This unique history examines global environmental governance through the lens of Stockholm, which has played an outsized role in shaping its development. Fifty years before Greta Thunberg started her School Strike for Climate, Swedish diplomats initiated the seminal 1972 U.N. Conference on the Human Environment that propelled Stockholm to the forefront of international environmental affairs. Stockholm has since become a hub for scientific and political approaches to managing the environmental and climate crisis. Utilizing archival materials and oral histories, Sörlin and Paglia recount how, over seventy years, Stockholm-based actors helped construct the architecture of environmental governance through convening decisive meetings, developing scientific concepts and establishing influential institutions at the intersection of science and politics. Focusing on this specific yet crucial location, the authors provide a broad overview of global events and detailed account of Stockholm's extraordinary impact. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘This masterful book tells the story of the celebrated United Nations Conference on The Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Here highbrow politicians, shrewd scientists, and vocal environmentalists debated one of the most important issues of our time. The Conference was inspiring back then, and its history should inspire us all today.’

Peder Anker - New York University

‘Anyone who has been seriously concerned about climate change, biodiversity, and the intersecting planetary crises of the Anthropocene has surely wondered at how often the ideas that frame and the institutions that struggle to manage global environmental issues appear to originate from a single city on the periphery of human habitation. Sörlin and Paglia explain how Stockholm became the central node of international scientific and political networks that made the whole Earth a governable object. Stockholm and the Rise of Global Environmental Governance provides a critical and nuanced yet inspiring history of policy progress in the face of accelerating degradation. It should be essential reading for environmental scholars, policymakers, and activists, as well as historians of science and international institutions.’

Perrin Selcer - University of Michigan

‘In this fine-grained analysis, Sörlin and Paglia explore the rise of the discourse of global environmental governance through the prism of an account of the work of a constellation of individuals and organizations associated with the city of Stockholm. The result is not only a new perspective on the evolution of thinking about global environmental governance but also a powerful argument for paying close attention to the geography of knowledge more generally.’

Oran Young - University of California Santa Barbara