The Treatment of Global Environmental Change in the Study of International Political Economy: An Analysis of the Field's Most Influential Survey Texts.

Human activities taking place as part of postwar globalization have had a profound and intensifying impact on the global environment. In turn, global environmental change (GEC) is becoming an increasingly influential force in shaping the global political economy, with wide-ranging impacts on trade, finance, development, growth, governance, and interstate relations. This article examines how GEC is described and explained to students of international political economy (IPE), by reviewing the field's most influential survey texts. It finds that while most of the texts reflect the broader field's approach to GEC fairly accurately (in depicting GEC as an "emerging issue" warranting further study), this article problematizes this framing and argues that GEC ought to be given more urgent attention. That is, despite offering a tacit understanding of GEC's increasing influence as a central force shaping the global political economy (and vice versa), there remains an opportunity to better explain this dialectic to students within the field's primary texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]