Chapter 6 discusses how environmental stewardship established itself as a fundamental norm of international society. The first section reviews the creation of secondary institutions, or environmental regimes, and how dynamics of international environmental rule-setting reinforced but also reinterpreted the underlying environmental norm. The second part focuses on indicators of changing state behaviour and identity, particularly with regard to how environmentalism affected diplomatic practices and multilateralism as a mode of international cooperation. The third part completes the story by examining the spatial dimension of environmental stewardship’s social consolidation, with a focus on how environmental ideas and practices spread worldwide and how the Global South came to not only adopt but also redefine global environmental responsibilities.

Why deal with sustainability last in a book about Green politics that has as its premise the need to place sustainability at the heart of global politics? The answer lies in the question. If the global economy, global security, development, the state and global governance had the achievement of sustainability as one of their overriding rationales and objectives, a separate set of policies, institutions and initiatives to undo, contain and offset the excesses of industrial society would not be necessary. There would be no need, in other words, for global environmental policies and regimes. The fact that they exist is an indictment of a system and a society living beyond its means and in unsustainable ways. This chapter develops Green critiques of unsusustainable development and more top-downmmethods of'managing' the environment before articulating Green visions of sustainability and ends with reflections on strategies involving law and protest to reform of the state and the pursuit of just transitions.