When Global Environmental Politics was first published, the environment was just emerging as a pivotal issue in traditional international relations. Now the environment is a topic central to discussions of security politics and the relationship between foreign and domestic policy - and so much has changed that Gareth Porter and Janet Welsh Brown found themselves rewriting more than half of their original text.

With new cases on biodiversity and desertification, this classic work is more complete and up-to-date than any survey of environmental politics on the market.

In addition to providing a concise yet comprehensive overview of global environmental issues, the authors have worked to contextualize key topics such as the Rio conference, water security, the biodiversity treaty, and trade in toxics. Environmental concerns from global warming to the ozone layer to whaling are seen as challenges to transnational relations, with governments, NGOs, IGOS, and MNCs all facing the prospect of multilateral interaction to solve a growing global problem.