

The Earth System Science Partnership is a partnership of four international global change research programmes (DIVERSITAS, IGBP, International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) for the integrated study of the Earth System, the changes that are occurring to the system and the implications of these changes for global sustainability.
The central activities of the ESSP are projects on issues of global sustainability, designed to address the global change aspects of a four critical issues for human well-being: energy and carbon cycles, food systems, water resources and human health. Capacity building is also a central part of the ESSP activities.

In addition to connections with our ESSP partners
and links to the global observations community (e.g. the Group on Earth Observations — GEO
; the Integrated Global Observing Strategy — IGOS
; the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites - CEOS
),

SCOR is co-sponsor of the GLOBEC
, IMBER
and SOLAS
projects

CACGP co-sponsors SOLAS and IGAC
.

ESA employs a liaison to work closely with IGBP projects.


Since its inception, IGBP has had close ties with these US organizations.
) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA
).IGBP also works closely with the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research
(APN), and the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research
(IAI).
Both APN and IAI support IGBP-related research and training activities, and are important partners in developing scientific agendas appropriate for their respective regions.
These collaborations are very important for IGBP, because these organizations provide significant scientific input and guidance to the projects as well as co-sponsoring the Fast-Track Initiatives.
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