UN Program Launches Effort to Globally Govern "Earth Systems"
ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH, SUSTAINABILITY, SOCIETY & CULTURE
Friday, May 22, 2009
The International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) has announced the launch of a new Earth Systems Governance Project . The goal of the project is to steer societies towards preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental change.Founded in 1996 by the International Council for Science and UNESCO’s International Social Science Council , IDHP is an international, interdisciplinary science program that promotes research, capacity-building, and networking with respect to the “human dimensions of global environmental change.” Since 2007, it has been a major program of the United Nations University . IDHP seeks to influence national environmental policies by injecting social science research into the global debates about climate change and environmental sustainability. By promoting the “human dimension of global environmental change,” the IDHP introduces further subjectivity into a debate already mired in accusations of questionable natural scientific data and conclusions.
The Earth Systems Governance Project, which will be formally launched at the 2009 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change in early December, was designed to carry on the work of the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change , a now-completed project of IDHP which studied “the roles that institutions play as determinants of the course of human/environmental interactions with respect to global environmental change.”
IHDP defines earth systems 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.” In the opinion of IHDP, the organizations, institutions and governance mechanisms currently being used to regulate the influence of human activity on the environment are insufficient and poorly understood. IHDP feels that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on research that addresses the policy shortcomings of “global, national, and local institutions and governance systems” in regards to the environment.
The Earth Systems Governance Project will focus on five “analytical problems,” including:
- Architectural problems relating to the “emergence, design and effectiveness of governance systems;”
- Agency questions relating to the parties that should be in charge of earth systems governance;
- Adaptiveness problems relating to building responsiveness to uncertainties into the earth systems governance model;
- Accountability issues relating to ensuring the legitimacy and transparency of institutions and organizations involved in earth systems governance; and
- Allocation and access issues relating to the fair and equitable distribution of the value produced by earth systems governance.
In addition to the five analytical problems, the Earth Systems Governance Project will focus on four “crosscutting research themes,” namely the role of power, the role of knowledge, the role of norms, and the role of scale.
Finally, the Project will conduct four case study research projects in order to give context to the five analytical problems. These “flagship activities” include specific research on such policy debates as the global water system, global food systems, the global carbon cycle, and the global economic system.
Through its social science research, policy development, and institution-building agenda, the Project is an integral part of the push by a growing number of international agencies and non-governmental organizations for the global governance of the environment.
Jim Kelly is the President of Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., a public interest civil and human rights law firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. The opinions expressed herein are his own.
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