In Global Environmental Governance and Small States: Architectures and Agency in the Caribbean, Michelle Scobie examines the problems of environmental management from the unique perspective of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). While the use of “state” here is linked to national sovereignty and governments, governance as a concept transcends “the Government” as an actor and its role as an authoritative institution—which Scobie does a good job of illustrating throughout her book by making references to actors such as international agencies, nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and independent authorities.
Scobie argues that the global environmental governance discipline is dominated by works on large global issues and international actors and that the smaller-scaled elements, such as those associated with SIDS, are not popularly engaged with. For Scobie, this imbalance is coupled with the fact that the majority of global environmental governance narratives are from the global North. Studying global environmental governance through the lens of SIDS adds a novel take on the discourse because the book’s narrative is based on geographies that can all too easily be considered socioeconomically and sociopolitically marginal on the world stage.
Global environmental governance is a discipline that explores the institutions, rules, regulations, legislations, and norms that are part of protecting the environment and its resources. Scobie’s writing in this book is set in a specific period of human history, that is, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is the current geological epoch and one that has been brought about by humanity’s marked influence and impact on the Earth system; humankind can be thought of as a geophysical force because of this influence and impact (Steffen, Crutzen, & McNeill, Reference Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill2007). The Anthropocene began around the eighteenth century; examples of its indicators are humanity’s carbon and methane emissions (Crutzen, Reference Crutzen2002; Steffen, Crutzen, & McNeill, Reference Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill2007).
SIDS and small islands in general are geographies that are characterized by their smallness, remoteness, oceanic nature, insularity, and small population size, among other defining traits (Wong, Reference Wong2011). These traits create unique challenges and opportunities for environmental governance, such as reconciling land-use conflicts for housing, agriculture, and/or industry given islands’ limited land availability, or even capitalizing on renewable energy opportunities to mitigate local greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy security.
The book’s most significant contribution is its exploration of the islandic environments in the Caribbean. It takes a timely and much-needed “for islands, by islands” approach, which makes it key reading for anyone who is interested in the Caribbean environment as well as island environmental management. Scobie’s writing makes a noteworthy contribution to the contextual understanding of managing limited resources by looking at them through the finiteness of islands, which, by their very nature, are spatial laboratories for studying resource limitations.
The author organizes her book into nine chapters. Chapter 1 characterizes SIDS as unique places and outlines the meaning of global environmental governance to these spaces. Chapter 2 provides detail on the theory of global environmental governance. Chapters 3–8 provide case studies from the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago, to explore sectoral themes that are important to environmental governance in the region, such as tourism, climate change, maritime affairs, energy, culture, and trade. Chapter 9 recaps the key lessons learned and themes addressed in the book in a neatly presented summary.
Each chapter’s discussion has a scalar focus that moves from the international setting (e.g., institutions such as the World Meteorological Organization and transnational agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC]) to the regional and local contexts of Caribbean SIDS (e.g., institutions such as the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre [CCCCC] and the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism); this literary strategy does a good job of connecting the global to the local. For example, Chapter 4 on climate change governance and the Caribbean illustrates how international platforms such as the UNFCCC relate to regional institutions such as the CCCCC. Several of the chapters’ tables and figures are also quite useful and apt to refer to, especially those concerning the actors involved in the various tiers and elements of governance in the islands looked at (see, e.g., Tables 5.2 and 6.1 on pp. 100 and 123).
The research that informs the book is qualitative and based on data collected from semistructured interviews conducted with regional and national state and nonstate environmental actors such as government officials as well as from supplementary literature such as policy and country reports. These data form the basis for the sectoral narratives presented in the empirical chapters (Chapters 3–8). Each of these chapters can be read independently of the others, and there are appropriate interchapter references where necessary. Each begins with a brief introduction, has a discussion of the state of the governance of the given sectoral theme, and includes a concluding section on future outlooks.
For example, in Chapter 5, the discussion moves from a broad and contextual introductory discussion of marine and ocean governance themes to the regional realities and relevant international agreements (e.g., the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982), then to regional actors involved in marine affairs in the Caribbean (e.g., the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism and the Caribbean Shipping Association), followed by fisheries as a specific area of importance for oceanic geographies like Caribbean islands, and, finally, a concluding section on the future trends in marine and ocean governance (e.g., thoughts linked to developments in mining of the seabed).
The empirical chapters’ accounts of the state of each sectoral theme’s governance draw on the elements in Figure 2.1 (p. 16) and provide a discussion of the global environmental governance context that affects each sectoral theme. The key elements—that is, the “building blocks” from Figure 2.1—that guide the discussions are contexts and relationships, power, norms and policy, structures and frameworks, and quality of governance.
In that regard, Scobie gives a good overview of the global environmental governance landscape and theory in Chapter 2. She introduces some early uses and integration of themes embedded in environmental governance by mentioning examples such as Alexander Graham Bell’s linkage of burning fossil fuels and global warming to the need for clean energy in 1917. Scobie goes on to outline the evolution of global environmental governance as a concept and the key theoretical building blocks mentioned before by explaining what each means theoretically. Next, she explores complexity, regional governance, actors, and sustainable development as underlying elements that are engaged with throughout her narrative; for example, she touches on the role of private actors and the Alliance of Small Island States as two new and important actors to consider in the environmental governance of SIDS.
However, references to works such as the planetary boundaries (see Galaz et al., Reference Galaz, Biermann, Folke, Nilsson and Olsson2012; Rockström, Reference Rockström2010; Rockström et al., Reference Rockström, Steffen, Noone, Persson, Chapin, Lambin and Nykvist2009; Steffen et al., Reference Steffen, Richardson, Rockström, Cornell, Fetzer, Bennett and Folke2015) and doughnut economics (see Raworth, Reference Raworth2012) could have supported the theoretical discussions surrounding islandic environmental management. This is because these concepts specifically relate to “carrying capacities,” “foundations,” and “thresholds,” and islands are good examples of finite resource systems that fundamentally relate to these and similar notions.
One specific item to point out from Chapter 2 is the limited justification for the four main case studies used (Jamaica, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago) and, more specifically, the limited discussion of their positioning relative to the theoretical approach. The author mentions on page 3 that the case studies are representative of the entire region. While this does not detract from the case studies’ efficacy in the book, it would have been useful to have a more explicit “why” and “how” relative to their inclusions and/or a discussion of their regional representativeness in Chapter 1.
Overall, the narrative takes a top-down approach to governance, given the extensive references to institutional actors, policies, and legislation, with some occasional references to bottom-up examples. However, this is not to say that the book solely and explicitly advocates for top-down environmental governance in the Caribbean (or otherwise). Rather, it more aptly documents the top-down governance landscape based on the theoretical constructs of global environmental governance and their Caribbean relevance and applicability.
For example, Chapter 4’s numerous references to institutions and agreements related to climate change governance, such as the UNFCCC, 1992 Rio Declaration, 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Forest Stewardship Council, are examples of the top-down slant of the book.
References and examples of bottom-up cases include archaeologists hosting workshops for the locals of Grenada to teach them how to make saleable replicas of pre-Columbian artefacts to reduce the occurrences of pillaging of archaeological sites in Chapter 7, as well as farmers in Trinidad and Tobago becoming active in protecting their traditional knowledge about their cocoa bean trade through international intellectual property rights in Chapter 9.
This book is suited for both undergraduate and postgraduate students because its narrative introduces the key themes and gives their academic contexts. This, combined with the way the book is structured, makes its take on global environmental governance digestible and accessible, which further broadens the readership. In that regard, public and private niche readerships in the tourism, climate change, maritime affairs, energy, culture, and trade sectors will also find this book appealing (particularly those from Caribbean SIDS).
