Background
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); it operated as one of IHDP's core projects.
Synthesis conferences and the activities leading up to
them, common events in projects operating under the auspices
of Global Environmental Changes (GEC) programmes, are,
first and foremost, stocktaking exercises. Their purpose
is to harvest important findings and harmonize results
in order to document and publish major advances in the
state of knowledge in well-defined research areas. In
addition, the synthesis process provided opportunities
to explore the policy relevance of a project's findings
and to develop a research agenda to guide the next phase
of work in a given issue area.
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Objectives
The IDGEC Synthesis Conference sought to:
(i) synthesize the result of 8 years of research on the
role of institutions in human-environment settings;
(ii) identify the policy relevance of these findings; and
(iii) charge young researchers to develop a new research
agenda for the next phase of work in this field.
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Conference themes
1. IDGEC research foci - causality, performance and design
2. IDGEC analytic themes - fit, interplay, and scale
3. Applied research from the IDGEC research foci and analytic
themes
4. The policy dimensions of institutional research
5. Institutional change
6. New directions
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