Project description:

The Marie Curie Training Course on the Human Dimension of Global Environmental Change aims to train and educate advanced doctoral students and young researchers about the theoretical developments and empirical and practical implications from the emerging field of earth system governance. It also provides the opportunity for participants to present the results of relevant research. It finally aims at establishing a network of young researchers and developing a research agenda for the future. The training course will be held back to back with the 2008 Berlin Conference on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, which this year has as its main theme, “Long Term Policies – Governing Social Ecological Change.”

A key concern of earth system governance is the negotiation at the interface of public decision-making and societal influence, between state and civil society, marking the boundaries between government and governance. Yet, how to organize the involvement of stakeholders in global and national decision making, and what difference it makes for problem solving, is still a question insufficiently understood in the social sciences.
The training course addresses the following key questions from different disciplines of social science:

• (How) does participation enhance problem defining/ formation and solving in earth system governance? What patterns of participation are observed, what are preconditions for participation and what impacts does participation have?

• What are new problems – e.g. lack of legitimacy, green wash, capture, corruption – and how to overcome these problems?