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IHDP Update 1.2009
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Magazine of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change
March 2009 · Issue 1 ISSN 1727-155X
www.ihdp.org
Social Challenges
of Global Change
1

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Table of Contents
IHDP Update Issue 1, March 2009
Introduction
3 The Social Challenges of Global Change
Oran R. Young, IHDP Scientific Commitee Chair
Editorial
4 An Inclusive Meeting in a Unique Setting
by Andreas Rechkemmer, IHDP Executive Director
5 The Open Meeting - Background and Perspectives
Falk Schmidt and Shalini Kanwar
7 The IHDP Open Meeting 2009 in Numbers
8 Open Meeting Preliminary Programme
Reflections From Two Regional Global Change Research Networks
Sponsoring the OM 09
10 A Privileged Platform for Establishing Long-Term
Professional Relationships
Tetsuro Fujitsuka, Director, Asia-Pacific Network for Global
Change Research (APN)
11 The Challenge of Becoming Policy-Relevant
Holm Tiessen, Director, Inter American Institute for Global Change
Research (IAI) and Gerhard Breulmann, Assistant Director Science
Programs, IAI.
Selected Articles from Participants
13 Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
Susana B. Adamo
22 Identifying the Poor in Cities: How Can Remote Sensing
Help to Profile Slums in Fast Growing Cities and
Megacities?
Maik Netzband, Ellen Banzhaf, René Höfer, Katrin Hannemann
29 Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City: An Analysis
of the Differential Exposures of Socio-Demographic
Groups to Environmental Risk
Humberto Prates da Fonseca Alves
35 Characterising the Mis-Linkages in the Transition to
Sustainability in Asia
Xuemei Bai and Anna J. Wieczorek
The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process
of GECHS and IT
42 Human Security in an Era of Global Change – The
GECHS Synthesis Process
Linda Sygna, Kirsten Ulsrud and Karen O’Brien
45 Moving Societies in a Sustainable Direction - Industrial
Transformation Synthesis Process
Anna J. Wieczorek and Frans Berkhout
New IHDP Projects and Initiatives – From Planning to Practice
47 Looking toward the Future - The Earth System Governance
Project
Ruben Zondervan, Executive Officer, Earth System Governance
Project
Imprint
IHDP Update is published by the Secretariat of the International Human
Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, United Nations
Campus, Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, D-53113 Bonn, Germany
The IHDP Update magazine features the activities of the International
Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and its
research community.
ISSN 1727-155X
Editor-in-Chief: Andreas Rechkemmer (V.i.s.d.P.)
Executive Editor: Gabriela Litre
Copy Editor: Sarah Mekjian
Layout: Carolyn Louise Smith and Tande Chilenge
IHDP Update is published triannually. Sections of the Update
may be reproduced with acknowledgement to IHDP. Please send a copy of
any reproduced material to the IHDP Secretariat. This magazine is published
using funds by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and
the United States National Science Foundation.
The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the
position of IHDP nor those of its sponsoring organizations.
Cover photo: Children playing on an overflown football ground in Sao Paulo/CARF
Brazil
2 IHDP Update 1.2009

Introduction
The Social Challenges
of Global
Change
Oran R. Young, IHDP Scientific Commitee Chair
Human actions lie at the heart of every effort to come
to grips with global environmental change. Whether we are
interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs),
sequestering carbon dioxide already in the Earth’s atmosphere,
or adapting to the impacts of climate change, we
must find ways to influence the actions of humans all the
way from the behaviour of the individual energy consumer
to collective choices about GHG emissions control policies.
Much the same applies to issues of land degradation and the
destruction of habitat vital to endangered species as well as
to the depletion of marine life arising from overfishing and
the spread of dead zones in the oceans. More often than not,
we know what human actions or combinations of actions
are implicated in these large-scale environmental problems.
In some cases, we even have a reasonably good grasp of the
driving forces that give rise to the human actions in question.
What does this imply for the development of research
strategies and the allocation of scarce resources available to
support global environmental change research? It goes without
saying that we need to improve our understanding of the
biophysical processes involved. A better understanding of
the likelihood and character of abrupt changes in the Earth’s
climate system, for example, would be immensely valuable.
Nevertheless, the top priority now must go to strengthening
our understanding of the sources of those human actions
that are relevant to global environmental change. What
would it take to alter current lifestyles in such a way as to
make major changes in the carbon footprints of individuals
IHDP Update 1.2009
Introduction • The Social Challenges of Global Change
Migrants from degraded agricultural land living in a slum in Mexico City. Photo: Mark Edwards / Still
Pictures
and their families? Under what conditions might large numbers
of people find satisfaction in ways of life featuring sharp
reductions in the consumption of material goods?
There is a tendency to juxtapose two distinct
ways of addressing such questions. One approach – call it
the top-down perspective - focuses on revising the prevailing
rules of the game in societies so as to alter incentive
structures. The other view – call it the bottom-up perspective
- directs attention to the spread of social movements
that can alter values and shift discourses so as to produce
large changes in individual behaviour.
The top-down approach looks to policymaking at the
national and even the international level, focusing on efforts
to adjust institutional arrangements in ways that will affect
individual behaviour. Introducing limited entry arrangements
to protect fisheries and establishing cap-and-trade
mechanisms to control pollutants like sulphur dioxide emissions
are cases in point. Current debates about a variety of
policy instruments intended to make GHGs emitters pay for
the use of the Earth’s atmosphere as a repository for wastes
also constitute examples of such an approach. Those who
adopt this perspective look to the operation of the political
system as a critical locus for efforts to effect change. They are
apt to pay attention to the role of political leadership in domestic
legislative processes as well as in international level
institutional bargaining.
The bottom-up approach, by contrast, directs attention
to sources of behaviour that lie outside ordinary calculations
of benefits and costs. The emphasis here is on social
3

Introduction and Editoral • The Social Challenges of Global Change
movements and the processes through which large numbers
of individuals become engaged in collective efforts to fulfill
broad social goals for reasons that have little to do with calculations
of benefits and costs. Could we imagine the development
of a social movement in the 21st century focused on
the right to a benign climate on a scale similar to the antislavery
and suffrage movements of the 19th century or the
women’s rights, civil rights and animal rights movements of
the 20th century? As these examples suggest, social movements
often have more to do with restructuring ideas and
ideals than with shifting calculations about the benefits and
costs associated with different choices.
We often treat the top-down and bottom-up approaches
as divergent, possibly even conflicting ways to think
about coming to grips with big issues like global environmental
change. That need not be the case. More often than
not, real changes occur when social movements energise
policymaking and restructured policies guide behaviour. In
the United States, for example, the anti-slavery movement
led to the 13th amendment to the Constitution, the suffrage
movement resulted in the 19th amendment to the Constitution,
and the civil rights movement motivated efforts to pass
the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Much the same may hold true
for efforts to come to terms with large-scale environmental
problems like climate change. We can expect real change
when aroused publics demand action as a matter of priority
and effective leaders emerge to push through major policy
initiatives at both domestic and international levels.
What is needed from the scientific community is a
collaborative effort on the part analysts who come from a
variety of disciplines to improve our understanding of the
conditions governing the intersection of these top-down and
bottom-up processes. There is no better place to make progress
in meeting this challenge than at the triennial Open
Meetings of the worldwide research community interested
in the human dimensions of global environmental change.
So do plan to come to Bonn in April.
Editorial
An Inclusive Meeting
in a Unique Setting
by Andreas Rechkemmer, IHDP Executive Director
Dear Readers,
This issue of UPDATE introduces the set-up, the programme
and the overarching goals for the 7th International Science
Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change, also known as the IHDP Open Meeting 2009.
The 7th Open Meeting focuses on “Social Challenges
of Global Change”. In an era of unprecedented, rapid
and large-scale environmental, economic and demographic
changes, the International Scientific Planning Committee
wisely decided to envisage the set of threats, challenges and
opportunities that these changes pose to human society at
various levels.
While addressing social challenges we will endeavor
to highlight the findings generated in our core and joint research
projects and our new science initiatives, e.g. those
on Earth System Governance, Integrated Risk Governance,
Knowledge, Learning and Societal Changes, and Vulnerability,
Resilience, and Adaptation. Two of IHDP’s original
science projects, Industrial Transformation and Global Environmental
Change and Human Security, will launch their
synthesis processes at the Open Meeting and thus contribute
significantly to new and cutting edge findings in the realm of
sustainable development and global change research.
The Open Meeting will not only be the venue for the
communication and exchange of new and integrated knowledge
on the manifold social challenges of global change. It will as
well provide an excellent platform for collective learning, stakeholder
engagement, science-policy interaction and working meetings.
An impressive array of special sessions, on site workshops and
side events have registered for the conference. I should also mention
the large exhibition space that will allow for very lively interaction
across disciplinary and professional borders.
Finally, I should stress the importance of the location of the
Open Meeting 2009. The United Nations Campus and Bonn as a
city both stand for their active engagement for sustainable development,
both in terms of science and practice. Bonn hosts almost 20
UN agencies, among them the Secretariat of the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Thus the political
and scientific relevance of the OM 2009 and its contribution to the
agenda of global environmental change research and policy for the
next years and decades is evident.
I am welcoming you all to Bonn in April and wish us all an
exciting and excellent Open Meeting 2009.
Yours sincerely,
Andreas Rechkemmer
IHDP Executive Director
4 IHDP Update 1.2009

The Open Meeting
Background
and Perspectives
Falk Schmidt and Shalini Kanwar
Over the course of 14 years the Open Meetings have
established themselves as the major activity within the Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change community
to stimulate the exchange of information on research
from the global to the national level. Again this year, the
Open Meeting will take place as the 7th International Science
Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental
Change. And as before the meeting is set to be
a vehicle to integrate researchers into the community and
provide the unique networking opportunity for scholars
from a wide range of disciplines who are working in areas of
common substantive interest. The 7th Open Meeting 26-30
April 2009, Bonn, Germany, will be the first one under the
overall guidance of IHDP’s Strategic Plan 2007-2015 and will
showcase the wealth of research being done on the human
dimensions of global environmental change.
Under the overall theme “Social Challenges of Global
Change”, set by the International Scientific Planning Committee
for the Conference, participants will discuss the role
of human beings as actors in global environmental change.
IHDP Update 1.2009
The Open Meeting Background and Perspectives
Lexington Arboretum, Lexington, KY. Photo: Code Poet
By focusing on social challenges, the conference puts people
into the centre of analysis. Scholars from all over the world
have submitted abstracts for the four major conference
themes concerning demographic challenges, limitations of
resources and ecosystem services, establishing social cohesion
while increasing equity at various levels and adapting
institutions to address global change. Furthermore, important
issue areas such as transitions and technological innovations,
adaptation to climate change, human security, risk
governance, human health and urbanisation, among others,
will be highlighted during the conference, since these
themes have proven to be of particular interest to those participating
in and presenting at the event.
By addressing “global change” in its title, the 7th
Open Meeting widens the perspective toward other important
change phenomena that are either affected by or further
contribute to the challenges of global environmental change.
While resource and governance challenges represent very
well established research streams within IHDP – and indeed
most of the contributions were submitted for one of the two
5

The Open Meeting Background and Perspectives
themes –, the two calls have also generated brilliant submis-
sions to address demographic challenges and the hurdles re-
lated to equity and social cohesion. Particularly in relation
to the latter, and in conjunction with the issues surrounding
adaptation, a clear move toward the “development agenda”
is apparent. This new direction will enrich the human dimensions
research agenda and will shed a different light on
shared challenges.
The increased understanding of the challenges we
are currently facing has shifted the focus in yet another way,
from understanding the dynamics of global environmental
change to using that understanding to devise ways to meet
the challenges that we see emerge. This has pushed the scientific
community to pay more attention to the relationship
between science and policy, to include more use-inspired
and policy-relevant research, and to improve communication
with government, business, NGO’s and the civil society
at large. As a UN conference at the UN Campus in Bonn, the
IHDP Open Meeting 2009 will attract policy-makers and
other practitioners from various backgrounds to attend the
conference and to confront scientific research with societal
demands even more so than past meetings have. Each of the
identified social challenges is both paramount for future living
conditions of human beings and a good entry point to
demonstrate IHDP’s preparedness to contribute useful insights
from its research to address and solve the problems.
The first call for submissions for the Open Meeting
started in end of August 2007 and closed at the end of the
same year. A second call was open from August to October
2008. There was an overwhelming response to both calls and
altogether about 1,250 submissions were received. In addition,
this Open Meeting will witness both the synthesis and
Sponsors and Partners of the IHDP Open Meeting 2009
the launch of new IHDP core projects and will therefore demonstrate
the vital nature of human dimensions research.
Around 65 % of the submissions made for the IHDP
Open Meeting 2009 were accepted. About 40% of the total
submissions are from the developing and the least developed
countries and the maximum submissions came from Asia
and Europe. Of the total accepted submissions almost 50%
of the submitters were 40 years of age or younger, proving
that the human dimensions research community represents
a new generation of scientists and science.
About 120 sessions and more than 60 posters are being
planned. They include delegates from more than 380 universities
and research institutes from all over the world who
will come together to discuss the social challenges of global
change. Different session formats will be used (plenary, parallel,
poster, special sessions, and round tables) to explore
different options for presenting the insights addressed and
led by scientists from all existing disciplines.
We are very pleased that several donors have committed
funding to support this event, especially to support
the participation of scholars who would otherwise not have
had the chance to attend this meeting. IHDP is very grateful
for that and is fully convinced that the Open Meeting can
only perform its role as a milestone event taking place triennially
and develop its potential to stimulate excellent new
research, if participants from around the world are present
and contribute to the discussions about the Social Challenges
of Global Change.
Authors
Falk Schmidt, IHDP Academic Officer, Leader Open Meeting Task Force
Shalini Kanwar, Associate Programme Officer
6 IHDP Update 1.2009

Age Groups of
Participants
Based on accepted
submissions from the
first and second calls.
(excluding 13% who
did not provide their
birthdate)
IHDP Update 1.2009
211
Age
30-39
166
Age
40-49
71
Age
50-59
39 19
Age 29 Over
and Age
younger 60
Developed and
Developing Countries
Represented
Based on accepted
submissions from the
first and second calls.
42.5%
Development status
Female
defined according
Participants
to UN sources.
57% (31 total)
Industrialized
Countries
Gender Ratio
of Participants
Based on the accepted
presentations from the
first and second calls,
excluding co-authors
Need for
Financial Support
Based on accepted
submissions from the
first and second calls.
Regional Distribution
of Participants
Based on the accepted
presentations from the
first and second calls,
excluding co-authors
17
Australia
and New
Zealand
4
Middle
East
58
Central
and South
America
156
Female
Participants
43%
No need
for support
252
Asia
138
North
America
38%
Countries in
Transition
5%
Least
Developed
Countries
252
Male
Participants
24%
Requesting
partial support
33%
Requesting
full support
94
Africa
304
Europe
The IHDP Open Meeting 2009 in Numbers
The IHDP
Open Meeting 2009
in Numbers
Some 1142 abstracts were submitted and reviewed for the
IHDP Open Meeting 2009. Those accepted will be presented orally
at one of the conferences numerous parallel sessions.
The body of presenters is dominated by scientists from
30 to 39 years of age, followed by scientists from 40 to 49 years
of age. This proves that the International Scientific Review
Committee has succeeded in selecting both the young and the
experienced, so as to best provoke global discourses on social
challenges of global environmental change following modern
scientific methodologies.
This year’s Open Meeting will provide an arena for scientists
from 53 countries to present their work. Of these scientists,
38 percent are female and a remarkable 43 percent come from
developing countries and countries in transition. A great number
of these researchers will receive stipends, partially securing
their participation costs.
The 7th Open Meeting’s presenters are affiliated with
more than 380 universities and institutions. Many of them are
among the world’s most respected institutions conducting and
supporting research on the social aspects of global environmental
change. The Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in
Japan, Arizona State University in the United States and Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands will be among the
universities with the strongest representation. With extremely
geographically and professionally varied backgrounds, the mix
of researchers presenting at the IHDP Open Meeting 2009 will
undoubtedly assure a motivating and rewarding dialogue.
Text by Barbara Solich / IHDP Communications Associate
Graphs prepared by Tande Chilenge / IHDP
7

IHDP Open Meeting 2009 Programme
Open Meeting Preliminary Programme 5 March 2009
April 27
Grand Opening & Demographic Challenges
8:30 - Registration
9:00 - Opening Ceremony
Prof Frieder Meyer-
Krahmer
State Secretary BMBF
Prof Liu Yanhua
Vice-Minister for Science &
Technology, China
Prof Hebe Vessuri
Chair of Council UNU
10:30 - Refreshment Break
Prof Wolfgang Hermann
Technical University of Munich
President
Prof Hans Joachim
Schellnhuber
PIK Director
11:00 - Plenary Session - Social Challenges
& Demographics
Prof Xizhe Peng
Fudan University, Institute Director
Dr Gernot Erler
Minister of State at the Federal
Foreign Office
Prof. Marcus Feldman
(TBC)
Stanford University
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Parallel Sessions
15:30 - Refreshment Break
16:00 - Parallel Sessions
17:30 - Break
18:00 - Roundtables
Science for the 21st
Century
Flavia Pansieri
Executive Coordinator UNV
Prof. Wolfgang Lutz
Leader, World Population Program,
IIASA
Poster Session
April 28
Resources & Technological Innovation
8:30 - Registration
9:00 - Plenary Session - Resources &
Technological Innovation
Prof Anthony Giddens
London School of Economics
Prof Ernst von Weizsäcker
IHDP Scientific Committee
Member
10:30 - Refreshment Break
11:00 - Special Sessions
Vulnerability, Resilience
and Adaptation
IHDP and UNU-EHS
Global Change and Human
Health: Preparedness
and Surveillance
GECHH, IHDP GECHH Advisory
Group and IGU Commission on
Health and the Environment.
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Parallel Sessions
15:30 - Refreshment Break
16:00 - Parallel Sessions
17:30 - Break
18:00 - Roundtables
Technological Innovation
Media Roundtable “Catastrophe
Sells”
Global Change and Human
Health: The Role of E-Health and
Telemedicine
Integrative Approaches in Global
Change Research – The Experience
with Different Integration
Methods
The new IHDP research projects
and initiatives, ESG, IRG, KLSC
Michael Mueller
Parliamentary State Secretary
BMU
Prof Ortwin Renn, Director
of DIALOGIK and Christopher
Bunting,
Secratary General IRGC
Industrial Transformations
Synthesis
Industrial Transformation Project
(IT)
Risk Governance Under
Global Change
IRG Pilot Project, IHDP Chinese
National Committee (CNC-
IHDP)
Poster
Session
8 IHDP Update 1.2009

April 29
Social Equity, Cohesion & Sustainable Adaptation
8:30 - Registration
9:00 - Plenary Session - Social Equity, Cohesion
& Sustainable Adaptation
Robin Mearns
World Bank, Team Leader
Social Dimensions of Global
Change
High Level Representative
from Small Island
States
10:30 - Refreshment Break
11:00 - Special Sessions
Pro-Poor Climate
Change Adaptation:
Engaging Local Institutions
and Local Voices
across Different Scales
World Bank
Human Security in the
21st Century
Global Environmental Change
and Human Security Project
(GECHS)
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Parallel Sessions
15:30 - Refreshment Break
16:00 - Parallel Sessions
17:30 - Break
18:00 - Roundtables
Global Equity, Local
Needs
Adaptive Governance:
The Case of Small Island
States
IHDP Update 1.2009
Marina Silva (TBC)
Senator and former Environment
Minister, Brazil
Dr Walter Ammann
President, Global Risk Forum
(GRF) Davos
Dr Poul Engberg-Pedersen
(TBC)
Director General Norad
Sustainable Water Management
- the key for
adaptation
BMU
Synthesizing Knowledge
of the Natural, Social
Sciences and Humanities
Research Institute for Humanity
and Nature (RIHN)
Poster Session
IHDP Open Meeting 2009 Programme
April 30
Adaptive Institutions & Governance
8:30 - Registration
9:00 - Plenary Session - Adaptive Institutions
& Governance
Dr Kirit Parikh
Chairman, Integrated Research
& Action for Development,
India
Prof Michael Zürn
Dean, Hertie School of Governance
Dr Laurence Tubiana
Director of IDDRI
10:30 - Refreshment Break
11:00 - Special Sessions
The Contribution of Social
Sciences to Climate
Change Research
IHDP, WCRP
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Parallel Sessions
15:30 - Refreshment Break
16:00 - Parallel Sessions
17:30 - Break
18:00 - Closing Ceremony
Speakers to be announced shortly
Prof Jan Pronk
Institute of Social Studies, The
Hague
Mark Fulton
Managing Director, Global
Head of Climate change Investment
Research, Deutsche
Bank
Prof Oran Young
Chair of Scientific Committee
IHDP
Financing Adaptation
to Climate Change:
What’s the Role for Europe?
EADI, EDC2020
9

Reflections From Two Regional Global Change Research Networks Sponsoring the OM 09
A Privileged Platform
for Establishing
Long-Term Professional
Relationships
Tetsuro Fujitsuka, Director, Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change
Research (APN)
The Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research
(APN) is proud to be a sponsor of the 7th International Sci-
ence Conference on Human Dimensions of Global Environ-
mental Change (GEC): the International Human Dimen-
sions Programme (IHDP) Open Meeting (OM) to be held on
26-30 April 2009 in Bonn, Germany.
One of the major goals of the APN is to improve the
scientific technical capabilities of nations in the region and
by supporting the IHDP OM 2009, the APN is making another
step forward towards achieving its goal. The APN believes
that by providing a platform where scholars, including
early career and developing-country researchers/scientists
can exchange information, the networking opportunities
are also strengthened leading to long-tem professional relationship
which will be of great benefit for the region in terms
of scientific excellence.
As APN supports activities that generate and transfer
knowledge in the physical and human dimensions of global
change in five main themes under its Science Agenda, it is
worth noting that the OM is structured to stimulate the exchange
of information on a transnational and regional basis
on the human dimensions of GEC. The APN recognises the
relevance of bringing together leading social and natural scientists,
practitioners, policy-makers and stakeholders from
various fields and geographical locations, particularly in
the Asia-Pacific (AP) region whose work are interconnected
with the human dimensions of GEC.
Another area of mutual interest between the APN
and IHDP OM is the capacity building/enhancement component.
When the APN Scientific Capacity Building and
Enhancement for Sustainable Development in Developing
Countries (CAPaBLE) Programme was launched in April
2003, the following were identified as major activities of
Fisherman in Bali, Indonesia. Photo: Jon Rawlinson
interest: scientific capacity development for sustainable
development; science-policy interfacing, awareness raising
and dissemination activities. Under CAPaBLE, young, early
career scientists are provided with opportunities to develop
their knowledge and capabilities in GEC research through
the enhanced sharing of knowledge, experience and scientific
information. With the regional scope of the OM inviting
all countries in the AP region, the APN believes that it
will pose strong scientific and political relevance for all the
APN member countries and the whole AP region at large,
enabling participation of younger and developing country
researchers.
The OM will include around 650 papers and poster
presentations. With the OM’s established scientific framework,
the APN is eager to learn how the questions posing
profound challenges in the area of GEC will be answered
during the course of the meeting. The APN also considers
the significance of raising the four main questions under
the ‘social challenge’ of the scientific framework. These four
questions [1) How do we deal with demographic challenges?
2) How do we deal with limitations of resources and ecosystem
services? 3) How do we establish social cohesion while
increasing equity at various levels? 4) How do we adapt institutions
to address global change?] will be addressed in the
OM with a wider perspective, looking both on the current
and future trends to ensure sustainable development.
Fully supportive of the OM, the APN trusts that the
activity will extend beyond showcasing IHDP’s contributions
to the international processes but also highlight sciencepolicy
dialogues through parallel sessions and side events at
a significant level and provide a forum for the exchange of
latest/emerging scientific research and trends in the global
change community.
10 IHDP Update 1.2009

The Challenge
of Becoming
Policy-Relevant
Holm Tiessen, Director, Inter American Institute for
Global Change Research (IAI) and Gerhard Breulmann,
Assistant Director Science Programs, IAI.
Open meetings: hundreds of participants from around
the world, a tight agenda, parallel sessions, large poster ses-
sions, 6:00am working breakfasts, lunch and dinner meet-
ings, long talks with old colleagues, abounding opportuni-
ties to meet new ones and a tremendous challenge to make
the best of it all. In times of easy long distance communication
and concerns about the carbon footprint of travel, are
open large meetings still appropriate?
Yes, it helps to put a face to an idea, develop personal
contacts and understanding and build collaboration on "experienced"
mutual interests. But no, there must be a better
way. Commonly key people are too busy with side meetings
to provide sound guidance to larger fora. Younger participants
who would benefit most from interactions but are not
part of networks often lose out. Sometimes this can be addressed
by having workshop and training activities back-toback
with such events, allowing for interaction with at least
some of the key players.
One of the key challenges for global environmental
change (GEC) science is that of becoming more policy relevant
and assisting governments, non-governmental bodies
and civil society organisations with the identification,
assessment and implementation of solutions. Solutions are
rarely discipline-bound, they are task oriented.
Increasing interdisciplinarity strains the open meeting
model even more. Perhaps it is time to integrate such
task orientation as a part of the meeting’s planning process.
IHDP Update 1.2009
Reflections From Two Regional Global Change Research Networks Sponsoring the OM 09
International Conference. Photo: Mr. Topf
Models for successful output-oriented meetings distribute
themes, tasks and even contributions well in advance, often
for mutual peer-review. The time spent together is thus
spent more productively and gives opportunities to develop
the unexpected next development and explore ideas in interactive
activities, rather than in show-and-tell settings.
Solutions are rarely discipline-bound, they
are task oriented.
The IAI has sponsored the participation of young scientists
to open meetings in the past. Rather than just funding
IAI regional participation, starting with the 2006 ESSP
OM in Beijing, the institute is aiming further with its funding
support. This time we will combine our sponsorship with
a commitment to a focused session on linking GEC science
to governance, asking participants not only to present their
science but to take the next step and provide critical impluses
for future directions, strategies and activities. What
can IHDP and IAI (and others) do to link science and governance?
Are there existing projects and programmes that
could join forces and ideas? Big ideas linking natural science,
social science and decision making must take small steps to
learn how to satisfy societies' increasing demand to provide
a return on GEC science investments in tangible ways.
11

Social Page-header Challenges of Global Change - Selected Articles from Participants
Selected Articles
from Participants
Antalya City. Photo: Melissa Maples
The IHDP Communications Team went through the
paper proposals accepted for the IHDP Open Meeting 2009
and invited four of the authors who recieved the highest
scores to provide a sneek preview to their articles with the
UPDATE magazine. The authors, scientists from Asia, Europe,
and the Americas, also explained why they decided to
participate in the IHDP Open Meeting 2009 and what they
expect of the conference. The four all agreed on the same
point: attending the IHDP Open Meeting 2009 is not a goal
in itself, but represents a new step towards the creation of
policy relevant, cutting-edge and borderless science prepared
to address the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
12 IHDP Update 1.2009

Photos: Damien du Toit
Environmentally Induced
Population Displacements
Susana B. Adamo
This article examines population displacements related to
environmental events, addressing conceptual, methodological
and security and policy issues. It also explores potential
future population displacements as a result of climate
change.
Keywords: population mobility; migration; environment; cli-
mate change
Environmentally induced population displacement
is a hot topic. Concerns about the consequences of climate
change for human populations, the recognition that migration
may be one of the most viable adaptation strategies, and
the view that such population movements would present security
challenges fuel this increasing interest, which has materialised
in a number of recent conferences (IoM & uNFPA
2008; uNu-Ehs, IoM & uNEP 2008; EFMsV 2008; PErN 2008;
rsC & IMI 2009).
Still, the debate on what constitutes an environmentally
induced move continues, and the general agreement
that environmental factors contribute to population mobility
translates into a modest consensus about the mecha-
IHDP Update 1.2009
Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
nisms, character and extent of that contribution (IoM 1992;
suhrkE 1993; LIttLE 1994; uNhCr/IoM 1996; rIChMoNd
1995; hugo 1996; swAIN 1996; LoNErgAN 1998; wood 2001;
BLACk 2001; CAstLEs 2002; BILsBorrow 2002; uNruh, kroL
& kIot 2004; huNtEr 2005, 2007; IoM 2007; rENAud Et AL.
2007; kNIVEtoN Et AL. 2008A; wArNEr Et AL. 2008; AdAMo
2008A).
There has been progress, however,. The International
Organisation for Migration has proposed a new working definition
of environmental migrants, which identifies trigger
events, types of movement and also hints at the mechanisms
linking environmental change and population mobility.
To capture the several possible combinations, particularly
for policymaking and development planning, the
IOM (2007) has also suggested different scenarios (tABLE 1).
13

Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
1. The propensity to
migrate in relation to
environmental change
A. Migration at less advanced
stages of gradual
environmental change
B. Migration at advanced
stages of gradual environmental
change
2. The impact of migration
on the environment
E. Migration’s impact on
the environment in areas
of destination
F. Migration’s impact on
the environment in areas
of origin
C. Migration due to
extreme environmental
events
D. Migration due to largescale
development and
land conservation
Table 1: IOM’s Migration-Environment Scenarios. Source: IOM 2007
3. Interactions between
migration, environmental
change, human
security and conflict
G. Human security challenges
of environmental
change and migration
H. Conflict potential of
environmental change
and migration
Of interest here are columns 1 and 3. Column 1 highlights
the heterogeneity of trigger events in terms of intensity, predictability,
and scale or magnitude, which results in critical
differences in terms of people displaced, area affected and
duration of the event (IoM/rPg 1992; IoM/uNhCr 1996; LoN-
ErgAN 1998; wood 2001; BAtEs 2002; BIErMANN & BoAs
2007; rENAud Et AL. 2007). Column 3 characterises the interactions
of environmentally induced displacement with
human security and conflict, topics that have also been on
the rise.
The movements
Depending on the intensity of the hazard, the vulnerability
of the exposed population, and the availability of assistance,
environmentally induced mobility may be arranged
in a continuum ranging from forced to compelled to voluntary
(hugo 1996; rENAud Et AL. 2007; BAtEs 2002). Overall,
a certain amount of coercion is implicit in the fact that push
factors in the origin area are more important than pull factors
in destinations (suhrkE 1993; hugo 1996; rIChMoNd
1995; stILEs 1997; BAtEs 2002). Frequently, environmental
‘push’ factors are intertwined with economic issues, but they
may also be linked to concerns about the deterioration of local
environmental conditions and of quality of life in general
(IzAzoLA, MArtíNEz & MArquEttE 1998; huNtEr 2005).
By far, most of the environmentally induced mobility
has been internal and short-term (hugo 1996; MyErs 2002;
hugo 2006; MAssEy, AxINN & ghIMIrE 2007). Some evidence
shows that the spatial distribution of pre-existing migrant
networks and other forms of social capital are relevant to estimate
the probability of local or long-distance moves as well
Migrant-like situa-
tions:
greater control over
the process and less
vulnerability, even if
people are moving in
response to deteriorating
conditions.
Environmentally driven
displacement:
compelled but voluntary;
more control over timing and
direction and less vulnerability
than refugees; but
less control and more vulnerability
than migrants.
Refugee-like
situations:
very low level of
control over the
whole process and
very high degree
of vulnerability
Figure 1: The continuum of environmentally induced population displacements
Source: Based on Hugo 1996; Bates 2002 ; Renaud et al. 2007
as the probability of return (hugo 1996; MCLEMAN & sMIt
2006). In the case of natural disasters, the most common and
fastest response is evacuation (huNtEr 2005, P.283), generally
occurring over a short distance and only temporary in
duration, although some evacuees may choose to relocate, as
happened with evacuees from New Orleans following Hurricane
Katrina. In the aftermath, an option is the permanent
relocation of entire communities to less dangerous places.
In developing regions, permanent environmentally induced
displacement tends to occur in a less organised way, and is
usually local, consisting of simply moving to less dangerous
places nearby, for example, to higher ground if available
(huNtEr 2005). However, local, spontaneous relocation may
not be possible if the surrounding area is densely populated
or if land owners refuse to allow resettlement (AdAMo & dE
shErBININ ForthCoMINg).
The movers
Environmentally induced flows may differ from ‘normal’
flows. Research on migration and drought in the Sahel
found a diversification of migration patterns during drought
periods. Although the flows did not intensify, their composition
changed, including a higher number of women and
children likely to reduce household consumption. Shifts to
circular and short-cycle labour migration as well as changes
in destinations and in the number of moves were also verified.
Remittances from long-term migrants were still essential
to their families, but households also put more workers
in the local labour market, which included the temporary
migration of young male members to increase income and
14 IHDP Update 1.2009

educe consumption (FINdLEy 1994; hENry, sChou-
MAkEr ANd BEAuChEMIN 2004; BrowN 2007).
Selectivity by socioeconomic status of individ-
uals and households, a key determinant of the degree
of vulnerability, has been also registered. Research in
Nepal (MAssEy, AxINN & ghIMIrE. 2007) found that
local environmental deterioration was associated with
short-distance movements of males and females, but
that this only applied to lower castes and that the effect
on long-distance moves was weaker . In the Sahel,
good or bad harvests, an indicator of wealth, determine
household choice of long or short-distance
moves of workers (BrowN 2007). Studies in the US
found that lower socioeconomic status was linked to
a higher probability of relocation after a hazard event
(huNtEr 2005), suggesting that better-off households
had more resources to afford rebuilding, had insurance,
or suffered less damage because of their ability to
meet the expense of mitigation measures. Yet, Izazola,
Martínez & Marquette (1998, P.114) found that middle
and upper-class households in Mexico City were more
likely to leave the city because of air quality concerns.
Data issues
In general, data on environmentally induced
migration are scarce, and ‘creative’ calculation methods
for the magnitude of past, current and future environmentally
induced displacement are generally controversial
(LoNErgAN 1998; BLACk 2001; CAstLEs 2002, P.2; BIErMAN
& BoAs 2007, P.9; BLACk Et AL. 2008). This lack of adequate
data, particularly in terms of time series of environment and
demographic variables, is still a constraint for methodological
innovation, and conclusive results are still absent (PErCh-
NILsEN 2004; kNIVEtoN Et AL. 2008B).
Some authors have suggested the use of population
censuses (LE BLANC 2008, P.42; sEE ALso PostINgs to
PErN 2008), relying on base-area information and focusing
on flows of migrants from areas of environmental change
and degradation. While it could be enough for a number of
policy needs, this could not be adequate for understanding
how and why environmental change can trigger population
mobility.
IHDP Update 1.2009
Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
Internally displaced refugees outside of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Photo: Endre Vestvik
The linking mechanisms
A more precise measurement and potential forecasting
of environmentally induced displacement would require
a better understanding of the mechanisms linking environmental
stressors and demographic behaviour. The identification
of these mechanisms entails considering different
factors and levels of determination, as well as temporal and
spatial scales.
A critical understanding is that (a) multiple factors influence
migration decisions, (b) environmental factors rarely
act alone and they cannot be easily disentangled from the
rest of the factors and processes leading to migration; and
(c) cause-effect relationships are hard to quantify and tied to
the rest of these factors (LoNErgAN 1998, PP. 10; wood 2001,
P.44; MEyErsoN, MErINo ANd durANd 2007; kNIVEtoN Et
AL., 2008A, P. 37). It is also important to remember that, except
in cases of sudden environmental disasters, mobility is
just one among several possible responses and adaptations
to environmental change (BILsBorrow 1992; BLACk 2001;
tACoLI 2007; AdgEr Et AL. 2007, P.736).
15

Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
Patterns of vulnerability and their determinants, for
example, individual demographic characteristics and house-
hold livelihood composition (BLAIkIE Et AL. 1994; kAsPEr-
soN Et AL. 1995; MACíAs 1992; CArdoNA 2001; dE shEr-
BININ, sChILLEr & PuLsIPhEr 2007; AdgEr Et AL. 2007),
are key factors for understanding population mobility as
a response to environmental risks, or the absence thereof.
People’s subjective view and perception of the hazard and of
their own vulnerability, based on past personal experience
as well as present and past individual, household and community
characteristics and the socio-economic, political
and historical context in which they are embedded, are also
relevant factors (IzAzoLA 1997; huNtEr 2005; hEAthCotE
1980; dAy 1995; hogAN 1995; MEzE-hAuskEN 2000, 2008).
Finally, population mobility as a response to environmental
impacts is embedded in socio-economic, cultural
and institutional contexts, and influenced by the historical
local development of the interactions between a population
and its environment (BLAIkIE & BrookFIELd 1987; LIttLE
1994; sChMINk 1994; gutMANN Et AL. 1996). Consequently,
it is spatially differentiated, as environmental hazards, population
exposure and vulnerabilities and risks, including security
risks, are not uniformly distributed across the globe.
Levels of development, living conditions, livelihoods, institutional
capacities and the strength of States can be quite diverse,
and regional diversity is the rule in migration patterns
and systems. This uneven distribution would require regional,
national and sub-national approaches to understanding
and addressing environmentally-induced displacements.
Agent-based models (ABMs) appear well-suited to
modeling the links between environmental change and migration
(ENtwIsLE Et AL. 2008; kNIVEtoN Et AL. 2008A) by
simulating responses from individuals, households or communities
to environmental events. These models are based
on the assumption that the results of individual actions may
differ from the sum of their parts in a system characterised
by interacting agents or autonomous decision-making entities,
emergent properties arising from agents’ interactions
with each other and a set of rules that govern these interactions
that take into account people’s perceptions and experiences
(kNIVEtoN Et AL. 2008A, P.47).
Methodological developments in migration research
can also be applied to the study of environmental displacement,
including multilevel models (BILsBorrow Et AL.
1987; zhu 1998; EzrA 2001); even history analysis techniques
(MuLdEr 1993; LIANg & whItE 1996; PArrAdo & CErruttI
2003); the combination of both techniques (EzrA & kIros
2001; hENry, sChouMAkEr & BEAuChENtIN 2004; kuLu &
BILLArI 2004); and the use of network analysis (korINEk Et
AL. 2005). Statistical analysis can be combined with Geographic
Information System techniques to determine spatial
patterns of environmental change impacts and migration,
also integrating data from a variety of sources (kNIVEtoN
Et AL. 2008A; ALso sEE MCgrANAhAN, BALk & ANdErsoN
2007).
Potential effects of climate change
The IPCC’s First Assessment Report warned that the
greatest effect of climate change on society could be human
migration, i.e. involuntary forms of displacement and relocation
(osCE 2005). This seems to point to population mobility
as a less desirable form of adapting to climate change- a last
resort coping strategy when other adaptation possibilities
are unavailable or have failed. Later, it was recognised that
there are situations in which population mobility constitutes
a powerful adaptive strategy. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment
Report stressed the significance of established migrant networks
and patterns as part of the inventory of the adaptation
practices, options and capacities available to face climate
change impacts (AdgEr Et AL. 2007, P.736).
The effects of climate change are likely to present
regional variations in their potential to trigger population
displacements depending on the place and time of the impact,
the affected population’s degree of vulnerability, and
the availability of alternative responses. In terms of international
displacements, the percentage of the population
affected may be a better predictor than the absolute numbers.
The reasoning is that the higher the percentage affected,
the more likely the national coping capacities will be
overwhelmed. Some combination of relocation in advance
of events and short-term displacements in the aftermath is
likely (AdAMo & dE shErBININ ForthCoMINg).
Socioeconomic status may become an important
predictor since population mobility as response requires
resources. Overall, in situ adaptation may be more likely in
developed regions while displacement may be more likely in
developing areas. However, it could be the case that a household
or individual is too poor to “invest” in migration, being
obligated to stay put and hope that the situation to improves.
The poorest populations, often living in the most vulnerable
locations (BLAIkIE Et AL. 1994), are likely to be those with
the fewest resources to permanently relocate. On the other
hand, relatively better off land owners are those with greater
incentives to remain on their land, so it is not easy to predict
who will move (AdAMo & dE shErBININ ForthCoMINg).
16 IHDP Update 1.2009

Sea-level rise appears to be the impact most certain
result in displacement and resettlement (hugo 1996; BLACk
2001; MCgrANAhAN, BALk & ANdErsoN 2007; dE shErBININ,
sChILLEr & PuLsIPhEr 2007) as a relatively gradual, slow on-
set event leading to relocation to higher ground nearby if
land resources are available. Coastal areas and Small Island
States (SIS) are particularly threatened by sea-level rise and
extreme weather events (BIjLsMA 1996; hugo 2006; NursE,
MCLEAN & suArEz 1997). Migration may be the only adaptive
response, particularly if sea-levels rise faster than predicted.
In the case of SIS in particular, relocation and resettlement
policies have been discussed (AdgEr Et AL. 2007). However,
the need for avoiding simplistic assumptions remains (MortrEux
& BArNEtt 2008).
Coastal flooding from storm surges and excess precipitation,
by contrast, is generally a less predictable and
sudden onset event. Extreme weather events are likely to
trigger local sudden and massive displacements from affected
areas. The key factors here are the predictability of
the event and the government and civil capacity to face it.
This type of movement will probably occur over short distances
and be temporary in nature (AdAMo & dE shErBININ
ForthCoMINg).
Seeking for dringing water in Rajasthan, India. Photo: Marcus Fornell
IHDP Update 1.2009
Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
Climate change impacts on freshwater resources
such as droughts, water scarcity and glacial melting are typically
slow onset events. Worsening dry conditions in semiarid
and sub-humid areas may render such areas unfit for
rain-fed agriculture and led to their abandonment unless
irrigation infrastructure is available. Population numbers
and densities in these regions, however, are already low, and
numbers of the displaced would thus be low. Environmental
changes related to large-scale adaptation works such as
water transfer schemes and flood defenses could be another
source of population displacement (AdAMo & dE shErBI-
NIN ForthCoMINg). Migration as an adaptive response to
declining freshwater resources is likely to rest on already
established patterns of population mobility (hugo 1996;
AdAMo 2003), and labour related circular migration of some
household members, generally young adults, may be expected
(BrowN 2007). Depending on the severity of the impact,
however, these long-time adaptations may not be enough
(tACoLI 2007) and more permanent migrations would then
be possible.
The determination of the magnitude of climate
change-related displacement is a contentious matter (sEE
BIErMAN & BoAs 2007 ANd CAstLEs 2002 For A dEtAILEd
dIsCussIoN) and available estimates show a large diversity
of possibilities, as illustrated in Box 1. Environmental impacts
have been calculated from climate change projections
assuming a linear and causal relationship between the environmental
event and population displacement and location
specific socio-economic responses have been generalised.
General numbers tend to reflect populations at risk “a long
way from predicting mass flight of a ‘refugee’ nature” (BLACk
2001, P.9).
Security concerns
Potential climate change-related displacement has
triggered different security concerns, which IOM (2007)
groups into two scenarios:
Scenario (G) relates to concerns about human security
challenges, including the security of individuals, households
and communities, and about their coping and adaptation
capabilities (BogArdI 2004; rENAud Et AL. 2007; IoM
2007). The more sudden, involuntary or forced the displacement,
the more likely it is to disrupt livelihoods and to deteriorate
quality of life, in many cases leading to the further
impoverishment of already vulnerable people (VINE 2005).
This approach to human security rests on human agency,
rights and sustainable livelihoods as means to face vulner-
17

Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
ability (BohLE 2007; wArNEr Et AL. 2008). It favors the con-
cept of adaptation in- situ, including risk management and
vulnerability reduction through poverty reduction and good
governance (IuCN Et AL. 2004). The aim is to increase the
resilience of households, communities, and nations, thereby
reducing vulnerability, livelihood disruption, involuntary
displacements, and relocation.
Scenario (H) relates to concerns about the conflict potential
of environmentally induced displacements. Climate
change, environmental degradation, and growing resource
scarcity have been identified as triggers or concomitant factors
in the emergence or aggravation of conflict situations,
although the evidence also shows that these are usually nonviolent
(CAstLEs 2002, P.6; stErN 2006; gLEdItsCh Et AL.
2007; woodrow wILsoN CENtEr ENVIroNMENtAL ChANgE
ANd sECurIty ProgrAM). These situations pose potential
threats to global and national security, and could eventually
increase in the presence of climate change. Scenarios
describing massive environmentally induced displacements
often accompany these scenarios, capturing some of the issues
found in the literature on environmental refugees (I.E.
MyErs 2001, 2002; rEuVENy 2005; CAstLEs 2002; wBgu
2007; CAMPBELL Et AL. 2007; urdAL 2005).
Policy issues
Policy issues related to environmentally induced
displacement include their implications for the origin and
receiving communities as well as the consequences for the
displaced population, particularly in the cases of sudden
displacement and displacements located toward the ‘forced’
end of the involuntary/voluntary continuum (oLIVEr-sMIth
2008).
The IOM (2007, P.5) has suggested tailoring policy interventions
to the stage of environmental degradation, for
example, by facilitating migration in the early stages of the
deterioration process, and mitigating forced displacement at
irreversible stages or anticipating the problem by promoting
sustainable development. This tailoring would, of course,
imply a clear understanding of the nexus between environmental
change and population mobility, which in turn
requires a “redirection of research toward clarifying conceptual
approaches and answering basic questions” (oLIVErsMIth
2008, P.102).
Finally, although studies have shown that environmental
displacements take place mostly within national
boundaries and are consequently a national matter, the
crossing of international boundaries would need to be an-
Selected estimates of environmentally-displaced
population due to climate
change impacts
• People at risk of sea-level rise by 2050: 162
million (Myers 2002).
• People at risk of droughts and other climate
change events by 2050: 50 million (Myers
2002).
• People potentially at-risk of being displaced
because of desertification: 135 million (Almería
Statement 1994)
• Number of people who have fled because
of floods, famine and other environmental
disasters: approximately 24 million (UNHCR
2002:12)
• Environmentally displaced people by 2010:
50 million (UNFCCC 2007).
• Refugees due to by climate change by 2050:
250 millions (Christian Aid cited in Bierman
and Boas 2007).
• People estimated to become permanently
displaced “climate refugees” by 2050: 200
millions (Stern 2006).
ticipated for both the nations most likely to be affected such
as for Small Island States as well as for the less likely nations,
since such displacement with require international cooperation
(hugo 1996; BrowN 2007).
Final remarks
This brief article should be concluded with a note of
caution and a call to action, restating some of the conclusions
of PERN 2008 seminar (AdAMo 2008B). The attribution
of population displacement to environmental stressors is a
delicate task, as many and very diverse scientific disciplines
are involved. Agreement in this field seems to be limited to
the acknowledgement that a relationship exits. The topic
of environmentally induced displacement still requires the
careful weighing of theory, data and methods in the determination
and evaluation of magnitudes, flows, selectivity
and even naming terms. Ideally, the understanding of how
populations respond to climate-based uncertainty and di-
18 IHDP Update 1.2009

Susana Adamo on
participating in
the IHDP Open
Meeting 2009
“After waiting for it since the end of the 6th
Open Meeting, I finally learnt about the IHDP
Open Meeting 2009 sometime during 2007,
through a combination of checking IHDP website,
PERN announcement, emailing to the
organizers and comments from colleagues. I
had decided to participate long before knowing
the date and venue, because I am convinced
that the Open Meetings are the very few (if
not the only) true interdisciplinary forums for
population-environment issues, combining science
and policy, and gathering the most diverse
audiences.
For different reasons, I had not been able of
participating in previous Open Meetings; this
will be my first one, and I am certainly looking
forward to being in Bonn in April. My expectations
for the Open meeting include to receive
constructive comments about my papers; to
meet and interchange experiences with colleagues
working in similar topics, as well as
with colleagues working on other aspects of the
field; and to participate as much as possible of
all the activities planned for the Conference”.
saster would be part of talks about ways to avoid exposure to
or mitigate the effects of catastrophic events.
At the same time, the mounting policy issues and human
security concerns that emerge from accelerated global
climate change demand attention. Interdisciplinary research
and communication between researchers and policymakers
must be enhanced. Scenarios of adaptive capacity and
its multiple factors must consider both flows of movers and
groups of stayers, lending greater attention to those contextual
factors, including level and style of development, which
could be most affected by climate change events.
Author
Susana B. Adamo, Center for International Earth Science Information Network
(CIESIN), Columbia University
IHDP Update 1.2009
sadamo@ciesin.columbia.edu
phone: 1-845-365-8966
fax: 1-845-365-8922
61 Route 9W
Palisades, NY 10964, USA
Environmentally Induced Population Displacements
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21

Indentifying the Poor in Cities
Identifying the Poor in
Cities: How Can Remote
Sensing Help to Profile
Slums in Fast Growing
Cities and Megacities?
Maik Netzband, Ellen Banzhaf, René Höfer, Katrin Hannemann
Using Geospatial Technology to identify vulnerable
groups and their physical environment could enhance
the search for equity in megacities.
Key words: Informal settlements, slums, marginal areas, remote
sensing, GIS, vulnerability, urban pattern, urban structure
types (UST), Normalised Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI), megacities
Identifying Spatial Patterns of Urban Poverty
Attempts to address the question of whether the
worldwide urbanisation process is dealing with poverty
have, thus far, been based on limited information. There is
little scientific and operational knowledge about this process.
Urban growth and land consumption patterns are only
beginning to be recognised and regulating actions are still
more than limited. Thus, the available information is very
often inadequate for policy and planning. Due to the microstructure
and irregularity of fast growing urban agglomerations
as well as their direct adaptation to local conditions
and terrain, a generically applicable and operational mapping
of these settlements has proven difficult.
Sophisticated data and methods of image analysis are
thus necessary. High resolution, remotely sensed data sets
allow for the interactive documentation of the growth in urban
areas, both quantitatively and, in combination with ancillary
data sets, qualitatively. In order to analyse and evaluate
intra-urban patterns as well as trends in slums across
cities, such data must be taken throughout the various levels
of planning processes and must incorporate all existing
and documented socio-economic information. This article
will focus on the identification of the poor in the context
of slums, informal settlements, marginal areas and low income
neighbourhoods, as well as their spatial embedment
in a number of fast growing cities and megacities across the
globe. The examples given are gathered from the Indian subcontinent
and Latin America. The spatial profile that traces
poverty in complex cluttered, and hard to control fast growing
urbanised regions is elaborated by means of very high
22 IHDP Update 1.2009

Figure 1: Karail Bastee (part), Mahakhali, Dhaka Photograph by: Dr. Peter Kim Streatfield,
ICDDR,B. In: Centre of Urban Studies (CUS) and National Institute of Population
Research and Training (NIPORT) and MEASURE Evaluation (ed.) 2006: Slums of Urban
Bangladesh: Mapping and Census, 2005. Dhaka
resolution (VHR) remote sensing data and the appropriate
associated techniques.
The major methodological objective of this research is
to delineate specific social groups in their respective urban
environment and structure with VHR and GIS. When exploiting
remotely sensed data in terms of spectra, the Normalised
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) explains the urban
green areas, their density, location and connectivity. Therefore,
NDVI analysis, based on the different reflection characteristics
of the vegetation in the red and near infrared spectral
bands, enables differentiation within and between the areas
of interest. In analysing the urban structure, Urban Structure
Types (UST) support social strata information. UST are spatial
indicators that help to divide and differentiate the urban
fabric into open and green spaces, infrastructure, and building
complexes so that typical characteristics such as physical,
functional and energetic factors can be identified. After the
classification of such single objects, the structural composition
in terms of the amount and connectivity of the single
IHDP Update 1.2009
Indentifying the Poor in Cities
objects is aggregated on a neighbourhood scale to generate a
UST (BANzhAF & höFEr 2008). The resulting UST layer forms
the basis for socio-environmental studies on topics such as
socio-spatial differentiation or for socio-ecological investigations
on neighbourhoods exposed to natural hazards (flooding,
landslides, etc.) and also supports socio-economical research
on inclusion and exclusion.
Beyond the presented case study in Santiago, this approach
comprises a segmentation procedure, a classification
scheme and a structural aggregation which approximates a
baseline when organising the urban pattern, and is therefore
transferable to other urban systems.
Mapping Slums and Informal Settlements – State
of the Art
UN-HABITAT established the Global Urban Observatory
(GUO) (uN-hABItAt 2009) in response to a decision
of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements,
which called for a mechanism to monitor global progress
in implementing the Habitat Agenda as well as to monitor
and evaluate global urban conditions and trends. The Global
Urban Observatory (GUO) addresses the urgent need to
improve the worldwide base of urban knowledge by helping
governments, local authorities and civil society organisations
develop and apply policy-oriented urban indicators,
statistics and other urban information The GUO has succeeded
in installing an important network and databases.
The Global Urban Observatory Network (GUONet)
is a worldwide information and capacity-building network
established by the United Nations Human Settlement Programme
(UN-HABITAT) to help implement the Habitat
Agenda at the national and local levels. In the Global Urban
Observatory databases, a multitude of information is stored
on urban indicators, statistics and city profiles. It is now essential
to work further on UN-HABITAT agenda goals, for
example, to provide security of tenure, using durable structures
and overcrowding as indicators as well as to promote
access to basic services, using access to safe water and access
to improved sanitation as indicators.
In this light, an international expert group on remote
sensing, slum identification and mapping met at the International
Institute for Geoinformation Science and Earth
Observation (ITC) (CENtEr For INtErNAtIoNAL EArth
sCIENCE INForMAtIoN NEtwork (CIEsIN) 2009). The goal
of the workshop was to document methods for the identification
and delineation of slum areas based on VHR remote
23

Indentifying the Poor in Cities
sensing and supplementary data sets including census and
related GIS data on infrastructure and services.
A number of general conclusions were drawn regarding
the diversity of poor urban areas:
• Standard method: no universal model of a slum in
a physical sense exists and so no standard method
for all slum identification and mapping has been
developed. A local adjustment of certain parameters
is always required.
• Intra-urban coexistence: many different manifestations
of slums, informal settlements, or other
marginal areas may be found within one city, each
requiring specific methodological adjustments to
be identified and mapped.
• Human life indicators: it is necessary to understand
both the nature of building construction
(size,materials, shape), the nature of other objects
(roads, health and social service facilities, open
space), the characteristics of the site conditions (lo-
Maik Netzband on
sharing research
in an interdisciplinary
platform
“Our research team learnt about the IHDP
Open Meeting 2009 at the end of 2007. This is
our first Open Meeting. We received the news
through the newsletter of the IHDP core project
Urbanization and Global Environmental Change
(UGEC). We expect that this Open Meeting will
be assembling scholars interested in the interface
of natural and social sciences for exchanging
and for discussing new ideas, concepts and
research efforts to foster further interdiciplinary
studies, especially on urban monitoring towards
sustainable cities. By organizing a session on
'Urban Remote Sensing (URS) and Social Sciences'
we seek to explore the potential of URS
for an integrated interdisciplinary social science
with a focus on urban sustainability. We trace
how URS can best fill the gaps in scientific information
to meet the needs of integrated spatial
social science”.
cation in urban area, slope, natural vegetation, hazards),
as well as the slum development process itself.
• Distinctive characterisation: slums and informal
settlements develop differently, for example,
through the gradual degradation of formal housing
and social filtering processes or through a variety
of informal housing development processes.
• Stage of a slum area (infancy, consolidation, maturity):
knowledge about slum characteristics and
changes are essential to properly identify and map
these areas from VHR images.
Ebert et al. (2009) have developed a new method
based on the contextual analysis of VHR image and GIS
data. An approach based on proxy variables derived from
high-resolution optical and laser scanning data is applied, in
combination with elevation information and existing hazard
data. With respect to social vulnerability indicators, an object-oriented
image analysis is applied to define and estimate
variables such as buildings, road access (paved/unpaved)
and green spaces with associated physical characteristics.
Sliuzas and Kuffer (2008) analyse the spatial heterogeneity of
poverty using selected remote sensing based spatial indicators
such as roof coverage densities and a lack of proper road
network characterised by the irregular layout of settlements.
Based on these indicators, the heterogeneity of several deprived
neighbourhoods were identified and different types
of poverty areas were deliniated. Other approaches, such as
that taken by Gamba et al. (2007), analyse VHR images of
disaster events to develop efficient methods for building detection.
These methods also estimate damages on the basis
of pre and post event images in order to map the presence,
location and status of buildings in order to provide a statistical
basis for planning instruments.
Such approaches exemplify the possibilities of VHR
images for poverty mapping and demonstrate the scale of
VHR needed to gain detailed information. In other words,
data aggregation may hide the spatial variation of the urban
structure, and thus, of poverty.
The Contribution of Remote Sensing in Determining
Spatial Configuration and in deriving
spatial information on Living Conditions
How remote sensing can help access the spatial configuration
of informal settlements and the living conditions
of urban dwellers is a central research question consisting
of several issues. To examine whether a spatial correlation
exists between the results of the different thematic land-use/
24 IHDP Update 1.2009

land-cover analyses, to identify land-use pat-
terns combined with a vegetation index analysis
(NDVI) and UST, to estimate spatial indicators
for quality of life and vulnerability to natural
hazards such as flooding The concept of classifying
UST by remote sensing and GIS has been
proved increasingly important as a baseline for
urban spatial research (BANzhAF ANd höFEr
2008; PuIssANt ANd wEBEr 2002; NIEBErgALL
Et AL. 2007; tAuBENBöCk Et AL. 2006). The
UST are characterised as follows. First, they can
identify different classes such as types of buildings
(different types of housing, industrial and
commercial sites, infrastructure), other classes
of impervious surfaces (road and rail infrastructure,
parking lots, etc.), and classes of open
spaces (woodland, allotments, parks). Second,
they can typify structures as per their individual
compositions, as it takes the composition of two
to three of the aforementioned classes to form
an urban structure type. Therefore, the amount,
connectivity, and distribution of impervious
surfaces, green spaces, and other open spaces on
an aggregated neighbourhood scale are the goal
of the quantitative spatial characterisation.
In terms of the urban vegetation pattern
analysed with the NDVI, existing vegetation and
other open areas are considered as positive urban
structure elements in terms of their ecological functions of
biodiversity and production of oxygen, for example, as well as
their social functions for individual recreational purposes and
as social meeting points. Water bodies as potential carriers
of disease and the road system as a potential air polluter are
considered as negative urban structures in the sense that their
proximity can cause respiratory and infectious diseases. Due
to the rapid population growth of megacities lacking appropriate
infrastructure measures, multiple health complaints
result for their inhabitants.
As a baseline for these research objectives, the challenge
is to develop rule sets which consist of a class hierarchy
and a process tree suitable to represent all existing UST represented
in each study area. A very large scale is warranted
when monitoring and analysing the land-use information
of a city using single features and UST. Multispectral and
panchromatic Quickbird data are used to identify and refine
even small features such as single bushes and tree crowns
and building size, as well as to delineate road networks.
In a first step, the rule set has to be developed in representative
areas of an urban agglomeration. In a second
IHDP Update 1.2009
Figure 2: Study area in central Dhaka, Bangladesh. Own study.
Indentifying the Poor in Cities
step, the rule set will then be transferred and adapted to the
whole study area. The process tree is developed as the core
of the classification scheme in which all processes are stored
and managed. In this module, all rules for each feature characterisation
are defined. Such feature characteristics can be
transferred to other parts of the Quickbird image with the
same acquisition date, for example, the same atmospheric
conditions and phenological phase.
Case Studies
Dhaka, Bangladesh
With its population density of 990 people per km²,
Bangladesh is known as the country with the highest population
density in the world (dEMogrAPhIC ANd hEALth
surVEys 2004) and with over eight million inhabitants, Bangladesh'
s capital Dhaka is called one of the most densely
populated and fastest increasing megacities of the world
(BurkArt Et AL. 2008).
25

Indentifying the Poor in Cities
There is an uncontrolled influx of people from rural
regions to the megacity of Dhaka (BEguM 1999), yet this in-
flux or city in-migration, is not accompanied by growth of
urban infrastructure and supply. Thus, many migrants move
into marginal areas already in critical situations, and result
in the persistent and increasing resource pressure in these
settlements. Insufficient water supply, waste disposal and
waste water treatment as well as traumatic hygienic conditions
and lack of access to basic services mark the living conditions
in these slums. Slum dwellers, on average, have poorer
health and are more vulnerable to disasters such as floods
(uN MILLENNIuM ProjECt 2005). At present, about one third
of Dhaka’s population lives in marginal settlements or slums
(BurkArt Et AL. 2008).
A further problem is that of environmental pollution
as a result of poorly developed infrastructure. Soil, air and
water pollution occurs through the burning of wastes such
as plastics and through a lack of sanitation. A rudimentary
suburban traffic system does not offer
alternatives and people thus use small motorcycles
and cars for mobility. The constantly growing
traffic that results with its associated emissions
adds to the contamination of urban air.
The three large rivers systems, the Gangha,
Brahmaputra and Meghna, flood each year, since
the artificially installed drainage systems cannot
handle the water masses sufficiently. The result
is an amplified surface discharge during the
monsoon season in particular, which lasts from
March until October. The slums, with all their
shanties, are thus seasonally threatened by such
floods, exacerbating the already precarious situation
faced by the inhabitants (CALdwELL 2004;
khAN 2007).
In the current investigation on the structure
of slum settlements in Dhaka, Bangladesh,
the goal is to prepare a vegetation-index (NDVI)
based analysis exploiting Quickbird VHR satellite
data in an object oriented classification scheme
and further GIS analysis to investigate the living
conditions and health endangerment for the inhabitants
in the slums of Karail and Badda. The
informal settlement of Karail has been choosen
due to its prominent status as largest marginal
quarter in Dhaka. (sEE FIg. 1). The vast majority
of Karail was mapped as slum area, and on closer
inspection of the original Quickbird data, an extremely
high building density was uncovered. The
land-use/land-cover classification and the NDVI
mapping shown in Figure 2 highlight the tremendous differences
in land-use patterns which can be found in Dhaka on
a very large scale, showing an extreme lack of vegetation in
poor areas and dispersed green spaces for middle and upper
class areas. The slum area of Karail is located in the west of
the map shown and identified as the one with the smallest
NDVI-values. On the island in between the water bodies,
there are upper middle to upper class residential neighbourhoods,
including some residents with diplomatic status.
These neighbourhoods show dispersed, multi-storey apartment
buildings and a high proportion of green and open
spaces. Again, this area contrasts with the urban area in the
east of this study, where one can find a land-use mosaic of
different building densities with a mix of rapidly changing
apartment blocks and shanties.
Figure 3: Santiago de Chile, District Lo Barnechea: Social housing building complex. Courtesy of
Juliane Welz, Risk Habitat Megacity, Field of Application “Socio-spatial Differentiation”
Figure 4: Santiago de Chile, District Lo Barnechea: Marginal area at river. Courtesy of Juliane Welz,
Risk Habitat Megacity, Field of Application “Socio-spatial Differentiation”
26 IHDP Update 1.2009

Figure 5: Study area in Lo Barnechea – Santiago de Chile. Own study.
Santiago de Chile
In the newly industrialising country of Chile, South
America, the highly dynamic capital, Santiago de Chile, with
its surrounding region, represents the dominant metropolis.
According to the national census, 5,392,804 inhabitants occupied
the Santiago urban region (SUR) in 2002, with 35.7
% of all Chilean people living in this metropolitan area, a
density of almost 10,000 inhabitants per square kilometre,
and a regional in-migration of 14.8 % (1992-2002) (INE
CENso 2002). As Santiago de Chile is located in the Central
Valley between the Andeas and the coastal cordillera, it is
simultaneously exposed to several natural hazards such as
urban flooding, landslides and earthquakes. Of great importance
is the change in the urban pattern, a process which
includes suburbanisation processes as well as the urban built
structures. Until the beginning of the 1980s, Santiago was
characterised by a high level of geographic segregation of
social groups. In fact, all high income households were concentrated
in the eastern sector of the city, while a considerable
agglomeration of poor families inhabited the south and
west (sABAtINI, 2000). This picture has now become more
diverse, influenced by a strong social housing programme.
IHDP Update 1.2009
Indentifying the Poor in Cities
Currently, social segregation still exists as does a
strongly regressive distribution of income, but richer
and poorer households live in neighbourhoods close to
one another. Both the state and the private sector have
strongly influenced the evolution of Santiago’s urban
pattern through intensive social housing programmes
on the one side and a vigorous private real estate sector
on the other.
The present study focuses on some adjacent
neighbourhoods in the local district or comuna, Lo
Barnechea, which is located in the north-east of SUR
towards the Andes, and through which the Mapocho
River runs. It is one of the local districts with the largest
contrasts in social dispersion, ranging from upper
class residential areas to social housing (FIg. 3), and is
one of the few informal settlements of Santiago (FIg.
4). It is the upper class that covers individual parcels
from 500 to 6,000 square metres in area and residential
buildings with surfaces covering 117 to 881 square metres
(gudIño & rEyEs PAECkE 2005, P. 92). In contrast
to these building types, the social housing complexes
cover a parcel size of approximately 70 to 120 square
metres, and are typified by row-to-row houses with four
storeys on poorer ground (gudIño & rEyEs PAECkE
2005, P.104). The informal settlement is characterised
by shanties with a complete lack of open spaces.
With the remote sensing techniques at hand, it
was feasible to analyse this urban structure based on the
surface characteristics described, which give an indication
of social status. As the urban structure is an important spatial
indicator for urban quality of life, VHR images from
Quickbird were analysed. In a first step, an object-oriented
classification approach was taken so as to identify the built
and natural environment. The proportion of single features
then form a UST for each neighbourhood (sEE FIgurE 5).
The study area comprises parts of the Mapocho River with
informal settlements next to the floodplain, social housing
neighbourhoods at a greater distance from the river bed,
and middle class residential areas with surrounding green
vegetation and individual swimming pools. As the Mapocho
River tends toward sudden flooding during the winter
season due to the Mediterranean climate in Santiago, the
aforementioned marginal area is extremely carries a high
level of flooding risk. Rapid and expansive watercourses, in
turn, lead to large areas of potential flood risk that occur at
sudden events of heavy rainfall (roMEro & ordENEs 2004).
The increase of flooding turns into disaster risk with human
lives being at stake by the construction of buildings and infrastructure,
because it negatively impacts the urban water
27

Indentifying the Poor in Cities
cycle. The ground’s infiltration capacity is greatly reduced
with the loss of pervious surfaces, and their value is lowest in
such exposed areas. That implies that the probability of being
affected by a flood is influenced by the building activities
in the catchment, especially those alongside the river bank.
Housing on river banks, and, more generally, in areas affected
by flooding, magnifies the risk for such inhabitants.
This study was implemented by the Helmholtz-funded
project Risk Habitat Megacity (rIsk hABItAt MEgACIty
2009) and part of the Field of Application “Land Use Management”.
Conclusions
Studies concentrating on the challenge of world urbanisation
and its links to global environmental change still
claim an unmet need for combined spatial, physical and socio-demographic
information. Using Geospatial Technology
to identify vulnerable groups and their spatial urban environment
could thus enhance the search for equity in megacities.
This contribution shows potential benefits of bridging
the gap between spatial analysis and remote sensing in
social science by characterising the deprivation of quality of
live for the urban poor, who are strongly influenced by their
physical environment.
ACkNowLEdgEMENts:
A special thanks to the DHAKA-INNOVATE research network (DFG Priority
Programme 1233 Megacities: Informal Dynamics of Global Change,
in this case the Berlin-Bielefeld Consortium), which was so kind as to offer
raster and vector data for further exploitation and which made the case
study of Dhaka feasible.
Authors
1 University of Leipzig, Institute of Geography, Johannisallee 19a, 04104
Leipzig, Tel. +49-341-9098005
2 UFZ - Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research, Department of
Urban Ecology, Environmental Planning and Transport, Permoserstr. 15,
04318 Leipzig, Tel. +49-341-235-1738
rEFErENCEs:
Banzhaf, E. & Höfer, R. (2008) Monitoring Urban Structure Types as
Spatial Indicators With CIR Aerial Photographs for a More Effective
Urban Environmental Management. In: Journal of Selected
Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
(JSTARS), IEEE. Vol. 1, issue 2, pp. 129-138. ISSN: 1939-1404.
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JSTARS.2008.2003310.
Begum, A. (1999) Destination Dhaka, Urban Migration: Expectations
and Reality. Dhaka
Burkart, K., Gruebner, O., Khan, MMH & Staffeld, R. (2007) Megacity
Dhaka. Urban Environment, Informal Settings and Public Health.
In: Geographische Rundschau/International edition, Band 4, Heft
Nr. 1, Seite 4-11.
Caldwell, B. (2004) Global Environmental Change, Urbanisation and
Health. The case of rapidly growing Dhaka. International Human
Dimensions Programme on Global Enviromental Change (IHDP),
pp. 8-9, Bonn
Centre of Urban Studies (CUS) and National Institute of Population
Research and Training (NIPORT) and MEASURE Evaluation (ed.)
(2006) Slums of Urban Bangladesh: Mapping and Census, 2005.
Dhaka
CIESIN - Center for International Earth Science Information Network
(2009) Global Sum Mapping. [Internet], Available from
[Accessed 16 January 2009].
Demographic and Health Surveys (2004) Bangladesh: DHS, 2004 -
Final Report (English). [Internet], Available from [Accessed 16
January 2009].
Ebert, A., N. Kerle & Stein, A. (2009) Urban social vulnerability assessment
with physical proxies and spatial metrics derived from
air- and spaceborne imagery and GIS data. Natural Hazards, Vol.
48, No. 2, pp. 275-294.
Gamba, P., Dell’Acqua, F. & Odasso, L. (2007) Object-oriented building
damage analysis in VHR optical satellite images of the 2004 Tsunami
over Kalutara, Sri Lanka. 2007 Urban Remote Sensing Joint
Event, Paris. France. ISBN 1-4244-0712-5/07
Huq, S. & Alam, M. (2003) Flood management and vulnerability of
Dhaka City. In A. Kreimer, M. Arnold & Carlin, A. (eds.): Building
Safer Cities: The Future of Disaster Risk. Washington, DC, pp.
121-135
INE - Instituto Nacional de Estatisticas (2003) Censo 2002. Chile.
Islam, K. M. N. (2006) Impacts of flood in Urban Bangladesh. Micro
and macro level analysis. Dhaka.
Khan, M. A. (2007) WASA oiling rusty pumps to tackle waterlogging.
The Daily Star, Dhaka
Niebergall, S., Loew, A. & Mauser, W. (2007) Object-oriented analysis
of very high-resolution Quickbird data for megacity research in
Delhi/India. In: 2007 Urban Remote Sensing Joint Event. Paris,
France, 2007. [Online]. Available: http://tlc.unipv.it/urban-remotesensing-2007/
Puissant, A. & Weber, C. (2002) The utility of very high spatial resolution
images to identify urban objects. Geocarta International, vol.
17 (1), pp. 31–41.
Risk Habitat Megacity (2009) Risk Habitat Megacity. [Internet]. Availabe
from: [Accessed
16 January 2009].
Romero, H. & Ordenes, F. (2004) Emerging urbanisation in the Southern
Andes. Environmental impacts of urban sprawl in Santiago de
Chile on the Andean Piedmont.
Mountain Research and Development, 24, 195-199.
Sabatini, F. (2000) The Santiago region. In: Simmonds, R. & G. Hack
(eds.): Global City Regions. Their emerging forms. Spon Press,
London and New York. Pp. 95-106.
Sluizas, R. & Kuffer, M. (2008) Analysing the spatial heterogeneity of
poverty using remote sensing: typology of poverty areas using
selected RS based indicators. In: Jürgens, C (ed.): Remote Sensing
– New Challenges of High Resolution, Bochum 2008. EARSeL
Joint Workshop, Bochum (Germany), March 5-7, 2008. ISBN 978-
3-925143-79-3
Taubenböck, H., Habermeyer, M., Roth, A. & Dech, S. (2006) Automated
allocation of highly-structured urban areas in homogeneous
zones from remote sensing data by Savitzky-Golay filtering
and curve sketching. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters,
vol. 3 Issue 4, pp. 532–536.
UN Habitat (2009) Global Urban Observatory. [Internet]. Available
from:
[Accessed 16 January 2009].
UN Millenium Project (2005) A home in a city. Task force report on
improving the lives of slum dwellers. London: Earthscan.
28 IHDP Update 1.2009

Favela in Sao Paulo. Photo by Aaron Michael Brown
Environmental Inequality
in São Paulo City: An
Analysis of the Differential
Exposures of Socio-
Demographic Groups to
Environmental Risk
Humberto Prates da Fonseca Alves
The paper’s objective is to operationalise the concept
of environmental inequality, measuring the association
between disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions
and greater exposure to environmental risks through
the use of geoprocessing methodologies.
IHDP Update 1.2009
Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
Keywords: Environmental Inequality. Environmental
Risk. Environmental Justice. São Paulo
City. Populations at Risk. Geoprocessing Methodologies.
Introduction
Environmental inequality can be defined
as the differential exposure of individuals
and social groups to environmental security
and risk. This implies that individuals are neither
equal from the perspective of the access
to environmental security and benefits such as
pure air, green areas and clean water, nor regarding
their exposure to environmental risks
such as floods, landslides and pollution. In this
way, factors such as residence location, dwelling
quality and transport availability can limit
the access to environmental benefits and increase
exposure to environmental risks (ALVEs,
2007; PAstor Et AL., 2001).
The argument of environmental inequality
emerges from the hypothesis that
a number of social groups, including some
minorities and low income populations, are
more prone to certain types of environmental
risks such as floods and landslides. Areas with
heightened environmental risk, often close to
landfills or subjected to floods and collapses,
are often the only places accessible to low income
populations. These populations, in turn,
end up building their dwellings in hazardous
conditions while simultaneously tackling other
environmental, sanitation and health problems
(torrEs, 2000; jACoBI, 1995).
29

Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
Figure 1: Spatial distribution of the environmental risk areas (near to watercourses and with high slopes) and of the three groups
of regions (poor, middle class and high class) in the city of São Paulo Sources: CEM-Cebrap, environmental risk areas cartographies;
Marques (2005).
The expressions "environmental inequality" and “environmental
(in)justice" are often used interchangeably, a
fact that clearly propounds the closeness of these two concepts.
Environmental injustice can be defined, in a very
broad way, as an iniquity that is apparent or a real resultant
of the uneven distribution of environmental externalities
linked disproportionately to communities of minorities and
low income groups. Consequently, environmental justice or
environmental equity can be defined as the a reduction of or
release from environmental injustices (Most Et AL., 2004;
hoLIFIELd, 2001).
The concept of environmental justice emerged at the
end of the 1970s in the United States along with the social
movements prompted by Blacks, Native Americans, Latinos
and low income populations living close to landfills, radioactive
dumps and highly polluting industries. In that country,
the scope of research concerning environmental justice
is very extensive and has shown increasing scrutiny in the
past 30 years. This has had the effect of positively influencing
current environmental policies in North America (BuLLArd,
1990; CuttEr, 1995).
In view of these elements, the general objective of this
article is to operationalise the concept of environmental in-
equality in order to identify
and characterise situations
of environmental inequality
in the metropolis of São
Paulo, Brazil at the present
time. To achieve this, social
and environmental indicators
as well as geoprocessing
methodologies were utilised
to pinpoint and measure the
existence of a link between
disadvantaged socioeconomic
conditions and greater
exposure to environmental
risk. Further, an attempt
was made to verify whether
the current trend of environmental
inequality is increasing
in São Paulo city.
To accomplish this
objective we analysed the
exposure level of different
social groups to situations
of environmental risk in
São Paulo city, conducting a
comparative study of the demographic
and socioeconomic dynamics between the populations
living in areas of environmental risk and those living
elsewhere. The hypothesis was that environmental risks are
unevenly distributed among different social groups.
By gathering the analyses, it was possible to put forth
some geoprocessing methodologies to operationalise the
concept of environmental inequality. We believe that the development
of empirical analyses, in particular the quantitative
and spatial ones, is an important part of the endeavour
to advance environmental inequality and environmental
justice research in the scientific and academic milieu (ALVEs,
2007; ACsELrAd Et AL., 2004).
Environmental inequality in São Paulo city
Initially, the evolution of the population living in areas
of environmental risk between 1991 and 2000 was analysed
to verify whether environmental inequality has been increasing
in recent times within São Paulo city. For 1991 and
2000, the population living in areas of environmental risk,
defined for the purposes of this study as either very close to
watercourses (less than 50 meters) and/or on steep slopes
30 IHDP Update 1.2009

(more than 30% grade), was assessed using the "overlayer"
approach.
The estimates obtained for 1991 reveal a population
of 1.6 million living in areas of environmental risk in São
Paulo, corresponding to 16.5% of the total 1991 population
of the city, which totalled 9.6 million. In 2000, while the
population of the city reached 10.4 million, the number of
people living in areas of environmental risk rose to almost 2
million, accounting for 19.1% of its inhabitants (tABLE 1).
Therefore, the results reveal that 1 out of 5 inhabitants
of São Paulo city live in areas of environmental risk, as
constituted by localities in close proximity to watercourses
that suffer from flood riskand exposure to water bourne disease
and/or in localities positioned on steep slopes that carry
high mudflow risk.
The increase in the proportion of people in areas at
environmental risk within the total population results from
the fact that while these risky areas had a population growth
rate of 2.5% a year between 1991 and 2000, growth in the
remaining areas barely reached 0.5% a year (tABLE 2).
Despite their significance, however, these results are
distorted because most of the areas carrying high environmental
risk are concentrated in the poor and peripheral
regions of the city. Therefore, by observing the population
growth in the set of at risk areas, it is not possible to discern
whether such growth is a direct result of the environmental
characteristics of the areas or a result of the fact that this
type of area is concentrated in poor and peripheral regions
of the city.
Taking this into consideration and in order to prevent
the effect of peripheral population growth on population
growth data in areas of environmental risk, as aggregated
for the city as a whole, comparative analyses between areas
of risk and non-risk were performed for each of the three
groups of regions: "poor regions", with a predominantly low
income population; "middle class regions", with a predominantly
middle class population; and "high class regions", with
a predominantly high income population (MArquEs, 2005).
For each region, population size estimates within the
areas of risk and non-risk in both census dates were assessed.
Afterward, the population growth rates for 1991 and 2000
were measured (tABLEs 1 ANd 2). Figure 1 shows the spatial
distribution of the environmental risk areas and of the three
groups of regions (poor, middle class and high class) for São
Paulo city.
In the set of "poor regions" where a low income population
predominates, the proportion of people living in areas
of environmental risk reached an impressive 28.3% for 2000,
which represents a population contingent of 1.1 million peo-
IHDP Update 1.2009
Methodology
Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
The methodology is based on the construction
of a Geographical Information System (GIS),
through which the digital cartographies (layers)
of the environmental risk areas (near to watercourses
and with high declivities) are overlapped
with a digital mesh of the census sectors
of the 1991 and 2000 IBGE (Brazilian Institute
of Statistics and Geography) demographic censuses
of São Paulo city. The environmental risk
areas were selected based on their proximity
to watercourses (less than 50 meters) and/or
because they have high slopes (more than 30%)
which predispose them to floods and mudflows.
The population size, the demographic growth
and the socioeconomic characteristics of the
residents inside and outside of the environmental
risk areas were assessed for both census
dates. These estimates were done for the city
as a whole and for each region delimited by the
spatial distribution of the social groups of São
Paulo city (poor, middle class and high class).
To achieve these estimates, a geoprocessing
method known as "overlayer" was used. The
regions corresponding to the three large social
groups in the metropolis of São Paulo were defined
by Marques (2005), based on factorial and
cluster multivariate analyses and a broad set
of socioeconomic and demographic variables of
the 2000 demographic census.
The methodology performed in this paper
benefits from a GIS database developed at the
Centre for Metropolitan Studies (CEM-Cebrap).
Articles, research results and socio-demographic
and environmental data for São Paulo Metropolitan
Area can be downloaded at the Centre´s
website. For more information, see http://www.
centrodametropole.org.br
31

Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
ple living in areas with a cumulative overlap of poverty and
environmental risk. As for the "middle class regions" and
"high class regions", the proportions of the population living
in areas of environmental risk were much lower, at 14.8 and
9.9% respectively (tABLE 1).
The results also show that in all the three groups of
regions, the population grew more rapidly in the areas of environmental
risk between 1991 and 2000. Likewise, in the
peripheral and poor regions, the population in areas of risk
grew 4.8% a year, while the population outside these areas
recorded a much lower growth rate of 3.3% a year. In the
middle class regions, the number of residents in areas of environmental
risk increased 0.6% a year, while in the non-risk
areas, the population decreased 0.4% a year in the period
from 1991 to 2000. In the high class regions, the population
diminished at rates very similar to those in the areas of risk
and non-risk (tABLE 2).
As the high class regions, including areas at risk, had
negative population growth and the environmental risk areas
in the middle class regions increased nearly 0.6% a year,
the largest part of the population rise in the environmental
risk areas of São Paulo occurred in peripheral and poor regions.
Therefore, while the population of the poor and peripheral
regions grew at a moderate to high pace, the population
rose extremely rapidly in the environmental risk areas
within these suburbs. Additionally, the environmental
risk areas in the suburbs are, in general, less urbanised than
the areas of risk located in central and wealthy regions. This
means that the peripheral localities close to watercourses
and/or with steep slopes are very often situated in less urbanised
areas and are consequently more prone to environ-
Areas
Total of the
city
Poor regions
mental risks. Such areas presented explosive growth rates in
São Paulo city throughout the 1990s.
Discussion of the results and final considerations
The results show that the areas where the population
of São Paulo grew significantly between 1991 and 2000 were
both areas of environmental risk and peripheral and poor
areas. This phenomenon reveals a recent increase in environmental
inequality in the city. There are several decisive
factors that could explain the elevated growth rate of the
São Paulo population living in areas of environmental risk
as defined in this study, and in particular, in peripheral and
poor regions.
The first factor that explains the growth of the city
and of the metropolitan region of São Paulo continues to be
its horizontal expansion and urban sprawl. The suburbs of
the city and metropolitan region, especially in south, east
and north extremes, encompass a very dense watercourse
network due to the topographical and hydrological emplacement
of the city’s river basins. Furthermore, the peripheral
areas also cover mountainous regions such as the Cantareira
Mountain Range in the north of the city. This basically
means that the higher population growth rates in these areas
translate into a larger population increase in areas of environmental
risk (torrEs Et AL., 2007).
The second aspect has to do with the dynamics of
urban land occupation. As the urban mesh of the city, including
the more consolidated peripheral regions, is already
occupied to a great extent, it is reasonable to assume that the
continuity of the horizontal growth implies the occupation
1991 2000
Middle class
regions
High class
regions
Population
Total of the
city
Poor regions
Middle class
regions
High class
regions
Total 9,644,122 2,799,606 5,198,973 1,644,240 10,434,252 3,873,362 5,074,262 1,486,628
Areas of risk 1,593,591 717,645 712,089 163,855 1,991,716 1,095,621 749,052 147,043
Non-risk areas 8,050,531 2,081,961 4,486,884 1,480,385 8,442,536 2,777,741 4,325,210 1,339,585
Participation (%)
Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Areas of risk 16.52 25.63 13.70 9.97 19.09 28.29 14.76 9.89
Non-risk areas 83.48 74.37 86.30 90.03 80.91 71.71 85.24 90.11
Table 1: Size and participation of the population, by regions, in relation to areas of environmental risk and non-risk. City of São Paulo – 1991-2000. Source: IBGE. Demographic
censuses of 1991 and 2000; CEM-Cebrap, cartographies of environmental risk areas; Marques (2005).
32 IHDP Update 1.2009

of less appropriate areas for human settlement,
such as the ones near watercourses
and those with high declivities. These areas
of environmental risk, very frequently,
are the only ones accessible to the low
income population because they are public
and/or preserved areas (invaded) or
because they have been very devaluated
in the market due to their risk levels and
lack of urban infrastructure (ALVEs, 2006;
2007).
A third factor is related to the significant
growth of the population living
in shanty towns. The association between
shanty towns and areas of environmental
risk, especially those on the edge of watercourses
but also those with high declivities,
is very apparent in the literature
concerning the subject (tAsChNEr, 2000) city of São Paulo
(sEE FIgurE 2).
In a few words, the natural conditions
of the areas where population
growth has occurred, the exhaustion of the available areas
for horizontal urban growth and the increase in shanty town
populations are some decisive factors that explain the significant
population rise in areas of environmental risk, recently
seen in the city of São Paulo.
The results also reveal that the population living in
environmental risk areas presents socioeconomic conditions
that leave these groups significantly disadvantaged
when compared with populations in non-risk areas. All indicators
considered point to the existence of disadvantaged
socioeconomic conditions in areas of environmental risk.
Areas
Total of the
city
IHDP Update 1.2009
Poor regions
Middle class
regions
High class
regions
Areas of environmental
risk
2.51 4.81 0.56 -1.20
Areas of
environmental
non-risk
0.53 3.26 -0.41 -1.10
Total 0.88 3.67 -0.27 -1.11
Table 2: Geometrical rates of annual population growth, by regions, in
relation to areas of environmental risk and non-risk. City of São Paulo –
1991/2000
Source: IBGE. Demographic censuses of 1991 and 2000; CEM-Cebrap, cartographies
of environmental risk areas; Marques (2005).
Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
Figure 2: Shanty towns located on the edge of watercourses: a typical example of environmental risk area in the
Copyright: Luciana Travassos, researcher at Laboratório de Urbanismo da Metrópole (LUME-FAU-USP).
Among these indicators, there exists significant differences
between risk and non-risk areas in terms of access to public
sanitation and the proportion of people inhabiting shanty
towns.
The results of the analyses thus confirm the hypothesis
of a positive correlation between greater exposure to environmental
risk and disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions.
Beyond the validation of this hypothesis, the analysis
made here allows us to evaluate the environmental inequality
phenomenon in São Paulo in quantitative and spatial terms,
identifying the social groups most exposed to environmental
risk, their location and the number of people involved.
The identification and the characterisation of some
specific patterns of spatial coexistence as well as the overlap
of poverty and environmental risk situations existing
in metropolitan areas like the city of São Paulo demand the
development of detailed analyses. Those allowed by the geographical
information systems, which make use of extremely
disaggregated spatial units of analysis such as demographic
census sectors, are particularly well suited to this type of
study and can yield meaningful results. This work provides
insight into situations of environmental inequality in São
Paulo city and other metropolitan areas, potentially lending
strong support for the planning of social and environmental
public policies such as housing and sanitation.
33

Environmental Inequality in São Paulo City
Author:
Humberto Prates da Fonseca Alves, Associate Professor at Federal
University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil
Humberto Prates da Fonseca Alves
Rua Hermantino Coelho, 841 - Apto B33 – Mansões Sto
Antônio
13087-500 – Campinas, SP – Brazil
Telephone: 5519-32560399
Email: humbiro@yahoo.com.br
rEFErENCEs
Acselrad, H., Herculano, S. & Pádua, J. A. eds. (2004)
Justiça ambiental e cidadania. Rio de Janeiro, Ed.
Relume-Dumará.
Alves, H. P. F. (2007) Desigualdade ambiental no município
de São Paulo: análise da exposição diferenciada de
grupos sociais a situações de risco ambiental através
do uso de metodologias de geoprocessamento. Revista
Brasileira de Estudos de População, 24 (2) jul./dez., pp.
301-316.
Alves, H. P. F. (2006) Vulnerabilidade socioambiental na
metrópole paulistana: uma análise sociodemográfica
das situações de sobreposição espacial de problemas
e riscos sociais e ambientais. Revista Brasileira de
Estudos de População, 23 (1) jan./jun., p. 43-59.
Bullard, R. (1990) Dumping in Dixie: race, class, and environmental
quality. San Francisco, Westview Press.
Cutter, S. (1995) Race, class and environmental justice.
Progress in Human Geography, No. 19, pp. 107–118.
Holifield, R. (2001) Defining environmental justice and
environmental racism. Urban Geography, 22 (1), pp.
78–90.
Jacobi, P. R. (1995) Moradores e meio ambiente na cidade
de São Paulo. Cadernos CEDEC, No. 43, pp. 12–40.
Marques, E. (2005) Espaço e grupos sociais na virada do
século XXI. In: Marques, E. & Torres, H. eds. São
Paulo: segregação, pobreza e desigualdades sociais.
São Paulo, Editora Senac, pp. 57-80.
Most, M., Sengupta, R. & Burgener, M. (2004) Spatial scale
and population assignment choices in environmental
justice analyses. The Professional Geographer, 56 (4),
pp. 574–586.
Pastor, M., Sadd, J & Hipp, J. (2001) Which came first?
Toxic facilities, minority move-in, and environmental
justice. Journal of Urban Affairs, No. 23, pp. 1–21.
Taschner, S. P. (2000) Degradação ambiental em favelas de
São Paulo. In: Torres, H. & Costa, H. eds. População e
meio ambiente: debates e desafios. São Paulo, Editora
Senac, pp. 271-297.
Torres, H. (2000) A demografia do risco ambiental. In:
Torres, H. & Costa, H. eds. População e meio ambiente:
debates e desafios. São Paulo, Editora Senac, pp.
53-73.
Torres, H., Alves, H. P. F. & Oliveira, M. A. (2007) São
Paulo peri-urban dynamics: some social causes and
environmental consequences. Environment & Urbanization,
19 (1), April, pp. 207-223.
Humberto Alves on the
Open Meeting 2009
“In 2005, I had a paper accepted for the 6th IHDP Open
Meeting, but was unfortunately not able to attend
because of a lack of funding. This time, since learning
of the 7th Open Meeting through the IHDP website in
January 2008, I have been looking forward to participating
in the meeting. My background is economics,
and I hold a master's degree in Sociology and a Ph.D.
in social sciences, all from the State University of
Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil. From 2004 to 2008, I was
a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Metropolitan
Studies (CEM-Cebrap) and at the National Institute
for Space Research (INPE) in Brazil. My main research
themes include population and the environment, socioenvironmental
vulnerability and inequality in metropolitan
areas, the socioeconomic and demographic drivers
of deforestation, urban sprawl and peri-urbanisation,
and social and environmental indicators. I am currently
an associate professor at the Federal University of São
Paulo (Unifesp), Brazil. I have been working on issues
regarding the population and its environmental relationships
for quite some time. In my doctoral studies,
I studied the socioeconomic and demographic drivers
of deforestation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. In my
post-doctorate, I worked with indicators of environmental
inequality and socio-environmental vulnerability
in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area. As one of the four
major social challenges of the IHDP Open Meeting 2009
is How do we deal with demographic challenges?, this
will be an exceptional opportunity to divulge my work.
I am therefore looking forward to taking part in the
IHDP Open Meeting 2009 both to show my work and to
learn more about the work of scientists and researchers
from all over the world in the field of the human dimensions
of global environmental change. It will be a unique
chance to meet colleagues and friends and make new
research contacts with scientists from other countries.
In sum, participating in the IHDP Open Meeting 2009
will be an extraordinary occasion, and one that cannot
be missed”.
34 IHDP Update 1.2009

Characterising the
Mis-Linkages in the Transition
to Sustainability
in Asia *
Xuemei Bai and Anna J. Wieczorek
Introduction
Many countries in Asia have been going through an
unprecedented process of economic development, industrialisation
and urbanisation during the past decades [1, 2].
These processes, multiplied by the speed of change and the
size of the populations involved, have resulted in the region
playing a pivotal role in global sustainability (Fig.1). In Asia,
the importance of sustainable development has been widely
recognised, evident in the many national councils for sustainable
development established and the term’s appearance
in high-level governmental documents. Many countries also
claim to have policies aimed at achieving sustainable development
[3]. Furthermore, numerous successful local sustainability
experiments are widely documented [4], which
we refer to as planned initiatives to embody a highly-novel
socio-technical configuration likely to lead to substantial
sustainability gains.
IHDP Update 1.2009
Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
Traffic Jam in the Ratchaburi Floating Market. Photo: Stuck in Customs
There is little evidence, however, that these national
policies and local practices are bringing about a sustainability
transition. Here we define a transition as a radical change
towards meeting the needs of a stabilising future world population,
while reducing hunger and poverty and maintaining
the planet’s life support systems [5, 6]. The question would
be: why the systems change towards sustainability is not
happening? What is preventing government policy from influencing
the environmental sustainability of development
and what is preventing the good local practices from being
upscaled to influence overall trends?
In this article, we examine the sustainability of Asian
development pathways by applying the aspects of the multilevel
perspective (MLP) on system innovation. Based on empirical
evidence from the region, we argue that the missing
mechanisms providing linkages among various levels in socio-technical
systems, both in terms of upscaling successful
practices and downscaling good policy intentions, are a pri-
*This paper presents some initial results of an ongoing study on Urbanization and Sustainability Transition in Asia, and is based on a recently published
paper Bai, X.M., A.J. Wieczorek, S. Kaneko, S. Lisson, A. Contreras: (2009) Enabling Sustainability Transition in Asia: The importance of vertical and horizontal
linkages. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 76: 255-266.
35

Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
mary factor obstructing the
sustainability of economic and
political transitions in Asia.
System Innovation Studies
Socio-technical tran- 1 0 0
sitions have gained increasing
attention both in recent
research [7-10] and in policy
discourses about sustainability
in industrialised countries.
5 0
While many local and region-
0
al environmental problems
have been addressed through
C r u d e S te e l P r o d u c tio n
regulation and adaptation of
# o f c a r s in u s e
existing systems, new environmental
problems, such as
climate change, appear to require
a radical reorientation of
E le c tr ic ity p r o d u c tio n
C O 2 e m is s io n
production and consumption
systems.
world (ROW). (Bai et al, 2009)
In innovation studies,
sustainability transitions have been conceptualised as
socio-technical system changes involving major and mutually-reinforcing
alterations to the economic, technological,
institutional and socio-cultural domains of systems fulfilling
basic societal functions [10, 11]. System innovations have
a number of specific attributes. They are radical, long term
[12, 13], multi-actor [14] and multi-level [8, 15]. Given their
complexity, system innovations are still not well understood
and are difficult to induce. To grasp this complexity and the
dynamics of transition processes, a multilevel perspective on
system innovations (MLP) has been proposed [16, 17, 8, 15] as
a conceptual framework to help understand and analyse the
way in which transitions unfold.
In this framework, the meso-level comprises a sociotechnical
regime, a concept that builds upon that of technological
regime [18], but which is significantly widened to
include actors, skills, product characteristics, rule sets, etc.
[17]. The socio-technical regime, for instance, a regional
transportation system, accounts for the stability of the socio-technical
system through the coordinated and aligned
activities of its actors. The regimes are set in a macro-level
context called the socio-technical landscape describing
broad, slow-changing factors that influence a variety of regimes.
The landscape includes government and internation-
2 5 0
2 0 0
1 5 0
( 1 9 9 4 = 1 0 0 )
A s ia
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
T o ta l P r im a r y E n e r g y S u p p ly ( m illio n T O E )
al policies, institutional frameworks, power relationships
between important societal groups, cultural values, and
shared understandings about societal problems and visions
of the future. Nested within the socio-technical regimes is a
micro-level structure of technological niches in which more
radical configurations of technology, institutions and behaviour
emerge under conditions of temporary protection from
full-scale market selection [16].
The key feature of the MLP is that transitions occur
through the interplay between the dynamics at these three
levels. The framework is a nested hierarchy [15, 8], which can
account for the stability in a regime, as well as for instabilities
that can eventually lead to the growth of more radical
alternative regimes precipitating a transition. Conditions
within the incumbent regime1 and disruptive developments
at the landscape level create windows of opportunity leading
to a search for more radical alternatives and novel solutions
to problems [19, 20]. The novelties emerging in technological
niches may, under these conditions, attract support and
break through to either re-stabilise or disrupt the incumbent
regime. Over the longer term, the emerging regime may
come to complement or substitute the incumbent one [21].
1 When e.g. existing technologies and behaviours are no longer sufficient
to deal with arising problems.
36 IHDP Update 1.2009
2 5 0
2 0 0
1 5 0
1 0 0
5 0
0
( 1 9 9 4 = 1 0 0 )
R O W
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
C r u d e S te e l P r o d u c tio n
# o f c a r s in u s e
T o ta l P r im a r y E n e r g y S u p p ly ( m illio n T O E )
E le c tr ic ity p r o d u c tio n
C O 2 e m is s io n
Figure 1. A comparison of production, consumption and environmental impact indicators between Asia and the rest of the

Analytical Framework
Analogously to the insights from the system innova-
tion literature, we propose a three dimensional framework
to examine what specific factors facilitate or obstruct transitions
to sustainability in Asia. Levels here correspond with
the analytical levels of the MLP, in particular, the landscape
and regime concepts. The micro level comprises sustainability
experiments (see Fig. 2).
The first dimension emphasises the vertical linkages
between various levels, for example, between local level practice
(micro) and national level policies (meso), and between
national level policies (meso) and international governance
regimes (macro). These vertical linkages are well documented
by existing studies mentioned in previous section.
The second dimension consists of horizontal linkages,
for example, linkages between experiments or between regimes,
in particular different governmental sectors and policies.
These horizontal dynamics have not yet received as much
attention in the system innovation literature as the first dimension
[22, 23], although we show that they are important.
The third dimension shows how the vertical and horizontal
linkages change over time, or with economic development,
and how changes in turn affect the transition. The
relationships of the vertical and horizontal linkages are not
static but subject to change over time.
We argue that these linkages between and within levels
are critical for substantial change to happen. Lack thereof
hampers change despite numerous efforts made at specific
levels. Among these dimensions, vertical linkages seem the
most important in converting successful experiments into
regime changes, or in translating a good policy intention
into practical success. However, the horizontal dimension
appears equally relevant, as it seems to be responsible for
conditions within which ‘a translation’ between experiments
and regimes takes place.
Characterising the Vertical Mis-Linkages
In this section we characterise the factors causing
vertical mis-linkages. We focus on the dynamics between
meso (regimes) and micro (experiments) levels, with particular
attention to institutional dimension, which in Asia
seems crucial to sustainability transition.
Two groups of factors can be identified: one comprises
factors and reasons that obstruct the upscaling of successful
experiments leading to regime change while the other
concerns factors and reasons that obstruct downscaling and
IHDP Update 1.2009
Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
translating good policy intentions into practical successes at
the local level.
The factors that obstruct upscaling include externalities,
failure in governance and the burden of scale.
Externalities:
Some success stories at a local level might be achieved
through externalities, a fact that constrains duplication of
such successes at larger scales. For example, the environmental
improvements seen in some Chinese cities have been
achieved by relocating polluting industries to other cities or
to outer suburbs, which means the improvement entails external
costs beyond the system boundaries [24]. This type of
success is perhaps achievable by a front-runner, but is not
replicable in all other locations and especially not achievable
on a wider scale due to the externality.
Failure in governance at an upper or lower level:
Successful examples are often the result of vision and
knowledge, strong political will, good policy and management
measures, and painstaking efforts at implementation
by government agencies. The success example of Rizhao city
in promoting solar energy use, described below, illustrates
the importance of these factors. Upscaling such successful
practices often requires equally effective governance at a
higher level. The Bangladesh rural electrification case shows
that the lack of such elements at higher-level governance
not only hampers the upscaling of locally successful experiments,
but may even hamper successful practices at the local
level. The Bangladesh case is also a good example of a regime
not creating windows of opportunity for successful local experiments.
Despite the fact that the government recognises
the problem and is committed to solving it, little coordinated
action is taken to facilitate change, partly due to failures
in institutional design as well as a lack of capacity.
Burden of scale:
Success at a smaller scale requires a smaller scale of
funding availability, human capacity, as well as relatively
simple institutional arrangements, which might be relatively
easier to obtain. The institutional and political demands
necessary to mobilise resources along with the governance
capabilities and organisational arrangements to achieve the
same success at a higher level are much greater. The Bangladesh
electrification case, presented below, is a good example
of this factor.
Factors that contribute to difficulties in downscaling
good policy intention include state simplification
37

Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
Xuemai Bai on
the Open Meeting
2009
“I have been a member of IHDP community
since 1998, and have participated in many of
its open meetings and various workshops. I
look forward to participating in the IHDP Open
Meetings as they provide an excellent platform
for exchanging ideas, meeting old friends, and
building up new research networks. I will be
presenting two co-authored papers at the 2009
Open Meeting, and as a Science Steering Committee
Member of IHDP Industrial Transformation
Core Project, I am also participating in IT
related forums and meetings”.
versus local particularity, conflicts of interest and imple-
mentation capacity.
State simplification versus local particularity:
There is evidence that policy at the national level often
fails to attend to the particular local situation, and that
goals and targets set by national governments do not reflect
the reality of local situations. For example, one of the major
factors that contributed to the failure of Huai River Basin
pollution control efforts led by the Chinese government was
that the national pollution control policy and target setting
did not correspond to the local situation [25]. A good policy
needs to be in tune with the local level reality.
Conflict of interest:
National policies sometimes are challenged by conflicts
of interest between whole and parts, where whole is national
level success outcome and parts can be a particular sector or
local entity. Local interests often get in the way of the effective
implementation of national policy at the local level, and
competing interests or a lack of coordination among different
governmental sectors jeopardizes effective implementation
[26, 27]. The central government’s lack of control over actions
at the local level is regarded as one of the biggest governance
problems in Chinese environmental policy. Conflicting interests
also can be found between private and public interests
and often lead to the undermining of a public good such as
the environment, in favour of private goods, such as income
or employment. This often constrains the development of effective
sustainability policy experiments.
Implementation capacity:
Good policies in Asia are often challenged by the local
implementation capacity, due partly to the nature of decentralisation
processes in Asian countries, where power is
given without accompanying financial capacity. The lack of
knowledge and skills can result in the national policy intention
being misinterpreted at the local level, which causes the
intention to get lost in translation. This suggests that local
readiness for a policy is necessary in order for that policy to
be successful. The extent to which this readiness is a matter
of time remains unclear, but it is a dimension that needs
further exploration.
Case Studies From Asia
The aforementioned analytical framework and factors
are based on the examination of much empirical evidence,
both in terms of cases of success and failure. In this section,
we present three case studies, highlighting how different aspects
of the six factors discussed above influence linkages
between sustainability experiments and governmental policies
in Asia over time. A detailed description of the cases can
be found in Bai et al. [28].
Case Study 1: Cattle Production in Eastern Indonesia
The demand in Indonesia for both meat and live beef
cattle for resettlement areas currently exceeds the local supply
capacity, with the deficit largely met by imports from
Australia. A new approach was developed and implemented
among a small number of farmers to promote a wider adoption
of livestock improvement technologies. This approach
involves introducing new grass and legume forage species and
associated optimum management strategies to the local farmers.
The pilot phase of the approach was proven successful,
resulting in increased farm area for forage production as well
as improved cattle production or voluntary adoption of the
technology 'package' (or its parts) by farmers in the respective
and neighbouring villages. Most of the farmers involved intend
to continue and expand the use of such best practice.
38 IHDP Update 1.2009

Despite the apparent success of such a strategy at the
village level, there are a number of challenges associated
with upscaling to the regional level. Widespread adoption
requires a significant operational shift by Indonesian extension
agencies and one of the challenges is to convince
farmers of the significant benefits of new forage to their
livestock enterprises. This emphasis on working with individual
farmers is different from the current approach in
which ‘proven’ technologies are typically extended to large
groups of farmers in a one size fits all, top-down approach.
The new approach requires tailor made solutions and a farm
specific, farmer driven systems approach as well as a multidisciplinary,
skilled team able to cope with the complex,
interdependent nature of particular farming systems. The
team needs to gain the respect of participating farmers and
maintain regular contact with them. Once there is evidence
of commitment and upscaleing to neighbouring farms, the
extension team may move on. This reliance on farmer-tofarmer
technology extension is complex, elevating the risk
that broader populations of farmers may find it difficult to
effectively adapt the approach to their own situations.
This case study shows various vertical mis-linkage
factors associated with the adoption of new livestock and
forage technologies in mixed crop/livestock smallholder enterprises
of eastern Indonesia. In particular, it highlights the
mis-linkages relating to the burden of scale, state simplification
and implementation capacity.
Case Study 2: Solar Energy Use in Rizhao, China
Rizhao is, by Chinese standards, a relatively small
coastal city on the Shandong Peninsula in northern China.
Since the early 1990s, the city has achieved widespread success
in adopting renewable energy [29]. About 99% of households
in the central districts use solar water heaters, and
most traffic signals, streetlights and park lights are powered
by photovoltaic solar cells. In the suburbs and villages, many
households are generating mash gas from sewage and using
an array of solar energy devices such as solar water heaters,
solar cooking facilities and solar heated greenhouses. It
is estimated that the use of clean energy has reduced CO2
emissions by 3,340,000 tons and SO2 by 12,500 tons annually
[30]. In 2007, the Transatlantic 21 Association awarded
the Rizhao initiative the World Clean Energy Award.
The success of Rizhao demonstrates the importance
of positive vertical and horizontal linkages through positive
synergies among multiple actors, and illustrates the positive
impact of a successful experiment to other regimes. The
IHDP Update 1.2009
Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
Shandong provincial government has provided policy measures
to encourage the development and adoption of solar
energy use in the form of subsidies to industrial R&D on solar
energy. The panels were made easy to install and the cost
of solar water heaters was brought down to the level of their
electric counterparts, creating large financial savings per
household (120 USD per year [29, 31]). Under this favourable
policy environment at the upper governmental level, Rizhao
city government has played a pivotal role in the popularisation
of solar water heaters. The city mandates all new buildings
to incorporate solar panels, overseeing the construction
process to ensure proper installation. Government buildings
and the homes of city leaders were the first to have the panels
installed. The city also launched a widespread public education
campaign, both advertising on television and holding
public seminars.
While contributing significantly to an improved energy
profile and reduced peak energy demand, the merit of popularising
solar energy has had profound impacts beyond the
energy sector. It has reduced coal burning in the city and improved
air quality, allowing the city to attract increasing levels
of foreign investment and tourism, as well as highly educated
people, wishing to become the residents of the city [29]
This case is a positive example of how well-functioning
vertical and horizontal linkages can induce a positive
sustainability outcome at the city level. With national or city
government policies to encourage renewable energy use, effective
governance to implement policy, and low cost solar
water heaters readily available, upscaling the experiment to
city level was successful.
Case Study 3: Rural electrification in Bangladesh
The Rural Electrification Program (REP) in Bangladesh
was started in 1978 as an important element of poverty alleviation
in Bangladesh. Its aim was to expand on-grid electrification
in rural areas through the establishment of communitybased
cooperatives called Palli Bidyut Samities (PBSs). Under
the REP, the number of electrified villages (and the related
electricity consumption) has greatly increased in rural Bangladesh,
as have the agricultural production and employment
rates. The programme has been recognised as an example of
a best practice in international development assistance and
attracted the attention of other developing countries.
The PBS system has worked well and raised rural
electrification from near zero in 1978 to over 20% in 2001.
With the growing electricity demand, however, the system
began to face serious and frequent load shedding and black-
39

Characterising the Mislinkages in the Transition to Sustainability
outs due to power supply shortages from the Bangladesh
Power Development Board (BPDB), which, until 1978, was
the only agency responsible for generation, transmission and
distribution of electricity. The problem has escalated during
irrigation seasons and has currently reached a serious stage,
highlighted by an incident in early 2006 in which 17 farmers
were killed amid violence between the police and protesters
demanding access to electricity. A state monopoly under the
BPDB, power generation in Bangladesh is also exposed to
the political interferences. Since 1991, the ruling party has
been changed alternately every 5 years, causing political turbulence,
conflicts and adversely affecting the continuity and
implementation of power development projects. This has restricted
the expansion of electricity generation capacity while
the demand for electricity in rural areas has been growing.
With the expansion of the REP over the entire country, the
REP has attracted more attention from politicians and government
officers, thereby undergoing the politicisation of its
autonomous and democratic decision making powers.
This case highlights vertical linkages and, in particular,
how a governance failure can hamper successful local practice
and its upscaling. From the vertical linkage perspective,
the case illustrates the tension between a top-down approach
of power supply and a bottom-up approach of rural electrification.
The case also illustrates the problems related to the
burden of scale through the growing bureaucratic nature of
the REP, as it was scaled up. It shows how the relationship
between the experiment and socio-technical regime changes
from favourable to conflict ridden, as experiments accumulate
and attempt to scale up. This highlights the importance of
an evolutionary view in analysing such linkages.
Conclusion
The application of a system innovation perspective to
the analysis of cases in Asia reveals the existence of conditions
favourable for a transition to sustainability and there is a positive
momentum both at the national level and in the form of
a number of small scale sustainability experiments. The MLP,
however, does not pay enough attention to the horizontal linkages
and their dynamics. We developed a three-dimensional
analytical framework encompassing vertical and horizontal
linkages that changed over time, in order to further identify
specific factors obstructing the upscaling of good practices
and the downscaling of good policy intentions.
The analysis of cases suggests that disturbances at various
levels alone are not sufficient to generate systems changes.
What is necessary is the existence of a robust mechanism
that captures the positive momentum of the disturbance at
a certain level and then reflects and links it to the upper and
lower levels of the system so as to create a synergic transformation.
The emphasis on linkage might have particular importance
in the Asian context. Due to the historical context
and the telescoped development pattern, the Asian situation
is qualitatively different from that experienced by the OECD
countries [32], as the regime actors in the Asian context are
faced with many problems to solve simultaneously [2, 32-34].
This complexity adds to the difficulty of establishing linkages
between local level initiatives promoting sustainability
and national level policies. It might also be that more time is
necessary for positive effects to emerge, but we do not have
sufficient evidence to draw any strong conclusions as to the
effect of temporal factors in terms of the effect of the accumulation
of successful experiments. How time and economic
development influence vertical and horizontal relations is
an important analytical dimension that is yet to be explored
theoretically and empirically.
The innovation and experimentation does not only
seem to be technology related, as the MLP suggests. Especially
in Asia, the importance of technology seems to be
outweighed by other factors related to social, economic and
political context. Most experiments have therefore been
conducted in the field of policy modernisation and institutional
reform.
NotE:
This paper presents some initial results of an ongoing study on Urbanisation
and Sustainability Transition in Asia, and is based on a recently published
paper Bai, X.M., A.J. Wieczorek, S. Kaneko, S. Lisson, A. Contreras: (2009)
Enabling Sustainability Transition in Asia: The importance of vertical and
horizontal linkages. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 76: 255-
266.
Authors
Xuemei Bai is Senior Science Leader at CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems,
leading research in the fields of urbanisation and environmental change,
urban and industrial ecology, urban resource and environmental management,
environmental policy in China and sustainability transitions in Asia
and Australia.
Anna J. Wieczorek is an executive officer of the Industrial Transformation
project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental
Change (IHDP IT) hosted by the Institute for Environmental
Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. .
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Men watching television in rural Bangladesh
Photo: Jeevs Sinclair
41

The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
Human Security
in an Era of Global
Change – The GECHS
Synthesis Process
Linda Sygna, Kirsten Ulsrud and Karen O’Brien
Photo: UN Photo/Logan Abassi
The relationship between social processes and grow-
ing environmental challenges is at the core of research with-
in the Global Environmental Change and Human Security
(GECHS) project. GECHS research places environmental
changes within larger socioeconomic and political contexts,
and focuses on the way diverse social processes such
as globalization, poverty, disease, and conflict, combine
with global environmental change to affect human security.
GECHS research recognizes the need to move human beings
and societies to the center of global environmental change
research—an approach that is closely related to the theme
of the Open Meeting 2009, “The Social Challenges of Global
Change.”
Human security can be interpreted as the freedom to
take actions that promote well-being in response to changing
environmental conditions. Key themes that have been investigated
by GECHS researchers include the effects of global
environmental change on water resources; the role of governance;
linkages between environmental change and food security;
conflict and cooperation in transboundary resource
management; linkages between environmental change and
population displacement and migration; gender dimensions
of environmental change; resource scarcity and conflict;
multiple stressors, differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity;
the role of culture, values, and worldviews in understanding
and responding to environmental change; climate
change and human security implications in cities and coastal
urban areas; linkages between environmental change and
poverty; and many other themes. The Open Meeting 2009
will serve as an arena for stocktaking on research related to
these themes, and for presenting GECHS perspectives and
research on global environmental change and human security
to the wider human dimensions community.
Below, we showcase some of the perspectives and
themes that will be presented in 15 GECHS sessions at the
Open Meeting, using three broad, interrelated streams of
knowledge that have been emerging over the years within
GECHS. The GECHS project is currently in a synthesis
phase, whereby ten years of research findings are being consolidated,
synthesized and disseminated. Progress has been
made in three areas. First, there have been important advances
on the conceptualization of human security, particularly
in terms of framing and understanding the implications
of environmental change for individuals and communities.
Second, a large body of empirical research has been created
on how various aspects of human security are influenced
by environmental change, and how multiple processes of
change threatens social, human and environmental rights.
The third broad stream of research within the GECHS proj-
42 IHDP Update 1.2009

ect is devoted to human capabilities to respond to social
and environmental stress, and how to create positive social
change and enhance human security in the context of global
environmental change. In the sections below, we will go into
more detail and give some empirical example to shed light
on how human security research can help society frame, research
and address environmental and social challenges in
the coming decade.
The Conceptualization of Human Security
Since the GECHS project was established in 1999,
there has been a considerable evolution in the ways that both
human security and global environmental change research
have been framed and discussed. In terms of human security,
discussions have moved beyond a state-centered focus
to include individual and collective security. The emphasis
is increasingly on how individuals and communities can respond
to an assortment of stresses and shocks that threatens
their social, environmental and human rights. In emphasizing
the human context in which biophysical changes both
occur and are created, the focus has been directed towards
various dimensions of security, including food security, water
security, livelihood security and environmental security.
In terms of global environmental change, perspectives
from the social sciences and the humanities are increasingly
seen as critical to understanding the causes and
consequences of biophysical changes. What has emerged
from GECHS research is the importance of framing environmental
changes as social and ethical issues, rather than
viewing them exclusively as environmental problems. Culture,
values, and worldviews are also brought into global environmental
change research as dimensions that influence
both vulnerability and responses to environmental change.
Understanding the human context of environmental change
is important in order to ensure development paths that increase
human security and promote sustainability. Despite
growing attention to these diverse aspects in the research
on global environmental change, much of this research is
still in an early phase, and there are significant potentials
for advancing it further. This implies bringing together and
integrating new and different perspectives on global environmental
change.
Climate change has been an important research
theme within the GECHS network, and much of the research
underscores the need to strengthen the social and human
dimensions in current debates about climate change. To
date, the issue of climate change has been widely discussed
IHDP Update 1.2009
The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
and debated among scientists and policymakers as an environmental
issue, rather than as a human security issue. Current
discourses on climate change draw attention to growing
bodies of research on biophysical changes of the earth
system, as well as on the economics and politics of climate
change management. Although the climate change vulnerability
literature has emphasized differential exposure, sensitivities,
and adaptive capacities, as well as the concept of
social vulnerability, there has been less attention given to the
implications of differential outcomes and changing vulnerabilities
for human security. Furthermore, the consequences
of adaptation and mitigation responses to climate change
have not been widely considered. Climate change does not
take place in isolation from other ongoing environmental
and social changes, and the consequences of climate change
are likely to exacerbate some of the already-urgent challenges
to biodiversity, water management, coastal zone management,
and many other environmental issues. A framework
for the investigation of multiple stressors can, for example,
shed light on interactions between globalization and global
environmental change, including why many regions, sectors,
and social groups may be “double exposed” to these global
change processes.
Global Environmental Change and Implications
for Human Security
Water stress, food insecurity, health insecurity and
loss of livelihoods are currently the reality of many people
and communities around the world. Interactions between
environmental and social processes are likely to have widespread
human consequences, thus GECHS research emphasizes
humanitarian consequences of environmental
change. Research on how individuals and communities are
influenced by global environmental change takes local needs
and the central problems in people’s lives as starting points.
This facilitates a deeper and more nuanced understanding
of how people both are affected by and affect environmental
changes. Such understandings form a necessary foundation
for solutions to human insecurity around the world. Water
scarcity, for example, has emerged as a serious issue for social
and economic development in many parts of the world.
What is evident is that the water crisis does not emerge as a
result of diminishing precipitation and limited water availability
alone, but it is also often a result of struggle over
access to and control of water resources. Instead of viewing
water scarcity as something natural, GECHS research
43

The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
Mobilizing a
New Generation
of Human
Security Researchers
The Open Meeting serves as a forerunner to
the GECHS Synthesis Conference that will take
place June 22-24 at the University of Oslo in
Norway. The synthesis phase does not only
involve highlighting the achievements of ten
years of research, it also involves elaborating
on the new research questions that are likely to
drive future research on global environmental
change. Mobilization of a new and committed
group of researchers will be a goal of the synthesis
process, and the Open Meeting represents
the first step in this direction. A side event
will take place both during the Open Meeting
and at the GECHS Synthesis Conference June
22-24 where a new generation of human security
researchers will be welcome to bring new
ideas to the table.
argues that the scarcity in many cases is caused by sociopolitical
processes.
A human security framing presents an alternative to
the traditional analysis of for example the consequences of
climate change. Whereas much of the attention, both within
research and in policy, is given to the biophysical impacts associated
with climate change, less attention is given to the
broader social consequences. Focusing on the social context
and social vulnerability, may bring us closer to answering
some of the following questions: Who are most affected by
climate variability and change? And why? Who are the winners
and losers? What makes some people more vulnerable
than others? How does climate change interact with other
processes to affect human security? What are the implications
for equity and sustainability? How do different beliefs, values
and worldviews influence processes, responses and outcomes?
Whose values count in responding to climate change?
Increasing Human Security in the Context of
Global Environmental Change
How to respond to environmental problems is becoming
an increasingly urgent question around the world,
among not only politicians and practitioners, but also among
the general public. GECHS research emphasize that the ability
to respond both individually and collectively forms the
backbone of sustainable strategies to reduce the adverse effects
of environmental change. Strengthening the capacity
to respond to global environmental change—including having
the options to end, mitigate, or adapt to risks to people’s
human, environmental and social rights—is central to research
within the GECHS network. Having the capacity and
freedom to exercise these options, and actively participate
in pursuing these options is also fundamental, which raises
important questions of voice and power. The human context
and differential vulnerability serve as starting points
for addressing environmental change. Rather than seeking
and creating solutions that target environmental stress separately,
GECHS research points towards solutions that seek
not only to reduce risk, but also to reduce vulnerability and
enhance adaptive capacity.
A human security approach opens up for a more positive
and visionary view on the future and what can be accomplished.
Developing human capabilities and promoting
social transformations has the potential to enhance human
well-being and security under change and uncertainty. This
means addressing the social context in which the adverse
impacts of environmental change is taking place. Some of
the central questions in this field of human security research
are: How do individuals, communities and societies adapt
to rapid change? What are the limits to and potentials for
adaptation? What will be lost? How can positive experiences
and useful technologies spread? What are the barriers to
social change? What are the opportunities for sustainable
responses? How can we create rapid social transformations
in a just and equitable manner?
These questions and many others will be addressed
in the 15 GECHS sessions at the Open Meeting. Sessions on
water security, sustainable adaptation, conflict, limits to adaptation,
poverty and climate change, double exposure, and
vulnerable cities will form an important arena for presenting
and discussing how far we have come in understanding the
relationship between human security and global environmental
change.
44 IHDP Update 1.2009

Moving Societies
in a Sustainable Direction
- The Industrial
Transformation
Synthesis Process
Anna J. Wieczorek and Frans Berkhout
IHDP Update 1.2009
The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
Production lIne of electronic devices in China. Photo: Gualterio Pulvirenti
After 9 years of its operation the Industrial Trans-
formation project has entered its synthesis phase. As com-
pared to a decade ago the urgency of global environmental
change, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, urban
tsunami, global population growth, growing resources
scarcity, becomes increasingly painful. The changes cause
higher level of disruption and growing restlessness of various
social groups, including individuals. The difficulty of the
situation may be amplified in the very next years because of
the on-going financial crisis and the yet-to-come crisis of the
“real” economy. Incentives and capabilities to strong environmental
(and social) actions may apparently weaken. The
urgency also reveals a sort of a crisis because of the difficulty
of meeting the challenges such as for instance reducing 20-
30% till 2020 or 60-80% to 2050 of CO2 emissions in Europe.
Furthermore we also face urgency in terms of time – we are
in the ‘build up phase’, when action is still possible or, better
say, the impact of acting now will be incomparably greater
45

The Open Meeting - a Platform to present the Synthesis Process of GECHS and IT
than later when e.g. new cities will have already been built.
Action now can be seen as a prevention of many undesired
lock-in’ and stimulation of alternative pathways instead of
pushing the development off its established trajectory. That
applies especially to the developing countries. The time span
we have for a timely action is 20-30 years from now which
is a tight schedule making radical system changes an inevitable
reality.
Within the Industrial Transformation research we
have learned that such transformations towards sustainability
are not easy for a number of reasons. Firstly there are
many areas of human needs such as nutrition, health, housing,
mobility which are often met through complex, global
and interlocking systems of provision, while being deeply
embedded in the national socio-cultural contexts. Secondly,
the spectrum of actors has broadened and numerous new
forms of participation make the decision making extremely
complex. The unstructured characters of the problems to
solve, insufficiency of policy strategies and instruments further
add to this complexity.
On the other hand we have already learned a great
deal about the way in which such radical changes possibly
take place and how to utilise this knowledge in policy making
and governance of change (see: Berkhout, IHDP Update
09). Now is the time for deploying of what we know about
sustainability transitions for the purpose of moving societies
in that direction.
The IT project of IHDP has, since its inception, always
been very much action oriented. Now, in the synthesis
phase, we would like to keep this spirit. We take stock of the
available knowledge about patterns in and governability of
radical change and given the challenges - we consider the
current position of societies with regards to sustainability
transition (s). We observe that while there are hopeful signs,
we are still far from being on the path that would lead us to
what could be called a sustainable world. We therefore contemplate
what possible actions are yet necessary in order to
move societies in a sustainable direction.
In doing so we reflect on the existence and the impact
of the so-called sustainability experiments, which are growing
in number in various parts of the world. Sustainability
experiments are planned initiatives to embody a highly novel
socio-technical configuration likely to lead to substantial
(environmental) sustainability gains. They are often local
initiatives which presence makes it increasingly possible
to envisage the emergence of new, more resource-efficient
socio-technical systems as the basis of more sustainable development
pathways (Berkhout et al., 2009). To better understand
the circumstances in which the experiments have
the power to transform exiting unsustainable incumbent
systems of provision, we apply insights from the growing
body of system innovation literature.
Single experiments however are not a sufficient precondition
for a change to take place (Geels and Schot, 2007).
They need to link up and reinforce each other and they need
favourable conditions to up-scale and transform the incumbent
systems. And we all know that the current systems of
provision (such as mobility or energy) are highly path dependent
and deeply locked-in and for that matter extremely difficult
to change. What we do see however is that the growing
urgency of global environmental change is putting significant
pressure on these systems, opening up yet few ‘windows
of opportunities’. Will societies recognise and utilise them?
Under what conditions and in what circumstances?
We hope to discuss these very complex questions
with the Global Environmental Change community during
a plenary round table on Tuesday morning at the upcoming
Open Meeting, which will take place in Bonn in April.
We also hope to be able to organise an IT side event.
During this meeting we will open up the floor for all ideas
that emerge from the current transition studies, which are
important to study further and in which there is interest
among the global change community. We particularly hope
to see there people who have been with IT for the past years
and who in various capacities contributed to the IT agenda.
We look forward to seeing again participants of our recent
very successful 2008 IHDP training on transitions that took
place in October 2008 in Delhi during the International Human
Dimension Workshop - IHDW.
"Zero Energy Home" in Bainbridge Island, Washington. Photo lifebegreen
46 IHDP Update 1.2009

Peruvian men meet to discuss water issues and regulation. Photo Daniel Bachhuber
Looking toward the
Future - The Earth
System
Governance Project
Ruben Zondervan, Executive Officer, Earth System Governance Project
The 7th Open Meeting of the International Human
Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, “The Social
Challenges of Global Change” also known as the IHDP Open
Meeting 2009, is the first large-scale meeting of the global
scientific community for the Earth System Governance Project
since its start as new, long-term research project. As the
newest project in IHDP’s portfolio of cutting-edge research
projects on the human dimensions of global environmental
change, the Earth System Governance Project (ESG)
will be strongly represented at, and actively involved in the
IHDP Open Meeting 2009. It will represented with its own
research, in joint activities with the other IHDP core projects
and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) joint
projects, and last but not least, with the new IHDP scientific
initiatives that are currently in an advanced planning phase:
Knowledge and Learning for Societal Change (KLSC), and
Integrated Risk Governance (IRG).
IHDP Update 1.2009
New IHDP Projects and Initiatives – From Planning to Practice
A new IHDP Core Project
In October 2008, the IHDP Scientific Committee
approved the Earth System Governance Science and Implementation
Plan and appointed the ESG Scientific Steering
Committee, decisions marking the project’s formal start.
The idea for a research project on earth system governance,
though, is older and was given a strong impetus by the 2001
Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change1 in which the
ESSP declared an ‘urgent need’ to develop ‘strategies for
earth system management’.
The idea developed first into a concrete initiative and
finally in a new project in a consultative process that started
in 2004, when the IHDP Institutional Dimensions of Global
Environmental Change Project (IDGEC) entered its synthesis
phase and mandated a New Directions initiative to develop
proposals for a new research activity. A March 2007 report
from the New Directions initiative resulted in the mandate
from the IHDP Scientific Committee to draft a science plan
and develop ESG which builds upon and further develops the
legacy of the successful predecessor, the IDGEC project (for
more details see Young 2008, Biermann 2008).
Setting a Research Agenda
The IHDP Open Meeting 2009 is the world’s largest
international science conference dealing with social aspects
1 See http://www.sciconf.igbp.kva.se/fr.html
47

New IHDP Projects and Initiatives – From Planning to Practice
of global environmental change and as such, will determine
the state-of-the-art of human dimensions research. In addition,
the theme of the 7th Open Meeting of the International
Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, “The
Social Challenges of Global Change,” responds to important
changes in the perspective of the scientific community on
the current challenges that we are currently facing and outlines
the new research agenda for the next decade in terms
of theoretical frameworks and methodologies as well as the
science-practice nexus and the policy relevance of social
science on global environmental change in general. IHDP
scientific projects are at the forefront of human dimensions
research and the new IHDP projects are also expected to set
both long-term research agendas as well provide overarching
guidance in their respective research areas.
The Earth System Governance Project provides just
such overarching guidance, as a common set of questions
for the study of earth system governance in Earth System
Governance: People, Places and the Planet. Science and Implementation
Plan of the Earth System Governance Project
(Biermann et al., forthcoming). This Science Plan was written
over the course of a year by an international committee
of scientists with interest and experience in the field of
governance. This scientific planning committee integrated
a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, including political
science, sociology, policy studies, geography, law and
economics, as well as expertise on all levels of governance,
from local governance to global agreements.
The scientific planning committee had three intense
drafting meetings and organised a variety of roundtables
and conference side-events so as to solicit the views from the
research community and from practitioners. Among other
things, the 2007 Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions
of Global Environmental Change was held under
the theme of ‘Earth System Governance: Theories and Strategies
for Sustainability’ and served as the launch of ESG’s planning
process. 1 Draft versions of the Science Plan have been
reviewed, in parts or in whole, by a large number of experts,
from both academia and political practice. Since early January
2009, an advance unedited version of the science plan has
been online, available to the entire scientific community. 2
Crosscutting the Community
Governance was a crosscutting theme in IHDP’s
scientific portfolio long before this theme evolved and co-
1 See http://www.2007amsterdamconference.org
2 For more information and download: http://www.earthsystemgovernance.org
The Earth System Governance Project understands
the concept of earth system governance
as “the interrelated and increasingly integrated
system of formal and informal rules, rule-making
systems, and actor-networks at all levels of
human society (from local to global) that are
set up to steer societies towards preventing,
mitigating, and adapting to global and lo-cal
environmental change and, in particular, earth
system transformation, within the normative
context of sustainable development.” The notion
of governance refers here to forms of steering
that are less hierarchical than traditional
governmental policy-making (even though
most modern governance arrangements will
also in-clude some degree of hierarchy), rather
decentralized, open to self-organization, and
inclusive of non-state actors that range from
industry and non-governmental organizations
to scientists, indigenous communities, city
governments and interna-tional organizations.
(cntd on next page)
alesced with the idea of earth system governance to become
an IHDP core project. As a project, governance will be maintained
and strengthened in its crosscutting character. The
Earth System Governance Project explicitly attempts in its
research activities to cut across the entire Earth System Science
Partnership community. Most IHDP projects, as well
as the ESSP joint projects, address questions of governance
and institutions. ESG itself seeks to strengthen the knowledge
base on governance issues in the other global change research
programmes. Illustrative of this is an ESG presentation at the
IHDP Open Meeting 2009, which will highlight how the analytical
problems examined by ESG could be relevant for governance
in the coastal zone at a panel convened by the Land-
Ocean Interaction in the Coastal Zones Project (LOICZ).
Practically, ESG has addressed the need to collaborate
with and to cut across other global change programmes
through extensive consultations with these projects during
the drafting of its science plan. For example, the flagship activities
outlined in the science plan have been developed and
will be implemented in close consultation and collaboration
with the ESSP joint projects, the Global Water System Project
(GWSP), the Global Environmental Change and Food
Systems Project (GECAFS) and the Global Carbon Project
(GCP). The flagship activities illustrate the existing coop-
48 IHDP Update 1.2009

(cntd from last page) Based on this general
notion the Earth System Governance Science
Plan outlines a research programme organized
around five analytical problems with four
crosscutting research themes and four flagship
activities.
1. Analytical Problems. The five analytical
problems are the problem of the overall architecture
of earth system governance, of agency
beyond the state and of the state, of the adaptiveness
of governance mechanisms and processes
and of their accountability and legitimacy,
and of modes of allocation and access in
earth system governance—in short, the five A’s.
2. Crosscutting Themes. The Earth System
Governance Project will focus, in studying the
analytical problems of architecture, agency,
adaptiveness, accountability and legitimacy,
and allocation and access, on four crosscutting
research themes that are of crucial relevance
for the study of each analytical problem but
also for the integrated understanding of earth
system governance. These four crosscutting
research themes are the role of power; the role
of knowledge; the role of norms; and the role of
scale.
3. ‘Flagship Activities’ as Case Studies. The
Earth System Governance Project will advance
the integrated, focused analysis of case study
domains in which researchers combine research
on the analytical problems. At the same time,
integration of the findings from different issue
areas on each of the five analytical problems
will increase theoretical knowledge on the core
elements of earth system governance. Four
flagship activities of the Earth System Governance
Project have been identified: research on
the global water system, on food systems, on
the global climate system, and on the global
economic system.
IHDP Update 1.2009
New IHDP Projects and Initiatives – From Planning to Practice
eration and, at the same time, signal to all other projects a
continuing commitment to maintain the crosscutting role
of governance. Consultations have and will continue to take
place with the initiative on Knowledge and Learning for Societal
Change, which has a strong crosscutting character as
well.
The IHDP Open Meeting 2009 will be attended by
about 1,000 international scientists, journalists and representatives
from the private sector, institutes, international
organisations and NGOs, as well as by government officials
and decision-makers from various fields. Among them will
be many of those involved in the IHDP core projects and
ESSP joint projects. The conference will therefore be an excellent
platform for interaction between the projects themselves
and between the projects and the global community
of global environmental change and sustainable development
researchers and practitioners. For the new projects,
the IHDP Open Meeting 2009 will also provide numerous
opportunities to explore long-term collaboration and activities
beyond the conference.
Towards a Global Community
The IHDP Open Meeting 2009 is a welcome opportunity
to further develop and extend existing networks as
well as to create new ones. In particular, the new projects,
addressing social challenges of global environmental change
that are of relevance to many other researchers worldwide,
will benefit from the presence of scientists who come from
various disciplines and research institutions all over the
world. Although the Earth System Governance Project,
for example, is social science oriented, its themes are also
relevant for natural scientists and the entire global change
research community. Research on earth system governance
will need to be an interdisciplinary effort that links all relevant
social sciences, but that draws on findings from natural
science as well. Diversity within the research community
together with strong networking is a prerequisite not only
for studying earth system governance but for all global environmental
change research.
For all its activities, the Earth System Governance
Project will thus need to rely on a large and dynamic network
that reflects the interdisciplinary, international, and
multi-scalar challenge of developing integrated systems of
governance to ensure the sustainable development of the
coupled socio-ecological system that the Earth has become.
To the end, it will spend substantial resources on building a
network that is designed to be as open as possible and that
49

New IHDP Projects and Initiatives – From Planning to Practice
follows the motto “People, Places, and the Planet”. The Earth
System Governance Network contains different categories
of affiliation:
First of all, there is the Earth System Governance Associate
Faculty. The Associate Faculty is a group of not more
than 100 individual scientists of high international reputation
who will take responsibility for the development of research
on particular elements of the Earth System Governance
Science and Implementation Plan. Although quality
and reputation are priorities surpassing any considerations
of quantity in terms of the Associate Faculty group, which
is, in any case, limited to 100 individuals, ESG is proud that
nearly 20 outstanding researchers from five continents have
already accepted the invitation to become Associate Faculty
members since the start of the project.
Secondly, the project recently launched the Earth System
Governance Research Fellows Network. Earth System
Governance Fellows are early to mid-level in their careers
and seek to link their own research projects with the broader
themes and questions advanced by the Earth System Governance
Science and Implementation Plan. Through a bottomup,
dynamic and active network, Earth System Governance
Fellows collaborate on research projects, debate ideas and
disseminate information on relevant events and opportunities
in the field.
While the above affiliations constitute networks of
people, the Earth System Governance Research Centres are
a global alliance linking these and other people to places.
The research centres support the implementation of specific
parts of the Earth System Governance Science Plan, for
example, by sharing responsibility for the analysis of one
particular analytical problem or one particular flagship activity.
Currently, there is a research centre in Amsterdam,
The Netherlands; in Chiang Mai, Thailand; in Colorado,
the United States; and in Stockholm, Sweden. Two more research
centres are in a planning phase.
In addition to the more formal affiliations to the Earth
System Governance Project outlined above, many researchers
all around the planet have set sail under the banner of the
relatively new concept of earth system governance. The fact
that a number of researchers not (yet) involved in the project
have submitted abstracts for the IHDP Open Meeting
2009 in which they already explicitly use the notion of earth
system governance and the concept of the 5 A’s (analytical
themes) is a joyous illustration hereof.
Activities at the IHDP Open Meeting 2009
The active involvement and strong representation of
the new projects is encouraged and generously supported by
the International Scientific Planning Committee of the IHDP
Open Meeting 2009 and by the IHDP Scientific Committee.
The new projects will have their own sessions in which they
will present their research agenda and research findings.
They will also hold both special events and meetings of their
Scientific Steering Committees or Planning Committees
back to back with the IHDP Open Meeting 2009.
To increase the visibility of the new projects and the
level of awareness, a joint session of the three new projects
is also planned. In this joint semi-plenary session, the ESG
and the KCSL and IRG initiatives will present an overview
of their projects including the respective scientific concepts,
the rationale for starting such a project, their planning processes,
and, in the case of the ESG, also a review of the first
months of implementation. The presentations will alternate
with short illustrative examples of how the overarching scientific
concepts and broad fundamental research questions
of the projects affect and guide individual researchers in
their research efforts.
With its decision to approve the Earth System Governance
Project, and the initiatives on Knowledge and Learning
for Societal Change, and Integrated Risk Governance,
the IHDP Scientific Committee has set the cardinal points
for IHDP’s scientific agenda. Now it is up to the new projects
to chart their courses to navigate the anthropocene. The
Earth System Governance Project science plan will serve as
the project’s compass and the IHDP Open Meeting 2009 as
the first beacon buoy on its scientific voyage of the coming
10 years.
rEFErENCEs
Biermann, F. 2008. Earth system governance. A research agenda. In
Institutions and Environ-mental Change: Principal Findings, Applications,
and Research Frontiers, edited by O. R. Young, L. A.
King and H. Schroeder, 277-302. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Biermann, Frank, Michele M. Betsill, Joyeeta Gupta, Norichika Kanie,
Louis Lebel, Diana Liverman, Heike Schroeder, and Bernd Siebenhüner,
with contributions from Ken Conca, Leila da Costa Ferreira,
Bharat Desai, Simon Tay, and Ruben Zondervan. Forthcoming
2009. Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet.
Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance
Project. [online available at www.earthsystemgovernance.org]
Young, O. R. 2008. Institutions and environmental research. The
scientific legacy of a decade of IDGEC research. In Institutions
and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications,
and Research Frontiers, edited by O. R. Young, L. A. King and H.
Schroeder, 3-46. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
50 IHDP Update 1.2009

Challenges
of Global
Change
IHDP Update 1.2009
IHDP
Open
Meeting
2009
7th International
Science Conference on the
Human Dimensions of
Global Environmental Change
26-30 April 2009
World Conference Center Bonn
UN Campus
Bonn, Germany
www.openmeeting2009.org
51

Contact Addresses
IHDP Secretariat
Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, 53113 Bonn,
Germany
ph. +49 (0)228 815 0600
fax +49 (0)228 815 0600
secretariat@ihdp.unu.edu
www.ihdp.unu.edu
IHDP Core Projects
ESG
Earth System Governance
c/o Ruben Zondervan, Executive Officer
Earth System Governance International
Project Office (ESG IPO), Bonn,
Germany.
ipo@earthsystemgovernance.org
www.earthsystemgovernance.org
GECHS
Global Environmental Change
and Human Security
c/o Linda Sygna, Executive Officer
GECHS IPO, Oslo, Norway.
info@gechs.org
www.gechs.org
GLP
Global Land Project
c/o Tobias Langanke, Executive Officer
GLP IPO, Copenhagen, Denmark.
tla@geo.ku.dk
www.globallandproject.org
IT
Industrial Transformation
c/o Anna J. Wieczorek, Executive Officer
IT IPO, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
anna.wieczorek@ivm.vu.nl
www.ihdp-it.org
LOICZ
Land-Ocean Interactions in
Coastal Zones
c/o Hartwig Kremer, Executive Officer
LOICZ IPO, Geesthacht, Germany
loicz.ipo@loicz.org
www.loicz.org
UGEC
Urbanization and Global Environmental
Change
c/o Michail Fragkias, Executive Officer
UGEC IPO, Tempe, AZ
fragkias@asu.edu
http://www.ugec.org
Joint ESSP Projects
GECAFS
Global Environmental Change
and Food Systems
John Ingram, Executive Officer
GECAFS IPO, Oxford, UK
john.ingram@eci.ox.ac.uk
www.gecafs.org
GCP
Global Carbon Project
Josep Canadell, Executive Director
GCP IPO, Canberra, Australia
pep.canadell@csiro.au
www.globalcarbonproject.org
Shobhakar Dhakal, Executive Director
GCP IPO, Tsukuba, Japan
shobhakar.dhakal@nies.go.jp
GWSP
Global Water Systems Project
Lydia Dumenil Gates, Executive Officer
GWSP IPO, Bonn, Germany
lydiadumenilgates@uni-bonn.de
www.gwsp.org
GECHH
Global Environmental Change
and Human Health
Mark W. Rosenberg, Kingston, Canada
rosenber@post.queensu.ca
MAIRS
Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional
Study
Frits Penning de Vries, Executive Director
MAIRS-IPO, Beijing, PR China
info@mairs-essp.org
IHDP Scientific Committee
Chair
Oran R. Young
University of California,
Santa Barbara, USA
young@bren.ucsb.edu
Treasurer
Sander van der Leeuw
Arizona State University, USA
vanderle@asu.edu
Vice Chairs
Geoffrey Dabelko
Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, USA
geoff.dabelko@wilsoncenter.org
Roberto Guimarães
School of Public Administration, Getulio
Vargas Foundation
roberto.guimaraes@fgv.br
Hebe Vessuri
Department of Science Studies, Instituto
Venezolano de Investiaciones Cientificas
hvessuri@gmail.com
IHDP- SC Appointed Members
Katrina Brown
University of East Anglia, UK
k.brown@uea.ac.uk
Ilan Chabay
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
ilan.chabay@sts.gu.de
Patricia Kameri-Mbote
International Environmental Law Research
Centre, Nairobi
pkameri-mbote@ielrc.org
Gernot Klepper
Kiel Institute of World Economics,
Germany
gernot.klepper@ifw-kiel.de
Liu Yanhua
China's Vice-Minister for Science
liuyanhua@mail.mos.gov.cn
Elena Nikitina
Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
enikitina@mtu.net.ru
Balgis Osman-Elasha
Higher Council for Environment and
Natural Resources, Khartoum, Sudan
balgis@yahoo.com
Germán Palacio
Amazon branch of the National University
of Columbia
galpalaciog@unal.edu.co
Henry Shue
University of Oxford, UK
henry.shue@politics.ox.ac.uk
Leena Srivastava
The Energy and Resources Institute
leena@teri.res.in
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
University of California, Santa Barbara,
USA
ernst@bren.ucsb.edu
IHDP-SC Ex-Officio Members
ICSU
Thomas Rosswall, International Council
for Science, Paris, France.
thomas.rosswall@icsu.org
ISSC
Heide Hackmann, International Social
Science Council, Paris, France
issc@unesco.org
UNU
Konrad Osterwalder, Rector, United Nations
University
rector@hq.unu.edu
ESG
Frank Biermann, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam, Netherlands
frank.biermann@ivm.vcc.nl
GECHS
Karen O'Brien, University of Oslo,
Norway
karen.obrien@sgeo.uio.no
GLP
Annette Reenberg, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark
ar@geogr.ku.dk
IHDP
Andreas Rechkemmer, IHDP, Bonn,
Germany
secretariat@ihdp.unu.edu
IT
Frans Berkhout, Vrije Universiteit Amstedam,
Netherlands
frans.berkhout@ivm.vu.nl
LOICZ
Jozef Pacyna, Norwegian Institute for
Air Research, Kjeller, Norway
jp@nilu.no
UGEC
Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez, University
of California, Riverside, CA
roberto.sanchez-rodriguez@ucr.edu
DIVERSITAS
Michel Loreau, McGill University, Montreal,
Canada
michel.loreau@mcgill.ca
IGBP
Carlos Nobre, Instituto Nacional de
Pesquisas Espaciais, Sao Paulo, Brazil
nobre@cptec.inpe.br
IGBP
Joao M.F. de Morais, International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme,
Stockholm, Sweden
morais@igbp.kva.se
WCRP
John Church, Antartic CRC and CSIRO
Marine Research, Canberra, Australlia
john.church@csiro.au
START
Roland Fuchs, International Start Secretariat,
Washington D.C., USA
rfuchs@agu.org
52 IHDP Update 1.2009