Seeing Complexity: Visualization Tools in Global Environmental Politics and Governance

Kate O’Neil’s colloquium explores how visualization tools and applications help scholars of global environmental politics and governance understand problems that are complex, linked, and cross-scalarâ€"the critical characteristics of contemporary environmental problems. This talk applies a visualization approach to the politics of waste disposal projects as climate offsets within the Clean Development Mechanism. This preliminary case gets at unexpected linkages across climate and waste governance at the international level, and lets us start to see local impacts of global mitigation and market mechanisms.