Globalisation and Environmental Governance

While our world faces many urgent problems, environmental issues are high on the list of topics that social as well as natural scientists, engineers, and others have much to contribute to in the deepening of understanding, development of policy options, and taking action to address, if not resolve.[1] Over the last couple of years, global warming and its anthropogenic causes and mitigations have deservedly received a great deal of public attention, in no small part due to former Vice President Al Gore's award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. At the same time, the rapid destruction of tropical forests is having an immediate effect on livelihoods, indeed even on the survival of traditional lifestyles, cultures, and communities in some of the world's least developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In the 21^st Century, for the first time, more humans around the world live in cities than in the countryside, and nearly one-third of humanity lives in two, rapidly developing countries, China and India (see Mol and Carter 2007; Sonnenfeld and Mol, 2006). Never before has the survival of the human species and planet been so dependent on future development of urban transportation systems, particularly those built (or not built) around the petroleum-based, combustion-engine-driven, personal automobile. Escalating global petroleum demand combined with (and precipitating) rapidly rising global petroleum prices make this concern even more urgent.

And in this time of hyper-, economic globalization, which includes the acceleration of trade from the world's factories and farms into our homes and onto our dining tables, never before has the commoditized exchange and consumption of goods and services been so great – with large accompanying risks, health and environmental impacts, and regulatory strains, gaps, and gaping holes. Alongside this, the power of large-scale retailers and consumer advocates also never has been greater.

Our world of rapid social, institutional, and environmental change is desperately in need of new insights, strategic orientations, policy prescriptions, and the plain, hard work of action: negotiation, mediation, implementation, and intentional change.

In this Symposium, five prominent social scientists share their thoughtful and at times provocative insights in addressing "Globalization and Environmental Governance: Is Another World Possible?" While varying in their perspectives, all contributors believe that another world is possible, one where humans can reverse, ameliorate, and perhaps even stop destructive impacts of current patterns, "systems", and cycles of production, consumption, and distribution. The contributions appear in the form of four articles, followed by a commentary.

In the first article (Urry 2008), John Urry, sociological theorist and Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, UK, explores possibilities for the end of the complex, integrated, suddenly obsolete sociotechnological system of personal transportation he calls "the car system". Drawing on insights from complexity theory (Luhmann, Capra, Casti, Prigogine, Nicolis, and others), Urry asks if and how it might be possible to significantly and expeditiously change a global industrial complex that employs tens of millions of people and contributes one-third of all greenhouse gases to our planet's atmosphere.

The next article (Spaargaren and Mol 2008), by environmental sociologists Gert Spaargaren and Arthur Mol, leaders of the Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Environment and Society (RC24), discusses the critically important role of citizen-consumers today in what they characterize as the "greening of global consumption". Though not without limitations, they suggest that profound changes are underway globally in consumers' engagement with producers and retailers in market-oriented, environmental governance. After Beck, Castells, Sassen, Urry and others, they argue that role of the late modern nation-state continues to evolve with respect to environmental governance at all geopolitical levels.

In the third contribution to this Symposium (Huber 2008), Joseph Huber, of Martin Luther University, Germany, one of the founders of the timely and still emerging theory of Ecological Modernisation (see also Mol and Sonnenfeld 2000; Mol 2002), emphasizes the continuing importance of the nation-state in environmental regulation and in forcing the radical, technological environmental innovations necessary for greater human sustainability on the planet. He suggests that what he terms "pioneer countries" particularly in the North have a critically important role to play in "the development and global diffusion of technological environmental innovations..."

The fourth article (O'Connor 2008), by David O'Connor, head of the Policy Integration and Analysis Branch of the United Nations' Division for Sustainable Development, thoughtfully examines the interlinked challenges of global climate change and tropical deforestation. In it, the author advances critical new, integrated political and policymaking strategies for mitigation of global warming and conservation of biodiversity in the post-Kyoto era. O'Connor suggests that environmental nongovernmental organizations have a critical role to play in such global environmental policy innovation and negotiation.

The Symposium concludes with a commentary by J. Timmons Roberts (2008), entitled "Challenges and Opportunities for Global Environmental Governance in the 21^st Century." Roberts, currently Chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on Environment and Technology, and Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, argues that another world, environmentally and socially speaking, is possible, but that "it's quite awful". He calls for social scientists and others to make their best efforts "to avoid the awful 'other words,' and provide strategic advice to policy-makers and other social actors ... who would move us to a truly positive future."

Each of these papers and the Symposium as a whole aim to advance social scientific contributions to the theoretical and empirical analysis of today's global environmental issues, and the complexity of the necessary solutions. All contributors to this Symposium strive to realize another, more sustainable and just world. Such a world is possible, but how? By whom? And with what dangers and pitfalls? Please turn the page...

The author of this editorial wishes to express his appreciation to all of the participants in this Symposium, two of whom traveled long distances overseas to participate in the Thematic Session upon which it was based. In addition, he would like to thank the vital, global community of scholars who provided critical feedback on earlier versions of the manuscripts in this Symposium. The editors of Global Environmental Change were enthusiastic in support of this Symposium from the beginning. Lastly, the author acknowledges the partial support of Washington State University for his participation in the 102^nd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, in New York City.

Carter, N., Mol, A.P.J., eds. 2007. Environmental Governance in

China

. Routledge, London.

Huber, J. 2008. Pioneer Countries and the Global Diffusion of Environmental Innovations. Theses from the Viewpoint of Ecological Modernisation Theory. Global Environmental Change, 18 (3), xx-xx.

Mol, A.P.J. 2002. Globalization and Environmental Reform: The Ecological Modernization of the Global Economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Mol, A.P.J., Sonnenfeld, D.A., eds. 2000. Ecological Modernisation Around the World: Perspectives and Critical Debates. Frank Cass/ Routledge, London, UK, and Portland, Oregon.

O'Connor, D. 2008. Governing the Commons: Linking Carbon Storage and Biodiversity Conservation in Tropical Forests. Global Environmental Change, 18 (3), xx-xx.

Roberts, J.T. 2008. Challenges and Opportunities for Global Environmental Governance in the 21^st Century. Global Environmental Change, 18 (3), xx-xx.

Sonnenfeld, D.A., Mol., A.P.J., eds. 2006. Special Issue on "Environmental Reform in Asia." Journal of Environment and Development, 15 (2).

Spaargaren, G., Mol, A.P.J. 2008. Greening Global Consumption: Redefining Politics and Authority. Global Environmental Change, 18 (3), xx-xx.

Urry, J. 2008. Governance, Flows, and the End of the Car System? Global Environmental Change, 18 (3), xx-xx.

[1] Articles in this Symposium originally were prepared for presentation in a special, plenary Thematic Session at the 102^nd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, in New York City, August 11, 2007. All have been further developed and revised, benefitting from comments at that session and subsequent peer review. The overall theme of the Annual Meeting was "Is Another World Possible?"

"Globalisation and Environmental Governance: Is Another World Possible?"