Registration for the 2011 Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance: Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges (May 17-20, 2011) is currently open. The Colorado Conference will bring together scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the challenge of achieving effective strategies of earth system governance. The Colorado Conference is part of a global series organized by the Earth System Governance Project. The Colorado Conference is hosted jointly by the Environmental Governance Working Group and the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University along with the IHDP Earth System Governance Project.

Paper abstracts and a preliminary conference schedule are available on the conference website. Conference highlights include:

• Plenary presentations by Oran Young (University of California-Santa Barbara), Arun Agrawal (University of Michigan), and former Colorado governor, Bill Ritter (to be confirmed).
• Parallel panels on the conference themes: 1) Linking across Scale; 2) Linking the Social and Natural Sciences; 3) Linking Research and Practice; and 4) Linking the “5As” (referring to the Earth System Governance project’s science plan).
• Innovative and interactive sessions on the role of technology in crossing boundaries and building bridges and linking research to practice.
• Plenty of time for networking with colleagues including an opening reception and coffee breaks throughout the day.
• A barbeque dinner in a traditional Colorado setting at Planet Bluegrass with live bluegrass music from Lonesome Traveler.

More pictures of Colorado → here (from the Environmental Governance Working Group at Colorado State University, all rights reserved)