Content:

1. Editorial

  • Multiple crises - how to get out?

2. News from ESEE and its members

  • Report from the Degrowth Conference

3. Other news

  • SETE Master Programme - Science, Environment, Land and Economy - at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ, France)
  • How do we reach our climate goals? New research findings and problem solving approaches

4. Events

  • 3rd International Wuppertal Colloquium (Call for papers)
  • EASY-ECO Conference
  • Scaling and Governance Conference 2010
  • Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance: 'Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges'
  • Law for Social-Ecological Resilience Conference
  • Symposium "Environment, Regions and Strategic Resources. Governance Models for Rights-Based Perspectives"
  • Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy's PhD Symposium and Conference
  • Green Growth, De-growth and Sustainability, PhD Course

5. Job openings

  • Research Associate (100% A13) Societal Transformation Processes and Modelling of Social Systems
  • Associate or Full Professor in the area of Sustainable Development
  • Two funded PhD positions at Science & Technology Policy Research (SPRU), University of Sussex
  • 50%-position at the UFZ-Centre for Environmental Research
  • Associate Director for the Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices (CSP2)
  • Resource-Ecological Economist Position CSIRO Australia
  • Senior Economist

6. Publications

  • From Government to Governance?
  • Public-private Partnerships in Global Climate Governance

1. Editorial:

Multiple crises – how to get out?
by Sigrid Stagl

For two years the fall-out of the financial crisis has caused distress for those who lost their jobs, savings and / or home. Policy-makers have been busy to devise plans to get back on track. Joseph Schumpeter and before him Werner Sombart famously talked about crises leading to creative destruction, which the process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation. In most countries and in most policy areas, the opportunities for radical technological, behavioural and institutional innovations have been missed so far.

The environmental crisis was of course the main motivation for establishing ecological economics some 25 years ago. Last year Johan Rockström and colleagues illustrated here that for at least three planetary boundaries, notably biodiversity loss, the biochemical flow boundary and climate change, we have moved beyond a safe operating space for humanity.

The report from the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress led by Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi added weight to the long-standing concerns about the focus on GDP and talked about the importance of distributional issues.

Increasingly authors (e.g. Brand 2009) argue that the economic, environmental, social and political crises are not separate processes, but aspects of a deep and multi-faceted crisis with a common root. They call for "[d]eep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities." (Speth 2010)

"Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis" is of course also the theme of the upcoming ISEE 2010 conference, will be a great opportunity to touch base with our ecological economics friends and colleagues from around the world and to discuss pathways that are radical enough to stand up the massive challenge of sustainable development. See you in Oldenburg / Bremen.

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2. News from ESEE and its members:

Report from the Degrowth Conference

The Second International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity (March 26-29, Barcelona) attracted more than 400 researchers. The conference involved plenaries as well as oral and poster presentations on the theory of degrowth, on employment, security, climate change, waste, institutions, politics and democracy for degrowth. A novel conference feature comprised the operation of working groups. Using collaborative and participatory techniques, the groups constructed research and political proposals towards degrowth, producing numerous proposals such as: gradual elimination of fiat money; defending local commons and establishing new jurisdictions for global ones; establishing integrated policies of reduced working hours (work-sharing) and introduction of a basic income; institutionalization of an income ceiling; discouraging the consumption of non-durable goods and the under-use of durable ones; abandonment of large-scale infrastructure; tax on advertising and considering banning it from public spaces; decommercialization of politics and enhancement of direct participation in decision-making. Presentations, papers, a conference declaration and other background material about the conference are available at www.degrowth.eu.

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3. Other news:

SETE Master Programme - Science, Environment, Land and Economy - at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ, France)

The purpose of the SETE Masters Programme is to prepare the new generations to meet the challenges of understanding decision and action for sustainable development. Students are invited to address in an integrated way the relationships between the economy, the physical environment and natural resource use, including questions of long time horizons, social justice and democratic political process in the context of deep uncertainty, irreversibilities and systems complexity.

The SETE Programme builds on a set of disciplinary foundations that guarantee the quality of training and entry points to professions, responding to the need for new combinations of skills, in research and in professional practice. It offers to students an initiation to interdisciplinary research and teaching through a cross fertilisation of environmental sciences (physics, chemistry, earth sciences, biological sciences), mathematics and computing, the sciences of social systems (economics, law, management, geography) and human interactions within ecosystems, and the humanities (ethics, sociology, political studies, demography).

For more information please click here.

How do we reach our climate goals? New research findings and problem solving approaches

Can Austria reach current energy and climate goals by 2020? The research institute SERI along with its partners tried to figure out answers to this question in the e-co project by order of the "Klima- und Energiefonds (Climate and Energy Fund)". On the one hand, they examined how necessary changes in Austrian energy consumption could look like and on the other hand they analyzed the resulting effects on the economy. Therefore, different scenarios with diverse foci were developed, such as expansion of renewable energy, increase in efficiency and reduction of consumption through behavioral change. Results are disillusioning. Only one of the scenarios achieves the target of a 34% renewable energy share of final energy consumption by 2020. Not a single scenario provides a decrease in CO2-emissions below the level of 1990 (62,08m tons CO2) – the Kyoto emission target for Austria would be 13% below the level of 1990. However, the transition towards sustainable forms of energy use has a positive effect on the GDP as well as on employment rates.

More details can be found here.

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4. Events:

3rd International Wuppertal Colloquium (Call for papers)

The 3rd International Wuppertal Colloquium on "Sustainable Growth and Resource Productivity – Harnessing Industry and Policy Towards Eco-Innovation" will be held on September 4 – 6, 2010 at Brussels, Belgium.

It will bring together top experts and aims to analyze the contribution of increasing resource productivity to sustainability. Having a focus on economics and sustainability, the international Colloquium shall also cover the technological, environmental and international dimensions. The Colloquium 2010 will have a focus on innovation and sustainable industrial policy and will also analyze synergies with climate change.

The Call for papers can be downloaded here.

EASY-ECO Conference

The 2010 EASY-ECO conference develops on the European perspective of evaluation of sustainable development (SD). The conference will be held on 17-19 November 2010 in Brussels and will be the final event in the EASY-ECO series of conferences and trainings started in 2002 by a network of twelve research centers. It will take stock of almost a decade of the EASY-ECO programme and SD evaluation practice at EU and national levels in order to – together with important European actors – identify the challenges ahead.

You will find attached the call for papers and the provisional programme of the three days conference, as well as some practical details (venues, submission procedure, EU grants for young researcher, ...). Complementary information will be made available on the EASY-ECO website: www.sustainability.at/easy/?k=conferences&s=brussels.

Important dates:
15 June 2010 : deadline call for papers
30 August 2010 : notification for acceptation
15 October 2010 : deadline for accepted papers

Scaling and Governance Conference 2010

The conference will be held on 10-12 November 2010, in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Its aim is to discuss different perspectives on scaling and governance issues. The starting point is that scaling and governance deserve more attention as a combination, not just in separate studies. We look at this integration as a major challenge for both the social, economic and the natural sciences. In order to get to transdisciplinarity, that is to say, cooperation between scientists from different disciplines as well as policy makers and citizens, vigorous communication between scientists from the natural science and the humanities is needed.

There are two distinct vocabularies: one with regard to scaling and one with regard to governance. With regard to scaling there has been a shift towards including the human factor as integral part of the system, which materialized into theories related to social ecological systems, and new methodologies that emphasized stakeholder participation, transdisciplinarity, and cross-scale interactions. With regard to governance there has been a paradigm shift from thinking in terms of state steering and governmental practices towards the analysis of multi-actor, multi-level and multi-sector governance. Also from economics there is increasing interest in governance and institutional issues. These shifts have a number of commonalities. They acknowledge the growing importance of multi-level interactions; they stress the need for enlarged transdisciplinarity, and address the need for increased stakeholder participation.

We invite participants of the conference to discuss integrative concepts, methodologies, and case studies related to scaling and governance issues in complex land systems. Anticipated outcomes of the conference include an international research agenda and recommendations for scale-sensitive governance approaches.

More information at: www.scalinggovernance.wur.nl/UK/Conference/.

Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance: 'Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges'

The conference will be held from 17th to 20th of May 2011 in Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America. It will be hosted by the Earth System Governance Project, the Environmental Governance Working Group (at CSU) and the School of Global Environmental Sustainability (at CSU).

More information: www.earthsystemgovernance.org.

Law for Social-Ecological Resilience Conference

The conference will be held from 17th to 19th of November 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden. It is co-arranged by Stockholm Environmental Law and Policy Centre, at the Faculty of Law, and Stockholm Resilience Centre, both at Stockholm University. Endorsed by the Earth System Governance Project.

Conference website: resilience.juridicum.su.se.

Symposium "Environment, Regions and Strategic Resources. Governance Models for Rights-Based Perspectives"

The trilingual symposium (French, English, Spanish) "Environment, Regions and Strategic Resources. Governance Models for Rights-Based Perspectives" will be held in Lille (France), MESHS, on 5-6-7 july 2010.

This Symposium is jointly organized by CLERSE (clerse.univ-lille1.fr) and by the RISC Consortium (www.risc.lu)

The final program and registration form are available on this Webpage.

For more information, contact: Olivier Petit (opetitfr@yahoo.fr) or Carmen Maganda (carmen.maganda@uni.lu)

Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy's PhD Symposium and Conference

The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy's PhD Symposium and Conference will be held at the London School of Economics on 15th and 16th September.

Download a draft programme for the symposium here
Download a draft programme for the conference here

Green Growth, De-growth and Sustainability, PhD Course

The course will be held from October 27-29, 2010 at the Oslo University College in Oslo. The programme, description and other informations can be found here.

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5. Job openings:

Research Associate (100% A13) Societal Transformation Processes and Modelling of Social Systems

from the 1st of September 2010 for an initial duration of three years with the possibility of extension for another three years. The tasks comprise research and teaching in the area of complex dynamics and modelling of social systems. This should include both the development of general concepts and case-specific applications in the area of integrated and adaptive governance and management of water resources. Teaching activities will focus on the master programme "Environmental Systems and Resources Management" and include the development of joint teaching activities with international partners, in particular with the Resilience Centre in Stockholm. The successful candidate is expected to make an active contribution to the acquisition of funding for projects and to ongoing activities in international networks, in particular the Global Water System Project a network of the Earth System Science Partnership.

For more details please click here.

Associate or Full Professor in the area of Sustainable Development

The Department of Public Governance and Management is accepting applications for a full-time faculty position at the associate or full professor level, depending upon qualifications and experience. We seek candidates with a distinguished record of scholarly publications and funded research in the area of sustainable development, as well as a demonstrated commitment to teaching and student mentorship. The ideal candidate will contribute to research and teaching in at least several of the following areas: environmental management; ecological economics; governance issues in sustainable development; analysis and evaluation of public policies towards sustainable development; 'green' business strategies; corporate social responsibility, social and human dimensions of sustainable development. The faculty member will play a leading role in the new Master of Science degree program in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy as well as to contribute to the planning and development of a Ph.D. program within several years.

For more details please click here.

Two funded PhD positions at Science & Technology Policy Research (SPRU), University of Sussex

The role of carbon capture and storage in UK energy transitions
The successful candidate will be based in the Sussex Energy Group at SPRU at the University of Sussex. Our vibrant team of researchers and doctoral students has a world-class reputation in the study of sustainability transitions and policies to promote sustainable innovation. The doctoral student will also be a full participant in a new, multi-university consortium project on Multiscale Systems Modelling for CCS Analysis and Optimisation, led by Prof. Sevket Durucan at Imperial College London. The student will be supervised by Dr Jim Watson, Director of the Sussex Energy Group and another member of staff at SPRU. Dr Watson is an internationally-respected research leader with a track record of research on policy and economic analysis of energy system transitions, including a specific focus on CCS. In addition to playing a significant role in this project, he is also leading another project to assess potential progress in CCS technologies for the UK Energy Research Centre with a view to informing public policies in the UK power sector. More infos can be found here.

Civil society in sustainability transitions
The successful candidate will be based with the environment and energy team at SPRU at the University of Sussex. Our vibrant team of researchers and doctoral students has a world-class reputation in the study of sustainability transitions and policies to promote sustainable innovation. The doctoral student will also be a full participant in a new, multi-university Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group, led by Prof. Tim Jackson at the University of Surrey. The student will be supervised by Dr Adrian Smith and Prof. Andy Stirling at Sussex, who are internationally-respected figures in the field of sustainability transitions research and grassroots innovation for sustainable development. The work will involve working with policy-makers as well as engaging widely with civil society organisations interested in the sustainable transformation of energy and/or food socio-technical systems. More infos can be found here.

50%-position at the UFZ-Centre for Environmental Research

The UFZ-Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany is accepting applications for a 50%-position for a German-speaking researcher or PhD student on building indicators for sustainable development based on the capability approach.

More informations (in German) can be found here.

Associate Director for the Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices (CSP2)

The Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices (CSP2) is now searching for an Associate Director for the Center

CSP2 administers a ten-year, $25 million challenge grant for sustainability made by the Miller Foundation, and manages a Graduate Certificate in Sustainability. The Center is structured as a transdisciplinary "pan-university" unit reporting directly to the Provost.

PSU has committed to becoming a truly sustainable university (www.pdx.edu/sustainability), and Portland is consistently ranked among the most sustainable cities in the US (www.sustainlane.com/us-city-rankings/overall-rankings) and the world (www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsArticles/5-Greenest-Cities-in-the-World.html). For additional information contact Beth Lloyd, Search Coordinator, at sustainability@pdx.edu or (503) 735-8556.

Resource-Ecological Economist Position CSIRO Australia

The CSIRO Australia has an exciting opportunity for a resource/ecological economist in the area of integrated socio-economic and biophysical modelling, policy design and analysis for natural resource management. A particular emphasis of the position will be on water scarcity and water resource management in the face of future climate uncertainty.
To be successful in this position you must have:

  • Well-developed skills in quantitative economics with an emphasis on environmental or natural resource economics and management. They are particularly interested in people with strong environmental economics background, participation in quantitative operations research, and modelling skills.
  • A working knowledge or experience in statistics, spatial analysis and GIS, regional or development economics, and familiarity with biophysical science relevant to resource and environmental issues.
  • The ability to think and work independently, write quickly and clearly, work to deadlines, be a strong communicator and thrive in a team environment.

CSIRO is strongly committed to Diversity and offers Flexible Working Arrangements and enhanced leave entitlements. For more information click here.

Senior Economist

nef is searching for a Senior Economist who will build and integrate technical expertise within nef, developing and overseeing nef's work on economics and contributing to projects across all its programme areas.

For more details click here.

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6. Publications:

From Government to Governance?
edited by Kluvánková-Oravská, Tatiana

Reference:
From Government to Governance? New Governance for Water and Biodiversity in Enlarged EU. Prague: Alfa Nakladatelství. 2010.

Abstract:
The book is a result of interdisciplinary research conducted under the GoverNat project. It explores evolution of environmental governance in the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), in particular: How the recombination of institutions "with the ruins of communism" affects the restructuring of command-and-control systems in the post-socialist countries of CEE and how it affects EU environmental governance.

For more informations click here.

Public-private Partnerships in Global Climate Governance
written by Pattberg, Philipp

This article assesses the contributions of public-private partnerships, understood as a specific type of networked climate governance, to effective and legitimate climate governance. The appraisal of networked governance in the climate change arena is based on three sets of criteria. First, their potential contribution to effective climate change mitigation and adaptation; second, their contribution to broader political goals such as increased participation and inclusiveness in global environmental governance; and third, their linkages and fit with the existing institutional architecture of international climate change governance. The article concludes with a set of questions for future research.

For more informations click here.

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