Environmental governance: the global challenge

In Environmental Governance, Lamont C. Hempel considers the nature of global environmental change and the institutional responses needed to manage it. While environmental problems are increasingly transboundary in scope and significance, governance remains sharply fragmented and territorial. For political institutions to cope successfully with growing biospheric crises, they must become glocal in design and operation -- some of the environmental authority presently invested in sovereign states must be redistributed to both supranational entities and local communities.Using political theory, applied policy analysis, and case studies, Hempel explains how major and sustainable improvements in the quality of life will require significant but achievable innovations. Changes such as green technologies, human population stabilization, full social cost pricing, the elimination of absolute poverty, and the widespread adoption of ecologically based values and ecologically compatible lifestyles will all be necessary in the coming decades. But without a redesign and strengthening of local, regional, and transnational political institutions and policies, such developments are not likely to flourish.While thoroughly grounded in political science, Environmental Governance is multidisciplinary in design, drawing on concepts and tools from ecology, economics, law, business, sociology, philosophy, public health, and international relations theory.