This collection provides a snapshot into the wide-ranging debates on the politics of the environment and its relationship to leisure/sport/tourism. It serves as a starting point for further dialogue between leisure studies scholars and those in other disciplines where many of environmental debates have been advanced.

Louise Mansfield is Deputy Director of the Brunel Centre for Sport, Health and Wellbeing at Brunel University, London, UK.

Belinda Wheaton is Principal Research Fellow in Sport and Leisure Cultures (sociology) at the University of Brighton, UK.

1. Leisure and the politics of the environment 2. Politics, research and the natural environment: the lifeworlds of water-based sport and recreation in Wales 3. Leisure, nature and environmental movements in the mass media: comparing Jumbo Pass and the Tobeatic Wilderness Area, Canada 4. The politics of the environment, and noisy sports: two totally different outcomes in the Lake District National Park for powerboating and off-road motoring 5. Leisure and sustainable development in Norway: part of the solution and the problem 6. Recreational activism: politics, nature, and the rise of neoliberalism 7. Embodiment and social and environmental action in nature-based sport: spiritual spaces 8. In search of belonging: immigrant experiences of outdoor nature-based settings in New Zealand