Earth System Governance

The Earth System Governance Project is a research programme chaired in the Netherlands by Frank Biermann and developed under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. This excerpt is from the upcoming publication Earth System Governance. People, Places, and the Planet.

[T]he Earth System Governance Project advances a science plan that is organized, first, around five analytical problems:

1. The first analytical problem - the architecture of earth system governance - includes questions relating to the emergence, design and effectiveness of governance systems as well as the overall integration of global, regional, national and local governance. Core questions include: How is performance of environ-mental institutions affected by their embedding in larger architectures? What are the environmental consequences of non-environmental governance systems? What is the relative performance of different types of multilevel governance architectures? How can we explain instances of 'non-governance'? What are overarching and crosscutting norms of earth system governance?

2. Second, understanding effective earth system governance requires understanding the agents that drive earth system governance and that need to be involved. The research gap is here especially the influence, roles and responsibilities of actors apart from national governments, such as business and non-profit organizations, the ways in which authority is granted to these agents, and how it is exercised. Core questions advanced in this Science Plan are: What is agency? Who are the agents of earth system governance (especially beyond the nation state)? How do different agents exercise agency in earth system governance, and how can we evaluate their relevance?

3. Third, earth system governance must respond to the inherent uncertainties in human and natural systems. It must combine stability to ensure long-term governance solutions with flexibility to react quickly to new findings and developments. In other words, we must understand and further develop the adaptiveness of earth system governance. But what are the politics of adaptiveness? Which governance processes foster it? What attributes of governance systems enhance capacities to adapt? How, when and why does adaptiveness influence earth system governance?

4. Fourth, the more regulatory competence and authority is conferred upon larger institutions and systems of governance - especially at the global level - the more we will be confronted with questions of how to ensure the accountability and legitimacy of governance. Simply put, we are faced with the need to understand the democratic quality of earth system governance. What are the sources of accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance? What are the effects of different forms and degrees of accountability and legitimacy for the performance of governance systems? How can mechanisms of transparency ensure accountable and legitimate earth system governance? What institutional designs can produce the accountability and legitimacy of earth system governance in a way that guarantees balances of interests and perspectives?

5. Fifth, earth system governance is, as is any political activity, about the distribution of material and immaterial values. It is, in essence, a conflict about the access to goods and about their allocation - it is about justice, fairness, and equity. The novel character of earth system transformation and of the new governance solutions that are being developed, puts questions of allocation and access, debated for millennia, in a new light. It might require new answers to old questions. But how can we reach interdisciplinary conceptualizations and definitions of allocation and access? What (overarching) principles underlie allocation and access? How can allocation be reconciled with governance effectiveness?