− ESG–Agency scholars have embraced the notion that agent influence is complex, contingent, and context dependent, with the success of environmental governance depending considerably on propitious environmental and social conditions. − Scholars have shifted from an earlier focus on how agents influence behaviours and environmental quality in earth system governance to how they influence governance processes, with increasing focus on democracy, participation, legitimacy, transparency, and accountability. − ESG–Agency scholars employ increasingly diverse methods to integrate insights from case studies, interviews, surveys, statistical analyses, and other approaches leading to deeper and more nuanced understanding of agency in earth system governance. − Adopting more interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to evaluating agency can foster future understandings of and contributions to earth system governance.

− ESG–Agency scholars frequently use power as an explanatory variable, but often without definition or theoretical conceptualization. − Reflections on power in earth system governance research are divided between agency-centered (power to) and structure-centered (power over) perspectives, which mirrors the historic schism between liberal and critical International Relations scholars. − In the future, more comprehensive conceptualizations of power will strengthen the persuasiveness of normative arguments in ESG–Agency scholarship.

− The role of the state as an agent of earth system governance has become more complex, contingent, and interdependent. − Although participatory and collaborative processes have contributed to more effective, equitable, and legitimate environmental governance outcomes in some instances, analyses of these processes should be situated within a broader governance perspective, which recasts questions of policy change around questions of power and justice. −The complexity and normative aspects of agency in earth system governance requires new forms of policy evaluation that account for social impacts and the ability of governance systems to adapt. − Many of the core analytical concepts in ESG–Agency scholarship, such as agency, power, authority, and accountability, remain under-theorized. In addition, some types of actors, including women, labor, non-human agents, those who work against earth system governance, and many voices from the Global South, remain largely hidden. − ESG–Agency scholars need to develop research projects and collaborations in understudied regions while also recruiting and supporting scholars in those regions to engage with this research agenda.

− ESG–Agency scholarship reveals that diverse forms of agency are crucial to cultivating adaptiveness of governance systems within complex and changing contexts. − ESG–Agency scholars are well-positioned to apply extensive insights to major emerging questions in the social sciences about adaptiveness and renewal of political and governance systems across many spheres of society. − Greater focus is required concerning the effects of agency on adaptiveness of environmental governance systems in several ways: materially, normatively, and temporally.

In academic writing from Green perspectives, work on the economy is perhaps the most well developed. This is understandable given that the economy constitutes the metabolism between human society and the wider ecosystem of which it is a part in terms of materials, resources, energy and waste. This chapter explores the critiques that Greens provide of the contemporary economy before considering alternative visions of a Green economy, as well as thinking about how to get from one to the other. Hence, I first outline Green critiques of today’s global economy, in particular its ecological unsustainability and commitment to infinite growth on a finite planet. We then look at what a Green economy might look like and how this departs markedly from ideas which invoke the same label propagated by institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank. Finally, we explore the range of strategies Greens employ and propose to build a green economy.

The concluding chapter pulls together key elements of a Green vision for global politics. It summarises the basis o a Green alternative in each of the areas covered in the book: security, economy, the state, global governance, development and sustainability. Recognising diversity of views and multiple theories of change, it suggests critical areas where this vision can be taken forward around the renewal of democracy and subsidiarity, by recommoning and economic democracy, by building new alliances and pursuing just transitions. The politics of the twenty-first century are and will be the politics of sustainability. The question for all of us is: whose politics and on whose terms?

Global governance is a particularly challenging area of global politics in which to assess and develop Green contributions because the nature of global governance reform that Greens would like to see is far less clear than for Green visions regarding related areas such as the economy, the state or security. I argue, nevertheless, that there is a clear need for a Green account of global governance, one which uniquely assesses the project and practice of global governance as a whole from the point of view of its ability to create a sustainable society rather than its ability to preserve order as an end in itself. This chapter firstl outlines Green critiques of prevailing global governance arrangements, focused on their democratic deficits and poor levels of accountability, the concentration of power in global neoliberal institutions such as the World Trade Organization,the World Bank and the IMF and their failure to advance a more sustainable model of development. Second, it proposes a vision for Green global governance in which there is a rebalancing and repurposing of global governance institutions around the need to move towards a sustainable society. Third, it evaluates strategies for achieving Green global governance.

The state figures centrally in Green debates about the prospects and possibilities of a transition towards a Green society. This is true across the spectrum of Green political thought from anarchist traditions that advocate stateless self-governing communities, to emphasis on decentralisation and subsidiarity, through to the multilevel or transnational eco or Green state. The state is viewed, variously, as too large, too small, too captured and compromised by incumbent actors, elites and classes, too exploitative, violent or hierarchical and bureaucratic, depending on which version of Green politics is drawn upon. For some, it represents too large and distant an institution to build an ecological society, especially one which, for Greens, would have to have grassroots' democracy at its heart. Yet for others, it is too small a unit to deal with ecological challenges. This chapter explores Green critiques of the undemcratic, capitalist-industrialist and coercive nature of the state before articulating different ideas about the form a Green state could take. Finally, it evaluates strategies for building a Green state through ecological democracy.

For many practitioners and scholars of International Relations, security is the number one issue in global politics. The need to secure survival trumps all other imperatives where a ‘state of nature’ is said to prevail among nations. It seems appropriate, therefore, to begin our enquiry into the contribution of Green politics to global politics with this central concern. Despite the absolute centrality given to the politics of survival in orthodox representations of IR noted above, ecological questions are largely neglected. This is inspite of a now vast literature on environmental security and environmental conflicts. Here I explore Green critiques of militarism targeting the sources of violence and conflict, as well as the ecological impacts of war, before articulating visions of a Green security and considering strategies for achieving it through ecologising security, multilateralism and democratc defence.

Environmental issues are now firmly on the global political agenda. Major UN summits and even meetings of the G8 most powerful economies in the world often feature environmental issues, especially climate change. We have now had nearly fifty years of international environmental diplomacy, such that unsurprisingly ‘the environment’ is part of everyday parlance in the practice and teaching of global politics. The same cannot be said for Green politics and perspectives on key global issues coming from more radical Green positions. Despite the potential contributions of Green thinking to an understanding and explanation of the underlying causes and potential solutions to the multiple crises engulfing global politics around war, poverty and social inequality or climate change, Green perspectives on global politics issues have rarely been articulated or brought together and have yet to gain traction. In a modest way, this book seeks to remedy that.

Development is sometimes referred to as the central organising principle of our time. So what can Green politics offer to the understanding and practice of international development? Greens have traditionally had a lot to say about key aspects of development, including peace and security, poverty and social exclusion, gender and, of course, sustainability in ways that reflect the involvement of peace, feminist and environmental movements in Green politics. The discourse and practice of ‘sustainable development’, in particular, is now omnipresent. Green politics should be playing a central role in debates about international development, but critical Green insights about the causes of poverty and destitution and how these relate to the organisation of the global economy, the role of aid, trade and multinational corporations, as well as around what inclusive, just and green solutions to these problems might look like, have often been overlooked. There is an urgent need to redress these oversights.