School of Geography and the Environment

Profile

Peter joined ECI as a James Martin Fellow on November 1st 2007. He is Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Before joining UEA he has held positions as Principal Research Fellow at Warwick University’s Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Associate Professor at FLACSO Argentina and the Instituto de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad Corporativa in Buenos Aires and lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. He has also worked in the NGO sector for Climate Network Europe in Brussels and Friends of the Earth London as a researcher and lobbyist. He has conducted consultancy and policy work for UNDP, GEF and the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Climate Action Network, The Earth Council, and governments such as the Sweden and the UK. He has also undertaken training work for many development agencies as chairs the Independent Advisory Panel of the NGO One World Trust.

Research Interests

In relation to climate change his main interests lie in the political economy of the issue: the role of business actors in the governance of climate change, the role of civil regulation of the private sector and the political dimensions and developmental implications of the new carbon economy. He is currently working on two books. One on Climate Capitalism with Matthew Paterson, tracking the different dimensions and implications of the remarkable growth in the carbon economy and a second, Governing Climate Change with Harriet Bulkeley, which explores the increasingly diverse modes and practices of climate governance by a range of state and non-state public and private actors.

More broadly, he is interested in the international political economy of environment and development. In different contexts he has worked on the governance of trade, finance, production in relation to the environment. For example, he has a current project funded by IDS on civil society participation in trade policy in Latin America. He has also conducted research on the politics of agricultural biotechnology regulation in the developing world, particularly in relation to the private sector in India and Argentina. Another strand of his work explores questions of corporate social and environmental responsibility, regulation and accountability in the developing world. He is interested in the ability of civil society organisations and poorer communities to advance social and environmental justice claims around the rights and obligations of corporations.

Each of these strands of work has evolved into a broader interest in the forms and implications of the relationship between contemporary capitalism and environmental governance, an interest that in the near term is being pursued through an project on ‘Climate Capitalism’ which seeks to make political and theoretical sense of the new carbon economy.

Recent Publications

• Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability London: Zed Books, Co-edited with Joanna Wheeler, 2006.
• The Business of Global Environmental Governance Cambridge MA: MIT press Co-edited with David Levy, 2005.
• Edited special issue of Third World Quarterly on ‘Beyond CSR? Business, Poverty and Social Justice’ Vol.28 No.4 2007.
• ‘Biotech Firms, Biotech Politics: Negotiating GMOs in India’, Journal of Environment and Development June, Vol. 16 No.2, 2007, pp. 183-206.
• ‘Trade and Environmental Justice in Latin America’, New Political Economy Vol. 12 No.2 June 2007, pp. 237-259.
• ‘Citizenship, accountability and community: The limits of the CSR agenda’ International Affairs Volume 81 No.3 May, pp.541-557 2005.
• 'Race, class and the global politics of environmental inequality' Global Environmental Politics Vol.5 No.3 August, pp. 70-94, 2005.

Peter is also author of Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics of the Greenhouse (CUP, 2000), co-author of The Effectiveness of EU Environmental Policy (MacMillan, 2000), and co-editor of Development and the Challenge of Globalisation (ITDG 2002), The Business of Global Environmental Governance (MIT 2005) and Rights, Resources and the Politics of Accountability (Zed books, 2006). He is author of many journal articles and book chapters on the international political economy of environmental politics covering climate change, agricultural biotechnology and corporate regulation and accountability. He has published in journals such as Review of International Political Economy, Global Environmental Politics, New Political Economy, Environmental Politics, Journal of International Development, Journal of Environment and Development and Development in Practice and is Associate Editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Environment and Development.