ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the roles State and nonstate actors play in global environmental politics. State and nonstate actors play key roles in the creation and implementation of national and international environmental policy. State actors play the primary roles in determining the outcomes of issues at stake in global environmental politics, but nonstate actors—Intergovernmental organizations, treaty secretariats, Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and corporations—influence the policies of individual state actors toward global environmental issues as well as the international negotiation process itself. The important actions by state actors in global environmental politics concern the creation, implementation, and expansion of international environmental regimes. National governments, despite their assertion of exclusive rights to act in international relations, are no longer the only governmental actors in global environmental politics. The emergence of environmental issues as major concerns in world politics coincided with the emergence of NGOs. Private business firms, multinational corporations, are important and interested actors in global environmental politics.
