Canada: Green Leader or Colossal Fossil?

Green Leader or Colossal Fossil?  Canada and the Perilous Imbalance of Global Environmental Governance

Through an examination of Canadians' complicated roles as agents and objects of globalization, this book shows how Canada's experience of and contribution to globalized governance is characterized by serious imbalances.

It explores these imbalances by tracing three interlinked developments: the emergence of a neoconservative supraconstitution, the transformation of the nation-state, and the growth of governance beyond the nation-state.

Advocating a revitalizated Canadian state as a vehicle for pursuing human security, ecological integrity, and social emancipation, and for creating spaces in which progressive, alternative forms of law and governance can unfold, A Perilous Imbalance offers a compelling analysis of the challenges that middle powers and their citizens face in a globalizing world.

Stephen Clarkson, FRSC, is currently a CIGI Senior Fellow and professor of political economy at the University of Toronto. His current research is assessing the extent to which the continental periphery – Canada and Mexico – constructs and/or constrains US power.

His published works are primarily concerned with the transborder governance and the economic relations between the three states of the North American continent that was institutionalized in conflicting ways by two decades of neo-conservatism, by NAFTA in 1994, and by the securitization of the United States' borders that followed the terrorist attack on 2001. His recent books on these issues include Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism and the Canadian State (2002); Governing under Stress: Middle Powers and the Challenge of Globalization (co-edited 2004), Does North America Exist? Governing the Continent after NAFTA and 9/11 (2008).

Stepan Wood is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and a member of the executive board of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability at York University. His research focuses on environmental law, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, globalization, transnational private governance, voluntary standards, and climate change.

He is vice-chair of the Canadian national committee on environmental management system standards, a member of the Canadian national committee on the ISO 26000 Social Responsibility Guide, and a frequent Canadian delegate to meetings of ISO Technical Committee 207 on Environmental Management. He was a law clerk to the Supreme Court of Canada and practiced law with the law firm White & Case in New York. He is a member of the Bar of New York.

He is co-author, with Stephen Clarkson, of A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance (UBC Press, 2010), and co-editor of Environmental Law for Sustainability (Hart, 2006) and Climate Law and Developing Countries (Edward Elgar, 2009).