Environmental politics and policy making in Australia.

Comparative analyses of environmental policy and politics in seven major industrialized nations.

This book offers an examination of the role of emancipation in the study and practice of security, focusing on the issue of environmental change. The end of the Cold War created a context in which traditional approaches to security could be systematically questioned. This period also saw a concerted attempt in IR to argue that environmental change constituted a threat to security. This book argues that such a notion is problematic as it suggests that a universal definition of security is possible, which prevents a recognition of security as a site of contestation, in which a range of actors articulate alternative visions of who or what is in need of being secured. If security is understood and approached in traditional terms - as the territorial preservation of the nation-state from external threat - then it is indeed difficult to see how environmental issues would benefit from being placed on states’ security agenda. If, however, security is defined in terms of the emancipation of the most vulnerable individuals from contingent structural oppressions, then drawing a relationship between environmental change and security may be beneficial for redressing those environmental issues and prioritising the needs of those most at risk from the manifestations of global environmental change. This book takes the limitations of contemporary approaches to the relationship between the environment and security as its starting point, and seeks to do two things. First, it aims to illustrate the ways in which arguments over approaches to environmental issues can be viewed as contestation over the meaning of 'security‘ in particular political contexts. Central here is the composition and assumptions of the dominant security discourse to emerge regarding those issues: a framework of meaning for the most important forms of action on behalf of a particular group, defining the terms for meaningful contestation and negotiation about security itself within that group. As such, the book attempts to illustrate the dynamics of competition over the meaning of security with reference to environmental issues, particularly focusing on instances of political change in the dominant security discourse through which that issue is approached. In the process the author points to the central role of these dominant security discourses in underpinning the most practically significant actions regarding environmental issues such as deforestation and global climate change. The book employs methodological tools that enable a focus on how particular frameworks of meaning are constituted and become dominant; how they provide a lens through which various issues are approached; and how discourses most consistent with redressing environmental change and the suffering of the most vulnerable might come to provide the framework through which security is viewed in particular contexts. This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Security Studies, geography, sociology, IR and Political Science in general.

This book is the second collection of systematic case studies describing national environmental policies in 17 countries in terms of capacity building (see Appen dix). The OECD defines environmental capacity building as "a society's ability to identify and solve environmental problems. " While various institutions, including UNEP, FAO, World Bank and OECD, have hitherto used the terms environmental capacity and capacity building almost exclusively with reference to developing countries, we have extended the concepts to industrialized countries, as well. The first collection, edited by Martin Janicke, Helge Joergens (both Free University Berlin) and Helmut Weidner (Social Science Research Center Berlin), was pub lished in 1997 under the title "National Environmental Policies - A Comparative Study of Capacity-Building" (Berlin, etc. : Springer Verlag). It included 13 studies of countries. As in the first volume, chapter I presents the conceptual framework underlying the national case studies. It is a slightly shorter version of the corresponding chap ter in volume I. The design of all case studies in the two volumes is largely con gruent with this conceptual framework. Although the various sections of the stud ies do not always have identical titles and subtitles, the central elements of the capacity-building approach have been applied in all cases.

Environment and Politics is a concise introduction to the study of environmental politics, explaining the key concepts, conflicts, political systems and the practices of policy-making. The authors examine a diverse range of environmental problems and policy solutions within different nations and cultures. This third edition expands the discussion of the differences in environmental politics between liberal democracies, military dictatorships and one party states, drawing on research conducted in Burma, Thailand, China and Iran. Topics covered include: the connections between green social movements and anti-globalization movements the impact of globalization on NGOs the rise in local environmental governance and international bureaucratic regimes the global role of the World Bank and WTO the case of Kyoto the current phase of US unilateralism and its impact upon the global environment. This text offers readers a greater understanding of international, national and local environmental politics and looks at future developments for effective local and international environmental diplomacy and both global and region-specific problem solving.

A textbook of readings that replaces Australian Environmental Policy (1992), edited by Ken Walker.

Featuring over 1900 references, drawings, and tables and drawing on disciplines as diverse as political economics, public management, and urban affairs, this versatile text offers comprehensive information on major policy and managerial issues important to local and national economic development. Pulling together the work of over 40 researchers, the book examines the role of government in economic advances and reform, provides a complete, up-to-date survey of the literature on local and national economic development, details local and regional economic progress in the US, adopts an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the study of economic expansion, and more.

First published in 2003, The Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences in Australia is a high-quality reference on significant research in Australian social sciences. The book is divided into three main sections, covering the central areas of the social sciences-economics, political science and sociology. Each section examines the significant research in the field, placing it within the context of broader debates about the nature of the social sciences and the ways in which institutional changes have shaped how they are defined, taught and researched.

This new collection from the leading journal, Environmental Politics, presents an excellent overview of the key themes found in contemporary green political thought since the early 1990s. Bringing together the journal's major work, this new book charts a fascinating period in which environmental politics developed from a marginal position in society and the academy, to its current place in the intellectual mainstream. Subdivided into clear sections on political theory, social movements, political economy and policy questions, and assisted by a contextualising introduction, this volume focuses on a set of clear themes: the character of green political theory relationships with other political traditions and theories origins and dynamics of contemporary environmental politics differences, similarities and tensions between the North and South the relationship of environmentalism to market economics and ecological modernization environmental aspects of distributive justice at the local, national and global levels the roles, value and valuing of nature in green theory and institutional practice. As a compilation, this book is unique. It delivers a snapshot of a variety of issues in the field, and is therefore ideally suited to teaching purposes, especially at postgraduate level. In addition, as each section is chronologically arranged, an evolution of related ideas can be clearly seen and appreciated, which builds an excellent understanding of the field of environmental politics

Presents a history and analysis of everyday events in the environmental movement down under, together with an array of theories held by social movements, non-institutional and non-governmental organizations, and informal networks and groups. Doyle (geographical and environmental studies, U. of Adelaide) also provides a chronology of the movement since the 1960s, traces the roots of the early wilderness and anti-nuclear networks, and travels through the Hawke years when environmental concern was incorporated into politics and business-as-usual. Finally, Doyle turns towards the environmental movement under the Howard government where it has been intensely challenged by the "wise use" movement, or what Doyle terms the "Gang Bang Theory of Nature." Distributed by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR