About the Conference :: 2011 Colorado Conference on Environmental Governance

About the conference

Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance:
Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges
Colorado State University, 17-20 May 2011

We invite you to the Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance to be held 17-20 May 2011 on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. This conference is part of a global series organized by the Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year research program under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The first Earth System Governance conference was held in Amsterdam in December 2009. The Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance is hosted jointly by the Environmental Governance Working Group and the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University along with the IHDP Earth System Governance Project.

Concept Note

Establishing effective strategies for mediating the relationship between humans and the natural world represents one of the most daunting tasks in the quest for global environmental sustainability. Environmental problems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, water quality and access problems, soil erosion and others, call into question the fundamental viability of how humans have organized the relationship between society and nature over the last two hundred years, creating an urgent need to identify and develop new strategies for steering societies towards a more sustainable relationship with the natural world.

The Earth System Governance Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change was launched in 2009 to address these problems of environmental governance. In this project “earth system governance” is defined 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. The Earth System Governance Project’s Science Plan is organized around five analytical problems. Architecture relates to the emergence, design and effectiveness of governance arrangements. Agency addresses questions of who governs the earth system and how. Adaptiveness research explores the ability of governance systems to change in the face of new knowledge and challenges as well as to enhance adaptiveness of social-ecological systems in the face of major disturbances. Accountability refers to the democratic quality of environmental governance arrangements. Finally, allocation and access concerns justice, equity, and fairness. These analytical problems are united by the cross-cutting themes of power, knowledge, norms and scale.

We look forward to welcoming you to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains!

On behalf of all co-hosts,
Michele Betsill, Tony Cheng, and Pete Taylor
Co-Chairs, 2011 Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance
Co-leaders, Environmental Governance Working Group, Colorado State University

Key dates

Program Corrections Due: 20 April 2011
Registration Confirmation Due: 20 April 2011
Full papers due: 1 May 2011

Conference themes

Linking across Scale
Linking the Social and Natural Sciences
Linking Research to Practice
Linking the 5As

Colorado International Steering Committee

Michele Betsill, Co-Chair, Colorado State University, USA
Tony Cheng, Co-Chair, Colorado State University, USA
Pete Taylor, Co-Chair, Colorado State University, USA
Frank Biermann, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jessica Clement, Colorado State University, USA
Kathleen Galvin, Colorado State University, USA
Joyeeta Gupta, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Norichika Kanie, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Louis Lebel, Chiang Mai University, Thailand
Diana Liverman, University of Arizona, USA and Oxford University, UK
Dennis Ojima, Colorado State University, USA
Robin Reid, Colorado State University, USA
Heike Schroeder, Oxford University, UK
Bernd Siebenhüner, University of Oldenburg, Germany
Dimitris Stevis, Colorado State University, USA
Jessica Thompson, Colorado State University, USA
Marcela Velasco, Colorado State University, USA
Susana Camargo Vieira, Universidade de Itaúna, Brazil
Diana H. Wall, Colorado State University, USA
Pius Z. Yanda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania