ABSTRACT
From the late 1980s onwards and with the end of the Cold War, the growing focus on international governance and the rising influence of environmentalism resulted in the incorporation of the environment into the discipline as a merely peripheral concern. Within mainstream International Political Economy (IPE) and International Relations (IR), many of the answers to questions about the nature of environmental threats and how best to mitigate them have been thought to be self-evident. The very notion of the Anthropocene is premised on a profound transformation in human-nature relations having taken place: the idea that the influence of human behaviour on the Earth's ecosystems is so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch. The ideological meanings and significance given to the environment are embedded in the social expression of capitalism. IPE of the Environment has to date been preoccupied with the institutional underpinnings of global environmental governance and the relationship between globalization and the environment.
