Earth System Governance: Looking at the central questions, methods and processes of a global research effort in this field

Date: 29 Sep 2009
Speaker(s): Frank Biermann
Venue: University of Leeds

Seminar explored ‘Earth system governance as a crosscutting theme of global change research’.

Frank Biermann 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 expanded on 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 stood 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 the question of access to goods and their allocation.

Part of CCCEP’s 2009-2010 Seminar Series at the University of Leeds.

Speaker: Frank Biermann, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Policy Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam