Title: Governing in the Shadow of Extinction
Subtitle: Political Life in the Age of Ecological Loss
Subject Classification:  Politics and Government, Climate Change, Indigenous Studies  
BIC Classification: JPA, RNK
BISAC Classification: POL010000, POL044000, PHI005000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Aug 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-910-3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-911-0

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Description

We live in an age of irreversible loss: species vanishing, climates shifting, landscapes disappearing. Yet our political institutions were built for growth, abundance, and progress. How do we govern when the future we once imagined is no longer available?

In this ambitious and interdisciplinary book, the author draws together political theory, environmental humanities, Indigenous epistemologies, and institutional design to answer that question. He argues that the dominant responses to ecological collapse—denial, displacement, and deferral—are actively destructive. Against them, he offers a new framework of loss-driven governance, grounded in three principles: anticipatory grief, preservation of options, and memorial accountability.
The book confronts the hard questions of who pays for the green transition, how to include children as political subjects, and what it means to mourn without despair. Drawing on case studies from the Whanganui River to the Pacific Climate Warriors, from Costa Rica to Bangladesh, Professor Masoud Rostami shows that loss-driven governance is already being practised in diverse contexts—and offers a roadmap for scaling it. Written for scholars, students, policymakers, and activists, Governing in the Shadow of Extinction is both a diagnosis of our planetary predicament, and a hopeful call to action.

Biography

Author(s):  Prof. Masoud Rostami is a professor of climate and geophysics at the China University of Petroleum, a visiting scientist at Sorbonne University and the École Normale Supérieure, and a former senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, where his work encompasses both physics and philosophy.

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