Environmental policy is one of the most dynamic and intellectually diverse fields in contemporary policy analysis, administration, and management. Not only does environmental policymaking span every governmental level from the local to the global, it also transcends a variety of very different jurisdictional boundaries, including political, intellectual, socioeconomic, cultural, and philosophical. Clearly, other policy fields are politically and scientifically complex with their own unique challenges. However, environmental policy is one of the few fields where practitioners, analysts, and academics must galvanize their knowledge and other available resources simply to cope with the daily realities of policymaking at the end of the 20th century. Until recently, the environmental policy literature has consisted primarily of conceptually limited works aimed at specific facets rather than forging a more comprehensive approach to studying the field. While this is certainly understandable given the relative newness of the field and its broad and diverse components, it nonetheless presents a difficulty for both students and practitioners of environmental policy because many sources must be consulted during any information quest. The Handbook of Global Environmental Policy and Administration contributes significantly to the informational and analytical needs of contemporary environmental policymaking because it is one of few attempts to approach the field from an extremely broad range of conceptual perspectives.
In their introduction to the volume, Dennis L. Soden and Brent S. Steel state that their purpose is to provide a global rather than solely state-centered perspective on national, transnational, and international environmental problems and policies. By including 39 chapters in this 816-page volume, written by 61 contributors who represent a vast range of academic disciplines, practitioner positions, and nationalities, Soden and Steel make a significant stride toward their goal of a state-of-the-art book for the global environmental policy field. The Handbook is aimed at both individuals with experience in environmental policymaking as well as newcomers. Not only does it provide more evidence about the global nature of environmental dilemmas; it also