Who is IESP?
Founded in 2008, IESP is a global network of scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and members from governmental and non-governmental organizations who share a deep concern about the challenges humanity faces in the Anthropocene.
Many of these challenges are literally “home-made”, which means that anthropogenic mismanagement of the Earth system, but also of countries and businesses, are a root cause for the four crises the Earth is facing today:
- Global warming and extreme weather events,
- Biodiversity decline and vanishing ecosystems,
- Pollution of the atmosphere, oceans, freshwater and soils,
- Social division through distributive injustice and access consumption.
Since the Great Acceleration of the 1950s, environmental and societal challenges have become increasingly complex. Up until now, the majority of humans simply respond to life-threatening crises – such as pandemics or extreme natural events – rather than preventing them in the first place.
With planetary boundaries being transgressed, extreme natural events challenging humanity are likely to increase in number and frequency. It is crucial for societies and individuals to become more resilient. To achieve this end, our political and everyday actions must extremely rapidly evolve from simply reactive in case of a crisis, to mitigating possible challenges in a proactive forward-thinking manner.
IESP acknowledges the significance of addressing today's Earth system crises for the survival of future generations.
Therefore, it aims to support urgently necessary civil and political action by facilitating the exchange of scientific knowledge and expertise, and by advocating for inter- and transdisciplinary research to enable a sustainable management of the Earth system through integrative systems-based thinking and problem solving.
IESP contributes actively to current public debates and policy-making by providing an independent platform for intellectual exchange, and through individual members engaging in professional committees and discourses.
The extended network consists of international members with expertise spanning from economics to geography, sustainability to philosophy, and civil engineering to water management.
IESP fosters networked thinking through by hosting events and workshops, intending to inspire discursive exchange. IESP spreads its ideas through publications as policy recommendations as well as active participation in academic and policy dialogue processes between various stakeholders of the human society.