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What is the role of the nation state in times of global environmental change? Will it be international regimes that determine the future evolution of successful environmental policies, or rather horizontal diffusion processes across nation states, triggered by policy innovation within nation states? What role is left for the nation state given the manifold challenges of transnational non-governmental organisations, new emerging forms of public-private governance, and the increasing power of the global market place? These fundamental questions led the German Political Science Association, represented through its Environmental Policy and Global Change section, to choose the theme “Global Environmental Change and the Nation State” for its 2001 Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, held 7-8 December 2001 in Berlin. The two-day meeting brought together 166 researchers from 28 countries with many different perspectives on global change and the nation state, including students of international relations and international law, environmental sociologists and economists, as well as experts on national environmental policy and comparative politics. Key note addresses were delivered by Klaus Töpfer, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Jürgen Trittin, the German Federal Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The conference was formally endorsed by the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), the global umbrella research network in this field, and organised by the Global Governance Project—a joint research programme of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Free University of Berlin and Oldenburg University—in close co-operation with the Environmental Policy Research Unit of the Free University of Berlin. Generous support was provided by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Energy. Additional assistance and endorsement was provided by the German Association for the United Nations, Berlin-Brandenburg Chapter; the Federation of German Scientists (VDW); the Canadian Embassy in Berlin; and Adelphi Research, Berlin. Last but not least, the conference would not have been possible without the unrelenting enthusiasm of our student volunteers from the Student Working Group on International Environmental Policy at the Free University of Berlin. We like to thank all supporters of the 2001 Berlin Conference for making this highly stimulating and fruitful meeting possible. This Proceedings volume presents the fifty papers of the 2001 Berlin Conference that we saw as the most useful and valuable within the context of the conference. All contributions have been reviewed for publication, and not all papers submitted could be included in the final Proceedings volume. We hope that the Proceedings of the 2001 Berlin Conference will enrich the academic debate on the role of the nation state in times of global environmental change, and will carry a flavour of the lively and thoughtprovoking debates during the 2001 Berlin Conference. We now look forward to the upcoming 2002 Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, which will address the theme “Knowledge for the Sustainability Transition: The Challenge for Social Science”. It will be held 6-7 December 2002 in Berlin; detailed information is available at www.environmental-policy.de.
