Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures

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Robin Leichenko and Karen O’Brien’s first book together, Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures, won the Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution from the Association of American Geographers. The book explores the connections between two of the most transformative processes of the 21st century, namely global environmental change and globalization. It presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the interactions between these two processes, and illustrates, through case studies, how these interactions create situations of “double exposure.”

Drawing upon case studies largely related to climate change, the book shows how prominent recent and current environmental events—recurring droughts in India, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the melting of the Arctic ice sheet—demonstrate different pathways of interaction between globalization and global environmental change. Each of these pathways shows how broader human security concerns, including increasing inequality, growing vulnerability, and unsustainable rates of development, are integrally connected to both processes of global change.

Double Exposure Reviews

“Double Exposures presents not only an exciting new program for conceptualizing global change—it also issues a call for creativity and cooperation in interdisciplinary scholarship.”

-Environmental Science & Policy

“Impressive, highly geographical and potentially important … the authors have mastered a remarkable range of issues and literatures and pulled them into a unifying framework that many will find useful.”

-Progress in Human Geography

“This book provides a powerful, structured, and refreshingly approachable account of how globalisation and global environmental change are reshaping the world ... as such, it is a very valuable addition to the literature and deserves to be widely read by scholars and students.”

-The Geographical Journal

The double exposure framework not only sheds light on the dangers associated with these two global processes, but also reveals possibilities for using the interactions to generate opportunities for positive action. The book ultimately challenges the ways that global environmental change and globalization are viewed and addressed. By drawing attention to double exposure, the book shows how integrated responses to global environmental change and globalization can create new types of synergies that promote sustainability and enhance human security.

Where to purchase

ISBN-13: 9780195177329
Print publication date: 2008
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2008
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177329.001.0001

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1. Introduction

  • Chapter 2. Global Change Discourses

  • Chapter 3. Double Exposure: A Conceptual Framework

  • Chapter 4. Pathways of Double Exposure

  • Chapter 5. Uneven Outcomes and Growing Inequalities

  • Chapter 6. Changing Contexts and Emerging Vulnerabilities

  • Chapter 7. Dynamic Feedbacks and Accelerating Changes

  • Chapter 8. Human Security in an Era of Global Change

Where to purchase

Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures is available through several online vendors. In the interest of supporting independent booksellers, you might start with the first link below to see if your local bookstore carries it.