CALL FOR PAPERS
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND FOREIGN POLICY: THEORY AND PRACTICE
 
[Please forward to interested scholars, practitioners and email lists.
Apologies for resulting cross posting.]
 
The Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy calls on interested
scholars and practitioners to submit proposals for papers on the theory and
practice of Environmental Foreign Policy. Papers will be considered for
inclusion in an edited book with the working title of ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
AND FOREIGN POLICY: THEORY AND PRACTICE.
 
THE PROJECT ON ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND FOREIGN POLICY
 
The Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy began in 1998. It has
so far resulted in seven books: Climate Change and American Foreign Policy
(St. Martin's Press/Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), International Equity and
Global Environmental Politics (Ashgate, 2001), The Environment,
International Relations, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Georgetown University
Press, 2001), International Environmental Cooperation (University Press of
Colorado, 2002), Global Warming and East Asia (Routledge, 2003), Confronting
Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia (United Nations University
Press/Earthscan, 2005) and Europe and Global Climate Change (Edward Elgar,
2007).
 
The core objective of the Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy
is to better understand the role of foreign policy  (notably the crossover
between domestic and international politics) in efforts to preserve the
environment and natural resources. We are interested in illuminating the
many attributes of foreign policy, which we can define broadly as the
"foreign" objectives (realizing that nowadays few issues are truly
"domestic" or "foreign") that officials of national governments seek to
attain, the values and principles underlying those objectives, the methods
by which the objectives are sought. We want to better understand the
processes by which objectives and principles and methods are developed and
implemented, and the actors and forces shaping those attributes. Foreign
policy can be viewed as the interplay between domestic forces, institutions
and actors (e.g., democratic principles, civil society, executive and
legislative power structures, government agencies and diplomatic personnel),
and international forces, institutions and actors (e.g., globalization,
whether economic, environmental or cultural, and international organizations
and regimes, powerful countries, corporations and nongovernmental
organizations). Foreign policy analysis is well suited to studying responses
to environmental changes because it highlights the fact that domestic and
international issues overlap, and vice-versa. Because foreign policy is
about both domestic and international politics and policy (etc.) and often
entails the use of multiple levels of analysis, it helps us form a better
understanding of the real world of environmental protection and related
international cooperation.
 
Underlying the project is the belief that it is not enough to analyze
domestic or international political actors, institutions and processes by
themselves. We need to understand the interactions between them, something
that explicit thought about foreign policy can help us to do. It almost goes
without saying that foreign policy and associated actors, institutions and
processes can play an important, often vital, role in determining whether
states (and other actors) join international efforts to address
environmental problems, and the degree to which those agreements are
implemented. However, this remains a relatively neglected area of research
compared to foreign policy analyses addressing, for example, trade and
security issues, or macro-level work looking at international environmental
regimes, on one hand, or micro-level work addressing questions of
sustainable development, on another.
 
The project seeks to understand foreign policy processes in global efforts
to address adverse environmental changes at the local, regional and global
levels; to analyze the actors and institutions ­ both domestic and
international ­ that constrain and shape national actions on environmental
issues; to show how environmental changes influence foreign policy
processes; and to critically assess environmental foreign policies. Other
objectives of the project are to "test the waters" of research in this
field; to showcase research that has not been forced into traditional
empirical, epistemological or ontological boxes in the expectation that new
areas and issues will be illuminated; to give insight to governmental and
non-governmental practitioners and activists, which can help to improve
their understanding of environmental issues in foreign policy; to
disseminate these ideas so that they might have some positive effect on
policy-making and scholarship; and to enlighten students and laypersons
interested in environmental protection, sustainable development,
international affairs and foreign policy.
 
One aim of the project is to provide a platform for neglected ideas and
approaches to the topics examined. Many other research projects ask
participating scholars to fit their research into very discrete frameworks.
While this approach leads to explicit results, it can exclude the views and
conclusions of scholars using approaches outside the mainstream or whose
approaches are unusual but do the best job of explaining reality. Hence,
this project seeks to combine work using proven and accepted methods and
approaches with work derived from alternative perspectives outside the
mainstream. The result is new information ­ or new interpretations of old
information ­ that increases our understanding of how to address adverse
changes to the natural environment. With this in mind, we welcome proposals
from experienced scholars as well as junior researchers nearing completion
of their doctorates, including individual or collaborating scholars from
both developed and developing countries.
 
For more information on the project and the papers published so far, please
visit the following Website: http://www.ln.edu.hk/projects/ecfp/Home.htm
 
COMMENTS FOR EVERYONE SUBMITTING PAPER PROPOSALS AND PAPERS:
 
The focus of this stage of the project is the THEORY AND PRAXIS OF
ENVIRONMENTAL FOREIGN POLICY. (As such, we will not focus on a single state
or region as we did in past phases of the project.) We wish to (1) develop
the DEFINITION of environmental foreign policy and the THEORIES that can
and/or should underpin environmental foreign policy analysis, and (2)
further describe and explicate the PRACTICE of environmental foreign policy
by states and other actors in both the developed and developing worlds. We
seek proposals for papers in the following areas:
 
THEORY: Papers should reveal new definitions and/or theoretical approaches
to environmental foreign policy, or show how extant theory can be deployed
to better explain, predict or direct environmental foreign policy. How can
and should we define environmental foreign policy? What are the possible
theoretical approaches for understanding it (e.g., descriptive theories) and
guiding it (normative theories)? How do existing theories of International
Relations help us to understand the processes and outcomes of environmental
foreign policy? What can we learn from theories from other (possibly largely
or completely unrelated) disciplines?
 
PRACTICE/PRAXIS: Papers should examine specific topics of environmental
foreign policy (e.g., air and water pollution, resource and species
exploitation, biospheres, climate change, etc.) and/or the environmental
foreign policies of specific states (e.g, India's foreign policy on climate
change, Norway's foreign policy on whaling, Brazil's foreign policy on
forestry or land use, Canada's foreign policy on Arctic resources, the US's
foreign policy on pollution from ships, etc.). We are especially interested
in papers that look at foreign policy PROCESS, including answers to
questions like these: What role do leaders and ministers play in
environmental foreign policy? Are particular environmental foreign policies
a function of domestic economic and political considerations or interactions
among state agencies and international bureaucracies, secretariats or
negotiating processes? Do personalities matter? Do leadership, domestic
norms and values, historical learning, geographic endowments, pluralism and
other "forces" substantially influence or shape environmental foreign
policy?
 
These are only some possible ways of exploring the THEORY and PRAXIS of
environmental foreign policy. We welcome the opportunity to consider other
ideas, especially new ones.
 
Those wishing to contribute to the project are asked to bear in mind the
following considerations:
 
1. The goal of your paper should be to illuminate the theory, processes
and/or praxis of ENVIRONMENTAL FOREIGN POLICY, including the actors,
institutions and/or forces of environmental foreign policy formulation
and/or implementation. We are particularly interested in chapters that get
"inside" states to better understand how foreign policy process
intentionally or inadvertently shape national behavior. We hope that all
chapters will have indirect (in the case of theoretical contributions) and
direct (in the case of descriptions and analyses of praxis) practical
implications for the real world of environmental protection and/or resource
management, for example pointing to the relevance of the research findings
for policymakers, practitioners, stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations
and/or other civil society actors. We want the resulting book to have
scholarly, academic AND practical importance. Nevertheless, chapters on
praxis should at minimum briefly review relevant theory and discuss the
theoretical implications of the research described.
 
2. Papers for the project should be written for a general-but-educated
audience. We hope that the book that results will do more than sit on
library shelves, instead being read by policymakers, stakeholders, activists
and students of environmental politics, foreign policy, international
relations, etc. Therefore, please avoid highly technical jargon (and clearly
define any jargon you do use), and explain all technical terms that are
found in your paper. Write out all acronyms the first time they are used,
and include a list of acronyms used at the end of your paper (these will be
consolidated from accepted chapters into a single list of acronyms at the
beginning of the book).
 
3. Style of references and citations: At this stage, please use the Harvard
author-date style of parenthetical citations with a list of references, and
include ALL information (full names of authors, titles, publishers and
location of publication, dates, page numbers, URL addresses for Websites,
etc.). Note: Often the Harvard style includes only the author's initials for
given name(s). However, at this stage it is ESSENTIAL to include full names.
Failure to provide all details of sources WILL cause problems later (we have
learned this from experience). The final style guidelines we choose will of
course depend on the publisher of the resulting book.
 
4. Word limit: The word limit for papers resulting from accepted proposals
may change depending on the final publisher, but plan to keep papers in the
range of 7000 to 9000 words (including notes and references, but not
including the list of acronyms).
 
5. Whether your chapter is included in the book will be a function of its
topic, the quality of writing, and what it looks like in its final form. We
cannot of course accept papers for publication based solely on a proposal,
and all papers will be subject to peer review and revision.
 
6. Please include your contact details (email, telephone, fax, postal
address) with your manuscript, and your job/post title and institutional
affiliation (for example: Paul G. Harris is a professor of international and
environmental studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.).
 
7. Language: All proposals and papers should be in top-quality English. If
you are not able to write well in English, please arrange for your paper to
be edited by an English speaker before submission, and please be prepared to
do this for each revision of the paper should it be included in the book
project.
 
8. DEADLINES: Abstracts or more detailed proposals (more detail is better)
submitted by 1 April 2007 will receive priority consideration. (We welcome
proposals at anytime thereafter, but they are less likely to be accepted.)
If enough quality proposals are received by 1 April, we hope to send
invitations for full papers/chapter drafts to selected authors by 1 May
2007. In that event, completed papers ready for full peer review will be due
by 1 November 2007. Those proposing chapters are asked to bear this deadline
in mind, and to submit proposals only if they can write full papers/chapters
by this date. (Dates may change as required.)
 
9. IMPORTANT NOTE: Those who agree to join the project should be willing to
commit themselves to the long process leading to publication. This process
normally involves taking papers through multiple revisions, meeting
sometimes-short deadlines and requests for information from the editor and
publisher, dealing with comments from referees and the editor, complying
with strict standards of professionalism (avoiding plagiarism and the like)
and fulfilling other normal (but sometimes onerous) requirements associated
with scholarly publishing.
 
10. Please send all paper proposals via email to ecfp [at] LN.edu.hk by 1
April 2007 for priority consideration (change "[at]" to "@" when emailing).
 
We welcome questions and comments on the project.
 
MANY THANKS for your interest in the Project on Environmental Change and
Foreign Policy.
 
Best regards,
 
Paul G. Harris
Director
Project on Environmental Change and Foreign Policy

**************************************************
P.G. Harris
Politics & Sociology Dept.
[Poli. Sci. Dept. starting Aug. 2007]
Lingnan University 
Tuen Mun, N.T.
HONG KONG

Tel: +852-2616-7199
Fax: +852-2891-7940
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.ln.edu.hk/psd/

Project on Environmental Change
and Foreign Policy Website:
http://www.ln.edu.hk/projects/ecfp/Home
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