Project Description
The ‘environmental revolution’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s produced far-reaching consequences for global governance, leading to the emergence and diffusion of new environmental norms, the creation of new regulatory institutions at national and international level, and the rise of new business practices focused on environmental management. European business played an ambiguous role in this emerging political transformation. Initially, most business leaders were slow to respond to the rise of modern environmental politics, with some supporting but many others rejecting environmental ideas. By the 1980s, European business organisations came to play a more prominent role in shaping the international environmental agenda, and by the 1990s some business leaders were able to claim a leadership role in the greening of global business practices. In this project, I investigate how European business leaders and organizations reacted to the rise of global environmentalism, how they organised themselves to influence the new international environmental agenda, and how they sought to shape international environmental norms and institutions through engagement in intergovernmental processes. The project focuses on business involvement in key international and transnational conferences, from the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (1972) to the first World Industry Conference on Environmental Management in Versailles (1984) and the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (1992). It engages with wider debates in business history and international political economy about the role of business in international politics, with regard to business preference formation, interest aggregation and sectoral conflict, as well as the role of business as an originator of newly emergent environmental norms and practices.
Personal Bio
Robert Falkner is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. He serves as the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA programme, a partnership between NYU Stern School of Business, HEC Paris and LSE. Until 2022, he was the Research Director of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Robert received a double degree in politics and economics from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a doctorate in international relations from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College). In 2006-07 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His research interests are in international relations, global environmental politics and international political economy. He has published widely in these fields, including Great Powers, Climate Change and Global Environmental Responsibilities (co-edited, Oxford University Press, 2022) and Environmentalism and Global International Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He is currently working on a new book (with Barry Buzan) on The Market in Global International Society, which traces the fluctuating fortunes of the market norm in international relations.