Book Review: Ken Conca, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance
| Author | Jan-Erik Lane |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917718153 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsInternational Relations |
Book Reviews 629
Theory, Salter’s collections bring a hardware
awareness to the field of International Relations
(IR) which, as he rightly points out, has been
mainly engaged in a discursive understanding of
international politics, sovereignty and state con-
trol.
In order to fill that gap in the literature, the
essays Salter has collected in the two volumes
of Making Things International open up the
field to a new perspective by demonstrating that
non-humans – these mundane things that make
our increasingly globalised world possible – are
not lifeless objects but active agents, which are
possibly as important as humans in sustaining
the international system.
In conclusion, the essays in Making Things
International examine materials of many forms
from historical and critical perspectives with an
underlying emphasis on the agency of the non-
human. When reading some of the essays in these
books that give objects a great deal of agency,
some IR scholars may roll their eyes. However, in
general, I believe, the contributors argue convinc-
ingly that a humanistic approach alone to sover-
eignty, power and control is not enough to fully
understand these forces, and it would enrich the
field of IR to join the critical debates on materials
of the international and the everyday.
Ali Karimi
(McGill University)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917714962
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An Unfinished Foundation: The United
Nations and Global Environmental
Governance by Ken Conca. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015. 301pp., £18.99 (p/b), ISBN
9780190232863
In 2016, the foremost expert of the economics
of climate change, Nicholas Stern, stated that
the governments of the states of the world must
recognise that time is running out for achieving
the modest goal of no more than a 2° increase
in the global temperature. From this perspec-
tive of policy urgency, this highly insightful
book by Ken Conca becomes required reading
for everyone concerned about the great risks
for mankind related to the process of global
warming.
Based on a profound inquiry into the role of
environmental policymaking in the entire sys-
tem of the United Nations (UN) since its crea-
tion, Conca launches an interesting proposal
for making environmentalism count for more.
Starting from the four major types of UN activ-
ity as laid out in its Charter – peace, develop-
ment, international law and human rights – Conca
argues convincingly that the environment is
missing. He then suggests two improvements
in order to put environmental issues at the cen-
tre of UN preoccupations.
First, to add the environment to the (cur-
rently four) central areas of the UN as accord-
ing to its Charter, and second, to coordinate
the many boards and agencies of the UN
which hold environmental functions, such as
the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) and so on.
To support his idea of increasing the rele-
vance of global environmentalism by fusing it
with the central occupation of the UN, a num-
ber of examples from the UN’s history are
examined in order to show that environmental
considerations could have made a positive dif-
ference to policymaking and decisions taken.
As an analytic tool, Conca utilises three
decision-influencing factors that complicate
and often derail UN decision-making from a
Pareto optimal outcome. He speaks of bureau-
cratic-organisational autonomy, the discursive
framework and path-dependent policies.
Conca manages skilfully to interpret the
history of UN environmentalism and all its
organs and conferences with these three con-
cepts, reminding us too of public choice princi-
ples. One arrives at the conclusion that the
Great Powers in the G20, who are responsible
for much of current CO2 emissions, play the
policymaking to fit their self-centred interests
by moving issues and proposals around, from
one body to another.
The only objection one can make to Conca’s
impressive analysis and learned recommenda-
tions is that even putting environmentalism
within all of the UN’s key areas may not auto-
matically improve what the UNFCCC and
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