ABSTRACT
The political dynamics of the global economy are central to determining both responses to specific environmental challenges, and the possibility of pursuing sustainability more broadly. The chapter elaborates the central debates about environmental politics when one views it from the focus on the global political economy and the debates within the academic field of IPE. The political dynamics of the global economy are central to determining both responses to specific environmental challenges, and the possibility of pursuing sustainability more broadly. A second key question in the IPE of the environment concerns the relationships between states on the one hand and private firms on the other. The key problematic here is the power of business to shape and constrain the pursuit of sustainability. People from this perspective tend to suggest that the ‘corporate greening’ discussed above is little but ‘greenwash’, since the underlying dynamics of the system within which corporations operate drive continuing ecological degradation.
