Analyse: This study consists of an analysis of global environmental change and its implications for international politics, with particular reference to the Arctic region. It is asserted here that the phenomenon of global environmental change is at the centre of a significant crisis in the current international order

This crisis is the result of the emergence and perception of a broad set of problems which are simultaneously manifest, although often in different ways, at both the local and the global level, and which appear to require new methods of analysis as well as new forms of governance to manage them

The Arctic region is used here as a case study to highlight the significance of this local/global nexus and its implications for both governance and methods of study