IHOPE Celebrates Two Decades of Integrated Research 2003-2023
The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) celebrates twenty years of collaboration with those who value both the past and the future of the human species and planet Earth! IHOPE works with indigenous and local communities, citizen scientists, modelers and scenario builders, resource managers, decision makers and practitioners in scholarly and practical disciplines.
At an International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) conference in Banff, Canada in 2003, ecological economist Robert Costanza and earth system scientist Will Steffen, who was then executive director of IGBP, conceived the idea of constructing an integrated timeline for human interaction with the Earth system. A little over 20 years later, we have now concluded our second decade of integrated research as a network and look forward to many more. An important milestone in 2023 was when IHOPE became a signatory to the Jena Declaration, demonstrating our commitment to collaborating for a sustainable future. The interdisciplinary IHOPE community now joins international partners—including Future Earth, the Club of Rome, and UNESCO’s BRIDGES Coalition and other initiatives—to steer humanity into the future.
There is no single solution to today’s challenges because global environmental, cultural, and historical diversity is too great. Instead, we must work from local and regional projects to broader scales, using flexible research frameworks and tools. IHOPE’s complex systems approach, the historical ecology toolbox, insights from the arts and humanities, and humanitarian values have already had broad impacts across the globe. Join us to draw lessons from the past that can build a sustainable future.