POL 519B Environmental Politics and Policy
This course will introduce students to some of the major problems and issues in environmental politics and policy, and to the different perspectives by which these issues are viewed. Environmental problems often cross the borders of states, but governance largely stops at the border, thus environmental politics and policy move beyond sovereignty in both the nature of problems and solutions. How can environmental issues be tackled in a system that is based on sovereignty? How do globalization and non-state actors facilitate both environmental problems and attempts to manage them? We will begin with a brief examination of various approaches to environmental problems and the history of the environmental movement, and proceed to an examination of approaches to manage environmental issues, as well as critiques of these laws and institutions. Environmental issues are difficult because they involve debates about the costs, benefits, and distribution of costs and benefits of environmental protection, as well as debates over appropriate political institutions to mediate the debates or implement solutions (who decides, who participates, and who has the authority to implement and monitor solutions). While there may be broad agreement that the environment is worth protecting in general, specific arrangements for environmental management involve political debates such as disputes over public vs. private property, individual vs. community goods, sovereign vs. non-sovereign authority, present vs. future generations, and the appropriate level of decision making authority (from global to local), to name just a few.