Dr Kate O'Neill1
1UC Berkeley, United States
Biography:
Kate O’Neill is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. She works on global environmental politics and governance, and the global (and local) political economy of wastes and recycling. Her most recent book, Waste, was published by Polity Press in 2019. She is also the author of Waste Trading Among Rich Nations (MIT Press 2000), and The Environment and International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2009/2017), and numerous articles. She is a former editor-in-chief of the journal Global Environmental Politics, and her work is often featured on radio, TV and other media worldwide.
Abstract:
This paper examines how environmental and climate justice norms, principles and organizations have challenged, changed – and could possibly transform – global (environmental) governance, by confronting existing ways of “doing business,” and existing models of global governance. In this paper, I examine this proposition through three lenses: scale, power, and voice. Scale in particular – local to global and vice versa – is a central part of this paper. The lack of local connection has long been a critique of global governance, but justice advocates have pushed for this inclusion – and for voice – in international negotiations. Examples are diverse, including indigenous peoples, environmental justice advocates from the global North – and even global alliances of waste pickers. I trace this history and examine what channels of access environmental justice advocates have utilized and how we can assess their influence – and perhaps power. In particular, how have, or can, the structures of global governance (and globalization) respond to these pressures? And what are some of the problems or unintended impacts of this process? As a draft, new chapter for a new edition of a textbook, it is designed to explain these phenomena to a student/general audience.