The 2017 Lund Conference on Earth System Governance will follow the successful and well-established conference format of previous Earth System Governance conferences. This format has proven effective in exchanging new research findings and insights, in building a truly global community of researchers, in particular including early career researchers, and in fostering the emergence of new ideas for earth system governance research and new policy options for governance of sustainable development.
The academic backbone of this conference format is the presentation of new cutting-edge research papers in the so-called Parallel Panel Sessions. All papers in these sessions have been selected through a rigorous double-blind peer-review.
In response to the call for papers, we received 335 submissions of abstracts by the extended deadline of 20 March 2017. As usual, most abstracts were received in the final days of the submission period, 84 even on the very last day.
The International Review Panel, consisting of 88 reviewers, reviewed all abstracts – grading each abstract in a double-blind process on a 1-5 scale and often providing valuable qualitative comments. By 18 may 2017, all grades were in and we calculated the average grade per abstract and ranked the abstracts accordingly.
Based on the capacity of the conference venue, and adjusted for expected withdrawals in the months to come, we accepted the best 253 abstracts for presentation at the conference. The authors of the abstracts were informed about the acceptance or rejection of their abstract on 20 May 2017.
The call for papers outlined five specific themes. The response to the themes in terms of abstracts submitted to each theme, differed quite a bit.
The Environmental Justice in Earth System Governance theme attracted most abstracts (101) of which 76 were accepted for presentation.
Earth System Governance in turbulent times with 67 submissions and Conceptual understandings and progress with 62 submissions ended up with 50 accepted abstracts each.
Theory and methodology with 41 submissions, 33 accepted comes in third, and Science and activism last, with 17 accepted out of 28 abstracts.
Another 27 presentations out of 36 submitted abstracts are related to earth system governance in general rather than to a specific theme.
The authors of the abstracts came from 53 countries, 42 remaining after review.
The host country Sweden tops the list with 44 submitted abstracts, closely followed by the Netherlands (42).
Other strongly represented countries are the USA (30), Australia (25), Germany (22), UK (18) and well as India and Canada (each 16) and Brazil (14)
Of the lead authors (co-authors not included) of the submitted abstracts, 51% are female, 49% male, and for the accepted abstracts 52% female, 48% male.
Additionally, several innovative sessions and exciting workshops before and after the conference have been proposed. With this diverse and high-level contributions, we are looking forward to facilitate the future pathway of the Earth System Governance Project and welcome the Earth System Governance community in Lund.
