Re-public Call for Papers

Online journal Re-public invites contributions for its upcoming special issue titled "From climate change to environmental justice?" The globalization of environmental issues, including climate change, is today part of the mainstream political agenda at all levels of governance. A seeming consensus has been reached by most progressive forces that environmental crisis is primarily a political problem that requires solutions global in scope and activated at national and local levels.

Divergences emerge, however, when concrete questions arise: who should be the primary actors in dealing with the environmental crisis? How is the current multiplicity of actors to be dealt with? In what ways should environmental policies relate to other concerns of social policy? Should, for example, development policies be directly linked to environmental goals? Is the globalisation of the environmental degradation another proof of the limitations of representative democracy and a call towards a more participative model? The special issue will attempt, on the one hand, to account for these divergences by focusing on the inter-connections between environmental protection and social justice. It will also attempt to explore the possibilities of articulating a unified social/environmental agenda. Potential contributions should highlight these interconnections by focusing on the following issues:

• Is there a north-south divide in environmental policy and thinking? What are, or might become, the points of convergence between developed and developing countries in the politics of climate change?
• How can environmental politics become connected to the fight against global poverty? Does, for instance, the production and use of biofuels increase poverty?
• Are ecological movements and environmental education currently lacking in dealing with problems of social equality?
• Is "green marketing" beneficial to both the environment and to the democratisation of markets?
• To what extent, does social justice entail the promotion of new, more decentralised models of energy production and distribution?

Essays should be approximately 1.500 words long. Please submit contributions in any electronic format to: phatzopoulos AT re-public.gr. The deadline for submissions: 20 June 2008. For more information, see http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=316.