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The world's ocean represents 70% of the earth's surface and contains 97% of the entire planet's water. It is a primary driver in the cycles of water and carbon and, through its huge capacity to store heat, plays a crucial role in the regulation of weather and climate. Its biota secure life: marine phytoplankton is responsible for almost half of the oxygen we inhale, and marine fish and shellfish provides food, employment, and livelihood opportunities to millions of people. Yet the oceans are under increasing pressure: three out of every four fish stocks are either fully exploited or overexploited, and the number of people living within 150 km of the coast is expected to increase to a staggering 6.7 million by 2050. This chapter places the oceans in the context of the earth system, discusses its variability and change, the uses we have of its goods and services, and introduces the challenges of sustainable management. It concludes by explaining how the book addresses the issues raised and introduces the rest of the chapters.

This chapter elaborates upon the concept of earth system governance based on existing literature in earth system science and global governance studies, making a distinction between earth system governance and traditional environmental policy studies. It considers key elements of the earth system governance problem structure that make it particularly challenging and complicated, and describes the normative frame for earth system governance. After discussing the theoretical basis and academic ancestry of earth system governance, the chapter differentiates earth system governance from competing concepts that are found in the literature, particularly the notion of “earth system management.” It then lays out the normative goal of earth system governance, with particular emphasis on earth system boundaries as it has emerged in recent years. Finally, it examines the fundamental problem structures that make earth system governance one of the most complex and difficult political challenges today, along with the basic governance principles for effective earth system governance.

This concluding chapter outlines the need for a new long-term research effort on the part of the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) on Earth system governance. It suggests the perspectives of the new research effort building on not only the “legancy” of the IDGEC but also “broadening the research focus from institutions to larger systems of governance” with reference to the transdisciplinary Earth System Science. The chapter focuses on the detailed description of governance systems and the exceedingly important new research efforts in Earth system governance. It also emphasizes that this second phase of the IDGEC will be policy-relevant through its development of a new research paradigm which reflects the current political context.

This chapter focuses on four types of agents of earth system governance: the state; nonstate agents, with particular emphasis on the increasing number of transnational public policy networks that bring actors together from different parts of society; transnational networks of scientists; and international organizations. It argues that agents are actors who have authority to set standards and rules that govern human interactions. To demonstrate the importance of agency in earth system governance, it first considers how actors become authoritative. It then explains how the role of the state has come under increased pressure from earth system transformation before discussing its role, along with that of public-private policy networks, science institutions, and international bureaucracies in the fundamental reform of the international architecture of earth system governance. Finally, the chapter proposes a number of reform options, including a more effective system of transnational public policy networks, improving the standing of scientific assessment bodies in the international system, and establishing a World Environment Organization.

This book explores the concept, principles, and challenges of what it calls “earth system governance,” a new paradigm for planet-wide environmental politics that challenges the traditional concept of environmental policy. It proposes earth system governance as an empirical reality and a political necessity and offers both analytical and normative perspectives in its discussion of global environmental politics in terms of five dimensions of effective governance: agency, particularly agency beyond that of state actors; architecture of governance, from local to global levels; accountability and legitimacy; equitable allocation of resources; and adaptiveness of governance systems. The book argues that effective earth system governance and planetary stewardship require new types of multilateralism and new forms of global governance that are better aligned with the exigencies of the Anthropocene. As such, it offers a wide range of policy proposals for future environmental governance and a revitalized United Nations.

This chapter discusses the overall global institutional architecture of earth system governance, with particular emphasis on the current fragmentation of the system. It conceptualizes architecture as the overarching system of intergovernmental and nonstate institutions operating in a governance domain, that is, the institutional framework within which agents operate. It considers the increasing institutional fragmentation within earth system governance, and between earth system and economic governance, citing climate governance as an example. It also examines the consequences of such fragmentation before proposing a number of reform options to enhance the overall consistency and coherence of earth system governance, such as increasing the coordination and integration of governance mechanisms and institutions and bringing them under the overall umbrella of a World Environment Organization, and creating a high-level UN Sustainable Development Council.

This chapter focuses on another key element of effective and legitimate earth system governance: the question of allocation, or differently put, of justice, fairness, and equity. It considers three ways of distributing costs and benefits of earth system governance: direct allocation through multilateral agreements, such as through international funds; allocation through markets established under international agreements, such as emissions trading; and allocation through environmentally motivated restrictions of international trade and investment. These three specific modes of resource allocation are discussed from the libertarian and egalitarian perspectives of justice. The chapter concludes by outlining three policy-related questions: the primacy of multilateralism over unilateral approaches in decisions on the (international) allocation of costs of actions; the strong appeal of the principle of equal rights for every person; and the most effective organizational setting for financial transfers and support mechanisms in earth system governance, with particular emphasis on the need to create a World Environment Fund that would ensure a fair allocation of the costs of earth system governance.

Humans have always attributed enormous importance to occurrences in the heavens. Over the past several centuries modern astronomy has revealed a cosmos of staggering size, filled with trillions of worlds. Its vacuum, weightlessness, lethal radiations, and fantastic speeds make space harshly inhospitable to human life. To access orbital space requires velocities some thirty-four times as fast as jet aircraft, climbing out of steep gravity wells. Of the many bodies mapped by science in this solar system, asteroids are most practically important because they sometimes collide with great violence, profoundly shaping Earth’s deep history. As knowledge of the cosmos has grown, anticipations of nearby intelligent life have dramatically shrunk. The Space Age has also witnessed a far-reaching revolution in understanding the Earth System. Marked by complexity, chaos, and emergence, life on Earth is incompletely understood and inventoried and much less subject to human control than previously assumed, reducing the feasibility of expansionist visions.

This chapter focuses on accountability and legitimacy as a dimension of effective earth system governance. It argues that questions of accountability and legitimacy are becoming ever more important, and that all key elements of the problem structure of earth system governance pose particular and often novel challenges for the accountability and legitimacy of governance. It discusses these challenges and outlines political reform options to cope with them. After explaining the concepts of accountability and legitimacy as they apply to earth system governance, the chapter considers some of the challenges posed by the emerging transformation of planetary systems for securing the accountability and legitimacy of governance systems, including high degrees of analytic and normative uncertainty. It then outlines a number of reform options to address such challenges, such as giving primacy to multilateral decision making over alternative approaches, strengthening the representation of civil society organizations in multilateral institutions and intergovernmental organizations, and creating a UN parliamentary assembly of representatives of national parliaments.

This chapter focuses on adaptiveness as a dimension of effective earth system governance, with particular emphasis on the requirements of global adaptation governance. It considers core dilemmas such as adaptability versus stability, effectiveness versus legitimacy, and effectiveness versus fairness in global governance arrangements. The focus is on drastic earth system transformations, especially global warming that exceeds 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. As one example of global adaptation governance, the chapter looks at the governance of climate-related migration wherein large numbers of people might be forced to leave their homes in the second half of the century due to climate change. It then proposes a system of global governance that could cope with substantially increased numbers of climate migrants due to earth system disruptions, including sea level rise and more frequent or more severe droughts and extreme weather events.

This chapter presents an integrated Earth system model that can be applied to calculate the habitable zone (HZ) around any main-sequence central star. The HZ is defined as the region within which an Earth-like planet might enjoy the moderate surface temperatures required for advanced life forms. Therefore, the HZ defines the conditions for the existence of Gaia. In this discussion, Gaia is a globally acting geosphere-biosphere system with homeorrhesis, i.e. the self-regulation of this system around an evolving point by and for the benefit of the biota. It is tacitly assumed here that extraterrestrial Gaias have characteristics common to life found on Earth: being carbon-based by photosynthesis and assuming liquid water.

This chapter serves as an epilogue to the edited volume "New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene." The chapter offers a careful, systematic overview of the book's various contributions, looking at what the book contributes to thinking about life on a fundamentally transformed planet. The author unpacks the ecological and conceptual meaning of the "Anthropocene," and then offers five elements of change in political analysis and practice needed within the larger context of planetary stewardship: 1) revisioning institutional architectures; 2) a new normativity; 3) a revised political science and political studies; 4) a move from disciplinary science to transdisciplinary knowledge generation; and 5) a leap from incremantalism toward transformative thinking. The chapter concludes by reminding us that the Anthropocene should not just be seen in terms of catastrophe and cataclysm, but rather with an appreciation for human ingenuity and resilience.

The Afterword examines several instances of the climatological unconscious: in the perceptual unavailability of the Earth as a total system; in the psychological imperative to wish away planetary necessity; and in the modern idea—an ideological symptom of industrial modernity—that humans can free themselves from planetary limits. In the Anthropocene, we must grapple with the fact that human activity has intensified planetary processes in ways that reveal our inability fully to control, contain, and capture the Earth’s energies. The climate crisis, then, requires us to develop a new critical theory of society in which we account for the way in which a turbulent and self-differing Earth intensifies, mediates, triggers, and asymmetrically distributes in ways that exceed sociological explanation. Any vision of a more just collective life, including one retrieved from the unrealized futures of the literary past, must integrate an appreciation of a necessity that exists in the Earth itself.

This book has outlined some elements of a blueprint for effective earth system governance, including a global and effective architecture that is adaptive to changing circumstances; participation by involving citizens and civil society at all levels; accountability and legitimacy as part of new democratic governance beyond the state; and fairness for all participants. There is no doubt that engagement of cities, civil society, and the private sector is urgently needed. Earth system governance cannot be addressed by governments alone. It must include all societal actors and individual citizens. For one, technology change and effective policies at local and national levels need to become a driving force of progress. Transformation in social behavior is crucial as well, moving from a focus on mere efficiency to broader notions of “sufficiency.” More importantly, new forms of multilateralism and effective international cooperation are needed. The institutional blueprint suggested in this book would be the largest transformation of the United Nations system since 1945.