The Environmental Governance Working Group (EGWG) at Colorado State University is a member of the global alliance of research centres affiliated with the Earth System Governance Project, a core initiative of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. Earth system governance is defined in this 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. 

The Earth System Governance Project advances a science plan that is organized around five analytical problems: 1) architecture, 2) agency, 3) adaptiveness, 4) accountability, and 5) allocation and access and four crosscutting themes: 1) power, 2) knowledge, 3) norms, and 4) scale. Four case study domains have been identified that will serve as flagship activities of the Earth System Governance Project: 1) the global water system, 2) global food systems, 3) the global carbon cycle, and 4) the global economic system. As an Earth System Governance Research Center, EGWG contributes research that facilitates the implementation of the Earth System Governance Project's science plan. 

Recent Activities

• Tim Ehresman and Stacy Lynn organized a study group on equity and justice (fall 2011-spring 2012).


• Michele Betsill is a member of the international steering committee for the Lund Conference on Earth System Governance: Towards Just and Legitimate Earth System Governance – Addressing Inequalities (18-20 April 2012). She and Peter Leigh Taylor are members of the international review panel for the conference.


• Michele Betsill participated in the the Earth System Governance Hakone Vision Factory: Bridging Science Policy Boundaries (27-29 September 2011) in Hakone, Kanagawa, Japan, which addressed key issues required for a fundamental transformation of global sustainability governance in the 21st century. The main outcomes of the Earth System Governance Hakone Vision Factory are summarized in the statement "Towards a Charter moment: Hakone Vision on Governance for Sustainability in the 21st Century."


• Michele Betsill was a contributing author to the Earth System Governance Project's Policy Brief on the Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development (September 2011).


• Timothy Ehresman and Dimitris Stevis coordinate the ESG Equity Network.


• EGWG hosted the Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance (May 2011).


• Michele Betsill and Kathleen Galvin organized a study group on Adaptiveness in Earth System Governance (Spring 2011).


• EGWG hosted two talks by ESG Scientific Steering Committee member Diana Liverman (University of Arizona) (March 2011).


• EGWG hosted a seminar by Kate Brown from the ESG Research Centre at the University of East Anglia on "Is Resilience the New Sustainability?" (February 2011).   


• Michele Betsill co-edited (along with Eleni Dellas and Philipp Pattberg of VU University Amsterdam) a special issue of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (vol. 11, no. 3) on "Agency in Earth System Governance."

People

• Michele Betsill, Member of the Scientific Steering Committee.


• Tony Cheng, Senior Research Fellow


• Peter Leigh Taylor, Senior Resesarch Fellow


• Timothy Ehresman, Research Fellow


• Stacy Lynn, Resesarch Fellow