Global, Area, and International Archive

“Presents a compelling and novel argument: that collective efforts to combat climate change have actually contributed to less sustainable modes of industrial growth. Much work has looked at the details of national and international climate change policy, but no one has addressed whether any of this effort is likely to make a real difference, and what the broader factors are that account for policy changes. . . . Will be attractive both for scholars of climate change and for policy makers.” Peter Haas, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Climate change is a global phenomenon that requires a global response, and yet climate change governance depends on the ability of individual states to respond to a long-term, uncertain threat. Although states are routinely criticized for their inability to respond to such threats, the problems that arise from their attempts to respond are frequently overlooked. Focusing on the experiences of India, Spain, and Australia, Hayley Stevenson shows how these countries have struggled to integrate global norms around climate change governance with their own deeply unsustainable domestic systems, leading to profoundly irrational ecological outcomes.

Hayley Stevenson is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield.

Studies in Governance, 1