International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change

IHDP

Annual ReportInternational Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change

IHDP Annual Report 201132

Navigating the Anthro-pocene first requires developing strategies for appropriate action and gaining greater insight into the drivers of global change.

GOvERNANCE AND KNOWlEDGE IN THE ANTHROPOCENEBy Ruben Zondervan, with contributions from Ilan Chabay

The Anthropocene: A new era in the history of Planet Earth in which the human species is a main driver of global environmental change .

Planetary Boundaries: Thresholds in natural systems defining a safe operating space for hu-manity .

Sustainability: Adapting to global change in the Anthropocene while not exceeding plan-etary boundaries .

These three powerful concepts have gained strong influence in recent years, well beyond the global change research community in which they were born . And yet despite their richness, they cannot convey a complete picture of the complex system of human-environment inter-actions . Missing are the human dimensions of global environmental change—the dynamic and rapidly changing interplay between human cul-tural, societal, economic and behavioural trends and the natural environments they both shape, and are shaped by . It is about the people who are drivers of global environmental change and therefore must be at the heart of any solution . In light of the unprecedented speed and mag-nitude of global environmental change, equally

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unprecedented changes in human behaviour are crucial to achieve sustainability—and to address inequity . But changes where to and how?

Given the non-linear dynamics of global en-vironmental change and natural systems out-side the range of natural variability, the Anthro-pocene is mare incognitum—an unchartered sea . Planetary boundaries do help to set a few outer marker beacons to the Anthropocene era, but the challenge for the human dimensions of global environmental change is to navigate the Anthropocene .

The IHDP Knowledge, Learning, and So-cietal Change Alliance, and the Earth System Governance Project contribute critical research to advancing answers to this question .

Navigating the Anthropocene first requires developing strategies for appropriate action and gaining greater insight into the drivers of global change and the behavioural transitions needed to avoid or respond effectively to possible ef-fects . Understanding the complex mechanisms, dynamics, and outcomes of the interplay be-tween knowledge, learning, and societal change will be crucial .

Faced with this wide array of complex and critical issues facing humanity at all levels—from the local to global scale—we need to find new ways of using local and traditional knowl-edge systems—including governance schema—in connection with formal scientific knowledge, develop broader understanding and communi-cation of our evolving knowledge base, and learn

to mitigate, adapt (including equitable gover-nance) in the rapid (and accelerating) changes in our world . The knowledge to address the issues must not only be found, (re)constructed or produced, but it must also be used to design policies for different scales, in order to change the behaviour of individuals, communities, and institutions .

However, merely having adequate and ap-propriate knowledge does not necessarily lead to requisite actions . In the gap between knowl-edge and action lie crucial issues not only of how knowledge is produced and by whom, but also how it is framed and communicated; by whom, for what purpose and in what con-text; and how it is learned and understood by relevant stakeholders . In addition to knowledge systems and learning processes, it is essential to identify and understand cultural and societal barriers to individual and collective action and

“Faced with this wide array of com-plex and critical issues facing human-ity at all levels—from the local to global scale—we need to find new ways of using local and traditional knowledge systems—including governance sche-ma—in connection with formal scien-tific knowledge.”

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effective, ethical ways to overcome them .These issues are at the core of the new IHDP

international research and action alliance on “Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change: finding paths to a sustainable future (KLSC)” . Addressing these kinds of socially-coupled complex issues requires trans-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research in which the entire

research process from conceptual design to data collection to analysis to communication of con-clusions is conducted with the participation of relevant and interested stakeholders .

Two of the key questions that the KLSC alli-ance will investigate are related broadly to issues of governance . How we can best understand and use computational models and scenarios with our evolving knowledge to create options for policy and practice? How can we create, use, and study the impact of narratives of sustainable futures, including those suggested by models, to stimulate constructive individual and collective actions and policy?

The two questions represent two comple-mentary perspectives on how people produce, understand, and respond to knowledge, and how understanding and response relate to in-

dividual and collective actions affecting sustain-ability at multiple temporal and spatial scales . Engaging with and communicating among stakeholders involves performance, exhibitions, workshops, legacy commercial media, and the increasingly extensive and influential repertoire of social media and ICT . Stakeholders include people from affected communities, corporate and NGO leaders, policy shapers and makers, social and natural scientists, historians, philoso-phers, and artists .

Navigating the Anthropocene secondly re-quires a better understanding of governance and the development of policy solutions towards a global, effective architecture for governance of sustainability that can adapt to changing cir-cumstances, that involves civil society, that is accountable and legitimate beyond the nation state, and that is fair for everyone . This is the challenge addressed by the IHDP Earth System Governance Project—an international interdis-ciplinary research alliance .

The issues and political dynamics in the 21st century are different from those when most institutions currently in place to govern the human interaction with natural systems were founded . Today’s problems are characterized by temporal, spatial, and sectoral interdependen-cies; complexity; a multitude of actors; and ana-lytical and normative uncertainty . This poses new questions and might require different an-swers to old questions related to key concepts in governance including power, scale, norms,

“Research on earth system gover-nance, is also research on the role that science and knowledge play in gover-nance.”

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and the role of knowledge . Research on earth system governance is also research on the role that science and knowledge play in governance . One of the crosscutting themes of the project is dedicated to this question and relates to all ana-lytical problems of earth system governance .

The boundary between knowledge and de-cision-making is not hard and fast, but dynamic and constantly negotiated . Neither is science free from politics, nor politics from science . Earth System Governance research thus pays at-tention to the intersection of power and knowl-edge and how this shapes the way earth system challenges are framed and potential policy re-sponse agendas set—because that is the plotting of a course in the Anthropocene .

Ancient maps often marked unchartered

territories with the foreboding phrase “here be dragons” . With humans as main driving force in the Anthropocene, it will be learning, knowl-edge, governance, and action that will deter-mine whether dragons indeed await us in the Anthropocene, or if it actually could be a nice place .