About IHDP

Human actions currently dominate the Earth’s great biophysical cycles, and are, in aggregate, responsible for a variety of largescale environmental changes from climate change to loss of biodiversity or changes in the land cover. There is no way to address such problems effectively without altering human behavior individually and collectively. It is no exaggeration to say that the Earth is moving into an era properly called the Anthropocene.

Through this knowledge, it has become clear that addressing largescale environmental issues, and fostering sustainable development will require a concerted effort on the part of researchers who focus on human behavior.

The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change was developed to this end. It works toward understanding and addressing the effects of individuals and societies on global environmental change, and how such global changes, in turn, affect humans. By integrating humans into the debate on global environmental change, IHDP addresses some of the most poignant, and widespread challenges of our day. As such, it is a producer of new knowledge that can flow into the work of scientific assessments of other organizations and enhance their ability to answer critical questions of interest to the policy world.

IHDP’s Activities

IHDP’s activities are focused in three principal areas: developing and sustaining cutting-edge research, developing world-wide capacity to understand and deal with these challenges, and promoting interaction between scientist and policy makers on these topics. Cutting-edge science pushes the research agenda, and urgency of action towards global environmental change forward, by continually identifying and addressing contemporary topics through it’s network of scientific projects. Its capacity development activities ensure the future and growth of human dimensions research by engaging young scientists. Interaction between science and policy enables the implementation of the research conducted within the framework of IHDP, bringing it to a level that is applicable, and useful for stakeholders, and decision-makers.

Programme Governance

IHDP is a joint programme of the International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and since 2006, also of the United Nations University. The IHDP Scientific Committee guides the work of the Programme under the terms of a constitution whose provisions are agreed upon by the three parent organizations.

IHDP’s Secretariat is located at the UN Campus in Bonn and operates under the auspices of the UNU. Individual IHDP projects have International Project Offices (IPOs) that are located in various places around the world but collaborate closely with the Secretariat in Bonn. Additionally, IHDP has a network of national committees and contact points all over the globe.