1st Edition

Negotiating the Environment Civil Society, Globalisation and the UN

By Lauren E Eastwood Copyright 2019
144 Pages
by Routledge

144 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

144 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Civil society participants have voiced concerns that the environmental problems that were the subject of multilateral environmental agreements negotiated during the 1992 Rio processes are not serving to ameliorate global environmental problems. These concerns raise significant questions regarding the utility of negotiating agreements through the UN. This book elucidates the complexity of how... Read more

List of Figures



Acknowledgements



List of Acronyms



Chapter 1: The Politics of Nature and the Nature of Politics



Chapter 2: Setting the Scene: The UN as an Ethnographic Research Site



Chapter 3: The Contested Terrain of Action: Civil Society in UN Climate Negotiations



Chapter 4: Civil Society Engagement in Regulating Biotechnology under the UN



Chapter 5: The Elephant in the Room: The Treadmill of Production as the Root Cause of Environmental Harm



Index

Biography

Lauren E. Eastwood is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, USA.

"While key to our collective future, few of us know much about the inner workings of United Nations-based environmental policy-making. This book fills the void. Based on thorough ethnographic fieldwork, Lauren E. Eastwood offers an original account of how civil society groups struggle in the corridors to keep global power accountable." -- Anders Blok, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

"A remarkable book. Lauren Eastwood's ethnography of how UN climate and environmental agreements are actually put together in the everyday of arguments, pressures, demonstrations and denials that go into the wording of documents is a powerful story. It is not good news, but I learned in reading what I did not know, I did not know. Thank you, Lauren." -- Dorothy E. Smith, Professor Emerita, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada

"Eastwood weaves rich ethnographic data and careful analysis to provide a deep understanding of global policy-making. She takes the reader on a journey into the meeting rooms and hallways of the UN and international climate conferences, through the discursive context and the textual processes that shape global environmental governance. Policy-makers, environmental activists, and anyone else who cares about the present challenges and future of our environment should read this book." -- Nancy Naples, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Connecticut, USA.

"Negotiating the Environment, by Lauren E. Eastwood, illuminates the politics of the policy processes by explicating how different views and commitments are coordinated through the production of institutional texts that become agreements, with associated winners and losers in particular policy matters. As an argument, Eastwo