Politics Faculty

Summary of Expertise

Climate Change, Climate (Geo)Engineering, Global Governance, International Relations, Climate Justice, Biodiversity Conservation, Trade-Environment Politics

Research Interests

Professor Jinnah's research focuses on the shifting locations of power and influence in global environmental governance, and in particular the role of transnational actors in environmental decision-making. Her most recent projects examine how key norms in global climate politics shape power relations, the role of U.S. preferential trade agreements in shaping environmental policy in trading partner nations, and the politics of climate engineering governance.

Biography, Education and Training

Dr. Sikina Jinnah is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Reimagining Leadership at UC Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on global environmental governance in the areas of climate change, climate engineering, and the nexus between international trade and environmental politics. She is the author or editor of 6 books and over 50 articles and chapters. Her first book Post-treaty Politics (MIT Press) received the 2016 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in international environmental affairs from the International Studies Association, and her newest book “Teaching Environmental Justice: Practices to Engage Students and Build Community is forthcoming in fall 2023. She is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and serves on the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Committee on Atmospheric Methane Removal. Dr. Jinnah’s PhD is from UC Berkeley in Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

Honors, Awards and Grants

• 2017-2020 Andrew Carngie Fellow
• 2016 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in international environmental affairs (for Post-treaty Politics), International Studies Association 
• 2014 William Cromwell Award for Outstanding Teaching, American University School of International Service 
• Additional awards and honors are listed here: http://www.sikinajinnah.org

Selected Publications

BOOKS

1.     Jinnah, Sikina, Jody Greene, Samara Foster, and Jessie Dubreuil. (eds.) Teaching Environmental Justice: Practices to Engage Students and Build Community. Edward Elgar Publishers, UK. (2023).

2.     Hayes, Graeme, Sikina Jinnah, Prakash Kashwan, David Koniski, Sherilyn MacGregor, John M. Meyer, Anthony Zito. (eds.) (2022). Trajectories in Environmental Politics. Routledge, UK.

3.     Jinnah, Sikina and Jean-Frédéric Morin. (2020) Greening through Trade: How American Trade Policy is Linked to Environmental Protection Abroad MIT Press. Boston, MA

-       Finalist (top 3) for the 2021 Canadian Political Science Association Prize in International Relations

4.     Morin, Jean-Frédéric, Amandine Orsini, and Sikina Jinnah. (2020) Global Environmental Politics: Understanding the Governance of the Earth. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

5.     Nicholson, Simon and Sikina Jinnah (eds.) (2016) New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene. MIT Press. Boston, MA

6.     Jinnah, Sikina. (2014) Post-treaty Politics: Secretariat Influence in Global Environmental Governance. MIT Press. Boston, MA

- Winner of the 2016 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book in the field of international environmental affairs from the International Studies Association

ARTICLES (selected recent)

Sikina Jinnah, Talati, Shuchi, Louise Bedsworth, Michael Gerrard, Michael Kleeman, Robert Lempert, Katharine Mach, Leonard Nurse, Hosea Olayiwola Patrick, Masahiro Sugiyama. 2024. “Do Small Scale Outdoor Geoengineering Experiments Require Governance?” Science. 358(6709):600-603.

Dove, Zachary*, Sikina Jinnah, and Shuchi Talati. 2024. “Building Capacity to Govern Emerging Climate Intervention Technologies” Elementa Science of the Anthropocene. 12(1) 1-22.

Parson, Edward, Holly Buck, Jinnah, Sikina, Juan Moreno-Cruz, and Simon Nicholson. “Toward an Evidence-informed, Responsible, and Inclusive Debate on Solar Geoengineering: A Response to the Proposed Non-Use Agreement.” WIRES Climate Change. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.903

Morin, Jean-Frédéric, Jennifer Allan, and Sikina Jinnah. (2023) “The Survival of the Weakest: The Echo of the Rio Summit in Environmental Treaties.” Environmental Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2023.2236505

Arrighi Julie, Roop Singh, Sikina Jinnah, and Pablo Suarez (2023) Solar geoengineering in the horizon: humanitarian dimensions. Frontiers in Climate 5:1206130. doi: 10.3389/fclim.2023.1206130

Jinnah, Sikina and Jane C.S. Long (2022) Top lesson from COVID for solar geoengineering: Anticipatory research is needed. Frontiers in Climate. 4:997430. doi: 10.3389/fclim.2022.997430

Florian Rabitz, Mariann Feist, Matthias Honegger, Josh Horton, Sikina Jinnah, and Jesse Reynolds. (2022) “A preliminary framework for understanding the governance of novel environmental technologies: Ambiguity, indeterminateness and drift”” Earth System Governance. 12(100134)

Elsässer, Joshua Philipp*, Thomas Hickmann, Sikina Jinnah, Sebastian Oberthür, and Thijs van de Graaf. (2022) “Institutional Interplay in global environmental governance: Lessons learned and future research” International Environmental Agreements: Law, Policy and Economics. 22: 373-392.

Taylor, Amani**, Arien Hernandez**, Aysha Peterson*, Sikina Jinnah. (2022) “Faculty Diversity in California Environmental Studies Departments: Implications for Student Learning” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-022-00755-z

Jinnah, Sikina, Simon Nicholson and David Morrow. (2021) “Splitting Geoengineering Governance: How Problem Structure Shapes Institutional Design” Global Policy. 12(S1):8-19.

Hayes, Graeme, Sikina Jinnah, Prakash Kashwan, David Koniski, Sherilyn MacGregor, John M. Meyer, Anthony Zito. (2021) “Trajectories in Environmental Politics” Environmental Politics. 30(1): 4-16

Gupta, Aarti, Ina Moller, Frank Biermann, Sikina Jinnah, Prakash Kashwan, Vikrom Mathur, David Morrow and Simon Nicholson. (2020). “Anticipatory Governance of Solar Geoengineering: Conflicting visions of the future and their links to governance proposals.”  Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.45: 10-19.

Jinnah, Sikina and Simon Nicholson. (2019). “The Hidden Politics of Climate Engineering: Lessons from UNEA.” Nature Geoscience. 12: 876-789.

Noémie Laurens*, Zachary Dove*, Jean-Frédéric Morin and Sikina Jinnah. (2019) “NAFTA 2.0: The Greenest Trade Agreement Ever?” World Trade Review. 18(4): 659-677.

Jinnah, Sikina, Simon Nicholson, David Morrow, Zachary Dove*, Paul Wapner, Walter Valdivia, Leslie Paul Thiele, Catriona McKinnon, Andrew Light, Myanna Lahsen, Prakash Kashwan, Aarti Gupta, Alexander Gillespie, Richard Falk, Ken Conca, Dan Chong, Netra Chhetri. (2019) “Governing Climate Engineering: A Proposal for Immediate Governance of Solar Radiation Management.” Sustainability. 11(14): 3954

Jinnah, Sikina and Simon Nicholson. (2019) “Governing Solar Radiation Management” Environmental Politics. 28(3): 385-396

Teaching Interests

Dr. Jinnah teaches courses on global climate change politics, international environmental politics, and global governance.