This book discusses political controversies involved in global biodiversity policy, and the practical opportunities that are opened up in solving them through increased citizen participation and democratic deliberation. It examines the emerging practice of deliberative global governance and its political consequences. The collection focuses on the intersection of global biodiversity policy and the promise of deliberative democracy. In doing so, it examines how new discursive logics emerge in global citizen deliberation that might destabilize the impasses encountered in biodiversity negotiations, how a "global citizens’ voice" emerges in deliberative processes despite the dominance of national institutions in the lives of those citizens, the most effective and innovative ways to amplify the results of large-scale deliberations to policy makers and broader audiences, and how future citizen deliberations can be designed to make them fair, feasible and consequential processes, in general and for biodiversity issues in particular. This highly original contribution to the field provides theoretical discussions, empirical analyses and local experiences of biodiversity policy, making it an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental politics, governance and sociology, particularly those interested in deliberative democracy, citizen participation and biodiversity.

An examination of the potential and limitations of deliberative consensus as a way to achieve effective international environmental governance. In this book, Walter Baber and Robert Bartlett explore the practical and conceptual implications of a new approach to international environmental governance. Their proposed approach, juristic democracy, emphasizes the role of the citizen rather than the nation-state as the source of legitimacy in international environmental law; it is rooted in local knowledge and grounded in democratic deliberation and consensus. The aim is to construct a global jurisprudence based on collective will formation. Building on concepts presented in their previous book, the award-winning Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence, Baber and Bartlett examine in detail the challenges that consensus poses for a system of juristic democracy. Baber and Bartlett analyze the implications of deliberative consensus for rule-bounded behavior, for the accomplishment of basic governance tasks, and for diversity in a politically divided and culturally plural world. They assess social science findings about the potential of small-group citizen panels to contribute to rationalized consensus, drawing on the extensive research conducted on the use of juries in courts of law. Finally, they analyze the place of juristic democracy in a future “consensually federal” system for earth system governance.

This important new book provides an excellent critical evaluation of new modes of governance in environmental and sustainability policy. The multidisciplinary team of contributors combine fresh insights from all levels of governance all around a carefully crafted conceptual framework to advance our understanding of the effectiveness and legitimacy of new types of steering, including networks, public private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder dialogues. This is a crucial contribution to the field. Frank Biermann, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands Can new modes of governance, such as public private partnerships, stakeholder consultations and networks, promote effective environmental policy performance as well as increased deliberative and participatory quality? This book argues that in academic inquiry and policy practice there has been a deliberative turn, manifested in a revitalized interest in deliberative democracy coupled with calls for novel forms of public private governance. By linking theory and practice, the contributors critically examine the legitimacy and effectiveness of new modes of governance, using a range of case studies on climate, forestry, water and food safety policies from local to global levels. Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy will appeal to scholars, both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate, as well as researchers of environmental politics, international relations, environmental studies and political science. It will also interest practitioners involved in the actual design and implementation of new governance modes in areas of sustainable development, food safety, forestry and climate change.

On one day in 2009, in thirty-eight countries around the world, 4,000 ordinary citizens gathered to discuss the future of climate policy. This project, 'WWViews', was the first-ever global democratic deliberation – an attempt to enable ordinary people to reach informed decisions on and impact the global policy process. This book – which analyzes the experiences and lessons from this ground-breaking event – marks the beginning of a new kind of democratic politics, providing practical lessons on how to increase the impact of global deliberation projects within the media and on official policy processes. The authors explore important themes for participatory approaches from the local to the global: the role of deliberation within global governance methodology and practice participant selection; policy impacts engaging the media how policy culture affects deliberation uptake capacity building and knowledge transfer process evaluation content and argumentation analysis gender, race and class aspects. The global aims of the 'WWViews project', along with the opportunity to evaluate the same process in different national and cultural contexts, makes this a hugely valuable and informative study for all those interested in democratic deliberation and environmental governance from the small to the international scale.

Deliberative democracy is well-suited to the challenges of governing in the Anthropocene. But deliberative democratic practices are only suited to these challenges to the extent that five prerequisites - empoweredness, embeddedness, experimentality, equivocality, and equitableness - are successfully institutionalized. Governance must be: created by those it addresses, applicable equally to all, capable of learning from (and adapting to) experience, rationally grounded, and internalized by those who adopt and experience it. This book analyzes these five major normative principles, pairing each with one of the Earth System Governance Project's analytical problems to provide an in-depth discussion of the minimal conditions for environmental governance that can be truly sustainable. It is ideal for scholars and graduate students in global environmental politics, earth system governance, and international environmental policy. This is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance.

The first Global Assessment launched in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) offers a reminder of how urgent it is to respond to biodiversity loss. It notably emphasises the striking figure indicating that one million of the Earth's species are now threatened with extinction. However, it is widely acknowledged that the global response to biodiversity loss is largely incomplete. One of the main reasons for this incomplete response is the lack of commitment from nations worldwide to establish adequate policies on biodiversity and implement them. At the national level, this lack of commitment has been attributed to an absence of principled leadership, transparency and accountability and an absence of productive interaction between competing interests. These are key attributes of democracy and are central in deliberative democratic theories, particularly when it comes to environmental issues. The relationship between environmental policy outcomes and democracy has long been analysed in systematic quantitative studies comparing 'democratic' and 'non-democratic' countries, most of which have concluded that countries that are more democratic achieve better outcomes. However, very few studies have paid attention to the relationship between environmental policy outcomes and democratic practices within so-called democratic countries. Therefore, there is a general lack of understanding as to why democratic countries still fail to prioritise environmental concerns in decision-making. This thesis aims to contribute to this empirical literature To do this, the thesis uses two case studies: France and Australia, between 2009 and 2019. Both countries are western democracies with industrialised economies and a well-developed environmental governance architecture (made up of national level biodiversity policies, institutions and agencies). Examining and comparing these two countries highlights those aspects of their democratic systems that contributes to their valuing (or neglecting) of common assets such as biodiversity. The analytical framework of the thesis combines biodiversity prioritisation and systemic deliberative capacity (grounded in the theory of deliberative democracy). The former involves assessing the degree of prioritisation of biodiversity in collective decision-making. The latter focuses the analysis on inclusion, deliberative authenticity and 'consequentiality' of deliberation within each country's biodiversity governance system. As this thesis takes a deliberative systems perspective in which the engagement of discourses is important, I look at the presence and prominence of biodiversity discourses, the way they interact with each other and the extent to which they are transmitted in the system. Data is collected via a range of techniques including document collection (media articles, publications and consultation procedures), stakeholder interviews and participatory event observation. The results demonstrate a clear difference between the two countries in terms of both biodiversity prioritisation and deliberative capacity on biodiversity. Compared to Australia, France performs better when it comes to prioritising biodiversity concerns in collective decision-making. The French performance reflects the prominence of three complementary discourses - those of ecological collapse, ecological solidarity and ecological modernisation - and their relatively effective transmission (particularly that of ecological modernisation) to government. In contrast, the Australian performance can partly be attributed to the prominence of two antagonistic discourses - namely, economic development and nature preservation - with only the former being prioritised in government policies. Consequently, there is a positive correlation between each country's deliberative capacity on biodiversity and the extent to which it prioritises biodiversity. Indeed, a plural and inclusive discursive landscape in which biodiversity discourses interact productively and are more easily transmitted in the system contributes to higher biodiversity prioritisation. However, the thesis concludes that while the French discursive landscape and deliberative system on biodiversity are more inclusive, authentic and consequential than those of Australia, this only contributes to moderate results on biodiversity policy, which are insufficient, considering the extent of biodiversity and environmental crises.

Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent international issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle. Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts. Each entry defines a central concept in global environmental governance, presents its historical evolution and related debates, and includes key bibliographical references. This new edition takes stock of several recent developments in global environmental politics including the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Global Pact for the Environment attempt in 2017, and the 2018 Oceans Plastics Charter. More precisely, this book: offers cutting-edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance; presents an up-to-date debate on sustainable development at the global level; gives an in-depth exploration of current architecture of global environmental governance; examines the interaction between environmental politics and other policy fields such as trade, development, and security; provides a critical review of the recent global environmental governance literature. Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars, and practitioners alike.

Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.

Deliberative democracy has been one of the main games in contemporary political theory for two decades, growing enormously in size and importance in political science and many other disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy takes stock of deliberative democracy as a research field, in philosophy, in various research programmes in the social sciences and law, and in political practice around the globe. It provides a concise history of deliberative ideals in political thought and discusses their philosophical origins. The Handbook locates deliberation in political systems with different spaces, publics, and venues, including parliaments, courts, governance networks, protests, mini-publics, old and new media, and everyday talk. It engages with practical applications, mapping deliberation as a reform movement and as a device for conflict resolution, documenting the practice and study of deliberative democracy around the world and in global governance.