In person icon Challenging the System The Environment at the Crossroads between the Westphalian and the Globalised World

Abstract

The major events of the last century have contributed to the creation of specific and recurrent interstate interactions that characterized 20th century international relations. Inherited from the Westphalian vision of the world, the inter-national system was mainly studied as an interstate arena. Today, new actors are playing significant roles on the international stage, and globalization has brought new ways of interacting. Yet, some international entities born in the aftermaths of those events, such as the UN, tend to show that traditional interstate interactions remain relevant. The ‘environment’ exemplifies this duality: on the one hand, touching closely upon the State’s sovereignty over its natural resources, the environment is a delicate matter of high-level politics; on the other hand, as a transboundary and multi-level issue, it requires international cooperation among an increasing number of actors who create different, often over-lapping, normative frameworks to tackle the consequences of human impacts on the biosphere. This panel proposes to explore the distinctive position that the environment holds at the crossroads between the Westphalian and the globalized world in the anthropocene. More precisely, it aims to understand the extent to which environmental issues challenge the traditional patterns of actor interactions on the international stage. It focuses on how actors at different scales of governance create a unique combination of environmental norms and policies. With the objective to best understand how the multiplicity of actors affect the production of norms and policies, the panel openly aims to decompartmentalize the field of environmental studies and offers a mix of political science and international law papers. In order to identify the multiplicity of ways in which environmental issues challenge the system, the panel combines papers that focus on a wide variety of actors (international organizations, States, civil society) at different levels of governance (international, national and local).

Title	Details
Between Securitisation of the Environment and Environmentalisation of the Security: The Challenge of Environmental Security for the United Nations	View Paper Details
Sovereignty over Natural Resources vs Prevention of Environmental Harm? Examining the Application of the Prevention Principle within Domestic Borders	View Paper Details
From Words to Deeds: Considerations Regarding the Political Implications of Discourses Related to Climate-Induced Migration – The Case of Bangladesh	View Paper Details
When Village Commons Become Global: The Role of Transnational Community-Based Networks in the Transformation of Global Norms for the Commons	View Paper Details
The Dual Spatiality of Environmental Politics: Negotiations on Forests and Genetic Resources	View Paper Details