Global environmental change will be with us forever, but how it happens in the future, and with what effect on the planet and its peoples depends to a large extent on how the international agreements, national politics and local actions play out. This collection provides a comprehensive assessment of these critical interconnections, and reveals how social scientists are making an invaluable contribution to the creation of more science and just livelihoods in a future world.

Global environmental change will be with us forever, but how it happens in the future, and with what effect on the planet and its peoples depends to a large extent on how the international agreements, national politics and local actions play out. This collection provides a comprehensive assessment of these critical interconnections, and reveals how social scientists are making an invaluable contribution to the creation of more science and just livelihoods in a future world.

Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.

Reconstructs negotiations of the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

This book examines how an error in global meta-policy set climate change negotiations on an unproductive course. The decision to base negotiations on the Montreal Protocol and overlook the importance of interests, it argues, institutionalised an approach doomed to fail. By analysing interests, science and norms in the process, and the neglect of ‘interactive minilateralism’, learning was delayed until the more promising Paris Agreement was finally concluded, only to encounter a Trump Presidency, which (ironically) might offer further learning opportunities.

Negotiating Environmental Agreements provides the first comprehensive introduction to their widely practiced and highly regarded techniques."--BOOK JACKET.

The basic assumption of this book is that the organization of a negotiation process matters.The global negotiations on climate change involve over 180 countries and innumerable observers and other participants, addressing enormously complex and economically vital issues with conflicting agendas. For the UN to create an effective and well-supported international regime has required enormous and very skilful organization: factors such as the role of the Chair, the choice of negotiating arenas, the rules for the conduct of business and the approach of negotiating texts are usually taken for granted, and rarely attract attention until something goes wrong.This book explores how the negotiations were organized to produce the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Change Convention and the subsequent Bonn Agreements and Marrakesh Accords. The author draws out the lessons and implications for other intricate and far-reaching negotiations, not all of which have succeeded so far, such as the WTO trade negotiations at Seattle and Cancun.This is essential reading for all participants in and organizers of international negotiations; and for researchers and students of international relations, climate change and environmental studies.