This document constitutes the report of the fifth session of the Scientific Steering
Committee of the IHDP project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change (hereafter IDGEC SSC 5).
Attendance. SSC members present : Daniel Arce (USA), Leslie King (Canada),
Song Li (China/USA), Jyrki Luukkanen (Finland), Suparb Pas-ong (Thailand), Russell
Reichelt (Australia), Agus Sari (Indonesia), Taishi Sugiyama (Japan), Oran Young
(USA). SSC members unable to attend: Alf Hakon Hoel (Norway), Paul Mathieu
(Belgium/Italy), Madiodio Niasse (Burkino Faso), Arild Underdal (Norway), Merrilyn
Wasson (Australia). Other participants: Syma Ebbin (Outgoing IDGEC Executive
Officer), Barbara Goebel (IHDP Executive Director), Louis Lebel (Thailand), Heike
Schroeder (Incoming IDGEC Executive Officer), Eduardo Viola (Brazil, Coleen Vogel
(IHDP SC Chair).
Overview. The overall theme of SSC 5 was taking stock and moving forward or, in other words, reevaluating IDGEC’s Implementation Strategy. This led to an extensive review of the current strategy as developed initially at SSC 1, a reaffirmation of some major scientific commitments, a fruitful discussion of extending the IDGEC framework, and the identification of a number of new topics and new priorities. As well, the session addressed a variety of organizational matters associated with the transfer of the IPO from
Dartmouth College to the University of California (Santa Barbara) at the beginning of
2003, personnel changes, and efforts to find new ways to provide valuable services to members of the IDGEC Network.
1. Implementation Strategy – general observations. In the course of the meeting, the SSC articulated several criteria that should help both in assessing ongoing activities and in making decisions about new activities. IDGEC should look for programmatic activities that (a) are located at the cutting edge of research on institutions,
(b) address areas in which IDGEC has a comparative advantage, and (c) show promise of producing policy relevant conclusions. Although IDGEC should be open to exploring linkages with other projects in pursuit of its goals, such linkages should not be allowed to detract from the development of a coherent and targeted program of IDGEC activities focused on work designed to address the IDGEC Research Foci. It will be helpful as well for the project to design an ongoing procedure for coming up with ideas for new substantive areas of interest, so that there will always be good prospects for new initiatives in the pipeline.
2. Continuity – Research Foci and Analytic Themes.
A review of IDGEC’s
Implementation Strategy led to a reaffirmation of the central role of the Research Foci and Analytic Themes first set forth in IDGEC’s 1999 Science Plan. The three Research
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Foci dealing with issues of causality, performance, and design emphasize the integration of IDGEC into the broader agenda of the New Institutionalism in the social sciences and law. There is general agreement that contributions to knowledge regarding these matters can and will serve as the criteria in terms of which IDGEC’s performance will be judged at the end of the project’s lifecycle. The analytic themes dealing with the problems of fit, interplay, and scale have proven highly productive. These themes have moved to center stage in research on environmental institutions or governance systems, and it is clearly the case that IDGEC has played an important role in promoting this development. There is consensus on the proposition that substantial room remains for more productive research to be carried out on the problems of fit, interplay, and scale during the next few years. Thus, the core elements of IDGEC’s Implementation Strategy will continue to guide the work of the project during the near future.
3. Change – extending the IDGEC framework. At the same time, the discussion at SSC 5 produced agreement on the importance of introducing new ingredients into the IDGEC Implementation Strategy. In the first instance, these changes will focus on “extending the IDGEC framework,” a phrase intended to connote new developments of a strategic nature rather than simply the adoption of new substantive topics for consideration. Although it still seems appropriate to treat the problems of fit, interplay, and scale as a coherent set of analytic themes, several new IDGEC priorities involve themes that are somewhat similar in character to the existing analytic themes.
The terms used to characterize the new themes during SSC 5 are agency, change, and knowledge. The idea of agency refers to a theme featuring an emphasis on major stakeholders in institutional settings, a concern for the interests of these stakeholders, and a consideration of the roles institutions play in determining distributive outcomes or, in other words, who gets what in processes involving the creation and operation of governance systems. The term change suggests the importance of thinking about institutions as continually changing structures of rights, rules, and decisionmaking procedures rather than as static arrangements that do not change much once they are put in place. The challenge here is to understand both the stickiness of institutions under many conditions and the forms and patterns of change occurring under other conditions.
Knowledge has been a topic of considerable interest to IDGEC for a number of years. A volume of papers produced by IDGEC on this theme is scheduled for publication during
2004 as a special issue of International Environmental Agreements edited by Syma
Ebbin. But SSC 5 suggested heightening IDGEC’s attention to the interactive relations between institutions and knowledge systems and raising questions about the coproduction of knowledge and institutions as well as the roles of individual leaders (e.g. knowledge brokers) in influencing the outcomes of such processes. References to all of these themes can be found in the original IDGEC Science Plan. But SSC 5 produced agreement on the desirability of directing more concentrated attention to these matters during the next phase. A committee consisting of Leslie King, Louis Lebel, and Oran
Young will produce the first draft of a document early in 2004 explaining IDGEC’s extended framework.
4. Existing flagship activities – The existing IDGEC flagship activities have all produced significant results. But they are at different stages of development and need to
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be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Syma Ebbin gave a presentation on the status of the
Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones (PEEZ) activity. PEEZ has several major publications in the pipeline, a critical workshop in the works, and ideas for examining the linkages between the governance of marine systems and the growth of institutional arrangements in other areas (e.g. trade). It may make sense to integrate PEEZ into a broader IDGEC activity dealing with all aspects of water or, in other words, the global water cycle (see section 5 below). But this need not alter the research priorities of PEEZ itself. Suparb Pas-ong and Louis Lebel provided an update on the Political Economy of
Tropical and Boreal Forests (PEF) activity. PEF has plans to pay more attention to institutional arrangements relating to boreal forests and to examine issues relating to the effort to establish a global forestry regime. But PEF expects to wrap up the work outlined in its original scoping report sometime in 2005. Jyrki Luukkanen and Taishi Sugiyama spoke of developments relating to the Carbon Management Research Activity (CMRA).
CMRA has undergone major restructuring over the last year. The focus now is on institutional developments beyond the initial UNFCCC/KP commitment period (i.e. beyond 2012) and on the integration of issues relating to adaptation to climate change.
Although these changes represent a major shift in CMRA’s research agenda, the SSC concluded that this redirection of CMRA’s priorities is a positive development.
5. New substantive topics. SSC 5 introduced a procedure known as QWaMPA to generate suggestions from individual members of the committee regarding new substantive topics of interest to IDGEC. This process led to a discussion of several new topics that deserve analysis from the IDGEC perspective. Two clusters of topics emerged as particularly suitable priorities for the next phase of the project’s work. First, institutional arrangements loom as major driving forces with regard to the allocation of water among alternative uses (e.g. navigation, irrigation, drinking water), the allocation of water among competing users (e.g. farmers, municipal water systems), and the maintenance of water quality. Several other aspects of a heightened focus on water are noteworthy. If we frame the issue in terms of the global water cycle, it becomes appropriate to move toward a suite of linked studies dealing with marine systems, estuarine and coastal zone systems, and systems featuring surface water and groundwater.
Among other things, this would facilitate the development of IDGEC linkages with other global change projects, such as ESSP’s Global Water System Project (GWSP), LOICZ in the case of coastal zone systems, and GLOBEC in the case of marine systems. The SSC decided to increase IDGEC’s attention to a range of water issues, regardless of the feasibility of developing strong links with these other projects. But it also emphasized the importance of exploring constructive links with a number of counterpart projects.
A second cluster of topics centers on issues pertaining to trade and the environment. The intent here is not to invest time and energy in producing more studies of interactions between various MEAs and the WTO or to debate the pros and cons of creating a World Environment Organization (WEO). Rather, there may be considerable value added to be gained from studies of two other aspects of the trade/environment linkages. Comparative studies of the environmental impacts of regional trade regimes offer one attractive research agenda. The emphasis here will be on place-based assessments of environmental issues associated with arrangements like APEC, NAFTA,
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and MERCOSUR. The other area of interest centers on the environmental consequences of the growth of commodity chains that link local and global actors concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities like bananas, coffee, copper, or even oil. A consideration of commodity chains would, at one and the same time, help to illuminate matters of institutional interplay and provide a point of comparison with studies of place-based phenomena.
6. Crosscutting issues. SSC 5 generated a marked growth of interest in the institutional dimensions of matters like social transformations, adaptation and learning, and especially vulnerability and resilience. Questions regarding adaptation and the limits of adaptive management have become increasingly central to discussions of the impacts of climate change and variability. More generally, the rise of human dominated ecosystems has added urgency to efforts to understand the determinants of vulnerability and resilience in these coupled systems. One observation that crops up frequently is that systems that appear to be similar in terms of their material circumstances frequently exhibit striking differences in their capacity to handle a variety of stresses without undergoing dramatic changes. One - though only one - explanation of this phenomenon centers of the role of institutions in allowing systems to track the emergence of stresses in a timely manner, process information about the major features of stresses, and take appropriate measures to deal with them. A natural focus for IDGEC in this connection is to examine the specific roles that institutions play in coping with stresses and enhancing resilience. A logical outgrowth of work in this field would be the accumulation of insights relevant to the (re)design of institutions to improve their ability to assess and respond to a range of stressors. Since vulnerability and resilience also constitute one of
IHDP’s crosscutting concerns, this subject offers a particularly attractive focus for
IDGEC science in the future.
7. Linkages. SSC 5 devoted considerable attention to the landscape of linkages among IHDP core projects, projects operating under the auspices of other global change research programmes (e.g. GLOBEC and LOICZ), and crosscutting projects sponsored by the ESSP (e.g. GCP, GWSP, GECaFS). There are obvious advantages in building synergistic links between IDGEC and any of a number of other projects. Yet the landscape of linkages is increasingly dense and turbulent, and there are apparent dangers in investing scare resources in the pursuit of collaborative initiatives that do not yield significant payoffs. What does this mean for the next phase of IDGEC science? The SSC discussed this question in detail and arrived at several important conclusions.
Collaborative efforts should be pursued only when there are clear advantages to IDGEC.
And even then, it will be important to follow a strategy of picking and choosing, making serious commitments to some collaborative efforts while generally avoiding others.
Based on this perspective, the SSC’s current view of linkages can be described as follows. With regard to sister IHDP projects, the proper strategy is to pool our resources to address issues of common concern like vulnerability and resilience rather than seeking to forge specific partnerships with other core projects. In the case of IGBP projects,
IDGEC is currently in an exploratory mode. There may be an opportunity to promote mutually beneficial collaboration with GLOBEC and LOICZ as well as GECHS
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regarding coastal and marine systems. From IDGEC’s perspective, the weak link in this collaboration at present is the LOICZ planning process. Another area worth monitoring in this connection is the planning process surrounding the development of IGBP’s new land compartment as a successor to GCTE and LUCC. IDGEC will continue to engage in exploratory interactions with those working on these initiatives without making any specific commitments to them at this time. With regard to ESSP, IDGEC has played a strong role in the development of the Science and Implementation Plans of the Global
Carbon Project (GCP) due in large part to the role that IDGEC’s chair plays as the cochair of the GCP SSC. IDGEC will continue to work collaboratively in this area. The enhanced interest of IDGEC in questions relating to water suggests the possibility of a mutually beneficial link with the GWSP. Persistent doubts about the coherence and vitality of the GWSP, however, have led to the adoption of a cautious attitude toward any largescale collaboration with this project for the moment.
8. IPO renewal and transition. The chair and the executive officer reported on state of the IPO. The project has recently received renewed funding from NSF that will underwrite the work of the IPO for the period 1 September 2003 through 31 August 2006.
During the course of the last academic year, the IPO moved from Dartmouth College to the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of
California (Santa Barbara). At the Bren School, the IPO is associated with the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development and has access to a strong pool of graduate students. Maria Gordon came on board during the spring of 2003 to serve as the IPO’s administrative assistant. Heike Schroeder, a political scientist from Germany, will assume the duties of Executive Officer during November/December (succeeding Syma Ebbin who has done an outstanding job during the last three years). Several UCSB students are also at work on IDGEC-relevant tasks. Overall, the IPO is in excellent shape at the moment.
9. IDGEC Network. Plans are in place to increase interaction with individual members of the Network and to identify needs they have that IDGEC may be able to address. The IPO will send a questionnaire (both electronically and in hard copy) accompanying the Biennial Report to members of the Network in an effort to strengthen links to these researchers. The IPO will make a concerted effort to find ways to respond to the needs of Network members during the coming year. A major feature of this initiative will be an effort to make better use of a variety of forms of electronic communication (e.g. collaboratories). The SSC approved of these plans.
10. Research Fellows. The appointment of research fellows continues to be a successful programmatic activity. IDGEC benefits greatly from the work of energetic younger scholars. At present, for example, research fellows are taking the lead in organizing the upcoming workshop on the intersection between EEZ regimes and trade policies and representing IDGEC’s interests in the development of the Global Water
System Project. At the Montreal meeting, the SSC agreed to the appointment of two new research fellows: Cathleen Fogel (USA), and Syma Ebbin (USA). Continuing research fellows include: Frank Alcock (USA), Antonio Contreras (the Philippines), Sylvia
Karlsson (Sweden), and Tun Myint (Myanmar/USA).
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11, IDGEC Endorsements. IDGEC has taken the view from the outset that the project should endorse other initiatives only when there is a clear and substantial connection with IDGEC’s goals. Nonetheless, the project receives regular requests for endorsements and has responded affirmatively in a number of cases. The chair and the executive officer briefed the SSC on recent additions to the roster of endorsed projects, including a study of post-Kyoto policy scenarios led by Taishi Sugiyama, the Global
Governance Initiative spearheaded by Frank Biermann, and the Transnational Institutions on Environment (TIE) project/workshop under the guidance of Gerd Winter.
12. Presentations/publications – The project has developed a stable strategy for presenting the results of IDGEC research to the broader science community. This strategy features the organization of IDGEC panels on a regular basis at meetings of the
International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), the International
Studies Association (ISA), and the Open Meetings of the Human Dimensions of Global
Environmental Change Research Community along with more ad hoc activities at a number of other professional meetings. The SSC discussed and approved several new initiatives in this realm. With regard to publications, IDGEC has not felt the need to establish a publication series of its own. Rather, publication has taken the form of producing edited volumes and placing articles in relevant scientific journals (e.g.
International Environmental Agreements).
The SSC agreed that this strategy serves the needs of the project well.
13. Policy relevance. The discussion at SSC 5 turned on several occasions to the issue of maximizing the policy relevance of IDGEC science. There was general agreement on the importance of ensuring the policy relevance of the project’s work along with a keen sense of the complexities of the science/policy interface and the effort required to present scientific conclusions in a form that is easy for members of the policy community to understand and use. One way IDGEC is proceeding regarding this matter is to include as members of the SSC several individuals who have worked in the policy community or have strong connections with this community. Another approach involves increased emphasis on science brokering or marketing IDGEC results in settings like the
World Bank or the GEF. The SSC concluded that the project should make a concerted effort to present the results of IDGEC science in settings of this kind.
14. IDGEC SSC membership. Three current members of the SSC will be rotating off the committee either because their terms are expiring or because they have missed two consecutive sessions of the SSC: Paul Mathieu, Mdiodio Niasse, and Arild
Underdal. The SSC discussed options for filling these vacancies at considerable length.
One conclusion was to invite Joyeeta Gupta (the Netherlands/India), a legal scholar located at the Free University of Amsterdam, to join the SSC. Beyond this, the group identified a sizable number of attractive candidates and agreed on procedures for contacting these individuals and exploring their willingness to serve as members of the committee. The expectation is that one or two additional invitations to join the SSC will be agreed upon during the next several months. Following standard procedure, all
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proposals for new members of the SSC will be forwarded to the IHDP secretariat for further action.
15. IDGEC SSC 6. The SSC accepted an invitation from Merrilyn Wasson to host IDGEC SSC 6 in Darwin, Australia. The invitation proposed a meeting either in
June or in September. A number of members of the SSC have teaching schedules that make September a difficult time to travel. Accordingly, the IPO will proceed to make concrete plans to hold SSC 6 sometime during the second half of June in Australia.
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