Sikina Jinnah – författare

An argument that secretariats—the administrative arms of international treaties—are political actors in their own right.

Secretariats—the administrative arms of international treaties—-would seem simply to do the bidding of member states. And yet, Sikina Jinnah argues in Post-Treaty Politics, secretariats can play an important role in world politics. On paper, secretariats collect information, communicate with state actors, and coordinate diplomatic activity. In practice, they do much more. As Jinnah shows, they can influence the allocation of resources, structures of interstate cooperation, and the power relationships between states.

Jinnah examines secretariat influence through the lens of overlap management in environmental governance—how secretariats help to manage the dense interplay of issues, rules, and norms between international treaty regimes. Through four case studies, she shows that secretariats can draw on their unique networks and expertise to handle the challenges of overlap management, emerging as political actors in their own right.

After presenting a theory and analytical framework for analyzing secretariat influence, Jinnah examines secretariat influence on overlap management within the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two cases of overlap management in the World Trade Organization, as well as a case in which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) secretariat failed to influence political outcomes despite its efforts to manage overlap. Jinnah argues that, even when modest, secretariat influence matters because it can establish a path-dependent dynamic that continues to guide state behavior even after secretariat influence has waned.

Prominent scholars and practitioners consider the role of global environmental politics in the face of increasing environmental stress.

Humanity''s collective impact on the Earth is vast. The rate and scale of human-driven environmental destruction is quickly outstripping our political and social capacities for managing it. We are in effect creating an Earth 2.0 on which the human signature is everywhere, a “new earth” in desperate need of humane and insightful guidance. In this volume, prominent scholars and practitioners in the field of global environmental politics consider the ecological and political realities of life on the new earth, and probe the field''s deepest and most enduring questions at a time of increasing environmental stress. Arranged in complementary pairs, the essays in this volume include reflections on environmental pedagogy, analysis of new geopolitical realities, reflections on the power of social movements and international institutions, and calls for more compelling narratives to promote environmental action.

At the heart of the volume is sustained attention to the role of traditional scholarly activities in a world confronting environmental disaster. Some contributors make the case that it is the scholar''s role to provide activists with the necessary knowledge and tools; others argue for more direct engagement and political action. All the contributors confront the overriding question: What is the best use of their individual and combined energies, given the dire environmental reality?

ContributorsErik Assadourian, Frank Biermann, Wil Burns, Ken Conca, Peter Dauvergne, Daniel Deudney, Navroz Dubash, Richard Falk, Joyeeta Gupta, Maria Ivanova, Peter Jacques, Sikina Jinnah, Karen T. Litfin, Michael F. Maniates, Elizabeth Mendenhall, Simon Nicholson, Kate O''Neill, Judith Shapiro, Paul Wapner, Oran R. Young

How the environmental provisions in US preferential trade agreements affect both the environmental policies of trading partners and the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements.

As trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization seem permanently stalled, countries turn increasingly to preferential trade agreements (PTAs) between smaller groups of nations. Many of these PTAs incorporate environmental provisions, some of which require trading partners to enact new domestic environmental laws, and use the enforcement mechanisms available within trade agreements as tools for environmental protection. In Greening through Trade, Sikina Jinnah and Jean-Frédéric Morin provide the first detailed examination of how the environmental provisions in US preferential trade agreements affect both the environmental policies of trading partners and the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements. They do so through a combination of in-depth qualitative case studies and quantitative analysis of an original dataset of 688 global PTAs.

Jinnah and Morin explore the effects of linkages between PTAs and environmental treaties and the diffusion of environmental norms and policy through PTAs. Centrally, they argue that US trade agreements can serve as mechanisms both to export environmental policies to trading partner nations and third-party countries and to enhance the effectiveness of multilateral environmental agreements by strengthening their enforcement capacity. They caution that PTAs are not a panacea for environmental governance; deeper problems of unsustainable consumption and differential power dynamics between trading partners must be carefully navigated in deploying trade agreements for environmental protection.

This book explores the dominant framings and paradigms of environmental politics, the relationship between academic analysis and environmental politics, and reflects on the first thirty years of the journal, Environmental Politics.

The book has two purposes. The first is to identify and discuss the key themes that have driven scholarship in the field of environmental politics over the last three decades, and to highlight how this has also led to oversights and silences, and the marginalisation of important forms of analysis and thought. As several chapters in the book explore, problem-solving frameworks have increasingly taken away space from more radical systemic challenge and critique, as the key themes of environmental politics have become ever more central to the field of politics as a whole – and as our understandings of social and environmental crisis become ever clearer and more urgent. The second purpose of the volume is to map out a series of new and developing agendas for environmental politics.

The chapters in this volume focus foremost on questions of justice, materiality, and power. Discussing state violence, multispecies justice, epistemic injustice, the circular economy, NGOs, parties, green transition, and urban climate governance, they call above all for greater attention to intersectionality and interdisciplinarity, and for centering key insights about power relations and socio-economic inequalities into increasingly widespread, yet also often depoliticised, topics in the study of environmental politics.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

This book explores the dominant framings and paradigms of environmental politics, the relationship between academic analysis and environmental politics, and reflects on the first thirty years of the journal, Environmental Politics.

The book has two purposes. The first is to identify and discuss the key themes that have driven scholarship in the field of environmental politics over the last three decades, and to highlight how this has also led to oversights and silences, and the marginalisation of important forms of analysis and thought. As several chapters in the book explore, problem-solving frameworks have increasingly taken away space from more radical systemic challenge and critique, as the key themes of environmental politics have become ever more central to the field of politics as a whole – and as our understandings of social and environmental crisis become ever clearer and more urgent. The second purpose of the volume is to map out a series of new and developing agendas for environmental politics.

The chapters in this volume focus foremost on questions of justice, materiality, and power. Discussing state violence, multispecies justice, epistemic injustice, the circular economy, NGOs, parties, green transition, and urban climate governance, they call above all for greater attention to intersectionality and interdisciplinarity, and for centering key insights about power relations and socio-economic inequalities into increasingly widespread, yet also often depoliticised, topics in the study of environmental politics.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.

Key Features:

Providing detailed instructions and reflections on teaching effectively and inclusively, Teaching Environmental Justice will be an invaluable resource for faculty and graduate students teaching modules in environmental justice in courses across disciplines. It will also be essential reading for researchers of teaching and learning seeking insight into cutting-edge classroom practices that center equity and justice in student learning.