Ireland and the Climate Crisis
Edited by David Robbins, Diarmuid Torney, and Pat Brereton
Palgrave, 2020
This book provides a comprehensive overview of Ireland’s response to the climate crisis. The contributions, written by leading scholars across a range of disciplines in the social sciences, humanities and beyond, shed light on diverse aspects of the climate crisis, the factors shaping Ireland’s response, and prospects for the future. Long regarded as a ‘climate laggard’, Ireland’s response to the urgent societal challenge of climate change has seen new momentum in recent times. The volume will serve as a key reference point for academics, students, policymakers, and a wide range of stakeholders. It will be of interest to readers within Ireland, as well as further afield, who wish to gain a deeper understanding of the constraints on, and opportunities for, successful climate action in Ireland.
European Union External Environmental Policy: Rules, Regulation and Governance Beyond Borders
Edited by Camilla Adelle, Katja Biedenkopf, and Diarmuid Torney
Palgrave, 2018
This book considers the environmental policies that the EU employs outside its borders. Using a systematic and coherent approach to cover a range of EU activities, environmental issues, and geographical areas, it charts the EU’s attempts to shape environmental governance beyond its borders. Key questions addressed include: What environmental norms, rules and policies does the EU seek to promote outside its territory? What types of activities does the EU engage in to pursue these objectives? How successful is the EU in achieving its external environmental policy objectives? What factors explain the degree to which the EU attains its goals? The book will be of interest to students and academics as well as practitioners in governments (both inside and outside of the EU), the EU institutions, think tanks, and research institutes.
European Climate Leadership in Question: Policies toward China and India
Diarmuid Torney
MIT Press, 2015
The European Union has long portrayed itself as an international leader on climate change. In this book, the first systematic assessment of Europe’s claim to climate leadership, I analyze the EU’s engagement with China and India on climate policies from 1990 to the present. I develop an analytical framework for assessing EU climate leadership that charts the factors driving the EU’s engagement with China and India, the form of the engagement, and the Chinese and Indian response. I argue that EU engagement was driven by a desire to build its international role, growing concern regarding climate impacts, and an interest in the economic opportunities provided by the transition to a low-carbon global economy. European engagement with China and India took the form of institutionalized dialogue and capacity-building, with more extensive contact with China than with India. I show that China responded to the EU with limited normative emulation and lesson drawing; India’s principal response was resistance.
Diarmuid Torney 