Australian IR scholarship on the environment: the recent past and the possible future

Abstract

ABSTRACT Australian IR scholars and scholarship have been prominent in framing, informing and contributing to global debates in the field of global environmental politics. This article reviews and analyses those contributions with a focus on the period since 2009. It takes as a starting point research that addresses international or global environmental issues, including those that demand a scalar approach to how the global is voiced and experienced at local and regional sites, and that, in doing so, illuminates key disciplinary concerns and contributes to disciplinary debates. The core of the article is woven around three overlapping sub-fields: global environmental governance, international political economy, and normative IR. It reveals how Australian-based IR scholars working on the environment have engaged with critiques of neo-liberalism, pursued more critical approaches to securitization, expanded the empirical and conceptual basis of how we understand institutional ecosystems, contributed to bringing social justice concerns to the forefront of global environmental politics and theory, and been part of a conversation about environmental challenges in the Asia Pacific region. The article concludes with some thoughts about the future direction of this research and scholarship.