This conference was designed to have all members of the Scientific Steering Committees (SSC) of various IGBP projects and their guests meet in one place and discuss organization-wide research results and problems. The main themes of this conference included a summary of the results of five core projects JGOFS],IGAC,PAGES, GCTE, and BAHC spanning the approximately ten years since inception, which had already started in the first reporting of research results, and deepening the entire organisation’s understanding of variations in the global system from the perspective of the bio-geochemical substance cycle integrating all of these fields.