The state and environmental challenges: A critical exploration of alternatives to the state‐system

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Abstract
Environmental issues have recently become an object of study among students of international relations. At the most theoretical level, a number of scholars criticise the ability of the state‐system to respond to environmental dangers and prescribe fundamentally different structures of governance as replacements for it. The two main schools of thought involved in this line of inquiry are supra‐statism (creating world‐government) and sub‐statism (decentralising power away from contemporary states). This article reviews and analyses these two conceptions. It aims to show that although they present themselves as radical departures from state‐centric thinking, they actually reaffirm the centrality of the institution of the state when thinking about forms of governance able to address environmental problems.

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