About InEG – Global Environmental Governance and International Environmental Regimes

InEG (International Environmental Governance) is a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s (BMBF) funding priority for social-ecological research (SÖF). The InEG project, which runs from October 2006 through September 2009, has a twofold objective:

• It establishes a network of European and U.S. institutions that are active in the field of global environmental governance, with a focus on environment and sustainability. The network is concerned with analysing and improving global responses to environmental and sustainability challenges.
• It serves to build the institutional capacity of the InEG network members to augment science impact through publications.

Social-ecological research, a concept developed by the German Ministry of Education and Research, aims to promote the ecological modernisation of society while simultaneously advancing social justice and economic prosperity. It seeks to strengthen the link between the social and ecological pillars of sustainable development by exploring the creation of synergies between them. Social-ecological research addresses the complexity of lifeworld problems and the need to reformulate these problems into issues of research which can be investigated scientifically (problem-orientation). It recognizes that the uncertainty of knowledge regarding these problems requires inquiry that extends beyond the traditional subject matter of individual academic disciplines to encompass diverse sources of knowledge (interdisciplinarity). Social-ecological research issues are not only of origin and relevance within the realm of science and therefore necessitate the incorporation of non-scientific knowledge into the research process (transdisciplinarity), particularly by including extra-scientific experience and practice (actor-orientation). Social-ecological research promotes a theoretical, conceptual, and methodological reorientation which will generate the knowledge needed to steer social transformation processes toward sustainability.

For Further/Background information, see Social-ecological Research, Framework Concept 2007-2010.

The InEG project is centred on a series of network meetings held in order to initiate, formalise, and enhance the network. Concrete output of the network will include the publication of a number of papers and of a final network meeting report. One public event – a final conference in 2009 – will ensure the dissemination of project results and the involvement of the interested public and scientific community.

InEG is financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
under the research programme "Social-Ecological Research".