The Politics of Climate Change: A Survey – Edited by M.T. Boykoff
Environmental Change and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice – Edited by P.G. Harris
Climate Change and Foreign Policy: Case Studies from East to West – Edited by P.G. Harris

The Politics of Climate Change: A Survey . London : Routledge . xx + 303 pages . ISBN 978-1-95743-496-5, $260.00 . M.T. Boykoff ( Ed. ), 2010 .

Environmental Change and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice . London : Routledge . xx + 223 pages . ISBN 978-0-415-48343-8, $140 . P.G. Harris ( Ed. ), 2009 .

Climate Change and Foreign Policy: Case Studies from East to West . London : Routledge . xviii + 180 pages . ISBN 978-0-415-48345-2, $140 . P.G. Harris ( Ed. ), 2009 .

Human activities, including large-scale industrialization, have altered the global environment in ways that are dramatic and potentially irreversible. Increasing population and consumption present growing pressure on multiple environmental systems, and these problems cross national borders. A prime example of this is the release of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the global atmosphere, resulting in increases in global average temperature and climatic changes that will continue to affect humans for generations to come. Addressing this challenge requires coordinated international action.

Global environmental issues, especially climate change, have become a critical and much contested arena in international politics. These issues involve multiple interests, stakeholders, and policy aspects. For example, the negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol drew not only country negotiators, but also became a global activist gathering and media event. Understanding the global politics of environmental change has thus become critical not only for scholars, but also for scientists, politicians, students, reporters, activists, and informed citizens worldwide.

Three new and informative edited volumes published by Routledge tackle some of the most complex and contested policy challenges surrounding the climate change issue. The Politics of Climate Change: A Survey, edited by Maxwell T. Boykoff, addresses the climate change issue from a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective. Two additional volumes edited by Paul G. Harris, Environmental Change and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, and a companion volume, Climate Change and Foreign Policy: Case Studies from East to West, focus on environmental and climate change issues from the perspective of foreign policy analysis.

The Politics of Climate Change draws upon the experience of a set of authors with academic backgrounds in a range of disciplines, including climate science, environmental studies, geography, biology, sociology, political science, and psychology. Politics in this volume is treated broadly, and comprises policy decisions by governments, as well as the broad social and cultural conditions under which climate change interacts with human activities.

The first three chapters set the background. The chapter by Stephen H. Schneider and Michael D. Mastrandea tackles the politics of climate science. They first provide a brief and thorough scientific introduction to the Earth's climate system. The remainder of their chapter addresses science–policy interactions and what they term “mediarology”—the understanding of communication and the media, which they view as critical understanding for everyone interested in climate change and public policy, and particularly for scientists. The chapter by Heike Schroeder lays out the history of international politics on climate change. Chukwumerije Okereke's chapter deals with key issues in international climate change negotiations, such as the role of market-based policy instruments, provision of technical and financial assistance, and the balance between adaptation and mitigation.

Subsequent chapters in the volume address in detail particular issues in climate politics. Hans von Storch looks at the role of science in creating climate change knowledge. Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson question the hegemony of market-based solutions in their chapter on the politics of the carbon economy. Maria Carmen Lemos and Emily Boyd examine the issue of climate adaptation, or how countries, especially developing countries, will deal with the impacts of a changing climate. Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts propose in their chapter a “hybrid justice” solution to North–South compromises in a post-2012 climate regime, in which countries reconsider and negotiate their beliefs about a fair outcome.

The final two chapters focus on engaging the public in climate change issues, an area of study that is a particular strength of this volume. This area has historically garnered less attention in studies of international environmental politics, which have largely focused on the politics of elite decision makers and/or scientists. In her chapter, Susanne C. Moser presents a cross-national comparison on attitudes toward climate change and policy. She argues convincingly that climate change attitudes are best understood within social, cultural, and economic contexts, and provides tools for understanding how to motivate public engagement toward climate solutions. Maxwell T. Boykoff, Michael K. Goodman, and Ian Curtis delineate the cultural politics of climate change, ranging from Al Gore to Madonna. In asking “Who speaks for the climate,” they review art, music, movies, sport, and even celebrities, who they refer to as the new “charismatic megafauna” in the climate change debate.

The volume concludes with an exhaustive, 75-page glossary of terms relevant to climate change and climate politics, ranging from entries on “fossil fuels” and “carbon dioxide” to those on “postmodern thought,”“Kyoto Protocol,” and “Marrakech Accords.” An additional 40-page section on maps and statistics provides detailed data on such topics as population, energy consumption, and ratification of environmental treaties. These glossaries should prove useful for teaching. While web links are provided for many of these data sets, the collection might have been even more useful for classroom use on a companion web site.

The book was completed before two major climate-related events in late 2009—the Copenhagen conference, which unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a new post-2012 climate accord, and “Climategate,” the release of emails and correspondence from scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which led to public questioning about scientific misconduct. Because of the rapidly changing nature of the climate issue, this is of course inevitable—but the arguments and background in the book hold up well given recent events, and can help to provide ways of understanding the evolving politics of climate change.

The two other volumes, Environmental Change and Foreign Policy and Climate Change and Foreign Policy, provide an in-depth look at selected case studies from the disciplinary domains of political science and international relations. The analyses presented in these volumes focus on foreign policy, defined as the level of analysis between domestic politics and international and global politics, while being connected to and affected by both. The volumes are structured around the argument that a focus on environmental foreign policy both helps in understanding global environmental politics, and that it provides new insights into foreign policy studies in general, within which environmental issues have garnered comparatively little attention.

Environmental Change and Foreign Policy includes both theoretical frameworks and case studies on environmental policy issues. After an introduction by the editor, Part I includes four theory-focused chapters. In a chapter on theories of environmental foreign policy, John Barkdull and Paul Harris propose a 3 × 3 matrix for analyzing environmental policies. They focus on three levels of analysis (society, state, and system), three basic causal variables (power, interests, and ideas), and their intersections. Loren Cass addresses the issue of environmental politics as symbolic politics, and the roles of ideas, identities, and norms in interstate cooperation on these issues. Thomas L. Brewer examines the private sector and industry responses to government climate change actions. Maximilian Meyer and Friedrich J. Arndt draw upon the field of science and technology studies to address “the politics of socionatures,” focusing on the connection between visualizations and global climate discourses.

Part II of Environmental Change and Foreign Policy presents case studies applying these theoretical perspectives. David Mutekanga examines biodiversity in Ugandan foreign policy, and the Ugandan ratification and implementation of the global Convention on Biological Diversity. Isabella Alcañiz and Ricardo A. Gutiérrez look at the case of Argentina, focusing on the dispute between Argentina and Uruguay over the construction of two pulp plants on the Uruguayan side of the shared Uruguay River. Mika Merviö addresses Finnish environmental and foreign policy, particularly the role of public environmental attitudes and identity in Finland. Ken Wilkening and Charles Thrift look at Canada's role as an environmental leader in the global negotiations to address persistent organic pollutants, which are a particular problem in the Canadian Arctic.

Sara Hughes and Lena Partzsch address water foreign policy in both the United States and the European Union, in the context of global goals for water availability and emerging ideas about water governance. Yohei Harashima addresses the politics of Asian developing countries in the World Trade Organization's Committee on Trade and the Environment, relating countries' interests and trade statistics to their foreign policy positions in this forum. Aike Müller asks why industrialized countries do not share an equal financial burden when it comes to tackling global environmental change in a chapter on financing for the environment. A final chapter, by Mihaela Papa, summarizes insights from the cases and proposes a generic framework for analyzing environmental foreign policy.

A major strength of Environmental Change and Foreign Policy is the diversity of empirical cases included in the book. In particular, the inclusion of three case studies addressing developing country foreign politics (Uganda, Argentina, and developing Asia) is an important contribution to a literature that has to a large extent focused on industrialized countries. The case studies are in addition explicitly linked to the theoretical frameworks presented, particularly referring back to the 3 × 3 matrix of Barkdull and Harris. The reasons for choosing these cases and not others, however, are less clear. Despite this variety, the cases are well summarized in the final chapter by Papa, which draws lessons from them to introduce a new application of a theoretical approach based on the willingness–opportunity framework.

Climate Change and Foreign Policy is designed as a companion volume to Environmental Change and Foreign Policy, and includes case studies focusing on the issue of climate change. These case studies range “from East to West.” Melissa Nursey-Bray addresses Australian foreign policy and the relationship between domestic electoral changes and its international climate leadership. Hiroshi Ohta writes of Japan's role as an “intermediate” or “support” state in global negotiations, while Paul G. Harris and Hongyuan Yu argue that China should take a leadership role in addressing the climate challenge due to its increasing influence on the global climate and the prospects for a transition to a cleaner economy. Oriol Costa addresses the question of who decides European Union foreign policy on climate change. Three chapters focus on individual European countries: Hungary (by Zsolt Boda et al.), Denmark (Deborah Murphy et al.), and France (Joseph Szarka).

Furthermore, Semra Cerit Mazlun compares Turkey's foreign policy on climate change and ozone depletion. Elizabeth L. Chalecki focuses on the United States under Bush Administration policies on climate change, arguing that U.S. foreign policy has failed to adhere to the norm of compliance with international treaties. The chapter was written before the election of President Barack Obama, and in hindsight, may have been overly optimistic about the degree to which an administration change would affect U.S. climate politics internationally, given domestic interests and constraints. Global North–South politics issues are addressed in a chapter by Åsa Persson and Richard J.T. Klein on adaptation to climate change. The two authors explore the idea of “mainstreaming,” or integrating adaptation funding into official development assistance.

The focus on East–West dimensions of the climate issue covers several of the largest emitters (China, the United States, and the European Union being the top three in total CO₂ emissions at present). However, other countries (India, African countries, small island states) are notably absent from the volume. In contrast to Environmental Change and Foreign Policy, which makes an explicit effort to tie together the case studies in introductory and concluding chapters, Climate Change and Foreign Policy is a stand-alone set of empirical cases, leaving most of the connection between these cases and further analysis to the reader.

Taken together, the three volumes provide extensive case material and many valuable theoretical insights for anyone interested in the politics of the environment and climate change. The Politics of Climate Change is more suited for a broader, interdisciplinary audience, and could be appropriate for use in a graduate-level interdisciplinary course. It provides much depth to concepts such as science-policy interactions, international politics and negotiations, public communication, and climate adaptation. Environmental Change and Foreign Policy and Climate Change and Foreign Policy are focused more on political theories, and thus provide a more in-depth approach to this particular dimension of global environmental issues, providing a diverse set of case material. They should thus be of substantial value to scholars of political science and international relations from both an empirical and theoretical perspective.