Books like Displacement, Development, and Climate Change — picked by fans

Funding of international organizations is one of the most obscure yet most consequential aspects of their work. Erin R. Graham convincingly demonstrates that the states that created the UN did not foresee the impending decolonization and the loss of the Western majority in the UN General Assembly, the UN body responsible for adopting the organization’s budget. Major donors, unable to maintain control over the regular budget, switched to providing voluntary funding—money that states can choose to give to the UN on their own terms, specifying projects and locations for their use.

The switch did not come about through an overhaul of the UN’s formal rules, but rather as a result of seemingly small, situation-specific decisions. Over time, they have led to the current state of affairs when 75 percent of UN development financing comes from voluntary contributions, undermining the spirit of multilateralism central to the UN.

The book theorizes international diplomats’ social capital as a reflection of their country’s positions in international hierarchies and, to a lesser extent, their individual experience and skill. It focuses, among other examples, on the debates on the reform of the UN Security Council that take place in the UN General Assembly. 

Pouliot offers a compelling account of the privileges that the permanent members of the UN Security Council enjoy that extend beyond veto powers, such as the mastery of the Council procedures that come with a permanent seat. The book suggests that besides institutional privileges, countries can also accumulate capital at the UN by providing voluntary funding or contributing peacekeepers.

The UN’s failure to prevent or stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is one of the darkest episodes in the organization’s history. Salton locates some of the responsibility for this failure in the inter-departmental rivalries within the UN Secretariat, in particular, between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Political Affairs. 

Based on the memoirs of Marrack Goulding, a Briton who served as the first head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations when it was created in 1992, the book sheds light on member states’ interference in the UN’s work. It also explores tensions between UN headquarters in New York and the leadership of the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, as well as between the diplomatic and military leadership in the operation itself. Imprecise responsibilities, unclear lines of command, competing priorities, and personal jealousies contributed to the 1994 tragedy. 

The UN peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, deployed in 1999 and still ongoing, has an annual budget of 1.13 billion dollars. It has over 16,000 military and police personnel and nearly 3,000 civilian specialists. Although it is preparing to withdraw, its duration, scale, and significance make it a fascinating case study of the UN’s work on the ground. 

Buitelaar’s book examines how the UN operates by zooming in on its cooperation with other international institutions—in this case, the International Criminal Court (ICC). Drawing on interviews with senior mission officials, the book convincingly demonstrates that individuals matter at the UN. Mission leadership’s decisions shaped whether and how peacekeepers supported the ICC’s work in an environment characterized by the US’ ambivalent attitude towards the court.

This book grabbed me with the horrific opening scene and made me think about how this planet is moving into a climate-threatening situation.

I loved the way Robinson made me feel what it was like to live in a heat-ravaged world. I liked the main character, the head of the Ministry for the Future, because she was believable. She was smart, compassionate, and politically savvy, the kind of person you could trust in this position.

I like that the climate threat is the canvas upon which the characters need to react. For me, it is very relevant to our current situation.

Bunny is an American teenager in Azerbaijan. Her father is a diplomat. She grows up in a world where oil is everything, listening to the language of the adults around her as some want their share of the profits reaped by this energy source while (a few) others point out the inequities in this industry and its potential long-term effects on the world.

What is fascinating as well is how she herself becomes part of this same world when she is an adult, almost as if she cannot help but be subsumed by the vast structure of the oil industry.

I bought this book after hearing its author, Simon Sharpe, speak about it at a festival. His talk was very inspiring and convincing, and the book definitely matched my expectations.

As a sustainability academic, it really appealed to me the way he sets out how current practices in science, economics, and diplomacy don’t work, and then proceeds to provide alternative solutions to address climate change, which is very compelling.

I liked that the call for action was not in the obvious areas that we normally pursue for climate action, and that despite all setbacks and lack of progress, there is grounds for hope, and regardless of who we are or what we do, there are things we all can do. 

I met Clive Hamilton at an event in London in 2011 shortly after the book’s launch. At the time the climate science community was still reeling from the disaster of the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit.

As rationalists, we were asking the question: “Why is the scientific evidence not being listened to?” Hamilton provided answers – about humanity’s free market consumerist fetish, the insidious role of mainstream economics, and our denialist tendencies, alienation from nature, and hubris.

He explained that “Awakening to the prospect of climate disruption compels us to abandon most of the comfortable beliefs that have sustained our sense of the world as a stable and civilising place.”

Dismissing techno-solutions such as Carbon Capture and Storage and ‘Clean Coal’ as diversionary tactics by powerful interests, the book offers an ethical and moral basis for reconstructing the future. Rereading it 13 years after its publication, I am… show more.

I chose Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change because I live in Connecticut and my own family and friend group have been gravely impacted by tick-borne infections. In fact, the subplot of my novel focuses on the frustrating story of a family seeking answers to this “mystery” illness.

We are at a moment where climate change is accelerating new and worsening pathogenic diseases and public health isn’t catching up fast enough. Mary Beth Pfeiffer provides a well-researched glimpse into the politics and pain of tick-borne infections in a climate-changing world.

I recommend this book as a community conversation starter because, more and more, citizens are coming together to share medical resources and put pressure on the public health community to act. 

I loved the setting—wild and beautiful but on-the-brink-of-collapse Antarctica.

And who knew there was a seed bank where all the seeds of the world are collected and saved? Who decides what’s worth saving?

A cliffhanger ending that kept me turning pages. I could never put it down.