Overview/Who we are
IHOPE is an international community of researchers and research projects that integrate the past of the Earth system and the history of human presence, with the goal of a just and sustainable future.
Our website offers news of interest to the IHOPE community, and along with other activities (e.g., workshops, conferences) presents idea-filled examples of partnerships that demonstrate how the past can build future durability into communities and regions. If you would like to join us, see the Membership page.
Activities
- We facilitate collaboration among the environmental sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, in addition to indigenous and local communities, citizen scientists, modelers and scenario builders, resource managers, decision makers, complexity thinkers and practitioners in fields such as architecture, engineering, and law.
- We build networks but do not fund research.
- We provide expertise to manage the future of landscapes and regions.
Research strategies
- We apply long-term, human-scale, and place-based perspectives that can be folded into the global system.
- We encourage theoretical pluralism, so long as widely accepted scholarly and ethical standards are met.
- We employ the toolbox of historical ecology, environmental humanities, and the study of complex systems to use the past as a laboratory.
Charting the future
IHOPE demonstrates the relevance of the past to the future of people, landscapes and regions. IHOPE investigates the complex chain of interactions which result in the sustainability or vulnerability of societies. IHOPE recognizes that a viable future requires equity, trust, and respect among communities of research and practice.
Viable modes of living on Earth cannot be found without incorporating human history, cognition, and cultural and geographic diversity into models and scenarios for the human future. The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) represents a coalition of science and humanities scholars with communities to facilitate pragmatic, sustainable, and ethical place-based management and to diversify expertise to manage the future.
History
At the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme’s (IGBP) 2003 conference in Banff, Robert Costanza and colleagues addressed the meeting’s challenge: how can the Earth System and human societies be viewed as a single system?
IHOPE thus began as an initiative of IGBP’s core project Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES). IHOPE was also a project of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP), thus linking environmental and social global efforts. In 2015, IGBP
and IHDP were dissolved and IHOPE, along with other global programs, was consolidated within the Future Earth framework. Under the guidance of Kathy Hibbard (2003-2009), the US National Center for Climate Research (NCAR) was IHOPE’s first home.
IHOPE was then hosted at the Stockholm Resilience Center (2009-2011) and then at Uppsala University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient History (2011-2018) under the guidance of Carole Crumley.
Learn more
Chase, Arlen F., and Vernon L. Scarborough (editors). 2013. The Resilience and Vulnerability of Ancient Landscapes: Transforming Maya Archaeology through IHOPE. Volume 24, Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, Wiley, Hoboken, NY.
Costanza, R., L. Graumlich, and W. Steffen, eds. 2007. Sustainability or Collapse: An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth. 96th Dahlem Workshop. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Costanza, Robert, Sander van der Leeuw, Kathy Hibbard, Steve Aulenbach, Simon Brewer, Michael Burek, Sarah Cornell, Carole Crumley, John Dearing, Carl Folke, Lisa Graumlich, Michelle Hegmon, Scott Heckbert, Stephan T. Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Vernon Scarborough, Paul Sinclair, Sverker Sorlin, and Will Steffen. 2012. Developing an Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE).
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 4:106-114. DOI 10.1016/j.cosust.2012.01.010 Crumley, Carole, Tommy Lennartsson, and Anna Westin, eds. 2018. Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology: The Past and Future of Landscapes and Regions. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
der Leeuw, S., R. Costanza, S. Aulenbach, S. Brewer, M. Burek, S. Cornell, C. Crumley, J. A. Dearing, C. Downy, L. J. Graumlich, S. Heckbert, M. Hegmon, K. Hibbard, S. T. Jackson, I. Kubiszewski, P. Sinclair, S. Sörlin, and W. Steffen. 2011. Toward an Integrated History to Guide the Future. Ecology and Society 16(4):art. 2.
Meyer, William J. and Carole Crumley. 2011. Historical Ecology: Using what Works to Cross the Divide. Atlantic Europe in the First Millennium BC: Crossing the Divide. Tom Moore and Lois Armada, eds., pp. 109-134. Oxford: Oxford University Press.