Issues and Challenges in International

Environmental Politics
Some Challenges for International Relation
Some Challenges for
International Relation
What is International relation?
International relations is the study
of the interaction of nation-states
and non-governmental
organizations in fields such as
politics, economics, and security.
Professionals work in academia,
government, and non-profits to
understand and develop
cooperative exchanges between
nations that benefit commerce,
security, quality of life, and the
environment.
Some Challenges
for International
Relation
It is perhaps more interesting and
important to note that international
environmental issues pose challenges
for some of dominant approaches in
international relation.
Why it is so?

Because the theories and simplifying assumption developed through

other areas of the study, such as security study or international
political economy, should not be assumed to apply equally well to this
area without careful examination of the evidences. Obviously in the
practice, the IR scholars required significant revision to take proper
account of the characteristics of environmental problems.
Some Challenges for
International Relation
• Why non-state actor typically plays the
important role in international
environmental problems?
Because as we all have known that
the non-state actors have produced
several big changes in the nation-
states system as well as in the role of
the nation-state in international
relations. These have been
instrumental in increasing
international interdependence and
relations, as well as in ordering and
expanding relations in this age of
interdependence.
Some Just as studies of international environmental
politics oblige us to take full account of a
Challenges range of non-state actors, and to review the
for significant and role of states, they also raised
the questions about the relationship between
International ‘international’ and ‘domestic’ spheres of
Relation political activities.
Some Challenges for
International Relation
The third issue for international relation
which is raised particularly by the
studies of international environmental
problems is the relationship between
knowledge, power and interests
 The ‘tragedy of the
commons’: an instructive
parable
According to Garrett Hardin, a U.S. ecologist
and author, he stated that the notion of
‘tragedy of the common’ can be explained
using a hypothetical example of the use of
common fish resources, and the notion show
that it is possible that ‘rational’ individual
actions can lead to ‘irrational’ collective
practice resulting in catastrophic over-
exploitation of common resources. Where
access to a common resources is open and
unregulated, each user continues to have an
individual interest in exploiting it to the
maximum.