Development and Environment

The objective of the working group “Development and Environment”, jointly coordinated by Liliana Andonova (HEID), Vally Koubi (University of Bern and ETH Zurich / CIS) and Katharina Michaelowa (University of Zurich / CIS) is to provide a forum for discussion on research pertaining to the areas of environmental and development policy, both separately and jointly in areas where the two fields overlap.

Development policy is interpreted broadly to include political processes and policies within developing countries. We are interested in discussing papers with some relevance to the development process, including work related to, e.g., conflict and violence, to the evaluation of policy interventions, to democratization processes in developing countries, to foreign aid and donor policies, to the developing countries’ role in international organizations, and any other work from the larger field of development studies.

Environmental policy is similarly interpreted broadly to include environmental cooperation and conflict, law, institutions and governance; local, national, transnational, and comparative environmental politics; and also topics related to the management of natural resources.

We believe that the group provides an interesting platform for exchange between scholars with different and complementary backgrounds including environmental politics, politics of international development, comparative politics and international relations, and covering a wide range of methodological approaches.