Kate O'Neill

Associate Professor
PhD  Political Science    Columbia University
BA  Brasenose College, Oxford University

129 Giannini Hall
Berkeley, California 94720
koneill@nature.berkeley.edu
office: 510-642-3747   lab: 510-642-3747   fax:  510-643-5438

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My research focuses on how the international community deals with global environmental problems. I am particularly interested in looking at various sites and modes of global environmental governance, from the system of treaties that govern international cooperation over the environment, to new forms of “non-state” governance, such as certification systems, to the role of powerful international institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. What is the environmental impact of such institutions? How well do they balance competing interests? How has global environmental governance matured over time, and how has it become more complex?

My forthcoming book, The Environment and International Relations, due to be published by Cambridge University Press in December 2008, provides an overview of global environmental governance, employing the theories and tools of International Relations to analyze and address global environmental problems. After developing an historical and analytical framework for understanding such problems as climate change, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion, and trade in hazardous wastes, I examine how governments, international bodies, scientists, activists, and corporations currently address these problems, and I consider strategies for how these actors might work together more effectively in the future.

My focus here is to assess the environmental impact of powerful international institutions such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. How well do these institutions function? What is their role in contributing to environmental change? How can they be part of the solution, and how well do they interact with existing international environmental organizations and governance? How can we understand civil society responses at the local level around the world to the environmental and social impacts of economic globalization?

When bad stuff crosses borders, solutions to environmental problems become more complicated. Why do some governments close borders while other governments seek cooperative solutions? What explains differences across countries in responding to transboundary risks? Building on research from my first book, Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (MIT Press, 2000), I expand my perspective to encompass such recent developments as Mad Cow Disease and Avian flu, examining the response of particular countries to transboundary risks in terms of several factors, including the structure and organization of key political institutions, the pattern of participation in decision-making processes, and the history of past events in each country that might affect current attitudes toward addressing environmental problems.

I am also an Associate Editor of Global Environmental Politics, the leading journal in my field, as well as ESPM’s Vice Chair for Instruction and head graduate advisor, and I remain active in the Environmental Studies section of the International Studies Association.

"US Beef Industry Faces New Policies and Testing for Mad Cow Disease", California Agriculture, October 2005.

"How Two Cows make a Crisis: US-Canada Relations and Mad Cow Disease", American Review of Canadian Studies (Summer 2005), pp. 295-319.

"Transnational Protest: States, Circuses, and Conflict at the Frontline of Global Politics." International Studies Review 6 (2004), pp. 233-251.

"Actors, Norms and Impacts: Recent International Cooperation Theory and the Influence of the Agent-Structure Debate", with Jörg Balsiger and Stacy VanDeveer; Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 7 (2004), pp. 149-175.

"A Vital Fluid: Risk, controversy and the politics of blood donation in the era of 'mad cow disease'." Public Understanding of Science 12(4): 359-380 (2003). "The Changing Nature of Global Waste Management for the 21st Century: A Mixed Blessing?" Global Environmental Politics 1.1 (2001): 77-98.

*Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation; (Spring, 2000), Cambridge: MIT Press, in series on American and Comparative Environmental Regulation. Awarded Caldwell Prize, 2002; Runner up for Sprout Prize (International Studies Association), 2001.

"International Nuclear Waste Transportation: Flashpoints, Lessons and Controversies", Environment, 41:4 (May 1999), pp. 12-15, 34-39. "Regulations as Arbiters of Risk: Great Britain, Germany, and the Hazardous Waste Trade in Western Europe", International Studies Quarterly 41:7, pp. 687-718 (December, 1997).

"Out of the Backyard: Managing Hazardous Wastes on a Global Scale", Journal of Environment and Development; 7:2, pp. 138-163 (June 1998).