Abbreviation | ESG Project |
---|---|
Formation | 2009 | (planning phase 2006-2008)
Founder | Developed under IHDP |
Type | Nonprofit organization, network or alliance |
Focus | Stimulate a vibrant research community for earth system governance through networking, task forces, conferences, publications |
Headquarters | Utrecht University, The Netherlands (from 2019 onwards) |
Region served | Worldwide |
Co-chairs | Cristina Inoue and Jonathan Pickering |
Funding | Various (for example Lund University, Utrecht University, Earth System Governance Foundation) |
Website | www |
The Earth System Governance Project (or ESG Project in short) is a research network that builds on the work from about a dozen research centers and hundreds of researchers studying earth system governance. It is a long-term, interdisciplinary social science research alliance. Its origins are an international program called the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. [1] The ESG Project started in January 2009. [1] Over time, it has evolved into a broader research alliance that builds on an international network of research centers, lead faculty and research fellows. It is now the largest social science research network in the area of governance and global environmental change. [2]
Utrecht University in the Netherlands has hosted the secretariat, called International Project Office, from 2019 to 2024. [3] [4] Previously the secretariat was at United Nations University in Bonn, Germany (from 2009 to 2012) and at Lund University, Sweden (from 2012 to 2018).
The ESG Project aims to "Expand the global mobilization of earth system governance researchers; stimulate and facilitate research collaborations; Inform and advise at the science-policy interface." [4] : 5
Its mission is to "to stimulate a vibrant, pluralistic, and relevant research community with the vision to understand, imagine and help realize just and sustainable futures". [4] : 5
The project also examines problems of the global commons, as well as more local problems such as air pollution, water pollution, desertification and soil degradation. [5] Due to natural interdependencies, local environmental pollution can be transformed into global changes. Therefore, the ESG Project looks at institutions and governance processes both local and globally. [5]
The ESG Project currently (as of 2024) has 557 members (also called research fellows ), who come from 57 countries from all continents. There are around 2500 scholars who engage with the network indirectly via social media and the newsletter. [6] : 12 This global network of experts consists of people from different academic and cultural backgrounds. [7]
The secretariat, called International Project Office (IPO) is hosted at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at the Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. [3] It usually has three staff members.
The secretariat ensures the functioning of this virtual international network. It is the "focal point for management and administration, as well as for the communication and network development efforts of the ESG Project".
The ESG Project operates under the direction of a Scientific Steering Committee (SSC). [9] The role of this committee is to guide the implementation of the Earth System Governance Science Plan. For the first ten years, until 2018, the committee was chaired by Frank Biermann, the network’s founder. Since 2019, the committee relies on system of rotating leadership, with two co-chairs elected for two years. [10] The scientific steering committee currently has 13 members (as of 2024) from diverse disciplines and geographical regions. [4] : 7
An international group of experts came together in 2006 in the Scientific Planning Committee, chaired by Frank Biermann. This committee wrote the first Science and Implementation Plan drawing on input for various drafts discussed at global events and conferences. Many scholars and practitioners contributed ideas, advice, and feedback. [1] : 7 In 2009, this first science plan was published. [1] [11] In this plan, the conceptual problems, cross-cutting themes, flagship projects, and its policy relevance were outlined in detail.
Since 2014, discussions have been held at conferences around a new science and implementation plan. In 2016 a group of lead authors was selected. After extensive review by the Earth System Governance community, the second Science and Implementation Plan was launched at the 2018 Utrecht Conference on Earth System Governance. [12] : 8
The National Science Foundation of the United States provided about US$15,000 each year since 2015 via Future Earth, an international research platform. This money supports annual meetings of the scientific steering committee. [9]
The project does not charge membership fees. Several universities support the project financially, as does the Earth System Governance Foundation. This foundation is a "non-profit charitable organization under Dutch law, created to help channel support from a variety of sources to the earth system governance research community". [13]
Funding for the secretariat has been provided from three universities so far who have each hosted the secretariat for several years:
In September 2023, the ESG Project launched an open call inviting institutions to submit bids to become the next host of the secretariat. The ESG Project has been assessing bids on a continuous basis since 15 December 2023. [14]
The ESG Project is supported by a global alliance of ESG centers, with 17 universities and institutes being involved. [15] Many of these universities have hosted the annual conferences of the ESG Project, including the universities of East Anglia, VU Amsterdam, Australian National University in Canberra, Colorado State University, Lund University, University of Nairobi, Radboud University Nijmegen, Tokyo Institute of Technology, University of Toronto, and Utrecht University.
There are four major publication series of the ESG Project:
Since 2007, the ESG Project has organized major scientific conferences on topics of governance and global environmental change: [24]
The ESG Project organizes task forces, which are international networks of senior and early career scholars with a series of working groups focused on particular ideas. There are currently nine task forces: [42] Planetary justice, earth system law, ocean governance, [43] new technologies, anticipatory governance, [44] Sustainable Development Goals, knowledge cumulation, climate governance, and governance of nature and biodiversity.
In addition to its core activities, such as conferences, taskforces and working groups, the ESG Project interacts with many smaller research projects that have been formally affiliated with the larger network. [45] Such affiliated projects are formally accepted by the ESG Project’s scientific steering committee, and its research findings are typically discussed at the annual conferences of the ESG Project.
Some of the affiliated projects specifically focus on the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, for example the GlobalGoals Project (from 2020 to 2025, funded by the European Research Council through an Advanced Grant awarded to Professor Frank Biermann). [46]
Examples of other affiliated projects that are current (as of 2024) or recently completed include: [45]
The ESG Project does not take policy positions as a network. However, its lead scientists have initiated many activities to support political decision-making and inform policy makers. For example, in 2011, the lead faculty of the ESG Project launched a global assessment on international environmental governance. This publication drew on ongoing research on the institutional framework for sustainable development in the period leading up to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro. [54] The outcome was an article in Science in 2012, written by 33 leading scholars from the ESG Project as a blueprint for reform of strengthening earth system governance. [54]
In 2011, more than twenty Nobel Prize laureates, several leading policy-makers and renowned thinkers on global sustainability met for the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. [55] The Nobel Laureate Symposium concluded with the Stockholm Memorandum. [56] This document mentioned earth system governance prominently and called for "strengthening of earth system governance as a priority for coherent global action". [57] It was submitted to the High-level Panel on Global Sustainability appointed by the UN Secretary General and fed into the preparations for the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
In 2014, the then project's chair Frank Biermann was invited to speak in the United Nations General Assembly during an Interactive Dialogue on Harmony with Nature. [58] [59] This fed into the Harmony with Nature report of the Secretary-General of the UN. [60]
In 2022, members of the ESG Project, along with many natural scientists, took the initiative to call for an "International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering". [61] The authors demand that "Governments and the United Nations need to take effective political control and restrict the development of solar geoengineering technologies before it is too late." [61]
In general, there is widespread support for the ESG Project in the scientific community, which is reflected in the size of the research network and in various publications by experts. [62] [63] : 210
The ongoing funding of the secretariat (called International Project Office, or IPO, in this case) is a challenge from time to time, just like it is for many other knowledge networks or alliances. The 2022 Annual Report of the network stated: "We are also exploring possibilities for the next institutional home of the IPO as our funding partnership comes to a close with Utrecht University in 2023". [4] : 15
In 2001, four global change research programs (DIVERSITAS, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), World Climate Research Programme, and International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) agreed to intensify co-operation through setting up an overarching Earth System Science Partnership. The research communities represented in this partnership said in the 2001 Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change that the earth system now operates "well outside the normal state exhibited over the past 500,000 years" and that "human activity is generating change that extends well beyond natural variability—in some cases, alarmingly so—and at rates that continue to accelerate." [64] To cope with this challenge, the four global change research programs have called "urgently" for strategies for Earth System management. [1]
In March 2007, the Scientific Committee of the IHDP mandated the drafting of the Science Plan of the ESG Project. The IHDP was the overarching social science program in the field at that time. For this drafting work a Scientific Planning Committee was appointed and chaired by Professor Frank Biermann, who was affiliated with VU University Amsterdam. This committee drafted in 2006-2008 the ESG Project's first Science and Implementation Plan. Biermann also became in 2009 the chair of the Scientific Steering Committee, until he stepped down in 2018. Since then, the Project is led by a Scientific Steering Committee that operates with rotating co-chairs. [65]
The ESG Project builds on the results of an earlier long-term research program, the IHDP core project "Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change" (IDGEC). [66] [67] : 235 In 2009, the ESG Project began.
Since the termination of the IHDP in 2014, the ESG Project operates independently as an international, self-funded research alliance.
In 2015 the ESG Project became affiliated with of the overarching international research platform Future Earth. [68] However, links between Future Earth and the ESG Project have remained weak. [9]
Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. It is most commonly used to encompass the variety of changes connected to the rapid increase in human activities which started around mid-20th century, i.e., the Great Acceleration. While the concept stems from research on the climate change, it is used to adopt a more holistic view of the observed changes. Global change refers to the changes of the Earth system, treated in its entirety with interacting physicochemical and biological components as well as the impact human societies have on the components and vice versa. Therefore, the changes are studied through means of Earth system science.
The Global Land Project [changed to Global Land Programme in 2016] is a research initiative of Future Earth. It aims to understand the changes of the land systems given the prospects of rapid and massive global environmental change. The goal of GLP is "to measure, model and understand the coupled human-environment system".
This is a list of climate change topics.
Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions : environmental, economic, and social. Many definitions emphasize the environmental dimension. This can include addressing key environmental problems, including climate change and biodiversity loss. The idea of sustainability can guide decisions at the global, national, organizational, and individual levels. A related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used to mean the same thing. UNESCO distinguishes the two like this: "Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal, while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it."
Environmental governance (EG) consists of a system of laws, norms, rules, policies and practices that dictate how the board members of an environment related regulatory body should manage and oversee the affairs of any environment related regulatory body which is responsible for ensuring sustainability (sustainable development) and manage all human activities—political, social and economic. Environmental governance includes government, business and civil society, and emphasizes whole system management. To capture this diverse range of elements, environmental governance often employs alternative systems of governance, for example watershed-based management. Obviously, in fact the EG arrangements are very diversed and not at all as inclusive as we could wish them to be.
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) was a research programme that studied the human and societal aspects of the phenomenon of global change.
William Lee Steffen was an American-born Australian chemist. He was the executive director of the Australian National University (ANU) Climate Change Institute and a member of the Australian Climate Commission until its dissolution in September 2013. From 1998 to 2004, he was the executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a coordinating body of national environmental change organisations based in Stockholm. Steffen was one of the founding climate councillors of the Climate Council, with whom he frequently co-authored reports, and spoke in the media on issues relating to climate change and renewable energy.
Earth system governance is a broad area of scholarly inquiry that builds on earlier notions of environmental policy and nature conservation, but puts these into the broader context of human-induced transformations of the entire earth system. The integrative paradigm of earth system governance (ESG) has evolved into an active research area that brings together a variety of disciplines including political science, sociology, economics, ecology, policy studies, geography, sustainability science, and law.
Diana Liverman is a retired Regents Professor of Geography and Development and past Director of the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development and Environment in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in Tucson, Arizona.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is an independent think tank founded in 1990 working to shape and inform international policy on sustainable development governance. The institute has three offices in Canada - Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Toronto, and one office in Geneva, Switzerland. It has over 150 staff and associates working in over 30 countries.
Future Earth is an international research program which aims to build knowledge about the environmental and human aspects of Global change, and to find solutions for sustainable development. It aims to increase the impact of scientific research on sustainable development.
Planetary health is a multi- and transdisciplinary research paradigm, a new science for exceptional action, and a global movement. Planetary health refers to "the health of human civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends". In 2015, the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health launched the concept which is currently being developed towards a new health science with over 25 areas of expertise.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), is a research centre on resilience and sustainability science at Stockholm University. It is a joint initiative between Stockholm University and the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Michele Betsill is an American political scientist. She is a professor of political science at Colorado State University, where she has also been the chair of the department. She studies climate change and sustainability policies, with a particular focus on how non-governmental actors and sub-national governments respond to climate change. She was a co-founder of the Earth System Governance Project in 2009.
Steinar Andresen is a Norwegian political scientist and Research Professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI) in Lysaker, Norway. He holds a Cand. Polit. degree in political science from the University of Oslo, where he served as professor from 2002-2006, and he has been a guest researcher at Princeton University, New Jersey, the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.
Xuemei Bai (白雪梅) is a professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology at the Australian National University. She was the winner of the 2018 Volvo Environmental Prize, and is an elected fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Joyeeta Gupta is a Dutch environmental scientist who is professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and co-chair of the Earth Commission, set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation. She was co-chair of UNEP's Global Environment Outlook-6 (2016–2019), published by Cambridge University Press, which was presented to governments participating in the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2019. She is a member of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. She was awarded the Association of American Publishers PROSE award for Environmental Science and the 2023 Spinoza Prize.
Aliyu Salisu Barau is a Nigerian academic and a full professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Bayero University Kano. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Bayero University Kano and the West Africa Hub Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), affiliated with the Earth Institute, Columbia University. He is also a Chartered Town Planner of the UK's Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).
Frank Biermann is a German political scientist and professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His research interests are in "global institutions and organisations in the sustainability domain". He was the founder in 2006 and first chair of the Earth System Governance Project. From 2018 until 2024 he directed a 2.5-million EUR research programme on the steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals. This was funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant.