The 2012 Earth System Governance conference in Lund, Sweden

The Earth System Governance conference in 2012 in Lund, Sweden, will be a major event to address issues of climate change justice and fairness!

We invite you to the Lund Conference on Earth System Governance to be held 18-20 April 2012 in Lund, Sweden. This conference is part of a global series organized by the Earth System Governance Project. The first Earth System Governance conference was held in Amsterdam in December 2009 and the second in Fort Collins in May 2011. The 2012 Lund Conference on Earth System Governance is hosted by Lund University and jointly organized by the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) and the Department of Political Science at Lund University, on behalf of the Earth System Governance Project.

The Earth System Governance Project, a ten-year research programme under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), was launched in 2009 to address the problems of environmental governance. In this project earth system governance is defined as the interrelated system of formal and informal rules, rule-making mechanisms, 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 earth system transformation, within the normative context of sustainable development.

The Earth System Governance Project’s Science Plan (available at www.earthsystemgovernance.org) 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 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, the theme of Allocation & Access addresses questions of justice, equity, and fairness. The Lund Conference on Earth System Governance will address all of these five analytical problems. The conference will particularly focus on research on accountability and legitimacy, and on allocation and access and will critically examine questions of justice, democracy, legitimacy and accountability in research and practice.

The 2012 Lund Conference will be organised in four thematic streams:

1. TOWARD JUST, FAIR AND EQUITABLE EARTH SYSTEM GOVERNANCE:

2. TOWARDS LEGITIMATE, DEMOCRATIC AND ACCOUNTABLE EARTH SYSTEM GOVERNANCE:

3. LINKING THE 5 “A” OF EARTH SYSTEM GOVERNANCE:

4. TRANSFORMING THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT:

* Key Dates

– Deadline for paper abstracts: 5 November 2011

– Notification of acceptance: 5 December 2011

– Full papers due: 15 March 2012

* Background

For more information about the conference click here