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Earth System Governance Project

Humans now influence all biological and physical systems of the planet. Almost no species, no land area, no part of the oceans has remained unaffected by the expansion of the human species. Human activity is generating change that extends well beyond natural variability and at rates that continue to accelerate. It is apparent that the institutions, organizations, and mechanisms by which humans currently govern their relationship with the natural environment and global biochemical systems are not only insufficient—they are also poorly understood. More effective governance systems are needed.

This is the rationale and challenge for the Earth System Governance Project that defines earth system governance as the interrelated and increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society (from local to global) that are set up to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental change and, in particular, earth system transformation, within the normative context of sustainable development.

The Earth System Governance Project, while being essentially a scientific effort, is also designed to assist policy responses to the pressing problems of earth system transformation. It builds on the results of an earlier long-term research programme, the IHDP core project Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC), and is expected to last until 2018.

Further information on the background, concept, and network of the project, as well as its publications and event announcements, is available at www.earthsystemgovernance.org.

Project Website

www.earthsystem
governance.org

Earth System
Governance

International Project
Office
UN Campus
Hermann-Ehlers-Str 10
53113, Bonn
Germany




Chair of the
Steering
Committee

Prof. Dr. Frank
Biermann,
Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
chair@earthsystem
governance.org





Executive Officer

Ruben Zondervan
zondervan@
ihdp.unu.edu

Project Goals

ESG strives for fundamental and applied research on the institutions and governance systems that regulate human interactions with natural systems.






Science Plan:
Earth System
Governance
People, Places,
Planet





Download English Version

Download Japanese Version



Publications and Events

  • EU - Earth System Governance Roundtable: The Future of International Environmental Governance and China
    Image
    The Earth System Governance Project, in collaboration with the European Commission Delegation in Beijing, organised the ´Roundtable on the Future of Environmental Governance in China: New actors, new mechanisms and global dimensions´ on 22 October 2009. The successful Roundtable was attended by thirty six high-level academics and practitioners in environmental governance in China.





    — Read more
  • Managers of Global Change. The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies
    Image
    International bureaucracies - highly visible, far-reaching actors of global governance in areas that range from finance to the environment - are often derided as ineffective, inefficient, and unresponsive. Yet despite their prominence in many debates on world politics, little scholarly attention has been given to their actual influence in recent years. Managers of Global Change fills this gap, offering conceptual analysis and case studies of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies...



    — Read more
  • Science Plan: Earth System Governance. People, Places, and the Planet
    Image
    Humans now influence all biological and physical systems of the planet. Almost no species, no land area, no part of the oceans has remained unaffected by the expansion of the human species. The four main global change research programmes, affiliated in the Earth System Science Partnership, see evidence today that the entire earth system now operates 'well outside the normal state ...
    — Read more
  • ESG Conference 'Earth System Governance: People, Places, and the Planet'
    Image
    2-4 December 2009, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.The Amsterdam conference will be the ninth event in the series of annual European Conferences on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, begun in Berlin in 2001. It will also be the global launch event of the Earth System Governance Project, a new ten-year research programme under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP).
    — Read more
  • The Earth System Governance Becomes IHDP's Newest Core Project
    Image
    IHDP has added another project to its scientific portfolio, the Earth System Governance Project. On 16 October 2008, the IHDP Scientific Committee approved the Earth System Governance Science and Implementation Plan and appointed the Scientific Steering Committee of the Project. These decisions marked the formal start of this new long-term research project on earth system governance and added the Earth System Governance Project to IHDP’s portfolio...
    — Read more
  • Earth System Governance Flyer
    Image
    In 2001, the four global change research programmes declared in their joint Amsterdam Declaration an ‘urgent need’ to develop ‘strategies for Earth System management’. Yet what such strategies might be, how they could be developed, and how effective, efficient and equitable they would be, remained unspecified. IHDP took up this challenge...
    — Read more
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