ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad overview of recent governance debates highlighting the main areas of convergence and divergence in empirical and conceptual studies. The aims of these environmental governance studies have been to two-fold, first to re-scale issues that had previously been seen as either the preserve of nation state negotiation, such as global climate change, or of only local concern, such as air quality. The creation of locally resonant analyses has also created new communities and coalitions of interest such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) a group of nations united by a precarious position in the light of climate change and rising seas. Central to this glocal reconceptualization of environmental governance is a challenge to the traditional views those policies simply trickledown from one level of government to the next at which point non-state actors have the opportunity to influence them.
