Global Environmental Policy Making

Abstract This article discusses the emergence of the environment as a global policy issue and the ways in which the international community has responded to global environmental problems, focusing on the period since the first global conference on the environment, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. It assesses the role of the United States in global environmental governance over this time period, as well as the impacts of global environmental policy on the country itself. It also traces the emergence and maturation of a distinct body of academic literature: global, or international, environmental politics. Beginning as a subfield of international relations theory, this literature has broadened into an interdisciplinary social science field of its own, addressing both the political causes of the global environmental crisis and the politics of global environmental governance.