Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance
This unique history examines global environmental governance through the lens of Stockholm, which has played an outsized role in shaping its development. Fifty years before Greta Thunberg started her School Strike for Climate, Swedish diplomats initiated the seminal 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment that propelled Stockholm to the forefront of international environmental affairs. Stockholm has since become a hub for scientific and political approaches to managing the environmental and climate crisis. Utilizing archival materials and oral histories, Sörlin and Paglia recount how, over seventy years, Stockholm-based actors helped construct the architecture of environmental governance through convening decisive meetings, developing scientific concepts, and establishing influential institutions at the intersection of science and politics. Focusing on this specific yet crucial location, the authors provide a broad overview of global events and detailed account of Stockholm’s extraordinary impact. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Sverker Sörlin is a public intellectual, policy advisor, professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and a leading name in environmental history. He is a recipient of the August Prize for Non-fiction.
Eric Paglia is an environmental historian at KTH Royal Institute of Technology researching global environmental governance, the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the Anthropocene, and the Arctic.
Open access