This new study shows how environmental issues represent a deep problem in conceptualising the relationship between human beings and nature. This key relationship grounds the implicit ethical and political concerns of International Relations and our understandings of environmental politics. It demonstrates that the core theoretical orientations of the study of International Relations are not only incapable of understanding and responding to contemporary problems, but are profoundly complicit in creating the ecological problems in the first place. This major book develops a sense of these realities based on the thinking of Martin Heidegger. It forwards new ways of rethinking the environmental questions and addresses crucial issues such as sovereignty, the International Law of The Sea, the Kyoto Protocol, Northern Alaskan oil exploration and exploitation and the impact of the United Nations Convention on the Law of The Sea III. This is essential specialist reading for readers concerned with the environment.