Dr. Sebastian Oberthür, Senior Associate with Ecologic, was elected as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) at the beginning of 2005.

IDGEC is a long-term international research project developed during the 1990s under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and currently operating as one of IHDP's core projects.

IDGEC sponsors and coordinates research on the roles that institutions play as determinants of the course of human/environmental interactions with respect to global  environmental change. The project aims to generate knowledge about social institutions and, at the same time, to build and disseminate the intellectual capital needed to devise policies to mitigate global environmental change problems.

Dr. Sebastian Oberthür has been appointed as a member of IDGEC's Scientific Steering Committee for a period of three years.