What have we achieved Where are we going

1
What have we achieved?Where are we going?

• Oran R. Young
• Professor of
• Environmental Science Management
• Chair
• IHDP Scientific Committee

2
Impressions of the Chair

• IDGECs scientific legacy
• Understanding individual institutions
• Building out to analyze more complex
  institutional systems
• Considering the role of institutions in coupled
  human/biophysical systems

3
Individual Institutions

• The individual institution as the unit of
  analysis
• Analyses of individual institutions/regimes have
  proven fruitful
• There is much more to be done in this realm
• Institutions as IVs and DVs
• Institutional drivers/institutional responses
• Effectiveness in solving problems scope
  conditions
• Successes/failures in regime (re)formation
• Institutions at different levels of social
  organization
• The role of the state
• Institutions as steering mechanisms in a highly
  dynamic socioecologcal environment
• Thresholds Nonlinear change and emergent
  properties
• Institutions themselves as dynamic systems
• Methodology From case study to database
• A portfolio of methods

4
Building Out

• But institutions are not stand-alone entities
• All kinds of linkages are important and worthy of
  study
• Interplay/interactions with other institutions
• Horizontal and vertical
• Institutional complexes
• Connectedness within issue areas
• Sharing mechanisms to handle specific functions
• Embededness
• Overarching/encompassing institutions
• The rule of law
• Institutions as elements of governance systems
• Norms, culture, CSOs
• Broader Context
• Politics, Economics. Culture
• Global social change- globalization

5
Coupled Systems

• Combining institutional and biophysical variables
• Examples land tenure systems and forest cover
  (as in IFRI), water systems and types of
  governance
• IDGEC contributions
• Problem solving where problems center on
  measurable biophysical phenomena
• Issues of fit
• Dynamic systems
• Governing dynamic, nonlinear systems
• Especially when the governance systems themselves
  are also dynamic and subject to nonlinear changes

6
A Comparison with Ecology

• Different levels of analysis
• Individual species (MSY models)
• Whole ecosystems (EBM models)
• Socioecological systems (VRA models)
• There is productive work to be done at each level
• Much the same is true in our field

7
The Road Ahead

• A hallmark of good science is that it brings new
  questions into focus as a product of ongoing
  research
• I am bullish about this prospect in the case of
  IDGEC
• But I will turn it over to Simon and Frank to
  elaborate on these prospects

8
ORAN R. YOUNG Co-Director Young_at_Bren.ucsb.edu
Phone [phone] Fax [phone]