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 900 multi-lateral environmental treaties coming into force over the past 40 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. According to a recent scientific assessment organized by the international Earth System Governance Project (ESGP), human societies must change course and steer away from critical tipping points that might lead to rapid and irreversible change, while ensuring sustainable livelihoods for all. The urgent challenge 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 Governance series delivers cutting-edge research on the most vibrant and relevant themes within the academic field of global environmental governance. In more detail, the areas of interest of global environmental governance research constitute:
The overall institutional and organizational structure of Global Environmental Governance
By David A. Deese
June 01, 2023
This book assesses the extent to which two specialized UN agencies- the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal - have been able to regulate environmental pollution in the global commons. Since the Kyoto Protocol and ...
Edited
By Thomas Hickmann, Lena Partzsch, Philipp Pattberg, Sabine Weiland
May 12, 2020
Anthropocene has become an environmental buzzword. It denotes a new geological epoch that is human‐dominated. As mounting scientific evidence reveals, humankind has fundamentally altered atmospheric, geological, hydrological, biospheric, and other Earth system processes to an extent that the risk ...
By Beatriz Martinez Romera
December 05, 2017
The regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation and maritime transport has proved to be a difficult task for international climate negotiations such as the Paris Agreement in 2015. Almost two decades prior, Article 2.2 of the Kyoto Protocol excluded emissions from ...
Edited
By Olaf Corry, Hayley Stevenson
July 27, 2017
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 ...
Edited
By Philipp Pattberg, Fariborz Zelli
June 30, 2017
The term Anthropocene denotes a new geological epoch characterized by the unprecedented impact of human activities on the Earth’s ecosystems. While the natural sciences have advanced their understanding of the drivers and processes of global change considerably over the last two decades, the social...
By Thomas Hickmann
June 16, 2017
In the past few years, numerous authors have highlighted the emergence of transnational climate initiatives, such as city networks, private certification schemes, and business self-regulation in the policy domain of climate change. While these transnational governance arrangements can surely ...
Edited
By Leah Horowitz, Michael Watts
December 07, 2016
Grassroots movements can pose serious challenges to both governments and corporations. However, grassroots actors possess a variety of motivations, and their visions of development may evolve in complex ways. Meanwhile, their relative powerlessness obliges them to forge an array of shifting ...
By Kai Monheim
September 09, 2016
Multilateral negotiations on worldwide challenges have grown in importance with rising global interdependence. Yet, they have recently proven slow to address these challenges successfully. This book discusses the questions which have arisen from the highly varying results of recent ...
Edited
By Sebastian Oberthür, G. Rosendal
October 12, 2015
This book analyses the status and prospects of the global governance of Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) in the aftermath of 2010’s Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD’s initial 1992 framework of global ABS governance established the objective of sharing the ...
Edited
By Norichika Kanie, Steinar Andresen, Peter M. Haas
May 22, 2015
The experience of environmental governance is approached in Improving Global Environmental Governance from the unique perspective of actor configuration and embedded networks of actors, which are areas of emerging importance. The chapters look at existing Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs...
