ABSTRACT
Environmental governance, however, has long been at the margins of the discipline of international relations. Diplomats and realist observers of international relations traditionally distinguish between high and low politics, with the former being concerned essentially with territorial integrity, the independence of national institutions, and the security of populations, and the latter with more sectoral concerns, ranging from economic growth to environmental protection and human rights. Environmental problems are caused by the actions of numerous agents that are, in turn, affected by them. Global ecopolitics, as is true of many other areas of international politics, is no longer the sole province of states. Emblematic of the readiness of some states and provinces to compensate for perceived federal inaction, is the Western Climate Initiative, which combines seven US states and four Canadian provinces. International environmental politics is also a laboratory where new forms of governance are invented and tested.
