Global Commons: Issues, Concerns and Strategies

Global Commons: Issues, Concerns and Strategies presents a comprehensive international perspective on the global commons—natural resource domains that are not subject to national jurisdictions and are accessible to all nations. These include the oceans, atmosphere and outer space, and specific locations such as Antarctica. Due to their critical importance in maintaining human lives and livelihoods, and their vulnerability to depletion, the collaborative preservation of the global commons is of great relevance to all human communities.  Leading world powers, such as France, are increasingly adopting environmental policies as key to their functioning as democracies. After the Paris Climate Conference, there has been a spurt in cooperation between major nations, such as France and India, in the fight against climate change.

This book provides exhaustive coverage of all the major facets of preservation of the global commons. It will, therefore, prove indispensable to all stakeholders in a new, just and sustainable world order.

Mohanan Bhaskaran Pillai teaches at the Department of Politics and International Studies of Pondicherry University and coordinates the UGC Special Assistance Programme in the Department. He is a teacher and researcher of 39 years’ standing. Currently, he is the Dean, School of Law, Pondicherry University, and Chairman of the Department of Politics and International studies of Pondicherry University on a second term. He has served previously as Director of the UNESCO Madanjeeth Singh Institute of South Asia Regional Cooperation and Chairman, Centre for South Asian Studies of Pondicherry University. He has also served as Principal of Pondicherry University’s Community Colleges located at Lawspet, Puducherry, and Mahe, Puducherry. His areas of specialization include South Asian studies, research methodology and international political economy. He has been a visiting professor at Paris 13 University and lectured at the University of Warsaw, Poland.

Over the years, he has earned a reputation as an institution builder in recognition of his role in setting up Pondicherry University’s Campus at Mahe, an outlying region of Puducherry, and serving as the founder Head of the Mahe Centre. He is the Founder Editor of the Institute for the Study of Developing Areas (ISDA) journal―Studies in Development and Public Policy―and the flagship journal of Pondicherry University―The International Journal of South Asian Studies.

He was a recipient of the Middle Career Award of the American Studies Research Centre at Hyderabad (currently renamed as Indo-American Centre for International Studies) in 1988. He received travel grants from the International Studies Association to attend its annual conference held at San Francisco in March 2018. He has been nominated as Chair of the Panel on Disaster Diplomacy, and Discussant in the Panel on Historical Issues in India’s Foreign Policy at the annual conference of the International Studies Association in March 2020 at Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Apart from the above accolades, he has been honoured for his paper on ‘Indian Strategic Culture: The Debates in Perspectives’ being accepted for presentation at the conference in the panel on Indian Philosophy as a site for theorizing IR.

He has authored and edited more than 10 books and published research papers in national and international journals of repute. His publications include The Politics of Regionalism in South Asia, India’s Foreign Policy: Continuity and Change, and India’s National Security: Concerns and Strategies. He has received multiple citations for his research papers. His hobbies are reading fiction and painting.

Geetha Ganapathy-Dore is an alumna of Annamalai, Madras, Paris 7 - Denis Diderot, and Paris Nanterre Universities. She is currently a research-accredited Associate Professor of English at the Law, Political and Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Sorbonne Paris Nord. She is in charge of the second-year master’s degree in trade policies with emerging nations. She is the author of The Postcolonial Indian Novel in English (2011). She has co-edited 10 volumes of research dealing with postcolonial literature (including migrant and refugee writings), culture and cinema, on the one hand, EU law, and human and environmental rights, on the other. Her research papers have appeared in many international journals. She has also translated Tamil short stories and poems into French. She sits on the editorial board of Atlantis, Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies, and heads the Society of Activities and Research on the Indian World. She is a co-project investigator for the SPARC project entitled ‘Engendering Development Goals, Action Plans and Strategies: Dialogues between India and Europe’ and lectured at the Centre for European Studies, Pondicherry University, in the summer of 2019.