The project on Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) is now formally closed. IDGEC completed its synthesis phase following the IDGEC Synthesis Conference in December 2006 and several months of preparation of publications. The Gobal Governance Project was formed to take the IDGEC research themes in new directions under a new science plan. To find out more, please go to: Glogov.org

HISTORY

IDGEC was a long-term international research project developed during the 1990s under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and operated as one of IHDP's core projects.

IDGEC Mission Statement

IDGEC sponsored and coordinated research on the roles that institutions play as determinants of the course of human/environmental interactions with respect to global environmental change. The project generated knowledge about social institutions and, at the same time, built and disseminated the intellectual capital needed to devise policies to mitigate global environmental change problems.

What are institutions?

Institutions are clusters of rights, rules, and decision-making procedures that give rise to social practices, assign roles to participants in these practices, and govern interactions among occupants of those roles. Unlike organizations, which are material entities that typically figure as actors in social practices, institutions may be thought of as the rules of the game that determine the character of these practices.

Institutions loom large as causes of large-scale environmental problems that are both systemic (e.g., climate change, ozone layer depletion) and cumulative (e.g., loss of biological diversity) in nature. Faulty structures of property rights, for example, can lead to severe depletions of stocks of living resources or to excessive uses of ecosystems for the disposal of airborne and waterborne pollutants. Conversely, institutions often figure prominently in efforts to solve or manage environmental problems. The establishment of regulatory regimes to control emissions of ozone-depleting substances or greenhouse gases is an example of obvious relevance to global environmental change.

A thumbnail history of the origin of IDGEC

IDGEC's history can be traced to a feasibility study submitted to the IHDP Scientific Committee (SC) in September 1995. That study initiated the process of creating a Scientific Planning Committee and drafting an IDGEC Science Plan that was approved by the IHDP SC in late 1998. The first IDGEC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) was appointed during the spring of 1999. The SSC met for the first time in June 1999 and mapped out an implementation strategy for IDGEC. From the outset, Dr. Oran Young, now a professor at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) has chaired the IDGEC SSC.
An IDGEC International Project Office (IPO) was established later in 1999 at Dartmouth College with funding provided by the US National Science Foundation. The IPO, headed by an Executive Officer and now located at UCSB, has played a critical role in the work of IDGEC beginning with the identification of issues ripe for systematic analysis and continuing through to the presentation and publication of findings. The current Executive Officer is Dr. Heike Schroeder, a political scientist from Germany. NSF funding for the work of the IPO is secure through 31 August 2006.