Environment and Global Political Economy

The environment in global political economy (GPE) has not been incorporated as a mainstream component of GPE analysis despite awareness of its ever increasing importance both in resource economic and also social-cultural terms as well as ecological importance. There are no direct environmental approaches to GPE which incorporate the environment in a systemic framework (apart from ecological world systems theory approaches discussed below in the nature-society relations section), which illustrates a clear gap in the literature and this book is one attempt to fill this vacuum from the perspective of one particular industry. There are many empirical accounts of the impact of certain aspects of GPE on the environment or on certain actors. However, an actor-centric view of GPE and environment neglects the relationship between nature and society in the 21st century and the relationship between ecology and social constructs, such as society and economy. In other words, it studies forms of social organization to address environmental degradation rather than the relationship between nature and society from a structural as well as actor-driven perspective. This book attempts to combine both these aspects. Global Environmental Politics (GEP) has been more successful in incorporating an understanding of the global political economy into its analysis as can be found in the works of Dauvergne and Clapp (2005), Clapp (2001), Paterson (2001 and 2007) and Kütting (2000 and 2004) as well as from a more historical perspective, Chew (2006 and 2008).