Skip to content

Cambridge Elements Series

Cambridge Elements are original, concise, authoritative, and peer-reviewed collections of scholarly and scientific research.

The Elements series on Earth System Governance provides concise, timely and authoritative studies of the governance of complex socio-ecological systems, written by world-leading scholars. Highly interdisciplinary in scope, the Elements in Earth System Governance series addresses governance processes and institutions at all levels of decision-making, from local to global, within a planetary perspective that seeks to align current institutions and governance systems with the fundamental 21st Century challenges of global environmental change and earth system transformations.

Elements in this series present cutting-edge scientific research, while also seeking to contribute innovative transformative ideas towards better governance. A key aim of the series is to present policy-relevant research that is of interest to both academics and policy-makers working on earth system governance.

Series Editors

Frank Biermann is Research Professor of Global Sustainability Governance with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is the founding chair of the Earth System Governance Project, editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Earth System Governance, and director of the GlobalGoals Project on the impacts of the SDGs, supported by a European Research Council Advanced Grant.

Aarti Gupta is Professor of Global Environmental Governance at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. She is Lead Faculty and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project and a Coordinating Lead Author of its 2018 Science and Implementation Plan. She is also principal investigator of the Dutch Research Council-funded TRANSGOV project on the Transformative Potential of Transparency in Climate Governance. She holds a PhD from Yale University in environmental studies.

Michael Mason is Associate Professor in Environmental Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he also Director of the Middle East Centre and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research covers global environmental governance and environmental politics in Western Asia/the Middle East. He is Principal Investigator on a UK Government-funded research project studying surface water changes in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin and their governance implications for Iraq.

Interested authors are invited to submit a proposal to series editors, please use the Cambridge Elements in Earth System Governance, proposal template

For more information and a list of published Elements, please visit Cambridge Elements Series on Earth System Governance 

Building Capabilities for Earth System Governance

This Element develops a new Strategic Capabilities Framework for studying and steering complex socio-ecological systems. It is driven by the…

Trade and the Environment: Drivers and Effects of Environmental Provisions in Trade Agreements

The mushrooming of trade agreements and their interlinkages with environmental governance calls for new research on the trade and environment…

The Politics of Deep Time

Human societies increasingly interact with processes on a geological or even cosmic timescale. Despite this recognition, we still lack a…

A Green and Just Recovery from COVID-19?: Government Investment in the Energy Transition during the Pandemic

Stimulus spending to address the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to either facilitate the…

Just Transitions: Promise and Contestation

Just transition prompts us to explore a number of important dimensions of Earth System Governance research, including sustainability transformations, inequality,…

The Normative Foundations of International Climate Adaptation Finance

Billions of dollars are annually transferred to poor nations to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. This…

The Emergence of Geoengineering: How Knowledge Networks Form Governance Objects

For many years, suggestions to ‘geoengineer’ the climate occupied a marginal role in climate change science and politics. Today, visions…

Adaptive Governance to Manage Human Mobility and Natural Resource Stress

Connections between resources and migration operate as a complex adaptive system rather than being premised in linear, causal mechanisms. The…

Addressing the Grand Challenges of Planetary Governance: The Future of the Global Political Order

The world today confronts unprecedented needs for governance having profound implications for human well-being that are difficult – perhaps impossible…

You might like these publication categories