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John Vogler, An unfinished foundation: the United Nations and global environmental governance. By Ken Conca, International Affairs, Volume 92, Issue 6, November 2016, Pages 1538–1539, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12771
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An unfinished foundation: the United Nations and global environmental governance. By Ken Conca. New York: Oxford University Press. 2015. 301pp. £64.00. isbn 978 0 19023 286 3. Available as e-book.
An unfinished foundation is a rare book, combining scholarship with optimism and proposals for a set of reforms designed to make the United Nations a ‘stronger foundation for global environmental governance’. This book is also unusual in its focus on that ‘most formal and conventional of international institutions’ (p. x), when its author, Ken Conca, is well known as an engaged scholar of environmental politics who has been, as he admits, generally sceptical of formal political processes, concentrating instead on transnational green activism in the search for a more sustainable world. Rather than simply criticizing the manifest failures of the UN in this regard, he explores its potential as a framework within which a more effective movement for global change can thrive: ‘The UN itself will not be the source for such a movement. However, mobilizing the powerful ideals embedded in its mandate—strengthening people's human rights in, around and through nature, and securing for them a more peaceful and less vulnerable footing in the human and natural worlds—can surely help to build it’ (p. 216).
