My research investigates how the contestation, negotiation and learning that occurs among actors at the global 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 global governance arrangements; how national and local systems intersect with and push against these global structures; 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 economics. I am particularly interested in how these issues shape the politics and policies relating to climate change and sustainable development. Learn more about my current research projects.
Book:
The Politics of Rights of Nature: Strategies for Building a More Sustainable Future (with Pamela Martin, MIT Press, 2021) available open access. With the window of opportunity to take meaningful action on climate change and mass extinction closing, a growing number of communities, organizations, and governments around the world are calling for Rights of Nature (RoN) to be legally recognized. RoN advocates are creating new laws that recognize natural ecosystems as subjects with inherent rights, and appealing to courts to protect those rights. Going beyond theory and philosophy, in this book Craig Kauffman and Pamela Martin analyze the politics behind the creation and implementation of these laws, as well as the effects of the laws on the politics of sustainable development.
Grassroots Global Governance: Local Watershed Management Experiments and the Evolution of Sustainable Development (Oxford University Press, 2017), 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. Using integrated watershed management as a lens, the book explains why some efforts succeed and others fail, and why implementing these “global ideas” locally causes them to evolve at the international level. In doing so, the book highlights the key role played by grassroots actors and reveals the grassroots level as an important but often overlooked terrain where global governance is constructed. Learn more here.
Select Articles and Book Chapters:
“Rights of Nature: Institutions, Law, and Policy for Sustainable Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics, edited by Jeannie Sowers, Stacy VanDeveer, and Erika Weinthal. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
“Managing People for the Benefit of the Land: Practicing Earth Jurisprudence in Te Urewera, New Zealand.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2020, pp. 578-595.
“Guardianship Arrangements in Rights of Nature Legal Provisions,” in Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law—A Guide for Practitioners, edited by Anthony Zelle, Grant Wilson, Rachelle Adam, and Herman Greene. Wolters Kluwer, 2020.
“How Courts Are Developing River Rights Jurisprudence: Comparing Guardianship in New Zealand, Colombia, and India,” Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2019, pp. 260-289 (with Pamela Martin).
“The Rights of Nature: Guiding Our Responsibilities through Standards,” in Environmental Rights: The Development of Standards, edited by Stephen Turner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 (with Linda Sheehan).
“Constructing Rights of Nature Norms in the US, Ecuador, and New Zealand,” Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2018, pp. 43-62 (with Pamela Martin).
“Can Rights of Nature Make Development More Sustainable? Why Some Ecuadorian Lawsuits Succeed and Others Fail,” World Development, Vol. 92, 2017, pp. 130-142 (with Pamela Martin).
“Pursuing Costly Reform: The Case of Ecuadorian Natural Resource Management, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 51, No. 4, 2016, 163-185 (with Will Terry).
“Assessing the impact of international conservation aid on deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa,” Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 10, 2015 (with Matthew Bare and Daniel C. Miller.
“Scaling up Buen Vivir: Globalizing Local Environmental Governance from Ecuador,” Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2014, 40-58 (with Pamela Martin).
“Financing Watershed Conservation: Lessons from Ecuador’s Evolving Water Trust Funds,” Agricultural Water Management, Vol. 145, November, 2014, 39-49.
“The evolution of water trust funds in Ecuador,” in Sustainable Irrigation and Drainage: Management, Technologies and Policies, edited by Henning Bjorlund, Carlos A. Brebbia, and Sarah Wheeler. Southampton, UK: Wessex Institute of Technology Press, 2012 (with Marta Echavarría).
“Democratization,” in Encyclopedia of Political Theory, edited by Mark Bevir. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2010.
