ABSTRACT
Despite acknowledgments that accelerating patterns of globalization render
the fragile systems of global environmental governance increasingly irrelevant (UNEP 1999), contemporary thinking about the challenge of managing
global environmental change continues to look to international regimes for
responses to environmental crisis. Increasingly, however, the study of inter-
national organizations cannot be divorced from an understanding of the nature
of the contemporary global political economy and its implications for the
future direction of environmental politics. As Saurin (2001: 80) notes ‘‘inter-
national political analysis continues to be conducted as if environmental
goods and bads are produced, accumulated and therefore regulated by public organizations. They are not.’’
