Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance

The Human Environment

Sverker Sörlin, Eric Paglia

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009187763
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This unique history examines global environmental governance through the lens of Stockholm, which has played an outsized role in shaping its development. Fifty years before Greta Thunberg started her School Strike for Climate, Swedish diplomats initiated the seminal 1972 U.N. Conference on the Human Environment that propelled Stockholm to the forefront of international environmental affairs. Stockholm has since become a hub for scientific and political approaches to managing the environmental and climate crisis. Utilizing archival materials and oral histories, Sörlin and Paglia recount how, over seventy years, Stockholm-based actors helped construct the architecture of environmental governance through convening decisive meetings, developing scientific concepts and establishing influential institutions at the intersection of science and politics. Focusing on this specific yet crucial location, the authors provide a broad overview of global events and detailed account of Stockholm's extraordinary impact. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: The Human Environment – The Stockholm Idea
• 1 The Stockholm Story: A Progressive Counternarrative
• 2 Sweden and Nature: The Model Country Paradox
• 3 Stockholm: A Climate Science Node
• 4 The Swedish UN Initiative
• 5 Twelve Days in Stockholm, June 1972
• 6 Enter the Earth System
• 7 Planetary Boundaries and Big Tent Science
• 8 “Listen to the Scientists”: Yes, But What Is the Message?
• 9 Conclusion: An Environmentalism of the Rich?
• Selected Bibliography
• Index