Category: Lecture commentary

I am sure you’ve come across these resources as you undertake your research for the final paper and prospectus, and for the regime analysis, but here are some resources that I think would be useful.

• Dr. Ronald Mitchell has a very large dataset of environmental treaties, NGOs, IGOs, etc. Professor Mitchell’s page offers detailed datasets with some sample data.
• The ENTRI database that CIESIN has been putting together is great for finding international environmental agreements. Some good quantitative data.
• Most of the United Nations agencies (UN-Water, UN-Habitat, UNESCO) will have some information on the actual treaties

As always, feel free to send me a quick note if you have any questions.

The past couple of weeks we have been discussing the structure of the United Nations Environment Programme (you can read some of Dr. Maria Ivanova’s recent work on global environmental governance and the UNEP). Fragmentation in global environmental politics is not surprising (at least to me). We live in a world where resource constraints and organizational and institutional design is not always optimal. Moreover, our thinking about environmental issues has evolved profoundly from the 1972 Stockholm United Nations Convention on the Human Environment to the Johannesburg 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (see that the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development is already planning the 2012 Rio+20 Summit).

The past week, we spent some time discussing how we could build a new architecture of global environmental governance. Share your discussions/own views here. While some people may see the ideas a bit far-fetched, my interest is, as I mentioned, to make you begin think about different ways in which you (individually) could begin to participate in the design of a more robust global environmental governance framework. Keep, as always, your commentary respectful.

Welcome to POLI 375A, Global Environmental Politics. It’s my intention to help you familiarize yourself with both theoretical and empirical ideas around global environmental governance. What makes governments act in the way they do when making life-changing decisions in regards to protection of their national habitats, compliance with international environmental agreements, participation in global environmental summits, to name a few. While POLI 351 Environmental Policy and Politics was a much more skill-building course, POLI 375A Global Environmental Politics is much more theoretical and knowledge-based. My courses usually involve a heavy amount of reading, critical and analytical thinking and a lot of in-class discussion and exercises. You should be prepared for this if you want to take this course.