• Political Geography and the Environment
2013-12-05
POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
A meeting of the IGU Commission on Political Geography
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
June 19-21, 2014
http://geography.uoregon.edu/pge/
The theme of the conference will be Political Geography and the Environment. The meeting will consist of two days of sessions, followed by an optional day-long field trip to the Oregon coast on June 21.
One of the clearest obstacles to the effort to confront environmental problems is the fragmentation of the planet into political spaces, few of which are meaningful ecological units. The issue is not just that ecological and political boundaries do not coincide; the very roles that territorial states play in the international state system and the world economy frequently work against collective action in the interests of the environment. Building on a tradition of examining the relationship between spaces of governance and environmental geographies, this conference will explore the role political geographic arrangements and understandings play in the effort to address the myriad environmental challenges of our time.
