Dauvergne Peter

University of British Columbia | UBC · Department of Political Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to greatly enhance the productivity and efficiency of global supply chains over the next decade. Transnational corporations are hailing these gains as a 'game changer' for advancing environmental sustainability. Yet, looking through a political economy lens, it is clear that AI is not advancing sustainability nea...

Over the past two decades, civil society advocacy to improve plastics governance has been surging across the global South. This diverse, fragmented, bottom-up advocacy is now a key force, this Perspective article contends, reforming policy and elevating concerns for community justice, social equity, and human rights. A variety of strategies charact...

Research on anti-plastics activism in Indonesia and Malaysia, although increasing somewhat in recent years, is sparse and patchy. Interviews with local activists and a review of the existing literature, however, does suggest this activism is intensifying. Activists are educating people of the health and ecological risks of plastics, and operating n...

Global environmental politics is at a critical juncture as the Earth System emergency deepens. The core environmental policies and actions of governments, intergovernmental organizations, corporations, and, to a lesser extent, mainstream nongovernmental organizations are visibly failing to deescalate this emergency. In response to these failures, w...

While turbulence is a longstanding feature of world politics, contemporary turbulence stemming from climate change and accompanying environmental catastrophes, and interacting with developments in other areas of international politics, has more dire planetary consequences than ever before. Yet, the subfield of global environmental politics has not...

Tire wear and tear is among the largest sources of global microplastic pollution. Interviews conducted in 2024 appear to indicate 'incremental progress' toward improving governance of tire wear. Knowledge of the ecological and health consequences is increasing. Pressure is growing for greater producer responsibility. Global standards to limit tire...

Guatemala is severely polluted with plastic waste, with open burning, illegal dumping, and leaking landfills causing widespread harms. What actions, this article asks, are local people taking to reduce this pollution? What, more broadly, does this suggest for the power of grassroots environmentalism to influence plastics governance in Guatemala? Dr...

Activists are campaigning worldwide to ban the use of facial recognition technology to identify, track, and profile people in public spaces. The power of this global movement is rising steadily but unevenly. Scores of local jurisdictions in the Global North have banned face surveillance since 2019, slowing, although not halting, uptake by governmen...

This commentary reflects on the first Global Stocktake (GST) under the Paris Agreement on climate change to offer insights for advancing climate actions and informing future GST cycles. The first GST, which concluded at COP28 in 2023, demonstrates the vital importance of a comprehensive, balanced, and inclusive approach to multilateral climate acti...

The Introduction to this book (Historical Dictionary of Environmentalism) provides a snapshot of the history and politics of global environmentalism and the global environmental movement.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – the creation, enhancement, and upscaling of carbon sinks – has become a pillar of national and corporate commitments towards Net Zero emissions, as well as pathways towards realizing the Paris Agreement’s ambitious temperature targets. In this perspective, we explore CDR as an emerging issue of Earth System Governance...

In 2022, states resolved to negotiate by the end of 2024 a legally binding international instrument to govern the life cycle of plastics, including the prevention of marine pollution. Prioritizing justice, this study contends, is going to be necessary for a fair and equitable agreement that safeguards human rights, which in turn is going to be esse...

Although escalating planetary turbulence threatens to destabilize political and economic systems, it also has the potential to inspire new ways to halt destructive practices and more toward more sustainable and just ways of governing world politics. This chapter presents a thematic summary of possible pathways for such a transformation. It begins b...

This chapter introduces the topic of facial recognition technology (FRT). It defines facial recognition, and explains the differences between facial verification, identification, tracking, and analysis. It introduces the main criticisms of the technology, including for policing, surveillance, emotion analysis, and profiling (e.g., gender, age, ethn...

This chapter introduces the book’s central arguments and explains its core contributions to advancing the understanding of the consequences of civil society activism for the globalization and normalization of new technology. A transnational social movement to oppose facial recognition technology (FRT), the chapter proposes, is growing in size, reac...

This chapter explores the politics of facial recognition technology (FRT) in the United States. It opens with a sketch of the successful campaign to force the Lockport City School District in New York State to turn off its facial security system in 2020. It then investigates the anti-FRT campaign in the city of San Francisco, which in 2019 became t...

This chapter analyzes the politics underlying legislation to regulate facial recognition technology (FRT) in the United States. It includes a case study of the politics leading to the passage of the 2020 bill to regulate FRT in Washington State, which Senator Joe Nguyen, a Microsoft employee, sponsored. The chapter focuses in particular on the infl...

This chapter outlines the transnational social movement to oppose facial recognition technology (FRT). Civil society organizations advocating for civil liberties, civil rights, human rights, and digital rights form the core of the movement. This includes Access Now, the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Article 19, Big Brother...

This chapter analyzes the rising worldwide opposition to the use of face surveillance technology by police, intelligence agencies, schools, and businesses. This resistance, the chapter notes, is much stronger in North America and Europe than in developing countries. To add evidence of this uneven influence, the chapter documents the growing influen...

This chapter analyzes the role of technology companies in expanding the global market for facial recognition technology (FRT). It surveys the influence of transnational corporations, such as Amazon, NEC, Microsoft, Panasonic, and the Thales Group. It notes the importance of Chinese companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. It further notes th...

This chapter explores the politics of normalizing the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in everyday life in China. The chapter examines how the Communist Party of China is deploying FRT to extend policing and mass surveillance, including to track Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region in northwest China. It explores the growing deployment o...

The global market for facial recognition technology (FRT), as this chapter documents, is expanding. Demand is rising for policing tools, surveillance systems, banking, education, disease monitoring, school and airport security, cashless transactions, emotion analysis, business decision-making, and the profiling of customers. Uptake is especially st...

The influence of the movement to oppose facial recognition technology (FRT), this chapter concludes, is likely to keep rising. More civil society organizations are set to join, extending the depth, reach, and diversity of resistance. The movement looks set to remain cooperative and the messaging is on track to become more consistent as more groups...

Revealing the politics underlying the rapid globalization of facial recognition technology (FRT), this topical book provides a cutting-edge, critical analysis of the expanding global market for FRT, and the rise of the transnational social movement that opposes it. With the use of FRT for policing, surveillance, and business steadily increasing, t...

Since 2019, China has emerged as a leading proponent of nature-based solutions (NbS) to improve global environmental management. These solutions – from regrowing forests to restoring wetlands to regenerating agricultural soils to greening cities – can, at least in theory, simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity, and enh...

The use of facial recognition technology (FRT) for policing and surveillance is spreading across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Advocates are saying this technology can solve crimes, locate missing people, and prevent terrorist attacks. Yet, as this article argues, deploying FRT for policing and surveillance poses a grave threat to civil society,...

An extensive literature exists on the influence of home country policies, political systems, and societal norms on the overseas environmental and human rights conduct of transnational corporations (TNCs). This literature has generally focused on the consequences of the overall institutional conditions within a home country, with relatively little r...

China’s influence on climate governance has been steadily increasing since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. Much of this influence, this article argues, has come from China forging a path for climate adaptation and mitigation for the global South. This is having far-reaching consequences, the article further argues, fo...

Since the 1970s, the international community has constructed a multilayered architecture to govern the planetary-scale impact of humans. This includes an array of international agreements, state policies, corporate programs, non-governmental initiatives, and community norms. Today’s problems would certainly be worse without this governance architec...

The idea that plastics can be harmful has been gaining strength since the 1990s. Resulting anti-plastic norms have been diffusing unevenly around the world, with different meanings, fragmented uptake, and variable policy influence. Explanations for why and where anti-plastic norms have gained traction have highlighted the power of industry, the res...

Activists in the global South have been navigating two powerful trends since the mid-1990s: intensifying state repression and rising investment in extractive projects from the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). In this context, this article explores the underlying forces determining the formation, enduranc...

The globalization of artificial intelligence is supercharging the technological base of the world order. What are the consequences of the rising power of AI for environmentalism? Machine learning and intelligent robotics can advance environmental knowledge and conservation. Yet other AI technologies – from facial recognition to automated online sur...

A handful of companies dominate the world’s shipping industry. These firms have gained political leverage over the global governance of container shipping in particular. Intriguingly, in recent years the Danish conglomerate Maersk—the world’s biggest container and shipping vessel company since the mid-1990s—has been using its influence to push for...

Drones with night vision are tracking elephant and rhino poachers in African wildlife parks and sanctuaries; smart submersibles are saving coral from carnivorous starfish on Australia's Great Barrier Reef; recycled cell phones alert Brazilian forest rangers to the sound of illegal logging. The tools of artificial intelligence are being increasingly...

This chapter assesses the global political economy of the environment. The growth of the world economy is transforming the Earth's environment. Nothing is particularly controversial about this statement. Yet, sharp disagreements arise over the nature of this transformation. Is the globalization of capitalism a force of progress and environmental so...

Since the 1960s environmental norms have emerged as a defining force in world politics. Scholars who study environmental communication have demonstrated the power of a great diversity of global norms, from the belief that development should be sustainable to the belief that commercial whaling is morally wrong. Global environmental norms have tended...

Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment con...

This chapter identifies gaps and emerging issues to distill an agenda for high-impact and original research in global environmental politics. Justin Alger and Peter Dauvergne divide their overview of this research agenda into five categories: global political economy; international institutions and nonstate governance; ecological crisis; climate po...

On some measures, the global governance of plastic is improving. Curbside recycling and community cleanups are increasing. Companies like Toyota, Walmart, and Procter & Gamble are reducing waste to landfill. And all around the world, as research consolidates and activism intensifies, towns, cities, and legislatures are banning some uses of plastic,...

Walmart. Coca-Cola. BP. Toyota. The world economy runs on the profits of transnational corporations. Politicians need their backing. Non-profit organizations rely on their philanthropy. People look to their brands for meaning. And their power continues to rise. Can these companies, as so many are now hoping, provide the solutions to end the mounti...

The palm oil industry is increasingly certifying its activities as “sustainable,” “responsible,” and “conflict-free.” This trend does not represent a breakthrough toward better governance, this article argues, but primarily reflects a business strategy to channel criticism toward “unsustainable” palm oil, while promoting the value for protecting ra...

Emerging environmental norms gain strength and diffuse more quickly when scientific evidence of harm is consolidating, when activism is intensifying, and when political and corporate resistance is relatively weak. The anti-microbead norm -- that plastic microbeads should be removed from personal care products -- has been gaining global influence si...

Drawing on fieldwork in three Andean regions of Peru, this article analyses the capacity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to reduce mining-related violence in rural communities in developing countries. Within Peru, to some extent CSR has stabilised short-term relationships between mining corporations and nearby communities, although tension...

Theoretically, this article reveals the long-term risk for local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of participating in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), accepting money from foreign sources and throwing ‘boomerangs’ internationally—a strategy used by local NGOs to seek international allies to pressure repressive and unresponsive states at...

The earth is spinning into an ever-greater ecological crisis. Yet the primary solutions to end this crisis – ranging from international environmental agreements to national laws to corporate codes of conduct to individual lifestyle changes – are failing to make significant headway in ending this escalating crisis. The failure to confront rising rat...

Genevieve LeBaron, Jane Lister, and Peter Dauvergne, “The New Gatekeepter: Ethical Audits as a Mechanism of Global Value Chain Governance -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The private ‘ethical audit’ regime occupies significant, yet under-investigated power within global value chain (GVC) govern...

Since 2006, governments have designated or announced 18 marine protected areas (MPAs) larger than 200 000 km2. Before then there was only one: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, established in 1975. To explain this marked shift in state governance of marine biodiversity, this article points to the importance of a gradual strengthening over...

Over the past two decades multinational corporations have been expanding ‘ethical’ audit programs with the stated aim of reducing the risk of sourcing from suppliers with poor practices. A wave of government regulation—such as the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (2012) and the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015)—has enhanced the legitimacy of...

Four trends would seem to be empowering environmentalists who target corporations with global brands: the increasing reach of social media, growing numbers of campaigns, the corporate turn toward ''sustainability'' to create brand value and manage supply chains, and the spread of eco-consumerism. Campaigns since 2007 to demand that brands stop buyi...

Drawing on seventy-four interviews, this article analyzes the rising importance since the mid-2000s of large marine protected areas (MPAs) as a policy for managing ocean conservation. Governments have initiated eighteen large MPAs (over 200,000 km2) since 2006, reflecting the emergence of a new large MPA norm in marine conservation. This norm, we a...

This chapter brings to light the risks – and at times grave costs – for human health and ecosystems of companies introducing new technologies and products to compete for profits and markets. New technologies and products can cast dark ecological shadows onto distant ecosystems, poor communities, and future generations. Sometimes these shadows arise...

This chapter focuses on the political economy of the environment and environmental change. The growth of the world economy is transforming the earth's environment. However, there are sharp disagreements over the nature of this transformation; for example, whether the globalization of capitalism is a force of progress and environmental solutions, or...

This article surveys the literature on transnational governance (TNG) and makes the case that the field of international relations (IR) is underestimating its scholarly value. Three main charges are commonly leveled at TNG scholarship, which broadly analyzes the importance for global governance of rules and rulemaking to coordinate nonstate actors...

Ch 2 Sailing Into the Anthropocence in Peter Dauvergne, Environmentalism of the Rich (MIT Press, 2016) ---------------- Chapters 2–6 survey the political and socioeconomic forces underlying the global sustainability crisis. Understanding the scale and depth of contemporary forces of capitalism and consumerism requires a close look at the consequen...

Peter Dauvergne, Environmentalism of the Rich -- Chapter 3, "By No Means Pleasant" ----------------------------------- Chapters 2–6 survey the political and socioeconomic forces underlying the global sustainability crisis. Understanding the scale and depth of contemporary forces of capitalism and consumerism requires a close look at the consequence...

To further the understanding of the diversity and complexity of environmentalism, chapter 8 opens with the story of Bruno Manser, who in the 1980s left Switzerland to live with the Penan people in Sarawak, Malaysia. Before long he had joined with the Penan to oppose the logging of Borneo’s rainforests; in the 1990s he would emerge from Sarawak and...

This chapter analyzes the turn within mainstream environmentalism toward business partnerships, cause marketing, professional fundraising, and the co-branding of products. The chapter further examines the role of nongovernmental organizations in setting up and running eco-labeling and eco-certification organizations. WWF, also known as the World Wi...

This chapter begins with a question that at some point just about every environmentalist asks themselves: “Is environmentalism failing?” In some respects and on some measures, environmentalism has been – and remains – a highly influential social movement. Nonetheless, the earth is clearly in a full-blown crisis as agricultural pollution, biodiversi...

Despite the dangers and risks, as this chapter demonstrates some international NGOs are continuing to challenge oil, mining, and timber companies with confrontational, direct-action campaigns. Chapter 10 opens with the story of the Greenpeace campaign against oil drilling in the Arctic, once again demonstrating the courage and conviction of “eco-wa...

This chapter pans out from the islands of the Pacific to analyze the forces of unsustainable production and consumption underlying the global sustainability crisis. It demonstrates how, everywhere, inequality is increasing, as is conspicuous, wasteful consumption as companies pursue more sales and more profits. The chapter highlights how advertiser...

Chapters 7–11 explore why environmentalism is failing to make more headway against the global forces of unsustainability analyzed in chapters 1–6. Chapter 7 sets up the analysis by reviewing the global history of the environmental movement, highlighting the diversity of thought across cultures and time. Diversity characterizes contemporary environm...

The ecological footprint of humanity, as this chapter documents, is now over 1.5 times higher than the earth’s capacity to regenerate renewable resources and assimilate waste. This crisis is worsening as the biological integrity of ecosystems continues to decline and as the global ecological footprint continues to rise (with per capita footprints r...

This chapter surveys the ecological and political history of the South Pacific island of Nauru after 1798 – a microcosm of the globalization of unsustainability. In the 1900s Nauru became a major source of high-grade phosphate fertilizer, especially for Australia and New Zealand. The history of phosphate mining in Nauru illustrates how deeply colon...

This book analyzes the power of environmentalism to advance global sustainability. On some measures progress would seem strong. Wildlife sanctuaries are multiplying. Eco-certification is strengthening. Energy efficiency is rising. And recycling is increasing by the day. Yet the earth continues to spiral into a worsening sustainability crisis. Why?...

Chapters 2–6 survey the political and socioeconomic forces underlying the global sustainability crisis. Understanding the scale and depth of contemporary forces of capitalism and consumerism requires a close look at the consequences of imperialism and colonialism on patterns of violence and exploitation. This chapter begins this process of understa...

This chapter adds to the book’s understanding of the shifting nature and great challenges confronting environmentalism, especially more radical strands. A glance at the history of Greenpeace reveals sharp differences as the organization was forming in the 1970s; even today the activism of Paul Watson, who left Greenpeace to spearhead the Sea Shephe...

This final chapter consolidates the book’s arguments and findings into a reflection on the limits and dangers of environmentalism of the rich. Policies and programs are producing gains, especially on per product efficiency measures. But these gains are not aggregating into global solutions. Efficiencies are lost as firms reinvest savings to stimula...

Environmentalism of the Rich By Peter Dauvergne --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the last fifty years, environmentalism has emerged as a clear counterforce to the environmental destruction caused by industrialization, colonialism, and globalization. Activists and policymakers have fo...

In an Editorial now published in “Global Environmental Change”, 18 climate policy researchers argue that analyses of equity and justice are absolutely essential for our ability to understand climate politics and contribute to concrete efforts to achieve adequate, fair and enduring climate action for present and future generations. Climate change ac...

This chapter analyzes the growing influence of multinational corporations on the narrative of sustainability, demonstrating how over the past decade they have been turning a once critical discourse of the environmental movement into a business strategy of growth and control. Seeing the general understanding of sustainability losing its ecological m...

This forum article highlights three major research trends we have observed in the journal Global Environmental Politics since 2000. First, research has increasingly focused on specific and formal mechanisms of global environmental governance, contributing to more elaborate and refined methodologies that span more scales and levels of analysis. Seco...

Since the early 2000s, a fierce debate has raged around the world over the value and consequences of biofuels. Shifting narratives, uneven and fluctuating policies, and activist campaigns for and against biofuels have caused deep financial and territorial uncertainties and complexities. We offer clarity on these debates for development scholars by...

This final chapter consolidates the book’s arguments and findings into a reflection on the limits and dangers of environmentalism of the rich. Policies and programs are producing gains, especially on per product efficiency measures. But these gains are not aggregating into global solutions. Efficiencies are lost as firms reinvest savings to stimula...

This forum article highlights three major research trends we have observed in the journal Global Environmental Politics since 2000. First, research has increasingly focused on specific and formal mechanisms of global environmental governance, contributing to more elaborate and refined methodologies that span more scales and levels of analysis. Seco...

To analyse corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a business tool and as a way to promote food security in the global South, this article draws on 65 interviews with supply chain personnel and a 2013 survey of 250 smallholder farmers in Nicaragua. Contrary to private governance literature, Walmart’s efforts to control supply chains in Nicaragua a...

Over the past five years, global retail chains such as Walmart, McDonald’s and Starbucks have accelerated their efforts to source and sell coffee ‘sustainably’. Whereas ethical and environmental concerns were the intended drivers of fair trade and organic coffee uptake among the big coffee roasters, now multinational retailers are strategically emb...

Mass protests have raged since the global financial crisis of 2008. Across the world students and workers and environmentalists are taking to the streets. Discontent is seething even in the wealthiest countries, as the world saw with Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Protest Inc. tells a disturbingly different story of global activism. As millions of gr...

This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplines, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological interests, but all active in the subfield of global environmental governance (GEG). Each of them reviews the emerging literature around one specific conceptual innovation of GEG, related to one of the...

In early 2013, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for ‘a sustainable development financing strategy’ and a move toward ‘options for a mechanism to promote the development, transfer and dissemination of clean and environmentally sound technologies.’ South-South cooperation offers an opportunity to connect Sustainable Development Goa...

During international environmental negotiations developing countries have commonly employed a unified strategy through the G-77 and China (G-77/China). Compared with other negotiations, such as those on trade and security, this strategy has been relatively successful in securing financial and technical benefits. Unity among developing states is not...

This article assesses the social consequences of efforts by multinational corporations to capture business value through recycling, reusing materials and reducing waste. Synthesising evidence from the global environmental justice and feminist and international political economy (IPE) literatures, it analyses the changing social property relations o...

This significant collection surveys 41 pioneering and influential articles in the field of environmental politics. It maps the historical trends and current research directions, revealing the most important debates and findings in this energetic area of scholarship. Themes covered include international agreements and state negotiations, global gove...

McDonald’s promises to use only beef, coffee, fish, chicken, and cooking oil obtained from sustainable sources. Coca-Cola promises to achieve water neutrality. Unilever has set a deadline of 2020 to reach 100 percent sustainable agricultural sourcing. Walmart has pledged to become carbon neutral. Today, big-brand companies seem to be making commitm...

Convoys of hundreds of Greyhound buses move buyers to and from the fair through the heavy heat and choking haze of congested Guângzhou City, population 13 million. Buyers crowd the booths amidst a constant din of English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Russian and Fula. Lineups for trolley carts intersect the flow of buyers a...

Brazil's influence is rising quickly in international affairs. Unlike those of China and India, its foreign policy relies heavily on non-military power—a characteristic of Brazil since at least the early 20th century. A mainstay of this policy has been the pursuit of ‘development’ for Brazil and the global South, with domestic discourse on the need...

The second edition of this Handbook contains more than 30 new and original articles as well as six essential updates by leading scholars of global environmental politics. This landmark book maps the latest theoretical and empirical research in this energetic and growing field. Captured here are the pioneering and lively debates over concerns for th...

This article introduces and evaluates the implications for global environmental change of the rising power and authority of big brand companies as global environmental governors. Contributing to the private governance literature and, in particular, addressing the gap in this research with respect to the political implications of individual firm ‘bu...