Historicizing Global Environmental Politics

Abstract This article makes the case for a deeper integration of historical perspectives into the study of global environmental politics (GEP). A review of the Global Environmental Politics journal’s first twenty-five years reveals how, despite its multidisciplinary ethos, history remains marginal to the research agenda that characterizes its output. The article identifies three uses of historical perspectives that can enrich GEP scholarship. First, historical methods help establish more reliable knowledge of the past and provide historical perspective to contemporary debates on how to tackle environmental problems. Second, historical approaches promote greater reflexivity in the use of social scientific frameworks, for example, when it comes to historical periodization and identifying relevant political agency. Third, history highlights the inherent temporality of our knowledge of the past and our social scientific theories. The article concludes with a call for greater engagement with environmental history to broaden GEP’s theoretical horizon and presents historicization as essential to fostering a more self-reflective, critical, and temporally grounded understanding of global environmental politics.