The International Panel on Earth Systems Governance
We are bringing together hundreds of scholars and experts to conduct the first-ever international scientific assessment on earth system governance.
Looking at Earth Systems Governance allows us to interrogate how institutions, policies, and governance systems can respond to planetary environmental challenges
Earth system governance refers to the way in which institutions, policies, practices, and governance systems respond to planetary environmental challenges.
the institutions, practices, political processes and governance mechanisms related to environmental change, earth system transformations and the quest for global sustainability.
” further adding that it is “open to scholars from all disciplines, empirical fields, and theoretical and methodological approaches” while being “less interested, for instance, in purely economic analyses or in studies of human dimensions of environmental change that lack a research question around concerns of governance, institutions or politics. Papers in human geography or contributions from environmental psychology that explain human behaviour without a focus on governance dimensions are likely to fall outside of the journal’s scope.” Biermann, F. (2019). Editorial to the inaugural issue of ‘Earth System Governance’. Earth System Governance, 1.
Earth system governance is at a critical juncture
The interlinked crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and widespread pollution are intensifying, while political systems often struggle to deliver effective responses. At the same time, geopolitical tensions and growing governance fragmentation are reshaping the landscape of international cooperation.
We address justice, democracy, and institutional design.
These developments raise fundamental questions: Which types of institutions and governance arrangements are most effective in addressing planetary-scale challenges? Under what conditions do they succeed or fail? What does current research tell us about planetary justice, democracy, institutional design, and the role of law in advancing planetary stewardship? Learn more about the research domains that we focus on in our assessment.
A call for coherence & collaboration
While a vast body of scholarship exists across disciplines, it remains dispersed across journals, edited volumes, and research networks. There is currently no comprehensive, systematic synthesis of the state of knowledge on earth system governance. To inform decision-making, social scientists need to collaborate—effectively, systematically and in a global community of joint scholarship.
IPESG Fills the Governance (?) Gap
To address this current gap, the International Panel on Earth System Governance (IPESG) has been established as a new science-based assessment initiative. Supported by the Global Challenges Foundation and rooted in the Earth System Governance Research Alliance, IPESG will conduct a large-scale, systematic assessment of research on earth system governance, bringing together hundreds of scholars from around the world.
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