Earth system governance

Abstract

Earth system governance is a new paradigm in the social sciences to better understand politics in times of socio-ecological system changes at planetary scale. It shares with traditional concepts, such as “global environmental politics,” the focus on governance as the collective steering of societal behavior by political actors. Earth system governance is broader than traditional global environmental politics in its emphasis on the complexity of integrated socio-ecological systems at planetary scale. Key concerns of earth system governance are vast and interdependent challenges, such as ocean acidification, land use change, food system disruptions, climate change, environment-induced migration, species extinction, changing regional water cycles, as well as more traditional environmental concerns. Earth system governance brings a new perspective for the theory of global politics that is system-focused as opposed to binary human-environment; integrated across levels instead of being merely inter-governmental or local; and progressive as a research approach by moving from positivist institutional analysis to critical theory and transformative global change.