Focus 1: Causality

This focus encompasses three more specific themes: (1) what is the role of environmental and resource regimes in global environmental change? (2) what is the role of other institutions (e.g., trade and investment regimes) in global environmental change? and (3) what factors determine the resilience of institutions in the face of global environmental change? As a group, these themes address the fundamental causal connections linking institutions to collective outcomes in the realm of human/environment relations.

Focus 2: Performance

Why are some institutional responses to global environmental changes more successful than others? This focus directs attention to more a circumscribed set of issues in order to deepen our understanding of factors that determine the results arising from human efforts to solve or manage environmental problems through institutional responses. It, too, includes three specific themes: (1) are there common features or elements of (un)successful institutional responses? (2) what factors threaten the development or the survival of institutional responses? and (3) what unintended consequences do institutional responses produce?

Focus 3: Design

What are the prospects for (re)designing institutions to confront environmental challenges? The goal of this most applied focus is to derive policy-relevant conclusions from the study of the institutional dimensions of global environmental change. This effort involves four specific themes: (1) what are the (dis)advantages of creating new institutions in contrast to reforming existing institutions? (2) how can we incorporate flexibility, self-correcting procedures, and social learning processes into environmental and resource regimes? (3) what are the relative merits of a range of institutional attributes, including formal arrangements versus informal social practices, hard law versus soft law arrangements, different types of decision rules, and alternative funding mechanisms in conjunction with environmental and resource regimes? and (4) can we integrate environmental and resource regimes with other institutional arrangements, especially economic arrangements, at different stages of national development?