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The expansion of the fishing industry in the last century has raised concerns over the long-term viability of many fish species. International fisheries have failed to prevent the overfishing of many stocks but have succeeded in curtailing harvests for some key fisheries. This book develops a theoretical approach, the vulnerability response framework, which can increase the understanding of the countries’ positions on the management of international fisheries based on linkages between domestic vulnerabilities and national policy positions. Vulnerability, mainly economic in this context, acts as an indicator for domestic susceptibility to the increasing competition associated with open access and related stock declines. Because of this relationship, it can also be used to trace the trajectory of the countries’ positions on fishery management as they seek political alternatives to economic problems. The author tests this framework by using it to predict national positions for eight cases drawn from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). These studies reveal that there is considerable variance in the management measures which ICCAT has adopted—both among different species and in dealing with the same species over time—much of which can be traced to vulnerability response behavior. Little attention has been paid to the ways in which international regimes change over time. The book’s approach illuminates the pressures for change that are generated by economic competition and overexploitation in Atlantic fisheries, and also identifies patterns of adaptive governance, as national responses to such pressures culminate in patterns of change in international management.

Common wisdom holds that the earth’s dwindling natural resources and increasing environmental degradation will inevitably lead to interstate conflict, and possibly even set off “resource wars.” Many scholars and policymakers have considered the environmental roots of violent conflict and instability, but little attention has been paid to the idea that scarcity and degradation may actually play a role in fostering interstate cooperation. This book offers a different perspective on the links between environmental problems and interstate conflict. Although the contributors do not deny that resource scarcity and environmental degradation may become sources of contention, they argue that these conditions also provide the impetus for cooperation, coordination, and negotiation among states. The book examines aspects of environmental conflict and cooperation in detail across a number of natural resources and issues including oil, water, climate change, ocean pollution, and biodiversity conservation. The contributors argue that increasing scarcity and degradation generally induce cooperation across states, but that when conditions worsen (and a problem becomes too costly or a resource becomes too scarce), cooperation becomes more difficult. Similarly, low levels of scarcity may discourage cooperation because problems seem less urgent. With contributions from scholars in international relations, economics, and political science, the book offers an investigation of the links among scarcity, environmental degradation, cooperation, and conflict.

North American policy responses to global climate change are complex and sometimes contradictory, and reach across multiple levels of government. For example, the U.S. federal government rejected the Kyoto Protocol and mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) restrictions, but California developed some of the world's most comprehensive climate change law and regulation; Canada's federal government ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but Canadian GHG emissions increased even faster than those of the United States; and Mexico's state-owned oil company addressed climate change issues in the 1990s, in stark contrast to leading U.S. and Canadian energy firms. This book examines and compares political action for climate change across North America, at levels ranging from continental to municipal, in locations ranging from Mexico to Toronto to Portland, Maine. It investigates new or emerging institutions, policies, and practices in North American climate governance; the roles played by public, private, and civil society actors; the diffusion of policy across different jurisdictions; and the effectiveness of multilevel North American climate change governance. The book finds that although national climate policies vary widely, the complexities and divergences are even greater at the subnational level. Policy initiatives are developed separately in states, provinces, cities, large corporations, NAFTA bodies, universities, non-governmental organizations, and private firms, and this lack of coordination limits the effectiveness of multilevel climate change governance. In North America, unlike much of Europe, climate change governance has been largely bottom-up rather than top-down.

This book investigates the process of information disclosure as a policy strategy for environmental protection. The process, which is a new approach to environmental protection, sometimes leads government and industry to focus on meeting only minimal standards. The authors examine the effectiveness of information disclosure in achieving improvements in corporate environmental performance by analyzing data from the federal government’s Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI, and drawing on an original set of survey data from corporations and federal, state, and local officials, among other sources. The authors find that TRI, a prime example of information disclosure, has had a substantial effect over time on the environmental performance of industry. When examining case studies from all over the United States, the conclusion is that improvement is not uniform: some facilities perform much better than others. The authors argue that information disclosure plays an important role in environmental policy—but only as part of an integrated set of policy tools that includes conventional regulation.

Our morning cups of coffee connect us to a global industry and, also, to an export crisis in the tropics that is destroying livelihoods, undermining the cohesion of families and communities, and threatening ecosystems. This book explores the crisis facing small-scale coffee farmers of Mexico and Central America, the political economy of the global coffee industry, the coffee producers’ response to this crisis, and the initiatives that claim to promote more sustainable rural development among coffee-producing communities. The contributors review the historical, political, economic, and agroecological processes involved in today’s coffee industry and analyze the severely depressed export market that small-scale growers in Mexico and Central America encounters. The book presents a series of interdisciplinary case studies showing how small-scale farmers manage ecosystems and organize collectively as they seek useful collaboration with international NGOs and coffee companies to create opportunities for themselves in the coffee market. The findings demonstrate the interconnections between the livelihoods of farmers, biodiversity, conservation, and changing coffee markets. Additional chapters examine alternative trade practices, certification, and eco-labeling, and discuss the politics and market growth of organic, shade-grown, and Fair Trade coffees.

In today’s globally integrated food system, events in one part of the world can have multiple and wide-ranging effects, as has been shown by the recent and rapid global rise in food prices. Transnational corporations (TNCs) have been central to the development of this global food system, dominating production, international trade, processing, distribution, and retail sectors. Moreover, these global corporations play a key role in the establishment of rules and regulations by which they themselves are governed. This book examines how TNCs exercise power over global food and agriculture governance, and what the consequences are for the sustainability of the global food system. It defines three aspects of this corporate power: instrumental power, or direct influence; structural power, or the broader influence corporations have over setting agendas and rules; and discursive, or communicative and persuasive, power. The book begins by examining the nature of corporate power in cases ranging from “green” food certification in Southeast Asia and corporate influence on US food aid policy to governance in the seed industry and international food safety standards. Chapters examine such issues as the promotion of corporate-defined “environmental sustainability” and “food security,” biotechnology firms and intellectual property rights, and consumer resistance to genetically modified organisms and other cases of contestation in agrobiology. In the final chapter, the editors raise the question of how to achieve participation, transparency and accountability in food governance.

Not so long ago, people North and South had little reason to believe that wealth from oil, gas, and coal brought anything but great prosperity. But the presumption of net benefits from fossil fuels is eroding as widening circles of people rich and poor experience the downside. A positive transition to a post-fossil fuel era cannot wait for global agreement, a swap-in of renewables, a miracle technology, a carbon market, or lifestyle change. This book shows that it is now possible to take the first step toward the post-fossil fuel era, by resisting the slow violence of extreme extraction and combustion, exiting the industry, and imagining a good life after fossil fuels. It shows how an environmental politics of transition might occur, arguing for going to the source rather than managing byproducts, for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, for engaging a politics of deliberately choosing a post-fossil fuel world. The book includes several chapters of analyses of the fossil fuel problem from the biophysical, cultural, ethical and political perspectives along with case studies that reveal how individuals, groups, communities, and an entire country have taken first steps out of the fossil fuel era, with experiments that range from leaving oil under the Amazon to ending mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

The legacy of environmental catastrophe in the states of the former Soviet Union includes desertification, pollution, and the toxic aftermath of industrial accidents, the most notorious of which was the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. This book examines the development of environmental activism in Russia and the former Soviet republics in response to these problems, and its effect on policy and planning. It also shows that because of increasing economic, ethnic, and social inequality in the former Soviet states, debates over environmental justice are beginning to come to the fore. The book explores the varying environmental, social, political, and economic circumstances of these countries—which range from the Western-style democracies of the Baltic states to the totalitarian regimes of Central Asia—and how they affect the ecological and environmental situation and public health. Among the topics covered are environmentalism in Russia (including the progressive nature of its laws on environmental protection, which are undermined by overburdened and underpaid law enforcement); the effect of oil wealth on Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan; the role of nationalism in Latvian environmentalism; the struggle of Russia’s indigenous peoples for environmental justice; public participation in Estonia’s environmental movement; and lack of access to natural capital in Tajikistan. The book makes clear that although fragile transition economies, varying degrees of democratization, and a focus on national security can stymie progress toward “just sustainability,” the diverse states of the former Soviet Union are making some progress toward “green” and environmental justice issues separately.

Environmental justice concerns form an important part of popular environmental movements in many countries. Activists, scholars, and policymakers in the developing world, for example, increasingly use the tools of environmental justice to link concerns over social justice and environmental well-being. This book investigates the emergence of a distinctively Latin American environmental justice movement, offering analyses and case studies that examine both the promise and the limits of environmental justice in Latin America and the Caribbean—both as a rallying point for popular mobilization and as a set of principles for analysis and policymaking. After considering such conceptual issues as the connection between environmental conditions and race, trade, and social justice, it presents a series of case studies. These studies focus first on industrial development, examining such topics as social tension over “megadevelopment” projects in Argentina and the concentrated industrial waste hazards of the export assembly plants at the U.S.–Mexico border, and then on the power and politics involved in land and resource use. Other chapters explore ecotourism; inequitable land distribution in Brazil; the ongoing struggle for justice and accountability over the former U.S. Navy bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico; and water policy in Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico. Taken together, the analyses and case studies suggest that environmental justice—which highlights both broader issues of global injustice and local concerns—holds promise as a way to understand and address environmental inequities in Latin America and elsewhere.

The idea of sacrifice is the unspoken issue of environmental politics. Politicians, the media, and many environmentalists assume that well-off populations won’t make sacrifices now for future environmental benefits and won’t change their patterns and perceptions of consumption to make ecological room for the world’s three billion or so poor who are eager to improve their standard of living. This book challenges these assumptions, arguing that they limit our policy options, weaken our ability to imagine bold action for change, and blind us to the ways sacrifice already figures in everyday life. The concept of sacrifice has been unexamined in both activist and academic conversations about environmental politics, but this book confronts it directly. The chapters bring a variety of disciplinary perspectives to the topic. Contributors offer alternatives to the conventional wisdom on sacrifice, identifying connections between sacrifice and human fulfilment in everyday life, and finding such concrete examples as parents’ sacrifices in raising children, religious practice, artists’ pursuit of their art, and soldiers and policemen who risk their lives to do their jobs. They examine particular policies and practices that shape our understanding of environmental problems, including the carbon tax, cycling incentives, and the perils of green consumption. This book puts “sacrifice” into the conversation about effective environmental politics and policies, insisting that activists and scholars do more than change the subject when the idea is introduced.