ABSTRACT
The politics of the environment clearly implicate both practices and understandings of the state and international relations. As the discussion below progresses, this question is taken further in considering-even as the topic is discussed in such terms-whether the state and international relations are appropriate categories of thought and practice, either in relation to the environment in particular, or indeed in general. A focus on the individual in turn has implications for theorizing world environmental politics as a particular facet of international studies that increasingly commands attention, and in doing so reorients our understanding of international relations or global politics more generally. If international relations scholars are concerned with the transformation of political community rather than the preservation of the environment, once environmental issues are introduced, the fundamental problematic becomes the transformation of the human relationship to the environment. The politics of the environment clearly implicate both practices and understandings of the state and international relations.
