The Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP) began as a specialized research center within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) in September 1998. It evolved as an outgrowth of the more informal Global Environmental Forum, which had existed within FSI for nearly a decade. CESP is also an affiliated center of the Woods Institute for the Environment. Formed in 2004, Woods is Stanford's principal initiative for assessing environmental science, technology, and policy at local, national, and global scales.

The Center has grown considerably under the experienced leadership of a series of co-directors - Walter Falcon, Donald Kennedy, Pamela Matson and Stephen Schneider. Leading scholars from the natural and social sciences, they reflect CESP's integrative approach to research, which balances the analyses of environmental problems from both scientific and policy perspectives.

The Center for Environmental Science and Policy plays a crucial role in mobilizing a multidisciplinary network of scholars, students, policymakers, and leaders to understand and help solve international environmental problems through science and policy research. The work of the Center engages scholars from disciplines as varied as the biological and geological sciences, civil engineering, economics, and law to develop new methods for environmental assessment, negotiation, remediation, and protection.

Workshops, policy briefings, and publications link CESP with other public policy and scholarly institutions within and outside of Stanford. The Center houses the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD), a multiyear, interdisciplinary program that draws on the fields of engineering, political science, law, and economics to investigate how the production and consumption of energy affect sustainable development. CESP does not award degrees, but is heavily engaged in graduate and undergraduate education. The Center holds a close affiliation with Stanford's Interdisciplinary Graduate Program on Environment and Resources and also directs the Goldman Honors Program, an interschool honors program in environmental science, technology and policy.