by Stephanie Jahn and Elisa Kochskämper

Several members of our research group attained the 2018 Utrecht Earth System Governance Conference: Benedetta Cotta, Lisa Glass, Nicolas Jager, Stephanie Jahn, Elisa Kochskämper and Jens Newig. Here we would like to share some insights from the conference:

The conference is organized by the global Earth System Governance Research Alliance, representing the largest social science research network in the area of governance and global environmental change. This research alliance aims at exploring political solutions and novel, more effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet towards sustainable and socially equitable development.

Our team had the opportunity to present the latest results and insights from different research that is all linked to this overall aim. We presented findings form the research projects Governect, MONA, EDGE and from Lisa Glass’ Phd project on Governance and the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as Elisa Kochskämper’s Phd project on Systematic Learning in Water Governance.

Organized in six overarching streams (Architectures, Agency, Accountability, Allocation, Adaptiveness and Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of Earth System Governance), the panels offered diverse views on how to tackle transformation from various disciplines. In order to gather these and further insights, the alliance launched their own journal during the conference. Papers can be submitted from now on.

Furthermore, the new Earth System Governance Science and Implementation Plan was introduced by leading authors Sarah Burch, Aarti Gupta, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Agni Kalfagianni, Åsa Persson to guide further research within the community: „Our vision is to understand, imagine and help realize just and sustainable futures by stimulating a pluralistic, vibrant and relevant research community.“

The new Earth System Governance Science and Implementation Plan can be downloaded here.

The conference organization also opened-up space for visibility of and information on researchers participating, which was a welcomed initiative not that frequently used at academic conferences. Our group members Elisa and Stephanie were interviewed by the conference media team:

Other interviews of participants of Earth System Governace Conference i.e. Ortwin Renn, Oran Young, etc. can be watched on the Earth System Governance Youtube Channel.