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Understanding Global Environmental Politics Also by Matthew Paterson ENERGY EXPORTERS AND CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS (with Peter Kassler) GLOBAL WARMING AND GLOBAL POLITICS Understanding Global Environmental Politics Domination, Accumulation, Resistance Matthew Paterson Lecturer in International Relations Keele University Staffordshire First published in Great Britain 2000 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-96855-0 ISBN 978-0-230-53677-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-53677-7 First published in the United States of America 2000 by ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-23090-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paterson, Matthew, 1967– Understanding global environmental politics : domination, accumulation, resis- tance / Matthew Paterson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-23090-6 (cloth) 1. Environmental Policy. I. Title GE170 .P38 2000 363.7—dc21 99–053110 ©Matthew Paterson 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-333-65610-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction: Understanding Global Environmental Politics 1 2 Realism, Liberalism and the Origins of Global Environmental Change 11 Introduction 11 The realist and liberal global environmental change research agenda 12 The causes of global environmental change in realist and liberal IR theory 23 Towards a structural account of global environmental change 29 Conclusion 33 3 The ‘normal and mundane practices of modernity’: Global Power Structures and the Environment 35 Green politics and International Relations 35 Global power structures and global environmental politics 40 Development and the production of global environmental change 54 Conclusions 58 4 Space, Domination, Development: Sea Defences and the Structuring of Environmental Decision-Making 66 Projects of domination 66 Development and the origins of sea defences 74 Structuring environmental decision-making 77 Conclusions 94 5 Car Trouble 95 Introduction 95 Autohegemony 99 v vi Contents Cars and environmental change 110 Cars and the IR of the environment 111 Challenging car culture 113 6 Fast Food, Consumer Culture and Ecology 118 Introduction: McLibel 118 McDonaldisation: McDonald’s as modernity and modernisation 123 Meat 130 The speed of fast food 135 Conclusions: resisting ‘McDonaldisation’ 138 7 Conclusion: Globalisation, Governance and Resistance0 141 Global civil society and global environmental governance 141 Globalisation and global environmental politics 145 Resistance and transformation 149 Toward a sustainable world? 153 Notes 162 Bibliography 175 Index 196 Preface During part of my life as a student, we had a new Vice-Chancellor. Knowing that some of his academic work concerned the politics of environmental problems, I was optimistic concerning the possible openings for campaigns to improve the way the university dealt with its environmental impact. At that time (about 1991–92), the Green Society of the Students’ Union was running a campaign concerning the promotion of car-use by the university. One part of this campaign con- cerned a plan by the university to spend £50000, building a temporary (if I remember rightly to last only one year) car park to accommodate expanding demand for car-parking space, until funds and space could be found for a permanent one. We (‘GreenSoc’, as the logic of abbreviation by which all student political groups’ names operate had it) produced a substantial document illustrating how, given the envi- ronmental consequences of car use, the university’s limited resources would be better spent subsidising bus passes, working with the local council to improve cycle routes on to the campus, and so on. We timed this to coincide with the arrival of the new Vice-Chancellor, sent him a copy personally, on the assumption that what we needed to do was get his interest so that he would take up the matter with the relevant com- mittee, and to provide him with alternative information to counter that produced by car-oriented bureaucrats in the planning office. However, in an ensuing issue of the university’s official magazine, the new Vice-Chancellor printed a response to the campaign which effec- tively stated that the environmental problems associated with develop- ments such as the car were determined by the logics of global capitalism and there was little point in the university spending its efforts or money in attempting to reduce the environmental impact of its decisions. At that point, I realised I could never be a proper structural Marxist. At the same time, the reverse position, that all that is needed is to cre- ate sufficient political will for action so that a sustainable future can be forged, is equally unsatisfactory, even if less annoyingly complacent. What I hope to do in this book, is to highlight both how global struc- tures of power systemically produce environmental change, but avoid the determinism and fatalism outlined above. An understanding of vii viii Preface the structural constraints facing agents should not be understood to foreclose possibilities for action; rather it should precisely help to iden- tify the possibilities for advancing social change. It is my hope that this book helps in such a project. Acknowledgements As usual, I owe many debts incurred in the production of this book. Deborah Mantle and Dave Scrivener both read the entire manuscript and provided invaluable feedback which substantially improved the flow of the text. Various people read individual chapters. Hidemi Suganami, Andrew Linklater, Debbie Lisle, and John Macmillan all read earlier versions of Chapter 4. Martin Parker read Chapter 6. John Macmillan, Simon Dalby and Cara Stewart also read Chapter 7. David Mutimer commented on parts of Chapter 3. A version of Chapter 4, com- bined with the general argument of the book, was given at seminars in the politics departments at Sussex University, Nottingham University and Staffordshire University, and the International Relations Department at Keele University. A version of Chapter 5 was presented at a seminar at Warwick University, at Carleton University, and at the British Interna- tional Studies Association annual conference in 1998. A version of Chapter 6 was presented to MA students on the MA in Environmental Politics at Keele University. A version of Chapter 7 was presented at York Center for International and Security Studies in Toronto, and Trent University. I thank those present at these various seminars for helpful and stimulating discussions of the ideas developed here. Parts of Chapter 3 appeared earlier as ‘Green Politics’, in Scott Burchill (ed.),Theories of International Relations(1996). I am grateful to Macmillan, the publisher, for permission to reproduce this here. I am grateful to MIT Press for their permission to reproduce the figure on page 28. Some of the research for Chapter 4 was carried out at Eastbourne Town Library. I am immensely grateful to the staff in the reference library there who were extremely generous with their time in finding many of the materials cited here. I am also grateful to Eastbourne Friends of the Earth and UK Friends of the Earth for letting me look at their files on their campaign on this question, and to those whom I interviewed: Peter Padgett, Eastbourne Borough Council Senior Engineer; Simon Counsell; Janet Grist and Mrs M. Pooley, Eastbourne Borough Council Environment Committee. The Department of International Relations at Keele University has provided an extremely congenial and stimulating atmosphere in which to work, and I am grateful to all my colleagues for this. Dave Scrivener again merits particular notice for his timetabling genius, which makes ix

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Understanding Global Environmental Politics develops a new, critical approach to global environmental politics. It argues that the major power structures of world politics are deeply problematic in ecological terms, and that they cannot be easily used to resolve major environmental challenges such a
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