Earth system governance (or earth systems governance) is a broad area of scholarly inquiry that builds on earlier notions of environmental policy and nature conservation, but puts these into the broader context of human-induced transformations of the entire earth system. The integrative paradigm of earth system governance (ESG) has evolved into an active research area that brings together a variety of disciplines including political science, sociology, economics, ecology, policy studies, geography, sustainability science, and law.
ESG research can be carried out under a conceptual framework of five analytical problems which are all highly interlinked.Biermann, Frank, Michele M. Betsill, Joyeeta Gupta, Norichika Kanie, Louis Lebel, Diana Liverman, Heike Schroeder, and Bernd Siebenhüner, with contributions from Ken Conca, Leila da Costa Ferreira, Bharat Desai, Simon Tay, and Ruben Zondervan (2009) Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet. Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project. Earth System Governance Report 1 (first science plan), IHDP Report 20. Bonn, IHDP: The Earth System Governance Project. These analytical problems are "problems of the overall architecture of ESG, of agency beyond the state and of the state, of the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and processes, of their accountability and legitimacy and of modes of allocation and access in ESG". They share at least four cross-cutting themes which are "power, knowledge, norms and scale".
ESG is not simply about the global level but all levels are relevant. Therefore, researchers study sustainability challenges at local, national and global levels. The ESG research community focuses on the study of formal rules and institutions, which include laws, public regulations and policies set by national or local governments and international organizations to address global and local sustainability problems. The network also examines informal rules and practices, such as unwritten norms and societal behaviors. Additionally, the community explores actor networks, such as relationships and interactions among various stakeholders such as governments, NGOs, and civil society.Sarah Burch, Aarti Gupta, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Agni Kalfagianni, Åsa Persson (2018). Earth System Governance. Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project (second science plan). Utrecht, the Netherlands
Example applications of ESG include topics around planetary justice, climate governance, ocean governance. For example, in the context of ocean governance, research in ESG helps to address governance-related needs of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. There are fundamental research questions regarding ocean science for sustainable development, namely "who gets what?" (justice and allocation), "who gets to decide?" (democracy and power), "how are current systems maintained?" (architecture and agency), and "how do these systems change?" (in the present: agency, adaptiveness and reflexivity; and in the future: anticipation and imagination). Another example are international treaties: Social science research on ESG can offer insights on the factors that have promoted successful negotiation, design, and implementation of international environmental agreements such as the High Seas Treaty.
Hundreds of scholars who are interested in ESG research have joined forces within the Earth System Governance Project, a large research network and interdisciplinary social science research alliance which began in 2009.Earth System Governance Project (2022) Annual Report 2022 of Earth System Governance Project, University of Utrecht
Definition The concept of earth system governance (ESG) is defined in the 2009 Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project 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."
A simpler version of the same definition is: Earth system governance is the combination of various rules and efforts from actors at all levels of society, from local to global, aimed at guiding actions to prevent, reduce, and adapt to environmental changes.
ESG is about the "societal steering of human activities regarding the long-term stability of geobiophysical systems" and "global stewardship for the planet based on non-hierarchical processes of cooperation and coordination at multiple levels".
ESG is a subfield of earth system sciences analyzed from a social sciences perspective. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Earth system science assumes a holistic view of the dynamic interaction between the Earth's spheres and their many constituent subsystems fluxes and processes, the resulting spatial organization and time evolution of these systems, and their variability, stability and instability.
The concept of ESG also has its conceptual boundaries: "Questions of international security, global communication, trade regulation, terrorism, or human rights, for instance, are less studied within the earth system governance research community."
Development The new paradigm of earth system governance was originally developed in the Netherlands by Professor Frank Biermann in his inaugural lecture at the VU University Amsterdam, which was published later in 2007. Based on this pioneering contribution, Biermann was invited by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change to develop a long-term comprehensive international program in this field, which became in 2009 the global Earth System Governance Project (ESG Project). The ESG Project is a network of researchers. It produced the first science and implementation plan for ESG research in 2009. This provided a framework for research activities of ESG scholars during 2009 to 2018. It was followed by a second Science and Implementation Plan in 2018 which is meant to guide the research activities from 2018 onwards.
Conceptual framework of analytical problems ESG research can be carried out under a conceptual framework of five analytical problems which are all highly interlinked. These analytical problems are "problems of the overall architecture of ESG, of agency beyond the state and of the state, of the adaptiveness of governance mechanisms and processes, of their accountability and legitimacy and of modes of allocation and access in ESG". The table below shows these five research activities and the main research questions for each of the analytical problems.
At the center of the ESG framework are particular problem domains (i.e. energy, food, water, climate, and economic systems), which are likely to be the focus of efforts to bring about transformations towards sustainability. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License +Conceptual framework of five analytical problems for research in ESG (all starting with the letter A)Analytical problemActivities of researchersExamples for main research questionsArchitecture of governanceTo analyze the emergence, design and effectiveness of governance systems as well as the overall integration of global, regional, national and local governance.How do environmental institutions perform within larger governance structures? What environmental impacts arise from non-environmental governance systems? What are the norms of ESG?Agents of governanceTo investigate the diverse agents beyond national governments, such as businesses, non-profit organizations, or cities, studying their roles, responsibilities, authority, and impact.Who are the agents of ESG? How do they exercise their roles, and how can their relevance be evaluated?AdaptivenessTo analyze how long-term stability can best be balanced with flexibility to respond to new developments. This research explores the politics and processes that enhance adaptiveness in governance.What attributes of governance systems promote adaptiveness? How does adaptiveness influence governance?Accountability and legitimacyTo focus on questions of accountability, legitimacy, transparency, and the democratic quality of governance.What are the sources of accountability, legitimacy and democratic governance? How do they affect governance performance? What designs can best balance interests and perspectives?Allocation and AccessTo study the distribution of resources, raising issues of planetary justice.How can interdisciplinary definitions of allocation and access be developed? What principles underlie planetary justice, and how does planetary justice align with governance effectiveness?
The first Science and Implementation Plan from 2009 emphasized four cross-cutting themes that were deemed crucial for understanding these problems: power, knowledge, norms, and scale. It also promoted focused case studies on the global water, food, climate, and economic systems, integrating here analyses of governance architecture, agents, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation.
The second Science and Implementation Plan from 2018 has expanded the original framework of the "5 A's" to pair them with novel concepts that have become more prominent in the community. This resulted in the following five sets of research lenses: Architecture and agency Democracy and power Justice and allocation Anticipation and imagination Adaptiveness and reflexivity
Those research lenses are embedded in four contextual conditions: Transformations, inequality, anthropocene, and diversity.
The ESG research community focuses on the study of formal rules and institutions, which include laws, public regulations and policies set by national or local governments and international organizations to address global and local sustainability problems. The network also examines informal rules and practices, such as unwritten norms and societal behaviors. Additionally, the community explores actor networks, such as relationships and interactions among various stakeholders such as governments, NGOs, and civil society.
When scholars conduct research in ESG they theorize about it as analytical practice (explaining current politics), as normative critique (a critique of current systems of governance), and as transformative visioning.
Analytical problems
Architectures Architectures of ESG has been defined as "the overarching system of public and private institutions, principles, norms, regulations, decision-making procedures and organizations that are valid or active in a given area of global governance". It is the "macro-level of governance", or a "bird's-eye view on the global governance landscape". Building blocks of architectures of global governance include intergovernmental institutions, international bureaucracies, and non-state, transnational institutions and networks.
The structural features of global governance architectures can be investigated at micro, meso and macro levels. The micro level includes "dyadic interlinkages between institutions". The meso level includes "regime complexes of loosely coupled institutions". Finally, the macro level is about whole architectures.
There are also many areas of voids in the governance architecture, i.e. instances of non-governance. For example, there is no global treaty on deforestation, no comprehensive laws or treaties in relationship to the atmosphere, the Arctic region, and ocean acidification.