This comprehensive and accessible book fills the need for a political economy view of global environmental politics, focusing on the ways key economic processes affect environmental outcomes. It examines the main actors and forces shaping global environmental management, particularly in the developing world. Moving beyond the usual academic emphasis on international agreements and institutions, it strives to integrate debates within the real world of global policy and the academic world of theory.
The book maps out an original typology of four contrasting worldviews of environmental change – those of market liberals, institutionalists, bioenvironmentalists, and social greens – and uses them as a framework to examine the links between the global political economy and ecological change. This typology provides a common language for students, instructors, and scholars to discuss the issues across the classical social science divisions.
Paths to a Green World covers globalization and its consequences for the environment; the evolution of global discourse on global environmental governance; wealth, poverty, and consumption; the impact on the environment of global trade and trade agreements; transnational corporations and differential environmental standards; and the environmental effects of international financing, including multilateral lending and aid and bilateral and private finance.
