Contesting Global Environmental Knowledge, Norms and Governance

✍ Scribed by M. J. Peterson (editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 207
• Series: Transforming Environmental Politics and Policy
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Through theoretical discussions and case studies, this volume explores how processes of contestation about knowledge, norms, and governance processes shape efforts to promote sustainability through international environmental governance.

The epistemic communities literature of the 1990s highlighted the importance of expert consensus on scientific knowledge for problem definition and solution specification in international environmental agreements. This book addresses a gap in this literature – insufficient attention to the multiple forms of contestation that also inform international environmental governance. These forms include within-discipline contestation that helps forge expert consensus, inter-disciplinary contestation regarding the types of expert knowledge needed for effective response to environmental problems, normative and practical arguments about the proper roles of experts and laypersons, and contestation over how to combine globally developed norms and scientific knowledge with locally prevalent norms and traditional knowledge in ways ensuring effective implementation of environmental policies. This collection advances understanding of the conditions under which contestation facilitates or hinders the development of effective global environmental governance. The contributors examine how attempts to incorporate more than one stream of expert knowledge and to include lay knowledge alongside it have played out in efforts to create and maintain multilateral agreements relating to environmental concerns.

It will interest scholars and graduate students of political science, global governance, international environmental politics, and global policy making. Policy analysts should also find it useful.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Figures
Tables
List of Contributors
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction: Contestation in international environmental governance
Contestation over definitions of relevant scientific knowledge
Contestation over using scientific and other forms of knowledge
Preview of contents
References
Part I Contestation over relevant scientific knowledge
Chapter 2 Linking scientific knowledge and multilateral environmental governance
Bringing science to the table
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification: a case study in four rounds
Improving the scientific basis for policy decision-making
What have we learned?
Note
References
Chapte 3 Still Saving the Mediterranean?: Expert communities, regionalization andinstitutional change
Experts in regional environmental cooperation
Regionalizing and rescaling Mediterranean environmental governance
The MedPlan at forty-something and revisiting Saving the Mediterranean
Where next?
References
Chapter 4 Measurement practices and evolutionary global institutions
Measurement, contestation, and the evolution of institutions
The cases: measurements for governance
Measurement and governance institutions
Measurement for sustainable development
References
Part II Contestation over the uses of expert and lay knowledge in formulating policy
Chapter 5 Global transdisciplinary science and sustainable development governance
Global transdisciplinary science
Transdisciplinary science as a tool in global governance for sustainability
The construction of transdisciplinarity for the SDGs
The prospects for developing transdisciplinary science
Note
References
Chapter 6 Climate change denial in the United States and the European Union
The Paris Agreement
Climate policy debates in the United States
Climate policy debates in the European Union
The implications of increasingly strong climate denial and skepticism
Note
References
Chapter 7 Science and policy in the International Whaling Commission
Whaling in the “old days”: continued depletion
IWC phase 1 (1946 to mid-1960s): continued overexploitation
IWC phase 2 (mid-1960s to mid-1970s): more conservation, lower catches
IWC phase 3 (mid-1970s to mid-1990s): the anti-whaling norm swamps the influence of science
IWC phase 4 (mid-1990s to 2017): more peaceful waters
Changing contours of contestation
Note
References
Part III Contestation over the uses of expert and lay knowledge in implementing policy
Chapter 8 Stakeholder access to norm validation: Whose practices count in global international relations?
Norms research in international relations
Practices: contestation and norm validation
Normative opportunity structure
Norm typology and research assumptions
The outlook for norm alignment between global and local
Note
References
Chapter 9 Global conservation and local lore in a post-colonial society: How traditional environmental knowledge shapes the implementation of international environmental agreements on protected areas
Nonstate actors’ participation in environmental governance
Regime fragmentation and complexity: a landscape for increased contestation
Jamaica and Cockpit Country governance: from coalition to contestation
Contestation among conservationists: science and culture
The Blue and John Crow Mountains: biodiversity and cultural heritage
Managing contestation: a (relative) success story
Linking local lore and scientific surveys for effective conservation
References
Part IV Epistemic communities and contestation
Chapter 10 Reflections on contested knowledge and those who study it
Epistemic communities 1.0 research program
Epistemic communities 2.0: including contestation
The future of knowledge and contestation
Pedagogy about epistemic communities, study, and practices
Note
References
Index