Environmental Politics

This section aims to run eight panels focusing on current issues in and approaches to environmental politics and policy. We expect to attract a diverse range of panels from scholars working throughout the academic political science community. Environmental themes are relevant to an increasing number of political research clusters, including (but not limited to) those specialising in public policy, parties and elections, international relations, social movements, and political theory. The overarching aim of the section is for all panels to draw together conceptual expertise and rigorous empirical analysis in order to explore, challenge and re-configure theories surrounding environmental problems, both new and old. For Montreal 2015, we especially encourage panels that propose innovative designs for encouraging interaction between presenters and between presenters and audience members. This could include round-tables, debates, dedicated discussants, and shorter papers with more time for facilitated discussion. We will call for panels which reflect both the more conventional core interests in the study of environmental politics and more recent or emerging areas of academic enquiry. Core topics include green political theory; green parties; environmental protest and civil society; environmental policy and regulation; sustainable development; the interface between environmental science and public policy; global environmental governance regimes. Emerging topics include areas such as: the ethics and politics of climate engineering, eco-social innovations, energy policy/politics, eco-feminist politics, environmental justice, environmental politics in everyday life, and methodologies and pedagogies in environmental politics. To date we have had several expressions of interest and intention to propose panels. Among these is the following, which has been proposed by two leading academics in our field: Panel title: Conceptual Foundations of Earth System Governance Panel chairs: James Meadowcroft (Carleton University) and Hayley Stevenson (University of Sheffield) Description: This panel will bring together papers exploring the key ideas that are framing debates around environmental governance during a period of global environmental change and earth system transformation. We anticipate papers focused on particular concepts (such as ‘planetary boundaries’, ‘environmental limits’, ‘the Anthropocene’, ‘resilience’, ‘the green economy’, etc.), as well as theoretical papers exploring the relationship between conceptual innovation and institutional innovation in the environmental domain. The ECPR Environmental Politics Standing Group has over 300 members and its sections have been vibrant and over-subscribed at all seven of the ECPR General conferences to date. At the 2014 Glasgow conference, 30 papers were run between seven panels, producing a series of high quality discussions on subjects ranging from climate engineering to post-enlargement EU environmental policy to public participation in environmental politics to different perspectives on global environmental governance. We expect an Environmental Politics section at Montreal in 2015 to be similarly notable and stimulating.