The Global Environment: An Overview

The environment arguably lies at the core of international political economy (IPE) even though the fact often goes unacknowledged in mainstream IPE scholarship. The IPE literature tends to analyse the environment through an anthropogenic lens by focusing on the services that it provides to humans. From this perspective the environment fulfils two critical functions. It is both the source of the resources that drive the modern globalised politico-economic systems as well as a sink to absorb and process much of the waste that is generated as a side effect of global production and consumption. Both aspects of the environment are critical to the functioning of local, national, and international systems of production and consumption. For example, the fossil fuels that drive the global political economy are extracted from the environment, and when they are burned the carbon dioxide, sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides that are created are released freely into the atmosphere where they contribute to climate change, acid rain, and smog. This is but one example of the intertwined relationship between the environment's role in the creation of value and the absorption of pollution. Mineral extraction and agricultural production also involve this relationship to the environment as a source of value and a sink for pollution. It is this dual role of the environment in relationship to international political economy that will be explored in this chapter…