ABSTRACT
During the Falklands campaign, Margaret Thatcher famously said: “It is exciting to have a real crisis on your hands when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment” (Thatcher 1982). Today environmental issues are the very source of real drama and great controversies in foreign policy. Large-scale natural disasters with high death tolls and tragic impacts on regional development, heated discussions on climate change at the United Nations Security Council, and political battles following the opening of the Northwest Passage are a few cases in point. Environmental issues are shaking up foreign policy circles, especially in the light of increasing scientific evidence of the nature of human dependence on ecosystems and of human contribution to environmental degradation and climate change.1 On the one hand, dealing with nature is a permanent policy challenge because it operates on its own timelines and cannot be ordered to deliver environmental recovery when we need it, despite all the political will and collective action. On the other, foreign policies have a unique opportunity to transform the current system in order to mitigate environmental damage, manage it, address liability for damage, and most importantly, take special care of the least resilient socio-ecological systems. Despite the fact that the relationship between foreign policy and the
environment has been the subject of much debate both in academic and policy-making circles, conceptual issues relating to environmental foreign policy as such, irrespective of the country that makes it, have received little treatment. This chapter aims to integrate different perspectives on the intersection of foreign policy and the environment, and draw on the findings of this volume, as it defines environmental foreign policy and explores its conceptual underpinnings. Following an analysis of the environment-foreign policy nexus in theory and practice, it clarifies the concept of environmental foreign policy and then derives a conceptual framework to analyze it. Next, the framework considers a state’s willingness to act on environmental concerns in foreign policy and its opportunities for action. The chapter concludes by identifying areas for further study.
