Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: An Unfinished Foundation
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE:
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http://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/conca.cfm * https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/ken-conca * http://www.american.edu/uploads/docs/ConcacurriculumvitaeDecember2016.pdf *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 93034523
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n93034523
HEADING: Conca, Ken
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Brown University, B.S., 1982; University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.S., 1985; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1992.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Political scientist, researcher, educator, and writer. U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC, Office of Energy Emergency Policy and Evaluation, policy analyst, 1984-85; Congressional Office of Technology Assessment,Washington, DC, Industry, Technology and Employment Program, contractor, 1985-86; University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, research associate, 1987-92, Program on Peace and Conflict Studies, lecturer, 1991; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Center for International Studies, research fellow, 1991-92; Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, visiting assistant professor, 1992-93; University of Maryland, College Park, assistant professor, 1993-98, associate professor, 1998-2007, professor of government and politics, 2007-10; American University, Washington, DC, School of International Service, professor of international relations, 2010—, Global Environmental Politics program, director, 2011-14.
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Interdisciplinary Energy Group, Graduate Engineering Program, visiting scholar, 1989; Nankai University, China, visiting professor, 1995; University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Leadership Institute, instructor, 1996, 2001; University for Peace, Costa Rica, visiting instructor, 2012; Peace Research Institute Oslo, visiting scholar, 2012.
MEMBER:International Studies Association, Academic Council of the United Nations System.
AWARDS:Summer research grant, University of Maryland Graduate Research Board, 1994; workshop grant, Social Science Research Council, 1995; Designated Research Infrastructure Fund grant, Department of Government and Politics, and Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, both University of Maryland, both 1998; award for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science, American Political Science Association and Pi Sigma Alpha, 1998, 2003; semester research grant, University of Maryland Graduate Research Board, 1999; grants from Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service, 2002-05, 2003-08; Excellence in Teaching Mentorship Award, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland, 2003; Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in the field of international environmental affairs, International Studies Association, 2003, for Confronting Consumption, and 2006, for Governing Water; fellow, Academy of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, University of Maryland, 2004-07; Chadwick F. Alger Prize for best book in the field of international organization, International Studies Association, 2006, for Governing Water; workshop grant, International Studies Association, 2007; grant from United States Institute of Peace, 2011; Fulbright Specialist Grant in Peace and Conflict Resolution, J. William Fulbright Foundation, and Collaborative Research Award, School of International Service, American University, both 2012; Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, School of International Service, American University, 2012-13, 2015-16; Ideas Incubator Grant, American University Center for Teaching Research and Learning, 2014; residential fellowship, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, 2016; residential fellowships, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, MD, and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Bellagio, Italy, both 2017.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System, Oxford University Press, 1992; From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring New Limits to Growth, Academic Foundation, 2005; Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte, Routledge, 2006; and Harnessing Natural Resources for Peacebuilding: Lessons from U.S. and Japanese Assistance, edited by Carl Bruch, Mikiyasu Nakayama, and Ilona Coyle, Environmental Law Institute, 2011. Contributor to journals, including Review of International Studies, Third World Quarterly, Politics and the Life Sciences, and Journal of International Law and International Relations.
SIDELIGHTS
Ken Conca, a professor at American University, often writes on environmental policy as it affects nations around the world. He has published several award-winning books on the topic and is an adviser to the United Nations’ environmental program.
Confronting Consumption
In the essay collection Confronting Consumption, edited by Conca with Michael Maniates and Thomas Princen, examines how and why people buy products, along with the consequences of consumption. People buy goods not only for their usefulness but also for their symbolic value, according to the editors, who refer to this symbolism as the “social embeddedness of consumption.” Consumers in developed countries, they point out, are usually shielded from the effects of their consumption on the environment and on the workers who manufacture the products. They further note that producers of goods are consumers as well; they need raw materials, equipment, and more in order to produce. The editors call on consumers to think about why they buy and what effects their purchases have, with the goal being a more equitable distribution of resources.
Discussions of consumption in the United States, Vicki Robin observed in Yes! magazine, have often been dominated by prosperous people who promote the idea of a simpler way of life as a benefit to the individual, not thinking of the larger society, in which for many people, simplicity is the norm because they lack the means to buy luxury goods. Confronting Consumption, however, “explicitly challenges the reader—indeed, all Americans—to notice distortions like this and see the inadequacy of the consumption debate to our looming environmental and political crises,” the reviewer commented. Those willing to take “a rigorous and systematic look at how the consumption-production machine hums daily to meet your needs (but not the needs of many others)” should “read this book,” Robin concluded.
Governing Water
In Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building, Conca examines the threat posed to the world’s freshwater supply, with use of water rising twice as fast as the population. Rivers, the primary source of freshwater, cross national boundaries, but regulations do not, he points out. He calls for a new, international means of stopping the “damming, draining, and diverting” of rivers. The United Nations has tried to establish a body for this purpose, without success, and grassroots organizations have spoken out on the matter, as have those who believe the free market can best manage this resource. The “dynamic tensions” between these varied interests may lead to creative solutions, Conca writes. He provides case studies of how Brazil and South Africa have handled water management.
Governing Water offers a thoughtful approach to this environmental and political challenge, according to some critics. “This is an important book, both because it deals with a vital topic in an expansive yet nuanced way and because it pushes the boundaries of much of the received wisdom about international regimes and environmental governance,” related Tim Bartley in the American Journal of Sociology. Victoria Carchidi, writing in the Electronic Green Journal, called Conca’s “ambitious and exhaustive” book “best suited to those interested in policy and international government.” Certain portions of the book will appeal to various specialists, she added, while “the clear, direct final chapter would benefit any interested reader.”
Green Planet Blues
Conca has served as coeditor of Green Planet Blues, which collects essays on global environmental concerns, through five editions. The fifth edition, published in 2015, includes chapters lamenting the lack of effective action to address climate change; outlining the environmental effects of consumer goods, such as the plastics littering oceans; calling for international cooperation to protect the environment; debating the concept of sustainable development; and discussing how environmental problems affect the world’s poorest people, while urging that those who craft solutions keep the interests of these people in mind.
On the London School of Economics and Political Science Web site, Michael Bassey recommended the fifth edition highly. “To me,” he remarked, “awareness of the degradation of our planet and the need for urgent international action should be the top priority of us all. As such I earnestly commend Green Planet Blues. Keep it on your bookshelf and dip into it regularly.”
An Unfinished Foundation
Conca’s monograph An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance assesses what the United Nations has accomplished in the realm of environmental regulation and what more needs to be done. The United Nations so far has limited its environmental work to promoting sustainable development in member nations and assuring that these nations cooperate with one another, Conca writes, but he calls on the body to do much more. Environmental issues, according to Conca, are linked to security and human rights, so the U.N. programs tasked with those matters must become involved. In building his case about this relationship, he points out that wars often arise from struggles over scarce natural resources, then sap those resources and cause pollution, making for an ongoing cycle of violent conflict and environmental harm. The human rights argument, he writes, is that everyone has a right to adequate clean water and unfouled air, yet the world’s poor nations suffer the most from pollution. Conca suggests that the U.N. Security Council take a role in addressing environmental problems, and that the United Nations as a whole create new programs that will integrate environmental work into its mission. In expanding this work, the United Nations will benefit the planet, but it will also benefit itself by becoming a stronger and more respected institution, Conca concludes.
Several reviewers found Conca’s recommendations provocative and worthy of consideration. “Before reading the book I was, I must admit, skeptical,” reported J. Samuel Barkin at H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. He continued: “But reading An Unfinished Foundation convinced me that Conca has a credible case to make. He writes clearly, accessibly, and engagingly, carefully marshaling argument and evidence. His argument is a measured one—that the reforms he is proposing will improve environmental governance, not that they will fix it.” Another positive assessment came from Iris Aikaterini Frangou, writing in the online Columbia University Journal of Politics & Society. An Unfinished Foundation “is well deserving of the praise it has received thus far,” she commented. Among its virtues, she said, is that it strikes a “unique balance … in calling for change without discrediting the international organization responsible for effecting that very change.” Barkin added: “The book provides an insightful argument about the place of the environment at the UN, a compelling history of how it got to be that way, and a convincing analysis of its shortcomings.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Journal of Sociology, May, 2007, Tim Bartley, review of Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building, pp. 1935-1937.
Bookwatch, May, 2010, review of Green Planet Blues, 4th edition.
Electronic Green Journal, spring, 2011, Victoria Carchidi, review of Governing Water.
Foreign Affairs, May-June, 2006, Richard N. Cooper, review of Governing Water, p. 155.
ONLINE
American University School of International Service Web site, https://sisgep.org/ (July 19, 2015), “Praise for Ken Conca’s New Book, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance.“
American University Web site, http://www.american.edu/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Columbia University Journal of Politics & Society, http://www.helvidius.org/ (December 14, 2015), Iris Aikaterini Frangou, review of An Unfinished Foundation.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, http://www.h-net.org/ (March 1, 2016), J. Samuel Barkin, review of An Unfinished Foundation.
London School of Economics and Political Science Web site, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (February 9, 2015), Michael Bassey, review of Green Planet Blues, 5th edition.
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center Web site, http://www.sesync.org/ (January 23, 2017), “SESYNC Welcomes Sabbatical Fellow Ken Conca.”
Wilson Center Web site, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ (June 7, 2017), author profile.
Yes! Online, http://www.yesmagazine.org/ (July 18, 2004), Vicki Robin, review of Confronting Consumption.
Ken Conca
Professor
School of International Service
Dr. Ken Conca’s research and teaching focus on global environmental governance, environmental peacebuilding in war-torn societies, environmental politics and policy in the United Nations system, water governance, and environmental policy analysis. He is the author/editor of several books on international environmental politics, including Governing Water, Confronting Consumption, Environmental Peacemaking, The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance, and the widely used teaching anthology Green Planet Blues. His latest book is An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance (Oxford University Press, 2015). Dr. Conca is a two-time recipient of the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book on international environmental affairs and a recipient of the Chadwick Alger Prize for best book in the field of International Organization. He is a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Expert Advisory Group on Conflict and Peacebuilding.
Degrees
PhD, University of California, Berkeley; M.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison; Sc.B., Brown University
Favorite Spot on CampusSIS Atrium; the Dav
SESYNC Welcomes Sabbatical Fellow Ken Conca
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Jan 23, 2017
Contacts: communications@sesync.org
This month Dr. Ken Conca will join the SESYNC team as a fellow on sabbatical from his home institution, American University’s School of International Service, where he is a professor of International Relations. He will spend much of his time on an independent sabbatical project that investigates climate change, water, and the social construction of risk.
Ken has written extensively on topics related to environment, peace, security, conflict and global governance. He is a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Expert Advisory Group on Conflict and Peacebuilding.
His SESYNC project examines how international water management experts incorporate climate risks into their decision-making. He is particularly interested in professional networks working on ‘climate-resilient’ infrastructure, specifically: large dam project planning/financing; urban water management; and rural water aid programs in developing countries.
Given the many forms of expertise involved in water management, and the many forms of risk management occurring in the water sector, finding common ground on climate/water risks is a significant challenge. The project seeks to understand how different communities of water experts (in finance, technology, management, science, policy) are defining and acting on climate-driven, water-related risks (scarcity, extremes, disaster, insecurity). The project aims to facilitate dialogue on how to manage uncertainty in climate resilience and adaptation efforts.
Ken spent the fall semester at the Wilson Center working mostly on the background literature and the conceptual framework for the project, and he is planning to dig into some of the empirical work this spring.
Ken is a two-time recipient of the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book on international environmental affairs, and a recipient of the Chadwick Alger Prize for best book in the field of International Organization. He earned his PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
On March 14th, Ken will be giving a seminar at SESYNC titled, "Climate change, water, and the social construction of risk.”
Ken Conca is an American University professor and an expert on UN environmental policy and politics. Conca is also author of the new book An Unfinished Foundation, The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance.(Oxford University Press)
Praise for Ken Conca’s new book, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance
July 19, 2015 by sisgep
Cover Art for An Unfinished Foundation
Professor Ken Conca’s new book will be released by Oxford University Press on August 10th, 2015
Update: We’ve gotten word from Professor Conca that An Unfinished Foundation was released on July 13th, 2015, ahead of the planned release.
On August 10th, 2015 Global Environmental Politics Professor Ken Conca’s new book, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance, will be released on Oxford University Press in paperback and hardcover (Links to order: paperback and hardcover. The E-book version may already be available; check with your preferred E-book store).
A summary of the book’s arguments can be found in an except that Conca shared as a blog post for McGill University’s International Journal of Sustainable Development Law and Policy.
Furthermore, read below for the official summary of An Unfinished Foundation, as well as praise for the book.
Official Summary of An Unfinished Foundation:
This book examines the origins, effectiveness, and limitations of the United Nations system’s approach to global environmental governance. The UN Charter mandates the global organization to seek four noble aspirations: international peace and security, rule of law among nations, human rights for all people, and social progress through development. On environmental issues, however, the UN has understood its charge much more narrowly. It works for “better law between nations” and “better development within them” while treating peace, security, and human rights as unrelated to the world’s environmental problems. A performance assessment of this selective approach shows that, despite some important gains, it is failing for some of world’s most pressing and contentious environmental challenges, and has lost most of the political momentum it once enjoyed. By not treating the environment as a human rights issue, the UN fails to mobilize powerful tools for accountability in the face of pollution and resource degradation. Similarly, ignoring the conflict potential around natural resources and environmental protection efforts causes the UN to miss opportunities to transform the destructive cycle of violence and vulnerability around resource extraction. The book traces the history of the UN’s approach, maps its increasingly apparent limits, and suggests needed reforms to use conflict sensitivity, peacebuilding, accountability mechanisms, and rights-based approaches as tools in the UN’s environmental work. The UN’s environmental efforts require not just a managerial reorganization but a conceptual revolution—one that brings to bear the full force of the organization’s mandate.
Praise for An Unfinished Foundation:
“Ken Conca argues carefully and persuasively that the United Nations must do much more to incorporate principles of human rights and conflict resolution into its environmental policies. His diagnosis is on target, and his concrete proposals would make international environmental protection more transparent, more responsive, and more effective.” John Knox, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment
“Ken Conca’s well-deserved reputation as an active, engaged, and insightful analyst is burnished further with his persuasive probing of the United Nations as an essential institution hobbled by a feeble and wrong approach to environmental challenges. This book is a wake-up call for those who dismiss international organizations as insignificant. An Unfinished Foundation makes a compelling case that a narrow focus on development and international law deprives the world organization of the leverage that would result from reframing the issue to include the peace- and rights-related dimensions of global environmental governance.” Thomas G. Weiss, author of What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It
“Without discounting or distorting the important work of the United Nations, Conca conducts a critical analysis of the international body’s record on environmental issues and sets out a bold but pragmatic agenda for reform and renewal. This book should inspire a vital debate about how the UN can live up to the full promise of its mandate, in order to tackle the most serious challenges facing humanity.” Athena Ballesteros, Director, Sustainable Finance Center, World Resources Institute
Ken Conca page 1
Curriculum vitae: Ken Conca
(updated December 2016)
American University
School of International Service
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016, USA
+1 202-885-6391 (voice)
+1 202-885-2494 (fax)
conca@american.edu
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Current position: Professor of International Relations, School of International Service,
American University, since September 2010.
Previous positions:
Director, Global Environmental Politics program, American University, 2011-2014.
Professor, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007-
2010.
Associate professor, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College
Park, 1998-2007.
Assistant professor, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College
Park, 1993-1998.
Visiting assistant professor, Department of Politics, Mount Holyoke College, 1992-93 academic
year.
Research fellow, MIT Center for International Studies, 1991-92 academic year.
Lecturer, Program on Peace and Conflict Studies, University of California, Berkeley, spring
semester 1991.
Contractor, Industry, Technology and Employment Program, Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment, 1985-86.
Policy analyst, Office of Energy Emergency Policy and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Energy,
1984-85.
Visiting and temporary appointments:
Fellow, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Annapolis, Maryland.
Residential fellowship, January-May 2017.
Ken Conca page 2
Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. Residential
fellowship, August-December 2016.
Visiting Scholar, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway, June 2012.
Visiting instructor, University for Peace, Costa Rica, February 2012. Co-taught course on
disaster risk reduction.
Instructor, Maryland Leadership Institute, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland,
College Park, summer 1996 and summer 2001. Program to promote diversity in graduate
education and careers in public affairs and public service.
Visiting professor, Department of Political Science, Nankai University, People's Republic of
China, June 1995.
Visiting scholar, Interdisciplinary Energy Group (AIE), Graduate Engineering Program
(COPPE), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, September-October 1989.
Research associate, Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, University of
California, Berkeley, 1987-1992.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Energy and Resources Group (ERG), University of California, Berkeley, 1992.
--ERG is an interdisciplinary graduate unit at UC Berkeley, conducting “education and
research for a sustainable environment and a just society.”
--Dissertation “Global Markets, Local Politics, and Military Industrialization in Brazil.”
--Dissertation chair: John Holdren. Readers: John Zysman, Gene Rochlin, Etel
Solingen.
M.S., Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1985.
--Land Resources Program. Specialization in Energy Analysis and Policy.
Sc.B., Geological Science, Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, 1982.
--Senior thesis "Fluid flow in porous media."
SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS
(see also Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles)
Books:
Ken Conca and Erika Weinthal, eds., Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy.
Manuscript in preparation. Under contract with Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017.
An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance (New
Ken Conca page 3
York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, eds., Green Planet Blues: Critical Perspectives on Global
Environmental Politics (Coulder, CO: Westview Press, fifth edition 2015).
--Previous editions 2010, 2004, 1998, 1995. Recommended title in Choice: Current
Reviews for Academic Libraries.
Jacob Park, Ken Conca and Matthias Finger, eds., The Crisis of Global Environmental
Governance: Towards a New Political Economy of Sustainability (London: Routledge, 2008).
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
--Winner of the Chadwick F. Alger Prize for best book in the field of international
organization, International Studies Association, 2006.
--Winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in the field of
international environmental affairs, International Studies Association, 2006.
Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, eds., Environmental Peacemaking (Washington:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, and Ken Conca, eds., Confronting Consumption
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002).
--Winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in the field of
international environmental affairs, International Studies Association, 2003.
Manufacturing Insecurity: The Rise and Fall of Brazil's Military-Industrial Complex (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997).
Ronnie D. Lipschutz and Ken Conca, eds., The State and Social Power in Global
Environmental Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
Wayne Sandholtz, Michael Borrus, John Zysman, Ken Conca, Jay Stowsky, Steven Vogel, and
Steve Weber, The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Articles in scholarly journals:
Ken Conca, Joe Thwaites, and Goueun Lee, “From Bully Pulpit to Bull in a China Shop?
Evaluating Proposed Roles for the Security Council on Climate Change.” Forthcoming in Global
Environmental Politics 17 no. 2 (May 2017).
Tim Kovach and Ken Conca, “Environmental Priorities in Post-conflict Recovery:
Efficacy of the Needs-assessment Process.” Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 11 no.
2 (August 2016): 4-24.
Ken Conca page 4
“Which risks get managed? Addressing Climate Effects in the Context of Evolving Watergovernance
Institutions,” Water Alternatives 8 no. 3 (October 2015): 301-316.
Claudia Pahl-Wostl, Ken Conca, Annika Kramer, Josefina Maestu, and Falk Schmidt, “Missing
Links in Global Water Governance: A Processes-Oriented Analysis,” Ecology and Society 18
no. 2 (June 2013), article 33 (10 pp).
“The Rise of the Regional in Global Environmental Politics,” Global Environmental Politics 12
no. 3 (August 2012): 127-133.
Ken Conca and Jennifer Wallace, “Environment and Peacebuilding in War-Torn Societies:
Lessons from the UN Environment Programme’s Experience with Postconflict Assessment,”
Global Governance 15 no. 4 (Oct-Dec 2009): 485-504. Reprinted in David Jensen and Steve
Lonergan, eds., Assessing and Restoring Natural Resources in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding
(Abingdon: EarthScan: 2012).
“The United States and International Water Policy,” Journal of Environment and Development
17 no. 3 (September 2008): 215-237.
“Water, Conflict, and International Cooperation,” Fudan Review of International Studies 7
(March 2007).
Ken Conca, Fengshi Wu and Ciqi Mei, “Global Regime Formation or Complex Institution
Building? The Principled Content of International River Agreements.” International Studies
Quarterly 50 (June 2006): 263-285.
“Environmental Governance After Johannesburg: From Stalled Legalization to Environmental
Human Rights?” Journal of International Law and International Relations 1 nos. 1-2 (December
2005): 121-138.
“Ecology in an Age of Empire: A Reply to (and Extension of) Dalby’s Imperial Thesis,” Global
Environmental Politics 4 no. 2 (May 2004): 12-19.
“Beyond the Earth Summit Framework,” Politics and the Life Sciences 21 no. 2 (September
2002): 53-55.
Symposium editor, “Ten years Since Rio: What Legacy for the Earth Summit?” Politics and the
Life Sciences 21 no. 2 (September 2002): 41-78. Harrison Symposium no. 2.
"The World Commission on Dams and Trends in Global Environmental Governance," Politics
and the Life Sciences 21 no. 1 (March 2002): 67-70.
Symposium editor, “The World Commission on Dams: A Model for Global Environmental
Governance?” Politics and the Life Sciences 21 no. 1 (March 2002): 37-71. Harrison
Symposium no. 1.
“Consumption and Environment in a Global Economy,” Global Environmental Politics 1 no. 3
(Summer 2001): 53-71.
Ken Conca page 5
Ken Conca, Thomas Princen, and Michael Maniates, “Confronting Consumption,” Global
Environmental Politics 1 no. 3 (Summer 2001): 1-10.
“The WTO and the Undermining of Global Environmental Governance,” Review of International
Political Economy 7 no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 484-494. Reprinted in Angus Cameron, Anastasia
Nesvetailova, and Ronen Palan, eds., International Political Economy (London: Sage 2007),
and in Peter Newell and J. Timmons Roberts, eds. The Globalization and Environment Reader
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2016).
"Between Global Markets and Domestic Politics: Brazil’s Military-Industrial Collapse,” Review of
International Studies 24 (1998): 497-511.
Ken Conca and Dennis Pirages, "Editors' Introduction: New Perspectives on U.S. Foreign
Policy," Futures Research Quarterly 13 no. 1 (Spring 1997): 5-9.
"Greening the United Nations: Environmental Organizations and the U.N. System," Third World
Quarterly 16 no. 3 (Fall 1995): 441-457.
"Rethinking the Ecology-Sovereignty Debate," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 23
no. 3 (January 1995): 701-711. Reprinted in Peter M. Haas, ed., Environment in the New
Global Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edwin Elgar, 2003) and in Ken Conca and Geoffrey D.
Dabelko, eds., Green Planet Blues (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, various editions).
"Peace, Justice, and Sustainability," Peace Review 6 no. 3 (Fall 1994): 325-331. Also
published in The Newsletter of the Political Economy of the Good Society 1 (Spring 1994).
"In the Name of Sustainability: Peace Studies and Environmental Discourse," Peace and
Change 19 no. 2 (April 1994): 91-113.
"Technology, the Military, and Democracy in Brazil," Journal of Interamerican Studies and
World Affairs (now Latin American Politics and Society) no. 1 (Spring 1992): 141-177.
Chapters in books:
“Causes of the New Earth: The Changing Shape of Global Environmental Politics,” in Sikina
Jinnah and Simon Nicholson, eds., New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016).
Ken Conca and Geoff Dabelko, “The Earth Summit: Reflections on an Ambiguous Event,” in
Conca and Dabelko, eds., in Conca and Dabelko, eds., Green Planet Blues: Critical
Perspectives on Global Environmental Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, fifth edition
2015). Originally published in second edition, 1998.
Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, “Introduction: From Stockholm to Sustainability?” in
Conca and Dabelko, eds., Green Planet Blues: Critical Perspectives on Global Environmental
Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, fifth edition 2015). Update of chapter appearing in
editions 1-4.
Environmental Human Rights,” in Peter Dauvergne, editor, Handbook of Global Environmental
Ken Conca page 6
Politics (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2012).
Jennifer Wallace and Ken Conca, “Peace through Sustainable Forest Management in Asia: the
USAID Forest Conflict Initiative,” in Päivi Lujala and Siri Aas Rustad, Eds., High-Value Natural
Resources and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Abingdon, UK: EarthScan, 2012). Also published
in Carl Bruch, Mikiyasu Nakayama, and Ilona Coyle, Harnessing Natural Resources for
Peacebuilding: Lessons from U.S. and Japanese Assistance (Washington: Environmental Law
Institute, 2011).
“Rethinking Authority, Territory, and Knowledge: Transnational Socio-Ecological Controversies
and Global Environmental Governance,” in Jacob Park, Ken Conca and Matthias Finger, eds.,
The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance: Towards a New Political Economy of
Sustainability (London: Routledge: 2008).
“Transnational Dimensions of Freshwater Ecosystem Governance,” in A.R. Turton, J. Hattingh,
G.A. Maree, D.J. Roux, M. Claassen, and W.F. Strydom, eds., Governance as a Trialogue:
Government-Society-Science in Transition (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006).
“Water,” in Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte, eds., Encyclopedia of Globalization (New
York: Routledge, 2006).
“Growth and Fragmentation in Expert Networks: The Elusive Quest for Integrated Water
Resources Management”, in Peter Dauvergne, editor, Handbook of Global Environmental
Politics (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2005).
Ken Conca, Alexander Carius and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, “Building Peace Through
Environmental Cooperation,” in The Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2005: Redefining
Global Security (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).
“Old States in New Bottles? The Hybridization of Authority in Global Environmental Governance,”
in John Barry and Robyn Eckersley, eds., The State and the Global Ecological Crisis (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 2005).
“Global Water Prospects,” in Dennis Pirages and Kenneth Cousins, eds., From Resource
Scarcity to Ecological Security: Exploring New Limits to Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2005).
"Imagining the State,” in Michael Maniates, ed., Encountering Global Environmental Politics:
Teaching, Learning, and Empowering Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
“The Case for Environmental Peacemaking,” in Ken Conca and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, eds.,
Environmental Peacemaking (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press and Washington:
Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002).
“Consumption and Environment in a Global Political Economy,” in Thomas Princen, Michael
Maniates, and Ken Conca, eds., Confronting Consumption (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002).
“Environmental Cooperation and International Peace,” in Paul F. Diehl and Nils Petter
Gleditsch, eds., Environmental Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000).
Ken Conca page 7
"Beyond the Statist Frame: Environment in a Global Economy,” in Fred P. Gale and R. Michael
M’Gonigle, eds., Nature, Production, Power: Towards an Ecological Political Economy
(Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2000).
"Environmental Confidence Building and Regional Security in Northeast Asia" in Miranda
Schreurs and Dennis Pirages, eds., Ecological Security in Northeast Asia (Seoul: Yonsei
University Press, 1999).
"Peace, Justice, and Sustainability," in Dennis C. Pirages, ed., Building Sustainable Societies
(Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996).
"Greening the United Nations: Environmental Organizations and the U.N. System," in Thomas
Weiss and Leon Gordenker, eds., NGOs, the UN, and Global Governance (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 1996). Reprint of article appearing originally in Third World Quarterly.
"Environmental Protection, International Norms, and National Sovereignty: The Case of the
Brazilian Amazon," in Gene Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds., Beyond Westphalia? State
Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
"In the Name of Sustainability: Peace Studies and Environmental Discourse," in Jyrki Kakonen,
ed., Green Security or Militarized Environment (Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth Publishing Company,
1994). Reprint of article appearing originally in Peace and Change.
"Environmental Change and the Deep Structure of World Politics," in Ronnie D. Lipschutz and
Ken Conca, eds., The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993).
"A Industrializaçao Militar no Brasil: O Período pré-64" in Domicio Proença Jr., ed., Uma
Avaliação da Indústria Bélica Brasileira: Defesa, Indústria e Tecnologia (Rio de Janeiro:
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1993).
"O Brasil na Economia Global de Armamentos," in Domicio Proença Jr., ed., Uma Avaliação da
Indústria Bélica Brasileira: Defesa, Indústria e Tecnologia (Rio de Janeiro: Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 1993).
Other publications:
Ken Conca and Anita Van Breda, “Enduring Responses to War and Disaster: The
Environmental Dimensions of Recovery.” Woodrow Wilson Center, forthcoming 2017.
“Rights and Environmental Protection Following Paris and the SDGs: Towards a Stronger Role
for the United Nations.” Report of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, New York, September 2016.
“Using the Full Mandate: Strengthening the Role of Peace and Human Rights in the IUN’s
Approach to Global Environmental Governance,” McGill International Journal of Sustainable
Development Law and Policy (online), May 2015.
Benjamin Pohl, Alexander Carius, Ken Conca, Geoffrey D. Dableko, Annika Kramer, David
Ken Conca page 8
Michel, Susanne Schmeier, Ashok Swain, and Aaron Wolf, The Rise of Hydro-diplomacy:
Strengthening Foreign Policy for Transboundary Waters (Berlin: Adelphi Research and Federal
Foreign Office, 2014). 52 pp.
“Decoupling Water and Violent Conflict,” Issues in Science and Technology, vol. XXIX no. 1
(Fall 2012): 39-48.
“Naturalism as Mastery?” Tikkun, May/June 2010.
“An Environmental Agenda for Obama.” Dissent, Summer 2009, 73-79.
“Stockholm Conference of 1972,” in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds., The Palgrave
Dictionary of Transnational History (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
“The New Face of Water Conflict.” Policy Brief no. 3 of the Navigating Peace Initiative,
Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, November 2006. Reprinted in Environmental Change and Security Program Report
13 (2008-09): 76-79.
Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte, editors, Encyclopedia of Globalization (New York:
Routledge, 2006). Associate editor for environment and health sections.
Ken Conca, Alexander Carius, and Geoffry D. Dabelko, “Promoting Environmental Cooperation
as a Peace-Building Tool.” Worldwatch Institute, Global Security Brief no. 6, June 2005.
Ken Conca, Fengshi Wu, and Joanne Neukirchen, “Is There a Global Rivers Regime? Trends
in the Principled Content of International River Agreements.” Harrison Program Research
Report, September 2003.
“Green Politics in the Bush Era: Anti-Environmentalism’s Second Wave,” Dissent, Summer
2001, pp. 29-33.
Anne H. Ehrlich, Peter Gleick, and Ken Conca, “Resources and Environmental Degradation as
Sources of Conflict,” Pugwash Occasional Papers vol. 2 no. 3 (September 2001): 108-138.
Discussion paper for the 50th Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs: Eliminating
the Causes of War, Cambridge, UK, August 2000.
“The Environment in Campaign 2000: Laying a Foundation for Citizen Activism,” Dissent,
Summer 2000, pp. 31-37.
"American Environmentalism Confronts the Global Economy," Dissent, Winter 2000, pp. 72-78.
"False Alarmist," Washington Post, Saturday October 24, 1998.
"The Environment-Security Trap,"Dissent, Summer 1998, pp. 40-45.
“Imagine There's No Countries: A Post-sovereign Perspective on the Global South's
Environmental Impact.” Occasional paper no. 27, Harrison Program on the Future Global
Agenda, August 1998.
Ken Conca page 9
“International Regimes, State Authority, and Environmental Transformation: The Case of
National Parks and Protected Areas.” Occasional paper no. 15, Harrison Program on the
Future Global Agenda, September 1996.
"Global Environmental Governance: Causes, Components, and Consequences," The Journal
of Green Cross Korea vol. 1 no. 1 (Summer 1995): 98-110.
"Resources and Security: A Framework for Analysis." Working paper, Pacific Institute for
Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, Berkeley, CA, February 1989.
International Competition in the Service Industries. U.S. Office of Technology Assessment
(Washington, July 1987). Contributor.
Trade in Services: Exports and Foreign Revenues. Special Report, U.S. Office of Technology
Assessment (Washington, September 1986).
Book reviews and review essays:
Ken Conca, “Complex Landscapes and Oil Curse Research,” Global Environmental Politics vol.
13 no. 3 (August 2013): 131–137.
Book review of Frank Biermann and Bernd Siebenhüner, eds, Managers of Global Change:
The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009)
in Global Environmental Politics vol. 10 no. 4 (November 2010).
Book review of Sebastian Oberthür and Thomas Gehring, eds, Institutional Interaction in Global
Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2006) in Perspectives on Political Science vol. 36 no. 3
(Summer 2007).
Review of Johannes Stripple’s Climate Change after the International: Rethinking Security,
Territory and Authority (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 2005) in Swedish Journal of
Political Science vol. 109 no. 1 (2007): 91-93.
Review of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2004) in Comparative Political Studies vol. 39 no. 6 (August 2006): 790-94.
Review of Joseph F. C. DiMento’s The Global Environment and International Law (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2003) in Law and Politics Book Review vol. 13 no. 7 (July 2003).
Review of The Social Learning Group’s Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks
(Cambirdge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001) published in Environmental Change and Security
Project Report vol. 8 (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002).
External review comments on the report “A Watershed in Global Governance?” An
Independent Assessment of the World Commission on Dams,” report of the World Resources
Institute (US), Lokayan (India), and the Lawyers Environmental Action Team (Tanzania).
Review of Wendy Hunter’s Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians Against Soldiers
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997) published in The Americas 54 no. 3
Ken Conca page 10
(January 1998): 473-5.
Review of Thom Kuehls’s Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996) published in American Political Science Review 91 no. 2
(June 1997): 503-4.
Media, video, blogging:
“Five Focal Points for US Global Water Strategy.” Blog post, New Security Beat, November 3,
2016.
“What’s Next for the Environment at the UN? Bringing Rights to the Fore.” Blog post, New
Security Beat, October 16, 2016.
Participant, media briefing on the opening of the 71st Session of the United Nations General
Assembly, School of International Service, American University, September 13, 2016.
“Should the UN Security Council Take Up Climate Security Issues? Ken Conca on Institutional
Change.” New Security Beat, May 20, 2016.
“A Healthy Environment is a Human Right.” Op-ed essay in The Guardian, October 1, 2015.
“World Environment Day – Three Questions for Ken Conca.” American University, School of
International Service, June 2015.
Blog post: “GEP Commencement Address,” GEP Blog, May 15, 2014.
Blog post: “Water: What to Do,” GEP Blog, March 14, 2014.
“Don’t poach tactics from the war on drugs,” Letter to the editor, Washington Post, 12 February
2014.
Video interview on why I teach and do research on water, filmed and edited by Andrea Keebler,
American University School of Communication, December 2013. Available on YouTube and
MediaFire.
“The Future of Water Conflict.” Video interview, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, February 2010.
“Environment, Conflict, and War-torn Societies.” Video interview, Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, February 2010.
“Green Planet Blues: Sustainability, Security, and Justice.” Video interview, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, February 2010.
“Green Planet Blues: Four Decades of Global Environmental Politics.” Video interview,
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, February 2010.
“Administrar el agua: globalización, redes y nueva faz del conflicto del agua (Governing Water:
Ken Conca page 11
Globalization, Networks, and the New Face of Water Conflict).” Vanguardia Dossier, no. 21,
October-December 2006.
“State Can Do More to Combat Warming.” Letter to the editor, Baltimore Sun, December 27,
2005.
Featured participant in the web chat on “Building Peace Through Environmental Cooperation,”
Worldwatch Institute, July 14, 2005.
“Mixed message: Bush pledges to spread freedom even as the U.S. spreads world pollution,”
Newsday, February 13, 2005 (solicited op-ed).
Commented on and led public discussion of the documentary film Drowned Out at the
Environmental Film Festival, Washington DC, March 25, 2004.
Radio interview on the 2002 Brazilian presidential elections for “On the Barricades,” WRPI,
November 13, 2002.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Scholarly awards and honors:
Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, School of International Service, American University,
2015-16.
Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, School of International Service, American University,
2012-13.
Winner of the International Studies Association’s Chadwick F. Alger Prize for best book in the
field of international organization, 2006. Awarded for Governing Water (MIT Press, 2006).
Winner of the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best
book in the field of international environmental affairs, 2006. Awarded for Governing Water
(MIT Press, 2006).
Elmer Plischke Faculty Research Award in Political Science, 2006. The Plischke Award is
presented annually to a member of the University of Maryland Department of Government and
Politics faculty for outstanding accomplishment in research publication.
Winner of the International Studies Association’s Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best
book in the field of international environmental affairs, 2003. Awarded to Thomas Princen,
Michael Maniates, and Ken Conca for Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002).
Grants and fellowships received:
Writing Residency, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Bellagio, Italy. Residential
fellowship awarded for May/June 2017.
Ken Conca page 12
Fellow, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Annapolis, Maryland.
Residential fellowship awarded for January-May 2017.
Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Residential fellowship awarded for
August-December 2016.
American University Center for Teaching Research and Learning, Ideas Incubator Grant, For
improvement of a role-playing simulation on river-basin diplomacy. $500 awarded December
2014.
Collaborative Research Award, “SIS Roundtable on the United Nations.” School of International
Service, American University. Co-principal investigator, with David Bosco and Charles Call.
$8,764, awarded September 2012.
Fulbright Specialist Grant in Peace and Conflict Resolution, J. William Fulbright Foundation.
Awarded April 2012 for a visiting scholar appointment at the Peace Research Institute Oslo
(PRIO), Oslo, Norway.
Grant “Learning from Post-Conflict and Disaster-Recovery Experience: Emerging
Environmental Dimensions of Sustainable Recovery.” United States Institute of Peace.
Principal Investigator, with Anita van Breda. $117,712, awarded April 2012.
Approved for listing on the Fulbright Specialist Roster, December 2011.
Workshop grant, International Studies Association, 2007. $5000.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service. Grant to the Harrison Program on
the Future Global Agenda to support a Natural Resources Advisor, Latin American and
Caribbean Region. 2002-2005. $451,557.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agriculture Service. Grant to the Harrison Program on
the Future Global Agenda to support a Biodiversity and Social Sciences Specialist. 2003-2008.
$230,588.
Semester research grant, University of Maryland Graduate Research Board, Fall 1999. Award
provided salary support for full release from teaching duties for one semester.
Designated Research Infrastructure Fund (DRIF) grant, Department of Government and
Politics, 1998. $3000.
Workshop grant, Social Science Research Council, 1995. Co-recipient with Miranda Schreurs.
$5200.
Summer research grant, University of Maryland Graduate Research Board, 1994. $6000.
Lectures, presentations, and conference/workshop activities (past five years only):
Workshop participant, “Religion and Climate Change in Cross-regional Perspective,”
cosponsored by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University and
Ken Conca page 13
the Observer Research Foundation. New Delhi, India, December 2016.
Presenter for the panel discussion “Climate Change and Civil Society in India and the United
States,” American Center, New Delhi, India, December 2016.
Invited lecture, “Implementing the SDGs and the Paris Accord: Bringing Rights to the Fore.”
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, New York, November 17, 2016.
Discussant for the fourth annual Al-Moumin Environmental Peacebuilding Award,
Environmental Law Institute, Washington, November 3, 2016.
Public remarks for the Global Water Strategy Listening Session, U.S. Department of State,
Washington, October 28, 2016.
Invited speaker for the panel “Water and Security in an Uncertain World,” Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, October 19, 2016.
Workshop participant, “The Conflict Potential of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: Backdraft
Revisited,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, September 26-27, 2016.
Invited speaker for the panel “The Conflict Potential of Climate Adaptation and Mitigation:
Backdraft Revisited,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, September 26, 2016.
Workshop participant, Forum on Climate Engineering Assessment, Tarrytown, New York,
September 22-24, 2016.
Presented paper “Bully Pulpit or Bull in a China Shop? Climate Change and the UN Security
Council” at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Academic Council of the United Nations System
(ACUNS), New York, June 2016.
Participant in the roundtable “The Environment after Paris and the SDGs” at the 2016 Annual
Meeting of the Academic Council of the United Nations System (ACUNS), New York, June
2016. Podcast: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2016/05/security-council-climate-securityissues-ken-conca-institutional-change/
Invited presentation for the panel “Rights-based Approaches: Patchwork or Panacea?” at the
conference “From Extractivism to Sustainable Development in Latin America: How to Make the
Best Use of the UN,” sponsored by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, New York, June 2016.
Presentation “Issues in Investment in Water Infrastructure and Climate Uncertainty,” Annual
meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS), Washington, June
2016.
Panelist, “Peace after Paris: Addressing Climate, Conflict and Development.” Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, May 2016.
Workshop participant, “Religion and Climate Change in Cross-cultural Perspective,” Center for
Latin American and Latino Studies, American University, March 2016.
Ken Conca page 14
Discussant for the workshop “Climate Change and the UN Security Council,” Elliott School of
International Affairs, George Washington University, March 2016.
Presented paper “Bully Pulpit or Bull in a China Shop? Climate Change and the UN Security
Council” at the 57th annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Atlanta, March
2016.
Presented invited remarks to the Seminar on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to
Armed Conflict, United Nations Headquarters, New York, October 2015. Sponsored by the
Permanent Missions to the United Nations of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Norway
in order to advise the International Law Commission’s Special Rapporteur on the topic of
Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict.
Conducted briefing for senior staff of the UN Environment Programme’s Program Strategy and
Planning Team, “A ‘Horizon Scan’ on Global Environmental Governance to 2030,” Nairobi,
Kenya (via teleconference), October 2015.
Discussant for the Third Annual Al-Moumin Environmental Peacebuilding Award and Lecture,
featuring Liz Alden Wily, School of International Service, American University, October 2015.
Featured speaker for the panel discussion and book-launch event “An Unfinished Foundation:
The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance,” School of International Service,
American University, September 2015.
Invited participant in the roundtable discussion “The Role of Musicians in Peace and
Environmental Movements,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, April 2015.
Presenter, Congressional briefing on "Conflict and Natural Resources in the Central African
Republic", along with representatives of Mercy Corps, the World Wildlife Fund, the Friends
Committee on National Legislation, and the Environmental Law Institute. United States
Congress, March 23, 2015.
Panelist for the roundtable “Water Securities and Insecurities,” Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Tufts University, March 2015.
Invited presentation for the workshop on Water and Security in the 21st Century, sponsored by
The World Peace Foundation in association with the Center for International Environment and
Resource Policy and the Water Diplomacy Program, Tufts University, Medford, MA, March
2015.
Panel chair, GEP Alumni Conference, American University, February 2015.
Invited presentation for the Conference on Intersectionality of Human Rights and U.S. Foreign
Policy, American University, January 2015.
Moderator for the panel “Water Governance & Development: Progress and Challenges for the
21st Century,” American University School of International Service, October 2014.
Discussant for the Second Annual Al-Moumin Environmental Peacebuilding Award and
Ken Conca page 15
Lecture, featuring Jon Barnett, School of International Service, American University, October
2014.
Invited participant for the Distinguished Scholar Roundtable honoring Peter M. Haas at the 55
th
annual meeting of International Studies Association, Toronto, March 2014.
Discussant for the Presidential Theme Panel “Environmental Security Revisited: New
Theoretical and Empirical Challenges” at the 55th annual meeting of International Studies
Association, Toronto, March 2014.
Discussant for the panel “New Earth Politics” at the 55th annual meeting of International
Studies Association, Toronto, March 2014.
Discussant for the Junior Scholars’ Symposium panel “NGOs and Institutions in Environmental
Governance” at the 55th annual meeting of International Studies Association, Toronto, March
2014.
Invited panelist for the roundtable “Future of Water Cooperation in the Middle East Region” for
the Conference on Israel and Water: Scarcity, Innovation and Cooperation. American
University, March 2014.
Workshop participant, “Workshop on Humanitarian and Military Better Practices: Reducing
Environmental Impacts and Improving Outcomes,” Environmental Law Institute, November
2013.
Moderator for the panel “Water and peacebuilding in the Middle East,” Washington College of
Law, American University, October 2013.
Panel participant, “Faculty and Graduate Student Collaboration and Publication,” Office of the
Vice Provost for Research, American University, September 2013.
Discussant for the workshop “Brazil and the Liberal Order: Brazil’s Influence on Global Norms
and Institutions,” sponsored by the School of International Service, the Fundação Getulio Vargas,
and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University, September 2013.
Keynote address, Global Environmental Politics commencement ceremony, School of
International Service, American University, May 2013.
Presented paper “Framing Water Uncertainties: Climate Risks in the Context of Evolving
Water-governance Institutions” at the 54th annual meeting of the International Studies
Association, San Francisco, April 2013.
Participant in the Presidential Theme Roundtable “Transnational Diffusion of Regulatory
Standards: Learning, Imitation, Socialization” at the 54th annual meeting of the International
Studies Association, San Francisco, April 2013.
Discussant for the First Annual Al-Moumin Environmental Peacebuilding Award and Lecture,
featuring Michael Barnett, School of International Service, American University, March 2013.
Ken Conca page 16
Discussant for the Spring Symposium of the Journal of International Service and the Graduate
Student Council, American University School of International Service, March 2013.
Co-organizer for the research workshop “Environmental Dimensions of Sustainable Recovery:
Learning from Post-conflict and Disaster Response Experience,” American University,
December 2012.
Keynote address “Beyond the Rio Era: Peace and Human Rights as Foundations of
Sustainability” at the annual conference of the Norwegian Association for Development
Research (NFU), Oslo, Norway, November 2012.
Invited presentation “Climate Injustice: Water Dimensions” for the plenary session of the
conference "Anticipating Climate Disruption: Sustaining Justice, Greening Peace," Tufts
University, Medford, MA, October 2012.
Invited presentation “The Changing Political Economy of Large Dams”, International
Development Program Student Association, School of International Service, American
University, September 2012.
Invited lecture “Responding to the Global Water Crisis,” Cedar Lane Universalist Unitarian
Church, Bethesda MD, September 2012.
Invited presentation “Water, Violence, Conflict and Cooperation.” Foreign Service Institute,
Arlington, VA, July 2012.
Invited presentation, “Climate Change and the UN Security Council,” Center for International
Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO), Oslo, Norway, June 2012.
Invited presentation, “Water as a Conflict Resource: New Research Directions,” Peace
Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway, June 2012.
Invited presentation, “Which Risks? Climate Change, Adaptation, and Risk Management in
Water Governance,” Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim,
Norway, June 2012.
Presentation “Water as a Conflict Resource” for the panel discussion “Resource Geopolitics for
the 21st Century: Security Dilemmas in the Anthropocene,” sponsored by the Transatlantic
Academy and the Global Environmental Politics Program, American University, May 2012.
Invited presentation, “Integration Versus Adaptation? Optimization, Risk Management, and
Uncertainty in Water Governance,” at the Workshop on Climate Change, the Water Cycle, and
Communicating Uncertainty,” Princeton University, March 2012.
Invited presentation, “Water and Violent Conflict,” National Conference on Science and the
Environment, Washington, January 2012.
Chair of the panel “Dissemination of Best Practices in Rural Water Governance and
Management,” for the Conference on French and American Partnerships among NGOs,
American University, January 2012.
Ken Conca page 17
Participant in the roundtable “Helping AU Faculty Jump-start their Research Agenda,” Ann
Ferren Conference on Teaching, Research and Learning, American University, January 2012.
Invited presentation, “Environment and Peacebuilding in War-torn Societies,” United States
Institute of Peace, Washington, November 2011.
Invited expert for the meeting “Women, Natural Resource Management, and Peacebuilding,”
jointly sponsored by UN Women and the UN Environment Programme, New York, November
2011.
Invited presentation (via Skype) “Water, conflict, peace and security.” Monterey Institute of
International Studies, October 2011.
Invited presentation “Sustainability and Urban Environmental Justice.” University for Peace,
Costa Rica, May 2011.
Invited presentation “The Global Water Crisis,” Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, American
University, Washington, March 2011.
Presented paper, “Greening the Scourge of War: The Environment as a Peace and Conflict
Issue within the United Nations” at the 52st annual meeting of the International Studies
Association, Montreal, March 2011.
Chair and discussant for the panel “Environment Policy: Economics, Policy Reform, and
Leadership” at the 52st annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Montreal,
March 2011.
Invited presentation “Water, Violence, Conflict and Cooperation.” Foreign Service Institute,
Arlington, VA, October 2010.
Invited participant for the Workshop on Global Water Governance and the UN System, Bonn,
October 2010.
Invited participant for the USAID Water and Conflict Toolkit Roundtable, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Washington, October 2010.
Moderator for the Panel “Who Governs?” at the Conference on Global Governance in the 21
st
Century, American University, Washington, September 2010.
Invited presentation “Water, Violence, Conflict and Cooperation.” Foreign Service Institute,
Arlington, VA, June 2010.
Invited presentation “Water, Violence, and Peacebuilding.” Swarthmore College, April 2010.
Invited presentation “Understanding the Global Water Crisis” for the Conference on Solving
Converging Global Crises,” University of Maryland, April 2010.
Presented paper, “Standing on Its Two Rear Legs: The Uneven Institutionalization of
Environmental Concerns within the UN System,” at the 51st annual meeting of the International
Ken Conca page 18
Studies Association, New Orleans, February 2010.
Discussant for the panel “The Politics of a Human Right to Water,” at the 51st annual meeting
of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, February 2010.
Participant in the roundtable panel discussion, “Big Ideas in Global Environmental Politics,” at
the 51st annual meeting of the International Studies Association, New Orleans, February 2010.
Invited presentation “Water and Violence: Assessing Pathways to Violent Conflict over Water,”
MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, February 2010.
Briefing on “The Water Management Future” as part of the Workshop on Freshwater Futures,
Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, January 2010.
(Activities prior to 2010 available upon request)
Editorships and editorial boards:
Associate editor, Global Environmental Politics, 2005-2011. Editorial board member, 1999-
2004 and 2011 to date.
Contributing Editor, Politics and the Life Sciences, 2001-2004.
Professional committees and advisory boards:
Member of the Expert Advisory Group on Conflict and Peacebuilding, United Nations
Environment Programme.
Member, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment.
Associate, Earth Systems Governance Project.
Co-convener of the Environmental Peacebuilding Working Group. EPWG is a Washington-area
network of professionals working on environment-conflict-peace linkages.
Co-convener, SIS Roundtable on the United Nations, 2011-2015. The SIS Roundtable seeks to
improve the quality of the Washington-area dialogue on the UN by bringing together experts
from diplomatic, academic, governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental
organizations working on UN issues.
External Reviewer, Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), 2011-2013.
Member of the Advisory Committee for the Project on Improving Natural Resource
Management in Post-conflict Societies. Joint initiative of the United Nations Environment
Programme, the Environmental Law Institute, the University of Tokyo, and the Commission on
International Law of the World Conservation Union.
Member of the Steering Committee for the Global Environmental Change and Human Security
Ken Conca page 19
(GECHS) program of the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental
Change (IHDP), 2007-2010.
Member of the Water Conflict and Cooperation Working Group of the Navigating Peace
Initiative, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2003-2006.
International Studies Association: Nominating Committee, Environmental Studies Section,
2006-2008; Executive Committee, Environmental Studies Section, 2001-2003; Chair of the
Graduate Student Paper Award Committee, Environmental Studies Section, 2002; Harold and
Margaret Sprout Award Committee, 1998-2000; Chair of the Nominating Committee,
Environmental Studies Section, 1996-1997.
Judge for the student video competition “World of Seven Billion”, sponsored by Population
Connection, 2014 and 2015.
Advisory Group, Initiative on Public Access to Environmental Decisionmaking, World
Resources Institute, 2000-2002.
Critical Issues Committee, Geological Society of America, 1995-2000.
Professional Associations: International Studies Association; Academic Council of the UN
System.
UNIVERSITY SERVICE
American University (Fall 2010 to date):
School of International Service:
Program Director, Global Environmental Politics (Fall 2011 through Spring 2014).
Committee service: Dean’s Task Force on Master’s Education (2015-16, chair); Dean’s Task
Force on Reorganization (2011-12); Doctoral Committee (2010-11, 2011-12); Faculty Actions
Committee (2012-13, 2013-14); Search committees in Global Environmental Politics (2010-11;
2011-12, chair) and in Global Urban Studies (2014-15, chair); Standing Committee on Term
Faculty Actions (2014-15, 2015-16); Three-person committees (first-level review) for third-year
review & reappointment (2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15) and for promotion & tenure (2012-13,
2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16).
Campus level:
Committee service: Provost’s Task Force on High-Impact Research (2013-14); AU 2030
Environmental Science Faculty Search Committee (2012-13, 2013-14); Tinker Field Research
Grant Selection Committee, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (2012);
Environmental Science Faculty Search Committee (2010-11 and 2011-12).
University of Maryland, 1993-2010:
Department of Government and Politics:
Director, Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda, Department of Government and
Ken Conca page 20
Politics (2000-2010). Duties included administering program budget; supervising two doctoral
research fellows and one program assistant; organizing research workshops, conferences and
speaker series; and promoting research initiatives.
Committee service: Awards Committee (2007-08); Executive Committee (1994-95, 1998-99,
2004-05, and 2007-08); Graduate Studies Committee (2001-03, 2005-06, 2006-08); Posttenure
Review Committee (2008, chair 2009); Promotion and Tenure Committee (1999, 2001,
2008); Recruitment Committees in Comparative Politics (1994-95), International Relations &
Comparative Politics (1998-99), Harrison Postdoctoral Fellow (chair, 1999), East Asian Science
and Technology Policy (2002), International Relations (2004-05); Salary Committee (1995-96,
1997-98, 2001-02); Tenure Review Committee (1998-99, 2001-02); Teaching Committee
(2003-05).
Environmental Science and Policy Program:
Program Development Committee (1995-1996); Steering Committee (1997-2010); Faculty
Coordinator, Environmental Politics and Policy Concentration (1997-2010); Chair, Assistant
Director Search Committee (2000); Program and Director Performance Review Committee
(member 2003-04 and chair 2009).
College- and campus-level committees:
Teaching Mentorship Award Selection Committee, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences,
2006; Teaching Committee, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2007-08; University of
Maryland Climate Action Plan Workgroup (2007-08); Provost’s Committee on International
Affairs (2005-06); Chair, Scholarships and Internships Subcommittee, Campus Certificate
Program in East Asian Studies (2002-03); Postdoctoral Fellow Selection Committee, Center for
Latin American Studies (multiple occasions).
TEACHING AND ADVISING
American University, Fall 2010 to date:
Courses taught:
--Graduate level: Water Governance (SIS 620), Policy Analysis for Global Environmental
Politics (SIS 620), Environment, Peace and Conflict (SIS 619), Environment and Politics (SIS
660), Practicum Team Research (SIS 793).
--Undergraduate level: Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding (SIS 419), Water in World
Politics (SIS 106).
Masters-level capstone team-research projects:
--“Water and peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine.” Field-based rapid appraisal and desk study
conducted in partnership with Palestinian Wastewater Engineers Group and Arava Institute
(2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016).
--“Carbon offsets and Costa Rica’s Payment for Environmental Services program.” Field- based
rapid-appraisal and desk study conducted in partnership with American University Office of
Sustainability (2014).
--“Future of conflict and development in the Mekong River Basin.” Desk study conducted in
partnership with the water team of the US Department of State (2013).
Ken Conca page 21
Advising and research supervision:
Director for two doctoral dissertations in progress (A. Kantel, A. Lindsay). Reader for three
completed dissertations (B. Brockmyer, N. Jayasinghe, K. Goodwin Reese) and one
dissertation in progress (G. Lee). Director for three completed Master’s theses (C. Johnson, T.
Lord, J. Wayland) and one thesis in progress (S. Ghimire). Supervisor for the research of
Summer Scholars Fellow S. Dugdale, Summer 2012.
University of Maryland, 1993-2010:
Courses taught:
Doctoral level: Global Environmental Politics; Third World in World Politics; Non-state Actors,
Advocacy and Social Movements in International Relations; International Law and
Organization.
Undergraduate level: Introduction to Environmental Politics; Advanced Topics in Environmental
Policy Analysis; Comparative Environmental Politics and Policy; International Political
Relations; The United Nations; International Relations of the Third World; Problems of World
Politics.
Advising and research supervision:
Advisor and concentration director for undergraduate specialization in Environmental Politics
and Policy within the campus major in Environmental Science and Policy, 1997-2010.
Director or co-director for 16 completed doctoral dissertations since 1998 (C. Ban, M.
Beevers, C. Blumel, A. Chatrchyan, S. Chen, F. Chery, K. Cousins, O. Orhan, R. Pinto, T.
Ricker, A. Sebastian, Q. Snyder, J. Swinski, K. Travis, F. Wu, E. Yoon). Reader for 42
completed doctoral dissertations since 1993 (G. Al-Madbouh, A. Amato (public affairs), J.
Audley, B. Biswas, A. Brettell, P. Burke, K. Chadha (journalism), Y. Chen, G. Dabelko, M.
Davila, H. De Vries, E. Frajman, S. Glasgow, G. Hathaway, W. Haxton, J. Ignatova, T. Innes,
A. Berland Kaul, D. Khosla, A. Kogl, C. Loyle, S. Marshall, C. Merrill, N. Massotto, B. Miller, M.
Milligan, P. Mofson, D. Moore, A. O’Donnell (sociology), J. Olsen, A. Pate, T. Perry, A. Pitsch,
S. Rada, N. Sahgal, M. Schaper, J. Sciubba, S. VanDeveer, I. Vassoler, T. Wedig, S. Weyker,
J. Wustenberg). External reviewer for 7 completed doctoral dissertations (J. Allouche, Geneva
Institute of International Studies, 2005; M. Asante, Department of Political Science, Howard
University, 1999; C. Kauffman, Department of Political Science, George Washington University,
2012; T. Kramarz, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, 2012; S. Nicholson,
School of International Service, American University; J. Stripple, Department of Political
Science, Lund University, 2005; and N. Yajima, University of Melbourne, 2006).
Member of 27 undergraduate honors thesis committees (11 as director) in Government and
Politics and 5 honors thesis committees (5 as director) in Environmental Science and Policy,
1993-2010. Supervised more than 120 undergraduate independent study projects, research
projects, and internships with local, state and national organizations.
Faculty advisor, Maryland Model United Nations Program, 1994-1998.
Teaching awards and honors:
Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, School of International Service, American University, 2015-
Ken Conca page 22
16.
Profiled on the American University web site as an outstanding faculty mentor, Spring 2015.
Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, School of International Service, American University, 2012-
13.
Nominee for Faculty Mentor of the Year, University of Maryland, 2010.
Nominee for Faculty Advisor of the Year, Provost’s Commission on Academic Advising,
University of Maryland, 2006.
Fellow, Academy of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, University of Maryland (2004-2007).
Identified as an outstanding mentor by the Celebrating Teachers Program, Center for Teaching
Excellence, University of Maryland, 2004.
Excellence in Teaching Mentorship Award, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences,
University of Maryland, 2003.
Award for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science, American Political Science Association and
Pi Sigma Alpha, 1998 and 2003.
Identified as a faculty mentor in survey of outstanding graduating seniors, College of Behavioral
and Social Sciences (multiple occasions).
Excellence in Teaching Award, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of
Maryland, 1998.
Nominee, Outstanding Faculty Award, College Park Association of Parents, 1997.
Economic, Social, and Environmental - Governing Water:
Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution
Building
Richard N. Cooper
Foreign Affairs.
85.3 (May-June 2006): p155.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
Full Text:
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building By Ken Conca : MIT Press, 2005, 456 pp., $70.00 (paper,
$28.00)
When the Rivers Run Dry -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
Fred Pearce
Beacon Press, 2005, 336pp, $26.95
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building
Ken Conca
MIT Press, 2005, 456pp, $26.95
These two books complement each other on a topic of high urgency in many parts of the world: inadequate supplies of fresh water. Pearce, a
science journalist, nicely narrates one story after another of shrinking lakes, falling water tables, and rivers that no longer reach the sea. Most are
man-made environmental disasters resulting from the diversion of water -- or, even worse, unsuccessful attempts to divert water -- for use in the
5/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1494794738051 2/5
economic activities of growing populations. Conca, a political scientist interested in social theory, uses cases of water (mis)management across
national boundaries and locally to examine intellectual and institutional efforts to improve such management and reconcile serious social and
political conflicts over water, including between those who oppose privatization of local water supplies and those who want natural river flows to
be preserved or restored. Water conflicts in Brazil and South Africa get special attention.
Cooper, Richard N.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cooper, Richard N. "Economic, Social, and Environmental - Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution
Building." Foreign Affairs, May-June 2006, p. 155. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA146090915&it=r&asid=bf584cb613264f5bd6a2f39f93f10dbd. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A146090915
---
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http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1494794738051 3/5
Westview Press
The Bookwatch.
(May 2010):
COPYRIGHT 2010 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bw/index.htm
Full Text:
Westview Press
2465 Central Avenue, Boulder, CO 80301
www.westviewpress.com
College-level courses strong in international peace-keeping and UN history will find the sixth updated edition of Thomas G. Weiss, et. al.'s THE
UNITED NATIONS AND CHANGING WORLD POLITICS (9780813344355, $47.00) an exceptional pick. It features a new chapter on
evolving security operations, updates discussions of the UN's actions around the world, and discusses the global economic and financial crisis to
bring all details up to date. College-level courses in political science and UN history will find this essential. Ken Conca and Geoffrey D.
Dabelko's GREEN PLANET BLUES, 4TH EDITION (9780813344119, $43.00) has been revised and updated throughout and examines global
environmental politics from different perspectives, from classic to activist terms. Examples of sustainability and ecological justice are presented
in a survey which has been updated to include fourteen new readings discussing globalization and environmental change, transnational activist
networks, and more. College-level libraries strong in global environmental issues must have this reader. The fifth edition of Pamela S. Chasek, et.
al.'s GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS (9780813344423, $43.00) provides a fine set of discussions about the global environment. This
updated introduction to the world's most important environmental issues includes new material on the latest environmental and international
politics, climate change, and issues of economics and globalization.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Westview Press." The Bookwatch, May 2010. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA226567730&it=r&asid=c293c252a03758feace21d27b44980e1. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A226567730
---
5/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1494794738051 4/5
Economic, Social, and Environmental - When the Rivers
Run Dry -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
Richard N. Cooper
Foreign Affairs.
85.3 (May-June 2006): p155.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
Full Text:
When the Rivers Run Dry -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century By Fred Pearce : Beacon Press, 2005, 336 pp., $26.95
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building
Ken Conca
MIT Press, 2005, 456pp, $26.95
When the Rivers Run Dry -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
Fred Pearce
Beacon Press, 2005, 336pp, $26.95
These two books complement each other on a topic of high urgency in many parts of the world: inadequate supplies of fresh water. Pearce, a
science journalist, nicely narrates one story after another of shrinking lakes, falling water tables, and rivers that no longer reach the sea. Most are
man-made environmental disasters resulting from the diversion of water -- or, even worse, unsuccessful attempts to divert water -- for use in the
economic activities of growing populations. Conca, a political scientist interested in social theory, uses cases of water (mis)management across
national boundaries and locally to examine intellectual and institutional efforts to improve such management and reconcile serious social and
political conflicts over water, including between those who oppose privatization of local water supplies and those who want natural river flows to
be preserved or restored. Water conflicts in Brazil and South Africa get special attention.
Cooper, Richard N.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Cooper, Richard N. "Economic, Social, and Environmental - When the Rivers Run Dry -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century."
Foreign Affairs, May-June 2006, p. 155. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
5/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1494794738051 5/5
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA146090914&it=r&asid=8b7853db4dee497f16d18dd10fdc529d. Accessed 14 May
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A146090914
Quoted in Sidelights: explicitly challenges the reader—indeed, all Americans––to notice distortions like this and see the inadequacy of the consumption debate to our looming environmental and political crises.
a rigorous and systematic look at how the consumption-production machine hums daily to meet your needs (but not the needs of many others)
read this bookç
Book Review- CONFRONTING CONSUMPTION Edited by Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, and Ken Conca
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Vicki Robin posted Jul 18, 2004
CONFRONTING CONSUMPTION
Edited by Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, and Ken Conca
MIT Press, 2002, 390 pages, $26.95
Buy this book from Powell's, an independent bookstore
I “confronted consumption” many years ago and it wasn't pretty. I saw the cost in my own “life energy” of everything I bought. I saw what I sacrificed when I pulled my attention away from the pleasures of existence and undertook the burdensome practice of shopping, buying, mending, manipulating and generally taking care of things. I learned how imaginative and empowered I became when I turned my own intelligence to problems rather than turning to (often clueless) salespeople to sell me the product that might meet my needs. Those products that did merit a place in my life had to meet one or more tests: they were durable, they were fanciful but cheap and/or they were beautiful or yummy. They needed to make it easier for me to grow in wisdom, understand my world, or serve others, or they were physical necessities. I wasn't stupid—better to buy paper, a printer and a computer than to try to write (my calling) on birch bark.
What is wrong with the thrift, creativity and honesty of the above paragraph? For one thing, the word “I” appears in it 10 times. Confronting Consumption, a collection of essays edited by Michael Maniates, Ken Conca and Thomas Princen, explicitly challenges the reader—indeed, all Americans––to notice distortions like this and see the inadequacy of the consumption debate to our looming environmental and political crises. No amount of personal effort at consumer sanity can adequately alter our deadly course.
Consumption isn't just a rational act on the part of isolated consumers. People don't buy just things, they buy the meaning of the things. The editors call this the social embeddedness of consumption. In America, consumption is embedded in the belief in the primacy of the individual, which creates the false notion that all consumption problems can be traced to and corrected by personal choices, with no reference to social, political or economic forces. This renders invisible commoditization, the creep of the commercial into the social—everything, including one's choice of mate, college, therapist and church, is now a consumer choice. Everything becomes an item to acquire in a competitive marketplace.
Second, they point out that “consumption” involves the whole chain of resource-use decisions from extraction to manufacture to workplace issues to transportation to ultimate disposal. Price is an inadequate feedback mechanism for the costs to people and nature of the things we buy and throw away—we can afford these things because of a host of policies that shield us from the consequences of our actions. They call this distancing. We consume “out of context”—making questions of environmental protection and justice rarified virtues rather than visceral experiences of pain or joy.
Third, they point out that production itself is consumption. Fishermen are consumers of many resources for their craft, and also of the viability of a fishery. Furniture, and auto and shoe makers are consumers. And every producer-consumer is to be held accountable.
All of this is an attempt to remove “consumption” from something individuals do (and could do better or differently if they were only educated or assisted) to something a whole society does. Confronting consumption is questioning the goals and aims of our economy, our politics and our norms—not just haranguing people to be a little less greedy.
As the Chair of the Simplicity Forum, an alliance of authors, academics, social activists, artists and significant thinkers committed to achieving and honoring simple, just, and sustainable ways of life, I took special note of Michael Maniates' chapter on voluntary simplicity. Maniates asks the crucial question: Can the simplicity movement really challenge consumerism and create a revolution? The answer: only if the individuals in this movement get political. If they remain smart rats who have learned self-protective ways to run the current consumer maze so they get more cheese for themselves, then they truly have abandoned the whole of civil society for their private—albeit simple—heavens.
But if they take on the political task of making balance, thrift, security and fulfilling leisure accessible to everyone—especially the “involuntary” poor—then their personal liberation from the rat race can have real social force. The meek shall not only inherit the earth, but they can make it better for everyone. There's plenty to fight for: a slew of tax shifting measures, better ways to measure progress than GDP (Gross Daily Product, which goes up with tragedy—accidents, divorces, illness—and counts environmental depletion as prosperity), and work-time legislation that would give everyone a break.
The first test of whether the simplicity movement is meeting his challenge, Maniates says, is whether it takes on time-justice. The movement may pass that test; Simplicity Forum's first major initiative is Take Back Your Time Day (www.timeday.org) which will be to the social dimension of sustainability what Earth Day was to the environmental crisis. The launch is October 24, 2003. Put it on your calendar and take a day off to teach, learn and take political action on the issues of overwork, overstress, over-business and over-scheduling that make simplicity so hard for so many.
Are you willing to confront consumption? Not just by personal virtue but by a rigorous and systematic look at how the consumption-production machine hums daily to meet your needs (but not the needs of many others)? Are you willing to be part of the simplicity movement, changing your life and the way of life in America? Then read this book.
Quoted in Sidelights: is well deserving of the praise it has received thus far.
unique balance … in calling for change without discrediting the international organization responsible for effecting that very change.
Review: “An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance”
UNCATEGORIZED | DECEMBER 14, 2015 BY HELVIDIUS GROUP | 0 COMMENTS
Ken Conca. An Unfinished Foudation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance.
Reviewed by Iris Aikaterini Frangou
December 14, 2015
An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance, a work by writer and analyst Ken Conca, is well deserving of the praise it has received thus far.
Conca does a commendable job at compiling thorough past cases of the ways in which the United Nations has addressed environmental issues through each of its four respective domains: international peace and security, rule of law among nations, human rights for all people, and social progress through development.
He takes notice of the limited actions that the UN has performed in addressing environmental issues in the context of global sustainability, and how the UN has constrained itself in working solely for the betterment of laws between nations and the advancement of development within these countries. Conca demonstrates that peace and rights are as inextricably linked to the environment – if not more so – as is the law intricately connected to the natural world. He therefore calls for the expansion of the UN’s scope, which he finds at present to be very narrow in focus.
The work’s novelty resides in the unique balance that it manages to strike in calling for change without discrediting the international organization responsible for effecting that very change. Conca does not urge his audience to subvert the UN, but, rather, by focusing upon the UN, he encourages his audience to alert institutions that have the capacity to act and a profound responsibility to see that change through, but which are culpable owing to their partially faulty approach towards resolving problems.
Conca focuses on the present without ignoring the past; in fact, he argues in favor of the integration of rights-based policies combining environmental sustainability with peacebuilding.
His pragmatism is most prevalent in his conclusion where he indicates the twofold advantage of instituting such policies, in respect to the two major stakeholders involved: the institution itself, which stands to increase its legitimacy and the global community, which significantly benefits from the implementation of more effective environmental policies by the UN.
Book Review: Green Planet Blues: Critical Perspectives on Global Environmental Politics (5th Edition) by Ken Conca and Geoffrey D Dabelko
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The contributors to the 33 chapters of this book show that the field is in desperate need of further study and essential action by social scientists. Awareness of the degradation of our planet and the need for urgent international action should be the top priority of us all, writes Michael Bassey, who earnestly commends Green Planet Blues. Keep it on your bookshelf and dip into it regularly.
Green Planet Blues: Critical Perspectives on Global Environmental Politics 5th Edition. Ken Conca and Geoffrey D Dabelko. Westview Press. 2014.
Find this book: amazon-logo
In 1972 The Limits to Growth report from the Club of Rome and reports of the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm alerted many to the future dangers facing Planet Earth. The chapters in Part One of Green Planet Blues explain why documents like these, and especially Garrett Hardin’s The Tragedy of the Commons, caught imagination and conscience.
Yet, today, many concerned about climate change are frustrated. Global policies develop slowly in relation to the scale of problems. Although many political leaders around the world express concern about global warming and environmental degradation, the political will to take effective action is lacking. As Jethro Pettit writes in Chapter 12: “In the North, civil society has concentrated on climate change more exclusively as an environmental issue … and has focused on scientific and technical solutions such as emission controls and carbon credits. In the South, however, climate change has emerged primarily as a sustainable development issue, whose solutions are seen as inseparable from larger issues of poverty, trade and globalization”.
One dramatic chapter, entitled “The Problem of Consumption”, by Peter Dauvergne, shows what the development of plastics has done. “Seasoned sailors avoid the clockwise vortex of calm winds and slow moving currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Inside this dead zone is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where jellyfish ingest tiny plastic pellets in a floating graveyard of plastic at least twice the size of the US state of Texas.” He argues that the core of such problems is the inability of governments to tackle fundamentally “the global ecological effects of drivers – such as advertising, economic growth, technology, income inequality, corporations, population growth, and globalization – that together are causing consumption, much of which is wasteful, to rise steadily worldwide.”
So what action should governments take? Chapter 10 focuses on the need for international co-operation. “For some, the challenge of global environmental governance is to fill the ‘anarchic’ space of an ungoverned world system with laws and rules that can change actors’ environmentally destructive behaviour, for others, it is to reform or transform deeply imbedded political-economic practices that already govern the world system: trade, foreign investment, development assistance, multinational corporate activity.” Both ways the challenge of achieving international co-operation is immense. Is this a task for the United Nations?
Chapter 27 describes how in July 2014 the UN Security Council debated the implications of climate change for international security. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “We must make no mistake. The facts are clear. Climate change is real, and it is accelerating in a dangerous manner… It is a threat to international peace and security.” When the UN Secretary-General says what is well known to environmentalists, but avoided and sometimes denied by others, we might expect the world’s media to highlight the message. (They didn’t). He said, “Around the world, millions of people are in danger of going short of food and water. … Environmental refugees are re-shaping the human geography of the planet, a trend that will only increase as deserts advance, forests are felled and sea-levels rise. Mega-crises may well become the new norm.”
Currently in the UK there is anguished debate about the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – a trade agreement between the European Union and the United States involving trade liberalization and opportunities for international companies to sue governments if new legislation damages their trade. Chapter 10 carries a serious warning about such liberalisation: “Over the last twenty years, governments throughout Latin America have reduced tariffs and other protectionist measures, eliminated barriers to foreign investment, restored ‘fiscal discipline’ by reducing government spending, and promoted the export sector of the economy.” The authors report on their comprehensive review of these changes: “with some exceptions, free-trade politics have taken a heavy toll on the environment. …U.N. agencies have documented the region’s growing problems with air, soil and water contamination, the result of urbanization and the modernization of agriculture.”
The idea of sustainability is debated in the five chapters of Part Four. It is seen as a controversial but potentially effective response to global environmental problems.
Many of the chapters, in different ways, seek justice for the poor of the world. Joseph Stiglitz, in Chapter 33, writes of the need to “re-imagine” our unbalanced global economy with international policies that benefit the world’s poorest and reduce the damage done by consumer goods on vulnerable ecosystems. “Environmental degradation is everyone’s problem, but it’s especially a problem for the poor, and for obvious reasons. Their position is more precarious, so when things go wrong, whether it’s pollution in a neighbourhood or rising sea levels swallowing a country, they are less able to respond effectively. In this sense, inequality ought to be a fundamental consideration when fashioning environmental policies.”
To me, awareness of the degradation of our planet and the need for urgent international action should be the top priority of us all. As such I earnestly commend Green Planet Blues. Keep it on your bookshelf and dip into it regularly.
The last words should be those of Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor in Chapter 31: “As Europe, the US and the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) continue to promote development models that rely on economic growth, which is often driven by over-consumption, questions are now being raised about how much longer the human society can continue on this path.”
Quoted in Sidelights: Before reading the book I was, I must admit, skeptical
But reading An Unfinished Foundation convinced me that Conca has a credible case to make. He writes clearly, accessibly, and engagingly, carefully marshaling argument and evidence. His argument is a measured one--that the reforms he is proposing will improve environmental governance, not that they will fix it.
Barkin on Conca, 'An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance'
Author:
Ken Conca
Reviewer:
J. Samuel Barkin
Ken Conca. An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. xvi + 301 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-023286-3.
Reviewed by J. Samuel Barkin (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2016)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
The dominant narratives of global environmental governance, and in particular of the United Nations’ role in that governance, are those of sustainability and of multilateral cooperation. Sustainable development brings an environmental sensibility to one of the UN’s core mandates, social progress through development, while multilateral cooperation allows specific international environmental problems to be addressed through another of those core mandates, promoting the rule of law among nations. These narratives result in a pattern of global environmental governance that focuses on development within countries, and law between them. They are so dominant that we think of them as normal and as unremarkable, and of other potential narratives as critical or as outside of the mainstream.
Ken Conca argues that this need not be so. The UN, to judge both from its charter and from its practices since the charter, has four central aspirations. The promotion of development and international law are two of them, but equally important are the promotion of international peace and security, and human rights. In An Unfinished Foundation he describes how the environment came to be dealt with at the UN primarily through the development and law mandates, rather than the security and human rights mandates, showing that it was more the result of institutional politics at the UN than of any particular affinity of environmental governance for the language and mechanisms of law and development rather than those of rights and security.
Conca further argues that the law and development route to global environmental governance is running out of steam, and that even at its most effective is unable to address broad patterns of globalization and consumption that threaten the natural environment. Bringing the security and human rights mandates into environmental governance, and the environment into those mandates, he suggests, will reinvigorate the UN’s role. Although he does not quite say it in these terms, Conca is suggesting that the development and international law frames are too state-centric, and are unable to either to address the effects of globalization on the environment, or to get away from the North-South politics that are embedded in the development discourse. What the UN needs, then, is to involve the more people- rather than state-centric discourses of human rights and human security in the politics of global environmental governance.
Before reading the book I was, I must admit, skeptical of the argument. Does the UN’s environmental machinery really need to be more complicated? Can the institutions within it that focus on security and humans rights issues, deeply flawed as they are, effectively promote global environmental governance? Is the UN really the place to look to at this point for progress in that governance? But reading An Unfinished Foundation convinced me that Conca has a credible case to make. He writes clearly, accessibly, and engagingly, carefully marshaling argument and evidence. His argument is a measured one--that the reforms he is proposing will improve environmental governance, not that they will fix it. Furthermore, he makes it in a way that addresses the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the UN system.
The argument is presented in six chapters. The first one, along with an overview of the project, provides a description of the UN’s environmental machinery and how it fits in with the rest of the organization. The second tells the history of how the environment at the UN became an issue of law and development rather than one of security and rights. A key point in this story is the 1960s, a time at which the environmental movement in the global North was growing while the membership of the UN was expanding rapidly as more of the global South became independent. The new members of the UN often saw the environmental movement as a threat to their control over their natural resources. A language of development emphasized the rights of states to such control, against claims by individuals both within and outside of the country. A language of law, meanwhile, reinforced the idea that the rights of states to control their own resources could only be limited with their explicit consent.
The third chapter makes the case for the core argument of the book, that the development and law mechanisms for environmental governance have fundamental limits, and that the UN needs to address the natural environment through its other two core mandates, security and human rights, as well. Conca argues that a focus on development within states and (voluntary) law among them fails to capture the environmental effects of globalization in a number of ways. One is the pollution haven effect, in which particularly environmentally noxious activities migrate to those states least able to cope with them (he writes about this in the context of regulatory races to the bottom, but the pollution haven description is the more accurate). Another is the externalization of the effects of consumption, in which producer countries are held responsible for the environmental damage of production, while the (generally richer) consumer countries are not.
The focus also fails to capture the complex relationship among violent conflict, natural resources, and environmental degradation. Conca suggests that while most of the literature on this subject posits a unidirectional relationship, from degradation to conflict or from conflict to degradation, the relationship is actually circular. War degrades the environment, and both the presence of valuable resources and the absence of environmental services make peace more difficult to attain. Neither a language of development nor one of international law is particularly effective at addressing this circle.
The fourth and fifth chapters make the case for environmental human rights and environmental security, respectively, within the UN system. These chapters are primarily institutional histories of the ways in which the respective environmental mandates have had an impact within the system, and the reasons why these impacts have not been greater. A key reason in the case of environmental rights is a set of questions including what right, whose right, and what obligations an environmental human right might entail. Key reasons in the security case include national interests, an under-institutionalized security infrastructure at the UN, and a lack of clarity about the relationship between security and the environment. The chapters include a number of specific illustrative examples, including the right to water, post-conflict peacebuilding, and climate change. They also highlight the specific institutions within the system of most relevance, including the Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in chapter 4, and the Security Council and the UN’s peacebuilding infrastructure in chapter 5.
The final chapter provides a set of specific suggestions for institutional reform at the UN to bring the environment more centrally into its human rights and security mandates. These range from the normative to the institutional to the programmatic. The normative recommendations revolve around acknowledging both a human right to the environment and an environmental responsibility to protect. The institutional recommendations are to both find a credible environmental role for the Security Council and create better mechanisms for UN system-wide responses to environmental issues beyond the current focus on law and development. Finally, the programmatic recommendations include environmental peacebuilding and finding ways to infuse rights and security elements into existing law and development efforts.
Not all of these suggestions are entirely convincing. One can question Conca’s faith in existing UN human rights institutions that many human rights scholars find dysfunctional and ineffective. Introducing the Security Council’s veto power into global environmental governance may hinder rather than help. The responsibility to protect is currently doing none too well on its home ground of crimes against humanity, and could conceivably backfire as a mechanism to generate international responses to environmental crisis. Those states least able to implement their environmental obligations and goals within the current law and development rubric will be no more able to respond to claims of environmental rights. The list of concerns with Conca’s policy recommendations could go on.
Having said this, he should be commended for making specific recommendations rather than ending with generic ideas for reform. Furthermore, while one can quibble with many (but not necessarily all) of the individual recommendations, taken as a set they provide a useful starting point for discussion of how to best integrate the environment into the UN’s security and rights mandates. Perhaps the most important of the recommendations are the normative ones, which depend less on specific implementation than the institutional and programmatic reforms, and more on generating a discourse which questions the conventional wisdom that the role of the UN in global environmental governance is exclusively one of development and international law.
It is questioning this conventional wisdom that is the central goal of An Unfinished Foundation, and it does so in a compelling fashion. Whether or not one is ultimately sympathetic to Conca’s specific suggestions for UN reform, or even his broader argument about the environment and security and environmental human rights, the book provides an insightful argument about the place of the environment at the UN, a compelling history of how it got to be that way, and a convincing analysis of its shortcomings.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=45589
Citation: J. Samuel Barkin. Review of Conca, Ken, An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2016.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45589
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
University of Pennsylvania
Title:
Governing Water
Journal Issue:
Electronic Green Journal, 1(31)
Author:
Carchidi, Victoria, University of Pennsylvania
Publication Date:
2011
Publication Info:
Electronic Green Journal, UCLA Library, UC Los Angeles
Permalink:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5wr7t0hq
Review: Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building
By Conca, Ken
Reviewed by Victoria Carchidi
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, USA
Conca, Ken. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution
Building. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. 466 pp. References, Index. ISBN: 0-262-53273-5
US $30 ppbk. Recycled, acid-free paper.
Freshwater ecosystems, essential providers of world ecoservices and home to most
endangered fish, are under ever-increasing stress from human uses. Most mainland countries
occupy part of an international river basin. Our use of fresh water increased six times over a
period in which the population increased only three times. What can change our attitudes
toward this fundamental worldwide resource? In Governing Water, Ken Conca points out
that no global agreement exists to safeguard the watersheds that provide the fresh water
we use so greedily and that are needed to maintain functioning ecosystems.
Conca’s field is policy and government, so his focus is on the formation of institutional
agreements—the governing, rather than the water per se. But the parlous state of the
world’s waterways provides a test case for global concerns that do not fit easily into
preexisting models of international “regimes.” Conca presents the Montreal Protocol, which
led to the phasing out of CFCs, and the Basel Convention, which regulates hazardous waste
transport, as two examples of regimes whose rules established accepted standards of
behavior and led to powerful change.
These models, Conca points out, do not accommodate rivers. Rivers and their watersheds
are not essentially outside or across borders. They function in local conditions. Global
consequences arise from a multitude of “local insults” inflicted by those living with and off
the rivers. Regulation in such complex situations requires new forms.
Current studies of regimes limit them to forms that derive from three “norms”: a boundaried
territoriality; an authority tied to state power; and a “rational-logical” body of knowledge.
Conca wants us to look beyond this status quo “to conceive of institutions that construct
more complex, diverse, or fluid spaces for fair and effective responses to a growing class of
socioecological controversies” (389). Such new institutional forms offer hope for regulations
that can prevent the wholesale “damming, draining, and diverting” (90) that has
characterized treatment of the world’s rivers.
This very comprehensive book takes readers through some possibilities for alternative regime
formation: the unratified 1997 UN Watercourse Convention that tried to set norms; neoliberal
efforts to “marketize” water; networks of experts formed around Integrated Water Resource
Management (IWRM); and the coming together of ecological and socioeconomic concerns
which has generated a powerful grassroots voice. None of these “nascent regimes” has yet
become a regime of accepted rules governing rivers. Yet each contributes to the “dynamic
tensions” (253) that may generate new institutional forms.
Carchidi: Governing Water
1
Brazil and South Africa, respectively among the richest and poorest countries in water
abundance, provide case studies of these forces in play at the state and local levels. These
detailed chapters illustrate the conflicts from which, Conca suggests, new kinds of regimes
may emerge. Conca concludes that cultural and geographical differences mean the
various voices have different weights in the two countries, but both are alike in that
“controversies over how to value water and who may participate in its governance” provide
“the principle force for the development of a new normative framework for water” (371).
Ambitious and exhaustive in its discussion of institutionalizing regimes, Governing Water is best
suited to those interested in policy and international government. Perhaps necessarily
repetitive at points, the writing is generally clear. The chapter on “Pushing Rivers Around”
gives a quick overview of threats faced by rivers that is very accessible. The introductory
chapters on Montreal and Basel could prove useful for college or graduate level discussions
of treaties’ implications. The case studies of Brazil and South Africa would inform anyone
studying those countries. And the clear, direct final chapter would benefit any interested
reader.
(597).
Victoria Carchidi, PhD
USA.
Electronic Green Journal, Issue 31, Spring 2011, ISSN: 1076-7975
Electronic Green Journal, 1(31), Article 8 (2011)
2
Couldn't copy and paste text
Citation: Tim Bartley , "Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building by Ken Conca," American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 6 (May 2007): 1935-1937.