Routledge Research in Global Environmental Governance

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 1000 multi-lateral environmental treaties coming into force over the past 50 years and numerous transnational 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 that a number of critical planetary boundaries have already been crossed. Human societies must change course and steer away from critical tipping points that might lead to earth system breakdown, 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, equitable and transformative 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

• The core actors, their interests and motives
• New governance instruments and approaches, including public-private partnerships; market-based governance
• Questions of governance effectiveness, democratic legitimacy, accountability and transparency in/of Global Environmental Governance
• Normative underpinnings and implications of Global Environmental Governance, including considerations of equity, access, fairness and justice
• Adapting the overall global governance landscape to new challenges, including ecological and social tipping points, taking into account the need for seep and systemic change
• Methodological questions on how to better integrate governance research and the more quantitative modelling and scenario communities

Philipp Pattberg is professor of transnational environmental governance, head of the Environmental Policy Analysis department, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU Amsterdam, and director of the interdisciplinary Amsterdam Sustainability Institute (ASI).

Agni Kalfagianni is full professor of management of international social challenges at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam.