Environmental problems began to take an important place in global politics by the end of the 20th century. With the emergence of environmentalism, as a social and intellectual movement, green politics has also started to become a part of International Relations and has profoundly occupied the literature with the increase in environmental problems. The growing significance of Green Theory in International Relations is related to the damaging effect of global warming and carbon emission that are the concerns not only of a particular state but whole states altogether. The green theory has an ecocentric world view that does not precede the human and perceive it as just a part of the ecological
system. 

Early environmental movements include acts of preservationism and resource conservationism (Dreiling & Wolf, 2001: 36). The first international treaty on flora (plants) was signed in 1889 in Bern, Switzerland to prevent the spread of plant disease affecting vineyards in Europe. The treaties followed the Bern Treaty in the 1920s and the 1950s which also aimed protection of the European
agricultural lands from the disease (Lanchbery, 1998: 58).

Major issues of the green parties were ecological responsibilities, social justice, non-violence, and grassroots democracy (Erçandırlı, 2017: 496). Until 1984, 12 green parties were established in Western European countries. In the following years, these parties gained seats in the parliaments of several European
democracies and became part of politics in five countries including Germany, France and Italy (Müller-Rommel, 2002: 1-16). In contrast to many political scientists’ expectations, in the 1980s the electoral and the parliamentary performance of the green parties has improved extraordinarily especially in Western European countries (Müller-Rommel, 2002: 1-16). Not just political parties, also nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) became more and more involved in environmental problems and international conferences during these years. NGOs like Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have sent delegation to all conferences where nation-states represent themselves with diplomats.
NGOs were working with experts of environmental problems and it can be said without doubt that most of the NGOs have worked with experts more than component states of the environmental politics conference had (Greene, 2001: 392).

The main differences between the Greens and Environmentalists is that Environmentalists accept the framework of the current political, social and economic structures of world politics as it is and believe that those problems can be solved within those structures while Greens’ approach to those structures as the main reason of the environmental problems and suggest that those structures must be challenged (Paterson, 2005: 236).

Anthropocentrism refers to a human-centered worldview which regards the nature within the human values. Modern human culture is based on anthropocentrism and positivist social science is based on anthropocentric perspective. An alternative view of the anthropocentrism is holistic “ecocentrism”.

Ecocentrism is the term that Green Politics is mainly based on. The ecocentric political philosophy denies the human-centered view and denotes a nature centered ethical view. According to ecocentrism, there is no supremacy over the
creatures. So, ecocentrism denies the superiority of human against the other living species.

The second alternative of greening capitalism is ecological modernization. It is also a new variation of sustainable development that leads countries to protecting the environment (Carter, 2007: 227). However, both concepts “sustainable development” and “ecological modernization” are controversial topics for the scholars’ works in the field. While “Shallow Environmentalist”
scholars argue that sustainable development can be the solution for many environmental problems, Green Theorists object to this idea again. As long
as Shallow Environmentalists, like liberals, keep their anthropocentric view when dealing with the environment, it continues to lead them to lack of questioning the aim of human progress (Steans, Pettiford, Diez, & El-Anis, 2010: 221).

Security has always been the most important issue in International Relations. Through the history of the International Relations thinking, many different theories have evaluated the security concept and explained it with their own dynamics. Traditionally, state security was the primary focus of international relations, and international security and understanding war, peace, and power relations in the international system took the center stage in the debates. In the realist literature, classical realists assume that states as the main actors must provide security for themselves in an anarchic world, while neo-realists assume that states are perpetually insecure, and this is why they continuously have to acquire capabilities (Arı, 2018: 144,155).

Shallow environmentalism is a term which is used for describing the environmentalists who assume that environmental issues can be solved within the existing system. So, shallow environmentalists do not criticize the social, political and economic status quo.

Deep environmentalism, or deep ecology or green perspective suggests that it is impossible to solve the environmental problems within the current system. So, the only way of protecting the globe from the irreversible damage is challenging the whole system. To sum up, radical changes are needed to save the globe.

The second alternative of greening capitalism is ecological modernization. It is also a new variation of sustainable development that leads countries to protect-ing the environment (Carter, 2007: 227). However, both concepts “sustainable development” and “ecological modernization” are controversial topics for the scholars’ works in the field. While “Shallow Environmentalist” scholars argue tha sustainable development can be the solution for many environmental problems,
Green Theorists object to this idea again. As long as Shallow Environmentalists, like liberals, keep their anthropocentric view when dealing with the environment, it continues to lead them to lack of questioning the aim of human progress (Steans, Pettiford, Diez, & El-Anis, 2010: 221).

Greens claim that there is a need both to challenge this view and reclaim a set of beliefs about the nature of the ecological crisis and to suggest that radical changes are necessary in order to respond to these problems. From a Green Perspective, world order, as it is currently constituted, is based upon capitalism, industrialization and the consumer culture. These major forms of social and political organizations are built upon and perpetuate oppressive social relationships – class inequalities, patriarchy and the destruction of indigenous peoples and communities. Modern social practices and forms of organization across the globe are also giving harm to the globe (Steans, Pettiford, Diez, & El-Anis, 2010: 222).

Green international relations theory is usually subdivided into an international political economy as it is mentioned before. The relation between environmental problems and international economy became clearer after the 1970s. For the last 50 years, environmental issues have been discussed at international summits, conferences, groupings of states because it has been widely accepted that the environmental degradation and pollution whether local or transnational or global,
impact whole states altogether. However, economic concerns often make it  difficult to reach a common decision, in order to prevent this, the financial
burden of the measures to be taken needs to be shared among countries. There is also a debate among developed and developing states on how to share the burden while many developing states, especially China wants to break down the economic responsibility to developed countries for their historic emissions. Climate negotiations becoming more of conservation of the narrow conception of economic self-interest of nations rather provides a common action plan for environmental issues.

Green is not just a color for International Relations discipline, it refers to a theory that concerns international environmental cooperation. In the previous section, reasons for the increasing importance of green politics is discussed through historical developments. After looking at the historical background of the environmental or ecological problems, a question comes to mind: how and where green political theory is located in this debate? To be able to answer this question we should first look at some definitions often used. There are several different terms describing green political theory in the literature, “ecologism” and “environmentalism” are among the most commonly used descriptions. Different from ecologism and environmentalism, ecological political theory and environmental political theory are also commonly used descriptions (Dobson, 2003).

Environmentalists suggest that ecological and environmental problems can be solved by the elites of the international system. They always want states to get involved in a solution of the prevailing environmental problems because states are the only actors in international relations able to handle such problems. Quite the contrary, green political theory sees this standpoint very problematic. According to greens, the involvement of states is not going to solve the ecological problems, moreover, states are already harming the ecological balance and are worsening the scenario.

To make the distinction between Environmentalists and Greens clear, two concepts should be explained; “Thinking Green” and “Green Thought” which are two different approaches problematizing the environmental issues in Internation-al Relations. “Green Thought” is a radically different way of thinking in Interna-tional Relations problematizing relations between human and nature and construction of social practices. “Thinking green” is an idea, held by environmen-talists, that has a concern about the environmental issues like acid rains, global warming and so on, but they argue that these problems can be solved through international cooperation. The view of “Green Thought” is, however, more nature -centered. Green Thought does not distinguish or prioritize the human being from the rest of the nature, instead assumes human beings as a part of the nature. This non-hierarchical approach called “ecocentrism” is the central feature
of green thought.

One aim of the International Political Economy is to provide alternative solutions to global ecological problems. Green theory can also be considered among  normative theories because of the importance it attaches to concepts such as environmental justice. However, it should be noted that, wherever green theory is positioned, all these approaches position the green theory under critical theory (Zamora, 2018: 625-639).

Green theory of international relations is clearly different from traditional international relations theories in many ways. However, many concepts of traditional international relations theories are also examined by green theory, but through green theories’ own evaluation. Security, state and economy are among the most discussed and controversial concepts of international relations and those three concepts are also important topics of green international relations theory, but with different meanings and values. To be able to understand the green international relations theory, it is crucial to grasp the meaning of these concepts in a green perspective.

According to green international political economic view, although global consciousness is very important, actions should be taken at the domestic level. These actions that should be taken involves disintegration of economic, social and political pillars of the existing global economy. In short, “think globally, act locally” should be the main principle for solving global problems.

Green international theory sees the need for radical change in the political structure of the world and makes its own stance to challenge the world order, in order to protect the globe against human-damage. Humans are responsible to protect the world because of two reasons. The first is that humans are respons-ible for the environmental problems that the globe faces today and have to fix the problems as they created them. Secondly, given the fact that human is the most developed creature of this universe, they have also ethical responsibility for protecting the rest of the universe and life forms.

Finally, it should be remembered again that Green Theory has similarities with many of the International Relations theories. But the main difference of the Green Theory comes from its distinctive perspective and the focus on the relations between human and non-human worlds. Decentralization, ecocentrism, attention on limits to growth are all unique for Green Politics (Paterson, 2005: 257). The following years will show us how much Green Politics is right about its assumptions, but it seems that the alternative approaches to International Relations will occupy the field increasingly every year.