Global Environmental Politics

For more than twenty years, Global Environmental Politics has provided an up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased introduction to the world’s most pressing environmental issues. This new edition continues this tradition while covering critical new developments in the field. Through case studies on key issues such as climate change, toxic chemicals, and biodiversity loss, the authors detail the development of major environmental regimes. With new material on the adoption of global Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; the December 2015 Paris Climate Change conference; and recent meetings of major conventions on desertification, biological diversity, and more; the authors present a comprehensive overview of contemporary international environmental politics. The book’s final chapter examines the challenges and opportunities facing the world’s environmental policy makers.Global Environmental Politics is vital reading for any student wishing to understand the current state of the field and to make informed decisions about which policies might best safeguard our environment for the future.

Pamela Chasek is professor of political science at Manhattan College. She is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles on international environmental policy, includingThe Roads from Rio: Lessons Learned from Twenty Years of Multilateral Environmental Negotiations,The Global Environment in the 21st Century, and Earth Negotiations. She is also the executive editor of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a reporting service on environment and development negotiations at the United Nations published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

Professor David Downie teaches classes in the Department of Politics and the Environmental Studies Program at Fairfield University. He has attended nearly one hundred global environmental negotiations since 1990 and is the author of numerous publications on the creation and content of international environmental policy. Prior to joining Fairfield University in 2008, Dr. Downie taught graduate courses in environmental politics at Columbia University from 19942008 and served in a number of faculty, research and administrative roles, including at the Earth Institute.

Janet Welsh Brown is a former policy analyst at the World Resources Institute, former executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a former member and chair of the board of directors of Friends of the Earth.