ABSTRACT
Liberal environmentalism describes the normative compromise in global governance that has predicated international environmental protection on the promotion and maintenance of a liberal economic order. Liberal environmentalism reflects a historical North–South bargain generated from the interaction of policy ideas and evolving structural features in the wider international political economy. Liberal environmentalism differs from the first wide-scale global responses to environmental problems in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which focused on the negative environmental consequences of unregulated industrial development, suspicions of economic growth, and planetary consciousness. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development further reinforced liberal environmentalism when it promoted public–private partnerships to implement sustainable development, a practice well institutionalized in the UN system. The formal consensus on norms consistent with liberal environmentalism nonetheless masks ongoing contestation over their meanings and how to implement them. Meanwhile, the Sustainable Development Goals show evidence of both reinforcing liberal environmentalism and potentially being transformative.
