N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L H U M A N D I M E N S I O N S P R O G R A M M E O N G L O B A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L C H A N G E

UPDATEIHD

P

01/2006

W W W . I H D P . O R GI H D P U p d a t e i s p u b l i s h e d b y t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l H u m a n D i m e n s i o n s P r o g r a m m e o n G l o b a l E n v i r o m e n t a l C h a n g e ( I H D P ) , Wa l t e r - F l e x - S t r. 3 , 5 3 1 1 3 B o n n , G e r m a n y, V. i . S . d . P. : U l a L ö w

1 The World’s Largest Social ScienceEvent on Global EnvironmentalChange | U. Löw

10 Resilience, Vulnerability and Adap-tation | M. Janssen, E. Ostrom

12 Non-State Authority and Legitimacyin Global Environmental Gover-nance | F. Biermann

15 Progress in Industrial Transforma-tion | A. Wieczorek, F. Berkhout

17 Talk for a Change: Communicationin Support of Societal Responses toClimate Change | S. Moser, P. Luganda

21 Global Environmental Change, Gen-der and Human Security | L. Bizikova, S. Bhadwal

23 The Complex Dynamics of Trans-boundary Water Management | A. Lovecraft

25 “Handing Over” – From LUCC to GLP |G. Laumann

26 The Pre-Open Meeting TrainingSeminars

28 UNU-EHS Expert Working GroupMeeting on Measuring Vulnerability

29 IHDP National Committee Science atthe 6th Open Meeting | D. Meyer-Wefering

32 IHDP National Committees Meet inBonn | D. Meyer-Wefering

32 Transparency and Fairness are Crucial | Interview with Barbara Göbel

34 In Brief

35 New Books

36 Calendar

C O N T E N T S

➤ continued on page 2

ISSN 1727-155X

THE 6th OPEN MEETING – THE WORLD’S

LARGEST SOCIAL SCIENCE EVENT ON

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

BY ULA LÖW

➤ The beautiful rococo building of the Bonn University was the venue for the 6th Open

Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Com-

munity. With its title reflecting the global situation, “International Security, Globaliza-

tion and Global Environmental Change”, the meeting took place from 9 to 13 October

2005 in Bonn, Germany.

The conference was a great success, with more than 1,000 participants attending

from over 85 countries. This represents a nearly three-fold increase from the previous

Open Meeting in Montreal and makes it the world’s largest social science event on glob-

al environmental change to date. The 5-day event consisted of four plenary sessions and

nearly 130 parallel sessions. While the official opening featured high-level keynote

speakers from the policy arena, the daily morning plenaries included top researchers

with presentations and discussions on provocative and thought-provoking topics.

These plenary sessions addressed topics such as the policy relevance of human dimen-

sions research, how to ground this research in present global realities, the weaknesses

and benefits of interdisciplinary research, and a stock-taking of the human dimensions

research to date.

OPEN MEETING2005 SPECIAL

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“Panta rei – Everything changes!” This well-known phrase by the

ancient Greek philosopher Heraklitos serves as a conceptual

backdrop to acknowledging that change in anything is a nor-

mal phenomenon. Global environmental change, however,

must be understood as a synonym for rapidly deteriorating

resources, livelihoods and biophysical parameters. Whereas

especially the natural sciences have largely contributed to the

understanding of both causes and effects of these phenomena,

IHDP particularly aims to foster their specific human, societal

and economic perspectives.

Global perspectives on the environment have gradually evolved

since the adoption of the UN Charter in 1945 and notable

milestones such as the 1968 Brundtland Commission. Scien-

tists and politicians alike are now paying more attention to

societal concerns such as economic, social and human devel-

opment, poverty reduction, health, water and sanitation, food

security, national security and statehood protection as well as

human security.

Still, there is a need to attract policy-makers’ attention to the

impressive range of IHDP research and findings from the pro-

gramme’s first decade – which I humbly consider “phase one”

of IHDP. We have consolidated a world-wide inter-disciplinary

network of outstanding scientists – bringing about a vast port-

folio of issues and results – and must now increase mutual dia-

logue with decision makers. Their interests and needs should

inspire our research in a truly cross-cutting, inter-sectoral and

inter-disciplinary way.

Often produced in developed countries, many global environ-

mental threats have significant impacts on developing ones:

Prominent are the loss of biodiversity, deforestation and deser-

tification, but we cannot overlook others such as the marginal-

ization of rural areas, economic disaster and poverty, migra-

tion, urbanization, and social conflict. As there is a clear link

between sustainable development, environmental change, and

globalization, IHDP wishes to pay particular attention to

developing countries, incorporate their science and research,

involve more researchers in our networks, and promote their

specific concerns while moving towards embracing world-

wide policy making entities.

Finally, I would like to mention the 6th Open Meeting, organized

by IHDP together with several strategic partners in October

2005 in Bonn. 1,000 participants from 85 countries gathered

to discuss issues of globalization and international security.

Ambitious fundraising helped to enable a large turnout from

younger and developing country researchers. A three-fold

increase in participants over the past Open Meeting in Mon-

treal in 2003, as well as the active involvement of high-level

policy makers, keynote speakers and researchers in the global

change field, confirmed the successful work and consolidation

of IHDP science over its first 10 years.

I am happy to be coming on board at this exciting time and look

forward to the future development and next stage of IHDP.

Dr. Andreas Rechkemmer

Executive Director

T H E C O N F E R E N C E : A G L O B A L P L A T F O R M

The 128 parallel sessions, chosen in a highly competitive

and two-tiered selection process, were centred around differ-

ent areas of human dimensions research.

In the exhibition hall, poster presentations were organized

around the same 14 themes, and up-and-coming researchers

were given a chance to showcase their posters several times

during the conference. In addition to this, a number of round-

tables and special side events took place, such as the IHDP

core science projects’ reception, the National Committees

meeting or the seminars of the United Nations University’s

Institute for Environment and Human Security (see reports in

this UPDATE).

Placing the 6th Open Meeting back-to-back with a series of

training seminars was an innovative way to focus on capacity

building and to actively involve as well as specially prepare 60

young researchers to take part and present their research at the

ensuing large international conference. Here, established and

newly rising researchers from more than 35 different countries

truly had the opportunity to mix during one of the numerous

parallel sessions, or one of the many social activities designed

expressly for the purpose of further communication and dis-

cussion of ideas in a more informal setting. A report on the

training seminars can be found in this issue of UPDATE.

At lunchtime but also in the evenings, the conference par-

ticipants benefited from the beautifully and centrally located

venue, and from a very mild and sunny October. The attractive

city centre of Bonn, the beautiful park outside of the universi-

ty main building, and the river Rhine flowing by beneath old

cannons and busy beer gardens where university students

meet – all of this added to the already very positive atmos-

THEMES OF THE 6th OPEN MEETINGPARALLEL SESSIONS

Theme 1: Adaptive Management and Resilience

Theme 2: Coastal Zones, Human Use of Oceans

Theme 3: Environmental History

Theme 4: Global Environmental Change and Human

Security

Theme 5: Globalization and Global Environmental

Change

Theme 6: Human Dimensions of Carbon and Water

Management, Food and Health

Theme 7: Industrial Transformation

Theme 8: Institutional Dimensions of Global Environ-

mental Change

Theme 9: Land-Use and Land-Cover Change

Theme 10: Methods in Human-Environment Studies

Theme 11: Regional Approaches to Human-Environment

Studies

Theme 12: Science-Policy Interface in Global Environ-

mental Change

Theme 13: Sustainable Development

Theme 14: Urbanization.

For all abstracts of the parallel sessions as wellas all paper abstracts within sessions, please seehttp://openmeeting.homelinux.org/abstract_listing.asp

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 3

6th Open MeetingO P E N I N G A N D T H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

phere throughout the Open Meeting. One of the highlights

among the social events was a boat trip along the Rhine river

towards the Loreley with evening dinner and dance. The boat

that was chartered for this event, the “MS Wappen von Köln”,

is the biggest tourist boat in the area – it can seat up to 1,000

people on board.

The organization and implementation of the Open Meet-

ing has been a major task for the IHDP Secretariat under the

leadership of its Open Meeting Coordinator, Lis Mullin. About

60 student volunteers also helped to check badges and guard

electronic equipment, as well as with numerous other tasks

throughout the conference. Without their help, the conference

would have been impossible to realize, particularly consider-

ing the great number of people that had enlisted.

THE OFFICIAL OPENING

The 6th Open Meeting began with a high-level opening cer-

emony on Sunday evening, October 9th. After a welcoming

note by Barbara Göbel, the outgoing Executive Director of

IHDP, the second speaker to address the audience was Hansvan Ginkel, Director of the United Nations University in

Tokyo. He stressed the importance of human security as a

political concept and research issue. The United Nations Envi-

ronment Programme´s (UNEP) Executive Director KlausTöpfer talked about the three pillars – global environmental

change, globalization and social security. He summarized all

the alarming facts of GEC – climate change, the rapid decrease

of nature capital, the fast changes in land-use and the rise of

desertification, as well as rapid urbanization – and stated that

we are losing diversity and stability. He then went on to talk

about globalization, global markets, economies of scale and

the effort to decrease poverty, as well as about transport,

tourism and global information. Töpfer stressed the link

between environment and poverty and stated that ecosystems

are the basics for fighting poverty. He concluded that there

cannot be social stability if there is loss of diversity, and while

mono-structured regions may boom for a while, they are at a

high risk of de-stabilization.

Liu Yanhua, the Chinese Vice-Minister of Science and

Technology talked about the history of IHDP and remem-

bered the first Open Meeting in Tokyo in 1998, a small meet-

ing where people were arguing about the focus of IHDP. Since

then, the Open Meeting has evolved into a big conference, and

the idea of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental

Change Research has been widely accepted. He then proceeded

to lay out the development of human dimensions research in

China, pointing to some of the major achievements of Chinese

research in the global change area, namely research on: 1) the

regional synthesis of the Monsoon Area; 2) historical/past

global environmental change; 3) water resources and cycles; 4)

land-use and land-cover change, and 5) the carbon cycle. Liu

went on to mention the Chinese National Committees of

IHDP and its global partner programmes, as well as the

upcoming IHDP regional conference in Beijing, to take place

in fall 2006. As important goals for GEC research in China, he

listed, among others, the opening of Chinese scientists to

research questions of global scale, their participation in inter-

national collaboration, the development of cross-project

research, and the building up of a national coordination sys-

tem for GEC research. He concluded by stating that human

dimensions have to be strengthened within Chinese GEC

research, and also become more development-oriented.

Like Klaus Töpfer before him, Alexander Schink, Secretary

of the State North-Rhine Westphalia for the Environment,

pointed out that since Bonn is the German city of internation-

al agencies and development organizations, it is a well befitting

location for a conference on global environmental change

issues. He then presented the German state North-Rhine

Westphalia, one of the more densely populated areas in the

world with a large industrial agglomeration, and still high car-

bon emissions (300 million tons per year). He gave a summary

of the environmental planning for the state, highlighting the

importance of renewable energies and the gentle use of open

space.

Finally, Mathias Winiger, the president of the Rheinische

Friedrich-Wilhems-Universität – (the University of Bonn) –

welcomed the international audience, and pointed towards

current global change events, namely the hurricanes in North

and Central America. He said that environmental issues have

become a main focus in research and technology, also within

the university. Bonn has become a big “think-tank” on global

change, with not only the university institutes such as the Cen-

tre for Development Research and the IHDP but also the UNU

and other environmental as well as development research

organizations having their main offices here.

After these keynote speeches, an official champagne recep-

tion took place at the historic Bonn town hall with a welcom-

ing speech by Bonn’s mayor Peter Finger.

THE MORNING PLENARY SESSIONS

It was notable that almost all high-level speakers at the

morning plenary sessions called for a fundamental change in

how global change research is viewed and done. In order to

better understand complex systems of interaction and in order

to influence policy decisions in a manner that leads to more

sustainability, the challenge for researchers is to include ethical

values and different viewpoints as well as to engage in eye-level

dialogue with society – “engaged research” – while keeping the

scientific standards high.

MONDAY PLENARY

Monday’s opening plenary focused on “Globalization, and

International Security: Grounding Human Dimensions

Research in Present Global Realities”. Session moderator

Diana Liverman, from the Environmental Change Institute at

the University of Oxford, opened this plenary session by pre-

senting the first speaker, Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence

Magazine. He is the founder of a number of small, ecological-

ly-oriented schools, and the author of several books. Satish

Kumar gave an all-encompassing view of the world, and in

particular, nature. He said that the visible world of science –

mind and ratio – should also leave space for the “invisible

world”, namely intuition, experience, insight and wisdom. He

pointed out that most people – also many of the GEC research

community present – are not close to nature anymore, and

that they are not “makers”, for example, by growing their own

vegetables or baking their own bread. He criticized our con-

sumer, petroleum-driven society in which our food, clothes

4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

etc. are based on globalized petroleum principles. He chal-

lenged the idea of “development” and called the West, a socie-

ty largely based on the above-mentioned unsustainable princi-

ples, “underdeveloped”.

Hallidor Thorgeirsson from the United Nations Frame-

work Convention to Combat Climate Change, gave a UN pol-

icy-oriented overview on global environmental change. He

talked about the discrepancy of individual choices as opposed

to collective choices and noted that the future implications of

climate change on human security will be significant. He said

that we have not lost the opportunity to turn this around, and

that the gravity of scientific evidence is slowly sinking in – it’s

when the findings of science start to affect people’s lives that

these findings become relevant to policy. He named the

Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Kyoto

Protocol as the two primary actions of international policy

makers as a response to climate change. He mentioned that

certain key people and companies in the private sector are

responding to climate change, also on their own initiative. He

also called the IPCC process successful, in particular with

regard to the dedication of the scientists, as well as with regard

to the wisdom of policy makers in resisting the temptation to

manipulate or exploit the process for short-term power policy

goals.

With regard to the earth’s future, Thorgeirsson said that

true leaders have to be optimistic, as optimists have to explain

why they are optimistic, and act on this behalf. Pessimism, to

him, is “the safe way out”. He underlined that there has to be a

balance between consuming and making, and criticized our

western double standards with regard to China’s and India’s

booming societies – we have to change first in the West. While

the US government is still opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, and

also to what scientists say about climate change, there are cre-

ative options going on “underneath” the official Kyoto Proto-

col with cities and local governments working in partnerships

towards reducing their emissions.

TUESDAY PLENARY

Tuesday’s plenary session presented IHDP’s core science

and outcomes, to the theme of “Taking Stock: Contributions

of IHDP to Human Dimensions Research”. IHDP’s scientific

Chair, Coleen Vogel from the University of Witwatersrand in

Johannesburg, gave a welcome speech and talked about the

challenges within the human dimensions of global environ-

mental change research. She highlighted the importance of

multiple interactive driving forces throughout the human

dimensions on GEC research and presented a model on the

climate change-development syndrome. Further models

looked at vulnerability, and its double structures of exposure

and coping. Consequently, Vogel highlighted social

learning/knowledge as a crucial crosscutting issue of IHDP

research. Besides the ongoing IHDP research on human-envi-

ronment systems, a vision for IHDP could be an improved

understanding of the science/society/action interface. Cur-

rently, there is still a disconnection between science and the

user community. We need institutional changes and improved

dialogue to bridge this disconnect. And we have to explore

ways of how to get from fundamental research to applied

research and back.

The first core science project to present its work was the

Land-Use and Land-Cover Change project. LUCC-chair EricLambin (University of Louvain, Belgium) presented some

global historical data on changes in cropland, forest cover,

grasslands etc. Currently, there are hundreds of case studies

worldwide, as well as comparative studies and meta-analyses

of the causes of forest-cover change, dryland degradation and

agricultural intensification. Proximate causes for this are

infrastructure extension, agricultural expansion, wood extrac-

tion and others as, the underlying causes being demographic,

economic, technological, policy & institutional as well as cul-

tural factors. He talked about regional pathways of land-use

change (land-use history, interactions between agents, man-

agement decisions and policies, organization at different

scales, learning and adaptation by actors), and showed differ-

ent models (spatial statistical, system-dynamic, economic,

multi-agent simulations) and scenarios of how land-use

change will affect land cover in the next 50 to 100 years. The

challenges for the integration of natural and social science

approaches are data (“linking people to pixels”), models (the

dynamic coupling of land-use cover change and biophysical

models), and theory (how can theories from multiple disci-

plines be integrated toward an overarching theory of complex

adaptive systems?). After 10 years of successful research, LUCC

has come to its termination, and an official hand-over ceremo-

ny to the new core science project LAND (GLP) that will take

up many of LUCC’s core findings and research questions has

taken place at the Open Meeting (see this UPDATE for a brief

report).

Oran Young (University of California at Santa Barbara),

chair of the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmen-

tal Change (IDGEC) core project of IHDP, first presented an

overview on the project. IDGEC focuses on institutions as

clusters of rights, rules, and decision-making procedures,

rooted in the “new institutionalism”, occurring at all levels of

social organization, and with an emphasis on environmental

and resource regimes. Its three principal research foci are: 1)

Causality – what role do institutions play in causing and con-

fronting global environmental change? 2) Performance – why

are some individual responses to global environmental change

more successful than others? 3) Design – what are the

prospects for (re-)designing institutions to confront global

environmental change? Within each of the research foci,

IDGEC looks particularly closely ate the analytic themes of

institutional fit, interplay, and scale. Governance is the

IDGEC-specific crosscutting issue to be explored together

with other IHDP core and joint projects. Young went on to

present some sample findings of IDGEC. In decision-making,

there should be reliance on consensus rules while at the same

time avoiding the problem of the least ambitious program.

There is a need to move beyond enforcement and manage-

ment models, and also a need to recognize interplay and

embrace multi-level arrangements. IDGEC is currently in a

synthesis process, distilling the project’s principal research

contributions, making it available to a wider public and iden-

tifying policy relevance, as well as facilitating policy applica-

tion of its work. It will also outline the next phase of research

for the project. This synthesis process will culminate in a Syn-

thesis Conference to be held in December 2006 in Bali,

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 5

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

Indonesia. The second Call for Proposals can be found in this

UPDATE.

Frans Berkhout (IVM, University of Amsterdam), the chair

of IHDP’s core science project Industrial Transformation (IT)

presented the goal and objectives of his project. The goal of IT

is to explore pathways towards decoupling of economic

growth from the related degradation of the environment. The

project aims to understand the societal mechanisms and

human driving forces that could facilitate a transformation of

the industrial system towards sustainability, and it seeks to

integrate and stimulate cooperation among international and

interdisciplinary scientists. Key messages that can be distilled

from IT research are that change in socio-technical systems is a

long-term and multilevel process full of uncertainty, that

innovation of new technologies in niches are important but so

are changes at the societal level, and that transforming socio-

technical systems requires processes of path-creating and

path-breaking. As a socio-technical system, he described the

hamburger, a very refined and stable production system and

technology – also through tastes that have been developed and

that lock in producers (i.e. farmers) and consumers. With

regard to path creation, he stated the high priced hybrid car as

an example, where Toyota took a leading role, worked on this

car for 20 years, and created a

niche. Now, other companies

follow. In terms of path

breaking he asked, how

mature technologies such as

coal or nuclear energy can

come to be replaced.

The IHDP core science

project Global Environmen-

tal Change and Human

Security was presented by

GECHS-chair Karen O’Brien(University of Oslo). She

stated that environmental

change is first and foremost an issue of human security –

which is achieved when and where individuals and communi-

ties have the options necessary to end, mitigate or adapt to

threats to their human, environmental and social rights, have

the capacity and freedom to exercise these options, and active-

ly participate in pursuing these options. Environmental

change interacts with other processes of change, and biophysi-

cal, social, economic, institutional, and technological condi-

tions create the context for vulnerability. This dynamic context

influences outcomes, including conflict and cooperation. The

main GECHS themes are: multiple, interacting processes of

change; cooperation versus conflict; gender vulnerability;

health interactions; and water and human security. With

regard to Hurricane Katrina, the hurricane that had devastated

New Orleans about one month earlier, it can be observed that

vulnerability is not a North-South issue; but it is an issue of

class, race, gender and age. Human insecurities are high in

coastal and urban areas, and issues of governance are critical.

A challenge and important, already ongoing task for GECHS,

and for IHDP as a whole, is the work at the science-policy

interface to increase response capacity and mitigate environ-

mental change. It has to be acknowledged that environmental

changes are taking place within the dynamics of other social

changes, and we have to reframe the way we think about envi-

ronmental change and also the way we think about human

security.

Richard Aspinall from the University of Arizona is one of

the transition team members of the Global Land Project

(GLP), a “follow-up” project of LUCC, and gave a presentation

on this new core science project of IHDP. Dynamics of land-

systems, consequences of land-system changes, and integrat-

ing analysis and modelling for land sustainability are the three

main components of GLP’s study of the coupled human-envi-

ronmental system. Within the theme of dynamics of land-sys-

tems, the questions are: How do globalization and population

changes affect regional and local land-use decisions? How do

changes in land management, decisions and practices affect

biogeochemistry, biodiversity, biophysical properties, and dis-

turbance regimes of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems? And

how do the atmospheric, biogeochemical and biophysical

dimensions of global change affect ecosystem structure and

function? The consequences of land-system changes are

encompassed through questions of: What are the critical feed-

backs from changes in ecosystems to the coupled Earth sys-

tem? How do changes in ecosystem structure and functioning

affect the delivery of ecosystem service? How are ecosystem

services linked to human well-being? And, how do people

respond at various scales and in different contexts to changes

in ecosystem service provision? The main questions of the

third theme of integrating analysis and modelling for land sus-

tainability are: What are the critical pathways of change in

land-systems? How do the vulnerability and resilience of land-

systems to hazards and disturbance vary in response to

changes in human and environment interactions? And, which

institutions enhance decision-making and governance for the

sustainability of land-systems?

Hartwig Kremer, Executive Officer of the LOICZ (Land-

Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone) core project, stated

that coastal systems are built and interlinked like stones in a

bridge – if one or a few of them crumble the whole bridge

may crash. He offered a few “short stories “ on the coastal

zone (“society’s edge”): The sediment short story describes

the difference between pre-anthropocene and modern sedi-

ment loads, the CO2 short story asks whether climate change

and human drivers will dissolve reefs and islands, and the

nutrient short story is about exports from watersheds to

coastal systems. For example, the Danube discharge of nitro-

gen into the Black Sea is closely related to fertilizer applica-

tion in the Basin, and there has been a significant reduction of

discharge since the beginning of the 1990s which was the

starting point of the economic transition period for ex-com-

munist Black Sea countries. The objective of LOICZ’s Black

Sea project is the continued recovery of a regional sea envi-

ronment. The challenges are: future European lifestyles, the

roles of accession and globalization; the integration of envi-

ronment in education and democratization; and the promo-

tion of collaborative learning towards coastal governance ini-

tiatives across the countries and action to foster effective and

long-term stewardship. EU membership of some countries

could offer prospects but could also exacerbate divisions

between EU and non-EU states. The Black Sea example

Karen O’Brien

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

reflects a general challenge for LOICZ science: how to bridge

different “reality views”.

Karen Seto (Stanford University), Scientific Chair of

IHDP’s new core project on Urbanization and Global Envi-

ronmental Change (UGEC) gave a presentation on the project

and its Science Implementation Framework that had been fin-

ished earlier in the year. The main research themes of UGEC

are: 1) Urban Processes that contribute to global environmen-

tal change (lifestyles and consumption patterns, urban land

use and land-cover change); 2) Pathways through which glob-

al environmental change affects the urban system (human

behaviour and interactions, the built environment, the

resource base upon which urban systems rely); 3) Interactions

and responses within the urban system (impacts, responses,

livelihoods in urban communities); and 4) Consequences of

interactions within urban systems on global environmental

change. As part of the implementation strategy, the project

will engage in thematic and regional networks, workshops and

roundtables, in synthesizing activities, links with other core

projects, as well as in active involvement of practitioners.

Important meetings for UGEC in 2006 are the UN-Habitat

meeting on cities in Cape Town, as well as the World Urban

Forum in Vancouver. Apart from the plenary presentation, the

UGEC Science Plan was also presented in-depth during a spe-

cial session, where it was well-received and discussed.

Finally, IHDP Scientific Committee member ElinorOstrom (University of Indiana) gave a short presentation on

the “Key Challenges for Human Dimensions Research”, and on

the Arizona Workshop that explored state-of-the-art papers

on the three concepts of vulnerability, adaptation, and

resilience (an IHDP crosscutting theme), as well as back-

ground papers on scholarly networks on this crosscutting

issue within human dimensions research, and on the history

of these three concepts. Scientific challenges are described by

the question of how globalization affects the behaviour of

coupled social-ecological systems at different spatial and tem-

poral scales, and by the question of what this means for vul-

nerability and resilience to specific disturbance regimes.

Important implications and questions for policy are: How well

do market and other indicators of “scarcity” reflect the social

opportunity cost of people’s actions at different spatial and

temporal scales, and how do people learn about trade-offs

between private production and the social loss of ecosystem

services? The challenge for IHDP research is how to determine

the right temporal and spatial scales for evaluating the effects

of environmental changes on resilience/vulnerability to par-

ticular disturbance regimes; to find the appropriate models

and methods for this; to find the appropriate indicators of

change (including threshold indicators); and to test the effec-

tiveness of existing indicators, especially social indicators, and

find out about the reasons behind their effectiveness or inef-

fectiveness. Ostrom announced the “Arizona Workshop” ses-

sion that was to take place that same day. A session summary is

included in this issue of UPDATE.

WEDNESDAY PLENARY

Sander van der Leeuw from the Department of Anthropol-

ogy at the Arizona State University led through the Wednesday

morning plenary session focusing on “The Challenges of

Interdisciplinarity in Global Change Research: Epistemologi-

cal and Organizational Aspects”.

Ronaldo Seroa da Motta, from the Institute for Applied

Economic Research in Rio de Janeiro, gave a lecture on “Eco-

nomic Criteria in Environmental Benefit Valuation”, starting

with the observation that consumptional choices are ranked

or ordered rationally (i.e. material, cultural, spiritual, environ-

mental etc.), with a restricted income against unlimited con-

sumption options. EBA is a policy issue with public budget

constraints as a background with two main questions to be

answered: 1) Which environmental aim should we give priori-

ty, and 2) what are the criteria (ecological, social, and econom-

ic) that we should use to carry this on? While the valuation of

ecological goods and services can never be the only decision

indicator (as it is, i.e. sensitive to models, and as there is uncer-

tainty on future flows of costs and benefits), there are never-

theless side advantages, and the valuation can bring about

social and economic issues which ecological criteria alone can-

not. It is possible to observe how costs and benefits are distrib-

uted across society.

He then explained Benefit Valuation Techniques (produc-

tion and demand approaches) and highlighted various aspects

of the use of monetary valuation, such as prioritization,

investment selection, pricing procedures, damage liability, and

accounting. Crucial for any exercise of monetary valuation is a

minimum set of environmental indicators. The OECD cate-

gories of pressures, state and responses could be a first step in

this effort. Also, monetary valuations need uniform proce-

dures, as these valuations are long-term and gradual processes.

Valuation should be undertaken by local experts, and the dis-

semination of valuation exercises and their results, due to their

scientific complexity and limitations, should be carefully

planned to avoid misinterpretation and misuse.

The critical point is that

the monetary value, once it

had been included, drove

out the other values. The

amount of resources, time,

and effort to convert every-

thing into a monetary value

may well be too high to

make this undertaking

worthwhile.

John Robinson from

the University of British

Columbia in Vancouver

gave a presentation “On

Being Undisciplined: Some

Transgressions and Intersections in Academia and Beyond”.

He started with the language games of inter- and trans-disci-

plinarity (multi-, cross-, inter-, pluri-, trans-, etc.) when in

practice, he suggests, there is discipline-based interdiscipli-

narity or issue-driven interdisciplinarity. He named sustain-

ability as an example for issue-driven interdisciplinarity,

with multiple knowledge domains, and inherently oriented

to societal problems. Issue-driven interdisciplinarity has to

be 1) problem-focused, 2) integrated, 3) interactive, 4)

reflexive, and 5) involves collaboration and partnerships.

John Robinson

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 7

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

Examples for problem orientation are scenarios of forecast-

ing and backcasting from future to present and vice versa, with

several alternative futures to be explored in the forecasting

mode. He also presented a matrix for integrating information,

knowledge, dialogue and action. With regard to the aspect of

integration, he differed between vertical and horizontal inte-

gration across fields and sectors, feedbacks and dynamics

(complexity-based approach), and qualitative and quantitative

aspects while taking the substantive definition of sustainabili-

ty into account (ecological, social, and economic imperative).

He also presented a model about the complexity of models –

while there has to be some input into a model for it to make

sense and offer additional knowledge, there is a turning point:

the bigger the model the less it will be able to tell you. How do

we communicate complex realities without losing the people?

Interface and science communication are crucial in this

regard.

Interactivity includes tools for engagement, community

engagement processes, three principles of interactive social

research, and understanding as an emergent property. There

is a challenge with models. “The real purpose of models is

not about describing the model but to change mental models

in the heads of users” (Wack) – most people are alienated

from large systems, and receive too much information

(“noise”) while at the same time lacking a mental model to

make sense of that information. Citing Postman (“informa-

tion is the garbage of the 90s”), Robinson points out that we

need less, but more tailored information. He then presented

the Georgia Basin Quest approach that has been designed by

a research team (including himself) based at the University

of British Columbia to facilitate debate about regional sus-

tainability and to explore a desirable and feasible future. It is

an interactive game that allows users to develop “what if…?”

scenarios for the future of their region. Another example is

the “Climate Change Calculator” that can be found on the

internet. He named interface-driven modelling as one

important principle of interactive social research. Other

principles are backcasting as social learning (give a set of

goals and attune the scenario until its outcome is consistent

with the goals) and the involvement of users in design and

also in research itself.

The reflexivity of issue-driven interdisciplinarity encom-

passes multiple views (biophysical systems view and actor sys-

tem view, that need a mutual interpretation), knowledge

realms of sustainability (ideational, societal, biophysical, with

cultural norms getting translated into social systems and vice

versa, and with the interaction of social systems and natural

systems, each shaping and limiting the other – how can these

realms be integrated?), discursive approaches, as well as a pro-

cedural definition of sustainability.

Robinson proceeded to talk about different partnerships

(academic, external i.e. with NGOs) and about the challenge

of institutionalizing interdisciplinarity – the resistance (“inter-

disciplinarity is the ghetto of the incompetent”), dangers,

issues of teaching and evaluation, as well as products. As the

world changes, societal demands have modified university

research (that has been curiosity-driven originally) into more

applied research and into commercialized knowledge produc-

tion. An alternative model of university research would partly

return to curiosity-driven research, but include a large portion

of engaged research, taking societal demands into account but

also producing outputs for society (other than mere commer-

cial ones).

THURSDAY PLENARY

Thursday’s final plenary provided both a wrap-up and a

look to the future with the title of “Looking Ahead: Making

Global Change Research Relevant to Society” and was moder-

ated by IHDP SC member Geoff Dabelko from the Environ-

mental Change and Security Project, Woodrow Wilson Inter-

national Center for Scholars in Washington.

The first speaker was Roger Kasperson from the George

Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University, who has also been

a keynote speaker at the last Open Meeting (Montreal 2003).

Kasperson started with the notions of “bridge between science

and policy or practice”, as well as the “divide between them” –

terms that represent a tunnel vision. Rather, we have a spider

web with diffuse connections between science and practice.

Focusing on risk perception and communication, he pointed

out six central problems:

1) The knowledge mismatch – we have to respect different

types of knowledge; the produced knowledge may not be

the knowledge needed on a practice base. Scientific

knowledge is conceptual and formally analytic, generic

rather than specific. It is not enough to just “bundle” that

knowledge for decision makers – this is still too much of a

“one-way” flow of communication.

2) Knowledge signals and interpretation – when “bundles”

of knowledge (for example about risks and hazards) from

scientists enters the spider web, the media picks out “sig-

nals” from this knowledge that they consider important to

society. These signals then get re-formulated, amplified,

and, finally, changed. Scientific messages about risks can

also get dampened – the problem then moves out of soci-

ety and disappears from the public agenda.

3) Different understanding and use for problems – what is of

primary concern to the analyst is often not the major goal

to the decision maker who is dealing with a much broader

set of issues. Decision makers often have “preferred” solu-

tions and wait for the right event to happen to apply these

preferred solutions.

4) Speed/policy mismatch – when a problem develops rapid-

ly the decision-making process is too slow, the response of

institutions etc. are delayed. How can we break out of this

incremental decision-making process? Research findings

show that the main problem with delayed policy response

is not the knowledge but the policy mismatch.

5) Policy formulation of science may not be sufficient when

it comes to implementation

6) Communities have to be made more resilient and for

this they have to be involved, not only the decision mak-

ers.

In order to produce knowledge that is usable and does not

sit on the shelf:

1) We need a new, problem-specific kind of science. In the

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, for example, protect-

ed areas did not receive any attention, and also energy –

8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

one of our major economic, ecological and policy issues –

was not explored.

2) We need collaborative processes. Otherwise, the issues

that people in practice need to know will not be dealt

with.

3) We struggle with the notion of knowledge systems. Vari-

ous inputs from practice people involve very different

kinds of knowledge (“local”, “expert”, “indigenous” etc.).

How do we validate knowledge and how do we integrate

local knowledge into scientific knowledge, or also qualita-

tive and quantitative knowledge?

4) We need a more value-centred kind of knowledge while at

the same time retaining certain traditional concepts such

as high standards.

Second speaker Aromar Revi from the Taru Leading Edge,

New Delhi, started with a working definition of global change

and a short look back into history. Globalization has been

around for a long time and the anthropogenic change and co-

evolution of human systems and ecosystems has been signifi-

cant during this period. Contemporary modernization-led

change, however, has been dramatically different with its

exponential rates of change of key state variables and its pow-

erful underlying forces, some of which can rapidly degrade the

resilience and adaptive capacity of traditional social systems

and ecosystems.

Global Change Research is relevant to various societies in

different ways – to the poor it is relevant in terms of adapta-

tion and limited mitigation strategies, or even just in terms of

adaptation options for survival, while for transition countries

it is relevant in terms of their opportunity to move up leverag-

ing on risk sharing arrangement with OECD countries, and

for OECD countries, global change research is relevant in

terms of mitigation strategies and with regard to maintaining

their status quo. Revi, just like most of the speakers before

him, stated that global change research currently still is largely

top-down, and that it needs to recognize the legitimacy of plu-

ral forms of relevance at multiple scales. Further, the phenom-

enon of interacting changes in many sub-systems (on which

global change is based) requires engagement with these sub-

systems, addressing the root causes rather than symptoms.

Looking at the scale relevance of global change research, a

weakening relevance can be observed at the lower scales of the

world system. Is this because of the centrality of state patron-

age for global change research, and is this appropriate given

that much of the innovative solutions come from outside the

state system?

The increasing reflexivity of the world system and the cre-

ation of “losers” (marginal, poor, vulnerable, agrarian,

coastal and forest dwelling populations) and “winners”

(transnational corporations, faith traditions, conflict enter-

prises, and energy and information industries) by global

change implies that global change research will need to “take

position” on key issues and stakes. Global change research

(GCR) is driven by the normal sciences trying to come to

terms with an increasingly post-normal world. It therefore

requires a new integrative framework and meta-disciplinary

body of knowledge. The key (epistemological) challenge for

the GCR community is whether post-normal GCR explo-

ration will be absorbed within mainstream research or

whether a new kind of “science” that links theory and prac-

tice will be created.

Revi proceeded with presenting older and newer models of

global change, from “only one earth” and the earth as a largely

closed system to the various driver models (i.e. exponential

global population growth or exponential output growth) and

an integrated model of these drivers, coupled socio-ecological

systems constrained by finite resources and sinks of only one

Earth. Multiple scenarios including various variables such as

industrial output, population, food per person, pollution, life

expectancy, human welfare index etc. all are pointing in

broadly the same direction. Unless multiple structural changes

are made, the world-system would tend to overshoot and col-

lapse. The impact of certain factors should be looked at more

closely, such as local history and economy, prices, technology

and institutional innovation, geography and scale, culture,

power and politics. And what can be done about poverty in

this frame?

Besides a set of particular questions that GCR could help

answer for India, Revi formulated five policy questions:

1) What are the conditions under which per capita output is

adequate to universally fulfill basic human needs (the

eight Millennium Development Goals)?

2) How much economic growth and/or redistribution is

required to stay ahead of population growth, especially in

the global South?

3) What are the necessary social conditions to enable this?

4) What are the ecological constraints to this being possi-

ble?

5) Can the existing global (regional/national) political set-

tlements and institutions provide an adequate framework

to enable this in an acceptable time frame?

He observed that somewhere along the way both the natu-

ral and the social sciences seem to have abandoned the early

goal of developing a wider integrative scaffolding to examine

Earth system questions in favour of more politically correct

and pragmatic research. Maybe the time has come to change

that now?

Revi then continued with further models about 21st cen-

tury developments that show shifts (and stabilization) ofAromar Revi

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

Official sponsor of the 6th Open Meeting:UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)

Financial sponsors of the 6th Open Meeting:APN (Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research)

APN – CAPaBLE

BMBF (Federal Ministry of Research and Education, Germany)

DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany)

Ford Foundation, India

GWSP (Global Water Systems Project)

IAI (The Inter American Institute for Global Change Research)

ICSU (International Council for Science)

InWEnt (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung)

ISSC (International Social Science Council)

NSF (National Science Foundation, USA)

NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, USA)

NRC (Norwegian Research Council)

NRF (National Research Foundation, South Africa)

RIHN (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature)

START (System for Analysis, Research and Training)

Stiftung Internationaler Begegnung, Sparkasse Köln-Bonn

UNU (United Nations University)

Co-organizers of the 6th Open Meeting:CIESIN (Center for International Earth Science Information Network)

IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis)

IGES (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies)

IHDP (International Human Dimensions Programme on Global

Environmental Change)

UNU (United Nations University)

The University of Bonn

These co-organizers not only provided funding for several sessions, but also

gave valuable scientific and logistical input in the planning process.

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 9

6th Open MeetingT H E M O R N I N G P L E N A R Y S E S S I O N S

population, shifts of social systems, as well as shifts in eco-

nomic hegemony (for example, a rapid rise of GDP in India

and China) and global material fluxes. Some relative certain-

ties that can be derived, for example, from a global landscape

report by the US National Intelligence Council are that: glob-

alization will largely be irreversible and likely to become less

westernized; the world economy will be substantially larger;

there is a rise of Asia and possible new economic middle-

weights; aging populations in established powers; energy

supplies “in the ground” sufficient to meet global demand;

environmental and ethical issues will come more to the fore;

growing power of non-state actors; an increasing number of

global firms will spread new technologies; an arc of instabili-

ty spanning Africa, the Middle East and Asia; and the US will

remain the single most powerful actor. Key uncertainties in

this report are, amongst others, whether globalization will

pull in lagging economies and the extent of gaps between

“haves” and “have-nots”, whether the rise of China and India

occurs smoothly, whether EU and Japan will be able to adapt

work forces, welfare systems and integrated migrant popula-

tions.

The dramatic change that the world will undergo by 2050

will be accentuated by heterogeneous regional behaviour

and emergent discontinuities in the world system. National

and regional dynamics are crucial to engage with to enable

better global governance, and national/regional ecological

models are returning after having been less than fashionable

in the past decades. These models need a greater under-

standing of how global projects can be implemented region-

ally (such as the eight Millennium Development Goals), of

possible shifts in global hegemony and regional political

consolidation, of the implementation of new global envi-

ronmental conventions, and of a possible emergence of a

network world. This is an important opportunity for GCR

to ground itself!

One of various further models that Revi presented was the

International Futures (Ifs) Model, a computer simulation of

global systems that is especially suitable for the analysis of sus-

tainable development and for examining the human dimen-

sions of global change, based on underlying data for 164 coun-

tries. It is a powerful tool for cross-sectional and longitudinal

analysis that provides a continuity of decision space, some-

thing policy makers look for.

Finally, Revi laid out a reference mode for Global Change

Research – it deals with simultaneous encounter with multiple

sub-systemic thresholds, many of which are degrading; with

no social or cultural memory of dealing with this class of

problems; with no proven implicit or explicit models to

address such challenges; with little clarity on the stability land-

scape; no institutional “control” structures and governance

regimes in place, and, hence, high levels of uncertainty and

risk to current trajectories of systems. One of the research

challenges is that there are cybernetic limits to the use of cur-

rent analytical tools when it comes to risk and VAR-assess-

ments. The new, integrative “sustainability science” needs a

calculus of the stability landscape of socio-ecological systems,

first around a rudimentary parameter set, i.e. population(s),

capital stock(s) and throughput densities. Then, as capacity

and confidence grows, we could engage with multi-level sys-

tems and more complex issues of distribution, power, institu-

tions and others.

A final conclusion was a citation of Marshall McLuhan

(from Understanding Media, Sphere 1971):

In the mechanical age now receding, many actions could be

taken without too much concern. Slow movement insured that the

reactions were delayed for considerable periods of time. Today the

action and the reaction occur almost at the same time. We actually

live mythically and integrally, as it were, but we continue to think in

the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age.

Western man acquired from the technology of literacy the

power to act without reacting. We acquired the art of carrying out

the most dangerous social operations with complete detachment.

But our detachment was a posture of noninvolvement. In theelectric age, when our central nervous system is technologically

extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorpo-

rate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, indepth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer

possible to adopt the aloof and dissociated role of the literate

Westerner.

ULA LÖW is Information Officer and Editor at the IHDP

Secretariat, Bonn, Germany; loew.ihdp@uni-bonn.de;http://www.ihdp.org; http://openmeeting.homelinux.org

1 0 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingA N I H D P C R O S S C U T T I N G I S S U E

RESILIENCE, VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTATIONBY MARCO A. JANSSEN AND ELINOR OSTROM

➤ One of the parallel sessions at the 6th Open Meeting of the

IHDP held in Bonn, Germany, reported on a series of synthe-

sis activities related to human dimensions research on

resilience, vulnerability and adaptation. In this article we

briefly summarize the content presented at this well-attended

session and place this content into the context of related activ-

ities to bring the communities of resilience, vulnerability and

adaptation together.

A little background to the panel is needed. In March 2004,

the IHDP Scientific Committee appointed one of their mem-

bers, Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, to organize a study

group to synthesize the relevant work of the crosscutting

theme within the IHDP research community of resilience, vul-

nerability and adaptation. The goal was to gain an under-

standing of the state of the art of relevant research with rela-

tion to human dimensions of Global environmental Change.

Furthermore, the Scientific Committee wanted a better

overview of this theme within the core programs of IHDP and

the potential, future research challenges.

For each of the three core concepts an eminent scholar was

asked to write a „state of the art“ report on the use of the con-

cept in the human dimensions research. Furthermore, a for-

mal bibliometric analysis was performed on those scholarly

publications that use the concepts in the human dimensions

research. As part of this endeavor, the first synthesis results

were presented in a Workshop held in February 2005 at Ari-

zona State University, a special parallel session was organized

at the Open Meeting of IHDP in Bonn, and a publication of a

special issue of Global Environmental Change is planned for

2006. Before we discuss the findings of the synthesis, we intro-

duce the concepts by their original roots:

The concept of resilience as used in the human dimensions

of global change research was introduced by ecologist C. S.

Holling (1973). According to Holling (1973, p. 17) „resilience

determines the persistence of relationships within a system

and is a measure of the ability of these systems to absorb

change of state variable, driving variables, and parameters, and

still persist“. Originally the concept had been used by ecolo-

gists in their analysis of population ecology and in the study of

managing ecosystems. As such, it is mathematically based and

model-oriented. Since the late 1980s the concept has increas-

ingly been used in the analysis of human-environmental inter-

actions. A number of scholars working on resilience of social-

ecological systems have organized themselves in 1999, forming

the Resilience Alliance.

The concept of vulnerability has its roots in the study of

natural hazards. Vulnerability is defined as „the characteristics

of a person or group in terms of their capacity to anticipate,

cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of a natural haz-

ard. It involves a combination of factors that determine the

degree to which someone’s life and livelihood is put at risk by

a discrete and identifiable event in nature or in society“

(Blaikie et al. 1994, p.9). In the 1990s natural hazards scholars

started to focus on the vulnerability of people to impacts of

environmental change, especially climate change. Geography

provides the major disciplinary legacy. In contrast to resilience

there is no focus on mathematical models, but a focus on the

comparative analysis of case studies.

Adaptation to environmental variability has been a focus

of anthropology since the early 1900s. In the 1990s scholars

began to use the term adaptation for the study of the conse-

quences of human induced climatic change, without explicit-

ly relating this back to the conceptual origins in anthropolo-

gy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines

adaptation as an „adjustment in ecological, social, or eco-

nomic systems in response to actual or expected climatic

stimuli and their effects or impacts. This term refers to

changes in processes, practices, or structures to moderate or

offset potential damages or to take advantage of opportuni-

ties associated with changes in climate. It involves adjust-

ments to reduce the vulnerability of communities, regions, or

activities to climatic change and variability“ (McCarthy et al.,

2001, p. 643).

In recent years, the separate communities of resilience, vul-

nerability and adaptation have had a major influence on the

research focused on the human dimensions of global change.

This was quite visible at the Open Meeting in Bonn where

many parallel sessions were related to vulnerability, resilience

or adaptation research. As the synthesis of the literature con-

firmed, human dimensions scholars are starting to use the

same terms, but they use the concepts sometimes differently

and do not always work together to the degree that might have

been expected given the thematic overlaps.

Encouraging more cross-disciplinary work on these themes

was a major reason for organizing the Arizona Workshop with

a small group of 25 scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss

the concepts and define future challenges for IHDP research

that embrace the different concepts. Sander van der Leeuw(Arizona State University) organized this workshop at Arizona

State University where representatives from the IHDP core

projects, the IHDP Scientific Committee, and various scholars

in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation were brought

together. The session in Bonn was organized to report on the

Arizona Workshop and on further developments growing out

of this Workshop.

Marco Janssen (Arizona State University) started with a

presentation of his paper, co-authored with Michael Schoon,

Weimao Ke and Katy Börner, all from Indiana University, on

scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation

within the human dimensions of Global environmental

Change. The paper presents the results of a bibliometric analysis

of the knowledge domains resilience, vulnerability and adapta-

tion within the research activities on human dimensions of

global environmental change. A database of 2,286 relevant pub-

lications during the last 30 years were collected and analysed in

terms of co-authorship relations, and citation relations.

The number of publications in the three knowledge

domains increased rapidly during the last decade. However,

the resilience knowledge domain is only weakly connected

with the other two domains in terms of co-authorships and

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 1 1

6th Open MeetingA N I H D P C R O S S C U T T I N G I S S U E

citations. The resilience knowledge domain has a background

in ecology and mathematics with a focus on theoretical mod-

els, while the vulnerability and adaptation knowledge

domains have a background in geography and natural haz-

ards research with a focus on case studies and climate change

research. There is an increasing number of cross citations and

papers classified in multiple knowledge domains. This seems

to indicate a slow merging of the different knowledge

domains.

The second speaker, Barry Smit from the University of

Guelph focused on the concept of adaptation and adaptive

capacity in the context of vulnerability of human systems to

global changes. Barry discussed a number of different ways the

concept has been used in the climate change community, illus-

trated by his own research where he used the various

approaches. Earlier approaches focused on the macro level and

the monetary valuation of adaptation, while recent studies

look at ways to facilitate practical adaptations and enhance-

ment of adaptive capacity at the community level.

Carl Folke (Stockholm University) was the third speaker in

the panel, and he discussed the recent developments in the

area of resilience. Although the concept originates in ecology,

it has been used for the analysis of social-ecological systems in

recent years. Foci in recent years include the local and tradi-

tional knowledge of ecological dynamics, the importance of

system dynamics across scale and the interactions between

scales, and the difference between resilience and transforma-

bility of systems.

Neil Adger from the University of East Anglia gave a pres-

entation on vulnerability at Arizona State University, but was

not able to attend the Open Meeting in Bonn. Adger discussed

recent developments in vulnerability analysis, especially with-

in the area of climate change. Adger formulates a number of

challenges. First, a theory of adaptation is required that explic-

itly incorporates the formation, persistence and causes of vul-

nerability. A second challenge arises from the tension between

objective and subjective measures of vulnerability. The vulner-

ability research community interacts with scientific communi-

ties in geological hazards, risk research, climate change, land

use change and others. It seeks to build credibility in these

interactions by developing credible measures of vulnerability

to provide apparent rigor and comparability. In doing so, how-

ever, vulnerability measures necessarily rely on objectively

measurable or external outcomes of vulnerability where vul-

nerability may be perceived or experienced differently by those

who are the most vulnerable.

From these discussions of the three core concepts, one

learns about the different intellectual backgrounds, but that

they also are beginning to use similar terms. For example, the

term adaptive capacity is a key term used in the resilience com-

munity, and the term resilience is also used in the vulnerability

community. Due to the different intellectual histories, these

terms do not always have the same meaning. Gilberto Gallopín,from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the

Caribbean in Chile, presented his analysis of the epistemological

linkages among the concepts of resilience, vulnerability and

adaptation. These concepts are related in nontrivial ways. For

example, vulnerability is not the opposite of resilience. There-

fore, efforts should be made to develop clear (and hopefully,

shared) specifications of the concepts in the abstract, ecological,

and social senses, that are mutually compatible. This can be crit-

ical for the interactions between social and natural sciences in

the study of the coupled socio-ecological systems

The last speaker at the Bonn session, Oran Young (Uni-

versity of California), presented a paper on: „How Will Global-

ization Affect the Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptability of

Socio-Ecological Systems at Various Scales? An Agenda for Sci-

entific Research.“ The paper is co-authored by Frans Berk-

hout, (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Gilberto Gallopín,

Marco Janssen, Elinor Ostrom, and Sander van der Leeuw.

During the intense discussions at the Arizona Workshop, chal-

lenges were addressed regarding the future research agenda of

human dimensions of global environmental change from the

perspective of the concepts resilience, vulnerability and adap-

tation. A topic that emerged during the Workshop was the

implications of globalization on the resilience, vulnerability

and adaptability of social-ecological systems at scales ranging

from the local to the global.

Globalization itself is not treated as a variable, owing to the

term’s lack of precision and the absence of standard measures or

indicators of globalization. Rather, globalization refers to a col-

lection of related developments that can be disaggregated and

analyzed one at a time. The structure of the global social-ecolog-

ical system is changing because of changing connections at all

kind of scales. Sometimes developments are more rapid at high-

er levels than the lower levels can deal with, as in the case of the

changing institutions in the European Union. We get more con-

nected at a global scale leading to a faster spread of information

and infectious diseases. The diversity, whether it is biodiversity,

language diversity or institutional diversity, is decreasing. In

sum, globalization has implications for the resilience, vulnerabil-

ity and adaptability of social-ecological systems. Globalization is

not a new phenomenon, but it may be an important crosscutting

theme to address resilience, vulnerability and adaptation of

social-ecological systems at multiple scales. Therefore, Young

and his co-authors see globalization as a key research challenge

for the IHDP community in the coming years.

The papers presented during this Bonn panel will be

brought together after revision for a special issue of the journal

Global Environmental Change on the topic of „Resilience, Vul-

nerability and Adaptation“, which will be edited by Marco

Janssen and Elinor Ostrom. The special issue will appear in

2006. A number of further activities are in development for the

near future, since the general opinion of many human dimen-

sions scholars is that the crosscutting theme of „resilience, vul-

nerability and adaptation“ within the human dimensions com-

munity is a valuable one, and a theme that does bring scholars

together from various backgrounds with a similar focus.

MARCO JANSSEN is Assistant Professor at the School of

Human Evolution and Society Change, Arizona State Univer-

sity, USA; Marco.Janssen@asu.edu

ELINOR OSTROM is Professor of Political Science at the Center

for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environment,

Indiana University, USA; ostrom@indiana.edu

References: www.ihdp.org/updateom05/references.html

1 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingI N S T I T U T I O N A L D I M E N S I O N S

➤ The emerging system of global environmental governance is

marked by a shift from state-driven politics and inter-govern-

mental cooperation to the inclusion of non-state actors and to

new forms of public-private and private-private cooperation.

Carefully orchestrated campaigns of environmentalists have

changed foreign policy of powerful states and initiated new

global rules. International networks of scientists and experts

have emerged, in a mix of self-organization and state-sponsor-

ship, to provide complex information that is indispensable for

policy-making on issues marked by analytic and normative

uncertainty. Corporations have also taken a more prominent

role in international decision-making, for example in the

Global Compact that major firms have concluded with the

United Nations.

These activities of private actors in global environmental

governance are no longer confined to lobbying governments.

Increasingly, non-state actors participate in global institutions

and at times negotiate their own standards, such as in the For-

est Stewardship Council or the Marine Stewardship Council,

two standard-setting bodies created by major corporations

and environmental advocacy groups without any direct

involvement of governments. Public-private co-operation has

received even more impetus with the 2002 Johannesburg

World Summit on Sustainable Development and its focus on

partnerships of governments, non-governmental organiza-

tions and the private sector – the so-called Partnerships for

Sustainable Development.

This emergence of private actors and private institutional

mechanisms in global environmental governance can be

broadly explained by its problem characteristics. Analytical

and normative uncertainties require insights and value state-

ments that states no longer can gain through traditional forms

of policy-making based on formal representation by their

domestic constituencies. Functional or spatial interdependen-

cies create policy deadlocks that make space for private rule-

setting, as was the case in global policies on fisheries or forests.

Global environmental governance therefore requires the pri-

vate actor at the global and local levels. At the same time, how-

ever, this gives private actors new degrees of autonomy from

intergovernmental or single-state decision-making.

All this poses challenging research questions. Non-state

actors lack the traditional means of coercion and power that

are defining characteristics of the state. Instead, non-state

actors yield influence through softer forms of authority that

often work through persuasion, arguing, the contribution of

new knowledge and the altering of global discourses. The

exact ways in which such authority is used, however, is not yet

fully understood. Most literature still builds on single-discipli-

nary case-study research with case selection often influenced

by practical considerations or flawed through case-selection

on the dependent variable, in particular where only ‘success

stories’ are chosen. There is hence a need for research pro-

grammes on transnational institutions that is complementary

to the major effort of the 1990s on analysing intergovernmen-

tal environmental regimes. These programmes could explore

key factors that explain the emergence of public-private and

private-private governance mechanisms at global and regional

levels, as well as the political effectiveness of private gover-

nance.

Furthermore, the increasing authority of non-state actors

in global environmental governance poses new questions

regarding their accountability and legitimacy. While the

nation state can take recourse to formal means of legitimation

that include universal elections representing all interests and

stakeholders, non-state actors are forced to rely on different

forms of legitimacy, including moral claims related to a public

good, semi-democratic claims related to membership, or out-

come-oriented claims that derive their legitimacy from the

results of the activity of non-state actors. Despite a growing

body of literature, the legitimacy of non-state actors, including

whether private involvement in global decision-making fosters

or harms the ideal of global democracy, has not yet been suffi-

ciently analysed.

These questions of authority, accountability and legitimacy

of non-state actors in global environmental governance stood

at the centre of a series of presentations at the 6th Open Meet-

ing, as part of the larger framework of the IHDP core project

‘Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change’

(IDGEC). None of these papers addressed the more tradition-

al research foci in the field of non-state actors, such as envi-

ronmentalist organizations like Greenpeace or the World Wide

Fund for Nature. Instead, all papers explored new actors that

have been underresearched, such as intergovernmental

bureaucracies or multinational corporations, or new, yet

unexplored mechanisms of global environmental governance,

notably transnational rule-making.

NON-STATE AUTHORITY AND LEGITIMACY IN GLOBAL

ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCEBY FRANK BIERMANN

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 1 3

6th Open MeetingI N S T I T U T I O N A L D I M E N S I O N S

In one paper, Steffen Bauer, a researcher at the Freie Uni-

versität Berlin and a fellow of the Global Governance Project

(glogov.org), presented the research design and first results of

the MANUS project, a 4-year research effort of a group of ten

researchers based in Germany and the Netherlands. The

MANUS project analyses a type of actors that has been rela-

tively neglected by mainstream International Relations

research: the plethora of international bureaucracies ranging

from the United Nations headquarters to the often minuscule

yet influential secretariats of international treaties. Bauer’s

presentation provided a first theoretical conceptualization for

the assessment and explanation of the influence of interna-

tional bureaucracies. He reviewed the authority of bureaucra-

cies in the light of different theories of International Relations,

notably rational institutionalism and sociological institution-

alism, and developed different criteria employed in the

MANUS project to assess the influence of international

bureaucracies. Bauer and colleagues identified their influence

in three functional areas. One domain of influences are the

knowledge and belief systems of actors, where bureaucracies

play a role through the funding and administration of

research, synthesis of scientific findings, and development of

problem frames and policy assessments. Bauer gave the inter-

national response to global warming as an example: In the late

1980s, uncertainty about global warming prevented govern-

ments from taking action. Knowledge was non-existent or dis-

puted among experts and lay-people. In this situation, it was

the bureaucrats of the World Meteorological Organisation and

the UN Environment Programme that initiated and organized

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to develop

consensus documents on the state of knowledge and on possi-

ble political response strategies.

Bauer and colleagues identified international bureaucracies

also as influencing global environmental governance through

the creation, support and shaping of norm-building processes.

Furthermore, they viewed international bureaucracies as cru-

cial in the implementation and revision of treaties, in particu-

lar through the staff of treaty secretariats, which organize

meetings, set agendas and report to the conferences of the par-

ties. International bureaucracies appear crucial in shaping

procedures, providing arenas for issue-specific negotiations

and framing inter- and transnational processes of bargaining

and arguing. Finally, international bureaucracies shape global

environmental governance through assistance to countries to

implement international agreements, which reshapes national

interests. Bauer then explored a number of hypotheses to

explain variation in the influence of these bureaucracies,

focusing as independent variables on the external institutional

setting of bureaucracies („policy“), the problem structure in

specific issue areas („problems“), and the internal factors that

could explain variation in bureaucratic authority in addition

to problem structures and external institutional settings

(„people and procedures“).

The second paper by Philipp Pattberg and KlausDingwerth from the University of Bremen and the London

School of Economics-and also both affiliated with the Global

Governance Project-focused on one specific aspect of non-

state agency-rule-making-and explored the authority and

legitimacy of transnational rules through a comparative study

of different transnational rule-making mechanisms. They

argued that as a relatively recent phenomenon, transnational

rule-making processes could be considered the most apparent

expression of the shift from state-driven politics and intergov-

ernmental cooperation to non-state-driven global governance.

In recent years, many such rule-making processes have

emerged around issues of global sustainability politics. As they

often focused on issues where intergovernmental decision-

making processes were either stalled or absent, some authors

have framed these processes as a merely complementary activ-

ity to intergovernmental negotiation. However, others have

praised these new mechanisms for being more inclusive, trans-

parent and accountable than intergovernmental decision-

making, and have hence suggested that non-state multi-stake-

holder processes could serve as a blueprint for global policy-

making in the ‘age of globalization’.

Pattberg and Dingwerth, on their part, attempted a system-

atic approach to this debate and asked three questions: (1)

Why do transnational rules emerge in global sustainability

politics? (2) How do these rules acquire authority and thus

matter in world politics? (3) What difference do certain proce-

dural and organizational features make with reference to the

democratic legitimacy of transnational rules? To answer these

questions, Dingwerth and Pattberg have researched in detail

five transnational processes: the World Commission on Dams,

the Forest Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship

Council, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible

Economies, and the Global Reporting Initiative.

Pattberg and Dingwerth argued that transnational systems

of rules emerge because demand for regulation is not met by

adequate supply on the national and international level. Going

beyond a rather simplistic functional explanation, their

research indicates that two additional features seem to be deci-

sive: the ability of non-state actors to construct a problem in a

novel way, most often as a risk for business interests, and an

inclusive idea that bridges existing differences, often based on

concepts of balanced representation, openness and shared

ownership. They also found that transnational systems of rules

show three types of influences: normative influences that are

the result of the concrete rules of the institution (e.g. how to

conduct a major dam-building project or how to conduct cor-

porate sustainability reporting); cognitive and discursive

Phot

o by

Ula

Löw

1 4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingI N S T I T U T I O N A L D I M E N S I O N S

influences that result from the transfer of knowledge and

learning processes (e.g. the framing of climate change as a risk

for institutional investors by the Coalition for Environmental-

ly Responsible Economies); and structural influences that

result from the interaction of transnational rules with existing

political or economic structures (e.g. the shift in markets and

trade flows induced by the Forest Stewardship Council). Pat-

tberg and Dingwerth finally laid out that the democratic qual-

ity of transnational rules depends on features that can be

attributed to distinct organizational forms of transnational

rule-making: Commissions (such as the World Commission

on Dams) and foundations (such as the Global Reporting Ini-

tiative) are more conducive to a deliberative mode of interac-

tion, while membership associations (such as the Forest Stew-

ardship Council) have-at least where membership criteria are

relatively relaxed-a comparative advantage in terms of inclu-

siveness and accountability.

The third paper was presented by Phillip Stalley of George

Washington University. In his paper, Stalley analysed the role

that foreign firms play in environmental governance in devel-

oping countries, an issue that generates particular relevance

from the fact that a large portion of pollution in developing

countries stems from industry and that most developing

countries compete to attract foreign investments. Stalley laid

out that many in the activist and policy arenas suspect that

foreign firms use their economic clout to press Southern gov-

ernments to turn a blind eye to environmental protection,

while business representatives argue that corporate environ-

mentalism, ethical supply chain policies and technology trans-

fer serve to enhance environmental governance in host coun-

tries. Stalley explained that both arguments make intuitive

sense, yet that the academic literature is surprisingly devoid of

case studies-which turns the issue essentially into an empirical

question. Stalley therefore presented his work on the environ-

mental activity of foreign firms in the chemical industry of

China, based on extensive field research in Shanghai. His

analysis extended not only to the environmental behaviour of

foreign firms themselves, but also to their relationship with

environmental regulators and domestic firms. In conclusion,

Stanley sketched possible policy options for governments

seeking to use foreign investment in a manner that enhances

sustainable development.

Kyla Tienhaara of the Institute for Environmental Studies,

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and a fellow of the Global Gov-

ernance Project, made the final presentation of the session.

Like Stalley, she focused on multinational corporations acting

as foreign investors in developing countries. However, in con-

trast to his presentation, she addressed how these actors might

have a negative impact on domestic regulation. In particular,

she explained how foreign investors could use investor-state

dispute settlement mechanisms to challenge environmental

regulation.

Tienhaara argued that while investor-state dispute mecha-

nisms have been present in bilateral investment treaties since

the 1960s, there has been a substantial increase in the number

of disputes brought before international arbitration mecha-

nisms in recent years. One way in which environmental regu-

lations have been challenged is through provisions in invest-

ment agreements on expropriation. While direct expropria-

tions and nationalizations have become quite rare, so-called

‘indirect expropriations’ have become more pertinent. One

particular type of indirect expropriation, a ‘regulatory taking’,

is particularly relevant, as it is a taking of property that arises

from state measures, such as the regulation of the environ-

ment. According to Tienhaara, the jurisprudence on the mat-

ter of regulatory takings, and the requirement to compensate

such takings, has been mixed.

Tienhaara stressed that while it is critical that researchers

assess the outcomes of investor-state disputes that involve

matters of public policy, the procedures followed in arbitra-

tion mechanisms make this difficult and in some cases even

impossible. She argued that there is a lack of transparency,

accountability and participation of third parties in investment

disputes. In particular, procedural problems are that not all

cases are registered, that proceedings are closed awards that do

not have to be published, that parties choose their own judges

and individuals may act as both counsel and as judges, that

there is no precedent and no appeals process, and that in most

cases there is no procedure for submission of amicus curiae

briefs.

Tienhaara suggested that these procedural problems are

not only relevant for researchers, but crucially, for regulators,

particularly in developing countries. She hypothesized that the

uncertainty created by the current framework, when com-

bined with the financial risk involved in proceeding to invest-

ment arbitration, could create situations in which the threat of

an investment dispute is sufficient to convince a government

to reverse or amend an offending regulation. She presented a

case study from Indonesia that involved multinational mining

corporations that had threatened the Indonesian government

with investment arbitration over a 1999 forestry law, which

banned open-pit mining methods in protected forests. After

several years of debate the Indonesian government eventually

allowed thirteen prioritized companies to operate open-pit

mines in protected forests. According to Tienhaara, there is

evidence to suggest that the government’s decision was based,

at least in part, on the desire to avoid arbitration. Tienhaara

concluded that more research needed to be conducted on how

investor-state disputes may be influencing government policy,

and also on how the current system of investor protection can

be reformed to make it more accountable, transparent and

inclusive.

All four papers presented at this session at the IHDP 2005

Open Meeting presented valuable insights into one of the

most exciting areas of current global governance research-

authority and legitimacy beyond the state. All papers made

important contributions, yet all also made clear that this area

of research is by far not sufficiently explored. Therefore, the

analysis of private agency and of transnational institutions in

global environmental governance is likely to gain salience in

the research agenda of the IHDP-IDGEC core project in the

years that follow the project’s first Synthesis Conference in

December 2006 in Bali, Indonesia.

FRANK BIERMANN is Professor of Political Science and Envi-

ronmental Policy Sciences, Institute for Environmental Stud-

ies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands;

frank.biermann@ivm.vu.nl

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 1 5

6th Open MeetingI N D U S T R I A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

➤ The last couple of years, two in particular – since the former

Open Meeting in Montreal in 2003 – brought some interesting

advances in the field of Industrial Transformation.

Firstly, it is now widely recognized in scientific and some

policy circles that current traditional policy approaches will

not be sufficient in our struggle with Global Environmental

Change (GEC). Given the complexity and urgency of these

problems, a transformation of the way in which human needs

are being satisfied, is seen as a promise though still necessitat-

ing a good knowledge base before informing policy on sound

alternatives.

Secondly, science in the field of IT has progressed to the

extent where we now have a good understanding of what is

meant by a „transformation towards sustainability“ – an issue

still not fully settled at the time of the Montreal discussions.

Namely, there seems to be an agreement – although language

may differ in some cases – that a transformation towards sus-

tainability denotes a long term, major or better say radical (as

opposed to incremental) change (Elzen & Wieczorek, 2005) in

the socio-ecological regime. Such a transformation encom-

passes mutually reinforcing changes in the economic, techno-

logical, institutional and socio-cultural domains. Analysts

from different backgrounds have used various concepts to

address the complexity of such change: system innovation,

regime transformation, technological transition, socio-eco-

nomic paradigm shift, industrial transformation, and others.

Despite of these rather significant developments there are

still many serious challenges in dealing with transformations

towards sustainability. A major challenge is to better under-

stand the dynamics of these processes. Their complexity

requires a combination of insights developed in various sepa-

rate disciplines. An ongoing and in-depth discussion between

these different perspectives might help to identify common

themes and potential synergies to characterize and understand

transition processes. This could eventually contribute to the

creation of policies that have the ambition to induce some-

what more radical changes than e.g. „the improvement of effi-

ciency by factor 4.“

NICHE-REGIME INTERACTIONS

System innovation studies took socio-technical systems as a

unit of analysis of sustainability transformations. From the IT

perspective, this seems not a bad idea as long as the vision is to

transform these systems towards sustainability, with environ-

ment being a part of it1. The system innovation writings in the

area of sustainability transitions emphasize this special role of

PROGRESS IN INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION

THE BONN 2005 IT SESSIONS

BY ANNA WIECZOREK AND FRANS BERKHOUT

1 It is perhaps sensible to explain here that system innovation studies do notonly look at transitions that take place on environmental grounds but alsosearch for general patterns of change in socio-technical systems, such as e.g.development of a steam ship or an engine car. Despite of the recent recogni-tion of the institutional embedding of socio-technical systems, still not muchand often no attention is spared for the ecological implications of thesechanges.

technological niches, which generate radical innovations, and

are the locations for learning processes (Elzen, 2004). These

niches need to be protected against natural market selection if

they are to induce change to the existing, often locked-in

regimes. This strategic niche management as described by

Kemp, Schot and Hogema (1998) served as a basis for the tran-

sition management ideas presented at the 6th Open Meeting by

Jan Rotmans. He argued that the management of transition in

a strict steering/planning-and-control sense is not possible

though there are vital chances to modulate the ongoing

dynamics towards sustainability goals. In his speech, Jan Rot-

mans presented transition management as a new form of gov-

ernance based on adjustment and learning in the 4-steps cycle:

1) Establishment and development of a transition arena

2) Development of a sustainability visions and transition

agenda

3) Initiation and execution of transition experiments

4) Evaluation, monitoring of the process, goals, policies and

learning effects

However, as promising as this approach may seem for solv-

ing at least parts of the GEC problem, it also leaves quite a

number of open questions to be asked about the role of tech-

nological niches in sustainable development; the interaction

between niches and regimes that are supposed to undergo a

radical change; and the role of stakeholders.

A number of papers in the session presenting the Sustain-

able Technologies Programme STP of the UK Economic and

Social Research Council touched upon these issues. AdrianSmith, for instance, argued in his presentation that the idea of

niche development is not as new as it may seem. It actually

dates back to the 1970’s when green practitioners began devel-

oping niche alternatives. In order to inform current niche the-

ory, Smith analysed the history of eco-housing and organic

food in the UK. He highlighted the significance of translations

between niche and mainstream contexts, the importance of

mainstream tensions, and the roles of true believers. „Transla-

tion“ was referred to as the finding that socio-technical prac-

tices developed in the niche context would only diffuse if they

can be translated into meaningful practices in the very differ-

ent contexts that pertain in the mainstream. „Tensions“ were

referred to as the fact that niches would not be turned to as a

source of innovation for mainstream actors unless those

actors feel themselves under pressure to change. Meanwhile,

true believers were presented as vital to the initiation of green

niches, as those who have the ideals, motivation, and stamina

to try and get initiatives established, often despite being poor-

ly resourced. True believers are also concerned about co-

option of their ideal practices by the mainstream. According to

Smith, Green niches can thus be sources for mainstream inno-

vation, but not models for innovation.

Chris Hendry, in his presentation, further discussed how

niche applications spread across market and what the require-

I N D U S T R I A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

1 6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

ments are for establishing successful niche positions. He used

case studies of fuel cell development in three market applica-

tions to illustrate specific market entry approaches, adoption

barriers and the roles of different actors in overcoming them.

He also argued that not all regime changes involve the same set

of factors.

A complementary analytical perspective on regime shifts

by investigating factors and mechanisms that weaken prevail-

ing regimes and by this create space for the emergence of alter-

native socio-technical settings has been proposed in another

session on the „Sustainable Transition of Infrastructures“ by

Bernhard Truffer and Jochen Markard. The authors used

examples of innovation in the electricity supply sector that

have the potential of inducing sustainable transformation, and

they emphasized the strong influence of institutional setting

and actor constellation in the process.

ACTORS

In fact, actors and their roles in either promoting, hinder-

ing or shaping change towards sustainability becomes a theme

that gets increasingly more attention within the IT type of

research. Whether government, consumers or NGOs – they

are all found to be crucial to the potential change. Next to the

analysis of the market incentives, such as profitability via

adding value in the food system (contribution by Ken Green),

the issue of partnerships is being investigated as a factor that

may bring either incremental or radical innovation (as

described in a case from the waste sector by Rachel Slater).

Ineke Meijer, in her presentation, investigated the influence of

perceived transition uncertainties on the stakeholders’ innova-

tion decision. She stressed that better insight in the uncertain-

ties may help us (i) understand the process of change better

and (ii) suggest possible points of policy intervention. Meijer

proposed a systematics of various uncertainties and analysed

the effects that these various types of uncertainties have on the

actor’s decisions in the case of a transition towards a micro-

cogeneration of heat and power systems in the Netherlands.

GREAT TRANSITIONS

Moving somewhat beyond the niche-regime interface and

beyond questions on the specific role of technology or actors

in initiating radical change towards sustainability, the Open

Meeting contributions again emphasized the need to investi-

gate transitions at a higher, more aggregated, macro-level of

world regimes. The open question, however, is: Are there

methods that can help us identify such processes and factors

by which societies can identify the stage of transition they cur-

rently follow? This is to compare transformations that take

place at different times and at different geographical locations.

Perhaps these insights can be helpful for identifying possible

points of intervention. Marina Fischer Kowalski, in her pres-

entation on comparing transitions in the North and South,

proposed to apply some new methods of „multidimensional

time distance analysis“. In her study on the transition from the

agrarian to an industrial mode of subsistence she focused on

(i) the biophysical dimensions of social systems such as popu-

lation dynamics, energy and material flows and land use; and

on (ii) the socio-economic factors. One of the most interesting

outcomes of her study on past transitions across time and

space in, for example, the energy sector was that Austria

reached the same level of development as the UK, but 200

years faster and with less impact on the environment. Extrap-

olation to the future in the same sector suggests that countries

that are currently developing will need between some 50 years

(Latin America) and about 250 years (South Asia) to catch up

with countries like Austria or the UK. Still, the ongoing transi-

tions are strongly influenced by multiple factors and co-evolu-

tionary developments, which may lead to very different transi-

tion pathways. The good news for policy makers is that the

pace and the direction of these processes may be influenced by

appropriate policies.

SCENARIOS

Scenarios are yet another useful tool to explore future

developments and they can also help to inform strategic deci-

sions (by policy makers as well as industry) in situations of

uncertainty. In his talk, Boelie Elzen argued that the existing

scenario methods are not well suited to explore transitions.

They pay little attention to interactions between technical and

societal developments and neglect cross-links between various

developments. Boelie proposed a new scenario method that

explicitly pays attention to the interrelation between technical

and societal factors in innovation processes (Socio-Technical

Scenarios – STSc). The method builds upon the above-men-

tioned multilevel transition theory and explores possible

developments on various levels (niche, regime, landscape). It

describes how these levels can influence each other to present a

richer picture of possible pathways towards sustainability. He

evaluated the usefulness of this STSc method for coordination

of activities of different stakeholders towards sustainability in

the mobility sector.

Four interesting transition scenarios (Firewalled Europe,

Sustainable Trade, Fossil Trade and Fenceless Europe) for

European energy transition have been presented by Jos Brug-gink. His storylines connect plausible global developments in

the world energy markets and climate change policies with

European energy regime changes and related national (EU

member states) innovation pressures. Bruggink expects that

two major events would have a grand influence on the urgency

and direction of the energy innovation in Europe:

– The arrival of a global peak in oil production; and

– The failure in global climate change policies.

(Bruggink 2005)

His conclusion was that the world economy is moving

towards a fossil trade scenario where oil production will peak

in the period of 2010-2020 and where there are no viable post-

Kyoto climate change policies. Only a strong link between cli-

mate change and poverty reduction, and between trade and

environment, could lead to a sustainable trade future where

post-Kyoto policies develop effectively. The European energy

sector then has a chance to turn to a large-scale trade in renew-

ables.

SUMMARIZING …

The discussions on these early research results reveal great

progress in the field of Industrial Transformation as well as the

emergence of an epistemic community that is interested in

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 1 7

6th Open MeetingI N D U S T R I A L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N / S C I E N C E - P O L I C Y I N T E R F A C E

specific aspects of radical change in socio-technical systems that

would bring sustainable development. In that respect, the disci-

plinary divide between the various contributions is serving a

good purpose and is by no means counterproductive. Transi-

tions are highly complex and uncertain processes and therefore

they benefit from these different perspectives (Olsthoorn, Wiec-

zorek, 2006). We need to continue the work on analysing past

transitions but also be cautious about jumping into quick con-

clusions about general patterns of change. The future may

evolve along very different paths than expected. Societies and

their conscious actions and policies, however, do not remain

without impact on the shape of our future. Management of

change is no easy task. The complexity of transition processes

implies a warning that transition policies cannot be based on

simple steering philosophies. They will need to take into

account interaction between different stakeholders, their inter-

pretations of the concept of sustainable development, and they

need to leave room for learning and feedback.

This report is based on selected presentations in the field of

Industrial Transformation at the 6th Open Meeting in Bonn

and strongly influenced by the authors’ participation in specific

sessions. We thank all for their contributions and hope very

much to meet at the next OM and further advance this trans-

disciplinary research agenda.

ANNA WIECZOREK is Executive Officer of the Industrial

Transformation core science project of IHDP at the Institute

for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amster-

dam, The Netherlands; anna.j.wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl;http://130.37.129.100/ivm/research/ihdp-it/index.html

FRANS BERKHOUT is Chair of the IT Scientific Steering Com-

mittee, based at IVM, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam;

frans.berkhout@ivm.vu.nl

References: www.ihdp.org/updateom05/references.html

TALK FOR A CHANGE:

COMMUNICATION IN SUPPORT OF SOCIETAL RESPONSE

TO CLIMATE CHANGEBY SUSANNE C. MOSER AND PATRICK LUGANDA

INTRODUCTION

News about global climate change isn’t good. Scanning the

papers on a regular basis, in fact, one could argue, news is get-

ting worse. And if we are honest, we may even say that the

news isn’t the half of it. The scientific literature – not con-

strained by the economic pressures of the news business, jour-

nalistic norms of balancing viewpoints, competing political

priorities, public indifference, and the whims of „issue atten-

tion cycles“ – lays out in far greater depth and sometimes

painstaking detail where things are at. Status, trends, and out-

looks of the world’s climate, ecosystems, economic and social

vulnerabilities, and societal capacities to deal with multiple

rapid and interacting changes can easily dishearten the close

observer. Indeed, the gulf between the urgency that many sci-

entists see in global climate change and compounding global

environmental and social changes vis-à-vis the extent of socie-

tal response to date (both in terms of mitigation and adapta-

tion) is far from closing.

One session at the 6th Open Meeting of the Human Dimen-

sions of Global Change Research Community in Bonn argued

that one important reason for this persistent gap is inadequate

communication of the risks and possible solutions of climate

change to those who could enact changes. Such actors do not

only include policy-makers involved in international climate

negotiations, but ultimately every one: business executives,

local and national government officials, civic society actors in

non-governmental organizations as much as in houses of wor-

ship, educators, and individuals in their personal lives.

Communication plays a critical role in problem definition and

agenda setting, creating an informed public and policy debate,

social mobilization, helping to build political pressure necessary

for policy and social change, and in identifying, promoting and

spreading possible behavioral and policy solutions. For commu-

nication to effectively play these roles, however, there is a growing

need to better understand how the recipients of climate change

information will treat the information that they receive, given

specific personal and cultural concerns and backgrounds and

socio-economic contexts, how they will respond behaviorally,

and what opportunities and barriers exist to implementing a par-

ticular change promoted in a communication campaign.

The communication-social change continuum is here presented with afocus on individual behavior change. This does not suggest that indi-

vidual behavior is the most important locus of climate change response;however, individuals – no matter how far the reach of their decision-making powers – will go through a similar process. Important contex-tual forces (e.g., culture, power relationships, interests, capacities) will

shape this bi-directional and cyclical process in unique ways.

1 8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

The session, entitled „Climate Change Needs Social Change

– The Role of Communication“, organized by the authors,

brought together a variety of perspectives from Europe, the

U.S., and Africa1,2 to explore the communication – social

change continuum around the following questions:

• What would effective communication of climate change

look like?

• What role can such communication play in facilitating

social change and societal response to climate change?

• What does research on communication and social change

have to offer to inform improvements in our communica-

tion practice?

• What (cultural) differences and similarities are there in

communication practice across nations that can both val-

idate „good“ practice and inform future research?

Papers in this session explored the interactions, processes,

and impacts of communication at a variety of „interfaces,“ for

example, that between the media – mainly print and TV – and

public opinion in the US (Maxwell Boykoff, University of Cal-

ifornia) and in the UK (Lorraine Whitmarsh, University of

Bath); between experts and the media in northern/coastal Ger-

many (Harald Heinrichs, University of Lüneburg, and HansPeter Peters, Research Center Jülich); between the law, the

media, government, and society at large in the US (MarilynAverill, University of Colorado); and between individuals and

communities – sometimes, but not always, mediated by formal

media channels – in East, Central and Southern Africa (PatrickLuganda). An overview of the communication-social change

continuum in the context of societal response to a global

change challenge such as climate change was provided by

Susanne Moser. It offered the conceptual „glue“ for the individ-

ual papers. This summary touches on some of the common

themes and interesting differences emerging from the papers.

WHAT ROLE CAN COMMUNICATION PLAY IN SOCIETALRESPONSE TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

The papers covered a wide variety of ways in which com-

munication can facilitate social change. Some focused on the

first and maybe most fundamental ways – such as raising

awareness of or alerting to a problem, especially global ones

that are difficult to detect with „the naked eye.“ More deeply,

communication, especially lively and interactive forms of

communication can help people create understanding and

meaning. As such communication helps in direct and indirect

ways to shape public or policy discourse, and thereby, influ-

ence public perceptions of the severity of climate change, per-

ceptions of the state of the science on it, and perceptions of

solutions. This was illustrated clearly in Boykoff ’s paper, which

investigated the impact that the journalistic norm of balancing

viewpoints has had in the US on public perception of the state

of the scientific consensus on climate change.

The public/media discourse in turn helps shape political

agenda and can garner or dissipate public support for policy-

making. Thus, the media plays a crucial role as mediator

between science and society (Whitmarsh, Heinrichs). The

media also plays a critical mediating role between issues of sci-

ence and the law by highlighting and interpreting court cases

about climate change to the listening public (Averill). Clearly,

it is litigation itself that can help clarify existing law, influence

corporate behavior, assign governmental responsibility, and

validate (or undermine as it were) the credibility, legitimacy

and salience of science. But the media, by reporting on such

cases, can extend these roles of litigation to encouraging pub-

lic debate, simply by casting the legal debates in a certain way

in the public arena.

Finally, as Luganda illustrated, communication among

individuals and communities can play an important role as a

first-order coping strategy. Talking about „strange weather“

and changes in climatic patterns simply makes climate change

less puzzling and helps integrate these changes into daily con-

versation and life. Taking a leaf from communication of

HIV/AIDS in Africa, he suggested that communication is a

cheap and powerful tool to reach deeply into people’s personal

lives, allowing for information to be shared easily among con-

cerned or affected populations.

ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONOF CLIMATE CHANGE

The question what role communication could play in soci-

etal response to climate change immediately raises a follow-on

question about actual impact or effectiveness. The presenta-

tions addressed the potential and actual impacts of communi-

cation, but did not directly answer the question what would

constitute effective communication. Obviously, the answer to

that question is highly context-dependent. It depends on the

stated goal of a communication effort, the communicator-

audience interaction, who the audience is and what they need

or want, the fit of communicated information and knowledge

with the audience’s mental models, pre-existing knowledge,

decision-making responsibilities and capacities. For example,

is the intent to simply raise awareness, to inform, to alert the

population at large or a specific subset, is it to educate in

broader and/or deeper ways, is it to mobilize people into

action, or to enable and empower them to take a specific type

of action?

In principle, communication effectiveness may be judged

by what actually has been said, how it has been said, who

and/or how many have been reached by the communication,

how that information has been received, and what the impact

of the communication was on perceptions, understanding,

decisions, and behavior. As a result, the measures of effective

communication one could envision are varied and the ones we

have are typically incomplete. All too frequently, however,

communication efforts are not followed up with attempts to

measure their impact.

We would argue that the measures that do exist can reveal

underlying assumptions about what effective communication

is believed to look like. For example, sometimes we count the

number of pamphlets distributed or the hits on a web site.

These may be the easiest ways to measure „impact“ yet they

S C I E N C E - P O L I C Y I N T E R F A C E : C O M M U N I C A T I O N

1 Unfortunately, the double session of papers was truncated by nearly 50% bythe fact that contributors from South America, other African countries andAsia were unable to attend the meeting due to lack of funding. There areplans underway to compile written versions of all the papers – those present-ed and those intended for presentation – in a forthcoming Special Issue of thenew e-journal Communication, Cooperation and Participation.

2 See http://openmeeting.homelinux.org/abstract_listing.asp; locate Session98; click on „details“ of the session description and for the abstracts of allpapers.

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 1 9

6th Open Meeting

also tend to reflect an underlying notion of communication as

one-way information delivery, where it is assumed that „the

information speaks for itself“ and will motivate appropriate

societal response. Alternatively, one may measure – and social

scientists frequently do, as reflected in several of the papers

presented – the change in perceptions or levels of understand-

ing in specified audiences over time as a result of communica-

tion (Boykoff, Whitmarsh). Sometimes these perceptions and

understandings are compared to a desired level of knowledge

(e.g., lay versus expert understanding of risks, lay versus expert

mental models of global warming). This approach is common

in contexts where the goal of communication is education,

greater preparedness for certain risks, or where researchers are

interested in understanding the impacts of different framings,

content, communication media, and channels have on public

understanding.

Another approach – represented by another one of the

papers (Heinrichs) – is to judge the subjective satisfaction with

communication interaction among those involved, for exam-

ple of reporters and scientists when they interact. Moving

toward decision or behavioral outcomes, one may also meas-

ure effectiveness by the number or types of actions taken in

response to communication (as alluded to by Averill). Typical-

ly, due to the multi-causal influences on decisions and behav-

iors, these linkages are not only difficult to measure, but also

rather weak (Moser). Finally, as another paper illustrated,

communication is also an essential ingredient in the building

of social capital (loosely understood here as informal net-

works of trustful relationships that support societal action).

Measures of social capital are elusive, but the notion reveals an

understanding of communication as a two-way exchange

(Luganda, Whitmarsh). This latter notion comes closest in

some ways to the origin of the word communication, which

shares its Latin roots with that of communion, i.e., a process of

imparting, sharing, and making common.

In short, the measures of communication effectiveness that

we have are partial, but valuable measuring sticks for how well

we are doing. What we know from these studies is that most

lay audiences in the U.S., Europe and Africa, still misunder-

stand the causes and dynamic of climate change, still know lit-

tle of possible solutions, still find it difficult to relate this glob-

al change to their lives and more immediate concerns and

hence still don’t see the relevance or urgency of the issue, and

still don’t understand why action is required now. Studies also

show that scientists and other communicators (e.g., in envi-

ronmental NGOs) frequently employ ineffective methods of

trying to reach lay or policy audiences, and that the cultural

and institutional gap between experts and the media contin-

ues to impede more effective interaction. Thus, improvement

in practice is needed, and more studies of communication

effectiveness are needed, including comparative studies across

nations, cultures, issues, and time.

THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN CLIMATE CHANGECOMMUNICATION

Scientists were the first to detect and define climate

change; they also have dominated public discourse about the

issue. Clearly, they have and continue to play a tremendous

role in the communication of climate change. The media con-

tinues to rely on experts as the most important source of fac-

tual information (Heinrichs) – albeit typically „balanced“ by

a perspective offered by other experts with contrary (and

sometimes contrarian) perspectives. The documented result

of this journalistic practice – as Boykoff showed – has been

the wanting state of public understanding and engagement

with the issue, and the stalled political debate in governmen-

tal circles.

So while scientists will continue to play a big role in com-

municating climate change, presenters at the 6th Open Meet-

ing suggested that it may be time to broaden the circle of

communicators. They also identified the need for a broad-

ened conversation beyond the state of the science and associ-

ated uncertainties. Even though the scientific endeavor is

driven by the pursuits of knowledge about incompletely

understood arenas, the scientific consensus about the reality

of climate change, and the human contribution to it, is grow-

ing. The deeper debate about response options, the associated

trade-offs, and value choices, clearly also requires scientific

input, but can and should not remain a scientific debate (e.g.,

Schneider 2004). In that sort of debate, scientists are not the

only ones that have legitimate standing. Several presenters

and others in the audience argued that the circle of messen-

gers thus needs to be broadened beyond scientists (as mediat-

ed by the media or involved directly). This would imply also a

move toward a dialogical notion of communication (not just

„delivery“ of information). Examples where such a dialogic

notion of communication is already practiced include the vil-

lage communication and learning centers in Africa, or the

agricultural and coastal/marine extension services in the U.S.

In short, this shift would imply a move from one-way to two-

way conversation, involving fundamental shifts in how we

think about and conduct „outreach.“ Such an approach

would also enrich the communication content as it would

allow the information to be adjusted to better fit in the needs

of the recipient audience. It would also allow communicators

to deal with queries and misperceptions at an early stage in

the communication cycle.

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEENDEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The Open Meeting offered a valuable opportunity to begin

moving beyond our typical disciplinary and institutional

enclaves and to compare notes across national experiences.

Even from the limited set of studies represented in our session,

we found interesting similarities in communication across

EU/US/African contexts. Such similarities include, for exam-

ple, the common need for creating relevance, for connecting

climate change to people’s lives and experiences and to deci-

sion-makers’ spheres of influence for the issue to gain salience.

In all countries represented by these papers, the important role

of experts in and for public discourse was emphasized. Clearly,

the challenge of communicating uncertain science, and con-

veying what science is all about, remains problematic in all

regions. At the same time, virtually all papers expressed the

need and desirability of moving beyond the sole reliance on

experts as communicators, and beyond the one-way informa-

tion-delivery model of communication so commonly still

practiced.

S C I E N C E - P O L I C Y I N T E R F A C E : C O M M U N I C A T I O N

2 0 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

Interestingly, across the national contexts represented, there

may be interesting gender issues in access to and choice of com-

munication channels, and in processing of received information

– issues that should be explored further in future research.

Among the interesting differences arising out of the pre-

sentations, we would note, for example, the degree of contro-

versy over the state of scientific consensus in Europe and the

United States, or the relative importance of various communi-

cation channels in developed versus developing countries. In

Europe and the US, for example, newspaper and television are

among the most important information sources for the pub-

lic, whereas in southern Africa, radio and informal communi-

cation channels play a far greater role. Literacy levels and the

availability and affordability of information infrastructure are

key determinants of this difference. In Africa, for example,

even where literacy levels are high, the reading culture may be

poorly developed and access to TV and the internet is limited

by low levels of development and poverty.

Another interesting difference concerns the scope and

reach of the decisions that certain information might inform.

Whereas in developed countries decisions based on the infor-

mation received may be limited to the individual and the

immediate family, in developing countries especially in Africa,

information is shared widely with individuals throughout a

community, especially with influential opinion leaders, elders,

local politicians, educated sons and daughters, thus potentially

influencing a far larger group. These differences imply differ-

ent challenges in how, with whom, and what is being commu-

nicated, and what impact such communication might have.

They also imply different politics surrounding the communi-

cation of climate change. For example, visible, „professional“

contrarianism is virtually absent in Africa.

MOVING FORWARD

Improving the communication of climate change in ways

that can truly facilitate and support societal response to a

global challenge such as climate change requires first and fore-

most specific attention to it. Continuing to talk in the same

ways, through the same channels, using the same tried and un-

true (i.e., ineffective) frames and mental models, and involv-

ing and addressing the same, but limited set of actors, virtual-

ly promises slow progress at best. There is growing evidence,

for example, that where communicators in the media are

exposed to basic science training and information from pro-

fessional scientists, there is a dramatic shift in the delivery of

effective communication (ICPAC/NECJOGHA training work-

shops in the Greater Horn of Africa & Southern Africa).

Moreover, to cross institutional, disciplinary and science-

practice boundaries requires patience, time, institutional sup-

port, willingness, training, and courage among those who would

participate in the emerging, broader conversation. While some

scientists have a natural talent as communicators, many do not

and typically do not receive training to become effective com-

municators. There is little institutional or financial support to do

so. Yet in interdisciplinary and practice-oriented settings, such

boundary-crossing opportunities exist, and valuable lessons are

being learned. Moreover, social scientists studying communica-

tion and social change dynamics can feed critical insights back to

their physical and environmental science colleagues.

Engagement around specific policy challenges, business

opportunities, or adaptation needs – in other words, around

concrete projects – may also provide arenas well enough

defined for participants to open up new channels of commu-

nication, to learn to speak and listen, negotiate visions, edu-

cate each other, and discover common languages. In short,

such opportunities will help to move from information deliv-

ery to engaged dialogue and thus help build the necessary trust

and social capital essential for embarking on social change.

The concreteness of such situations will further help make this

abstract „global change“ issue more real and local, and embed

climate change in wider sustainability challenges.

Some situations may also allow for creative broadening of

the array of communication formats to be employed. For

example, various art forms – theater, story-telling, song, poet-

ry, and dance – are beginning to address climate change,

bringing the scientific issue alive in more engaging, accessible

ways that offer meaning and facilitate emotional engagement.

Finally, the study of communication (and its effectiveness),

and its role in social change has not yet risen to great signifi-

cance in the international human dimensions research com-

munity. Including a wider set of disciplines that contribute to

the larger research endeavor and to the understanding of core

research priorities (e.g., IT, IDGEC, GECHS, and urbaniza-

tion) should be a high priority for the IHDP. Research priori-

ties may include but should not be limited to the following:

• cross-national comparative case studies of the impacts of

communication;

• studies of communication effectiveness;

• exploration of gender differences in how communication

is accessed, received, conducted, and linked to action;

• research into the causal linkages between communication

and social change;

• progress in our understanding of how to connect science

more effectively to social institutions of power and influ-

ence – such as the media, policy-makers at various levels,

businesses, NGOs, and resource managers; and

• a better understanding of the political economy that

shapes what kind of conversation about climate change is

being or can be had, who is and who isn’t heard, and why

it is so difficult to change these conditions.

We thank the presenters and the audience of our session for

lively discussion and for raising some of the important issues

raised in this summary.

SUSANNE C. MOSER is a Research Scientist with the Institute

for the Study of Society and Environment at the National Cen-

ter for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA;

smoser@ucar.edu; www.ncar.ucar.edu

PATRICK LUGANDA is a Journalist and Chairman of the Net-

work of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa

(NECJOGHA), Kampala, Uganda; and member of the ICPAC-

IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center, Nairobi,

Kenya;

patrick_luganda@yahoo.com

References: www.ihdp.org/updateom05/references.html

S C I E N C E - P O L I C Y I N T E R F A C E : C O M M U N I C A T I O N

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 2 1

6th Open Meeting

➤Gender perspectives on global environmental change are

highly relevant to research in human security, yet few initia-

tives have been undertaken to identify gender-differentiated

contributions, impacts and responses to global environmental

change. Although it has been well documented that gender

mediates the use of environment through gender roles,

responsibilities, expectations, norms, and the division of

labour, there has been relatively little research on how vulner-

ability to environmental change, coping capacity, and adaptive

capacity are gendered (Seager and Hartmann, 2004). Drawing

together different perspectives, this panel will serve as the

foundation of a larger research project that combines the

insights of an integrated analysis of local and regional human

security and a gender analysis, to illuminate the real-world

dimensions of vulnerability to global environmental change.

Livia Bizikova and Suruchi Bhadwal were the co-organizers of

this panel session.

Joni Seager (York University, Toronto) explored the inade-

quacy of gendered data and indicators within the UN system,

in particular UNEP, and presented the results of one project to

bring gender into the work of the agency. Suruchi Bhadwal(TERI, New Delhi) highlighted the strong impacts that global-

ization and macro-scale processes of change have on the liveli-

hoods of poor communities in India, and in particular on the

women of these communities. Minu Hemmati, together with

her co-author Ulrike Roehr (both Genanet, Frankfurt)

focused on gender aspects of climate change relevant do devel-

oped countries. Livia Bizikova (AIRD, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver) gave a presentation on the gender

dimension of climate change mitigation and adaptation in

transition countries. S.H.M. Fakhruddin (CEGIS,

Bangladesh) presented a study on gender-differentiated cop-

ing mechanisms and vulnerabilities in the coastal zone of

Bangladesh.

Macro-scale physical processes influence livelihoods of

many dependent on these resources for a living. Strong link-

ages exist between the physical and the social dimension of the

earth’s system, with changes in one influencing the other criti-

cally. Although many studies have sought to explore the

impact of environmental changes on communities, the gen-

dered aspect to vulnerability of these macro-scale processes

has seldom been explored. Exposure to changes in climate,

globalization, or soil degradation induces differential impacts

on gender, posing serious concerns. Gender inequalities, both

in the North and the South, are rooted in existing gender roles

and attitudes that have strong social, economic and environ-

mental implications. These inequalities, however, tend to be

very site-specific and require a close and careful elaboration of

the local conditions. Apart from huge gender disparities in

developing countries, differences can also be observed in

industrialized countries and in countries of transition. The

issues revolve around differential decision-making abilities,

differing roles and responsibilities in terms of access to

resources and benefits, as well as institutional support and

available opportunities.

Gender disparities in industrialized countries are grouped

around lower participation of women in decision-making,

wage gaps, vertical and horizontal segregation of men and

women in the economy, gender roles in care economy, gender-

specific types of violence, feminization of poverty and so on

(Hemmati, Roehr). While in transition countries the attention

towards gender inequalities and the attempts to balance them

are becoming a part of policy development the experience of

these countries also reveals new dimensions of gender

inequalities such as access to land, re-appearance of the typical

women’s and men’s role due to the state’s withdrawal from car-

ing activities, as well as stronger gender segregation in specific

occupational types (Bizikova). In case of countries in the

South, however, the situation is more precarious. Characteris-

tic gender disparities in the South are differential allocations

of wages, physical abuse and violence, exploitation by those in

powerful positions as women are rendered helpless, outward

migration with huge consequences on health resulting in

spread of infectious diseases e.g., AIDS and other health

impacts – posing problems of malnutrition, maternal death

and spread of epidemics, stalled education and low female lit-

eracy rates, as well as reduced empowerment and decision-

making abilities. While rural-urban migration of men, in

many cases, is directly linked to environmental degradation, it

is often the women who stay behind under grim conditions

(lack of clean water, poor soil, exposure to drought and floods,

starvation, as well as lack of adequate protection and mitiga-

tion from natural hazards in general) (Bhadwal).

Underneath potential climate change related measures, the

different gender roles, incongruities and attitudes are hidden.

At the general level, the principal determinant of a society’s

capacity to adapt to change is likely to be access to resources.

This is determined by entitlements that are often the product

of external political factors and processes operating at the

super-national scale but that have consequences at the sub-

national level (Adger et al., 2004). International trade and

multilateral agreements that influence national economic

policies are good examples. Poverty, inequality, isolation and

marginalization can all undermine the entitlements of indi-

viduals and groups, but the inequality between women and

men within a given society or community often is higher than

inequalities between the specific groups or communities. For

example, the average wage differences between men and

women in developing countries as well as within the EU are

higher than differences between average wages across coun-

tries. Therefore, taking into account gender disparities makes

studied processes, trends and indicators less homogenous by

involving different societal needs and values.

H U M A N S E C U R I T Y : G E N D E R

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE, GENDER AND

HUMAN SECURITY BY LIVIA BIZIKOVA1 AND SURUCHI BHADWAL

1 Opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessar-ily reflect the views of Environment Canada.

2 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

The divergence

between approaches,

both top-down and

bottom-up, and their

capability to grasp

gender inequalities,

has significant

impacts. In case of

top-down approach-

es, issues such as

equal representation

of women in the

whole process of

policy preparation

could be a challenge.

Bottom-up approa-

ches on the other

hand provide signifi-

cant information on

the measures re-

quired for adapting

to and mitigating the

effects of climate change, highlighting the necessity of climate

change related measures to be tailored for local needs (Klein et al.

2003). As adaptation strategies reflect the dynamics of peoples’

livelihoods, adaptation must be seen as a process that is itself

adaptive and flexible to address locally specific and changing cir-

cumstances (IISD, 2003). This also allows challenging gender

roles and attitudes by re-assessing current livelihoods from a per-

spective of future strategies, and in this way avoid maintaining the

status quo in gender disparities or even further deepening of gen-

der inequalities. Therefore, only with multi-scale analysis involv-

ing gender sensitive approaches can the full nature of equity and

empowerment issues be exposed (cf. Beg et al., 2002), allowing

particular attention to be paid to supporting strategies that will

secure livelihoods and aid poverty reduction, in addition to

enhancing our understanding of equity issues.

Case studies provide an excellent way to peep into and capture

the micro-scale dimensions of gender-based impacts and vulner-

abilities associated with changes in the global climate. Based on

these studies carried out at the local level, the impacts on women

and their lowered capacities in responding effectively to the so-

felt consequences are increasingly realized.

One of the consequences of climate change related events is

the change in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events

including droughts and floods. The gendered aspects of vulnera-

bility to these macro-scale processes have hardly been taken into

account. Especially in developing countries, in many contexts,

men are better connected with early warning mechanisms due to

their movement in public space and access to formal and infor-

mal channels of communication; e.g. radio, TV, informal com-

munity networks and interaction with officials. Therefore, capac-

ity building to increase the potentials to cope with disasters

requires gender specific approaches. In drought-affected regions,

numerous women toil under severe conditions, in addition to

having to cater to the immediate needs of their children. Reduced

labour and cheap wages during these periods has further signifi-

cant impacts on the household income. Under acute circum-

stances, cases of malnutrition and consequent deaths are report-

ed. Death during child-birth is also common during such times.

In case of floods, women are affected more by the spread of epi-

demics, as basic hygiene precaution cannot be maintained. Dur-

ing both droughts and floods the school drop-out rates of girls is

very high. Examples are cited from case studies in India and

Bangladesh in this context (Bhadwal, Fakhruddin).

Gender-specific response measures and coping strategies to

various vulnerabilities can be observed. Cited specifically in the

context of Bangladesh, women family members in different parts

of the coastal zone were found to be involved with various kinds

of activities that can support the households in critical periods.

Growing livestock (poultry, goats etc.), homestead gardening,

cottage industries, minor financial savings and so forth are

amongst the major coping measures. Men, on the other hand,

were found to rely more on external supports (money lenders,

adjustment/negotiation of the market prices in accord with other

farmers) (Fakhruddin).

By considering impacts on gender in proposed steps to

enhance the resilience of communities to cope effectively with cli-

mate variability and change, gender disparities can be reduced.

Care must be taken to implement non-conflicting procedures that

are in alliance with the sustainable development goals. For exam-

ple, measures to increase carbon sequestration such as reforesta-

tion and afforestation could be in conflict with subsistence farm-

ing (women’s tasks) and related health impacts from changes in

diet on women and their children, no availability of off-farm work

(if the proposed measure requires less-intensive labour force) and

potential increase of women in the informal sector (Bizikova).

To be able to prevent losses during disasters, the role of women

needs to be recognized, and they have to become more actively

engaged in the risk reduction process. Gender mainstreaming can

encourage ownership of the process and thus reduce associated

risks. In order to better cope with negative impacts, increased rep-

resentation of women at decision-making level, changes in land-

ownership status, and gender-sensitive adaptation measures have

to be part of the climate change measures.

Gender-conscious approaches should be adopted in risk man-

agement efforts to cope effectively with disasters particularly at

the community level. Gender-differentiated coping mechanisms

and vulnerability assessments will increase capacity of men and

women to live more safely in hazard-prone environments,

increase women’s access to resources (including financial

resources), and foster a transition to a more sustainable society

less exposed to the vagaries of changing weather conditions. In

order to successfully introduce gender sensitive methods of prob-

lem analysis and impact assessment, women have to be empow-

ered at the decision-making level. This will also lead to better gen-

der-responsive and participatory development policies.

LIVIA BIZIKOVA is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the

Adaptation and Impact Research Division (AIRD), The

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;

lbizikova@ires.ubc.ca; www.ubc.ca

SURUCHI BHADWAL is Area Convenor and Associate Fellow

with the Centre for Global Environment Research, TERI, New

Delhi, India; suruchib@teri.res.in; www.teriin.org

References: www.ihdp.org/updateom05/references.html

H U M A N S E C U R I T Y : G E N D E R

Capacity Building of Rural IndianWoman

Phot

o:Co

urte

sy o

f Wor

ld B

ank

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 2 3

6th Open Meeting

➤Amy Lovecraft and Tun Myint co-chaired a panel entitled

„Local, Regional, and International Institutions to Reduce

Conflict and Increase Capacity for Restoration, Protection, and

Usage of Transboundary Waters.“ The session was located in

the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change

section of the conference. Both Amy Lovecraft (University of

Alaska Fairbanks) and Tun Myint (University of Indiana

Bloomington) are Research Fellows with the Institutional

Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. Their panel

sought to bring together institutional research on bodies of

water which are transnational in location. Recent estimates

note that 263 of the world’s rivers are shared by two or more

countries, and these transboundary watersheds account for at

least 60% of the world’s freshwater and some 40% of the

world’s people (Gerlak, 2004). As human understanding of the

natural world has expanded, it has become apparent that the

boundary lines of maps, while often drawn around natural for-

mations such as mountain ranges, desert edges, or rivers, have

become political artifacts when trying to manage the ecology of

most natural resources. These realizations by the public and

governing agencies have sparked growth and change in inter-

national boundary diplomacy and administration. The presen-

tations in the session achieved three goals related to analysis of

internationally shared waters. First, as a group the cases of

transboundary relationships and their current governance

mechanisms at multiple scales represented over a dozen affect-

ed countries. Second, the papers evaluated the potential of cur-

rent and proposed institutions to reduce conflict and increase

capacity for achieving resilient ecosystems and sustainable

water goals. The different cases covered a broad spectrum from

new institutions, such as those just developing in Central Asia,

to long established relationships such as those along the Rhine

in Europe. Thirdly, the papers covered several methodologies

from the development of institutional recommendations based

on mathematical models, to in-depth policy history, to Young’s

(2002) fit, interplay and scale. Due to these attributes the ses-

sion audience was able to learn about a diverse array of trans-

boundary water arrangements. The session was crowded, with

six presenters, but nonetheless a question and answer period

followed. This review of the session will now briefly recount

each paper presented and follow up with some of the major

summary lessons.

Grace Koshida (Environment Canada) made the first pres-

entation, called „Drought Risk Management in Canada-U.S.

Transboundary Watersheds: Now and in the Future.“ Her work

examined the significant hazard of drought to both Canada

and the United States. As demand for water increases in North

America so does the potential for conflict in the shared water-

sheds between the two countries. Koshida’s talk presented the

social and ecological vulnerabilities that accompany the threat

of drought in the Okanagan, Poplar, Red, and Great Lakes

Basins. Droughts have multiple effects on any given ecosystem.

For example, they can affect forest fire potential and species’

survival but also have public health aspects related to safe

drinking water. She discussed how drought risk has been man-

aged historically and her work gave an in-depth descriptive his-

tory of each of the institutions present in each basin. Through

the presentation it became clear that climate change and

increasing population pressures will play a major role in the

future availability of water for this region.

The next presentation, by Carmen Maganda (University of

California, San Diego) headed south and addressed the waters

shared between cities in the states of California, United States

and Baja Calfornia, Mexico. Her work, entitled „Competition

for the Water Resources of the Colorado River in Southern

California: The Case of San Diego vs. Imperial Valley“,

stemmed from her doctoral research exploring how trans-

boundary waters are administered (managed, planned, and

assigned) for growing cities sharing water resources. Her pres-

entation compared the regional competition between authori-

ties in the San Diego metropolitan area, and those in Imperial

Valley for the distribution of water from the Colorado River.

The impact of the recently signed Imperial Valley-San Diego

water agreement has had negative collateral effects on Mexican

users of the Colorado River, such as an inability to draw need-

ed water during dry seasons, due to the asymmetrical power

relationship between northern and southern parties. She

argued that her study demonstrates that local elites will con-

tinue to behave in self-interested ways, and create unsustain-

able policies, unless bi-national institutions are better

designed to restrain all parties which rely on a shared resource.

The third presentation, by Sabine Moellenkamp (Universi-

ty of Osnabrück) took the panel to Europe for „Sharing the

Rhine River: Transboundary Cooperation on Multiple Scales

and in a Changing Institutional Environment.“ While a multi-

tude of cooperative arrangements on several scales have

evolved among the nine countries sharing the Rhine, Moel-

lenkamp’s presentation focused on the development of the

German and French partnership. Germany has a federal sys-

tem while France has centralized water agencies and their sys-

tems communicate about the Rhine primarily through the

International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine.

Although their relationship can be constrained by differing

legal systems and attitudes towards the environment, there

have been positive ecological effects from their cooperation.

Her focus was on how these two countries have implemented

the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), which is

mandatory throughout the European Union. The new WFD,

and its eco-regional approach, has created new structures that

make the governance of the Rhine more complex as multiple

stakeholders and agencies must be included. However, she

argued, the relationship between Germany and France for

managing the Rhine has improved; so much so that salmon

have returned.

Taras Samborsky (Moscow State University) presented a

detailed mathematical model about shaping the future of

I N S T I T U T I O N A L D I M E N S I O N S : W A T E R M A N A G E M E N T

THE COMPLEX DYNAMICS OF TRANSBOUNDARY WATER

MANAGEMENTBY AMY L. LOVECRAFT

2 4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

shared water use institutions among several countries in Central

Asia. His talk, „The Theoretical Model of Optimal Division of

Water Recourses Between Different Countries of Central Asia“,

discussed how sharing waters is complicated by the political,

economic, and social problems of Khazakhstan, Kirghizstan,

Tajhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. He offered a theo-

retical model of optimal division of water recourses for these

Central Asian countries. The model was based on the principles

of the market economy, which are rather new for these post-

Soviet republics. The main instrument of the model was a total

economical effect of water recourse utilization as a function of

quantity and quality of water used during a calculation period.

Every country, region or district is considered to be a participant

of the market and can buy or sell some part of quote for the

water utilization and pollution. The model determines the opti-

mum strategy and gives the possibility to reach maximum prof-

it. The model can be used for the scientific substantiation of

quotes and expenses for the ecological monitoring and protec-

tion. The successful realization of Samborsky’s model may pres-

ent opportunities for the normalization of the political situation

in Central Asia as well as guiding economically effective and

ecologically safe utilization of water recourses there, as well as in

other regions of the world.

„Institutional Mechanisms for Conflict Resolution and Water

Cooperation: An Assessment of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint

Rivers Commission“ was presented fifth by Monirul Mirza(Institute for Environmental Studies, Toronto). He noted that a

large number of rivers are shared by India and Bangladesh, as

well as their neighbors, creating a complex policy environment

due to diverse interests and ecological conditions. For example,

the amount of dry season water available in these rivers is not

enough to meet demands of both countries for agriculture, river

regulation, navigation, industrial and domestic water require-

ments, etc. On the other hand, during the monsoon, Bangladesh

is often engulfed by floods generated in the upstream areas

beyond its border. Mirza’s focus in his presentation was on the

institutional relationship between India and Bangladesh

addressing the particular problems of resolving water sharing in

the Ganges River and mitigating flood hazards. In other words,

the region’s water „problems“ are of both excess and scarcity. The

Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission (JRC) was created in

1973. The talk presented an overall assessment of the scope of the

JRC, the roles it played in fostering water cooperation and its

limitations. While the JRC has evolved as an institution and has

the potential, depending on political trends, to greatly benefit the

region, he argued that the records of the negotiations show that

because of its limitations in scope and executive power, political

interventions have been required to really jumpstart water agree-

ments. The presentation also demonstrated that the scope of the

JRC should not be limited to water sharing but should also be

expanded to include other areas of cooperation such as ecosys-

tem and water quality management and non-navigational uses

of water.

The final presenter was Louis Lebel (Chiang Mai University,

Thailand). His ongoing work analysing institutions for water

resources in Vietnam was presented as „The Politics of Scale,

Position and Place in the Management of Water Resources in the

Mekong Region.“ Lebel utilized Oran Young’s institutional

methodology of fit, interplay, and scale to evaluate the appropri-

ateness of the scales for science, management and decision-mak-

ing in the Mekong waters. He argued that these features of an

institution cannot be unambiguously derived from physical

characteristics of water resources. His talk explained how scales

are a joint product of social and biophysical processes. As such,

the politics of scale metaphor has been helpful in drawing atten-

tion to the ways in which scale choices are constrained overtly by

politics and more subtly by choices of technologies, institutional

designs and measurements. But at the same time, the scale

metaphor has been stretched to cover a lot of different spatial

relationships. Lebel argued in his presentation that there are ben-

efits for understanding and action of distinguishing issues of

scale from those of place and position. He illustrated this with

examples from the management and politics of water resources

in the Mekong region where key scientific information is often

limited to a few sources. The key effective institutional manage-

ment will be to shift water politics in the Mekong region from a

technocratic and coercive mode fearful of citizens and science

into a more integrated and deliberative mode open to greater

public participation in decision-making about individual water

resource development projects.

In summary, these excellent presentations conveyed four

important points related to transboundary water management.

First, the use of water resources shift over time as ecological con-

ditions as well as user populations change. This means that insti-

tutions must be flexible in design, or at least open to amend-

ment, so that new circumstances do not mean depletion of

resources. Koshida’s work effectively demonstrated how even

between friendly post-industrial neighbors issues of water

scarcity may drive conflict in the coming decades. Perhaps even

new institutions may need to develop when older ones are

unable to adapt their legal or technical style to a particular prob-

lem. Second, culture and power relationships cannot be ignored

as key variables contributing to the capacity of institutional suc-

cess. Each of the presentations contained this thread but Magan-

da’s and Mirza’s works showed just how important political pres-

tige and national financial resources can be to institutional cre-

ation and implementation respectively. Third, perceptions

toward the water resources themselves will play a role both in

institutional design as well as how existing national and subna-

tional structures view their relationship(s) to the water institu-

tions. Moellenkamp’s presentation of how two European Union

neighbors can still have very different cultural relationships with

the same river as well as Lebel’s stress on the need for the inclu-

sion of citizen-driven information about a resource are excellent

examples of this concept. Finally, each author’s contribution

demonstrates the importance of understanding how institu-

tions, as sets of rules and practices, change (or do not change) the

behaviors of water users from the local to the international.

AMY LOVECRAFT is an Assistant Professor of Political Science

at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, USA; http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu; http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~idgec/about/fellows/lovecraft.html

TUN MYINT is a Research Fellow at the University of Indiana,

Bloomington, USA; http://www.research.iu.edu/centers/wptpa.html; http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~idgec/about/fellows/myint.html

I N S T I T U T I O N A L D I M E N S I O N S : W A T E R M A N A G E M E N T

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 2 5

6th Open Meeting

➤Among the many activities synthesizing the results of the

LUCC (Land-Use and Land-Cover Change) project during the

6th Open Meeting in Bonn in October 2005, there was also a

roundtable to hand over its very subject matter to the newly

established Global Land Project. Already in 2003, the Scientif-

ic Steering Committee of LUCC started to prepare a review of

tasks and activities to be implemented along the lines of the six

LUCC Science Questions:

1) How has land cover been changed by human use over

the last 300 years?

2) What are the major human causes of land-cover change

in different geographical and historical contexts?

3) How will changes in land use affect land cover in the

next 50-100 years?

4) How do immediate human and biophysical dynamics

affect the sustainability of specific types of land uses?

5) How might changes in climate and global biogeo-

chemistry affect both land use and land cover?

6) How do land uses and land covers affect the vulnera-

bility of land-users in the face of change and how do

land-cover changes in turn impinge upon and enhance

vulnerable and at-risk or critical regions?

In this connection, the question was raised of what remained

to be taken up by the new Global Land Project. It became obvi-

ous that the LUCC research questions 1) – 5) could be fairly well

addressed in the final synthesis (see LUCC section in this

report), though research questions 4) and 5) needed revision

and further actions in the then remaining two years lifetime of

the project. A review of LUCC research question number 6)

revealed, however, that it could not be addressed fully and to a

satisfactory degree by the LUCC synthesis. It should therefore

be considered part of the LUCC heritage to be dealt with in

more detail by the new Global Land Project.

A review of the vulnerability theme explained why the

exposure-sensitivity-coping capacity framework was still con-

sidered rewarding, but should be handed over to the Land

Project. Accepting this recommendation, the Global Land

Project rephrased it as one of its three major cornerstones of

Theme 3 in the Science Plan: „How do the vulnerability and

resilience of land systems to hazards and disturbances vary in

response to changes in the human-environment interac-

tions“. The LUCC SSC gave some main arguments for explo-

ration beyond the current state of knowledge. The current

framework (exposure-sensitivity-coping capacity) needs to

be extended to include the minimization of risk through

diversification and the risk/migration nexus. This includes,

for example, risk-taking behaviour in land use, the role of

urbanization and remittances, or the role of insurance and

credit policies. Also, the local context needs to be better inte-

grated so that, for example, household decisions can be incor-

porated in those approaches trying to understand which local

land use strategies minimize or maximize risk. Finally, quan-

tifications of vulnerability should be aimed for wherever pos-

sible, but the heterogeneity of actors and uses within a place

suggests avoiding any large-scale quantification of vulnerabil-

ity at the regional level.

These recommendations where part of the input provided

to a very well attended „handover-session“ from Eric Lambin,Chair of the LUCC SSC to Richard Aspinall and DennisOjima, the interim Co-chairs of the newly constituted GLP

SSC, on 11 October 2005 in Bonn, Germany. Richard Aspinall

and Dennis Ojima presented the GLP science framework and

subsequently faced the critical questions and constructive

input of a distinguished audience of international scholars

interested in land science. They invited all members of the

LUCC community to continue staying involved with the new

GLP and help ensuring continuity from the many scientific

achievements of LUCC, which became so obvious those days.

GREGOR LAUMANN is International Science Project Coordinator

at the IHDP Secretariat, Bonn, Germany; laumann.ihdp@uni-bonn.de

L A N D

„HANDING OVER“ – FROM LUCC TO GLPBY GEGOR LAUMANN

Phot

o by

Ulr

ike

Klop

p

2 6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

➤IHDP, in collaboration with co-organizing partners of the 6th

Open Meeting decided to take concerted effort to use this

unique opportunity for the systematic promotion of young

scientists, particularly those from developing and emerging

economies from all regions of the world, to interact, cross-

link, and exchange information on various aspects of global

change.

Four Pre-Open Meeting Training Seminars took place from

October 6-8, 2005 in Königswinter, Germany. These capacity

building activities focused on methodological issues related to

research questions on the human dimensions of global envi-

ronmental change, with topics linked to the IHDP core science

projects and the Earth-System-Science joint projects. These

seminars were not only held to develop concrete skills and give

state-of-the-art information and knowledge about the topics

in question, but also to enhance collaboration and networking

between the young researchers and the broad Global Environ-

mental Change research community. To foster integration

with the core science projects of IHDP, key scientists linked to

the IHDP networks volunteered to take up the training man-

date for three days. The four training seminars proofed to be

an exiting and challenging interactive exercise, and enabled

young researchers from all over the world to meet with top

researchers to learn from each other and feel inspired for fur-

ther collaboration.

1) Training Seminar on Urbanization and Global Envi-ronmental Change

Trainers: Frauke Kraas, University of Cologne, Germany,

and Roberto Sánchez, University of California, Riverside,

USA

Co-Trainers: William Solecki, Hunter College, City Uni-

versity of New York, USA; Karen Seto, Stanford Universi-

ty, USA; David Simon, Centre for Developing Areas

Research (CEDAR), University of London, UK

This group aimed at a better understanding of the interac-

tions and feedbacks between global environmental change and

urbanization at the local, regional, and global scales. It fol-

lowed a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective.

The trainers introduced innovative conceptual and method-

ological approaches.

The four thematic foci of the seminar covered the array of

interaction between the urban and the global environment

components of the Earth system. It started with processes

within the urban system that contribute to global environ-

ment change. A second focus was put on the pathways through

which specific global environmental changes affect the urban

system. It also addressed the resulting interactions and

responses within the urban system. Finally, it dealt with inter-

actions within the urban system on global environmental

change, or feedback processes. These four thematic foci create

a comprehensive perspective of the dynamic, diverse, and

complex interactions between urban systems and global envi-

ronmental change processes.

The topics of this training seminar stretched from biophys-

ical processes across global socioeconomic changes to urban-

ization and health issues. Trainers and participants looked at

case studies from all over the world, discussed potential inter-

linkages for interdisciplinary research approaches and tried to

position their own research activities within the IHDP net-

works in order to benefit from already existing research activi-

ties and results.

2) Understanding Vulnerability to Global EnvironmentalChange in the Context of Globalization

Trainers: Karen O’Brien, University of Oslo, Norway;

Janos Bogardi, United Nations University – Institute for

Environment and Human Security, Bonn, Germany, and

Claudia Pahl-Wostl, University of Osnabrück, Germany

Co-Trainers: Eric Crasswell and Marcel Endejan, Global

Water System Project Office, Bonn, Germany; Michael

Bollig, University of Cologne, Germany; Jörn Birkmann,

United Nations University – Institute for Environment

and Human Security, Bonn, Germany; Sabine Möl-

lenkamp, University of Osnabrück, Germany

This training seminar was tightly focused around under-

standing and assessing human vulnerability from the perspec-

tive of various discourses, using a range of methodologies, in

light of a host of competing stresses. Particular emphasis was

placed on the themes of water (both abundance and scarcity

under global environmental change) and the context of glob-

alization. The course content was delivered through a variety

of means, including formal lectures, group activities, role play-

ing and group discussions. There was general agreement that

vulnerability is a dynamic concept related to multiple process-

es, but the precise definition of vulnerability and appropriate

methodologies for measuring it (or, indeed, the appropriate-

ness of measuring it) were extensively debated by participants.

Among other activities, Karen O’Brien asked the participants

to step outside their pre-conceived notions of how they think

about the concept and assigned them to work within various

discourses (biophysical, human-environment, critical and

transformational globalization) to both explain and propose

solutions to a large-scale human and environmental disaster,

the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. This exam-

ple managed to illustrate many of the recurring themes of the

workshop: Multiple stresses, nested scales, the role of institu-

tions, political discourse, uneven development, the role of

technology, human security and the idea of „winners and los-

ers“. These themes were further explored in subsequent exer-

P R E - O P E N M E E T I N G T R A I N I N G S E M I N A R S

THE PRE-OPEN MEETING TRAINING SEMINARS

TRAINING SEMINARS ON METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES RELATED TO THE HUMAN

DIMENSIONS OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 2 7

6th Open Meeting

cises led by other facilitators to give participants an apprecia-

tion of the many voices and challenges of vulnerability assess-

ment in various contexts.

As a whole, the training seminar, as well as the Open Meet-

ing that followed, provided a broad overview of recent

research findings and advances in the conceptualization of

various aspects of the interactive effects of human security and

the natural environment in the context of global environmen-

tal change and globalization. The new contextual and concep-

tual frameworks in which the otherwise much explored

research topics were situated provided a stimulus for reconsid-

ering old problems and approaches for addressing them from

a new perspective.

3) Analysis of Spatial Data for Human DimensionsResearch – User Workshop

Trainers: Alex de Sherbinin and Adam Storeygard,

CIESIN at Columbia University, USA; Günther Menz,

Matthias Braun and Hans Peter Thamm, University of

Bonn, Germany.

This training seminar provided hands-on technology tools

training for the analysis of spatial data. The seminar focused

on the use of geographic information systems (GIS), remote

sensing and statistical software with training on ArcMap,

Erdas and GeoDa respectively. It was particularly useful to use

examples from developing countries concentrating on global,

regional (Africa) and local (Benin) scales of analysis. Topics

addressed during the seminar included cartographic represen-

tation & modeling, land-use & land-cover change (LUCC),

and spatial correlation analysis.

This seminar proved to be a very useful (and quite unusu-

al) integrated training on several techniques that are usually

approached separately. Furthermore, the discussion of

research problems in a multidisciplinary audience gave the

chance to understand and solve problems with a variety of

perspectives.

The first part of the seminar focused on global data sets and

the deconstruction of those explaining the way in which these

were developed, the

way in which selected

variables answer a par-

ticular research ques-

tion, variables develop-

ment, etc. The second

part focused on region-

al and local study cases

in Africa (the whole

continent and Benin),

as well as on the need to

understand which vari-

ables from a global

dataset would answer

questions at the local

level, and which tech-

niques were more suit-

able for this type of

analysis.

This seminar was conducted through the collaboration of

several institutions, each one of them providing a particular

focus of expertise. Thus the trainers managed to cover two dif-

fering main topics in the realm of spatial data for human

dimensions research, i.e. spatial statistics, and remote sensing

and land-use/land-cover change (LUCC). The institutions

involved in this training seminar were the Center for Interna-

tional Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the

Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) at

Columbia University, as well as the Center for Remote Sensing

of Land Surfaces, University of Bonn.

4) Training Seminar on Economic Methods for GlobalEnvironmental Change Research

Trainer: Gernot Klepper, Institute for World Economics,

Kiel, Germany

Co-Trainers: Sonja Peterson and Manfred Wiebelt,

Institute for World Economics, Kiel, Germany.

In this training seminar the students were introduced to

the most common methods for modeling economic aspects

from a regional to the worldwide scale. Particular lectures

were about different approaches to modeling economic

processes in relation to environmental change and political

scenarios. Different methods were shown in theory and

examples, including the general equilibrium model (GEM)

to evaluate different scenarios to deforestation and political

decisions (in the case of Cameroon), as well as partial mod-

els. In addition, data requirements to build economic models

were discussed, and the social accounting matrix (SAM)

method was presented. Each student talked about personal

experiences and research problems, and all participants eval-

uated alternative approaches for specifics problems in an

interactive session. Problems presented for the students

included deforestation by soybean expansion, fishery and

fish population fluctuation in relationship to climate change,

individual decisions in different economic contexts, as well

as sector impacts in relationship to climate change or poli-

cies.

ACTIVE INVOLVE-MENT OF YOUNGSCHOLARS FROMALL OVER THEWORLD

IHDP managed to

invite 60 young schol-

ars to join into this

capacity building event

and to also stay on

for the 6th Open

Meeting in Bonn due

to the generous sup-

port of the Asia-Paci-

fic Network for Glo-

bal Change Research

(APN) and its CAPa-

BLE Programme, the

P R E - O P E N M E E T I N G T R A I N I N G S E M I N A R S

Central Europe

Eastern EuropeLatin Americas

South East Asia

USA/Canada

Africa

Diagramme 1: Distribution of the training seminar participants’ areaof residence

2 8 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

Inter-American Insti-

tute for Global Change

Research (IAI), the

Center for Internation-

al Earth Science Infor-

mation Network

(CIESIN), the SysTem

for Analysis, Research,

and Training (START),

the United Nations

University (UNU), the

Norwegian Research

Council, the University

of Cologne, the Kiel

Institute for World

Economics and the

Foundation „Interna-

tional Encounters“ of

the savings bank

Cologne/Bonn.

The distribution of

participant’s area of

residence demon-

strates the truly international character of this exercise (see

diagramme 1). Organizing this capacity building event back-

to-back with the 6th Open Meeting proofed to be a successful

strategy for fostering

young human dimen-

sions researchers from

all over the world to

actively participate in

the world largest social

science conference on

global environmental

change issues. This

consolidated active

involvement of young

scientists has been

generally acknowl-

edged by all confer-

ence participants and

was a crucial factor for

the spirit of a truly

international, interdis-

ciplinary science con-

ference grasping on

the human dimensions

of global environmen-

tal change.

Organizer of the Training Seminars:

Ike Holtmann, IHDP Secretariat, Bonn, Germany

T R A I N I N G S E M I N A R S / U N U - E H S

MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE2nd UNU-EHS EXPERT WORKING GROUP MEETING ON MEASURING VULNERABILITY

➤The UNU-EHS Expert Working Group (EWG) met for a

second time during the 6th Open Meeting, following up on its

inaugural meeting in Kobe, Japan in January 2005. The sec-

ond meeting was larger, welcoming representatives from a

variety of German planning and development assistance

institutions, partners from on-going field research in Russia

and Sri Lanka, as well as a number of young scientists.

The title of the meeting „Measuring the Unmeasurable“

was provocative and stimulating. Dealing with the concept of

„vulnerability“ across a range of disciplines concerned with

sustainable human development, risk reduction, and human

security in operational terms is a challenge. At one extreme,

vulnerability is a fundamental characteristic of human exis-

tence, where intersubjectivity reveals the dependence of each

individual on others and the individual’s proneness to loss,

injury, and abandonment. At this pole of reflection on the

phenomenon of vulnerability, the social sciences come close

to their philosophical limits, and the „data“ are qualitative.

At the other extreme, vulnerability may be defined by climate

science, engineering, or economics as the propensity to spe-

cific, measurable negative effects or impacts. The quanta may

be narrowly defined (as soil moisture and crop yields, a

building’s behavior under seismic stress, or money). One way

of representing this continuum of ways to comprehend vul-

nerability is provided in a background document used in the

Working Group meeting (see www.ehs.unu.edu)

The disciplinary breadth of the participants was very

large, a fact that enriched the discussions. Integration of

reports of ongoing research work in Sri Lanka following the

December 2004 tsunami, flooding in Russia, and pre-disaster

planning in Tanzania, Central America, and South Africa

helped to center and focus so many wide ranging points of

view.

An enormous number of fresh insights came out of the

deliberations. These ran the full gamut from the use of qual-

itative methods such as story telling to capture perceptions of

risk and vulnerability to fully quantitative methods involving

remote sensing and econometrics.

In the end, however, everyone seemed to agree that the

way forward in making the concept of vulnerability useful in

development, risk reduction, and human security lies in

answering some fundamental questions: Measurement of

vulnerability to what? Through what? By whom? For whom?

To achieve what?

A report of the second meeting of the UNU-EHS’ Expert

Working Group „Measuring Vulnerability“ is in preparation

and will be published early 2006. For orders please contact

Ilona Roberts, UNU-EHS, Goerresstrasse 15, 53113 Bonn.

Training Seminar on Spatial Data

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 2 9

6th Open Meeting

IHDP NC Mexico/IHDP NC USA, “Urbanization: A Two-Way Lane – Cities as Drivers and Targets of Climate Change”:Cities are contradictory drivers of development. On the one

hand they are centers of key activities inducing transforma-

tions of the carbon cycle and the climate system (e.g. trans-

portation). They have an ecological footprint extending to dis-

tant and remote places. Furthermore they are targets of the

impacts of climate change. It is therefore difficult for city man-

agers and stakeholders to even comprehend both cities’

impacts on the carbon cycle, and cities´ vulnerabilities to cli-

mate change. On the other hand, cities are centers of cultural

opportunities, and changing lifestyles capable to induce trans-

formations in development that can contribute both to decar-

bonization of our societies, and to enhance our adaptive

capacities.

The IHDP Mexican National Committee, the US Commit-

tee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, the IPCC

and the Global Carbon Project, supported this session, on

cities as drivers and targets of climate change. The paper from

IHDP NC Mexico, “How do Local Governments Manage Glob-al Issues? Governance of GHG Emissions in Mexico City”,

Patricia Romero Lankao (Chair) explored some factors

explaining accomplishments, difficulties and challenges facing

authorities and other actors managing carbon emissions in

Mexico City. She found that local regimes have worked as

learning facilitators. City actors recognize linkages among

emissions, urbanization and transportation, and include more

scales (global and local) in their framing. This and other posi-

tive results do not warranty an effective management of emis-

sions. For authorities face institutional constraints, e.g. lack of

coordination among three tiers of government. Cities’ emis-

sions trajectories are driven by other factors operating at glob-

al scales in space and through time. For example, reduced gov-

ernmental investment in public transportation has con-

tributed to a shift in mode share from metro and buses to

minibuses and low capacity modes, leading to increased emis-

sions. (For further information on this session and papers pre-

sented, contact Patricia Romero-Lankao, Chair IHDP NC

Mexico,

prlankao@correo.xoc.uam.mx, and Thomas Wilbanks, Chair

USHDGC, wilbankstj@ornl.gov)

IHDP NC Nepal, “Institutional Interplay on the Environ-ment and Resource Regime of Central Himalayan Mountains:Study on Nepal”: After the end of World War II many nations

underwent political transformation and a new world order

began to emerge. Rapid economic and technological develop-

ment was the main theme for these underdeveloped countries

left behind by the industrialized world. The central Himalayan

mountain region also got the message to move along with the

new world order. As a result a new paradigm for environmen-

tal and resource regime began to emerge. A multiplicity of

institutions began to operate at the local, regional and nation-

al levels. Traditional institutions got diluted by the externally

implanted institutions and often worked at cross-purposes.

Furthermore, each institution tried to emerge as a complete

self, causing lack of coordination among the sectoral institu-

tions as well as the traditional village councils.

This region is characterized with complex environmental

and resource regimes in fragmented and diverse socio-eco-

nomic units. With the degree of development the degree of

vulnerability also has been increased many fold. However,

there are some success stories too. A historical review on the

institutional dimension of development efforts in Nepal of the

past six decades has been carried out. The driving force behind

the growth and transformation of institutions, the role and

effectiveness thereof and the impact to the environment and

resource regime of this central Himalayan Mountain Region,

Nepal, was critically analyzed.

Observations from Sharad Adhikary (Member, IHDP NC

Nepal) concluded that the centralized political and economical

establishment of the country neglected the role of local com-

munities and their traditional practices and thus gave birth to

numerous conflict situations such as: a) resource use (opti-

mization problem), b) external encroachment to the natural

resources local communities being exploited economically, c)

cultural invasion – disruption of cultural and age-old transi-

tions, d) feeling of incompetence or incapable among the local

people, and e) disruption of localized economic structures and

thus deepening of economic crises including recession of prod-

ucts. Furthermore multiple donors gave rise to multiple insti-

tutions often working on cross-purposes including disruption

and continuity. (For further information on this paper present-

ed, contact Sharad Adhikary, Member IHDP NC Nepal,

adhikary@yahoo.com, himac@mos.com.np)

IHDP NC Nigeria/IHDP NC Cameroon, “Urbanization inWest Africa: Patterns, Processes, and Implications for Land Useand Land Cover”: Urbanization, as a complex process of social

change and is progressing unabated in most of the developing

countries. It is characterized by the creation of large urban

centers - either by migration, temporary and/or permanent

settlements of workers, or workers-to-be in towns. These are

particularly visible in the seventeen countries that constitute

the West African subregion. For example, a cursory look at the

various statistical details for these countries attests to the stu-

pendous growth in population over the past 20 years, with

devastating consequences in the face of bad governance, inept

administration and large-scale corruption. This has led to the

large-scale abandonment of rural areas, the transposition of

rural for urban poverty and the deleterious affects of these for

food security in the region.

As if this were not enough and as a result of demand for

land for various purposes resulting from urbanization, there

has been serious pressure on the existing facilities and infra-

structure within cities. Most of the agricultural land within

and at the fringe of the city has been converted to either resi-

dential plots or commercial centers legally and illegally. These

N A T I O N A L C O M M I T T E E S

IHDP NATIONAL COMMITTEE SCIENCE

AT THE 6th OPEN MEETINGBY DEBRA MEYER-WEFERING

3 0 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open Meeting

have reduced the food supply to the city, especially vegetables

and staple foods. It is thus apparent that the social, economic

and environmental consequences of land-use change present

significant challenges to rural and urban populations in many

parts of West Africa. It is recognized that land-use change

impacts in very different ways on different countries and com-

munities in the region, but that there are some common prin-

ciples for effectively managing change, which this session

sought to address.

A case study for Nigeria was presented by IHDP NC Nige-ria, “Globalization and the Role of Multinational Corpora-tions in Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in the Niger Deltaof Nigeria”, which argued that since Nigeria derives the bulk of

its revenue from crude oil, the oil multinationals act as a gov-

ernment on their own, operating with minimum safety rules

and thus despoiling both land and water resources. The effect

is that people can no longer partake in traditional occupations

such as fishing or farming. Yet, because of the general poverty

level of people and because of the perceived wealth of oil com-

panies, the area continues to get steady streams of people for

all categories of jobs. The result is the increasing of desertifica-

tion in the area and continued loss of forested land and pollut-

ed rivers. The paper suggests more pro-active actions and

greater vigilance from government and its agencies and, most

importantly, the economic empowerment of the people of the

Niger Delta. (For further information on this session and

papers presented, contact Samuel Babatunde Agbola, Chair,

IHDP NC Nigeria, babatundeagbola@yahoo.com, and JohnForje, Chair, IHDP NC Cameroon, jowifor@yahoo.fr)

IHDP NCP Zimbabwe/IHDP NCP South Africa,“Droughts, Poverty, and Livelihoods: Key Issues from SouthernAfrica”: Global Environmental Change (GEC) is a key issue

that impacts on Southern Africa. One area, but not the only

area of concern, is climate change (e.g. droughts and floods).

The recurrence of droughts has impacted heavily on rain-fed

agriculture and food provision with increased poverty in the

region. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for national

economies of Southern Africa has shown to be significantly

affected by consecutive droughts causing need for food aid

nearly every year. Tropical cyclone induced floods in the late

summer have only worsened the food situation, often increas-

ing disease and malaria epidemics among human communi-

ties. The effects of a harsh climate have been exacerbated by

HIV/AIDS, high unemployment, unstable macro-economies

and governance issues.

This session was organized by IHDP NCP Zimbabwe to

raise key human dimensions issues grappling Southern Africa

including climate and society interactions; poverty and liveli-

hoods; agriculture, food systems and food security in the con-

text of droughts. A recent regional workshop, organized by

IHDP NC South Africa, for ‘young’ scientists on HDGEC in

Southern Africa (held in Richards Bay, South Africa, 13-15

September 2004) demonstrated excellent research output with

high quality and in-depth data analysis from the region, a few

of which presented their findings in this session. The issues

were discussed in terms of complex human-environment

feedback interactions; social policy responses to environmen-

tal change; vulnerability and adaptive capacity; methodologi-

cal debates in HD research; interdisciplinary research and

common agendas.

A case study was presented by IHDP NC Botswana “Limitsto Livelihood and Environmental Sustainability in KgalagadiEnvironment of Southwestern Botswana: The Case of the Mat-sheng Village”, which addressed the extent to which water still

remains the principal limiting factor to socio-economic devel-

opment and sustainable rangeland management in southwest-

ern Botswana. (For further information on this session and

papers presented, contact Hector Chikoore, Member, IHDP

NCP Zimbabwe, hectorchikoore@yahoo.com)

IHDP NCP Argentina/NCP Chile, “Regional Approaches toHuman-Environment Studies: Environmental Ethics”: Ethics

is the philosophical discipline that reflects critically upon the

moral questions of human beings. This is a complex and prob-

lematic field due to its special relationships with all the areas

that have to do with human action, motivations, sense, norms

and values. Since Rio Summit, 1992, issues such as sustainable

environmental development, quality of life, rights of future

generations, rights and/or duties towards nature, etc., have

reached such a high level of discussion that they have made

their way into common conscience as concepts, which are

ambiguous and dilemmatic enough to encourage theoretical

discussion. Thus, social as well as natural sciences have been

invited to the debate where modern notions of nature and

human practices in relation to the environment are ques-

tioned. This forced a revision of the bases of our modern sci-

ence and civilization process and a re-examination of the

social representation of the relation society-nature. This

reflection brings about the need to build dialogue spaces for

analysis of representations (or visions of the world), which

provide the models from which the building of values is based

and the variety of ethical systems is explained.

N A T I O N A L C O M M I T T E E SPh

oto

by T

hom

as M

auer

sber

g

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 3 1

6th Open Meeting

The aim of this session was to share different conceptions

of the relationship society-nature, which have built different

environmental ethics. The possibility of finding ways to build

consensus strategies appears from knowledge and mutual

respect towards antagonistic approaches, based on the articu-

lation of legitimate differences towards a sustainable and less

conflictive common future with the generation of norms and

values which enable and optimize co-existence by and for all.

In her paper, “Ethics, Science and Global Environment:

Thoughts Upon Human Action, Science, Power and Nature –

Society Vulnerability”, IHDP NCP Argentina, Elda Tancredi,

analyzed components of contemporary debate on ‘ethical

turn’ and the relationship with global environmental issues.

Some critical points on the history of moral considerations

upon nature-society relationship in western thoughts were

described. (For further information on this session and paper

presented, contact Elda Tancredi, Chair, IHDP NCP Argenti-

na, eldatancredi1@ciudad.com.ar and Alejandro Leon,

Chair, IHDP NCP Chile, aleon-a@uchile.cl)IHDP NCP Belarus, “The Capacity Assessment for Public

Participation in SEA: Case of Belarus”: The path Belarus fol-

lows after it gained independence in 1991 is very similar to

those adopted by most formerly Soviet Republics. It includes

top-down governance and heavy dominance of the state in all

spheres of public life, which worked fairly well for the enforce-

ment of environmental of administrative mechanisms, such as

taxation and pollution abatement control. However, some

international obligations taken by Belarus imply the develop-

ment of mechanisms based on public participation and stake-

holder dialogue. Furthermore, the UNECE SEA (Strategic

Environmental Assessment) Protocol with its core require-

ments for transparency and bringing broader public on every

step of the process will be signed in the near future. The Proto-

col does not describe the way of interactions with public; pub-

lic participation is compulsory, but the Parties of the protocol

are free to design their own procedures for consultations. If

legal and institutional practices of open societies fit easily the

principles of the SEA, in Belarus, like in many other countries

with weak traditions of cooperation with non-governmental

sector, such mechanisms are still to be developed.

Though not really strong, environmental NGOs in Belarus

are well-established institutional structures; they rely on sub-

stantial expertise of their members in environmental issues,

they are relatively open to new ideas, flexible in decision-mak-

ing and, as often demonstrated, have strong environmental

and social commitment. It was therefore recognized that the

NGOs could play a significant role in the SEA implementation

as dynamic, proactive players.

The central question of the study was: whether Belarusian

environmental NGOs are capable of participation in the SEA

procedures and whether they can mobilize broader public for

this. Specific research objectives were 1) to review compulsory

and non-binding requirements for participation embedded in

the Protocol against the provisions of the Belarusian legisla-

tion and existing institutional settings, 2) to analyse the capac-

ity and readiness of environmental NGOs to contribute to the

SEA procedures and to benefit from them; and 3) to develop

policy recommendations. The study included survey of the

SEA stakeholder groups with emphasis on environmental

NGOs (through interviews and questionnaires), analysis of

the national, international and EU legislation, and SWOT

analysis of the NGO’s participation in the SEA.

The survey showed that NGOs fully realize their role and

responsibilities in the SEA; all of them have expressed their

will to be a part of it. Main reasons for participation were “to

influence the incorporation of environmental matters in

decision-making” and “to increase NGOs authority and

political weight”; all organizations believed their future role

in the SEA significant. It was found that NGOs staff mem-

bers had sufficient expertise in possible areas of the SEA,

though they were not well aware of the SEA itself. Therefore,

further training events are needed, particularly in the light of

the NGOs mission to communicate the information on the

SEA to the broader public. The NGOs do not report any

problems with the access to information on the SEA: all of

them have access to the Internet and printed materials, and it

is noteworthy that language barrier (most published materi-

als are in English) was not a major problem. Representatives

of NGOs also had an opportunity to attend workshops on

the SEA arranged by the UNDP office in Minsk. These were

reported as very well prepared and the most helpful, espe-

cially if compared to others. However, it is the lack of finance

that was identified by most as the major barrier for participa-

tion in the SEA and involvement of broader public into it;

financial help was expected rather from abroad than from

the national agencies.

The closest reference to the SEA principles of public partic-

ipation in the Belarusian legislation is Public Environmental

Review (PER), which is an optional part of the compulsory

environmental expertise. Respondents from the environmen-

tal NGOs have indicated their mistrust in the PER as a work-

ing participatory mechanism, and its former participants have

expressed their deep dissatisfaction about it. If extended over

the SEA, this tendency can lead to what might be called “false

participation”, i.e. formal involvement of public without tak-

ing seriously their concerns. As such, the PER still can be con-

sidered an opportunity for the development of public partici-

pation. Another alarming trend is that neither governmental

officials nor NGOs fully realize the importance of the SEA

steps; both are inclined to prefer expert judgments to the opin-

ions of broader public. Other threats are peoples’ suspicious

attitude towards any kinds of non-governmental activities,

and the increasing indifference about environmental prob-

lems.

It can be concluded from the study that Belarusian envi-

ronmental NGOs have sufficient potential for participation in

the SEA implementation, serious threats notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, capacity-building actions should be taken: distri-

bution of promotional materials, trainings and workshops,

establishment of NGO networks (those existing do not really

work). Discussion of the SEA legislation should be open and

interactive; a pilot project demonstrating working mecha-

nisms of public participation should precede the final hearings

and approval of the SEA legislation. (For further information

on this paper presented, contact Maria Falaleeva, Co-Chair

IHDP NCP Belarus, falaleeva_mariya@mail.ru and AntonShkaruba, Co-Chair, IHDP NCP Belarus, fiumicina@yahoo.com)

N A T I O N A L C O M M I T T E E S

3 2 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

6th Open MeetingN A T I O N A L C O M M I T T E E S / B A R B A R A G Ö B E L

IHDP NATIONAL COMMITTEES MEET IN BONNBY DEBRA MEYER-WEFERING

To-date, 62 nations are actively linked to the IHDP research

community (compared to half this number at the time of the Rio

Open Meeting in 2001), with 31 National Committees (thirteen

of which are categorized as Global Change Committees within

the context of the ESSP) and 31 National Contact Points. Of

these nations, more than half are located in developing countries

and transition economies. IHDP takes a ‘bottom-up’ approach,

drawing upon voluntary participation and commitment of

researchers from different disciplines representing all regions of

the world.

The steady increase is the result of more clearly defined roles

and functions of the National Committees, as well as a noticeable

rise in the profiles of our National Committees within the Pro-

gramme. This is being achieved via the coordination of the

IHDP Secretariat by increasing exposure of national/regional

activities in the UPDATE newsletter and the website, through

facilitating cooperation between researchers in different Nation-

al Committees and between the National Committees and IHDP

projects. IHDP has also funded National Committee Chairs to

represent its Programme often in HDGEC-related meetings,

namely those regionally relevant to the Committees and to

IHDP projects.

IHDP National Committees serve as a platform to create and

raise awareness and capacity of national science communities on

the importance of IHDP research and development. All strive to

increase the visibility and understanding of IHDP research pri-

orities, promoting and raising the profile of HDGEC research in

a national context. In recent years, the National Committees have

been taking a more proactive role in participating in the shaping

of future plans for the Programme and in helping to strengthen

the interactions between the science community and policy

makers.

The meeting of IHDP National Committee Chairs was

organized to provide a forum for the exchange of information

between National Committees on their operational aspects,

national research agendas, and to explore the possibilities of fur-

ther strengthening their role with regards to defining IHDP proj-

ects. The meeting served to compare approaches and research

methodologies on interdisciplinary HDGEC research at the

national/regional levels. It assessed organization, coordination,

gaps, needs for improvement, and served to promote collabora-

tion, partnerships and communication of IHDP-related research

and direct linkages to the Programme.

Just over 60 national representatives from 45 National Com-

mittees and National Contact Points, actively took part in this

meeting. Of these, more than half came from developing coun-

tries or transition economies. The meeting also attracted an

additional 50 Open Meeting participants to listen and learn

about our national and regional networks. The scientific leader-

ship of the meeting was shared amongst select NC Chairs and

the discussions were steered by the lead figures in IHDP gover-

nance, namely the outgoing and incoming Chairs of the IHDP

Scientific Committee, as well as the outgoing and incoming

Executive Directors of the IHDP.

We would like to thank all of the National Committee

Chairs for their intellectual input during the preparations for,

presentations and discussion during the meeting, but also for

their openness, enthusiasm and above all commitment to the

future success of the IHDP. The IHDP will continue to work

together with you to ensure you have a clear voice within our

Programme.

The meeting could not have been realized without the gener-

ous financial support of the United Nations Environment, Scien-

tific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Internation-

al Social Science Council (ISSC). Their contribution to the IHDP

Seed Grant Initiative made it possible for twelve National Com-

mittee representatives to take active part in this meeting as well

as present papers during the Open Meeting.

➤ Debra Meyer-Wefering is International Science Project

Coordinator at the IHDP Secretariat, Bonn, Germany;

wefering.ihdp@uni-bonn.de

TRANSPARENCY AND FAIRNESS ARE CRUCIAL

INTERVIEW WITH FORMER IHDP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR BARBARA GÖBEL

Q: When you chose the position of IHDP Executive Director,

what were your assets, and what were the new challenges?

When taking this position three years ago, I was the first

Director of IHDP with a strong background in the humanities.

I also integrated three areas of experience that are, in my opin-

ion, of relevance for strengthening the social science compo-

nents of global change research, as well as to develop an inter-

disciplinary and international programme, that takes the diver-

sity of scientific paradigms and the different regional perspec-

tives on global environmental change (in particular the voices of

the South) into account. First, I have long-term experience in

interdisciplinary research, teaching and project management in

the area of human-environmental relations. Second, I have a

strong inter-cultural background. This is related to my biogra-

phy (I grew up in Spain and in Argentina), my professional

training as a social anthropologist with more than 3 years of

fieldwork in the Andes, and my working experience in universi-

ties and research institutions of different countries (Germany,

Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and France), which sharpened my

sense of how different cultural and institutional settings influ-

ence scientific practices. And third, in my research I have always

been interested in social science theories and methods, and in

how to link, for example, economic and cultural approaches.

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 3 3

Interview

New challenges were repre-

sented to me by the manage-

ment of an international,

interdisciplinary staff of about

12 people and of a complex

structure (of a network of net-

works) with a broad range of

thematic foci and a great vari-

ety of activities. What was also

new for me was that I often

found myself in situations

where I was assigned the role

of representing “the” social

sciences (including humani-

ties and economics).

Q: What were the main achievements of the last three years?

The visibility of IHDP increased, not only in the context of

global change research but also within the social sciences. New

project developments, an internal and external assessment

process of what IHDP has achieved so far, the organization of

the 6th Open Meeting with a series of preparatory synthesis

workshops, and a stronger outreach strategy are some of the

crucial steps in this process. In the interface between natural and

social sciences, new joint projects were developed together with

IGBP (e.g. LOICZ and GLP), and IHDP played a central role in

the development of the Earth System Science Partnership. But

we have also been able to attract more core social science com-

munities by linking research on global environmental change to

a greater extent to globalization studies. In the last three years,

IHDP also started to work more focused on the science-practice

interface, an area that my successor, Andreas Rechkemmer, will

certainly develop much further. We also developed a capacity

building strategy that is embedded into the development of

IHDP’s core research projects and takes regional needs into

account. And last but not least, I should also mention that the

operational basis of the programme and its whole governance

structure were strengthened. All this would not have been possi-

ble without the support of the staff of the IHDP Secretariat, the

Scientific Committee and the Scientific Steering Committees of

the core research projects, and my colleagues in the partner pro-

grammes.

Q: Could you summarize some of the most important experi-

ences/lessons you learned in the last three years?

The last three years in IHDP have been an intellectually

inspiring and personally very enriching experience, one that

I would not like to miss. I had the opportunity to work

together with outstanding personalities and intellectuals,

and I gained new friends. These have been also very intensive

years, demanding much support and understanding from my

husband and my little daughter because of my frequent

absences. My work at IHDP (re-)emphasized for me the

importance of fairness, of transparency in the process, and

the respect of difference. These key attributes are fundamen-

tal for the trust building required for the work in these types

of interdisciplinary and international settings. It also showed

me the relevance of the dynamic combination of subjective

and practical engagement, and analytical distance in order to

allow creative diversity but, at the same time, keep focused

and pragmatic.

Q: What are the future challenges for IHDP?

IHDP needs to further extend its international presence

and broaden its interdisciplinary basis. It will have to be able

to attract funding from more countries in order to assure the

sustainability of the programme. Another important and

ongoing challenge for IHDP is to organize a strong input of

the social sciences into the global change arena in epistemo-

logical coherent ways. An additional challenge is to establish

a stronger nexus between science and practice. This requires

the production of knowledge not only for understanding but

also knowledge for action and actionable knowledge. And

finally it is also a future challenge to include, to a greater

extent, multiple cultural perspectives (ontologies and knowl-

edge systems) on global environmental change (definition,

context, causes, impacts, etc.) into one explanatory frame.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your new job in Berlin

I left IHDP in October 2005 in order to take the directorship

of the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin, an institution pro-

moting scientific and cultural exchange of Germany with Latin

America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. It is not only an

interdisciplinary research centre for the social sciences and

humanities which hosts the largest library in Europe on the

Ibero-American region, but also develops a broad range of cul-

tural activities, thus acting as a widely recognized coordination

platform for the relations between these countries. Similar to

my position in the IHDP one of my main tasks is to bring

together different actors and institutions and organize common

activities and projects. New aspects are the strong inclusion of

the cultural dimension in the science policy interfaces and the

much larger infrastructure I have to manage.

In spite of these new challenges it was not an easy decision

for me to leave IHDP. At the moment, the programme is in a

very interesting phase as its role in the global change arena and

its visibility has increased considerably. Coleen Vogel, Roberto

Sánchez Rodríguez and I invested a lot of intellectual energy,

emotional commitment and personal time to strenghten

IHDP’s operational basis and to develop its scientific frame fur-

ther. I was looking forward to harvesting from these invest-

ments and being able to devote more time to the science related

to the programme. However, the formal conditions of the offer

in Berlin and the high reputation of the Ibero-American Insti-

tute in the social sciences and humanities as well as the cultural

and political worlds related to Latin America, Spain and Portu-

gal led me to accept my new position. Even though this means

“Goodbye” to the IHDP Secretariat it does not mean “Farewell”

to IHDP as a whole. I will keep the connection to the IHDP and

hope to be able to contribute further to the development of

global environmental change research through my new posi-

tion’s focus on culture and globalization.

INTERVIEW BY ULA LÖW

B A R B A R A G Ö B E L

Barbara Göbel

another new team member. As a scientific consultant he will

be leading the effort to synthesize the major scientific achieve-

ments of IHDP over the past 10 years. Falk holds a M.A. in

Philosophy, Business Administration and Law and is currently

a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the Free University,

Berlin. His research focus is on global environmental gover-

nance with a strong emphasis on regime building, especially in

the field of freshwater. Falk Schmidt is co-author of a book

and published several scientific articles about the institutional

dimensions of global environmental governance, but also eth-

ical questions and challenges.

Also in our core projects, life changes. Maureen Woodrow,

who rendered outstanding services in her many years as Exec-

utive Officer of GECHS, has

left the project. She will con-

tinue – all the more intensely

– with her research on cli-

mate change and human

security. The new GECHS

Executive Officer is LynnRosentrater. She is a geogra-

pher who has worked in cli-

mate change research, includ-

ing developing a better

understanding the carbon

cycle, impacts to biodiversity,

and adaptation opportuni-

ties. She has been affiliated

with the Long-Term Ecological Research Network, the Inter-

national Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and WWF the

conservation organization. She has extensive experience as a

project manager, working in the fields of education and

research, as well as in the computer industry. Her research

interests focus on the human dimensions of global change,

especially with regard to the social drivers of change — cultur-

al, economic, demographic and political forces — and how

these in turn are influenced by the environment. Welcome on

board, Lynn!

N E W S

3 4 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

In Brief

IN BRIEF

➤➤➤ We are in a period of change at the IHDP Secretariat.

First of all, IHDP has a new Executive Director since Novem-

ber last year. We would like to

welcome Dr. AndreasRechkemmer who comes in

from the United Nations Uni-

versity, and we would like to

say ‘goodbye’ to our Executive

Director of the past years, Dr.

Barbara Göbel, and wish her

good luck in her new position

as Director of the Ibero-

American Institute, Prussian

Cultural Heritage Founda-

tion in Berlin. During her

time at the Secretariat she has

been working tirelessly and has been dedicated to promoting

IHDP, making it more visible and successful worldwide.

Andreas has been working as a Senior Academic Advisor to

the Director of UNU’s Institute for Environment and Human

Security (EHS) in Bonn, Germany. Prior to that he served the

United Nations as a Programme Officer at the Secretariat of

the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and

worked at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) – Ger-

man Institute for International and Security Affairs, Europe’s

largest foreign affairs think-tank. Andreas is a guest researcher

at the Social Science Centre Berlin (WZB), and lectures at Free

University of Berlin and the European School of Governance

(EUSG). He holds a Master in Political Science and a PhD in

International Relations. His research focus is on global envi-

ronmental governance, with particular views to human securi-

ty and the reform of the United Nations system. Andreas is

author, co-author and editor of several books, scientific papers

and press articles.

But there are more people coming and going. MaaritThiem is on parental leave since the beginning of this year. We

wish her all the best and look forward to working with her

again soon. With Falk Schmidt, we are happy to welcome

Andreas Rechkemmer

Lynn Rosentrater

IDGEC Synthesis Conference6-9 December 2006, Bali, Indonesia

The Second Call for Papers is now open. The deadline for paper

and poster submissions has been extended to 1 March 2006.

For more information, please use the following link to access

the IDGEC Synthesis Conference Second Announcement:

http://fiesta.bren.ucsb.edu/~idgec/science/IDGEC2nd

Announcement_FINAL.pdf

We look forward to hearing from all

interested GEC research community

members and look forward to con-

tinuing the synthesis process with

your input.

The 2006 ConAccount meeting

„Dematerialization Across Scales: Measurement, Empirical Evidence,Future Options“September 13-14, 2006, Vienna AustriaBack to back with a policy dialogue „dematerialization whyand how?“ September 15, 2006

Timeline:Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 2006

Notice of acceptance and final programme: June 2006

Conference ChairsHelga Weisz, Heinz Schandl, Paul Brunner

http://www.iff.ac.at/socec/conaccount2006

Global Change and Mountain RegionsAn Overview of Current Knowledge

Edited by Uli Huber, Harald Bugmann and Mel Reasoner

Mountain regions occupy

about a quarter of the global ter-

restrial land surface and provide

goods and services to more than

half the humanity. Global envi-

ronmental change threatens the

integrity of these systems and

their ability to provide the goods

and services upon which

humanity has come to depend.

This book gives an overview of

the state of research in fields

pertaining to the detection, understanding and prediction of

global change impacts in mountain regions. More than 60 con-

tributions from paleoclimatology, cryospheric research,

hydrology, ecology, and development studies are compiled in

this volume, each with an outlook on future research direc-

tions.

Springer2005, 650 p., Hardcover, US$199.00

ISBN: 1-4020-3506-3

Industrial TransformationEnvironmental Policy Innovation in theUnited States and Europe

Edited by Theo de Bruijn and Vicki Norberg-Bohm

The MIT Press, July 2005, ISBN 0-262-54181-5

The United States and European countries are experimenting

with a new generation of policy approaches for combating

environmental degradation. Industrial Transformation evalu-

ates the effectiveness of twelve innovative voluntary, collabora-

tive, and information-based programs, focusing particularly

on the effectiveness of these programs in bringing about

industrial transformation — changes in production and con-

sumption structures that will help move their societies toward

environmental sustainability.

The twelve programs analyzed have the potential to create

incentives for industry leadership, stimulate beyond-compli-

ance behavior, address environmental degradation not current-

ly regulated, and encourage innovative solutions by involving a

wide range of stakeholders. The programs — six in the United

States and six in Europe — include Energy Star product label-

ing in the United States, R&D collaboration in US Department

of Energy programs, the US Toxic Release Inventories, the EU’s

Eco-Audit Regulation as implemented in the UK, the Dutch

Target Group Policy, and the German End-of-Life Vehicles Pro-

gram. The comparative analysis of the twelve programs proves

that these new approaches are not a panacea for industrial

transformation. Taken together, the cases provide a range of

experiences from which to draw lessons for future policy

design.

I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6 | 3 5

PublicationsN E W B O O K S

NEW BOOKS Industrial Transformation in the DevelopingWorld

By Michael T. Rock and David P. Angel

An important and timely book by leading experts

‘Grow first, clean up later’ environmental strategies in the

developing economies of East Asia - China, Korea, and Taiwan

in Northeast Asia and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines,

Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia - pose a

critical regional and global sustainability challenge in this area

of continuing rapid urban-based industrial growth. It is the

most polluted region in the world.

Whilst being at the leading edge of the processes of urban-

ization, industrialization, and globalization these economies

are in the midst, not at the end, of their urban-industrial trans-

formations. During the next 25 years urban populations in the

region are expected roughly to double, and most of the indus-

trial capital stock that will be on the ground by 2030 has not yet

been built. Given East Asia’s growing size in the world’s econo-

my and ecology, and its increasingly polluted environment, this

looming urban-industrial transformation is both a challenge

and an opportunity. Unless steps are taken now to make this

transformation more sustainable, East Asia’s, and the world’s,

environmental future is likely to deteriorate seriously.

Oxford University Press, October 2005, 272 pages, numerous

tables and line drawings, ISBN-10: 0-19-927004-X, Price: £50.00

(Hardback)

Improving Impacts of Research Partnershipshttp://www.kfpe.ch/key_activities/impact_study/index.html

This new KFPE-publication is based on analyses of a

number of case studies encompassing a wide variety of

research partnerships between the North and the South,

discussions held during the various workshops of the

«Impact Assessment Working Group»[1], and the con-

clusions derived. The book focuses on potential impacts

of such research partnerships – impacts beyond the sci-

entific advance, namely ‘attitudinal changes’, impacts on

capacity strengthening, and impacts on society or on

decision-makers.

Choosing the Right ProjectsDesigning Selection Processes for North-South Research Partnership Programmes http://www.kfpe.ch/key_activities/selection_process/index.html

By Priska Sieber und Thomas Braunschweig

The aim of present publication is to help design,

revise, and implement project selection processes in

North-South research partnership (NSRP) pro-

grammes. In particular, it addresses the complex chal-

lenge of dealing with the multiple objectives of NSRP

programmes: scientific quality, development relevance,

and adherence to partnership principles.

3 6 | I H D P N E W S L E T T E R 1 / 2 0 0 6

N E W B O O K / E V E N T SPublicatons/Calendar

Printed on 100% recycled paper

Sustainable ConsumptionThe Implications of Changing Infrastructuresof ProvisionEdited by Dale Southerton, Heather Chappells, and Bas Van Vliet

Sustainable Consumption is unique, not just in its inter-disci-

plinary and substantive subject matter (changing networks of

utility consumption and production), but because it examines

empirically the key theoretical debates underpinning the social

sciences at the beginning of the 21st century. This book shifts the

focus of sustainable consumption away from the individual

consumer and their lifestyles, and examines how existing sys-

tems of provision constrain how people consume and how sus-

tainability is conceived in popular and policy-related discourses.

2004 192pp Hardback 1 84376 330 3 £45.00

The Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning is an

international Journal that provides a forum for the critical

analysis of environmental policy and planning. It explores the

environmental dimensions of common policies such as trans-

port, agriculture and fisheries, urban and rural policy, all stages

in the policy and planning processes from formulation to

implementation, and the interactions between governments

and markets, the strategies of non-governmental organizations

and business in relation to the environment, and land-use deci-

sion-making.

Discounted subscription rate to IHDP members: £40 and

US$66 (reduced from £71 and US$113)

➤ The IHDP UPDATE newsletter features the activities ofthe International Human Dimensions Programme on GlobalEnvironmental Change and its research community.ISSN 1727-155XUPDATE is published by the IHDP Secretariat Walter-Flex-Strasse 3 53113 Bonn, Germany.EDITOR: Ula Löw, IHDP; loew.ihdp@uni-bonn.deLAYOUT AND PRINT: Köllen Druck+Verlag GmbH, Bonn+Berlin,GermanyUPDATE is published four times per year. Sections of UPDATE maybe reproduced with acknowledgement to IHDP. Please send acopy of any reproduced material to the IHDP Secretariat.This newsletter is produced using funds by the German FederalMinistry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the UnitedStates National Science Foundation (NSF).The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarilyrepresent the position of IHDP or its sponsoring organizations

Executive Officer PositionURBANIZATION AND GLOBAL

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE PROJECT

A Core Project of the International Human Dimensions

Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP)

The Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC)

Project is seeking a highly motivated person to serve as its full-

time Executive Officer for the period June 2006 through June

2009. The position will be located in the UGEC International

Project Office at the Arizona State University in Tempe,

Arizona, USA.

For more information, please see www.ihdp.org

MEETING CALENDAR➤➤➤ 27 - 29 March - Bonn, Germany

3rd International Conference on Early Warning (EWC III)http://www.ewc3.org➤➤➤ 20 - 21 April - Miami, USA

17th Global Warming International Conference and Expo(GW17)

http://globalwarming.net

➤➤➤ 18 - 20 May - Paris, France

Energy, Material and Urban Environment (EMUE)

http://www.univ-mlv.fr/~www-ltmu/EMUE/

➤➤➤ 31 May - 3 June - Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences

http://www.hicsocial.org

➤➤➤ 11 - 14 June - De Spreeuwel, The Netherlands

Tourism and Climate Change Mitigation

➤➤➤ 12 - 15 June - London, UK

HOLIVAR 2006 Open Science Meeting

The ESF Programme on Holocene Climate Variability isorganizing its Final Open Meeting

➤➤➤ 19 – 23 June – Bali, Indonesia

Survival of the Commons: Mounting Challenges and NewRealities

11th IASCP Global Conference -http://www.iascp.org/bali/iascp06.html

➤➤➤ 20 – 23 June – Bonn, Germany

Governance and the Global Water System Institutions

http://www.gwsp.org

Global EnvironmentalChange: Regional ChallengesAn Earth System Science PartnershipGlobal Environmental ChangeOpen Science Conference

Call for Contributions (February - April). The Earth System Science Partner-

ship (ESSP) invites scientists, policy makers, practitioners, scholars, members

of the private sector and journalists to participate in this Conference and to

submit abstracts (oral or poster presentations) relating to parallel session

themes. Please note that this call will mostly be for poster presentations, and

that poster sessions will be an integral part of the Conference.

www.essp.org/ESSP2006

Abstracts for presentations and posters may be submitted online

February - May 2006