Thinking Ecologically About the Global Political Economy

This book advances an ecologically grounded approach to International Political Economy (IPE). Katz-Rosene and Paterson address a lacuna in the literature by exploring the question of how thinking ecologically transforms our understanding of what IPE is and should be.

The volume shows the ways in which socio-ecological processes are integral to the themes treated by students and scholars of IPE – trade, finance, production, interstate competition, globalisation, inequalities, and the governance of all these, notably – and further that taking the ecological dimensions of these processes seriously transforms our understanding of them. Global capitalism has always been premised on the extraction, transformation and movement of what have become known as ‘natural resources’. The authors provide a synthesis of ecological arguments regarding IPE and weave them into an overall approach to be usable by others in the field. This synthesis draws on basic ecological political ideas such as limits to growth and environmental justice, ideas in ecological economics, practices of ecological movements in the global economy, as well as key ideas from other political economic traditions relevant for developing an ecological approach.

Providing a broad and critical introduction to international political economy from a distinctly ecological perspective, this work will be a valuable resource for students and scholars alike.

Ryan Katz-Rosene is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies, where he researches and teaches a range of topics relating to global environmental politics, international political economy, and Canada’s role in the world. He also serves as Vice President of the Environmental Studies Association of Canada.

Matthew Paterson is Professor of International Politics at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of global environmental change and in particular of climate change. He is currently focused on the political economy and cultural politics of climate change, and starting to work on the networked character of global climate governance.