Environmental Politics & Policy
Welcome!
I am Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science at the University of Oregon. I am also Participating Faculty in Environmental Studies.
My research and teaching focus on environmental politics, ecological law, rights of nature, and sustainable development. I am broadly interested in how the interaction between state and non-state actors at the global, national, and local levels determines policy responses to environmental challenges like climate change and ecosystem destruction, both domestically and internationally. This agenda is driven by three questions. First, when states fail to address a global problem like climate change, either through multilateral agreements or national laws, why and how are actions nonetheless taken on the ground? Second, how does the interaction among global, national, and local actors determine the success of governance reform attempts? Third, how do ideas regarding the best way to tackle global problems, and the structures for implementing these ideas, evolve?
To answer these questions, I examine how authority is structured and exercised in new, experimental governance arrangements; how power is distributed and flows within transnational governance networks; the politics of creating collaborative, multi-level governance arrangements; norm contestation and evolution; and ecological law. I am particularly interested in how these issues shape the politics and policies relating to climate change and sustainable development.
A scholar-practitioner, my research and teaching is informed by more than a decade’s experience working for NGOs and government before joining academia, as well as extensive experience working internationally in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Israel, Cyprus, and New Zealand. Currently, I am a member of the United Nations Knowledge Network on Harmony with Nature and a Participating Member in the UN General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature, tasked with providing recommendations on implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Links to my publications are available here.
Ecological Law as a Tool for Advancing Truly Sustainable Development
Scientists are increasingly warning that goals for achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, but can only be achieved through transformative change across economic, social, political, and technological systems. My current research focuses on how a growing number of community activists, lawyers, judges, scientists, government leaders, and researchers around the world are working to enact this transformation by adopting innovative legal provisions that prioritize the functioning of ecosystems and planetary systems that produce the conditions necessary for life. The last 15 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of laws based on ecological jurisprudence—a legal philosophy that sees nature not as a set of objects to be exploited, but as a community of subjects (including humans and non-humans) who are connected through interdependent, reciprocal relationships. Recognizing that human well-being is dependent on the well-being of ecosystems that provide the conditions for life, ecological jurisprudence places the well-being of all members of the biotic community (including humans) ahead of human self-interest alone.
My most recent book (with Pamela Martin)— The Politics of Rights of Nature: Strategies for Building a More Sustainable Future (MIT Press 2021)—tells the story of how people around the world are creating new laws that recognize natural ecosystems as subjects with inherent rights, and appealing to courts to protect those rights. The book analyzes efforts to use rights of Nature as a tool for constructing ecologically sustainable development, capable of achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goal of living “in harmony with Nature,” and shows how rights of Nature jurisprudence evolves through experimentation and reshapes the debates surrounding sustainable development.
My current research looks more broadly at how different cultures are adopting different legal expressions of ecological jurisprudence. While the rights of Nature framing is common is some Western legal systems, laws rooted in non-Western cultures often emphasize human responsibilities rather than rights of Nature. In 2021, I received a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to create the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor, an open access, interactive, online platform that tracks ecological law initiatives globally and provides related information and resources for policymakers, researchers, lawyers, and activists. I currently lead an international team of researchers that maintains and continually expands the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor. Among other things, I use the Monitor’s dataset and dashboard interface to analyze similarities and differences between different legal and cultural expressions in order to identify common underlying principles, as well as lessons about strategies for strengthening implementation.
Grassroots Global Governance
My work on the global advancement of ecological jurisprudence builds on my first book, Grassroots Global Governance: Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development (Oxford University Press 2016), which shows how when international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by implementing “global ideas”—policies and best practices negotiated at the global level—locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance not only explains why some efforts succeed while others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes these ideas to evolve.
The book shows how transnational actors’ success in putting global ideas into practice depends on the strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy arenas. Yet, grassroots actors neither accept nor reject global ideas as presented by outsiders. Instead, they negotiate whether and how to adapt them to fit local conditions. This contestation produces experimentation with unique institutional applications of a global idea infused with local norms and practices. Local experiments that endure are perceived as “successful,” allowing those involved to activate transnational networks to scale up and diffuse innovative local governance models globally. These models carry local norms and practices to the international level where they challenge existing global approaches. By explaining how this occurs, the book reveals the grassroots level as an important but often overlooked terrain where global governance is constructed.
My research is funded through fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Inter-American Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, Sony Electronics, the Oregon Humanities Center, and the University of Oregon.
For more information on my research, teaching, or my CV, please click on the links above.
