Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance

210 Pages·2000·0.84 MB·English

by  Matthew Paterson (auth.)

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
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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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
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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
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