---
id: organizations/earth-system-governance-project
about:
  label: Earth System Governance Project
  description: >-
    A research network of social scientists studying the rules and institutions
    that steer how societies respond to environmental change; it keeps a
    directory of governance datasets.
  tags:
    - governance
    - policy
    - social science
    - environmental law
    - research network
    - neighbouring field
organization:
  form: network
  homepage: 'https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/'
domains:
  - people
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Earth System Governance (home page)
      url: 'https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/'
    - title: Research Agenda & Science Plan
      url: 'https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/research/'
    - title: Earth System Governance Data Directory
      url: 'https://www.earthsystemgovernance.org/data-directory/'
    - title: Earth System Governance Project (Wikipedia)
      url: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_System_Governance_Project'
    - title: 'Earth System Governance, the journal (OpenAlex record)'
      url: 'https://openalex.org/S4210220330'
  created: '2026-11-04'
  reviewed: '2026-11-04'
  reviewed_by: >-
    Claude, from the sources listed; the data directory list itself was not
    opened
  status: draft
  unlinked: >-
    A real and active research network, but it studies governance and builds no
    models, outside the wiki's range (2026-11-04).
---
The Earth System Governance Project is a research network of scholars from the social sciences, the humanities and interdisciplinary fields. It studies governance in its own definition: the formal and informal rules, rule-making systems and networks of actors, from local to global, that steer societies towards preventing, mitigating and adapting to environmental change.[^1,2] It began in January 2009 under the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, and its office has been at Uppsala University in Sweden since 2025.[^4]

It works through annual conferences, the twentieth of which is at Uppsala University on 20 to 24 September 2027, and through taskforces and working groups on climate, oceans, biodiversity, Earth system law, earth-space governance, social-ecological systems, and imagination and anticipation.[^1] Its journal, Earth System Governance, is published by Elsevier and had about 300 papers in OpenAlex by November 2026, with new ones each month.[^5]

It does not build models. For people modelling a place, the useful part is the data directory, an open list of datasets and databases on environmental governance, to which anyone can suggest an entry.[^3]