Critiquing Green Diplomacy

Abstract

International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy. By Lee-Anne Broadhead. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002. 240 pp., $55.00 cloth (ISBN: 1-58826-092-5), $19.95 paper (ISBN:1-58826-068-2). The articulated mission of International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy stems from critical theory's admonition “to comprehend the given society, [to] criticize its contradictions and failures, and to construct alternatives.” (Kellner 1984:122–123, Broadhead's emphasis, quoted on p. xi). From this perspective, Lee-Anne Broadhead's book serves the useful and necessary purpose of criticizing incremental intergovernmental approaches to environmental policymaking. However, the book is less successful in either the first or the third aspects of its mission. It does little to foster an increased understanding of “green diplomacy” or international regime theories or to offer robust alternative remedies for environmental problems. Operating in the spirit of the Frankfurt School (that is, the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas among others), Broadhead takes issue with much of the existing world order, beginning with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In her view, the instrumental rationality of the Enlightenment, its manifestation in Western science, its celebration of technology, and its conceptualization of the natural environment serve as foundations for economic liberalism, environmental degradation, international regime theory, and counterproductive green diplomacy. The distinctions between instrumental and ecological rationality are only partially explicated by Broadhead. In essence, instrumental rationality has to do with disaggregation, focusing attention on one issue at a time rather than taking a holistic approach. Despite this superficial treatment, Broadhead designates the Enlightenment's enshrinement of instrumental rationality as the crux of the problem. Acknowledging the important role that scientists within epistemic communities play in creating environmental regimes, Broadhead argues that the solutions provided by mainstream science are misleading. They blind us to …