Paths to a Green World
Subtitle: The Political Economy of the Global Environment
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: April 1, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 351
ISBN-13: 9780262532716
Subjects: The Environment; Science; Politics / Current Events; Science/Mathematics; Environmental Science; Public Policy - Economic Policy; Public Policy - Environmental Policy; Science / Environmental Science; Economics - General; Environmental economics; Environmental policy; Global environmental change
First sentence: The sun could well engulf the earth in about 7 or 8 billion years.
Description: This comprehensive and accessible text fills the need for a political economy view of global environmental politics, focusing on the ways key economic processes affect environmental outcomes. It examines the main actors and forces shaping global environmental management, particularly in the developing world. Moving beyond the usual academic emphasis on international agreements and institutions, it strives to integrate debates within the real world of global policy and the academic world of theory. The book maps out an original typology of four contrasting worldviews of environmental change---those of market liberals, institutionalists, bioenvironmentalists, and social greens---and uses these as a framework to examine the links between the global political economy and ecological change. This typology not only helps students understand and participate in debates about these worldviews but also provides a common language for students and instructors to discuss the issues across the social sciences. The book covers globalization and its consequences for the environment; the evolution of global discourse and global environmental governance; wealth, poverty, and consumption; the impact on the environmental standards; and the environmental effects of international financing, including multilateral lending and aid and bilateral and private finance. Brief, illustrative case studies appear throughout the text.