A breathtaking review which covers the major approaches and actors in the governance of climate change this carefully edited book includes essays from dozens of scholars who are shaping our understanding of responses to the real and existential risks of a warming world. The book is especially strong in its discussion of how critical social theory can help us understand the politics of climate change, in its histories of climate policy, and in the multiple perspectives it provides on the international climate regime across sectors, institutions, countries and scales. I was impressed by the diversity of authors, including the number of women contributors, and by the efforts to connect research to political action.'
- Diana Liverman, University of Arizona, US'Bäckstrand and Lövbrand have crafted a remarkable volume, gathering over fifty cutting-edge scholars engaging every aspect of climate governance-what it has been, what it is, and what it could and should be. This is truly a one-stop shop for grasping the diversity of research on climate governance. It will engage students exploring the field, scholars seeking to understand the state of the art, and practitioners looking to make sense of the challenges of responding to this most crucial of global issues.'
- Matthew Hoffman, University of Toronto, Canada

'As the ambit of climate governance has expanded out from the UN to encompass myriad actors at multiple levels, so too has the challenge of understanding the whole. This comprehensive and expertly edited Handbook provides the alpha and omega of climate governance scholarship. I confidently predict that it will become the standard reference for years to come.'
- Andy Jordan, University of East Anglia, UK

The 2009 United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen is often represented as a turning point in global climate politics, when the diplomatic efforts to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol failed and was replaced by a fragmented and decentralized climate governance order. In the post-Copenhagen landscape the top-down universal approach to climate governance has gradually given way to a more complex, hybrid and dispersed political landscape involving multiple actors, arenas and sites.

Drawing upon contributions from more than 50 internationally renowned scholars, the Handbook assesses the state and direction of climate governance at multilateral, EU, national and local levels. The volume mobilizes multiple scholarly traditions ranging from grand theorizing to close empirical studies of micro-political practices, and spans the ideational and the material, the historical and the contemporary, the normative and the critical. The resulting collection of chapters represents the state of the art and most recent thinking in the rich and expanding scholarship on climate politics and governance.

Contributors: C.E. Adler, P. Aldunce, D. Alegría, A. Anderson, S. Andresen, C. Åsberg, K. Bäckstrand, I. Bailey, G. Bang, S. Beck, M. Betsill, H. Betts, F. Biermann, R. Bórquez, M. Boström, H. Bulkeley, D. Ciplet, J. de Koning, L. Dilling, R.S. Dimitrov, K. Dingwerth, C. Dupont, R. Eckersley, F. Fischer, D.R. Fisher, T. Forsyth, V. Galaz, A.M. Galli, J.F. Green, R. Grundmann, A. Gupta, J. Gupta, A. Hansson, P.G. Harris, S. Hayes, K. Hochstetler, M. Hulme, K. Indvik, V. Jankovic, S. Jasanoff, C. Karlsson, M. Khan, M. Klintman, A. Kronsell, M. Lederer, B.-O. Linnér, R.D. Lipschutz, E. Lövbrand, H. Lovell, M. Mason, S. Matti, J. McGee, A. Neimanis, P. Newell, S. Oberthür, A. Oels, C. Okereke, E.A. Page, C.F. Parker, A. Persson, S. Rayner, T. Rayner, P. Revell, J.T. Roberts, H. Schroeder, B. Siebenhüner, M.M. Skutsch, P. Stalley, H. Stevenson, J. Stripple, E. Turnhout, H. van Asselt, E. Viola, J. Vogler, J. Wettestad, V. Wibeck, F. Zelli