ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines broad developments in environmental policy occurring in Anglo-American contexts since the mid-twentieth century. Rejecting the view that environmental policy always exhibits a pre-given, fixed set of characteristics, the chapter instead presents ideas and practice in this arena as continually contested and reshaped. Conceptually, it traces shifting ideas about the object(s) and goals of environmental policy, from early concerns with pollution control, through engagements with ecological modernisation, sustainable development, and the Anthropocene. Practically, it documents a still-evolving set of movements away from ‘command and control’ regulation by states, towards diverse forms of multi-stakeholder, multi-level partnership, often but not always underpinned by market-based governance tools and instruments.
