Institutional Dimensions

of

Global Environmental Change

 

Biennial Report

Spring 1999 - Spring 2001

 

The Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) is a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) based in Bonn, Germany. The International Project Office of IDGEC is located at Dartmouth College.  

 

Table of Contents

·               Mission Statement

·               Letter from the Chair

·               Scientific Steering Committee

·               IDGEC Science

o               Atmospheric Systems

o               Terrestrial Systems

o               Marine Systems

o               Theme on Institutions and Knowledge

o               Science Integration

·               IDGEC Partnerships

·               Network of Researchers

·               International Project Office

·               Future Trajectories

·               List of IDGEC Publications

·               Financial Summary

 

 

Mission Statement

IDGEC sponsors and coordinates research on the role of institutions in shaping human/environment interactions -- especially with respect to global environmental change, sustainable development, and human welfare -- in order to add to our general knowledge of social institutions and to build intellectual capital for improved policymaking in response to environmental changes.

 

Letter from the Scientific Steering Committee Chair

The IHDP core project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) moved from the planning stage to the implementation stage during the first half of 1999 with the publication of the IDGEC Science Plan in April and the first meeting of the project's Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) in June. Now, two years on, the project has compiled a track record that can be examined for evidence of accomplishments to date and indications of future directions.

 

At the outset, the SSC decided to launch a small number of flagship activities dealing with substantive matters of such high priority that they warrant examination under the auspices of the steering committee itself. The current flagships deal with atmospheric systems— the Carbon Management Research Activity (CMRA); marine systems— the Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones (PEEZ); and terrestrial systems— the Political Economy of Boreal and Tropical Forests (PEF). Each activity team has published a Scoping Report, and several have organized scientific workshops and submitted funding proposals to support ongoing work. The flagship activities have begun to play a leadership role in mobilizing sizable groups of scientists around their research agendas. In addition, they have triggered the emergence of new themes that cut across the concerns of the flagships, such as the problem of compliance and the linkages between institutions and knowledge.

 

IDGEC has also worked hard to build partnerships with other organizations and research communities, including other global change research programs, national committees, university-based research teams, and even the secretariats of international environmental regimes. A particular focus of attention has been the effort to join forces with the other major global change research programs to pursue cross-cutting issues relating to carbon, water, and food systems. IDGEC has played a prominent role in the development of the Global Carbon Cycle Joint Project and will collaborate with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the World Climate Research Programme to drive this project forward in the near future.

 

Under the capable leadership of Dr. Syma Ebbin, IDGEC's International Project Office has also made substantial progress in activating a worldwide network of individual researchers interested in the project's scientific agenda. Long-term, international scientific programs like IDGEC can only succeed to the extent that they are able to build intentional communities of individuals who share common interests, and who find the scientific framework provided by the project helpful in organizing their work and facilitating collaboration with like-minded colleagues.

 

IDGEC is now a going concern. By the time of the next biennial report, it should be possible to report initial findings pertaining to the project's basic science questions and analytic themes.

 

 

Oran R. Young

Dartmouth College

IDGEC Scientific Steering Committee

Oran R. Young, Chair

Dartmouth College, USA

 

Russell Reichelt, Vice-Chair

CRC Reef Research, Australia

 

Elena Andreeva

Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

 

Scott Barrett

Johns Hopkins University, USA

 

Angela Cropper

The Cropper Foundation, Trinidad and Tobago

 

Alf Håkon Hoel

University of Tromsø, Norway

 

Leslie King

University of Northern British Columbia, Canada

 

Paul Mathieu

Catholic University of Louvain la Neuve, Belgium

 

Madiodio Niasse

Consultant, Senegal

 

Suparb Pas-ong

Walailak University, Thailand

 

Peter Heinz Sand

University of Munich, Germany

 

Agus Sari

Pelangi, Indonesia

 

Merrilyn Wasson

Australian National University, Australia

 

Yoshiki Yamagata

National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan

IDGEC Science

The IDGEC Science Plan lays out three Research Foci and three Analytic Themes that are intended to lend coherence and structure to the collaborative efforts of many researchers working on the roles that institutions play both in causing and in confronting large-scale environmental changes. The Research Foci, which deal with matters of causality, performance, and design, are familiar concerns in the literature on social institutions. By contrast, the Analytic Themes, which deal with the problems of fit, interplay, and scale, address new issues that the IDGEC Scientific Steering Committee believes are at the cutting edge of research on the institutional dimensions of environmental change. Increasing knowledge about these matters will constitute one of the major contributions of the project over the next five to 10 years. Yet the problems of fit, interplay, and scale are themselves in need of further elaboration in conceptual and analytic terms to make them suitable to serve as key elements in the IDGEC research program.

 

One of the first major products of IDGEC is a book prepared by Oran Young to meet this need. The book, which MIT Press will publish early in 2002, is entitled The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale. In addition to extended discussions of the three Analytic Themes, the book explores the differences between what IDGEC calls collective-action models and social-practice models of institutions, and provides an account of the relationship between analysis and praxis with regard to institutions. Because of the time involved in formal publication, and because this book is meant to be helpful to all those working in the field, the International Project Office has posted the text of each chapter on the IDGEC website.

 

At its first meeting, the IDGEC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) decided to launch three flagship activities focused on substantive institutional issues relating to atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial systems as a means of organizing work dealing with the project's theoretical and applied concerns. These activities, which are known as the Carbon Management Research Activity (CMRA), the Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones (PEEZ), and the Political Economy of Boreal and Tropical Forests (PEF), are major vehicles for the organization of IDGEC research. The Scoping Reports and other documents relating to the flagship activities are available at www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec.

 

Atmospheric Systems

With the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, the international community has embarked on an effort to develop a global regime that will address climate change. Transforming these agreements into effective climate change institutions poses a monumental challenge. 

 

The IDGEC Carbon Management Research Activity (CMRA) has two “themes.” The first explores the institutional issues related to the administration and implementation of the climate regime in its present form and focuses on issues of compliance. The second theme focuses on the longer-term ability of the regime to change over time, to adapt to the insights gained through the process of implementation, changing technologies, scientific understandings, and global socio-economic conditions.  

 

Accomplishments

The CMRA Scoping Report was published and distributed in March 2000. It is also available in full text on the IDGEC website: www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec. The initial implementation meeting of IDGEC’s CMRA was held on May 29-30, 2000 in Tokyo, Japan. The meeting was attended by more than 30 researchers from 12 countries and a range of disciplines, and was sponsored by the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), and the International Human Dimensions Programme.

 

The purpose of the meeting was to move the research activity from its initial scoping phase into the research phase. There were several objectives in doing so.

 

The first objective was to stimulate a discussion among the participants about the institutional issues and research questions raised by the Scoping Report, and to identify those that are of particular concern to policy-makers and researchers.

 

The second objective of the meeting was to elaborate on the most important of these research questions and identify, in concrete terms, an initial set of research projects that could be undertaken under the CMRA to begin to resolve them.

 

Finally, the SSC wanted to elicit participants’ ideas about how to best develop the linkages and network of researchers necessary to move the activity forward.

 

While the participants did not reach specific conclusions regarding the range of issues and topics discussed at the meeting, a general consensus did emerge regarding a number of issues:

 

Ø   There was general agreement that a coordinated research program to look at the range of institutional issues associated with the climate regime is timely and of tremendous interest to both researchers and policy-makers.

 

Ø   Two questions emerged as being particularly important: (1) What is the relationship between the Clean Development Mechanism rules and incentives for participation in it? and (2) How effective are the various options being considered in the compliance mechanism?

 

Ø   The participants recognized that an expanded network of researchers is necessary to move the activity forward, and that additional efforts are necessary to draw researchers from important regions that were not represented at the first planning meeting, such as Africa and Latin America.

 

Ø   Participants expressed interest in being part of an on-going dialogue with the policy community on institutional questions associated with the climate regime, and expressed interest in holding a series of discussions with participants in the meetings of the Conference of the Parties and its subsidiary bodies.

 

Ø   Participants welcomed recommendations and nominations from the FCCC Parties of other researchers who might become involved in this effort.

 

A report of the proceedings of this meeting was edited by Granville Sewell, IDGEC Research Fellow, and published by the NIES. The report, available on the IDGEC website, contains the presentations made by workshop participants and outlines the important institutional research questions that they believe are of interest to both researchers and policy-makers.  This report, together with the Scoping Report, is intended to be a point of reference for the further development of the CMRA.

 

Future Directions

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and NIES have awarded the CMRA simulation team, Granville Sewell and Yoshiki Yamagata, some funding to begin development of two simulation “games” aimed at exploring the implications of different institutional contexts, rules, and mechanisms in the international carbon management regime. One simulation is focused on carbon emissions trading mechanisms and the other will focus on compliance. The effort provides an exciting opportunity to assist policy-makers in developing effective regulatory mechanisms and institutional structures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to get a handle on anthropogenic climate change.

 

Terrestrial Systems

The state of the world's forests is an emerging global issue. There is little doubt that deforestation is a serious problem in many parts of the world. A recent United Nations publication, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Forest Resource Assessment 2000, “suggests that the average annual net loss of forests during the 1990s was 9 million hectares.” 

 

At the same time, there is a growing recognition of the critical role that forests play in providing a variety of environmental services of global importance. Forests are critical for carbon sequestration, for the maintenance of biological diversity, for the well-being of local communities, and for providing resources for sustainable development.

 

IDGEC’s forest activity has published a Scoping Report entitled, “The Political Economy of Tropical and Boreal Forests” (PEF), available in full-text on the IDGEC website: www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec. The PEF research agenda focuses on three themes: the effects of political decentralization on forest management, the impact of globalization on the condition of forests, and the consequences of international forest agreements.  IDGEC’s forest activity looks at the following types of issues:

 

v   Why do some forms of resource tenure promote sustainable forest management practices and outcomes, while others lead to degradation?

v   Under what conditions does decentralization result in better forest management practices and outcomes?

v   Under what conditions does integration in the global economy lead to more sustainable management of forests?

v   How do local, national, and international institutions interact with respect to forest management and to what effect?

v   How can international environmental and trade regimes be redesigned so that they will facilitate sustainable and equitable management of forestlands?

 

Accomplishments

Implementation is getting underway in this activity. The Asia-Pacific Network has recently awarded PEF Scoping Report author Dr. Suparb Pas-ong at Walailak University in Thailand a grant to conduct an institutional analysis of forest conditions in four countries of Southeast Asia. A total of six case studies will be completed: three will focus on upland forests, two on coastal (mangrove) forests, and one will include both forest types. Within the context of globalization and decentralization, the analysis will focus on the interplay between local, national, and international institutions because the success of environmental institutions depends not only on their own strength, but also how they interact with other institutions.  

 

Additionally, a group of African and European research institutions have been awarded a grant from the European Union for their research project on “Changes in Land Access, Institutions and Markets in West Africa” (CLAIMS). Among them is the Institut d’Etudes du Developpement at the Catholic University of Louvain la Neuve, at which SSC member Paul Mathieu is affiliated.

             

The authors of the PEF report and some of IDGEC’s SSC members have also submitted a proposal to the European Commission Programme on Tropical Forests in Developing Countries. They’ve pulled together an impressive team of researchers from around the world to collaborate on the proposal.

 

A series of case studies in Asia and Africa have been selected with the goal of identifying the forces driving forest changes in these areas. The project focuses on institutional determinants of af/de/reforestation, including the decentralization of political institutions within individual countries, the globalization of markets for timber and other wood products, and the interplay between institutional arrangements operating at different levels of social organization. 

 

With support from Dartmouth’s Dickey Center for International Understanding, IDGEC has embarked on a project focused on the political economy of boreal forests.  Student Research Assistant Katie Greenwood began work on this project in the spring of 2001, developing an annotated bibliography of data and references relating to boreal forests.  Work on this project will continue and result in a report synthesizing information on the nature and role of institutions in boreal forest use and management in northern nations. 

 

Future Directions

With several grants in various stages of implementation and development, the work of the PEF flagship is quickly entering the stage when research findings will be available. PEF has created a vibrant community of international researchers linked by common interests in the institutional drivers of forest use and management.

 

Marine Systems

The establishment of 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) brought 11 percent of the world’s ocean, 90 percent of the world’s fish catch, and approximately 25 percent of the world’s primary productivity under the jurisdiction of coastal states. This shift constituted one of the most far-reaching distributional and institutional changes in the history of the world.

 

The main research thrust of this activity is to assess how this enclosure has affected the conservation and use of marine resources. There are currently more than 100 coastal countries with EEZ-based regimes in operation, creating a rich opportunity for comparative analysis. 

 

IDGEC’s ocean governance activity has published a Scoping Report entitled “Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones” (PEEZ). The full text is available on the IDGEC website: www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec.

 

The PEEZ research agenda addresses four broad clusters of effects associated with EEZ-based regimes:

v   How can we account for the variation in the performance of EEZ regimes?

v   How have EEZs affected the conservation, distribution, and efficient use of marine resources?

v   How has the creation of EEZs changed traditional notions of sovereignty?

v   How have EEZs affected the way in which ideas and knowledge about resource management and conservation are developed and introduced?

 

Accomplishments

The PEEZ project took its first step toward implementing its research agenda by convening a workshop in Tromsø, Norway in March 2001. SSC member Alf Håkon Hoel, of the Department of Political Science at the University of Tromsø, convened the meeting.  The emphasis was on inviting young scientists, including doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. A summary report of the workshop is available on the IDGEC website: www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec.

 

The Tromsø workshop brought together a team of 14 internationally based researchers addressing the issues on the PEEZ agenda. It also provided a forum for the presentation of individual research projects, and a discussion of how the PEEZ project can move forward by refining research questions and sharpening the project focus. 

 

Discussions centered on the North Atlantic and North Pacific regions; the team hopes to expand this to include a greater emphasis on Southeast Asia and the South China Sea region in the next workshop. The papers and discussions focused on the production of knowledge and ideas regarding marine systems, institutional dynamics, the institutional dimensions of national policy space, and institutional interplay.  

 

Future Directions

Particularly promising avenues for PEEZ include studies of the interplay among ocean governance arrangements and the global trade and biodiversity regimes, the implementation of EEZ arrangements in national settings, and comparisons between ocean governance and other emerging arrangements dealing with matters like genetic resources.

 

The next workshop will likely be held in Australia in late 2001 or early 2002. The focus for this meeting will be institutional arrangements in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Australia region relating to exclusive economic zones, and the issues of equity and sustainability. It is envisioned that the papers presented at the two workshops will be developed into a book. PEEZ plans to develop a database describing the participants’ research projects that can be accessed via the IDGEC website. 

 

Theme on Institutions and Knowledge (THINK)

Virginia Walsh, the former executive officer of the IDGEC International Project Office, has been working on developing a cross-cutting Theme on Institutions and Knowledge (THINK) under the joint umbrella of IDGEC and the Center for Global Change and Governance (CGCG) at Rutgers University. The project is designed to establish CGCG as a “hub” within IDGEC’s global network of researchers.  

 

THINK is designed to inform the work of IDGEC’s three flagship activities. It will focus on institutions, knowledge, and ecosystems as complex, interrelated systems. The project is organized around four lines of inquiry: (1) social institutions and knowledge; (2) institutions and scientific negotiations; (3) knowledge and institutional effectiveness; and (4) beliefs and social norms.  

 

Accomplishments

This past February, IDGEC sponsored a panel organized by Walsh at the 2001 International Studies Association (ISA) annual meeting to explore linkages between institutions and knowledge. Several of the papers from this panel are available on the IDGEC website.

 

Future Directions

A Scoping Report is in progress and should be published later in 2001. Additionally, an IDGEC-sponsored panel examining the THINK research questions will take place at the 2002 ISA meeting. The panel will bring together researchers from a variety of disciplinary, methodological, and cultural perspectives to sharpen and extend individual projects through friendly and pointed debate. The design is explicitly pluralistic, encouraging participation by analysts who bring a variety of perspectives to bear. The panel will be organized as a workshop to facilitate the development of a book-length edited volume for submission to MIT Press’ Politics, Science and Environment series, or a special issue of the journal Global Environmental Politics.

 

Science Integration

IDGEC science activities are not isolated projects; rather, they are connected to one another through a variety of cross-cutting themes. The research questions and emerging results demonstrate a number of linkages, shared threads, issues, and drivers.

 

Over the past year, two such cross-cutting themes have been identified and are emerging as research agendas that cut across the three flagship activities. They are knowledge systems and compliance. In addition, the Analytical Themes of interplay, scale, and fit, and the Research Foci on causality, performance and design, are also intended to cut across the research activities and to provide a focus for research and conclusions.

 

As the results of the flagship research activities have begun to emerge, other cross-cutting concepts, issues, and questions became apparent:

 

1.     sustainable development;

 

2.     distributional impacts of the performance of institutions;

 

3.     institutional responses to uncertainty including issues of resilience and adaptation;

 

4.     discourse and discourse analysis in the creation and operation of institutions;

 

5.     impacts of globalization, decentralization and interplay among trade and environmental regimes;

 

6.     social impacts or side effects of institutional performance, such as impoverishment, loss of livelihood or culture, corruption, and crime; and,

 

7.     the role of transnational corporations in reinforcing or subverting institutions.

 

In the coming years, IDGEC will examine these issues in the three flagship activities. This will facilitate efforts to synthesize and integrate the results emerging from the research in the three areas.

 

 

IDGEC Partnerships

The IDGEC SSC has articulated a strategy focused on creating partnerships with others pursuing compatible agendas; the initial focus is to select a few partners whose activities seem particularly compatible. In addition, the SSC has decided to prioritize partnerships that afford opportunities to build bridges between IDGEC and the natural science and policy communities.

 

Accomplishments

IDGEC has been actively involved in developing cross-cutting research agendas with other global environmental change programs on carbon, food systems, and water. In conjunction with these activities, IDGEC representatives have attended a series of workshops: Carbon in Oslo 4/2000; Terrestrial Ecosystems in Lisbon 5/2000; Food Systems in Reading 7/2000; Water in Paris 9/2000; Carbon in Durham 10/2000; Carbon and Terrestrial Ecosystems in Kobe 1/2001; and Food Systems in Chiang Mai 2/2001.

Carbon has progressed the farthest of the three cross-cutting themes, and a prospectus has recently been completed. 

 

The Global Carbon Cycle Joint Project is built on a 'framework' that provides an integrated perspective across disciplines, as well as national boundaries. The approach is to accept humans and their activities as an integral part of the carbon cycle, and to focus on the human-environment system as a single, highly linked, and interactive system that drives the dynamics of the carbon cycle. The goal is to understand the underlying mechanisms and feedbacks that control the carbon cycle, explain the current patterns of sources and sinks, and develop plausible trajectories of the behavior of the carbon cycle into the future. The project's target is to provide societies, over the 10-year life of the project, with a significantly enhanced scientific knowledge base on the global carbon cycle to support policy debate and societal action.  

 

IDGEC’s Chair, Oran Young, has been appointed co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Carbon Cycle Joint Project. A meeting to launch the International Carbon Joint Project was held on July 14, 2001 in Amsterdam.

 

IDGEC has also been developing collaborative relationships with a number of institutions and academic programs. These include engaging in cooperative work with NIES in Japan, developing a collaborative research agreement with Rutgers-Newark CGCG, and establishing informal relations with Harvard’s Global Environmental Assessment and Sustainability Projects. 

 

IDGEC has also initiated relationships with various policy organizations, including the United Nations. IDGEC has worked with the UN FCCC Secretariat to examine the implications of various compliance strategies for the UN FCCC. IDGEC is also entering discussions with the UN to identify areas where IDGEC can contribute to the Rio +10 process and the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

 

Future Directions

IDGEC will continue to establish collaborative relationships with international and national, academic, research, and policy organizations.

 

Network of Researchers

Global change research projects like IDGEC are not funding agencies in their own right. To succeed, they must find ways to identify and knit together sizable groups of scientists who have access to resources of their own, but who find it attractive to join forces in collaborative efforts to develop convincing answers to a common set of high priority science questions.

 

In successful cases, the result is an unusually powerful research engine. Nonetheless, the transformation of a diverse collection of scientists into an effective research community pursuing a common agenda requires leadership, hard work, and access to at least some material resources. Efforts to achieve this goal generate transaction costs, including the resources required to develop websites, organize workshops, and provide communications mechanisms. As a result, initiatives in this area require deliberate choices and careful planning.   

 

Accomplishments

One of IDGEC’s ultimate goals is to catalyze an international community of researchers focused on the science questions framed in the Science Plan and Scoping Reports.  To further this goal, the IDGEC International Project Office has reevaluated and reprioritized the IDGEC communications strategy. Recognizing the critical nature of utilizing innovative communications systems, such as the Internet, the International Project Office has decided to emphasize electronic communications over printed means, thereby conserving both resources and money.

 

To this end, the International Project Office has recently completed an overhaul of the IDGEC website (www.dartmouth.edu/~idgec) and has initiated an IDGEC email discussion group. The International Project Office is actively working to expand IDGEC’s on-line holdings of full-text reports and publications so researchers in remote or developing areas of the world may access relevant reference materials easily and inexpensively.  

 

Additionally, after printing and mailing two paper issues of IDGEC News, the International Project Office has shifted to distributing its biannual newsletter by email and via the IDGEC website. The International Project Office has published an IDGEC brochure for distribution at conferences and by mail.

 

The International Project Office is also continuing to expand its international network of interested researchers. The IDGEC network has expanded to include over 400 individuals, and the International Project Office is constantly updating the network database. 

 

IDGEC has established and implemented a two-level endorsement procedure to guide the development of institutional and individual relationships. At this time, many research and conference proposals from individuals and organizations seeking IDGEC endorsements have been received. IDGEC recently endorsed a proposal from the German Association for Political Science for a conference entitled “Global Environmental Change and the Nation State” to be held during December 2001 in Berlin.

 

IDGEC has also been actively represented at scientific meetings. 

·      An IDGEC panel on flagship activities was convened at the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) 2000 conference in Bloomington, Indiana.

·      Syma Ebbin gave a talk on her IDGEC-related research on fit and interplay in the Pacific salmon management regime at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in February/March 2001. 

·      Oran Young gave a plenary presentation entitled, “Can New Institutions Solve Atmospheric Problems? The Cases of Acid Rain, Ozone Depletion, and Climate Change” at the IGBP, IHDP, and WCRP-sponsored Open Science Conference held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 2001. Syma Ebbin, Granville Sewell, and IDGEC Research Assistant Adam Smith produced a poster on the institutional dimensions of climate change for this same conference. 

·      As noted previously, IDGEC sponsored a panel on institutions and knowledge at the 2001 ISA annual conference. Oran Young presented a paper entitled, "Inferences and Indices: Evaluating the Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes” at this ISA conference. 

 

Planning is also underway for future IDGEC panels at scientific conferences. IDGEC will sponsor several panels focusing on institutional interplay and the institutional dimensions of the climate change regime at the Open Science Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Research Community in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in October 2001. Another IDGEC-sponsored panel exploring knowledge systems is planned for the 2002 ISA meeting.

 

IDGEC has emphasized the inclusion of younger researchers in IDGEC workshops and activities. To this end, IDGEC has identified four individual scientists as IDGEC Research Fellows. Frank Alcock, Antonio Contreras, Granville Sewell, and Virginia Walsh are the first IDGEC fellows. The relationship is meant to benefit both the fellows and IDGEC in their research endeavors. 

 

In addition, IDGEC has been awarded a small grant from Dartmouth’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, which has allowed the International Project Office to hire two undergraduate students as research assistants. The students are working on projects relating to IDGEC’s forestry (PEF) and carbon (CMRA) flagship activities. 

 

Future Directions

The IDGEC International Project Office is continuing to explore new mechanisms to build and catalyze its network of researchers, as well as the use of innovative communications technologies in this realm. The International Project Office is also seeking to establish an institutional mechanism at Dartmouth College to support a graduate fellowship program, as well as funding to support such a program. 

 

International Project Office

The IDGEC International Project Office consists of an executive officer, administrative assistant, grants coordinator, and several student assistants. The International Project Office has secured core funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) running through September 2003. 

 

Core Staff

Syma Ebbin

Executive Officer

 

Chrystel Buell

Administrative Assistant

 

Kay McCabe

Grants Coordinator

 

Future Trajectories

Priorities of the International Project Office include enhancing the IDGEC publication base and expanding on-line holdings of IDGEC-relevant publications. The International Project Office is also looking into developing a series of easily accessible and policy-relevant publications for translating scientific literature on institutional dimensions of global environmental change to a broader audience, including policy-makers and laypeople. 

 

Although the International Project Office of IDGEC is funded through a grant from the NSF, this support does not provide any funding earmarked for specific research activities focused on IDGEC’s science questions, or for the development of publications, workshops and conferences. In the future, the International Project Office will seek external funding to augment the resources at hand. Among other activities, such funding could be used to:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately, IDGEC’s performance will be measured by the extent to which it has:

 

Ø   launched new research or redirected ongoing research;

 

Ø   promoted synthetic efforts to ensure that overall understanding of the institutional dimensions of environmental change is greater than the sum of the parts;

 

Ø   become the focal point of an intentional community working on institutional issues relating to environmental change; and

 

Ø   found ways to cooperate with interested members of the policy community.

 

 

List of IDGEC Publications

Science Plan

Scoping Reports

The Institutional Dimensions of Carbon Management

Performance of Exclusive Economic Zones

The Political Economy of Tropical and Boreal Forests

Books

Oran Young, The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change (MIT Press 2002)

Journal Articles

Suparb Pas-ong and Louis Lebel, “Political Transformation and the Environment in Southeast Asia.” Environment 42(8), (2000): 8–19.

Workshop Reports

Granville Sewell and Yoshiki Yamagata eds., "Report of the Initial Planning Meeting," IDGEC CMRA, May 29-30 2000. Tokyo: Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies

 

Alf Håkon Hoel, "Report on the Workshop on the Performance of the Exclusive Economic Zones: Management, Trade and Knowledge," IDGEC PEEZ, March 30-April 1, 2001. Tromsø: University of Tromsø

 

 

The production of this Biennial Report has been made possible through funding provided by the US National Science Foundation grant no. BCS0080786, the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, and Dartmouth College.

 

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors  and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the IHDP Scientific Committee, Secretariat, nor its sponsors, ICSU (International Council for Science) and ISSC (International Social Science Council).


Financial Summary

IDGEC-International Project Office*

 

 

 

Financial Statements for FY 2000 and 2001

 

 

Year Runs: September 1 - August 31

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  FY 2000

 

 FY 2001

Expenses:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Executive Salaries

 $              33,824

 

 $             34,669

Support Staff Salaries

 $              20,231

 

 $             22,904

Scientific Research Salaries

 $              12,113

 

 $             17,065

Fringe

 $                9,175

 

 $             15,688

 

 

 

 

Printing/Publications

 $                6,809

 

 $                5,357

Mailing Costs

 $                3,009

 

 $                1,054

Telephone

 $                    369

 

 $                   200

Supplies/Equipment

 $                3,258

 

 $                2,196

 

 

 

 

SSC Meetings

 $              22,523

 

 $             30,990

Other Travel

 $              12,435

 

 $                7,014

 

 

 

 

IDC: Rent, Utilities, Corporate Overhead

 $              34,886

 

 $             33,933

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total Yearly Expenses

 $            146,200

 

 $           171,130

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Income:

 

 

 

National Science Foundation

 $              89,240

 

 $             96,313

Dartmouth College

 $              36,237

 

 $             38,632

University of Bonn:

 

 

 

International Human Dimensions Programme

 $              20,723

 

 $             36,185

 

 

 

 

Total  Yearly Income

 $            146,200

 

 $           171,130

 

*Note: This International Project Office budget reflects only direct expenses; it does not include other projects and grants that support IDGEC activities and research performed outside the International Project Office.