Humanity and planetary ecosystems face serious crises which threaten our survival and sustainability, including climate change, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, de-forestation, armed conflict and severe pollution/contamination of our atmosphere, waters and land spaces.
National governments are failing to adopt the policies and practices necessary to protect the environment and ensure sustainable peace. The competitive nature of the global economy and national interests will continue to thwart global action to protect the environment unless we establish stronger global governance that requires such action.
Earth Governance Mechanisms – including international treaties, courts and management bodies – can facilitate the adoption, implementation, oversight and enforcement of stronger international law, transcending competitive national interests and protecting our ecosystems.
Current Earth Governance Mechanisms are either very weak or non-existent. The MEGA project works to strengthen existing mechanisms and establish additional ones in order to protect the environment for current and future generations.
In 2020 the Global Challenges Foundation, Stimson Center and Global Governance Forum established a Climate Governance Commission to explore, evaluate, develop and promote high impact global governance solutions to facilitate urgent and effective climate action to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C or less. The commission is comprised of a group of diverse and high-level experts from academia, politics, business, science and civil society.
In 2021 the Commission released Governing Our Climate Future. Interim Report of The Climate Governance Commission, which discussed four key areas of environmental governance – challenges, solutions, policy and governance – and which outlined some of the proposals to improve environmental governance.
In November 2023, the Commission will release Governing Our Planetary Emergency: 2023 Report of the Climate Governance Commission, which updates and builds on the 2021 interim report, in particular to flesh out the proposals for environmental governance and provide details on their possible structures, mandates and establishment.
The Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance (MEGA) platform includes a strong focus on the proposals and recommendations in Governing Our Planetary Emergency, along with campaigns and other actions to establish and implement these proposals.