Bringing the In‐Between Back in: Foreign Policy in Global Environmental Politics

Abstract

Many environmental problems are transnational in their causes, consequences, and/or solutions. The increasing pace of global environmental destruction suggests that research on policies to address these problems has proved to be inadequate to the task. One possible way to enhance our understanding of global environmental politics and policy is to look more carefully at what goes on between and across the international and domestic aspects of it: to look at environmental foreign policy. This article describes foreign policy in the context of global environmental politics and discusses the potential utility of foreign policy analysis to help scholars and policy makers to better explore, comprehend, and possibly mitigate the human impact on the environment. Examples are drawn from the cases of China, Japan, and the United States.

Creative and disruptive elements in Norway´s climate policy mix: the small-state perspective

“…The importance of the national foreign policy strategy for the country's climate policy is an important but largely neglected issue (for exceptions, see Harris 2002, Cass 2008. Although foreign policies of small states have traditionally not received as much attention as those of great powers (Neumann and Gstöhl 2004), scholars have begun showing interest in the subject (Ingebritsen et al 2006, Björkdahl 2008.…”

“…With this, we aim to address the gap in the literature as few studies have drawn on the insights from comparative political economy to explain national climate politics and policy (but see Lachapelle and Paterson 2013). By incorporating the foreign policy factor, we seek to contribute to the literature on the role of international affairs and symbolic politics in national climate policymaking (Harris 2002).…”

India’s Environmental Strategy in the Global Climate Negotiations

“…By analysing the environmental foreign policy of various States, it can be explained how the environmental policies of the States influence the various dimensions of GEP. The dominant matter of concern is that many studies of GEP do not adequately stress the foreign policy part of environmental protection efforts (Harris, 2008). Interestingly, analysts have little knowledge about how governments formulate their environmental foreign policies and how those policies work in the domain of GEP.…”