Agency in Earth System Governance

The modern era is facing unprecedented governance challenges in striving to achieve long-term sustainability goals and to limit human impacts on the Earth system. This volume synthesizes a decade of multidisciplinary research into how diverse actors exercise authority in environmental decision making, and their capacity to deliver effective, legitimate and equitable Earth system governance. Actors from the global to the local level are considered, including governments, international organizations and corporations.

Chapters cover how state and non-state actors engage with decision-making processes, the relationship between agency and structure, and the variations in governance and agency across different spheres and tiers of society. Providing an overview of the major questions, issues and debates, as well as the theories and methods used in studies of agency in earth system governance, this book provides a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers, as well as practitioners and policy makers working in environmental governance.

• Covers a broad spectrum of social science research from diverse disciplinary perspectives, drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to provide an understanding of earth system governance across multiple scales, issues and geographies
• Accessibly written, the book will be of interest to those working in a broad range of disciplines who are looking for an overview of agency in earth system governance
• Based on a systematic analysis of the journal literature from the last decade, the book highlights the most important research trends and debates