Global Environmental Politics: the transformative role of emerging economies

Urpelainen, J. Global Environmental Politics: the transformative role of emerging economies. Columbia University: New York, Chichester, West Sussex. 2022. (pp. 344) Paperback (ISBN 978-0-23120-077-6) $35. In Johannes Urpelainen’s own words, the ‘central argument’ in his recently published monograph Global Environmental Politics is ‘not complicated’. The main claim being that the emerging economies—notably, China and India—with their large populations and following several years of robust economic growth are now defining the play in global environmental politics. This perceptible geo-political shift, however, will be most tested in the coming years on the ‘energy transition’ quest—the shift from dirty fuels such as oil and coal to a suite of renewables such as solar, wind, and hydro-electricity. Comprising a total of six neatly laid out chapters, Global Environmental Politics sets up the discussion by rehearsing for us the main debates and frameworks that have thus far explained the links between environmental outcomes and international political economy, particularly how the ‘American century’ set the tone and timbre for global environmental politics throughout the twentieth century. With the rise of the emerging economies in the twenty-first century, however, Urpelainen identifies four new ‘drivers of change’, which he believes can explain why the previous dominance and influence of the North or industrialised countries have increasingly begun to wane. The first driver is the ‘power to destroy’, which refers to the environmental footprint created by population size and per capita resource destruction. The second concerns the suite of either positive or negative ‘environmental preferences’ that an emerging economy may choose to adopt as it sets about achieving economic growth. The third driver discusses the ‘institutional capacity’ of an emerging economy in terms of their ‘actual ability to implement’ protective and conservation based environmental policies. And lastly, he considers the sizeable addition in recent decades to the ranks of the emerging economies such as Tanzania, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, Bangladesh, and many more. Upon discussing a raft of global environmental treaties, arrangements, and understandings, especially over how the various rounds of the Conference of Parties (COP) deal with the challenges arising from climate change, Urpelainen arrives at a somewhat disheartening assessment. To quote: The rapid rise of emerging economies with large populations, robust economic growth, relatively weak environmental preferences, and limited institutional capacity has decimated the foundations of the twentieth-century model of environmental treaty making (122). In other words, environmental protection and conservation can only play second fiddle, at best, to the emerging economies’ more urgent quests to achieve their development goals. However, Urpelainen throws in a significant caveat by discussing the case of China, whose government, he points out, from the middle 2000s onwards began to proactively invest in building and strengthening institutional capacity, which has, in fact, over time, even begun to notch up several successes by tempering some of the environmental ravages that could easily follow in the wake of rapid economic growth. India, in contrast, it is argued, has not only shown ‘weak environmental preferences’ but has also failed to develop any credible institutional capacity to safeguard the country’s complex and critical environmental assets. And worse, most of the emerging economies in Africa, Asia, and South America in Urpelainen’s estimate seem to be following the India model by failing to invest in developing any meaningfully institutional capacity. While it does appear that Urpelainen may be simply reiterating that the emerging economies will always choose economic growth over the need for protecting the environment, his overall argument actually aims to move us in a different direction. The claim here being that if global environmentalism is to move forward in the twenty-first century, then there has to be a shift from Green environmentalism with its focus on protecting and conserving Nature to instead embracing ‘brown environmentalism’—an emphasis on people-centred concerns over livelihood, improving quality of life in health, sanitation, and urban transport, and in a word, addressing the challenge of the environment through sustainable development. In effect, Urpelainen thinks that the growing geo-political heft of the emerging economies makes it imperative that Green agendas can only be materialised by meaningfully addressing Brown environmentalism. Global Environmental Politics is accessibly written and stays clear of the needless clutter for jargon; nor is it weighed down by any overbearing use of statistics and acronyms. In all, the reader gets to engage with arguments that are simply and starkly stated, which also makes the book especially ideal for undergraduate teaching. By way of criticism, however, it can be pointed out that Urpelainen’s theoretical preference is clearly tuned towards what the Canadian political scientist and international relations theorist Robert W. Cox (1926–2018) describes as a problem-solving approach. The problem-solver “takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action” (Elliot 1998). Consequently, Urpelainen often gives us the impression that the environmental challenges confronting the contemporary world can be sorted through an innovative mix of policies that are essentially informed by technical and managerial inputs. In contrast, those adopting a ‘critical approach’ study the environment as a conceptual terrain marked by the complexities of history, power, and ideologies. In such a perspective, China’s recent efforts to go ‘Green’ can be more insightfully explored, as the scholars Li and Shapiro (2020) in their recent monograph tell us, by exploring conservation and ecological protection as problems of “coercive environmentalism.” For Li and Shapiro, China’s state-led environmental programs could end up profoundly transforming state-society relationships by eroding transparency and undermining social justice, while simultaneously increasing centralisation and the coercive powers of government. In a similar vein, environmentalism in India too is increasingly being turned into a state-led and managed project alongside the systematic enfeeblement of institutional checks and by sustained efforts to discourage popular mobilisation around environmental issues (D’Souza 2022). Global Environmental Politics is a welcome addition to concerns that can no longer remain academic. Given the dire challenges brought on by climate change, students of environmental politics have to directly speak to the urgent cries for clarity and action on the ground and to the growing vulnerabilities brought on by extreme weather events.

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