accounts of IPE and global environmental
politics.
How different approaches in IPEE have engaged with the environment reflects
and often reinforces the theoretical suppositions and conceptual categories that
underpin them. They embody different understandings of power and the role of
the state and international institutions, of causation, responsibility and agency, and
of what constitutes ‘the environment’ as well as how to study the economy
(international economic relations or following production, distribution and con-
sumption). So, at the risk of caricature, for realists the environment is an issue in so
far as it involves security concerns, or enhances the potential for conflict or to
destabilise the balance of power (Levy 1995). For scholars in a liberal tradition, the
central questions remain ones of institution-building and providing cooperative
outcomes for what are essentially defined as collective action problems. More critical,
often Marxist-inspired, accounts are better placed to develop a ‘social green’
account (Clapp and Dauvergne 2011), but run the risk of attributing all outcomes
to the capitalist system and the power of capital in particular. As yet underdeveloped,
but potentially fruitful combinations of critical work within IPE and work on social
and political ecology and ecological economics offer significant promise, as does a
more ecological or green theory of IPE (Laferrière 2001; Helleiner 1996) to com-
plement and critique existing critical and structural perspectives.
Thus far, scholars of IPEE have yet to fully engage with the Anthropocene
argument, an argument that, as Jason Moore (2013) claims, ‘obscures and relegates
to context the actually existing relations through which women and men make
history with the rest of nature: the relations of power, (re)production and wealth in
the web of life’. What an account grounded in (international) political economy –
placing social and socio-ecological relations at the heart of its analysis – can enable,
is a check on some of the Malthusian narratives that accompany claims around the
Anthropocene. These have focused on the ‘wicked’ mix of peak resources and
population growth that surpass ‘natural thresholds’ while obscuring a more differ-
entiated understanding of questions of causation, responsibility and power. It is our
contention, however, that the theory and practice of IPEE can be made central to
an understanding of the production of the Anthropocene and to the possibilities of
redirecting the global economy along a more sustainable pathway.
Notes
1 We are grateful to the editors and contributors for their comments and suggestions on an
earlier draft of this chapter.
2 Future Earth bills itself as a research platform focused on coordinated Earth System
research (future earth.org; Lövbrand et al. 2015). It builds on the collaborative work of
the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme, Diversitas and the International Human Dimensions Programme.
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9
SECURITY POLITICS AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
The new security dilemma
Hugh C. Dyer
Introduction
In both theory and practice there are obvious tensions between climate security
and national economic security. The political tension derives from challenges in
meeting competing goals, although naturally there is great interest in ‘win-win’
policies, and particularly if they do so without directly challenging existing prac-
tices and ‘business as usual’. A deeper source of tension lies in the various
understandings of security, and their inevitably intimate relationships to the
natural environment. Writing in Vogler and Imber’s The Environment and Inter-
national Relations 20 years ago (Dyer 1996), I challenged the realist conceptions of
security of the time and, from a normative theoretical perspective, criticised
attempts to encompass environmental issues within the existing national security
agenda (being influenced in this by Deudney 1990). I explored the implications
of taking environmental security to be a universal value. This was largely
addressed to the disciplinary debates of international relations, in which norma-
tive theory is particularly relevant to issues of global environmental change
because of the tensions revealed in the dichotomy between communitarian and
cosmopolitan traditions of thought. The argument then that environmental
security and national security are alternative values arising in the context of
alternative worldviews remains relevant. What was still novel at the time was an
emerging awareness of environmental issues being a challenge to traditional
meanings of political concepts, including justice, equity and development along
with the obvious need to preserve a sustainable foundation for life on Earth – and
of course in that broader context, ‘security’. Five years later I asked whether
environmental concerns, and the considerable volume of publication and public
debate about these, had transformed institutional thought and practice in the field
of international relations. I argued that the idea of environmental security in
Security politics and climate change 155
particular justified the incorporation of the key terms and perspectives of

environmental studies into the study of international relations (Dyer 2001).
In this chapter I return to the task of examining limitations in the mainstream
perspective of ‘environmental security’. I build on my earlier analysis by focusing
on climate change policy to illustrate the value of a more ‘eco-logical security’
perspective. The chapter examines the conceptual difficulties of capturing relevant
issues in a ‘security’ framework; reviews and reflects on literature around the subject
of environmental security over the past 20 years; and explores the policy discourses
in which these security terms are deployed. It offers a critical assessment of the
structural and strategic assumptions and implications of the relationship between
climate security and other priorities. The discussion underwrites further assessment
of the policy positions of actors with critical roles in setting the global agenda,
where incoherence and competing political priorities undermine coordinated,
consistent policy. Variations in climate security discourses further exacerbate the
implementation of concrete policy (von Lucke et al. 2014). This chapter points to
a new form of security dilemma, which, like the classical formulation, tells us that
the pursuit of any single object of security is ‘an effort which proves self-defeating
because complete security remains ultimately unobtainable’ (Herz 1959: 231). This
points to the imminent potential of novel security concerns to transform international
politics, which may be better understood from an ecological perspective on
the political challenges of achieving global justice. This chapter will also indicate
the emerging political opportunities that these challenges create.
The political challenge of ’climate security’: a review

‘Security’ must mean something like stability and absence of danger. What conditions
are to be stabilised and what or who is endangered are the assumptions underlying
any notion of security. When climate security is invoked, the assumptions seem to
be that the climate system should be stabilised, and that rapid change endangers
everything from individual livelihoods to the global political economy. While these
assumptions are reasonable in the context of ‘business as usual’ policy, the overall
policy objective of maintaining the status quo is probably unreasonable given the
nature of the challenges, if evading climate impacts in the short term amounts to a
‘band-aid’ solution to a larger structural problem.
In the early twenty-first century, Simon Dalby revealed the discourses of insecurity
arising from unexamined notions of both environment and security. He noted the
limited imagination of political possibilities and assumptions about the possibility
(and desirability) of achieving security through a controlling technological man-
agement (Dalby 2002: 146). This work also challenged realist assumptions about
achieving spatial security, often through imperialist intervention (ibid: 155), and by
extension controlling the environment through a state-centric security apparatus
(ibid: 293-294). This raised broader issues about our understanding of complex
environment–society relations. Dalby later argued for understanding security eco-
logically, given the extent of environmental change arising from economic
156 Hugh C. Dyer
globalisation (Dalby 2009). This requires reframing conventional notions of

international security to incorporate the deeply interconnected concepts of envir-
onmental and human security, and integrating diverse disciplinary perspectives on
security within a more holistic ecological as opposed to state-centric context.
Floyd and Matthew’s comprehensive overview of environmental security studies
notes that the meaning of environmental security is contested (Floyd and Matthew
2013: 279). They argue against a simplistic environmental scarcity and conflict
perspective, given the significance of climate, demography and sustainability, and
defend critical approaches (ibid: 292). They conclude that while there is a clear case
for securing the human environment, ‘environmental security’ is a contested concept
imbued with cultural values, that the language of security is open to abuse; this
leads to support for Dalby’s view that achieving security will require significant
change in socio-economic practices (ibid: 290). Floyd and Matthew give particular
attention to critical and ethical perspectives on the links between climate and
security, given that climate change may become the dominant issue for environmental
security studies (ibid: 280).
Debate around key security terms offers insight into the nature of the ‘political
community’ of climate. These new terms invoke consideration of a global political
community in which individual responsibility is an important consideration but,
more radically, they potentially extend the scope of political community beyond
the current generation (in respect of inter-generational equity) and beyond the
human agent (in respect of ecological concern). While as an issue area climate has
received considerable attention, the notion of ‘security’ attached to it is relatively
novel and introduces a different intellectual and policy orientation that has not yet
been thoroughly explored. Beyond this novelty is the connection – often tension –
between climate and other issues, which has also been raised, but not seriously
confronted. In many instances this connection allows climate to be presented as a
security issue simply in terms of being a threat or conflict multiplier (Brzoska 2014) –
if climate change is not the proximate cause of conflict, existing social and political
tensions can easily be exacerbated by climate impacts (which of course remain a
source of threat to livelihoods independent of conflict).
What is largely missing in the existing literature on environmental security is
consideration of the implications of the security terminology; the hidden tension
behind policy; and the inevitable reductions in consumptive lifestyles and declining
or altered economic growth. This calls attention to both contradictory and com-
plementary aspects of climate ‘security’ and other strategic goals, and the need for
coherent policy across these areas. It raises a challenge to address the (generally
unspoken) requirements to make sacrifices in terms of consumption and/or to absorb
costs in terms of adaptation and mitigation, if objectives are to be pursued in a co-
ordinated manner and within a relevant timescale. If ‘security’ is an important aspect of
climate policy, the term ‘climate security’ has not been clearly defined, which
makes it both hard to measure and difficult to balance against other policy goals.
The ‘security’ content of the debates can, of course, be drawn from the tradi-
tional field of military-political security such that the underlying characteristics of
climate issues are stripped down to potential consequences of conflict. A conven-

tional political-military strategic orientation continues to dominate debates about
security, and so illustrates commonly held conceptions of the nature of the issue
and implied responses to it. The vulnerabilities identified in this perspective include
lines of communication and transportation. Perhaps ironically, concerns about our
impact on the climate now include concerns about the impact of environmental
change on well-supported energy infrastructures (Paskal 2009). This suggests a
definition of climate security as avoidance of direct physical harm, but also the
possibility of more specific definitions in terms of the social-economic con-
sequences of failure in this regard, or even a more extensive notion of existential
security regardless of the type or source of threat.
Thus, climate security can be couched either in military security terms (Briggs
2012), or more comprehensively viewed in terms of human security (Barnett and
Adger 2007). This latter perspective would bring climate security into a wider
frame of reference that considers social and economic change, and the political
challenge of governing such processes. It would also cast doubt on a climate
security perspective that focuses on dealing only with the aftermath of climate
change, through enforced adaptation or proposals to geoengineer the climate, rather
than preventing catastrophic climate change in the first place. No military security
strategy would ignore preventive action in favour of post-conflict remedial action,
even if that proves necessary in the event. So it is that traditional security perspec-
tives have influenced thinking about environmental and climate security, and yet
have been unable to take account of increasingly significant demands for a broader
‘human security’, or to deal with critical perspectives on securitisation. The danger
is that a specific security logic may be imposed on environmental concerns such as
climate change that are not amenable to fixed spatial and temporal notions of
security, and require greater sensitivity to processes and practices.
Security concepts, and the issues to which they refer, tend to hinge on estimates
of relative importance giving rise to ‘urgency’ or ‘emergency’. We might note that
one person’s sense of emergency is not always shared by others (consider the phrase
‘lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part’), and
that security concepts are influenced by perceptions and social constructions. Yet, it
is commonplace in organisational contexts that the urgent displaces the important.
To some extent this explains the political force of security concepts, as they
underwrite claims for priority. In this way, daily struggles for survival, or dignity,
are not captured by an understanding of security that focuses on a single iteration
of threat or cataclysm – although the prospect of a sudden fall from a position of
relative privilege to a position of daily struggle might well be seen as an urgent
security issue by the privileged. What determines ‘security’ is how, and by whom,
issues are classified as either important or urgent, or both.
It may be that some basic value determines what is agreed to be fundamentally
important (say, human rights), and yet this may be displaced by claims for urgency
in respect of less fundamental, less important, more specific and less principled
concerns (say, security of particular governments or of economic privilege). This is
158 Hugh C. Dyer
the significance of a shift to the ‘high politics’ of security. As long as limited and
specific issues are classified as urgent (i.e., as security issues), long-term planning for
important issues will be overshadowed and unattended. Even when important
issues occasionally surface in the urgent category in the form of natural, economic
or political disasters (a tsunami, typhoon or earthquake; famine; hyperinflation;
general loss of liquidity in a ‘credit crunch’, or a defaulting sovereign debtor; a
Kosovo, Rwanda or Syria), these may be viewed as humanitarian issues or some-
how ‘private’ misfortunes that are exempt from normal national or international
security considerations. It is possible that priority and urgency is assigned on a
completely ad hoc basis by the specific interests implicated in particular events,
although this is still rare or diffuse enough to have little impact on general concepts
of security (if somewhat more on national security doctrines) – or, more to the
point, states are still able to define any threat to their interests in national security
terms. The conventional connection between national interest and power politics
permits the characterisation of some important long-term issues such as nuclear
proliferation as being security issues, but only to the extent that these are presented
as potentially becoming urgent, immediate threats. The presentation is of the
essence here – the ‘War on Terror’ being an instructive, and deeply flawed, case in
point. An example of rethinking such issues can be found in the work of Etzioni
(2007). He made a pragmatic communitarian case for ‘primacy of life’ as the focus
and priority of security, and the priority of such security over democracy (in US
foreign policy), which is indeed hard to argue against in these simple terms,
although this does not address the conditions of life beyond individual corporal
security. A most recent expression of US policy remains conventional in its char-
acterisation of climate security: citing the 2015 National Security Strategy, the
Department of State’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review refers to
climate change as an ‘urgent and growing threat to our national security, risking
increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food
and water’ (US State Department 2015).
How does the novel concept of ‘climate security’ find itself in the mix of
security concepts? Indeed, is it to be taken seriously as a security concept? It is less
likely to be taken seriously in a conventional perspective, but more likely to be in a
critical perspective, and perhaps most likely from a radical perspective – but this
leaves us to ponder its appearance in mainstream discourse. It may be that political-
economic concerns about climate change have sufficient urgency to qualify as
security issues. Perhaps it is only the contribution to military and economic security
concerns, as a potential conflict multiplier (Brzoska 2014), that attracts attention,
although more radical insights are possible. Consider the notion of ‘biopolitical
security’. Foucault’s notion of biopolitics can be mapped onto a critical, radical
notion of security as surveillance, control and thus management of the human
species. Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero (2008), for example, note that the referent
object of the biopolitics of security is ‘life’, which in turn is subject to modern
developments in respect of population demographics, molecular biology and digital
virtual life. The modern freedom–security relationship thus described raises
Foucault’s spectre that it may threaten itself, and ‘wager the life of the species on its
own (bio) political strategies’ (Dillon and Lobo-Guerrero 2008: 265). Without
necessarily adopting such a radical critique, this new security term can be tested in a
more familiar context, and from a range of perspectives (Oels 2012; von Lucke et al.
2014). How can the concept of ‘climate security’ help us to appreciate longer-term
issues of importance but as yet little apparent urgency? There is something of a political
struggle to define the level of urgency in the human (economic, social, political)
relationship to climate change, with the only common ground being acceptance that
we currently inhabit a carbon-intensive economy. There is a degree of technological
optimism in proposals for a ‘low carbon economy’ or ‘green economy’. Because of
our current political-economy there are, of course, direct connections between
resource issues (including food) and climate change that may trigger a broader sense
of insecurity (that is, beyond trade and finance) about the global economy.
Furthermore, differences in scientific and cultural views (Corry and Jørgensen
2015) and ‘ideational fragmentation’ in global security governance (Floyd 2015)
undermine a common understanding of climate security in this context.
Here, the politics of these issues is situated in a ‘security’ context, and vice versa –
the security terms are situated in a political, moral or socio-economic context. While
there is likely to be some tension between the intended meanings of the term
‘climate security’, and even some incoherence, setting the issues in a ‘security’
context may amount to both cause and effect of an underlying political shift. The
obligation to provide security – an obligation of political authority, typically the
state – is extended by ‘climate’ beyond traditional response-to-threat categories and
practices of states; consequently the capacity of states to deliver such security is also
reduced, making room for other economic and social actors to exert influence. As a
commitment to climate issues develops and establishes these as fundamental respon-
sibilities of government and fundamental rights of individuals, a new social compact
and a new politics emerges. This recent security term can be seen as reflecting more
than a merely instrumental adjustment to practical challenges, within the framework
of existing political conceptions and commitments. Rather, it indicates a deeper
structural shift – even if such a radical potential is not likely to be immediately
acknowledged by the policy communities that espouse these terms. The nature of
the issues seem to require rather too much management and governance, too much
intervention, for them to be addressed simply by tinkering with a neoliberal
economy – although just possibly they might be by neoliberal institutions. Industrial
and developing states are attempting to coordinate climate policy with a long-term
view; however, this demands giving attention to renewable energy sources as well as
their side-effects. The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate points to the
need for ‘long-term transition strategies’ (2014). This suggests that providing climate
security will take on the proportions of large-scale planning (if short of ‘planned
economies’ per se) of the type historically required to address systemic crises.
Appreciating both the ecological and political challenges of this new security
concern will provide a better understanding of their implications for the emerging
structural conditions of international politics.
160 Hugh C. Dyer
The strategic context of climate security

‘Climate security’ has entered political discourse as a strategic goal. However, the
corresponding political mechanisms are underdeveloped, and perhaps incoherent,
which suggests that the element of sustainability has not yet been taken seriously. So
rather than indicating an act of ‘securitisation’, the practical dilemmas in the climate
context suggest that this new form of ‘security’ only indicates some political commit-
ment, reflecting a shift in priorities. To the extent that this reflects appreciation of
unsustainable inequities and a shift toward more ecological values, it is a politically
significant turn; to the extent that it implicates ‘green’ economic practices and political
action, it is also a shift in structural assumptions. However, beyond the practical pro-
blem of coping with existing structures, or changing them, is the deeper problem of
assuming foundational points of reference for any given structural reality such that
challenging or changing it is difficult or impossible. So there is an intellectual, or atti-
tudinal, hurdle to leap at the outset – we’d have to accept that some deeply held
assumptions are simply no longer viable. It is precisely to the point that climate security
dilemmas are seen as a challenge: traditional goals of states (health, wealth, security,
etc.) look different from a climate security perspective, which could/should lead to
change in political and economic practices. Minteer (2005: 37) suggests that such
reconsiderations of the public interest is a necessary approach ‘in making connections
between normative arguments and environmental policy discourse’. This reflects
Hayward’s (1998) argument that environmental values are supported by enlightened
human interests, and furthermore that this link must exist to promote ecological
goods, and that consequently there are serious implications in fully integrating envir-
onmental issues into our disciplinary concerns. Hargrove (1989) makes an argument
for anthropocentric, aesthetic sources of modern environmental concern by identify-
ing attitudes that constrained (‘idealism’, ‘property rights’) and supported (scientific and
aesthetic ideals) our environmental perspectives. If this doesn’t stretch us much beyond
our current selves, there is no reason such anthropocentric orientations couldn’t be
built upon as a foundation for more specifically eco-centric perspectives. The key here
is to identify the underlying ‘security’ assumptions that thwart efforts to cope with
climate issues coherently and effectively, and to advocate those assumptions that serve
genuine long-term human security interests (inevitably in an ecological context). In
this way can we take stock of the existing structures that constrain and diminish human
agency while conceiving of those that would liberate and secure it in sustainable ways.
As the reality of the situation slowly dawns on us, various political, moral, economic
and social actors are beginning to consider and test new strategies for coping – the real
question is whether they are just playing to beat the clock, or if they’ve stopped long
enough to reconsider the rules and purposes of the strategic context in which they act.
Challenges in climate security discourse: a critique

‘Climate security’ plays to an existing set of assumptions about international politics
being defined essentially in terms of a condition of security, and consequent
political relationships and political issues defined in terms of security. These

assumptions are part of a very limited conception of what and who is to be
secured. ‘Climate security’ shares with other perspectives on environmental security
a vulnerability to limitations imposed by military-political conceptualisations of
security, and the subordination of climate change and the environment in general
to national economic security.
The dominance of underlying assumptions about the essence of world politics
colours everything else – all kinds of relationships and issues. A trend towards
‘securitisation’ of non-military issues brings with it both dangers and opportunities
(see the critiques by Buzan et al. 1998; Williams 2003; and others). The double-
edged sword of securitising climate issues is forged from the element of urgency or
emergency invoked by the ‘security’ category. This could justify either unwelcome
extraordinary action or complete inaction by states. Yet it may also provide wel-
come political focus, resources and timely implementation of progressive climate
policy. However, the complexity and novelty of this combination of policy
challenges requires innovative interdisciplinary theoretical tools drawing on work
in both security studies and eco-political thought to develop a more holistic ‘eco-
logical security’ perspective (for example, Pirages and Cousins 2005). Such a per-
spective would enhance prospects of a viable global agenda for achieving climate
security in a coordinated manner.
The concept of ‘ecological security’ is in wide circulation, particularly in the
developing world (African Development Bank and WWF 2012; Foundation for
Ecological Security 2016; Gong et al. 2009; Jogo and Hassan 2010), and even some
government departments use this title (e.g., in the Ukraine), but its meaning is
diffuse. This is either a problem in terms of establishing a shared political vision and
agenda, or an opportunity for cooperation through creativity and inventiveness.
Change itself is not problematic, and even economic growth has always drawn on
the opportunities change brings in terms of new technologies, new social practices
and new markets, which may indeed allow for ‘Better Growth, Better Climate’
(Global Commission on the Economy and Climate 2014). So the prospect of
economic change should not be too troubling (and for those disadvantaged by the
current global economy, an equitable change would be welcome). However, if
change is alright, economic growth may not be, or at least not in its current guise –
so this will require a change of perspective on ‘growth’ such that it does not signify
‘more of the same’ in terms of ever-increasing consumption of the Earth’s resources
and reductions in natural carrying capacities. In the context of possibilities for
de-materialising economic activity, Jacobs asks whether for ‘9 billion people aspiring
to developed-world living standards, facing already severe pressures on planetary
resources, is there any rate of global economic growth in practice which will
nevertheless allow the environment to be properly sustained over the long term?’
(Jacobs 2012: 17, emphasis in original). For example, growth in human opportu-
nities and diversity of practices would be welcome and economically beneficial, if
these do not require fossil fuels and carbon sinks. Equally, it is not novel to speak
of ‘economic security’ as a high priority, but whatever that entails now it certainly
162 Hugh C. Dyer
won’t look the same in the future, as every historical wave of economic change has
taught us. Because the various kinds of security we seek, including that related to
climate, are so clearly tied up with our unsustainable economic and political practices
it requires little imagination to grasp that some form of sustainability is needed, and
yet we lack clear strategic goals and mechanisms to achieve it.
Thus climate issues might be conveniently linked to traditional notions of
security where that suits current political purposes. This would ignore Deudney’s
argument that organised violence as a traditional threat and source of insecurity is
not analytically comparable to environmental threats (Deudney 1990, 1991). At the
same time, the economic threats are increasingly obvious, and as these are a central
focus of national interests, what could previously be described as ‘low politics’
issues of economics and social welfare increasingly move into the ‘high politics’
category previously occupied by military-political issues (Pirages and De Geest
2003). So it has now become commonplace to identify climate change as a sig-
nificant issue. At the same time it has become equally commonplace to note the
poor state of coordinated planning in respect of such challenges with little evidence
so far of governments getting it right, with continued dependence on fossil fuels
and an assumption that markets will deliver without significant policy direction.
Even where effective government interventions might be expected, as in China, or
democratic pressures push in different directions, such as in the United States,
responses to climate security do not challenge a business-as-usual economic devel-
opment perspective. Even agreement between these two countries to jointly
announce carbon-reduction targets in advance of the 2015 climate summit (White
House 2014) appeared to be as much a trade agreement not to compete on a
carbon basis, as an effort to create diplomatic momentum. Buchner and Carraro
(2006) suggested as much in concluding that this bilateral cooperation provided the
greatest economic incentives for climate regime participation. So if climate change
has been politicised, it is not so clear that it has been securitised.
Ecological security as political cause and effect

Security is central to understandings of the responsibilities of states. Governments
have obligations to their own population, which include defending them from
external threats of all kinds – even if threats to nationals emanate from their own
state. Security is usually the first concern of individuals as well, which may extend
to self-sacrifice to protect others (even if self-interest is a limitation). The boundaries
of concern and felt responsibility for security are potentially flexible, and obligations
may vary over time and space. The rationale for those obligations may now be
extending over wider ranges of time and space, especially within an ecological
perspective on how ‘security’ might be obtained. In this way, alertness to
the security implications of climate drives political developments, while at the same
time an already developed sense of political obligation prompts a recasting of these
issues in more urgent security terms. So the insecurity of the status quo, with
respect to climate, is enough to warrant serious consideration of how relative
security might be obtained. Yet the most obvious dimension of insecurity is the
collective failure to plan and act for the inevitable change that will be forced upon
us, sooner or later. At every periodic assessment it seems sooner, rather than later,
as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other government
reports confirm our worst fears and the Doomsday Clock is set ever nearer to
midnight (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2014).
On the assumption that justice and equity will underwrite the feasibility of any
international climate strategies, Grasso (2007: 223) attempts to ‘identify a pluralistic
normative ethical framework for climate mitigation and adaptation’ that includes
‘the criterion of lack of human security’ as regards the allocation of adaptation
resources. Dabelko (2008) notes the considerable history of environmental security
thinking, which figured in the landmark Brundtland Report, ‘Our Common
Future’, 28 years ago (Brundtland Commission 1987), including extensive discus-
sions of energy, food security and sustainable development in general. However, the
Brundtland account of environmental security (and sustainable development) may
be too conventional and insufficiently radical for current purposes, as the con-
temporaneous critiques and events of the intervening decades suggest. Indeed ‘Our
Common Future under Climate Change’ was the topic of a 2015 scientific con-
ference at UNESCO in Paris preceding the 2015 climate summit. The present
challenges require a more holistic ‘ecological security’ perspective for achieving
climate security in a coherent, coordinated manner. This reflects the evolving logic
of political-security relationships, which are no longer purely militaristic and terri-
torial. Pirages and De Geest (2003) offer an ‘eco-evolutionary’ approach to envir-
onmental security, ‘to anticipate and analyse emerging demographic, ecological and
technological discontinuities and dilemmas associated with rapid globalization’.
Kütting (2007) highlights the distinctions between environmental security and
ecological security, suggesting that ecological security addresses local environment/
society relations rather than state-centric concerns with environmental threats –
although she does argue that ecological security is still focused on the issue of violence
and conflict as security references, rather than inequality per se. Kütting also notes
Peluso and Watts’ (2001) political ecology critique of the concept of environmental
security: ‘[Their] ecological security approach combines structural political economy
approaches with cultural and ecological studies.’ Thus, Kütting concludes that the
breadth and inclusiveness of ‘ecological security’ give it great qualitative and normative
analytical power but can also diffuse the meaning and reference of the concept. It is a
broad concept and yet the breadth of ‘ecological security’ may provide the broader
framework for narrower discrete policy topics that are otherwise thrown into a
competitive relationship, and in which climate policy may be marginalised.
For each society, economy, country or collective actor (such as the European
Union or the United Nations), competing political and economic demands may
undermine the attempt to address climate security priorities in a coordinated, con-
sistent and complementary manner. It is already clear that climate is part of a wider
nexus of issues that invokes long-term security concerns for major actors, but not
yet so clear that it has been treated seriously as a key part of interconnected
164 Hugh C. Dyer
strategic goals in policymaking. Achieving such strategic goals rests heavily on

global cooperation, as much as national consensus, and the success of any such
endeavours would seem to rest in having a commonly accepted framework – such
as ecological security – to underwrite agreement in both principle and policy. It is
the underlying set of values and perspectives that has not yet been seriously
addressed in climate security discussions, not least because addressing it head-on
would present profound challenges to almost everything we currently do, and the
way we do it. There may be some hope and example arising from responses to
recent economic difficulties that, in raising challenges to assumptions about financial
credit and debt, may point to parallel challenges of ecological credit and debt. To
meet such challenges it will be necessary to internalise an ecological understanding
of human security in our political, moral, economic and social systems and structures.
The emergence of ‘climate security’ reflects an increased sense of urgency
around this issue at the heart of state interests and the global political economy.
This may yet represent the tipping point at which the remnants of denial and
resistance are abandoned in favour of structural adjustments of the ecological kind.
While practical solutions may have short-term political implications, the real chal-
lenges of pursuing climate security arises from the wider structural implications of
securing a sustainable future. Viewing such developments as a political turn allows
us to appreciate that a sense of insecurity can cause us to question our assumptions
and adjust our attitudes, and that changing our attitudes can underwrite our efforts
to change everything else.
Climate inequalities and inequities – questions of justice recast

Initially, and perhaps ultimately, the political context for climate security is a matter
of distributional justice between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ among present and
future generations. This is no longer an abstract philosophical issue: US President
Obama presented his pre-Paris 2015 climate policy initiatives in the context of
inter-generational equity, and was (somewhat perversely perhaps) supported in this
by being sued by a group of young people on constitutional grounds for failing to
protect their future (Taylor 2015). Even where there is some progress in developing
climate policy, the net climate effects remain – and remain unevenly distributed – due
to increasing damage to carbon sinks and increasing consumption, and continuing
dominance of fossil fuel energy. The broader distributional issues are, in typical
fashion, buried beneath the policy priority of servicing national economies. These
limitations may be addressed internally where equity is a consideration in national
distribution, and could be notionally extended transnationally where there is eco-
nomic integration (as in the EU) or significant interdependence (as in regional trade
and development areas), although the usual pattern of agreement on the lowest
common denominator and the lowest cost forms of cooperation still seems to
apply. The distributional aspects of climate impacts are thus determined as much by
the structure of state ‘sovereignty’, and national authority structures of varying
degrees of accountability, as by international cooperation or global markets.
Barnett (2001: 76) suggests that ‘economic and energy security takes priority
over environmental security’. This gives some hint as to why climate issues are
forced into a conventional security framework, due to a national power calculus.
However, the long chains of production, supply and demand are not conducive to
national autonomy, and the relationship between states and markets is strained. The
transnational and global issue of climate change is not amenable to a purely national
strategy, whatever local initiatives might be taken. So, in considering a political
turn, it is such structural features that may be subject to some twisting as both states
and markets are encompassed in wider social trends that influence climate policy.
While more traditional security concerns are evident in talk of international conflict,
a human development perspective advancing ‘human security’ would have the
global benefit of showing that there are sustainable ways to meet basic human
needs. Since economic development is understood to create energy needs, then
this suggests awareness of a potential structural shift in international politics that
provides both relevance and substance to the idea of ‘climate security’, even if
policy development is still catching up.
If ‘climate security’ is to be achieved, it would have to be clear what aspect of
our relationship to the climate system is to be secured. Security for the existing
sources of climate problems (‘business as usual’) through mitigation and adaptation
adjustments will not be conducive to long-term security from the consequences of
climate change. In this respect, climate clearly threatens ‘human security’ (Barnett
and Adger 2007), which suggests rather more than a military planning issue (Briggs
2012). What’s more, there is still some debate about the urgency of the problem.
Lacy (2005: 38) raises a pertinent query: ‘should we accept a hierarchy of security
that places the threat of human-generated climate change into the safe-category of
a Second-Order problem?’ It is not clear that simple efficiency gains in some
locations will curtail global growth, given the power of consumption. So it is
necessary to both think and act globally to arrive at a consensus on ‘sufficiency’ in
which equity for locals is central.
We should also question the ability to exercise effective control over narrow
areas of policy concern in ignorance of a wider interconnectedness and complexity,
as illustrated by Commoner’s third law about the negative consequences of tech-
nological interventions in natural systems (Commoner 1971). This is not a counsel
of despair, but rather an exhortation to avoid narrow, short-term, convenient and
comfortably familiar policy solutions that avert our gaze from the broader picture –
which indeed we may find distasteful, as things stand. Neither does this suggest that
small-scale, locally relevant policy is inappropriate – on the contrary this is among
the most common and promising ways forward, but it too must correspond to a
broader logic (eco-logic) at a global scale, and may still be thwarted by the con-
straints of global political-economic structures. Those tensions will eventually
resolve themselves one way or the other, but at this point it seems unlikely that
they can resolve themselves in favour of a laissez-faire position with respect to
underlying political-economic assumptions. So far the broader logic has been that
of neoliberal political economy, but some highly visible failures following from that
166 Hugh C. Dyer
logic must surely have brought such assumptions into question. Even if capitalism is
adept at reinventing itself, it will now have to reinvent itself in response to the
challenges of climate security, and the equity issues embedded in them. Specifically,
any serious effort to deal with climate change ‘requires wide and deep structural
reform of contemporary high-energy societies’ (Barnett 2001: 118).
Beyond short-term instrumental adjustments – security and justice

It can be seen that the emergence of climate security terminology suggests more
than just instrumental adjustment to practical challenges of current international
politics, and domestic policy (Hymas 2012). The systemic and structural implications
of this shifting discourse suggest a significant underlying change, and the opportunity
to capitalise on momentum or dynamics that would genuinely address the issue of
climate should be seized. For example, while carbon markets may have a limited
impact, such quantification and monetisation may allow attribution of climate-change
losses to specific carbon-emissions. Such factors may concentrate the mind and lead to
more widespread behavioural change, and in turn change the opportunity structures
of our political and economic institutions. Jacobs (2012: 15) concludes ‘that the
theory of green growth (on whichever body of economic thought it is based) cannot
determine the question of whether any particular green growth strategy or path will
achieve the claims made for it’, and that at the ‘same time, it is clear that the case for
green growth is stronger the further ahead one’s frame of reference looks’.
While instrumental short-term adjustments may advantage some actors, it is
necessary to appreciate the deeper political significance of the climate scenario. In prac-
tice, policymakers can respond not simply by addressing pertinent stakeholders in their
policymaking, but by supporting a diversity of actors in pursuit of a common purpose.
‘Changes in the behavior of citizens, new engagement of civil society organizations, and
reorientation of the private sector toward a green economy, are all crucial to achieve
progress’, even in a governmental context (Biermann et al. 2012). The complexity
of the energy-climate nexus, as in other areas of environmental concern, is likely to
create multiple pathways for governance and institutional diffusion (Bernstein and
Cashore 2012; Ovodenko and Keohane 2012). The challenge for policymakers is
thus to identify and capitalise on the emerging opportunities in politics and practice
that climate security has engendered. In the absence of a convenient ‘silver bullet’
solution, security cannot be in the service of self-indulgence but instead must
address self-sufficiency within the limits of a global carbon budget.
In viewing shifts in the security discourse as politically significant, we are better
able to appreciate structural consequences. Evolving security concepts should
encourage further development of a more holistic ‘ecological security’ perspective,
since our inherited ideas are imperfect guides to the future. Oversimplification of
climate issues under ‘security’ labels is risky. As the securitisation literature suggests,
in doing so governments may signal high-priority ‘national interests’ and the threat
of extraordinary measures, potentially engendering conflict and undermining
cooperation. The concept of ‘climate security’ influences the way security is
approached in general because it reflects consideration of a particular condition of

modernity, which challenges assumptions about the merits and modes of economic
growth, raises issues of inter-generational equity and responsibility, brings non-
human agency to bear on political structures, and both requires and complicates the
governance of socio-economic change. What is at stake in analysing climate
security as an issue of justice, in particular, is that it involves more than the obvious
issues of inequality, of a division of spoils with winners and losers, and tension
between global initiatives and local aspirations. The sense of justice it invokes bears
on both the global and the local in arriving at a virtuous political settlement which
avoids universal harm. Vanderheiden (2008) says that there is a historical responsi-
bility for climate change, and thus it demands an essentially cosmopolitan notion of
justice because it is a global phenomenon implicating future generations in terms of
equal benefits and burdens, notwithstanding challenges of deploying procedural
justice to arrive at distributional justice. Goodman (2009) describes ‘climate justice’
as a totalising concern, involving large-scale transformation of political contesta-
tions. Guerrero (2011) notes that inequalities arise from variations in impacts and
threats to existence caused by climate change. Whether climate change is so sig-
nificant an issue that it has been securitised via the concept of ‘climate security’ is
not so clear, though it has certainly been politicised, and perhaps securitised inap-
propriately in some instances as Floyd (2013) suggests is possible. Yet, really extra-
ordinary (state) measures are not yet apparent, in spite of calls for urgent action,
and state policy and practice have so far seemed more like nudges towards ecolo-
gical modernisation. These policies have also blended into conventional global
governance which itself is diversifying, and either becoming more polycentric
(Ostrom 2009) or fragmenting (Floyd 2015) into somewhat more anarchical forms
(Dyer 2014) than the traditional state-centric context of international diplomacy
which informed early conceptions of security.
As in the traditional understanding of a security dilemma, in the climate context
the tensions arise when states attempt to secure the ‘territoriality’ or ‘imperme-
ability’ on which their ‘sovereignty’ and ‘independence’ is perceived to rest (Herz
1959: 76). These categories of policy and practice are not appropriate to modern
concerns with climate change and related threats to survival. However, a more
ecological perspective on security could lead to even more extraordinary measures:
cooperation in the long-term pursuit of human interest, bringing some urgency to
what is obviously important. It is possible to transcend the dilemma or paradox, by
bringing trust to bear on uncertainty through shared norms in our worldviews on
climate change. Thus some conformity around ecological values understood in
terms of justice, and set against existing assumptions and practices, may yet help us
cope with the dilemma of climate security.
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10
ENERGY SECURITY IN AN AGE OF
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
Jonna Nyman
Introduction
Reliable energy supplies are crucial for the military, political and economic survival
of states, and as a result it is widely agreed that energy is a security issue. Studies of
energy security in International Relations (IR) usually focus on the national security
aspect(s) of energy and its (geo)political implications. With fears of increasing compe-
tition for resources, energy is an issue of geopolitical tension: particularly for
importing states, who have been the focus of most studies in IR. Consequently,
the price, availability and supply of fossil fuels, particularly oil, have remained at
the centre of energy security discussions. But energy supplies are necessary for the
survival of our societies more broadly, too. Equally, energy consumption is the
single biggest cause of climate change and raises serious questions about our future
existence. Energy choices affect the global environment and global environmental
politics, but discussions of energy security often overlook environmental questions.
However, more recently this debate has come under scrutiny and critique. In
this chapter I suggest that the energy security debate is changing as energy concerns
become more closely linked with other agendas, including environmental politics.
As it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the impact of energy choices on the
environment, a growing number of authors challenge IR’s historical focus on
energy importing states and the supply of fossil fuels. I also argue that the changing
context of energy politics raises questions about the state system that go to the
heart of the subject of IR.
First the chapter looks at energy security in International Relations, assessing
the key ongoing debates and the impact of environmental change on these. It
shows that unlike the study of the environment, which has seen ongoing discus-
sions about the concepts under study and debates over justice, human security
and securitisation (Floyd and Matthew 2013), energy security has only recently
172 Jonna Nyman
begun to face similar scrutiny. After illustrating the limits of the traditional under-
standing of energy security in IR, I point to some key emerging critiques, showing
that the conversation is beginning to change. The chapter ends with a small case
study of the changing energy security debate in China, highlighting the implica-
tions of such a change.
Energy as security in IR: competing realist and liberal logics

Energy security studies is a multidisciplinary field, spanning not just IR but also
environmental studies, energy technology studies, energy policy, energy engineering,
energy law and governance, planning and management. In IR, however, energy
security became a serious focus of study with the oil crises of the 1970s and the
concept took on a specific meaning as a result. The classical definition comes from
Yergin’s 1988 article, which states that ‘the objective of energy security is to assure
adequate, reliable supplies of energy at reasonable prices and in ways that do not
jeopardise major national values and objectives’ (1988: 111). The oil crises saw
supply shortages and price hikes, underscoring the vulnerability of energy-importing
states. As a result, study of what became known as ‘energy security’ centred around
security of supply and stable prices from the 1970s onwards, and it is only in the
past five to ten years that we see IR concerning itself with other aspects of energy
security in any significant way. As recently as 2010, Dannreuther suggested that the
traditional definition remains largely ‘unquestioned’ in the mainstream literature on
energy security (2010: 145).
The emphasis on energy supply and price indirectly assumes a focus on fossil
fuels, and particularly oil, as the main energy resource traded internationally on a
global market. What’s more, because the concept itself stems from the oil crises,
‘energy security is the theory and practice of securing energy for the nation state’
(Barnett 2001: 34, emphasis added). The oil crises had a huge impact on economic
and political stability, and the importance of continued supplies for sustaining
military capability is well known. Deese suggests that while energy security has an
internal (domestic) component, ‘it is the external component – energy imports –
that poses the most immediate problems for national security’ (1979: 140). This
link between energy and national security has been central in IR literature on the
subject ever since. States play a vital and arguably increasing role in energy politics,
with national oil companies and state intervention growing in importance. We are
said to be living in a ‘fossil fuel age’, characterised by the continual struggle by
states to secure supplies of scarce resources (Yergin 2011: 4).
Little attention has been paid to the question of what we are securing in energy
security discussions for this very reason: the implicit, accepted focus on securing the
survival of the sovereign state has made the question redundant. Mulligan (2010:
89) analyses the link between energy and national security and argues that rather
than being seen as part of the global commons ‘fossil fuels have historically been
seen in terms of “property”, and as subject to states’ sovereign right to exploit their
natural resources’. He traces the removal of fossil fuels from the environmental
Energy security 173
agenda, showing that because of their association with industrialisation fossil fuels
have become seen as ‘part of the human (rather than the “natural”) world’ (ibid:
86). Thus, in most discussions of energy security, both in IR and in political con-
texts, the implicit focus is on securing fossil fuel supplies for the nation-state. In
contrast, environmental questions are rarely considered.
IR itself has also affected how we understand energy security. In International
Relations, security has traditionally been understood as protection from threats,
usually of a military or geopolitical nature, and the referent object – the thing to be
protected – has been the state. The state is presented as ‘inside’, and the thing to be
protected, while the international is presented as anarchic, ‘outside’ and Other.
Because of this distinction, the state has been seen as the necessary focus of security
and in need of protecting from an indefinite number of possible threats that exist in
the anarchic realm, including Other states. The privileging of the state has set limits
on the security debate, and in particular limits on how ‘we have been able to think
about more desirable alternatives’ (Walker 1990: 7), including the very meaning of
security.
This particular understanding of security, anarchy and the international has
coloured the study of energy security in IR. It also underpins the traditional energy
security debate, which is characterised by a divide between realist and liberal
understandings of the international system. Here, I use Shepherd’s ‘logics of
security’ as an analytical framework for understanding the mainstream energy
security literature, to highlight problems with the concept of energy security and its
ties to a traditional understanding of security and the international system. Shep-
herd suggests that every security discourse is ‘organised around a particular logic of
security’:
each competing conceptualisation of security has a distinct primary focus,

referent object and perspective on the arrangement of the international
system… The ways in which these claims are made, the assumptions that
inform them, and the policy prescriptions that issue from them, are what I
refer to as ‘logics of security’.
(Shepherd 2008: 294)
The realist logic focuses largely on the state level, and authors emphasise the
anarchic nature of the international system as inevitably and irrevocably leading to
competition between states. The liberal logic focuses on the state and/or the global
level, with the state or global economy as the referent object of security. While
such authors emphasise anarchy, they stress economic interdependence and assume
that states can overcome anarchy through cooperation. In practice, the claims
these logics make about energy security are both linked to a ‘highly conventional
logic of security’ (ibid: 294). There is agreement between authors that energy
security is about security of supply, and that security of supply is a national security
issue, but they propose different solutions or methods for achieving energy security.
The rest of this section surveys the mainstream literature on energy security
174 Jonna Nyman
through the lens of these logics. Much of the literature considered is focused on
energy security more broadly, but some focuses specifically on the United States
and/or China, as the two largest energy consumers.
What I call the realist logic here is sometimes labelled the ‘strategic’ approach.
Dannreuther describes it as the ‘neomercantilist and realist tradition, which sees the
international struggle for energy security as a zero-sum game’ (2010: 145). Here energy
security is ensured by controlling supplies via state-owned companies, focusing on
energy independence/self-sufficiency, political links with, and investment in, energy-
exporting states, and by using military force (Andrews-Speed 2004: 340). There is a
large body of literature on resource wars that feeds into the ominous predictions of the
realist logic (Klare 2002). The thing to be secured here is always the state, and the state
is the central actor in an anarchic world with scarce energy resources: ‘we are seeking
more, but finding less’ (Klare 2008: 39). Here we see a world where the strategic
interests of selfish states competing to ensure their autonomy and survival trumps the
power of the international market and international cooperation.
Energy security is considered a key part of foreign policy and key to national
security interests. Vitally, in the realist logic securing the state involves ensuring
strategic autonomy in the international system, so here security necessitates ‘reducing
vulnerability to being subject to the power of others’ (Lee 2005: 289). It is central
to discussions of power: ‘ever since the industrial revolution, energy and the need
to secure its supply have been fundamental to any position of power in the world’
(Schlesinger 2005: xiii). Strategy and military thinking are closely linked to how
energy security is understood:
traditional energy security concern is about the supply of and demand for
energy… A state is said to be insecure if it has to rely on external sources of
strategic materials which contribute to its ‘war potential’ or if the supply of the
strategic materials is under threat.
(Lee 2005: 266)
Ultimately, energy security is about ensuring secure access to the energy

resources ‘required for the continued development of national power’ (Kalicki and
Goldwyn 2005: 9).
The autonomous state and national security are the central organising principles
around which the realist logic represents energy security:
Chinese oil executives are told to put their country’s oil security above the
economics of their business. US Generals are told to expand their bases in
order to project power into regions containing United States’ energy interests.
Clearly, energy security is national security.
(Boekestein and Henderson 2005: 80)
The international system is said to be characterised by a ‘resource race’, a zero-sum

game where a growing China needs increasing energy supplies which can only be
Energy security 175
satisfied ‘at the expense of other energy-starved nations’ (Klare 2008: 12). Follow-
ing this logic, ‘every barrel of oil China buys in the Americas means one less barrel
available for the US’ (Luft 2005). The possibility of disrupted supply is continually
highlighted as a geostrategic vulnerability. The logic presents a world characterised
by intense inter-state competition and perpetual possibility of conflict. Optimistic
realists suggest cooperation is possible, but the more common conclusion is that ‘it
is likely that oil wars, instead of oil, are in the pipeline’ (Lee 2005: 289).
Turning now to the liberal logic, this has also been referred to as the ‘market’
approach to energy security. Rather than political-military solutions or indepen-
dence, it focuses on liberalising energy markets, integration and interdependence as
the solution to energy security (Andrews-Speed 2004: 340). Energy security
remains understood as reliable and adequate supply of energy at ‘reasonable prices’
(Bielecki 2002: 237). It is a specific, economic form of neoliberalism that is
emphasised here, and the international system is generally still seen as anarchic.
However, cooperation is thought not only possible but likely, as the world is
becoming increasingly interdependent. Here energy security ‘is not a zero-sum effort; if
appropriate policies are instituted, the improvement of one country’s energy security
need not be at the expense of other countries’’ (Gault 2006: 9, emphasis added).
The thing to be secured here is usually the economy, but it can vary from
securing the national economy or economic growth of particular states through
economic integration, to focusing on securing the stability of the global economy
(sometimes as a means to achieve the former). Some studies move completely
above the state-level, emphasising globalisation and removing the state as a referent
object of security. For example, in a 2006 article titled ‘Ensuring Energy Security’,
Yergin suggests: ‘There is only one oil market, a complex and worldwide system
that moves and consumes about 86 million barrels of oil every day. For all con-
sumers, security resides in the stability of this market. Secession is not an option’
(2006: 76).
Here the market itself is given agency, moving and consuming oil. It is this
market that both provides security and needs to be secured, while individuals only
exist as consumers. Some authors take a macroeconomic approach, emphasising the
‘impacts of high energy prices and the danger of economic losses resulting from
potential shortfalls in energy supply’ (Bielecki 2002: 237). Here ‘the meaning of
reliable and adequate supply is rather straightforward: it simply means uninterrupted
supply that fully meets the needs of the global economy’ (ibid: 237). However,
despite the emphasis on securing the global economy, it is secured ultimately in
order to secure states – it is ‘consuming countries’ that are ultimately ‘vulnerable’ – and
states, together with industry, are key actors to minimise risks of supply disruptions
and their possible negative impact on the global economy (ibid: 236–249).
Authors in the liberal logic present international markets and multilateral initiatives
or institutions as the solution to energy insecurity. Markets are central, and states
remain secure by staying ‘integrated into a global system of energy consumption’
(Yergin 2006). In other words, states must integrate into the neoliberal energy
market to ensure security. This kind of thinking is institutionalised, with International
176 Jonna Nyman
Energy Agency energy security indicators emphasising ‘firm trust in the functioning
of (liberalised) energy markets’, while other security of supply indicators, including
depletion or resources, are disregarded (Kruyt et al. 2009). The logic is underpinned
by a belief in liberal interdependence: we are told there is a need for ‘national,
regional, and international energy strategies that foster cooperation on energy issues’
(Pascual and Zambetakis 2009: 32). Cooperation is presented as the natural response
to energy security concerns, as the world becomes increasingly ‘energy-inter-
dependent’ (Verrastro and Ladislaw 2007: 95). A similar logic endures in the global
energy governance literature, which emphasises the need for institutionalised global
energy governance with a working energy agency regulating the global energy
market (Helm 2002: 184; Florini and Sovacool 2009). The liberal logic of energy
security presents a globalised and interdependent international system where coop-
eration over energy is likely, although economic competition remains a key princi-
ple. The emphasis is on neoliberal macroeconomics, with liberalisation of markets
and multilateral initiatives as solutions to energy security concerns. It rarely recog-
nises the limitations of relying on markets.
Many authors sit between the realist and liberal logics, pursuing various hybrid
approaches (for example, see Tunsjø 2010). While various combined approaches
present interesting analyses of energy security issues, the state and/or the national/
global economy is/are still the referent/s of security, and the claims made about the
international system and the assumptions that underpin these claims remain the
same. Lastly, it is important to recognise that energy security needs vary between
countries, and at the international level. The International Energy Agency was
originally founded to help responses to major disruptions in oil supply, but today
also engages with environmental awareness, sustainability and climate change.
However, it still officially defines energy security as ‘the uninterrupted availability
of energy sources at an affordable price’ (IEA 2015).
The narrowness of traditional IR and its particular understanding of security,
anarchy and the international has produced a narrow energy security debate where
energy security is assumed to equal ensuring supplies and stable prices for the state.
Authors share a similar understanding of the organisation of the international
system and the objects worthy of study. State competition is privileged, whether
strategic or economic. Throughout, the focus remains on fossil fuels, particularly oil
security.
This hitherto dominant debate leaves many questions unanswered. Crucially, it
fails to examine or recognise the impact of environmental change on energy politics.
Energy security is changing and it has important implications both for environ-
mental politics and for International Relations. This chapter now turns to look at
more recent challenges to this debate.
A changing debate: conceptual and normative critiques

Despite the dominance of the traditional debate, there is an emerging discussion
over the meaning and focus of energy security: one study found as many as
Energy security 177
45 different definitions of energy security in the literature (Sovacool 2010: 3–6).

Kruyt et al. (2009) also note a growing number of potential energy security indica-
tors used in the literature, but find that most are not actually used in policymaking,
where the emphasis remains on security of supply. Over the past five years, how-
ever, studies of energy security have continued to push the boundaries. Some
challenges come from critical security studies, others from political geography, law,
energy or environmental policy studies. This section outlines some key challenges
posed, and is followed by a small case study to illustrate the changing debate and
some of the implications.
First, the concept of energy security has been critiqued. Valentine highlights the
problem of ontological and epistemological ‘blindness’ in the existing literature on
energy security, which works to obscure underlying assumptions and choices in terms
of how energy security is represented. Most energy security studies ‘fail to acknowl-
edge critical assumptions that skew or bias the findings’ and present assessments ‘as
if they reflect absolute objectivity’: in practice, the concept of energy security is
notoriously ‘fuzzy’ (Valentine 2010: 70). Ciută notes that ‘energy security clearly
means many different things to different authors and actors, and even at times to
the same author or actor’ (2010: 127). This becomes a serious problem when ‘some
politicians refuse to define energy security at all’ (Sovacool 2010: 2).
Chester argues that the concept itself is slippery as it is ‘polysemic’ in nature
(2010: 893) – that is to say, it has multiple, related meanings. Ultimately, energy
security ‘takes on different specificities depending on the country (or continent),
timeframe or energy source to which it is applied’ (ibid: 893). Similarly, Knox-
Hayes et al. (2013: 609) studied attitudes towards energy security in ten countries,
finding that energy security is context-dependent and ‘best understood from a
nuanced and multi-dimensional perspective’. Ciută develops an in-depth analysis of
the concept, noting that ‘abundant analyses of pipeline politics stand in stark contrast
to the very few attempts to make sense of energy security conceptually’ (2010: 124).
While the mainstream literature suggests ‘there simply is no need to debate what
energy security is, because we know both that energy is a security issue and what
security is’ (ibid: 124), he suggests that the concept is in practice multiple and
context-dependant.
Second, various normative arguments critique the narrow focus of the traditional
debate and suggest alternatives. The current focus on the needs of states that import
fossil fuels neglects a number of issues. Dannreuther suggests the concept needs to
be broadened beyond ‘the interests of the rich, primarily Western, energy-importing
states’ (2010: 145). He emphasises the human security dimension of energy security,
arguing that only the richest third of the world’s population enjoys reliable and
affordable supplies of energy, while a quarter of the world’s population lacks access
to electricity and their experiences and interests remain ignored (ibid: 147; see also
Wirth et al. 2003: 133). The focus on supply security also ignores demand security:
oil-producing states depend on ‘stable and secure revenues for development’, a
difference in interests that he labels the ‘North-South dimension of energy security’
(Dannreuther 2010: 150).
178 Jonna Nyman
In a related critique, Simpson notes the state-centric, US or European focus of

the vast majority of the energy security literature. He shows that rather than secure
oil supplies, citizens of the Global South still largely rely on fuel wood for energy
(Simpson 2013: 249). His critique of the traditional focus on fossil fuels points not
just to a Eurocentric bias but also an ‘intrinsic bias given to energy technologies’,
which is not neutral: ‘fossil fuel and nuclear technologies all favour large-scale
industrial development and have centralising political and economic consequences’
(ibid: 254). He suggests that ‘a critical energy security perspective relates more to
the ability of individuals, particularly in marginalised or deprived communities, to
secure sufficient access to energy for their personal needs’ (ibid: 250). He also
highlights the importance of critical approaches focusing on justice and sustainability
in providing ‘an antidote to the traditional definitions of energy security that are
associated with militarism, wars and unsustainable, unnecessary and inappropriate
levels of industrial development’ (ibid: 260).
Hildyard et al. present a similar human security-focused critique of energy
security, suggesting that policies securing fossil fuel supplies
are triggering a cascade of new insecurities for millions of people – whether as

a result of the everyday violence that frequently accompanies the development
of frontier oil and gas reserves, or because the pursuit of ‘energy security’
through market-based policies denies many people access to the energy produced.
Indeed, the more that the term ‘energy security’ is invoked, the less clear it is
just what is being ‘secured’.
(Hildyard et al. 2012: 5)
Comparable gaps in current energy security policies are noted by Wirth et al.,
who also note ‘the danger to political and economic security posed by the world’s
dependence on oil’ (2003: 133). Lastly, Sovacool et al. (2014) look at energy equality
and justice, making an important normative argument about access to energy and
developing principles of energy justice.
A somewhat separate set of normative arguments is raised by critiques of the con-
tinued focus on fossil fuels as problematic specifically because of their impact on the
climate. Political geographers and scholars of environmental policy have been particu-
larly significant in developing this important line of critique. Bradshaw argues that the
mainstream literature on energy geopolitics ‘still fails to engage with the potential
consequences of climate change’ (2010: 281). Environmental sustainability remains
separated from concerns over security of supply (Kruyt et al. 2009; Umbach 2012).
Bradshaw (2010: 287) emphasises globalisation and the need to address energy security
concerns above the state level, arguing that energy security and climate change are
global problems that cannot be solved by a single state or region. Framing energy as a
state security issue serves to separate it from environmental concerns more generally, and
as a result it remains prioritised above environmental concerns (Nyman 2016, 2017).
Meanwhile, if we consider environmental security, it becomes clear that energy
security ‘also concerns the ecological impact of burning fossil fuels’: following this,
Energy security 179
the solution is not maximising fossil fuel supply, but rather renewable energy or
great reduction in energy use (Barnett 2001: 35; Vanderheiden 2011). This litera-
ture points to air pollution and global warming as major threats to health and
political stability, which cannot be dealt with without changes in the energy sector
(Jacobson 2009: 149). Such critique often goes hand-in-hand with criticism of the
human security implications of fossil fuel dependency. Large-scale changes to the
energy sector are also needed ‘to secure an undisrupted energy supply for a growing
population, particularly as fossil-fuels become more costly and harder to find/
extract’ (ibid: 149–150).
Such critiques raise important concerns with market-centred thinking on energy
security, which has clear implications for the field of IR more broadly. Pro-
blematically, ‘fossil fuels are cheap and relatively easily deployed sources of energy,
largely due to market failures that fail to take account of their social and environ-
mental externalities’ (Vanderheiden 2011: 609). The emphasis on economic com-
petition over fossil fuels drives up consumption and is not sustainable. When liberal
understandings of energy security focus on the global level, they emphasise secur-
ing the international economy and current standards of consumption, which is not
sustainable for people or planet. While collapsed energy markets would clearly be
problematic, markets should not be the primary focus of energy security policy.
Overall, this group of critiques argue in favour of a more sustainable or ecologically
informed approach to energy security.
Another line of critiques suggests that IR has struggled to grasp the wider com-
plexity of energy systems. Post-human theorising emphasising the complex inter-
dependence of social and physical worlds has pointed to further ways in which
traditional understandings of security are limited (Mitchell 2014). Similar thinking,
often rooted in energy policy or technology literatures, has been applied to energy
security. Cherp and Jewell advocate a shift from viewing various components of
energy security in isolation to studying whole energy systems. They define energy
security as ‘low vulnerability of vital energy systems’ (Cherp and Jewell 2014: 420).
Here, it is the security of vital energy systems themselves that is the focus: defined
as energy systems that ‘support critical social functions’ (ibid: 418). This definition
clearly decouples energy security from the state. While recognising that energy
systems are ‘delineated by sectoral or geographical boundaries’, regional and global
geographical boundaries are as important as national ones here, while sectoral
boundaries divide systems not by geography but by energy source, end uses or by
supply/production processes (carriers and infrastructure) (ibid: 419; Cherp and
Jewell 2013; for another example, see Johansson 2013).
Lastly, there has been growing interest in using securitisation theory to study
energy, highlighting the political implications of labelling energy a security issue.
Elsewhere I examine a case of energy securitisation in US–China relations, and
highlight the potential policy impact of energy securitisation as well as the wider
political implications of securitising energy (Nyman 2014). In the case studied,
securitising energy hampered cooperation and harmed bilateral relations. The EU,
meanwhile, presents interesting challenges, as attempts to securitise energy have not
180 Jonna Nyman
helped integration. Instead, securitising calls for a ‘Common Energy Policy’ have
increased member states’ unwillingness to give up sovereignty over energy
(Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008). Leung et al. (2014) examine securitisation of
energy supply chains in China, suggesting that China securitises oil supply chains at
the expense of improving the reliability of domestic electricity supply. It is clear
that the policy implications of securitising energy are potentially severe: an issue
completely overlooked in dominant debates that fail to reflect on what it means to
consider energy as a security issue and what the implications are. However, the
consequences can also be potentially positive: Mulligan suggests peak oil, or
‘energy descent’, is highly amenable to securitisation. He argues that casting peak
oil as a security issue can be beneficial, in particular if it’s understood as a problem
not of state security, but of human ecology (Mulligan 2011: 645).
It is clear that a number of challenges to the traditional debate are emerging.
The energy security conversation is beginning to change, and the following section
develops a small case study to illustrate the changing debate in practice and its
implications.
From critique to practice: the gradual transformation of China’s

energy security politics
China is now the world’s largest energy consumer and pays increasing attention to
energy security. The opening up of the Chinese economy in the 1980s led to a
surge in energy demand, but it was in 1993, when China shifted from being a net
oil exporter to becoming a net oil importer, that energy became a key focus. With
continuing growth in demand energy security has risen up the agenda, and since
the doubling of oil imports in 2000 ‘energy security’ (能源安全, nengyuan anquan)
has been a key ‘buzzword’ (Leung 2011: 1330–1331). China’s solution to the
question of supply security has been to focus on self-sufficiency, which remains at
around 90 per cent as a result of policies encouraging domestic production of
energy. In this sense, at least on paper China remains largely energy independent – and
thus ‘energy secure’ in the sense of the realist logic. However, the preoccupation
with self-sufficiency placed much of the attention during the 1990s and the early
2000s specifically on oil, as concerns grew over rising oil imports and the impact of
potential import dependence on China’s security of supply. China’s early experience
of energy security concerns and its early debate largely reflects the traditional IR
security of supply discussions (for more detail on this, see Nyman and Zeng 2016).
However, the focus on oil imports overshadowed what is now becoming a core
concern: the centrality of coal in China’s energy mix. During China’s rapid indus-
trialisation, coal provided an ideal energy solution. It was not only comparatively
cheap, it was easily available domestically and raised no supply concerns. Coal still
provides China with a secure source of energy under the terms of the traditional
energy security debate and criteria. Today China is ‘the world’s top coal producer,
consumer, and importer and accounts for almost half of global coal consumption’,
but because of coal, it is now also ‘the world’s leading energy-related CO2 emitter’
Energy security 181
(EIA 2015). The growing impact of coal consumption on China’s environment

and climate has led to more and more merging of energy and environmental
questions in the past five years. Here, the impact of energy choices on the envir-
onment is not just tangible in an academic sense, it is literally visible in the smog
that envelops China’s megacities each winter. The scale of the problem came to
international attention in what media organisations rapidly dubbed the ‘air-
pocalypse’ of 2013, as air pollution ratings went through the roof. It also serves to
illustrate the absurdity of separating energy and environmental questions.
Beijing itself serves as a good example. In 2014, a study by the Shanghai Academy
of Social Sciences found that pollution has made Beijing almost ‘uninhabitable for
human beings’ (Li 2014). To put this in context, during 2012 I spent the winter in
Beijing. I rapidly developed a ‘Beijing cough’ from the pollution and learnt to
judge whether or not I should open the window based on a combination of how
clearly I could see the buildings across the street and by looking at the Air Quality
Index (AQI) pollution data every morning. On the AQI scale, readings above 100
are deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups and anything above 150 is deemed
unhealthy for the general population. Levels occasionally go ‘beyond index’ (above
500), and in 2013, they surged above 750. Much of Beijing’s pollution derives
from burning coal: it is not only surrounded by coal-burning power plants (see
West 2013), it has also had coal power stations in the city itself, with the last closed
down in the spring of 2017.
The air pollution affects daily lives, as well as longer-term health. Smartphone air
quality apps have grown in popularity, as have increasingly high-tech face masks:
all to enable citizens to venture outside more safely. It has been linked to increases
in lung cancer (Wang and Shan 2014), and Richard Muller from Berkeley Earth
considers breathing the air in Beijing as equivalent to smoking nearly 40 cigarettes
a day, suggesting that air pollution is a cause of 1.6 million deaths in China
annually (Economist 2015). It also affects the global environment: China’s energy
consumption has made it the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and therefore
a major cause of global warming. Smog from China’s east coast also regularly
travels across the Pacific to hit the US west coast (Reklev 2014).
On a more positive note, the very scale of the problem has made it difficult to
ignore and China’s energy security debate is beginning to change in response.
China faces a difficult dilemma: in many ways the stability of the country is tied to
continued economic development, which demands energy. Consequently, energy
security has long taken priority over environmental questions. But now energy
itself is causing instability, as a source of growing popular discontent with envir-
onmental degradation. As a result, the government is beginning to take environ-
mental questions more seriously: this can be seen in the shift in the 11th and 12th
Five-Year Plans (covering 2006–2010 and 2011–2015 respectively). Here, there is
increasing focus on changing energy consumption patterns and reducing energy
intensity, with the 12th Five-Year Plan introducing quantitative targets. The most
recent White Paper on energy (from 2012) also goes significantly further than its
predecessor on environmental questions. It emphasises ‘environment-friendly and
182 Jonna Nyman
low-carbon development’, together with sustainability (PRC Central Government

2012: part II). In 2014, China’s prime minister Li Keqiang declared a ‘war on
pollution’, and while energy and resource security remain important president Xi
Jinping has also stressed the concept of ‘ecological security’ (Renmin Ribao 2014).
New targets for cutting coal consumption have also been introduced.
At the same time, international climate and power politics have aligned in a
way that plays well with China’s need to tackle domestic environmental chal-
lenges. Driven by domestic environmental concerns, China is no longer con-
sidered to be ‘obstructing’ a global climate agreement (a narrative that emerged
during and after the Copenhagen summit in 2009). Instead, it has played an
increasingly important role in international climate change negotiations, including
making a major bilateral climate agreement with the United States ahead of the
Paris climate summit in 2015. This has allowed China to take on what is increas-
ingly considered to be a leadership role: a role that is unlikely to diminish so long
as US opinion remains divided. But China’s changing environmental and energy
politics could work as a driver for growing international engagement, and perhaps
even leadership.
While some mixed messages remain, when China released figures for 2014 they
indicated a decline in annual coal consumption for the first time. It is too soon to
tell if this is a temporary blip attributable to slowing economic growth, or a result
of China’s shift towards cleaner sources of energy. However, policy documents
show clear indications of a fundamental shift in China’s approach to energy security,
driven by environmental concerns and air pollution in particular. The ‘airpocalypse’
and growing public discontent with China’s air quality is shifting China’s energy
security debate and policy. Energy security and environmental questions are
increasingly merged in policy discussions, although much remains to be done. As
part of this, understandings of energy as a security issue are also changing: while the
focus on securing state energy supplies remains, the meaning of energy security is
expanding to include environmental and health concerns (Nyman and Zeng 2016).
This illustrates some of the flaws in the traditional debate, and shows that in
practice the energy security debate is changing with changing environmental realities.
China could be seen to be energy secure in the traditional sense, as it suffers no
serious energy supply vulnerabilities. However, growing air pollution from burning
fossil fuels is producing ecological and human insecurity.
Conclusion
While the traditional energy security debate reifies the discipline’s traditional cate-
gories of analysis and prioritisation of state over international and security over
environment, the changing debate and reality poses important challenges to IR.
Traditional IR cannot comprehend or explain contemporary energy security realities
(Nyman 2017), and it cannot provide satisfactory answers on how to deal with
these new realities (Nyman 2017). Energy security increasingly overwhelms classi-
fications such as state/international and security/environment, crossing boundaries
Energy security 183
and refusing to be neatly categorised. The global implications of the changing cli-
mate make it difficult to see a place for state-centred solutions. However, as illu-
strated above, the energy security conversation is beginning to change, with
growing acknowledgement of these difficult questions. This is perhaps the biggest
contribution of energy security studies to the discipline of IR.
This chapter has outlined a number of challenges to the dominant debate: from
normative arguments about equality, justice and sustainability, to conceptual critiques
and securitisation studies questioning what we ‘do’ when we call energy a security
issue. Post-human and energy systems literature undermine the state-centric focus
of the mainstream debate, and when we shift from national security to human
security it becomes clear that protecting sovereignty is not the same as making
people secure. The environmental and climate implications of energy policies,
meanwhile, show the limits of a market-focused liberal logic. The illustration of
China’s changing energy security politics shows the practical significance of these
questions, too. It is clear that how we understand and study energy resources or
resource scarcity has profound implications for environmental politics and the Earth
as well as for International Relations. Context matters: we can no longer base our
theories of the world on abstract logics that derive from particular (Eurocentric)
assumptions and historical experiences, and treat these abstract logics as ‘neutral’,
objective and universally applicable. Rather, IR needs to be situated within and
recognise specific historical and cultural conditions of possibility.
The changing energy security debate also has important implications for under-
standing environmental politics. Energy choices cause increasingly serious envir-
onmental problems. Most importantly, we cannot take action on climate change
without major changes to the energy sector. However, it is clearly not enough to
incorporate energy into environmental discussions: environmental questions need
to be central to discussions on energy. Here, China’s experience provides interesting
potential for future study.
Energy politics is thus central to the future of IR and environmental politics: it
raises crucial environmental questions and serious questions about how we under-
stand and study international relations and the state system, the appropriate units of
analysis, international institutions and the central aims and means of security politics
itself. Most importantly, it indicates that business as usual concerning energy
security is running into conceptual, practical and political challenges that are likely
to lead to profound transformations in the coming years and decades.
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11
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AS IF
THE EARTH MATTERS
Introduction
This book set out to examine how International Relations has begun to come to
terms with the entwinement of social and natural systems. In a sense it is mysterious
that this entwinement ever disappeared from view. Natural features of the world
were originally the central focus of nineteenth-century thinking about geopolitics
(e.g., Mackinder 1904), and world politics is by definition a spatial and geo-
graphically located affair. Still, the modern discipline of IR, like many social sciences,
almost lost sight of nature, rediscovering it gradually from around the 1960s in the
form of ‘environmental problems’. In mainstream IR debates, nature became all
but invisible. Kenneth Waltz’s abstract model of states in anarchy airbrushed away
the geophysical backdrop to neorealist geopolitics. Neoliberal institutionalists also
envisioned a world of states suspended in an anarchic structure rather than a concrete
geography, and treated the environment as an example of interdependence.
Environmental problems were important to regime theory, but remained a relatively
‘low-politics’ category issue, albeit one of considerable interest to problem-solving
institutions. Constructivists and post-structuralists with their focus on culture and
signification also lacked a strong sense of materiality, not least when compared to the
Marxism and historical materialist from whom they largely overtook the disciplinary
critical mantle after the end of the Cold War.
By around 20 years ago, however, environmental matters had reappeared. But as
described in Chapter 1, the field was dominated by mainstream institutionalist
approaches tackling problems of resource scarcity and governing environmental
problems. This volume aimed to explore how, since then, during the past two
decades, the environment (or nature) has edged closer to the core of the discipline
from a variety of angles. A growing diversity of IR approaches now owe some of
their shape – and some of them owe their existence – to scholars grappling with
the international relations of (global) environmental problems.
In this concluding chapter, we first summarise the contribution of this volume to
IR and the field of Global Environmental Politics. We also draw attention to
additional themes and theories that define the field while lying beyond the scope
of this volume. We then summarise what we see as the most prominent shifts in
the study and practice of international environmental politics over the past two
decades. We conclude the book with some reflections on the challenges that
remain for the discipline of IR to fully appreciate the implications of the natural
world and planetary singularity.
A summary of our contribution

As we pointed out in Chapter 1, regime theory emerged in no small part through
analysis of environmental problems that arrived on the political agenda during the
1970s, and recently the idea of a ‘regime complex’ has been further developed
through analysis of climate change governance. Realist security studies have taken
to old themes of scarcity and appeared in new incarnations related to ‘climate
security’. But many other IR traditions have also responded. In an exciting
expansion of the English School’s repertoire of ‘primary institutions’ of interna-
tional society, Falkner argues in Chapter 2 that environmental stewardship is clearly
discernible in the form of a gradually consolidating norm affecting other key
institutions including sovereignty. Vezirgiannidou and Nyman’s chapters (3 and 10)
both show how mainstream realist and liberal approaches have been nudged by
environmental politics and greening at the state level. Dyer and Nyman’s chapters
(9 and 10) explore how the concept of security, a core classical concern of Inter-
national Relations, has changed through its encounters with environmental issues
such as resource scarcity and global climate change. IPEE reminds us that interna-
tional political economy is inherently linked to the environment and that the main
driver of ecosystem destruction and overload is expansive capitalist production and
consumption processes (Newell and Lane, Chapter 8 in this volume).
As well as modifying old ones, global environmental challenges have also drawn
new theories and ideas into the discipline. Beck and Forsyth’s Chapter 5 shows
how Science and Technology Studies has become a productive source of new
insights in international relations. This goes in particular for the international poli-
tics of climate change where the IPCC and scientific models have become an
international factor to be reckoned with. That chapter, as well as Stephen Hobden’s
Chapter 6 on geoengineering and post-human approaches, suggest that IR has
begun digesting the implications of complexity approaches and the limits of viewing
international relations from a purely human perspective. Finally, green perspectives
and concerns have also driven important normative agendas in IR; for example,
concerning inter-generational justice, which is taken up by Gillard, Ford and
Kütting’s Chapter 7. The move within IR to explore non-Western and ‘global IR’
perspectives has also involved debates about what a ‘green state’ is and a
IR as if the Earth matters 189
diversifying notion of statehood – a theme taken up in Death and Tobin’s chapter

(Chapter 4).
Together, this shows a discipline increasingly marked by the challenges of global
environmental politics, although this book is of course by no means exhaustive.
Other issues such as food security and environmental aid, development and
migration also contribute to the wide and lively field of Global Environmental
Politics. Other pressing issues such as dramatic biodiversity loss, dilemmas of water
management and older problems of energy and local resource scarcity have been
partially eclipsed by the recent ‘carbonisation’ and globalisation of perspectives on
international environmental thinking that climate change has brought with it (see
below). Furthermore, institutions such as carbon markets and phenomena like climate
city networks are just two important features of ‘climate governance’ not covered
fully in this volume (see Bulkeley and Newell 2015). Other theoretical contributions
to IR related to environmental debates should also be kept in mind. For example,
‘macro-securitisation’ has been added to the vocabulary of the Copenhagen School
to accommodate the arrival of global threats such as climate change (Buzan and
Wæver 2009). Risk-security literature emphasises that environmental doctrines of
prevention, precaution and risk-management have been adopted in security strategies
and by security actors such as NATO (Rasmussen 2006). The links between post-
colonial structures and environmental problems and contestations is also a fertile
ground for IR and the Earth. So this book will not be the last word on the
greening of IR (and the internationalisation of Environmental Studies) as this process
continues to unfold.
Changing traditions and trends

On the other hand, we must not get ahead of ourselves. While the field has
broadened and diversified, it is worth taking a step back to assess changing tradi-
tions and trends more widely, noting also some new limitations to perspectives on
IR and the Earth. We see three prominent shifts in the study and practice of
international environmental politics over the past two decades. The first is a
broadening and diversification of the theoretical landscape. The second is a con-
solidation of a global view of the environment, and in particular a ‘carbonised’
view of environmental challenges. The third is a focus on the fragmentation of
political authority.
Theoretical diversification
In the mid-1990s, when John Vogler and Mark Imber brought together IR scholars
to reflect on how the discipline has treated environmental change, they were
confronting a very different theoretical landscape to today. Their aim was to
broaden ‘the treatment of environmental change within International Relations’
beyond questions of international cooperation (Vogler and Imber 1996: 2). At that
time, IR scholarship on the environment was mostly oriented towards the study of
international institutions. The driving concern was how to motivate and facilitate
cooperation among some 180 states on issues of common concern. Although IR
scholars haven’t resolved this fundamental challenge, an increasing number have
acknowledged that this is not the only challenge that environmental problems pose
for International Relations. Indeed, there has been a growing recognition that
the ‘problem-solving’ lens may not be the most urgent one to apply. Preoccupa-
tion with making ‘institutions work smoothly’ (Cox 1981: 128–129) has margin-
alised important questions about who holds power, how power is deployed, how
institutions came into being, and what implications this has for justice – something
that arguably hampered those very institutions at the flawed Copenhagen climate
summit. IR scholars associate such concerns with a ‘critical’ approach in the sense
that it shifts focus from immediate solutions to the overall conditions of global
environmental politics.
Vogler and Imber’s 1996 volume included work from the perspectives of political
economy, social ecology, gender, constructivism, science studies and environmental
security. At the time of their publication, these were very much on the periphery
of the field. The critical approach is clearly diverse and we should be cautious
about drawing generalisations. But in certain ways, critical thinking has moved into
the mainstream of international environmental politics. This is especially true of
particular strands like political economy and critical security studies. And this is also
especially true outside the North American context, with the contributions to this
book to some degree reflecting this theoretical diversification.
In this volume we have heard the argument that mainstream interest-based
theories are limited in explaining international climate change politics, but can be
helped along with the addition of a two-level game framework that brings a
domestic focus to analysis (Vezirgiannidou). We have seen how our understanding
can be enriched by examining environmental issues through the lens of the English
School (Falkner), non-Western thinking (Death and Tobin), science and technology
studies (Beck and Forsyth), post-human thinking (Hobden), feminism, justice and
political ecology (Gillard, Ford and Kütting), ecologically informed international
political economy (Newell and Lane) and critical security studies (Dyer and
Nyman).
Globalisation and carbonisation of worldviews

A second shift is the way in which environmental problems are predominantly
recognised. Ever since environmental issues appeared on the international agenda
in the 1970s, there has been a tug-of-war between ‘brown’ issues and ‘green’
issues. Traditionally, countries with high levels of poverty have tried to focus
attention on the local environmental issues that undermine quality of life in the
immediate and short term. These so-called brown issues include sanitation, water
pollution, soil erosion and sewage. Developed countries in which these localised
problems have largely been under control tend to prioritise issues that affect future
quality of life on a global or regional scale. These so-called ‘green’ issues (which
now impinge upon much more than just ‘the environment’) include climate
change, ozone depletion, biodiversity, transnational pollution, and the preservation
of global resources (Hicks et al. 2008: 31).
Early multilateral environmental agreements during the 1970s focused almost
exclusively on issues with immediate and localised effects, and involved just a
handful of neighbouring or nearby states. By the 1990s this was already shifting.
Diplomatic time and resources were increasingly directed to negotiations among all
states on planetary-scale issues. One way in which the shift in attention and priority
has become evident is in aid spending. In the 1980s, brown issues received about
80 per cent of all environmental aid. By the late 1990s, this figure had dropped to
about 70 per cent, and to about 60 per cent by 2008. This shift is most prominent
in the least developed countries (LDCs), where almost all environmental aid is
directed to green issues that reflect global concerns (Hicks et al. 2008: 31). Of
course, global-scale environmental issues do affect poor developing countries too.
It would be wrong to cast these only as priorities and concern for wealthy countries.
Nevertheless, we ought to recognise that the global view of the environment does
marginalise certain issues.
The dominant view of environmental issues has not only become globalised. It
has also become carbonised. The issue of climate change now captures more public
and diplomatic attention than any other environmental issue. Attempts to carve out
space for addressing other environmental issues has led to climate change ‘band-
wagonning’ and ‘carbonisation’ of environmental politics. Climate change is a
complex issue: its causes and consequences are entangled in other environmental
issues such as water scarcity, deforestation, food security, desertification, and bio-
diversity loss. This complexity provides the opportunity for those working on
other environmental issues to attract attention and resources by linking their
agenda to climate change mitigation and adaptation (Jinnah and Conliffe 2012).
Sometimes these linkages are very sensible, but opportunistic bandwagonning is at
other times problematic. To give just one example, linking the restoration of
drylands to carbon sequestration may help tap into carbon markets, but this may not
be the most fair or effective way of addressing desertification (ibid: 202). In terms of
‘carbonisation’, the tools of practical climate politics such as the ‘carbon footprint’
unit of measurement and carbon accounting for carbon markets has made much of
what was previously energy policy, forestry or consumer behaviour into part of
global and local efforts at ‘governing the climate’ (Lövbrand and Stripple 2013: 38).
It may not be too far-fetched to soon speak of the ‘empire of climate change’.
The increasing dominance of climate change in the study of international
environmental politics is also reflected in this volume. Contributors were invited to
select their own empirical focus, and half selected a case on climate change. Rather
than reflecting an imbalance in the book’s coverage of the field, we believe this
selection is revealing of the state of the field. Just as ‘green’ issues can crowd out
attention to ‘brown’ issues, and while climate change does compound most other
problems, we should recognise that there are trade-offs in focusing too narrowly
on climate change. As important as this issue is (and we certainly do not intend to
downplay its importance), there are additional environmental issues that affect the
quality of life of current and future generations such as diminished access to clean
water, degrading soils, exposure to toxic wastes and air pollutants, biodiversity loss,
‘land grabbing’ for industrial agriculture, and others.
Fragmentation of political authority

The globalised and carbonised view of the environment pulls multiple issues into a
unitary and planetary perspective. But at the same time as this unitary view has
gained dominance, the political dynamic has become more and more fragmented.
During the 1980s and 1990s, governments and environmentalists tended to look
towards multilateral institutions like the United Nations (UN) to coordinate
international environmental action. ‘Global problems require global solutions’ was
the message of the day, and global solutions were assumed to mean carefully crafted
and coordinated plans. Even as recently as the mid-2000s, Australia and the United
States were widely criticised for undermining multilateralism and the global
response by building their own ‘minilateral’ institution alongside the Kyoto Pro-
tocol. This institution, the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate, has ceased to exist. But this style of global governance – multiple,
voluntary, overlapping institutions – has now become the norm.
Several chapters in this volume highlight that the state still occupies a central role
in global environmental politics (Falkner, Vezirgiannidou, Death and Tobin). But
the role of other actors is increasingly important. This fragmentation of governance
is particularly evident in climate change politics. Matthew Hoffman observes that
since the diplomatic debacle that played out at the Copenhagen climate summit in
2009, the ‘centre of gravity’ in global climate governance has shifted away from the
UN and towards what he calls ‘experiments in responding to climate change’
(Hoffmann 2011: 5). There are now hundreds of experiments in climate governance
with different configurations of authority and action. Some are partnerships among
regional municipalities and city mayors; others are networks of investors and cor-
porations; some are initiatives led by civil society groups; and some bring together
state actors, the private sector and civil society. Some are based only on sharing
information and ‘best practices’ (in energy efficiency and new technologies, for
example), others create carbon markets or other tools for voluntary emissions
reductions (see Chapter 8), yet others provide monitoring and oversight. The Paris
agreement on climate change, which was agreed in 2015, takes a first step towards
trying to coordinate all this activity beyond the UN by requesting that initiatives
register their existence, aims and activities on an online platform. But ‘orchestrat-
ing’ this multiplicity of governance activity is becoming a significant challenge in
itself (Hale 2016).
Practices within UN institutions are also changing. This is a trend that we are
only beginning to observe in very recent years. In the climate change regime, the
approach of agreeing a global goal and then negotiating the distribution of
responsibility is now dismissed as too ‘top-down’. Today’s style is ‘bottom-up’
negotiations whereby states unilaterally decide what level of ambition is realistic for
themselves. The global goal becomes the sum of individual pledges, albeit with a
view to ‘ratchet up’ efforts later. This bottom-up and voluntary style is not only
reflected in ambition, but also in the types of mitigation action made available.
Gone is the fixed package of mechanisms and the expectation about who will use
them and how. Today all countries can decide what mix of unilateral, bilateral and
multilateral mechanisms is appropriate for meeting their greenhouse gas targets.
Resolving the puzzle of IR and the Earth

More fundamentally, while much is happening both in the discipline and on the
ground, and environmental perspectives have both advanced and narrowed, there
is a lingering sense in which the basic puzzle of IR and the Earth remains unsolved.
In particular the implications of ‘the Anthropocene’ for IR have yet to be fully
fathomed and digested. Scientists have suggested that ours is a new geological age,
marking the end of the relatively stable 11,000–12,000-year-old Holocene epoch.
In the Anthropocene, societal activity is so great that humans have perhaps become
the decisive factor shaping the Earth. Human impact on natural systems is not only
quantitatively much greater that at any time before in the history of the Earth; the
very distinction between ‘human’ and ‘nature’ is according to some Anthropocene
ideas blurring (Purdy 2015: 2). If humans every year move three times more sediment
than the all the world’s rivers combined; if nuclear test-explosions have changed
the background radiation in the atmosphere; if the currently 7 billion people on
the planet are the main cause of the sixth mass extinction of species in the history
of the planet, then the illusion of water-tight borders between ‘natural’ and
‘human’ systems becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.
This potentially poses a fundamental challenge to IR as a discipline – a challenge
we have not yet begun to fully grasp. An Anthropocene focus on the stability of
global Earth Systems and their interlinkages with ‘Anthros’ – the human species –
arguably goes against the very grain of IR, which examines the consequences of
societal multiplicity: division rather than unity, distinctness rather than common-
ality. Recent restatements of classical geopolitics that dust off previously central
concerns such as the strategic implications of landmasses, oceans, mountain ranges
and local climates (Kaplan 2009; Porter 2015) have paradoxically ignored the
reverse implications of human society for the natural world. IR has sometimes left
it to others such as critical geographers to point out that geography is with climate
change no longer a fixed condition but is becoming a variable that is shifting due
to human influence (Dalby 2014); or to anthropologists to work on how some key
assumptions and notions such as sovereignty might need to be revisited in view of
the Anthropocene (Folch 2016). The dominant realist, liberal and constructivist
perspectives in IR of course remain – like most social science – anthropocentric in
their focus and wedded to identifying purely social causes of social effects (Deudney
1999). Liberal notions of human rights and human security, although increasingly
linked to sustainable development (e.g., in the Sustainable Development Goals), in
their essence exclusively privilege human lives, perspectives and concerns. Earth
Systems governance literature has made positive contributions to the challenges of
designing governance frameworks for policy ideas such as ‘planetary boundaries’
(e.g., Biermann 2014). But often such approaches are mistaken for replacements for
geopolitics, as if, just because we cannot afford to quarrel in a collectively threa-
tened world, the dilemmas of multiplicity will conveniently melt away. For Frank
Biermann, the Anthropocene ultimately requires ‘transformative structural change
in global governance’ (Biermann et al. 2012: 52). Simon Dalby urges that ‘traditional
geopolitical thinking is now outdated, and working within its premises perpetuates
habits of mind and modes of policy analysis that simply don’t fit the new circum-
stance’ of the ‘new artificial circumstances of the Anthropocene’ (Dalby 2014: 2).
But IR has yet to get hold of a clear roadmap for the transformative structural
change in global governance and the search has only just begun for the geopolitical
codes of the new geological epoch of humanity.
While geopolitics arguably began in ancient Greece with physiopolitics (from
physis – Greek for nature) (Deudney 1999: 29), it appears to still be very difficult
indeed to think about international politics and planetary unity at the same time.
Far from melting away in the face of slogans such as ‘global problems require global
solutions’, societal multiplicity remains a dogged generator of problems, also – or
especially? – in the Anthropocene. We think this book shows that societal multiplicity
is increasingly seen through the prism of problems arising from what we in this book
have called ‘planetary singularity’. But while structures of Global Environmental
Politics are being explored, the contours of this project remain at best sketchy.
We suggest that this implies that at least three things are needed to progress.
First, the history and reasons for a separation of natural or physical causes on the
one hand and social explanations on the other need to be dug out again and
understood, particularly in terms of what they mean for IR. Simply adding
‘environment’ to the existing theoretical frameworks for understanding global
politics – and conversely adding ‘governance’ to natural science analysis of Earth
Systems – has got us some of the way, but is clearly not sufficient. Not if the
implications and dangers of the Anthropocene epoch are to be taken seriously. This
means looking back to the origins of the social sciences as they tried to establish
themselves independently from the natural sciences and philosophy, and thinking
imaginatively about how social and natural systems are not hermetically separate
but intimately interconnected – all the more so in an age of hyper-technological
developments and destabilised Earth Systems. To understand what this means for
IR in particular this also means we must examine the origins of IR as a discipline as
it eked out an identity from history, law, philosophy and political science from
around the beginning of the twentieth century. Why and how was physiopolitics
jettisoned in the way that it was?
Second, ‘more interdisciplinarity’ across the social-natural science (and huma-
nities) is a call that now resonates with many, and is indeed vital if the world no
longer acquiesces to being analysed in terms of ‘social’ versus ‘natural’ causes and
dynamics. But at the same time any temptation to replace social theory and social
science frameworks wholesale in favour of concepts and theories from natural science
such as evolution, tipping-points, and complexity should be resisted. There is a
long tradition for unreflexively importing metaphors and theories from natural
science laboratories (not least from biology but more recently from climatology and
Earth Systems Science), but this generally comes at an analytical and political cost
(Bell 2006). Those familiar with social Darwinism or the writings of Thomas
Malthus should not need reminding of this. Of course, at the same time we should
continue and redouble efforts to build bridges to and from the natural sciences and
draw from ideas such as complex adaptive systems and cybernetics, but remember
that these sciences now also, in the Anthropocene, face an object of study that is
partly social, heavily influenced as it is by human activity (yet still with logics of its
own). IR is arguably as important in explaining the onset of the Anthropocene
as climatology and geology are, as only when European colonial expansion caused
the Spanish to arrive in South America, or when industrialisation spread globally
did human impact on natural systems take off sufficiently to become a ‘force of
nature’. Only with a strong IR focus on the continued consequences of societal
multiplicity can an understanding of international politics in and of the Anthro-
pocene be grasped. Interdisciplinarity, after all, for it to work, requires all parties to
have reflexive but secure disciplinary identities.
Third, in terms of methods and ‘truth’, the integration of insights from both the
humanities and the natural sciences requires a pragmatic and creative attitude to
knowledge production and consumption. Scientific institutions, tools (e.g., models)
and organisations have become constitutive for key global issues such as climate
change (Allan 2016). But conversely, social imaginaries of the future, of society and
of the international are just as much a factor that scientists, technologists and
engineers need to reckon with (Jasanoff 2015). It will not help much to have the
technological devices needed to rebalance the Earth Systems, if we have no political
or ethical means to put them into practice. Likewise, it is less helpful to have
designed institutions, social structures and lifestyles that feel agreeable if the natural
underpinnings sustaining them are disappearing beneath our feet.
We may yet learn to manage the planet and relations with each other – balance
planetary singularity with societal multiplicity – but it will be infinitely more dif-
ficult if ‘governance’ is tagged on as an afterthought to technological development,
‘scientific’ is reserved for one single mode of knowledge and ‘international’ is studied
as if the Earth did not exist.
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INDEX
Aarhus Convention on Access to China 38, 50, 54–5, 74, 86, 162, 172,
Information, Public Participation in 174–5, 179–3
Decision-Making and Access to Justice in civil society 9, 63, 89, 126–7, 140, 192;
Environmental Matters 69 global civil society 14
Actor Network Theory 88 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) 36,
African Ministerial Conference on the 87, 130, 147
Environment 73–4 Climate Change Performance Index 70
African Union 73–4 climate: change 4–17, 19, 26, 32–6, 38,
ALBA coalition (Alianza Bolivariana para los 40–2, 45–55, 63, 70–5, 82–3, 86–94,
Pueblos de Nuestra América) 72 100, 102, 104, 111–16, 197 189, 191–2;
Anthropocene 18–19, 103, 136–7, 140–5, ‘denialism’ 17, 91–3; engineering 100;
148; Anthropocene era 136–7, 140, global climate governance 8, 35, 37, 41,
193–4 192; governance 5, 9, 15–17, 32, 40–1,
anthropocentrism 3, 15, 18, 31, 63, 72,76, 105–7, 122–3, 128, 192–4; international
86, 100, 129, 160, 193; anthropocentric climate politics 27–8, 33, 36–7, 46;
bias 100 management 100; and security 19, 156;
Aristotle 4 see also Cancun climate agreements;
assemblage 15, 74; see also Latour, Bruno; Climategate; Copenhagen Climate
new materialism Conference, 2009 (COP15); Kyoto
Protocol; Paris Agreement
Beck, Ulrich 14 Climategate 90–1
Brundtland Report 4, 36, 163 Club of Rome 3
Byrd-Hagel resolution, 1997 50 colonialism 4, 9, 28, 68, 73, 75, 155, 195;
see also post-colonial
Cancun climate agreements, 2010 38 Committee of the African Heads of State 73
capitalism xi, 4–5, 10, 14, 51, 63, 65, 68, 72, complexity: complex adaptive systems 15,
76, 124, 129–30, 143–8, 166, 188 109–10, 195; complex systems 15,
carbon 9, 11, 14, 35, 100, 141; carbon 110–12; complexity approach 110, 188;
capture and storage (CCS) 101, 113–15; complexity theorists 109; complexity
carbon markets 39, 42, 147, 166, 189, thinking 18, 100, 109–12
191–2 ; carbon tax 70; carbonisation cooperation x, 8, 9, 12, 29, 32–8, 42, 47,
189–92; see also low-carbon technology 50–8, 89, 103, 138, 161–7, 173–6, 189;
Carson, Rachel 3 minilateral cooperation 8, 38, 42, 192
198 Index
Conference on Climate Change and the environmental realism 13

Rights of Mother Earth 72 epistemic communities 14–15, 17, 67, 74,
constructivism 10, 16–17, 28, 31, 46, 48, 81–9, 93, 126
53–5, 58, 83, 88, 187, 190, 193 European Union (EU) 39, 48, 65, 67,
Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) 69–71, 73, 163
106, 125
Convention on Long-Range Transboundary feminism 10–11, 121, 129, 190
Air Pollution 106 fossil fuels 3, 11, 53, 54, 66, 86–7, 89, 92,
Convention on the Prohibition of Military 104, 141–4, 161, 172–82
or Any Other Hostile Use of Foucault, Michel 10, 11, 87, 158–9; see also
Environmental Modifications governmentality
Techniques 106 Fukuyama, Francis 67
Copenhagen Accord 38 Future Earth 137
Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009
(COP15) 4, 38, 42, 46, 71–2, 91, 190, game theory 5, 47, 138
192; Copenhagen School 13, 189 geoengineering 15, 18, 100–16, 188
cosmopolitanism 16, 29, 37, 42, 66, 70, 122, geography x, 4, 5, 15, 122, 146,
127, 154, 167 177, 179
critical international political economy 14 Global Commission on the Economy and
critical security studies 13, 15, 177, 190 Climate 159, 161
critical theory 10; critical theorists 65, 68 global economy 159, 161, 173, 175
Cultural Theory 85–6, 92 global energy governance 176
global environmental governance 8–9, 14,
deliberative democratic theory 12 32, 81, 85, 120–1, 124, 126, 128, 131,
development 3, 8, 27–35, 49, 54, 65, 67, 138–9, 143, 145–6, 171
72–6, 130, 162, 165, 181 globalisation 63, 68, 140, 156, 175, 178,
discourses: of ecological justice 127–9; of 189–90
justice 18, 121, 131; of political ecology governance 40, 100, 122, 128, 136, 140,
127; discursive power 124–5; 142, 167, 194
environmental justice discourse 120, governmentality 11, 87; see also Foucault,
126–9; political discourse and movements Michel
126; social discourse 121 Gramsci, Antonio 10–11
domestic-international interactions 45–8, 51, Great Acceleration 2, 19, 141–2
53, 55–6, 58 greenhouse gases (GHG) xi, 7, 9, 33–7, 39,
41, 47, 50, 52, 70, 71, 91, 100, 102–4,
Earth System Governance 127, 139, 142, 107, 114, 181, 193
193–4 Green Climate Fund 40
ecological economics 145–6, 148 green growth 64, 67, 142, 146, 166
ecological justice 120–1, 127–8, 131, 190 green parties 4, 70, 73
ecological modernisation 64–8, 72, green political theory 127
74, 128 green state 1, 64–72; African green states
ecological political economy 145 74–5; European green states 69–72; green
economic growth 32, 67, 73, 87, 130, 145, imperialism 66, 69
156, 161, 167, 175, 182 Greenpeace 84
English School 3, 16, 26–35, 41–2, 69,
188, 190 Happy Planet Index 71–3, 75
environmental justice 13, 16, 121–6, 128–9, hegemonic stability theory 6–7
131,145 historical materialism 10
Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 68, human ecology 180
70, 73, 75
environmental politics 2–5, 16, 29, 31, 35, industrialization 63; Industrial Revolution
63–4, 75, 81, 121–5, 128, 130, 137, 146, 141, 174
188–9, 191, 194 institutionalism 45, 187; liberal
environmentalism 1–3, 10, 26–7, 29–32, institutionalism 7, 9–10, 46, 50, 53, 55,
41–2, 65, 137 58, 65, 130, 139, 147, 173–6, 183 188,
Index 199
193; neoliberal institutionalism 45–6, 47, Nationally Determined Contributions

67, 83, 124, 128, 131, 159, 175, 187; (NDCs) 39
see also Keohane, Robert NATO 48, 57, 189
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate neorealism 16, 45–9
Change (IPCC) 17, 81–2, 89–91, new materialism 16; see also post-humanism;
93–4, 103, 163; Fifth Assessment Latour, Bruno
Report 89, 91; Third Assessment normative theory 15, 154
Report 88
International Council for Science 142 Organization for Economic Co-operation
International Energy Agency 176 and Development (OECD) 67, 69–70
International Political Economy of the Outer Space Treaty 106
Environment (IPEE) 136–7, 139–40,
143–4, 146–8, 188 Paris Agreement 37, 39, 192
international political theory 12, 73 patriarchy 63, 76, 129, 146
international society 16–17, 26–43, 64, planetary boundaries 127, 194
66–7, 69–70, 76, 188 planetary singularity 1, 19, 188, 194–5
political ecology 16, 127–9, 146–8, 163,
justice see environmental justice; 190
cosmopolitanism political economy 16, 18, 67, 121, 130,
136–40, 143, 145–8, 155, 159, 163–5,
Kant 50, 66 188, 190
Keohane, Robert 6, 7, 8, 9 post-colonialism 73, 68, 189
Kuhn, Thomas 86 post-humanism 16–17, 100–1, 107–16, 179,
Kyoto Protocol 4, 7, 37, 39, 51, 57, 71, 82, 188, 190; see also complexity
87, 90, 130, 192 post-structuralism 47–8, 50, 163, 187
post-Washington Consensus 67
Latour, Bruno 15, 85, 125, 142; see also public participation 69
assemblage; new materialism
liberal environmentalism 10 Rawls, John 121–2
liberal internationalism 50–3, 58 realism 13, 28, 46–7, 49–50, 53, 55–6, 58,
liberalism see institutionalism 126; structural realism 47; see also
Limits to Growth report 87 neorealism
Locke, John 50 reductionism 86, 93, 126
low-carbon technology 38, 40, 75; see also regime complex 188
renewable energy regime theory 12–13, 30, 138, 187–8;
renewable energy 54, 70–1, 73, 75, 103,
Manifest Destiny 3 104, 159, 179
Marxism 5, 10, 65, 130, 146, 148, 187 Rio Conference on Environment and
Merton, Robert 84 Development (Earth Summit, UNCED,
methodological nationalism 137 1992) 4, 37
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 67 Rio+20 Summit, 2012 136–7
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 90 Royal Society 101–3
minilateralism 8, 38, 42, 192
Montreal Protocol 4, 34, 39, 83–4, 106 Sachs, Jeffry 67
multilateralism 37–9, 42, 192; Science and Technology Studies (STS) 5,
environmental multilateralism 2–9 15–17, 81, 84–6, 88–9, 92–4, 188, 190
multilateral environmental agreements 3, security 156–7, 159–62, 165–6, 172, 175,
8–9, 26, 30, 71, 191; see also Aarhus 188; biopolitical security 158; climate
Convention on Access to Information, security 154–5, 156–62, 164–7, 188;
Public Participation in Decision-Making ecological security 161–4, 166, 182;
and Access to Justice in Environmental economic security 161, 163; energy
Matters; United Nations; Paris securitisation 179; energy security 19,
Agreement; Rio Conference on 171–8, 180–2; environmental security
Environment and Development; Vienna 154–6, 156–7, 163, 178; global security
Convention governance 159; human security 157,
200 Index
160, 164, 171, 177, 179, 183, 193; (UNCED) 36–7; United Nations
international security 34; macro– Conference on the Human Environment
securitisations 13; national economic (UNCHE) 3; United Nations
security 154, 161; national security 158, Convention on Biological Diversity
171–4, 183; Securitisation Theory 13; (UNCBD) 8; United Nations
state security 155, 178, 180; Convention on the Law of the Sea 106;
societal multiplicity xi, 1, 16, 19, 193–5 United Nations Educational, Scientific,
sovereignty 1, 6, 7, 27–35, 40–2, 51, 122, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
125, 164, 167, 172, 180, 183, 188, 193 163; United Nations Environment
Stiglitz, Joseph 67 Programme (UNEP) 67, 83; United
Stoermer, Eugene 103, 140 Nations Framework Convention on
sustainable development 1, 4, 11, 70, 120–1, Climate Change (UNFCCC) 9, 12, 16,
139, 163, 193; see also development 27, 35–9, 42, 45, 47, 82, 106, 126, 128;
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 67 United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) 8
two-level games 56–7
Vienna Convention 39, 83
unitary actor assumption 46–8, 50, 53, 58
United Nations 4, 67, 192; 1992 United Waltz, Kenneth 29, 46, 48–9, 66, 76, 187
Nations Conference on Environment and Welsh School 13
Development (UNCED) Rio Summit World Commission on Environment and
(the Earth Summit) 137; the Conference Development, 1987 4; see also Brundtland
of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC Report
36; Paris Summit 2015 (COP21) 4, 5, 39, World Meteorological Organization
162–3, 182; Stockholm Conference 1971 (WMO) 89
26; United Nations Conference on World Resources Institute (WRI) 86, 90
Environment and Development World Wide Fund for Nature 84

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TRADITIONS AND TRENDS IN GLOBAL

Olaf Corry is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. His research is

Hayley Stevenson is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the Uni-

Global environmental governance has been a prime concern of policy-makers since

Environmental Politics and Governance in the Anthropocene

Grassroots Environmental Governance

Traditions and Trends in Global Environmental Politics

Regime Interaction and Climate Change

Edited by Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson

ISBN: 978-1-138-63387-2 (hbk)

List of contributors vii

1 IR and the Earth: societal multiplicity and planetary singularity 1

8 IPE and the environment in the age of the Anthropocene 136

Silke Beck is a Deputy Chair at the Department of Environmental Politics,

Olaf Corry is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of

Carl Death is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at the University

Robert Falkner is Associate Professor of International Relations at the London

Lucy Ford is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford Brookes

Tim Forsyth is Professor of Environment and Development at the London

Stephen Hobden is Reader at the University of East London. His publications

Gabriela Kütting is Professor of Global Politics, Department of Political Science,

Richard Lane is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Global Political

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex.

Jonna Nyman is Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheﬃeld.

Hayley Stevenson is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the Uni-

Paul Tobin is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, where he

Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou is a Lecturer in International Organisations at

Olaf Corry and Hayley Stevenson

The short and long history of international environmental politics

Studying international environmental politics

Anarchy and environment

Transnational environmental regime complexes

Theoretical diversiﬁcation: from problem-solving to critical analysis

how ideological and strategic forms of power shape international environmental

masculinisation of the global environmental governance agenda. Rephrasing Cynthia

What has the environment ever done for IR?

environmental regimes created by varying numbers and sets of actors engaged in

Outline of this volume

To illustrate their aim of placing social and socio-ecological relations in focus,

Lundborg, T. and Vaughan-Williams, N. (2011) Resilience, Critical Infrastructure, and

shift has been challenged more recently by several counter-trends. By engaging

The English School, global environmentalism and progressive

The English School: key concepts and debates

An English School perspective on global environmentalism

deeper level of international cooperation and even convergence between states

Pluralism versus solidarism in international climate politics

The international climate response: coexistence or cooperation?

partly a reﬂection of the complexity of the mitigation task, which involves

The solidarist ambition of the UNFCCC regime

the move to institutions and expansion of global rule-making; changes in the

gave rise to a more expansive approach to global rule-making, focused on the

countries. The framework convention’s principle of ‘common but diﬀerentiated

A crisis of solidarism? International climate politics between great

The crisis of multilateralism: a case for great power management?

The experience of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, in particular, was a

unencumbered by the conventions of multilateralism, seeking out opportunities for

The Kyoto Protocol: state solidarism in decline

New forms of climate governance and the rise of

Viewed from an English School perspective, the growth in transnational govern-

The case of climate change is particularly suited to the task of understanding

Neorealism, neoliberalism and the unitary actor assumption

main proponent is Robert Keohane, accepted these neorealist assumptions in order to

Problematising domestic–international interactions: a ‘domestic

(associated with demands regarding ‘sovereignty’ and ‘autonomy’), dominant poli-