International Relations and Global Climate Change

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Urs Luterbacher, Detlef F. Sprinz
MIT Press, 2001 M10 26 - 354 pages
This book surveys current conceptual, theoretical, and methodological approaches to global climate change and international relations. Although it focuses on the role of states, it also examines the role of nonstate actors and international organizations whenever state-centric explanations are insufficient.The book begins with a discussion of environmental constraints on human activities, the environmental consequences of human activities, and the history of global climate change cooperation. It then moves to an analysis of the global climate regime from various conceptual and theoretical perspectives. These include realism and neorealism, historical materialism, neoliberal institutionalism and regime theory, and epistemic community and cognitive approaches. Stressing the role of nonstate actors, the book looks at the importance of the domestic-international relationship in negotiations on climate change. It then looks at game-theoretical and simulation approaches to the politics of global climate change. It emphasizes questions of equity and the legal difficulties of implementing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. It concludes with a discussion of global climate change and other aspects of international relations, including other global environmental accords and world trade. The book also contains Internet references to major relevant documents.

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Contents

The History of the Global Climate Change Regime
23
Classical Theories of International Relations
43
Nonstate Actors in the Global Climate Regime
95
Principles of Justice in the Context of Global Climate
119
Modeling Global Climate Negotiations
153
Policy
183
International Law and the Design of a Climate Change
201
Institutional Aspects of Implementation Compliance
221
The Global Climate Change Regime in the International
245
The Organization of World Trade and the Climate Regime
279
Conclusions
297
References
311
Index
339
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About the author (2001)

Urs Luterbacher is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Environmental Studies and the Centre for Finance and Development at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Detlef F. Sprinz is Professor at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Potsdam.

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