These videos show participants and speakers at the Earth Systems Governance conference taking part in ‘chair chat’, a structured interview about their perspectives from the event, filmed by Amy Hochstetler. For the full collection of interviews please visit the Earth Systems Governance website Simon Wolf, Helmholtz Environmental Research Center, Germany Joyeeta Gupta, Scientific Steering Committee, IHDP Earth System Governance Project; Scientific Steering Committee, ESSP Gl...   read more >>

Ruben Zondervan is the executive officer of the Earth System Governance Project and programme officer at the Secretariat of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, Bonn, Germany. In the early evening of 4 December, the 2009 Amsterdam Conference came to an end with a closing plenary entitled 'The Earth System Governance Vision Factory: I Have a Dream'. Chaired by Frank Biermann and Roberto Pereira Guimaraes, this plenary was held in a slightly differen...   read more >>

Sara Hughes is a PhD candidate at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a fellow with the Earth System Governance project. Sara is in her fourth year of PhD work and is interested in the way our systems of government shape our cities. Her research focuses on urban planning and decision making, particularly in the area of water and wastewater services. I came to the 2009 Amsterdam Conference on Earth System Governanc...   read more >>

Kathrin Dombrowski is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. According to John Dryzek, democracy is absolutely integral to effective earth system governance. We know from history that democracies have a better environmental track record than authoritarian states. However, it now seems that the type of democracy also matters. In his presentation, Dryzek pointed out that consensual democracies (found in Northern Europe and Japan) surpa...   read more >>

Pedro Fidelman is a research rellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Australia, and fellow for the Earth System Governance Project. He is particularly interested in environmental governance, institutional analysis and common-pool resources. The terminology of the ESG conference include words like resilience, reflexive adaptation, social entrepreneurs, deliberation, climate change, multi-scale governance, climate policy integration, adaptive g...   read more >>

Pedro Fidelman is a research rellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Australia, and fellow for the Earth System Governance Project. He is particularly interested in environmental governance, institutional analysis and common-pool resources. On Friday morning, a very interesting panel discussion took place at the ESG conference. The panellists – Roberto Guimaraes, Maarten Hajer and James Meadowcroft – provided their views on ‘New Theories for...   read more >>

‘Martin Luther King did not say "I have a nightmare’’' warned Maarten Hajer in today’s session on 'New Theories for Earth System Governance. The recent ‘ClimateGate’ media coverage might seem like a nightmare for those who have been trudging the long, lobbying road to Copenhagen, but Hajer warns that the trick is in the media message. New theories of Earth System Governance have to take into account the impact that the media has on the public, and that positive messages are much more l...   read more >>

Kathrin Dombrowski is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. The two semi-plenaries on agency and accountability, which were held consecutively on Thursday, complemented each other well and illustrated some of the ways in which these two ‘A’s of the Earth System Governance (ESG) Science Plan are interlinked. According to Michele Betsill, the key research questions relating to agency in earth system governance are the following: What...   read more >>

Roberto Pereira Guimarães talks to Louise Stoddard from The Broker about what Earth System Governance means in a practical sense and how climate change can be compared to the course of the Titanic.   read more >>

Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, talks with Louise Stoddard from The Broker about the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen and her article published today in Nature, which argues that we need a four degree reduction in global temperature to combat climate change.   read more >>

Kathrin Dombrowski is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Isn’t there something missing? It occurred to me today that although there is lots of talk about vulnerability and justice at the conference, I have not come across any papers that look specifically at issues of gender. In fact, I noticed that the conference programme doesn’t mention the word ‘women’ (or ‘woman’) once. It’s an interesting omission given that women are often...   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam Today's session on forestry governance highlighted the complexity behind the ambitions of Earth System Governance. KK Kaushal, Forestry Officer for the Government of India, first presented the example of Tamil Nadu, India, where the state has taken on a community involvement process to restock forests through the process of Joint Forest Management (JFM). JFM involves the establishmen...   read more >>

Sara Hughes is a PhD candidate at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a fellow with the Earth System Governance project. Sara is in her fourth year of PhD work and is interested in the way our systems of government shape our cities. Her research focuses on urban planning and decision making, particularly in the area of water and wastewater services. Water is one of the most important resources on the planet – it p...   read more >>

Michele Betsill is an associate professor at the Department of Political Science from the Colorado State University.   read more >>

Joyeeta Gupta, professor of climate change law and policy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and of water law and policy at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, talks with Louise Stoddard from The Broker about the problems associated with imposing paradigms of governance onto other states. The upcoming Copenhagen climate change conference is also discussed.   read more >>

Frank Biermann from the Earth System Governance Project, SENSE Research School and VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands, talks with The Broker.   read more >>

Amrita Lamba is a junior research fellow and doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India I just about found some moments of soliloquy to pen my thoughts on what struck me most on the first day of the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. My focus will be on Professor Louis Lebel’s presentation on 'Inclusive, Deliberative and Adaptive: Changing How Water is Managed at Multiple Scales'....   read more >>

Sara Hughes is a PhD candidate at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a fellow with the Earth System Governance project. Sara is in her fourth year of PhD work and is interested in the way our systems of government shape our cities. Her research focuses on urban planning and decision making, particularly in the area of water and wastewater services. Today was the conference kick-off – and the excitement in the air...   read more >>

Kathrin Dombrowski is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. In his opening statement, Frank Biermann mentioned that the word ‘governance’ comes up 961 times in the conference programme. The Earth System Governance Project is particularly interested in ‘new’ forms of governance, that is to say private forms of governance beyond the nation-state. Academic research on instances of rulemaking by private actors has really taken off in re...   read more >>

We arrived at Hotel Volendam this morning for the start of the Earth System Governance (ESG) conference to a glorious sunrise over the neighbouring cheese factory. If participants at the conference didn’t realize they were in the Netherlands before, then they sure do now. The plenary kicked off with Frank Biermann outlining the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year plan with a focus on global, but also local level, governance. Frank briefly outlined the five different areas of foc...   read more >>

Amrita Lamba is a junior research fellow and doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Coming to grips with development that lasts has been an elusive search for humankind. While the discourse in social science has traipsed along the trajectory that saw newer ways of defining development, as sustainable development and now adaptive governance, it makes me ponder as a social scientist whether we are at all committed to amelio...   read more >>

Kathrin Dombrowski is a PhD student in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics ‘Earth System Governance – People, Places, and the Planet’ is the theme of the 2009 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimension of Global Environmental Change, taking place this week (2-4 December). I was lucky to be accepted to participate in the PhD Winter School on ‘The Challenge of Adaptive Governance’, which preceded the conference and brought together about 32 PhD stud...   read more >>

Pedro Fidelman is a research rellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Australia, and fellow for the Earth System Governance Project. He is particularly interested in environmental governance, institutional analysis and common-pool resources December is shaping up to be an important month for the debate, and hopefully some decisions and actions too, on global environmental change. From the 7th of December, environmental ministers and officials...   read more >>

Sara Hughes is a PhD candidate at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a fellow with the Earth System Governance project. Sara is in her fourth year of PhD work and is interested in the way our systems of government shape our cities. Her research focuses on urban planning and decision making, particularly in the area of water and wastewater services. As a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbar...   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam Last week, after completing my registration for the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, I went to see the new ‘ultimate disaster movie’ 2012 at the cinema. The storyline was poor, but the effects were horrifyingly impressive. Hawaii was turned into a luminous series of bubbling volcanoes and enormous floods; earthquakes and clouds of ash wiped...   read more >>