The great dispersal: The fall and rise of global environmental governance

Abstract

This article presents a new way of understanding Global Environmental Governance (GEG), historically and functionally. We outline a revised analytical framing, which connects the post-WWII moment of early globalizing conservation with the intensifying attempts to govern the human-earth relationship through an ever-growing assemblage of governable environmental objects and their quantifiable indicators as proxies. Our argument is as follows: (1) GEG has followed a trajectory of dispersal of actors, institutions, conceptual tools and responsibilities from the micro- and local scales to the planetary. We analyze how these trajectories unfold in three essential domains: Earth System science, sovereignty, and neoliberalization. (2) GEG is performative. The governance itself has created the dynamic environmental objects under governance. (3) In this way, GEG has normalized the environment as a policy object.

Keywords: Diplomatic history; Earth system science, History; Environmental governance, History; Environmental history; Global environmental governance; Governable environmental objects.

Fig. 1

Top diplomat Sverker Åström, Sweden’s ambassador to the United Nations 1964 to 1970

Fig. 2

Economist Barbara Ward speaking during the Stockholm UN 1972 conference