What kinds of international institutions are best suited to dealing with global environmental problems? How can we address the crisis of state capacity? What role should non-state actors have in environmental governance? Why are women and indigenous peoples still marginalized in global environmental politics? What are the consequences of the global ecological crisis for economic and security policies? The Global Politics of the Environment makes sense of the often seemingly irreconcilable ideas behind answers to these questions. It focuses throughout on the tensions between mainstream strategies, which seek to build support for reforms through existing institutions, and radical critiques, which argue that environmental degradation is a symptom of a dysfunctional world order that must itself be transformed if we are to meet the challenge of saving the planet.