01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Citation
Chasek, P. S., Downie, D. L., & Allan, J. I. (2026). Global Environmental Politics (9th ed.). Routledge.
Chapter Summary
The ninth edition has eight chapters and about 426 pages, with lists of figures, tables and boxes, a list of acronyms and an index. The publisher describes it as an account of the main environmental treaty regimes that has been developed over more than thirty years of editions. The structure is easy to see from the contents: two framing chapters (the field and its actors), three case-study chapters organised by period (the beginning, the Rio conventions, the twenty-first century), and three analytical chapters on effectiveness, sustainable development and the future. New in this edition, according to the publisher, are a case study on plastic pollution, new material on the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, the World Trade Organization's agreement on fisheries subsidies, and the use of the International Court of Justice to improve compliance.
Chapter 1: The Emergence of Global Environmental Politics
The opening chapter has four sections: global macrotrends, an introduction to the field, international regimes, and paradigms in global environmental politics. It supplies the background and the concepts, notably regimes and paradigms, that the case chapters then use.
Chapter 2: Actors in the Environmental Arena
A survey of who takes part in environmental politics. The section headings list nation-state actors and their roles and interests, intergovernmental organisations, scientific bodies, treaty secretariats, international financial institutions, regional and other multilateral organisations, non-governmental and civil society organisations, Indigenous peoples, and business and industry.
Chapter 3: The Development of Environmental Regimes: The Beginning
The first set of cases: whaling, international trade in endangered species, stratospheric ozone depletion and hazardous waste.
Chapter 4: The Development of Environmental Regimes: The Rio Conventions
The cases that grew out of the 1992 Rio conference, as the chapter title indicates: climate change, biological diversity, and desertification, land degradation and drought.
Chapter 5: The Development of Environmental Regimes: The 21st Century
More recent cases: toxic chemicals, mercury, marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, and plastic pollution, the last being the new case study of this edition.
Chapter 6: Effective Environmental Regimes: Challenges and Opportunities
A step back from the cases to ask what makes regimes work. Sections cover the challenges to creating effective regimes, opportunities to improve implementation and compliance, and increasing and improving financial and technical assistance.
Chapter 7: Environmental Politics and Sustainable Development
The relationship between environmental protection and development: North-South relations, changing economic realities, trade and environment, and the balancing of the environmental, social and economic agendas.
Chapter 8: The Future of Global Environmental Politics
The final chapter, on global environmental governance in a changing international system, the continuing evolution of that governance, and the prospects for global environmental politics.
Key Concepts
Chapters 1-2: The field and its actors
- International regimes: a section of Chapter 1 and the organising idea of the case chapters.
- Paradigms: competing frameworks for understanding global environmental politics, introduced in Chapter 1.
- Treaty secretariats and scientific bodies: kinds of actor given their own sections in Chapter 2, alongside states, international organisations, civil society, Indigenous peoples and business.
Chapters 3-5: Regime case studies
- Regime development over time: the chapters are grouped as the beginning, the Rio conventions and the twenty-first century.
- Issue areas: from whaling and ozone depletion to climate change, mercury and plastic pollution.
Chapters 6-8: Effectiveness, development and the future
- Implementation and compliance: the focus of Chapter 6's discussion of opportunities.
- Financial and technical assistance: a section of Chapter 6.
- Sustainable development: the subject of Chapter 7, with North-South relations and trade.
- Global environmental governance: the concern of Chapter 8.
Critical Analysis
Strengths
- A clear, regular structure. The case chapters are grouped by period, and each ends with a conclusion section, so a reader can look up one issue, such as ozone depletion or mercury, without reading the whole book.
- Wide coverage of issue areas. The contents run from whaling and endangered species to climate, biodiversity, chemicals and plastics, giving a broad picture of what international environmental agreements have covered.
- Authors with negotiating experience. According to the publisher's biographies, Chasek is co-founder and executive editor of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, Downie has attended nearly one hundred global environmental negotiations since 1990, and Allan is a strategic advisor to the Bulletin. This is consistent with the book's close attention to negotiation and treaty detail.
- Updated edition. The publisher highlights updated case studies and the new plastics case, so the edition covers developments through the 2020s.
Limitations
- Treaty-centred. The core of the book is the development of regimes, with most chapters organised around negotiated agreements. Readers interested in domestic environmental politics, green political thought or social movements will find that this book does not make them its main concern; the contents list no chapters on them.
- Large and detailed. About 426 pages with eight chapters, three of them case-study chapters, so the book is dense for a short course; instructors will need to choose cases.
- No independent review located. The endorsements on the publisher's page come from academics and practitioners and are marketing material; the claims about the book's standing as a foundational text in the field rest on them.
Where It Fits in the Course
This is the main survey textbook for international environmental politics in the course list. Kate O'Neill's The Environment and International Relations is a shorter textbook with a more analytical framework from international relations, and is a good companion or a first introduction before the longer Chasek, Downie and Allan, whose strength is case-by-case coverage of regimes. Neil Carter's The Politics of the Environment is a comparative textbook that connects green ideas, activism and policy at national and international levels, so it fills in what the treaty-centred book leaves out.
The remaining books are narrower or more advanced. Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons studies how communities govern shared natural resources and informs thinking about cooperation and institutions. Robyn Eckersley's Environmentalism and Political Theory is a work of environmental political theory, and Matthew Paterson's In Search of Climate Politics is a scholarly monograph on how climate change is political. Read these after a survey text.
How to Use This Book
The book suits undergraduates in political science, international relations or environmental studies who want a survey of how the world has tried to manage environmental problems. Prior coursework is not essential, and Chapter 1 introduces regimes and paradigms, but some familiarity with international relations vocabulary will make the early chapters easier.
A practical plan:
- Start. Read Chapters 1 and 2 first; they define regimes, paradigms and actors, which the rest of the book relies on.
- Core. Choose the case studies that match your course. Chapter 4 (climate change, biodiversity, desertification) covers the three Rio conventions, Chapter 3 includes ozone depletion as an early regime to compare them with, and Chapter 5's plastic pollution case shows the challenge of creating a new treaty, as the publisher puts it, during a period of significant global change.
- Analysis. Chapter 6 on effectiveness and Chapter 7 on development are where the cases are compared; read them after at least two of the case chapters.
- Finish. Chapter 8 looks ahead and is a good place to begin an essay or discussion about reform.
- Alongside. Make a one-page table of the regimes you read, noting for each the main actors and the compliance issues, then use it to compare cases when you reach Chapter 6.