Stefanie Fishel1, Prof Anthony Burke, Jessica Whyte2, Matt McDonald3, Susan Park4, Robyn Eckersley5
1The University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Australia, 2UNSW, Australia, 3University of Queensland, Australia, 4University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 5University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Stefanie Fishel is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She is the author or editor of The Microbial State (Minnesota UP, 2017), Environmentalism after Humanism (Palgrave, 2025), and with Anthony Burke, The Ecology Politic (MIT Press, 2025).
Anthony Burke is Professor of Environmental Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Australia. His books include Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence (Routledge, 2007), Uranium (Polity, 2017), Institutionalising Multispecies Justice (Cambridge UP, 2025), and with Stefanie Fishel, The Ecology Politic (MIT Press, 2025).
Jessica Whyte is a Scientia Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, with a cross-appointment in the Faculty of Law. She is the author of Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben (SUNY, 2012), and The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Verso, 2019).
Matt McDonald is a Professor in International Relations at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Security, the Environment and Emancipation (Routledge, 2012), co-author (with Anthony Burke and Katrina Lee-Koo) of Ethics and Global Security (Routledge, 2014) and author of Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security (Cambridge UP, 2021).
Susan Park is Professor of Global Governance in International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her books include The Good Hegemon: US Power, Accountability as Justice, and the Multilateral Development Banks (Oxford University Press 2022) and Environmental Recourse at the Multilateral Development Banks (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has published widely in the fields of environmental political theory and international relations, with a particular focus on ecological democracy, the greening of states, and the ethics, politics and governance of climate change. She received a Distinguished Scholar Award (Environmental Studies Section) at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Toronto 2019.
Abstract:
Over the last decade questions of the planetary have begun to intrude on the international, in terms both of violent physical disruptions to planetary systems and climate, and an intellectual challenge to the field of international relations through the lens of a planetary politics or a politics for the Anthropocene. The organisational and ontological structure of the international fails to match the physicality and change of the Earth, raising profound questions of global governance and international law, and the fundamental ontologies and assumptions of IR as a discipline. Such work has occasioned energetic debate and been accompanied by novel strands of thinking with animals and nonhuman nature. Questions of climate, biodiversity, and pandemic governance are just a few that it raises.
In this roundtable two of the authors of the 2016 manifesto of "Planet Politics", Stefanie Fishel and Anthony Burke, present their new book, The Ecology Politic, and invite responses. They present this work of environmental political theory as a both prequel to the manifesto and an extended exploration of its philosophical dilemmas – which include the planetary as a problem. Is it a new normative goal, a physical reality, a system of governance, a political ontology, or does it contain elements of all? Even as human societies act beyond the boundaries and tolerances of the planet, can it be measured, managed, and governed? Given the book's argument that states are structured by a constitutional "sovereign ban of nature", is the nation-state viable as a legal and ontological substructure for the international or the planetary?