This book focuses on the present and future challenges of managing ecosystem transformation on a planet where human impacts are pervasive. In this new epoch, the Anthropocene, the already rapid rate of species loss is amplified by climate change and other stress factors, causing transformation of highly-valued landscapes. Many locations are already transforming into novel ecosystems, where new species, interactions, and ecological functions are creating landscapes unlike anything seen before. This has sparked contentious debate not just about science, but about decision-making, responsibility, fairness, and human capacity to intervene. Clement argues that the social and ecological reality of the Anthropocene requires modernised governance and policy to confront these new challenges and achieve ecological objectives. There is a real opportunity to enable society to cope with transformed ecosystems by changing governance, but this is notoriously difficult. Aimed at anyone involved in these conversations, be those researchers, practitioners, decision makers or students, this book brings together diffuse research exploring how to confront institutional change and ecological transformation in different contexts, and provides insight into how to translate governance concepts into productive pathways forward.

The term Anthropocene denotes a new geological epoch characterized by the unprecedented impact of human activities on the Earth’s ecosystems. While the natural sciences have advanced their understanding of the drivers and processes of global change considerably over the last two decades, the social sciences lag behind in addressing the fundamental challenge of governance and politics in the Anthropocene. This book attempts to close this crucial research gap, in particular with regards to the following three overarching research themes: (i) the meaning, sense-making and contestations emerging around the concept of the Anthropocene related to the social sciences; (ii) the role and relevance of institutions, both formal and informal as well as international and transnational, for governing in the Anthropocene; and (iii) the role and relevance of accountability and other democratic principles for governing in the Anthropocene. Drawing together a range of key thinkers in the field, this volume provides one of the first authoritative assessments of global environmental politics and governance in the Anthropocene, reflecting on how the planetary scale crisis changes the ways in which humans respond to the challenge. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of global environmental politics and governance, and sustainable development.

We live on an increasingly human-dominated planet. Our impact on the Earth has become so huge that researchers now suggest that it merits its own geological epoch - the 'Anthropocene' - the age of humans. Combining theory development and case s

Why has global governance largely failed to effectively tackle some of the most pressing global environmental challenges of our time? What are the obstacles to effective global and planetary problem-solving? And which solutions and responses have global governance actors come up with to confront these challenges? This textbook teases out the tragic entanglements between dominant global governance dynamics and the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, showing how international and global cooperation mechanisms that evolved over the last two hundred years are deeply implicated in exacerbating many of today’s global environmental challenges. The book focuses on several global environmental challenges which are intrinsically interconnected, threatening to destabilise the entire Earth-system with serious consequences for human societies across the world. These global environmental challenges include infectious disease outbreaks, global food production processes, the pollution of freshwater resources, energy consumption patterns, deforestation and CO2 emissions. At the same time, the book also presents several alternative governance examples based on more democratic, citizen-based and holistic approaches to the global climate crisis, which point the way towards a new understanding of global governance in the age of the Anthropocene. This textbook is for undergraduate and postgraduate students of global governance, environmental politics and international relations.

An exploration of the need for innovative mechanisms of governance in an era when human actions are major drivers of environmental change. The onset of the Anthropocene, an era in which human actions have become major drivers of change on a planetary scale, has increased the complexity of socioecological systems. Complex systems pose novel challenges for governance because of their high levels of connectivity, nonlinear dynamics, directional patterns of change, and emergent properties. Meeting these challenges will require the development of new intellectual capital. In this book, Oran Young argues that to achieve sustainable outcomes in a world of complex systems, we will need governance systems that are simultaneously durable enough to be effective in guiding behavior and agile enough to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. While some insights from past research on governance remain valid in this setting, Young argues that we need new social capital to supplement mainstream regulatory approaches that feature rule making with an emphasis on compliance and enforcement. He explores the uses of goal setting as a governance strategy, the idea of principled governance, and the role of what is often called good governance in meeting the challenges of the Anthropocene. Drawing on his long experience operating on the science/policy frontier, Young calls for more effective collaboration between analysts and practitioners in creating and implementing governance systems capable of producing sustainable outcomes in a world of complex systems.

Anthropocene has become an environmental buzzword. It denotes a new geological epoch that is human‐dominated. As mounting scientific evidence reveals, humankind has fundamentally altered atmospheric, geological, hydrological, biospheric, and other Earth system processes to an extent that the risk of an irreversible system change emerges. Human societies must therefore change direction and navigate away from critical tipping points in the various ecosystems of our planet. This hypothesis has kicked off a debate not only on the geoscientific definition of the Anthropocene era, but increasingly also in the social sciences. However, the specific contribution of the social sciences disciplines and in particular that of political science still needs to be fully established. This edited volume analyzes, from a political science perspective, the wider social dynamics underlying the ecological and geological changes, as well as their implications for governance and politics in the Anthropocene. The focus is on two questions: (1) What is the contribution of political science to the Anthropocene debate, e.g. in terms of identified problems, answers, and solutions? (2) What are the conceptual and practical implications of the Anthropocene debate for the discipline of political science? Overall, this book contributes to the Anthropocene debate by providing novel theoretical and conceptual accounts of the Anthropocene, engaging with contemporary politics and policy-making in the Anthropocene, and offering a critical reflection on the Anthropocene debate as such. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, global environmental politics and governance, and sustainable development.

This book offers the first critical, multi-disciplinary study of how the concepts of resilience and the Anthropocene have combined to shape contemporary thought and governmental practice. Faced with the climate catastrophe of the Anthropocene, theorists and policymakers are increasingly turning to ‘sustainable’, ‘creative’ and ‘bottom-up’ imaginaries of governance. The book brings together cutting-edge insights from leading geographers, international relations scholars and philosophers to explore how the concepts of resilience and the Anthropocene challenge and transform prevailing understandings of Earth, space, time and knowledge, and how these transformations reshape governance, ethics and critique today. This book examines how the Anthropocene calls into question established categories through which modern societies have tended to make sense of the world and engage in critical reflection and analysis. It also considers how resilience approaches attempt to re-stabilize these categories – and the ethical and political effects that result from these resilience-based efforts. Offering innovative insights into the problem of how environmental change is known and governed in the Anthropocene, this book will be of interest to students in fields such as geography, international relations, anthropology, science and technology studies, sociology, and the environmental humanities.