Environmental Governance: Power and Knowledge in a Local-Global World

This edited collection makes a highly significant critical contribution to the field of environmental politics. It argues that the international-level, institutionalist approach to global environmental politics has run its course, employed solely by powerful actors in order to orchestrate and manipulate local communities within a continuing hegemonic system.

The outstanding international line-up of contributors to this volume explore the real advances that are being made in the areas were the local and global intersect and how power fits into the equation. They explore the relationship between governance, power and knowledge, using power as the main analytical tool.

The contributors adopt a variety of approaches and perspectives – some starting from the local level and shifting upward to the global, and some using a global perspective that narrows down to the local. Some chapters explore specific case studies and others employ a more conceptual framework – but all of them bring a new dimension to the relationship between power and knowledge in environmental governance. Power here is explored in all its guises – from relational to structural power.

An important and timely exploration of a topic at the forefront of global debate, Environmental Governance is essential reading for all students of global environmental politics, international political economy and international relations.

Gabriela Kütting is Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Rutgers the State University of New Jersey in Newark. Her research interests lie in the field of global environmental politics and she is the author of ‘Environment, society and International Relations’ (Routledge 2000) and ‘Globalization and environment, greening global political economy’ (SUNY Press 2004).

Ronnie D. Lipschutz is Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent books are The Constitution of Imperium (Paradigm, 2008) and Globalization, Governmentality and Global Politics: Regulation for the Rest of Us? (Routledge, 2005).