Seminar, 29 September 2009: Professor Frank Biermann

Earth System Governance as a Crosscutting Theme of Global Change Research

Part of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy’s 2009-2010 Seminar Series at the University of Leeds.

Frank Biermann, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, presented the science plan and implementation strategy of the Earth System Governance Project, a new ten-year global research effort developed under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. The presentation elaborated upon the concept of earth system governance and on the central questions, methods and processes of a global research effort in this field. Earth system governance is defined 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. Based on this general notion, the science plan of the Earth System Governance Project is organised around five analytical problems that also stand at the centre of this presentation: The architecture of earth system governance; agency in earth system governance; the adaptiveness of earth system governance; problems of accountability and legitimacy of governance; and finally the question of access to goods and about their allocation.

Frank Biermann specialises in global environmental governance, with emphasis on climate negotiations, UN reform, global adaptation governance, public-private governance mechanisms, the role of science, North-South relations, and trade and environment conflicts. Frank Biermann holds a number of research management positions, including head of the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit and director-general of the Netherlands Research School for the Socio-economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE), a national research network of nine research institutes with 150 scientists and 350 PhD students. Frank Biermann is also the founding chair of the annual series of Berlin Conferences on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change; the founding director of the Global Governance Project (glogov.org), a joint programme of twelve European research institutes; and the chair of the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year global research programme under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (earthsystemgovernance.org).

His most recent publications are Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies (ed. with B. Siebenhüner, MIT Press, 2009); Global Climate Governance Beyond 2012: Architecture, Agency and Adaptation (ed. with P. Pattberg and F. Zelli, Cambridge UP, 2010); and International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance (ed. with B. Siebenhüner and A. Schreyögg, Routledge 2009).
Frank Biermann email |