Environmental Politics Specialist Group
Convenors
Dr. Louise Fitzgerald, University College Dublin. Email: louise.fitzgerald@dcu.ie
Aims
The Environmental Politics Specialist Group aims to provide a forum for the growing community of scholars researching environmental politics in Ireland and beyond. Ireland and the wider world face significant challenges as a result of a growing variety of environmental stresses. From global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss to local environmental issues such as air and water pollution, an expanding global population coupled with resource-intensive patterns of production and consumption are placing increasing strains on ecosystems and societies. Mitigating these challenges and adapting to the consequences of environmental change are partly technical issues but they are also fundamentally political, with notable economic, social, and governance aspects. PSAI members who work on environmental politics do so from a range of perspectives and approaches (comparative politics, EU studies, International Relations, normative political theory), and focus on a variety of environmental issues (climate change, pollution, ocean and marine politics, energy policy) at multiple scales of governance (local, national, European, international).
Activities
The Environmental Politics Specialist Group will hold an annual workshop to provide a venue for ongoing research on environmental politics in and about Ireland. This may be combined with a policy-focused panel involving contributions from practitioners and/or a keynote from a high-profile international speaker. The Specialist Group will also convene at least one panel on environmental issues at each PSAI annual conference. Beyond this, the Specialist Group will act as a springboard for combined panel proposals for international conferences such as PSA, ECPR, APSA, UACES and ISA.
Membership
The Environmental Politics Specialist Group welcomes members from across disciplinary areas and specialist areas. To become a member of the Group you must be a member of the PSAI, which you can join here.
You do not have to belong to an Irish university to be a PSAI member or to join the Group.