International political economy and global environmental change

One of the most notable features of world politics in the 1990s is the emphasis given to the environment. The recent upsurge of interest in global environmental issues reflects changes in world politics; an increasing awareness of environmental degradation; the global nature of many environmental problems; and changing attitudes to the relationship between humans and the natural world. In the contemporary global system, the nature and dimensions of the ecological crisis have become an unavoidable issue for governments, business corporations and civic groups. Recently, students of international relations have begun to analyse the dynamics of global environmental change. This chapter is an attempt to examine the ways in which one particular type of international theory has addressed the issue of global environmental change. It will provide a critical introduction to international political economy (IPE) analyses of global environmental change. This task is necessarily complicated because it is impossible to specify a single approach to international political economy. A central task of this chapter, therefore, will be to develop an argument which recognises both the unity and the diversity of IPE as a discipline. In doing so it will assess the contribution of the different perceptions of and responses to the ecological crisis which arise from the differing approaches to IPE.