David L. Downie

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David Leonard Downie (born in 1961 in the United States) is an American scholar focusing on international environmental politics and policy. He has written extensively on obstacles that can impede the creation and implementation of more effective international environmental politics. His particular focus includes obstacles that stem from: the strucutures and interaction of the international political, legal, ecological and economic systems; common procedures employed in environmental policy making; characteristics of environmental issues themselves; and the need to implement and fund internationally developed rules, norms and policies on the national and local level.

His research also examines global efforts to protect the ozone layer, adress global climate change [1], and restrict toxic chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). He has attended dozens of global negotiations on these topic. At many of the meetings associated with the ozone layer [2] and POPs,[3], worked with the Secretariat to draft in-session and summary documents used by negotiators. The author of numerous articles and scholarly publications on a variety of topics, his co-authored textbook, Global Environmental Politics [4] is one of the most widely used in the field.

Dr. Downie currently serves as Associate Director of the M.A. Program in Climate and Society [5] at Columbia University [6] and Director of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change [7] at the Earth Institute [8] at Columbia University. Dr. Downie has taught courses in international environmental politics at Columbia since 1994 and served as Director of Environmental Policy Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University from 1994-1999. In 2000 he moved the Earth Institute to focus on new interdisciplinary educational and applied policy research programs. His education includes a B.A. in Philosophy from Duke University (1983) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1996).

[edit] Recent Publications

Climate Change: A Reference Handbook, with Kate Brash, forthcoming 2008.

Global Environmental Politics, 4th Edition, with Pam Chasek and Janet Welsh Brown (Westview Press, 2006; German and Japanese language editions, 2007).

The Global Environment: Institutions, Law and Policy, edited with Norm Vig and Regina Axelrod (CQ Press, 2004);

Northern Lights against POPs: Combating Toxic Threats in the Arctic, edited with Terry Fenge (McGill-Queens University Press, 2003).

"Greener Global Governance: Recognizing Roadblocks on the Path to More Effective International Environmental Policy," in Jeffrey Sachs ed. Is Sustainable Development Feasible? (Columbia University Press, forthcoming).

“Economics and Public Policy,” with Lyndon Valicentim in Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe, eds., Illustrated Guide to Climate Change, forthcoming, 2008.

"Coral Reef Alliance", "Global Coral Monitoring Network", and "International Coral Reef Action Network", in Michael Lück, ed., Encyclopedia of Tourism and Recreation in Marine Environments (Oxford: CABI, 2007).

Persistent Organic Pollutants, in Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte eds., Encyclopedia of Globalization (Routledge 2006).