Globalization and the Environment critically explores the actors, politics and processes that govern the relationship between globalization and the environment. Taking key aspects of globalisation in turn – trade, production and finance – the book highlights the relations of power at work that determine whether globalization is managed in a sustainable way and on whose behalf.
Each chapter looks in turn at the political ecology of these central pillars of the global economy, reviewing evidence of its impact on diverse ecologies and societies, its governance – the political structures, institutions and policy making processes in place to manage this relationship – and finally efforts to contest and challenge these prevailing approaches.
The book makes sense of the relationship between globalisation and the environment using a range of theoretical tools from different disciplines. This helps to place the debate about the compatibility between globalisation and sustainability in an explicitly political and historical context in which it is possible to appreciate the ‘nature’ of interests and power relations that privilege some ways of responding to environmental problems over others in a context of globalisation.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Preface vi
Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations x
Tables and Boxes xiii
1 Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power 1
2 The Political Ecology of Globalization 17
3 The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance: Power(in) Globalization 34
4 Global Trade and the Environment: Whose Rules Rule? 60
5 Global Production and the Environment: Racing to the Top, Bottom or Middle? 88
6 Global Finance and the Environment: Gambling on Green 114
7 Conclusions: Ecologizing Globalization/Globalizing Ecology 145
References 160
Index 186
Über den Autor
Peter Newell is professor of international relations at the University of Sussex and director of the Centre for Global Political Economy.