Organizing for Global Environmental Change Policy: How Difficult Can it Be?

Environmental change does not respect geopolitical boundaries, and so new groups continue to spring up to try to assist with the policy aspects of addressing impacts region-wide. One of the newest organizations on the environmental change policy scene is the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). GEO is an intergovernmental organization that does not use a treaty or other legal framework to perform its duties. Moreover, all of the members of GEO volunteer to do help the organization achieve its goals, and some go even further and donate funds. How do they make the most of the volunteers? How do the volunteers even decide to join GEO, and why? Has GEO been effective? How does a volunteer intergovernmental body organize itself? In what key ways does GEO achieve what other organizations cannot? Are there lessons here for addressing global environmental change at other levels? There are lessons to be learned regarding how the GEO structures itself to be most effective when handling the challenges of making Earth observations available for societal benefit. This paper discusses the results of research conducted to learn more about this unique animal in the policy zoo, and will provide answers to these and other questions gleaned from the case study on GEO.