ISA Working Group Announcement
Thursday, September 18th, 2008This year, the Governing Council approved a proposal for three sections (ALIAS, Environmental Studies, and Human Rights) to create Working Groups during the conference.
The ESS Working Group theme is “Governing the Environment”. Recent environmental studies scholarship has produced much insight into rules governing human behavior and its impact on the environment. We know quite a bit about international negotiations, regimes, and organizations setting boundaries for the behavior of states. Similarly, comparative scholarship has produced a wealth of knowledge on domestic environmental regulations. In addition to such IR and comparative inquiries, a more recent branch of research studies rule-making by non-state entities such as firms and NGOs. Given this proliferation of thinking in analytically distinct dimensions of environmental rule-making it seems necessary to compare notes across these bodies of scholarship and explore what we have learned about rules regarding the environment. How may they differ depending on the rule-maker? How may they interact with (or contradict) each other?