Content:

1. Editorial

  • Editorial by Begum Ozkaynak

2. News from ESEE and its members

  • Election to the board of the ESEE
  • Election to the board of the ISEE
  • NEW DATES FOR ISEE2012 - JUNE 16-19, 2012
  • ESEE journal Environmental Policy and Governance
  • Environmental Values Free Access for ESEE Members

3. Other news

  • Call for papers on "sustainability and the capability approach" in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities

4. Hot topic

  • Open Access Society - by Janne I. Hukkinen
  • Bioenergy and its contribution to GHG balances.
    An accounting error and its consequences on resource use - by Nina Eisenmenger
  • Comment on ‘Decoupling resource use from economic growth – illusion or fact?’ (ESEE Newsletter Autumn 2011) - by Blake Alcott
  • Decoupling: facts and illusions about texts. A reply to Blake Alcott - by Marina Fischer-Kowalski

5. Events

  • SDS 2012 - Sustainable Development Symposium, 15-17 February 2012, Graz, Austria
  • First workshop on mitigation of GHG emissions from the Spanish agroforestry sector, 8-9 March 2012, Bilbao, Spain
  • International Workshop “Beyond Efficiency - Exploring the Political and Institutional Dimensions of Market-based Instruments for Ecosystem Services”, 13-14 March 2012, Berlin, Germany
  • TEEB Conference 2012, Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature: Challenges for Science and Implementation, 19-22 March 2012, Leipzig, Germany
  • “Planet under Pressure 2012: New Knowledge Towards Solutions” The 2012 Global Change Open Science Conference, London, 26-29 March 2012
  • International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas, 13-19 May 2012, Montreal, Canada
  • 12th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), 16-19 June 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, 20-22 June 2012 , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • European Summer School in Resource and Environmental Economics Management of International Water, 1-7 July 2012, Venice, Italy
  • IWREC 10th Annual Meeting, 28-29 August 2012, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Third International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, 19-23 September 2012, Venice, Italy

6. Job openings

  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)
  • UNU-IAS Announcement of Fellowship programmes 2012
  • Scientific coordination and management of research activities at UFZ
  • 3-year PhD studentship on Socio-Economic Aspects of Climate Change Mitigation through Multifunctional Forestry in Scotland
  • FEEM, Senior Researcher Position in Climate and Energy Economics

7. Publications

  • Sustainability Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach

8. Students

  • Kapp-award for ecological economics
  • Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy: New Data Discovery Tool
  • STEPS Centre Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability, 14 - 25 May 2012, Brighton, UK
  • Summer School in Global Environmental Governance, 25 June – 6 July 2012, Larvik, Norway

1. Editorial:

by Begum Ozkaynak

Irene Ring’s Editorial in the Autumn 2011 edition of the Newsletter offered a concise overview of the upcoming international conferences marathon we will witness in the first half of 2012. In conclusion, she highlighted the importance of the role that we, as ecological economists, can and do play in this process. International organisations and research centres are in fact currently generating various reports that will be launched before and during these events.

One can safely foresee certain threads that will be common to all these reports in terms of content. Many will surely once again underline the importance of simultaneously achieving environmental sustainability and human well-being goals in the first half of the 21st century, and indicate that many environmental problems undermine human well-being and quality of life. These reports are also likely to emphasise that current policies and strategies are inadequate in setting humanity on a sustainable path, and fail to meet many internationally agreed goals and targets; particularly those related to climate change, biodiversity, water, and food security. This is a fact realised by ecological economics long ago!

In this context, the urgent need for approaches that address our triple—ecological, social, and economic—crisis will probably be another key message common to these reports. To this end, there will presumably be a shift of focus in research and policy discussions from assessing problems to assessing solutions.
Divergences in these reports will likely be with regard to the solutions proposed, especially regarding the degree and type of interventions needed. This is no surprise. The question, then, is how will ecological economists respond to this? What proposals should ecological economics put forth? The papers presented at the last ESEE conference in fact show that ecological economists are eager to make distinct and positive contributions to policy-making. Many of the conference papers presented in Istanbul were marked with a far-sighted outlook that was directly linked to policy-making. These mainly dealt with indicators used in relation to societal metabolism, policy instruments, trade-offs and synergies of interventions and macro-economics for sustainability transitions. There were also papers discussing lessons learned from environmental conflicts and justice movements.

No doubt, there is no single solution to the current crises, but a range of tailored responses may be required to reflect the diversity of regional needs. This, of course, necessitates not only strong political will and determination, but also further academic research studies that assess alternative policies and seek to ascertain models of economic development and governance structures that reflect the needs of both ecosystem integrity and social justice. In the transition to sustainability, there is also an urgent need to report on and bring promising initiatives and good practices to the forefront so they may have sufficient impact. Let’s do it!

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2. News from ESEE and its members:

Election to the board of the ESEE

ESEE members have voted their representatives for the next three years. We congratulate the new board members and thank them for their commitment!

Reelected Board Member:
Nina Eisenmenger (Austria), Treasurer
 
New Board members:
Timothy J Foxon (UK)
Olivier Petit (France)
Nuno Videira (Portugal)
Jesper Kenter (UK), Student representative

Election to the board of the ISEE

ISEE members are encouraged to vote for the ISEE Board.
If you have not yet cast your votes for Officers for the ISEE Board,
we invite you to do so now by logging on at http://www.ecoeco.org/elections/2011/isee with your e-mail address and password.

The elections will close on 21 Dec 2011 2359 GMT.


NEW DATES FOR ISEE2012 - JUNE 16-19, 2012
 
Consistent with our strategy to interface and promote dialogue with the Rio+20 Earth Summit, ISEE2012 will be held in Rio de Janeiro from June 16th through 19th, 2012, just before the Summit begins.
 
We have received nearly 1050 abstracts from 850 lead authors in 71 countries throughout the world, including a number of exciting panel and poster proposals. Peer review is in progress and will be completed by mid-December.  

For more information, see www.isee2012.org


ESEE journal Environmental Policy and Governance

Papers have flown in for the special ESEE conference issue of Environmental Policy and Governance (EPG) to be published in summer 2012. Currently, the papers are being refereed, a process managed by Begum Özkaynak, Irene Ring, and Sigrid Stagl.

The November/December issue of EPG also is a special issue focussing on "Participatory approaches to modelling for improved learning and decision-making in natural resource governance". I heartily invite you to have a look at papers around different participatory modelling methods in freshwater, marine, or forest management.

Felix Rauschmayer, ESEE editor of EPG


Environmental Values Free Access for ESEE Members

Members of the ESEE can obtain free online access to the journal Environmental Values for the current year.  This requires using codes via the publishers website at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/ev.  In order for ESEE members to get access codes please email the ESEE Secretary, Klaus Kubeczko (klaus.kubeczko@arcs.ac.at) who will supply these to any current member.

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3. Other news:

Call for papers on "sustainability and the capability approach" in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities

The link between sustainability and the capability approach is of increasing interest in a time when questions of human, social, and economic development seem to be of higher interest than those of intergenerational justice. The 2009 Stiglitz-Sen report discussing indicators of social and economic development is one place where this link has been discussed, the more recent Human Development Report 2011 on "Sustainability and Equity" another. Emerging from their research project GeNECA (fair sustainable development based on the capability approach), Ortrud Lessmann and Felix Rauschmayer invite submissions dealing with this link until 4th of May on this issue for the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.
Find here the call for papers.

Felix Rauschmayer and Ortrud Lessmann

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4. Hot topic:

Open Access Society - by Janne I. Hukkinen
 
At the ESEE board meeting in Istanbul last summer we discussed current issues in ESEE activities and alternative ideas for dealing with them. Having struggled for a couple of years as the ESEE membership responsible with the complexities of the ISEE/ESEE configuration, I suggested the notion of an open access society. Since the idea received what I interpreted as cautious interest among the other board members, I’ll throw it out again.
 
Why does a scientific society need members? A meaningful number of members bring the society credibility and basic funding through membership fees to run its activities. In some societies it may make sense to have gatekeeping, such as a membership fee, to control membership. In a small scientific society such as ESEE, this is not really the issue. My guess is that many of us would like to have many more members in ESEE to increase its credibility. With more members, the intellectual approaches we have developed to current environmental challenges would be likely to spread to wider audiences. With the number of paid members in the 300-400 range, ESEE has an interest in increasing its membership—radically. So why not make membership free and deal with the funding of activities in some other way?
 
Why do members need the scientific society? They look for intellectual exchanges on mutually interesting topics in meetings and publications. My guess is that most members are less interested in paying for the prestige of membership in a scientific society and much more interested in paying for the enjoyment of meeting colleagues in conferences and publishing their work in journals. So why not make attendance in conferences and publication in journals the paid services with which the scientific society funds its activities?
 
The model of an open access society I am proposing is of course borrowed from open access journals. The logic is simple: Pay as you go. If your manuscript is accepted for publication in the society’s journal, you pay. If your paper is accepted to the society’s conference, you pay extra, over and above the fee that a non-presenter pays to cover the cost of conference organization.
 
I think any scientific society, but ESEE in particular, should consider the open access society. The ISEE/regional society configuration means that ESEE members pay their membership fees to ISEE, which formally manages all ISEE membership issues. But in addition to that, ESEE has its own membership responsibilities. I won’t go into the details, but I can tell you that having the double bureaucracy and accounting gobbles up much intellectual capacity that might otherwise advance ecological economics.
 
What I am proposing does not imply the breakup of the ISEE/ESEE relationship. If ISEE were an open access society, any number of international/regional society configurations could be managed with ease.
 
I look forward to you reactions.
 
Janne I. Hukkinen
ESEE chair of education committee
janne.i.hukkinen@helsinki.fi


Bioenergy and its contribution to GHG balances.
An accounting error and its consequences on resource use - by Nina Eisenmenger

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban just passed but the big question “how can we successfully combat climate change” is still open. What is clear is the fact that we have to reduce the CO2 emissions which means we have to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use. Policy makers so far hoped that energy efficiency together with the substitution of fossil energy carriers with bioenergy would make up most of the necessary change. The underlying assumption is that biomass combustion would not add CO2 to the atmosphere because burning biomass only releases what was taken up from the atmosphere during plant growth.
But new evidence was published in September 2011: the Scientific Committee of the EEA stated that "[t]his mistaken assumption results in a serious accounting error." Land that is used to grow energy plants cannot be used for growing plants for other purposes and thus cannot add to carbon sequestration. These indirect land effects so far are not considered in the carbon accounting and thus GHG effects of bioenergy are neglected.
The accounting error is considered significant if not “immense”. Proper accounting can even increase carbon emissions as stated by the published opinion. For the full text of the EEA opinion and more information go to http://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/governance/scientific-committee/sc-opinions/opinions-on-scientific-issues/sc-opinion-on-greenhouse-gas/view or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@aau.at) or Detlef F. Sprinz (dsp@pik-potsdam.de).
 
This new evidence changes a lot. The European policy just as many others strongly built on the increasing use of renewable energies in the future. The target formulated in the European Energy Strategy for example is 80-95% of renewable energies in 2050. There are two ways towards increasing the share of renewables to somewhere around 90%: increasing the total amount of renewable energies or decreasing the total amount of energy used and thus increasing the share of renewables within. Taking the above described accounting error seriously, the first is not an option. Accordingly, efficiency gains are not enough but a clear reduction of total energy use or more generally resource use is required. A fact that is neither popular nor fully supported by current policies.
 


Comment on ‘Decoupling resource use from economic growth – illusion or fact?’ (ESEE Newsletter Autumn 2011) - by Blake Alcott

I have several objections to ESEE’s implicit celebration of the fact that worldwide, GDP has grown faster than resource consumption – dubbed ‘decoupling’.

  1. Decoupling relates resource consumption to GDP. It is thus a mere ratio, a dimensionless number telling us nothing about the absolute size of resource consumption (known of course in ecological economics as the critical quantity throughput that measures the sustainable size of human activity). The ratio only tells us how much economic product we squeeze out of a unit of resources. An account of a report on decoupling, I suggest, should identify this limited area of interest rather than imply that decoupling itself is environmentally beneficial.
  2. Metaphorically, the environment doesn’t ‘care about’ ratios, and neither would future humans unless, to borrow from Kenneth Boulding, posterity looks back and finds joy in the fact that we have had a great party. Yet isn’t the raison d’être of sustainability science in large part leaving enough for future humans?
  3. The article uncritically quotes UNEP’s executive director Achim Steiner’s sound-bite that “Decoupling makes sense on all the economic, social and environmental dials.” But again, since decoupling (with throughput growing as usual) is a mere ratio, it cannot turn the “environmental dial” at all.
  4. The article then embraces Steiner’s full embrace of whatever can “stimulate growth”. The “trade-off” between sustainability and “economic goods” is allegedly not “inevitable”. According to the Newsletter the 20th century’s delinking means it is “environmentally no problem to have further economic growth.” Sustainable (endless) growth has thus survived three decades of criticism by... ecological economics. (Thankfully, the Newsletter’s next ‘Hot Topic’ is about degrowth.)
  5. Brief mention could have been given in this story to the fact that lots of materials are limited (and facing increasing per-unit extraction costs) and thus by definition not sustainably extractable. (The UNEP report itself, in my reading, tends to conflate renewables and non-renewables.)
  6. On the decoupling itself, the Newsletter states, “Thus decoupling of resource use from economic growth was a fact.” But “resource use” is ambiguous because it is an aggregate term. The cited article by Krausmann et al. (2009, in EcolEcon) actually states on pages 2701-2702 that the aggregate decoupling results mainly from reduced biomass use, while “mineral materials” (seemingly including industrial minerals and ores, construction minerals and fossil fuels) between 1900-2005 did not decouple at all! The statement is thus misleading.

   The last century’s increase in aggregate materials use per person, alongside increasing numbers of persons and, ipso facto, total materials use, are moreover shown by Krausmann et al. to be trends. But if this is so, how can there be no “inevitable trade-off” between sustainability and “economic goods”?
   What concerns me most, though, is that the perhaps most distinguishing feature of ecological economics is here being disregarded: sustainable scale. The decoupling narrative is only about efficiency and affluence.

Kind regards,
Blake Alcott
 


Decoupling: facts and illusions about texts. A reply to Blake Alcott - by Marina Fischer-Kowalski

Dear Blake,

I feel in your critique you don’t give fair treatment, neither to me nor to the Achim Steiner I quote. You say “decoupling” refers to a mere ratio between resource consumption and GDP, correct. While I completely agree with you that the environment does not care about ratios between biophysical flows and money, what I am citing from the UNEP report is absolute numbers: “the socioeconomic extraction and use of biomass, fossil fuels, industrial minerals & ores, and construction minerals, in other words, all material resources, has increased eightfold from 1900-2005. During the same period, global real GDP has increased 23 fold, almost three times as much. Thus decoupling of resource use from economic growth was a fact.” This fact, as is demonstrated in the report (and in my text), does not resolve the problem: despite decoupling, absolute amounts of anthropogenic resource use keep rising in a totally unsustainable fashion. 
 
There is a wide spread illusion that “decoupling” would provide a reconciliation of economic growth with environmental concerns. What the report shows is that, at best, decoupling could mollify this conflict (and indeed, I believe if resource use during the 20th century would have increased 23 fold like world GDP, and not just eightfold, we would now be in a terrible situation globally!). There may be a difference between the two of us how far we consider it worthwhile to fight such an illusion: I think it indeed is worthwhile, and that’s why I engaged in such an international assessment, but I still say (and this is probably a meeting ground between us) that there needs to be degrowth for rich industrial countries, and I also say so explicitly in my ‘hot topic’ piece. Achim Steiner, more than me, has to encounter the international policy situation, and he knows, if he is telling developing countries that for environmental reasons they can’t have economic growth, they will not listen to him anymore. So he needs to fight the prejudice that anything good for the environment is bad for the economy and vice versa, and he is perfectly right from a developing country perspective that the search for economic growth at the lowest environmental price (“decoupling”!!) makes sense – and is achievable!

Where I really disagree is your point 5: I do not think that lots of materials are limited, I think that all materials are limited. The distinction between “renewables” and “non-renewables” is treacherous: What “progress” during the 20th century provided us with was a major shift towards the use of non-renewables (see Krausmann 2009). As we experience with the biofuels problem, reversing this trend is very dangerous, indeed. So, you are quite right, the UNEP report did not draw a strategic line distinguishing renewables and non-renewables, but, as I believe, rightly so.

Marina Fischer-Kowalski
 

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5. Events:

SDS 2012 - Sustainable Development Symposium, 15-17 February 2012, Graz, Austria

This is the second in a series of annual events which aims to bring together young researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplinary backgrounds interested in the major challenges posed by achieving Sustainable Development. The first Symposium was held at the Trinity College(TCD) in Dublin during February 2011.

For further details please see this link: sds2012.tugraz.at

Deadline for registration 15th January 2012.


First workshop on mitigation of GHG emissions from the Spanish agroforestry sector, 8-9 March 2012, Bilbao, Spain

Call for abstracts: Open until December 23rd.
Registration: Open from February 1st.

Further information: www.bc3research.org/events/remedia/


International Workshop “Beyond Efficiency - Exploring the Political and Institutional Dimensions of Market-based Instruments for Ecosystem Services”, 13-14 March 2012, Berlin, Germany

Based on interpretative, institutionalist, and economic perspectives, the workshop aims at contributing to the present cost-effectiveness and efficiency-centred debate on Market-based Instruments (MBIs) for the provision of environmental goods and ecosystem services.

Further information: www.ecosystemservices.de/news/mbi-beyond-efficiency


TEEB Conference 2012, Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature: Challenges for Science and Implementation, 19-22 March 2012, Leipzig, Germany

The TEEB Conference 2012 will be hosted by the Scientific Coordinators of the TEEB reports, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ, in Leipzig, Germany. In Leipzig, conference participants will have the possibility to discuss and update the findings of the TEEB study and contribute to a new understanding of the link between economics, decision-making and the environment.

Further information: www.teeb-conference-2012.ufz.de


“Planet under Pressure 2012: New Knowledge Towards Solutions” The 2012 Global Change Open Science Conference, London, 26-29 March 2012

Building on a comprehensive update of knowledge of the Earth system and the pressure it is under, the Planet Under Pressure conference will present and debate new insights into potential opportunities and constraints for innovative development pathways based on novel partnerships.

The registration deadline for poster presenters has been extended to 20 January 2012.

More information at http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/


International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas, 13-19 May 2012, Montreal, Canada

The goal of this conference is to build a degrowth movement in the Americas with rigorous examination of issues, involving academia and social movements, arts and sciences, thought and living experiences. For this purpose it will be a "slow" one-week long conference to experience degrowth.

Call for submissions for workshops, panels, papers, posters, artistic presentations, symposia and special sessions: montreal.degrowth.org/call.html

Guidelines and Deadlines: montreal.degrowth.org/call_guide.html

Deadlines for Paper Presentation, symposia, workshops, roundtables and special sessions: December 31, 2011


12th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), 16-19 June 2012, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

ISEE is holding its next biennial conference – ISEE 2012: ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS AND RIO +20 – CONTRIBUTIONS AND CHALLENGES FOR A GREEN ECONOMY – June 16-19, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to dovetail with Rio +20 UNCSD Earth Summit.

Visit the conference website www.isee2012.org

More details can be found here.


Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, 20-22 June 2012 , Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The pre-registration for participation in the preparatory meeting and in the Conference by relevant NGOs and other major groups is now open.

http://www.uncsd2012.org/registration


European Summer School in Resource and Environmental Economics Management of International Water, 1-7 July 2012, Venice, Italy

The European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the Venice International University (VIU) are pleased to announce their annual European Summer School in Resource and Environmental Economics for postgraduate students.
The 2012 Summer School will take place from 1st to 7th July, at the VIU campus on the Island of San Servolo, in Venice, located just in front of St. Mark’s Square. The theme of this Summer School is Management of International Water.

Further information: www.feem.it/ess/

Deadline for applications: February 1st, 2012


IWREC 10th Annual Meeting, 28-29 August 2012, Stockholm, Sweden

The International Water Resource Economics Consortium (IWREC) 10th Annual Meeting will be held on 28-29 August 2012, as an integrated part of the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm.

IWREC is accepting submissions of full papers on any of the following topics:

  • Economics of irrigated and/or rainfed agriculture,
  • Economics of institutional design to manage hydrological variability,
  • Economics of transboundary water management and
  • Economics of water resources at large.

For further details please see this link:

www.worldwaterweek.org/iwrec

Call for papers: www.worldwaterweek.org/iwrec (open until 15 February 2012)


Third International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, 19-23 September 2012, Venice, Italy

The conference offers an opportunity for people to meet in a different environment, and to find points of agreement and convergence between each other. This should help them to focus their own efforts while keeping in mind the complex nature of the de-growth movement as a whole. People with different areas of interest and levels of experience can come together and combine their knowledge. This includes research (universities, study groups, lines of research), experimentation (good practices, [permacultori], networds of economic solidarity), communication (activists, filmmakers, giornalists and other media figures), and artistic expression (actors, musicians, writers and poets).

More details: www.venezia2012.it/en

Deadline for papers: 15th of February, 2012

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6. Job openings:

Postdoctoral Fellow, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)

The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), offers a two year postdoctoral fellowship with the level of financial support according to the academic and professional profile of the applicant.

Further information: www.bc3research.org/join_us/job_offers.html

Applications close: 22nd December 2011


UNU-IAS Announcement of Fellowship programmes 2012

Every year United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies offers PhD and Postdoctoral fellowships to provide young scholars and policy-makers, especially from the developing world, with a multi-disciplinary context within which to pursue advanced research and training that are of professional interest to the successful applicant and of direct relevance to the research agenda of their selected UNU-IAS or UNU-ISP programme.About 8-10 fellowships will be awarded in total in 2012 for three types of fellowships: Ph.D. Fellowships, Postdoctoral Fellowships and JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellowships. 

For more information, see www.ias.unu.edu/sub_page.aspx?catID=35&ddlID=631

The closing date for applications is 29 February 2012 and the starting date is 01 September 2012.

Also an admission for a MSc Programme in Environmental Governance with scholarship opportunities is ongoing: www.ias.unu.edu/default.aspx


Scientific coordination and management of research activities at UFZ

The Department of Computational Landscape Ecology (CLE) invite applications for a position on Scientific coordination and management of research activities at UFZ in the field of land use options and biodiversity (m/f) code digit 131/2011 to commence as soon as possible. The appointment is for an initial period of 3 years, an extension is aspired.

For more information, see www.ufz.de/index.php?de=11426
 


3-year PhD studentship on Socio-Economic Aspects of Climate Change Mitigation through Multifunctional Forestry in Scotland

The project Socio-Economic Aspects of Climate Change Mitigation through Multifunctional Forestry in Scotland offers an opportunity for a PhD scholarship available at the James Hutton Institute in co with the University of Aberdeen for European/UK Students. 

Application deadline: 13 February 2012

For further information, see www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=35876&LID=1374Applications close: 22nd December 2011


FEEM, Senior Researcher Position in Climate and Energy Economics

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), a leading research institute on sustainable development (www.feem.it) is looking to recruit a motivated and talented senior researcher to cover an open position within the Climate Change and Sustainable Development Research Programme. 

Further information: www.feem.it/getpage.aspx?id=433, ref: CCSD/12.2011

 

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7. Publications:

Sustainability Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach
by Shmelev S. E. and Shmeleva I. A. (eds), Palgrave, 2012

Sustainability Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach is the result of collective reflection by an international group of academics from Canada, France, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. It was inspired by the interdisciplinary discussions started in St Petersburg, Russia at the conference Globalisation, New Economy, and the Environment: Business and Society Challenges for Sustainable Development, organized by the editors of this volume under the auspices of the International Society for Ecological Economics in 2005.

This book explores the major actors, paradigms and ideologies in sustainable development, employing novel approaches such as linguistic and discourse analysis as well as simulation games and the psychology of ecological consciousness to provide an important contribution to the environmental policy field.

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=539023

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8. Students:

Kapp-award for ecological economics

"Economy without growth" is this year's topic for the 5.000 Euro award for young scientists in the German-speaking area. Awarded work will be published in the VÖÖ-series.

Further information (in German): Ausschreibungstext
Deadline: 15 January 2012


Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy: New Data Discovery Tool

SSPP is introducing Academic Programs in Sustainability, a new data discovery tool that allows users to explore a growing database of more than 100 worldwide educational institutions, offering more than 150 degree granting sustainability programs.  The database aims to increase the visibility of these programs to the sustainability community.

Readers can search and sort the Academic Programs in Sustainability database by institution name, program/degree, or location. As part of SSPP’s mission to enhance scholarly communication, education, and research, it will be a part of the Researcher’s Toolkit alongside other free, open access data and resources such as Sustainability Experts, Sustainability Datasets from U.S. Government, Sustainability Dissertations, and Featured Datasets visualizations.

For more information about Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, please access sspp.proquest.com.


STEPS Centre Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability, 14 - 25 May 2012, Brighton, UK

In Summer 2012 the STEPS Centre will hold a two-week international summer school on Pathways to Sustainability.
Involving innovative forms of teaching and interaction, including an international team of leading researchers in this field, the Summer School will be held from 14 - 25 May 2012, with opportunities for a few participants to stay on for a further two weeks of guided independent study and writing.
Topics covered will include

  • the politics of sustainability
  • knowledge and power
  • understanding uncertainty and risk
  • innovation and transitions
  • global governance of science and technology
  • livelihoods, institutions and development
Applications are invited from highly-motivated doctoral and postdoctoral researchers or those with equivalent experience, working in fields around development studies, science and technology studies, innovation and policy studies, and across agricultural, health, water or energy issues.
The deadline for applications is 31 January 2012. For full details of the Summer School and how to apply, download the information leaflet below.

Summer School in Global Environmental Governance, 25 June – 6 July 2012, Larvik, Norway

The second course of the Thor Heyerdahl Summer School in Environmental Governance – will be organized in Norway in 2012. The topic of this year’s course is ‘Global Environmental Governance’ and it will run from June 25 through July 6. It is organized by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
 
The course will focus on the frontiers of theory formation in the field of global environmental governance emphasizing both the earth systems dimension and the issue of international environmental agreements. It will also cover a wide variety of empirical questions concerning the processes of formulating international environmental regimes, their interplay and the relationships to other international agreements – especially trade. It will focus on the varied landscape of successes and failures and try to disentangle the causes and reasons for this situation not least through looking at the interests of the various actors involved. The issue of doing interdisciplinary research in this field will also be emphasized. Questions about how to succeed better in the future will be raised – both concerning research and the governance field itself.
 
The series is aimed at giving PhDs and young researchers the opportunity to develop high level skills in analyzing environmental governance issues. It offers the opportunity to critically reflect on the present status of both theory and practice in the field, and to discuss alternatives to present developments and solutions. 
 
Several internationally renowned researchers will participate as keynote lecturers. Per date we have made agreements with Frank Biermann, Clive Spash and Oran Young. Frank Biermann is professor of political science and of environmental policy sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam. He presently chairs the Earth System Governance Project. Clive Spash is professor of public policy and governanceat the Vienna University of Economics and Business, with a long history in ecological economics. Oran Young is professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is most famous for his work on international environmental institutions and chairs the Scientific Committee of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change.
 
The Summer School is open to PhD students and young researchers who have completed their PhD degree within the last 4 years of the application deadline (February 15, 2012). Priority will be given to applicants from social science oriented programs or interdisciplinary (combined social and natural science) programs. Priority will moreover be given to PhDs, but we wish to include a few young researchers as well. In total, about 25 students will be admitted.
 
The summer school series is organized by the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB). Thor Heyerdahl professor Arild Vatn is responsible for convening the series.
 
More information will be available at http://www.umb.no/thor-heyerdahl-summer-school from January 6, 2012.

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