Walter A. Rosenbaum’s classic Environmental Politics and Policy, Tenth Edition once again provides definitive coverage of environmental politics and policy, lively case material, and a balanced assessment of current environmental issues. The first half of the book sets needed context and describes the policy process while the second half covers specific environmental issues such as air and water; toxic and hazardous substances; energy; and a global policymaking chapter focused on climate change and transboundary politics. Covering major environmental policy initiatives and controversies during President Obama's two terms and capturing the sudden and radical changes occurring in the American energy economy, this Tenth Edition offers the needed currency and relevancy for any environmental politics course.
Why is it so difficult to control, or fix, pollution? How can we justify harvesting the world’s natural resources at unsustainable rates, even though these activities cause known harm to both people and ecosystems? Scientific knowledge and technological advances alone cannot tackle these environmental challenges; they also involve difficult political choices and trade-offs both locally and globally. What is Environmental Politics? introduces students to the different ways society attempts to deal with the political decisions needed to prevent or recover from environmental damage. Across its six chapters leading environmental scholar Elizabeth DeSombre explains what makes environmental problems, such as climate change, overfishing or deforestation, particularly challenging to address via political processes, what types of political structures are more or less likely to prioritize protecting the environment, and how effective political intervention can improve environmental conditions and the lives of people who depend on them. It will be a vital resource for students new to the field of environmental politics as well as readers interested in protecting the future of our planet.
The aim of this book is to review central concepts in the study of environmental politics and to open up new questions, problems, and research agendas in the field. The volume does so by drawing on a wide range of approaches from critical theory to poststructuralism, and spanning disciplines including international relations, geography, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and political science. The 28 chapters cover a range of global and local studies, illustrations and cases. These range from the Cochabamba conference in Bolivia to climate camps in the UK; UN summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg to climate migrants from Pacific islands; forests in Indonesia to Dutch energy governance reform; indigenous communities in Namibia to oil extraction in the Niger Delta; survivalist militias in the USA to Maasai tribesmen in Kenya. Rather than following a regional or issue-based (e.g. water, forests, pollution, etc) structure, the volume is organised in terms of key concepts in the field, including those which have been central to the social sciences for a long time (such as citizenship, commodification, consumption, feminism, justice, movements, science, security, the state, summits, and technology); those which have been at the heart of environmental politics for many years (including biodiversity, climate change, conservation, eco-centrism, limits, localism, resources, sacrifice, and sustainability); and many which have been introduced to these literatures and debates more recently (biopolitics, governance, governmentality, hybridity, posthumanism, risk, and vulnerability). Features and benefits of the book: Explains the most important concepts and theories in environmental politics. Reviews the core ideas behind crucial debates in environmental politics. Highlights the key thinkers – both classic and contemporary – for studying environmental politics. Provides original perspectives on the critical potential of the concepts for future research agendas as well as for the practice of environmental politics. Each chapter is written by leading international authors in their field. This exciting new volume will be essential textbook reading for all students of environmental politics, as well as provocatively presenting the field in a different light for more established researchers.
Global Environmental Politics is the perfect introduction to this increasingly significant area. The text combines an accessible introduction to the most important environmental theories and concepts with a series of detailed case studies of the most pressing environmental problems. Features and benefits of the book: Explains the most important concepts and theories in environmental politics. Introduces environmental politics within the context of political science and international relations theories. Demonstrates how the concepts and theories apply in a wide variety of real world contexts. Case studies include the most important environmental issues from climate change and biodiversity to forests and marine pollution. Each chapter is written by an established international authority in the field. ? This exciting new textbook is essential reading all students of environmental politics and will be of great interest to students of International Relations and Political Economy.
Understanding Global Environmental Politics develops a new, critical approach to global environmental politics. It argues that the major power structures of world politics are deeply problematic in ecological terms, and that they cannot be easily used to resolve major environmental challenges such as global warming. Instead of simply advocating the construction of new international institutions to respond to such challenges, therefore, the book argues that the construction of alternative social and political structures in necessary.
Globalization today is as much a problem for international harmony as it is a necessary condition of living together on our planet. Increasing interconnectedness in ecology, economy, technology, and politics has brought nations and societies into even closer contact, creating acute demands for cooperation. Earthly Politics argues that in the coming decades global governance will have to accommodate differences even as it obliterates distance, and will have to respect many aspects of the local while developing institutions that transcend localism. This book analyzes a variety of environmental-governance approaches that balance the local and the global in order to encourage new, more flexible frameworks of global governance. On the theoretical level, it draws on insights from the field of science and technology studies to enrich our understanding of environmental-development politics. On the pragmatic level, it discusses the design of institutions and processes to address problems of environmental governance that increasingly refuse to remain within national boundaries. The cases in the book display the crucial relationship between knowledge and power—the links between the ways we understand environmental problems and the ways we manage them—and illustrate the different paths by which knowledge-power formations are arrived at, contested, defended, or set aside. By examining how local and global actors ranging from the World Bank to the Makah tribe in the Pacific Northwest respond to the contradictions of globalization, the authors identify some of the conditions for creating more effective engagement between the global and the local in environmental governance.
"The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope. The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands is co-published with Oregon State University Open Educational Resources, who will release an open access edition alongside this print edition"--
