Content:

1. Editorial

  • Editorial - Ecological Economics in the Era of Donald Trump, by Dan O’Neill  

2. News from ESEE and its members

  • ESEE Summer School 2017
  • Environmental Policy and Governance - EPG Journal
  • New Special Issue on Shared, Plural and Cultural Values
  • Report from the first SIMRA workshop in Bratislava
  • New Book: Green Economy Reader - Lectures in Ecological Economics and Sustainability

3. Hot topics

  • Juha HiedanpääOf co-creation
  • Rita Lopes: Mainstreaming stakeholder participation for ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation
4. Interviews: Reflections on ESEE and ecological economics
  • Arild Vatn: What ecological economics needs to advance

5. Events, jobs and publications

  • Call for papers: The New Climate Economy after the Paris Accord, Journal of Economic Policy
  • Call for Papers: Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Sustainability
  • Job offer: Endowed Assistant Professor in Ecological Economics & Environmental Policy
  • Job offer: Impact Evaluator at University of Leeds postdoctoral level
  • Job offer: Postdoctoral position based at the IIES-UNAM, México
  • Job offers: Two Research and Teaching Fellow / PhD Positions on Ecosystem Services
  • New Issue: Environmental Values Vol.25, No.6, December 2016

1. Editorial

 

Editorial: Ecological Economics in the Era of Donald Trump
 
by Dan O’Neill
 
The year 2016 has been a big year, and not necessarily a good one for ecological economists. With the election of Donald Trump in the US (who happily “digs coal”) and the decision of 52% of the British public to exit the European Union, the world has become a very uncertain place.
 
To paraphrase Herman Daly, ecological economists are concerned with three things: (1) sustainable scale, (2) fair distribution, and (3) efficient allocation — in the order given. We often argue that environmental problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss cannot be solved by simply correcting “market failures” (as these are pervasive), but can only be addressed by limiting the scale of economic activity to be within ecological limits.
 
Although I support the pre-eminence ascribed to sustainable scale in the ecological economics vision, outcomes like Donald Trump and Brexit force home a very real message. If we cannot provide an economic narrative that addresses the day-to-day problems being faced by the majority of the population, ecological sustainability will remain an unachievable pipe dream.
 
As a community, I think we need to focus more on the second goal — fair distribution. Although it is hard to say how much of the recent increase in nationalism and populism is driven by increasing inequality, it is certainly a factor. As Thomas Piketty has shown, inequality is on the rise and returning to levels not seen since the 19th century. Moreover, the situation is only likely to worsen with the rise of artificial intelligence and the increasing computerisation of jobs. It has been suggested that close to 50% of current jobs will be subject to automation in the next decade or two.
 
Automation of course represents a tremendous opportunity. If accompanied by a universal basic income then we could begin to move towards Keynes’s idea of a 15-hour workweek and even a leisure society. However, in the context of a capitalist system where workers are replaced by machines, and the profits go to the privileged few, the direction of travel seems to be mass unemployment, not mass leisure.
 
If we are to have any chance of achieving sustainable scale, then ecological economists need to work with other progressive groups to advance a new economic vision that provides a viable and hopeful alternative to the politics of Donald Trump and the rise of European nationalism. We already have a pretty good idea of what this vision would include: working-time reduction, a universal basic income, limits on private wealth accumulation, new measures of progress, and so on. The challenge is to get these important ideas out of the classroom, and into the pressroom.

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2. News from ESEE and its members

ESEE Summer School 2017

ESEE 2017 organisers are inviting postgraduate students, PhD students and early-stage researchers to join us for the 2017 ESEE Summer School. The theme of the summer school is IMPACT: approaches and tools for enhancing the social and policy impact of your research. The event will take place from 18th – 20th June 2017, Budapest, Hungary. The aim of the summer school is to explore and reflect on the real-life impact of our own research activities and its potentials. Senior researchers will support all participants. Presentations, discussions, knowledge sharing and self-reflection will aim at learning about the possibilities for increasing policy and social impact of ecological economics research.

Deadline for applications: January 31, 2017
 
Remember to join the discussion in the ESEE Facebook group.

More information
 

Environmental Policy and Governance - EPG Journal

Current Issue: September/October 2016 (Volume 26, Issue 5)
Research Articles:

Municipal Governance and Sustainability: The Role of Local Governments in Promoting Transitions (pages 323–336)
Nora Smedby and Maj-Britt Quitzau

How Does Hybrid Governance Emerge? Role of the elite in building a Green Municipality in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon (pages 337–350)
Cecilia Viana, Emilie Coudel, Jos Barlow, Joice Ferreira, Toby Gardner and Luke Parry

Beyond Mandated Participation: Dealing with hydropower in the context of the water framework directive (pages 351–365)
Judith Feichtinger and Michael Pregernig

Increasing the Use of Evaluation Through Participation: The experience of a rural sustainable development plan evaluation (pages 366–376)María-Angeles Díez, Beatriz Izquierdo and Eduardo Malagón

Do Non-State Perspectives Matter for Treaty Ratification and Implementation? The case of the European Consultation on the Nagoya protocol (pages 377–393)
Amandine Orsini

Landscape Perceptions and Social Evaluation of Heritage-Building Processes (pages 394–408)
Alberto Rodríguez-Darias, Agustín Santana-Talavera and Pablo Díaz-Rodríguez

Striking the Balance Between Renewable Energy Generation and Water Status Protection: Hydropower in the context of the European Renewable Energy Directive and Water Framework Directive (pages 409–421)
Jonida Abazaj, Øystein Moen and Audun Ruud

The Role of Trade Associations in Environmental Compliance Under Limited Enforcement: The case of small businesses (pages 422–436)
Eungkyoon Lee, Chan Su Jung and Jooyoung Kwak
 

New Special Issue on Shared, Plural and Cultural Values

ESEE board member Jasper Kenter has edited a 15-paper Special Issue of the journal Ecosystem Services on 'Shared, Plural and Cultural values', to be released in December. The issue was developed on the premise that to deeply resolve conflicts between nature conservation and exploitation, we need valuations that result from and are integrated with transformative processes that bring together different voices to develop shared understandings of conflicts between different ecosystem services and shared values around how to resolve them. 

Key themes include the formation and institutionalisation of shared values through socialisation, formal and informal deliberation; deliberative alternatives for value-aggregation; understandings and critiques of deliberation; and interrelations between values, culture, place and identity. The importance of institutional factors, such as power issues, and the inevitable subjectivity of valuations around complex and contested issues are highlighted. A wide range of monetary and non-monetary analytical, deliberative, interpretive and psychometric methods are integrated in a range of empirical papers. 
Shared, plural and cultural values are presented as a knowledge intervention critiquing the increasing tendency to artificially separate economic and socio-cultural values, and monetary and non-monetary valuation. The authors advocate deliberative valuations as a means to integrate plural values and as a boundary object between research, practitioner and policy communities, enabling more effective translation of values into decisions and creating new democratic spaces for transformative social change.

The issue will be freely accessible until the end of 2017, and can be accessed via http://www.sharedvaluesresearch.org.
 

Report from the first SIMRA workshop in Bratislava

Newly funded H2020 project SIMRA under the coordination of the James Hutton Institute in Scotland has been officially launched on the 1st April 2016. Scientists from 15 countries across Europe and the wider Mediterranean area met at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen to mark the start of a 4-year project addressing some of the most important social challenges faced by rural areas.

SIMRA’s overarching objective is to fill the significant knowledge gap in understanding and enhancing social innovations in marginalised rural areas by advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation and connected governance mechanisms in agriculture and forestry sectors as well as in rural development in general.

A main mission of the trans-disciplinary approach of SIMRA is to advance academic excellence in order to promote the exchange of knowledge across various disciplines and expert arenas and to bridge the still existing gaps between science, policy and practice. 

The first SIMRA Workshop hosted by SPECTRA (a joint research centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovak University of Technology and Comenius University) in Bratislava (Slovakia), during October 26– 28, 2016, concentrated on set up of transdisciplinary mode  for systematic knowledge exchange and learning process in understanding and assessing social innovations for marginalised rural areas. The workshop was endorsed by the Slovak presidency of the Council of the European Union and also involved the consortium meeting with scientific and stakeholder experts in forestry, agriculture and rural development, which came together as a Social Innovation Think Tank (SITT). 

More information
 

New Book: Green Economy Reader - Lectures in Ecological Economics and Sustainability
edited by Stanislav Shmelev


State of the art in sustainability thinking, inspired by interdisciplinary ideas of ecological economics. This book is focusing on sustainability pathways, new economic theory, democracy and institutions, multidimensional assessment of sustainability, macroeconomic modelling and policies, climate change and renewable energy, resource flows and circular economy, regenerative cities, environmental conflicts and values. It will be helpful for MSc and PhD students in Economics, Management, Environmental Change, Ecological Economics, Development Economics, Sustainability and practitioners in business, international and nongovernmental organizations. Rich, diverse and thought provoking collection of top level contributions, it will help to facilitate the transition towards sustainability and educational reform. 

More information

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 3. Hot topics

Hot topic: Of co-creation
 
by Juha Hiedanpää, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
 
Institutional design and policy implementation do not always produce the results that were the reason for their initiation and they never produce only the intended results, but a multitude of consequences, some of which are beneficial to the original goal and some of which are not. The tendency is for situations to grow more complex. The grey wolf policy in Finland is one example. Despite recent bottom-up institution building and policy implementation (Anon, 2015), negative surprises tend to appear and bring the problematic situation close to square one again: where conflict is intense and protecting wolves more difficult. These setbacks are due to many causes and reasons, including problematic managerial actions, interest group reactions or a combination of these.
 
Sometimes situations like this are called 'wicked'. I would rather call them a problematic situation. Friedrich von Hayek (1982, 37) has already reminded us that realisations are always surprising and emerging societal structures, order and results are due to human actions, but not all of them are due to human design. The late Ulrich Beck (2016) was of a similar opinion as he emphasised the role and significance of side-effects in institutional adjustment and in the growth of societies. For him, governmental goals are actually reactions to the side-effects of previous attempts to control side-effects. This is a peculiar feature of institutional evolution.
 
This realisation-oriented policy making is slowly gaining ground from transcendental institutionalism. According to Sen (2009, 5-6), the political desire to set institutions right transcendentally has two features: “First, it concentrates its attention on what it identifies as perfect justice, rather than on relative comparisons of justices and injustice… Second, in the search for perfection, transcendental institutionalism concentrates primarily on getting institutions right, and it is not directly focused on the actual societies that would ultimately emerge”.
 
The realization-orientation principle is close to the pragmatic maxim by Charles S. Peirce (CP5.402): “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects are the whole of our conception of the object”. Realizations, i.e. effects, do not appear spontaneously, without human intention and design, they appear in complex transactions from within the ecostructure already in place but change due to these very same transactions. Realisations are co-created.
 
Understood from this view, institutional adjustments and policy designs are what their conceived effects ultimately become - the policies are only as good as their co-created effects. As Sen reminds us, those who focus on realizations and who are engaged in making comparisons from the point of view of real-life consequences are more often interested in identifying and solving practical policy problems leading to these injustices. The realisation-orientation calls for coordinated co-creation of policy designs and implementation.
 
The idea is not as old as it first seems. In co-construction, people are invited to participate in policy planning, agenda setting and, say, evaluation of ongoing policy processes, but they do not participate in implementation.  In co-production, people take part in data collection, but they do not necessarily participate in any other parts of the knowledge production process, i.e., in defining research problems or in executing analysis and, especially, not in weighting societal policy problems and potential solutions. In co-design, people participate in policy instrument development, but again there are no guarantees that the engagement and collaboration meaningfully extends from the early phase of the policy cycle to any point further. 
 
These three forms of public involvement may, of course, produce wonderful practical effects but there is one feature that makes them different from the approach of co-creation. The three approaches do not walk the participants all the way to effects; they do not engage people until the intended policy outcomes and emerged side-effects, some of which are mutually valued and some of which may not be.
 
In his cosmology, Peirce (CP 6.302) introduced three general aspects of change: tychism, synecism and agapism. Tychistic change is spontaneous, being that of absolute chance, of fortuitous variation. A change happens without articulated, planned and preordained purpose. Synecistic change is about continuity, struggle, agreement and mechanical necessity. In our handling, we could say that this is where we find conflict on one hand and partners on the other. The third mode of change is agapism. It is a commitment to the presence and importance of friendship and love. It is evolution by creative love, evolutionary love, or creative symbiosis, as I like to call it.
 
Creative symbiosis brings new purposes into being, something that synecistic partnership or tychistic interaction do not. Creative symbiosis is a form of change that is essentially teleological and end-directed (Deacon, 2012; Nagel, 2012). It is not spontaneous although ingredients of surprise, spontaneity and emergence are accounted for there and it is not mechanical even though the evolutionary process seems to proceed from one stage to the other. Creative symbiosis re-does and re-negotiates the purpose, working rules and motivation continuously according to perpetually changing environmental interdependencies and functions. The actual enables the possible and the variation in the possible brings in the potential. Stuart Kauffman (2016) calls this sort of co-creation ’the Adjacent Possible’.
 
The ontological challenge of co-creation is immense. On a more practical level, the approach of co-creation creates and develops participatory means and encourages people to engage in problem definition, action research design, in the execution of the co-creation process and reflective weighing of results and side-effects. Co-creation is not only about policy solutions but also, perhaps more so, about cultural entrepreneurship and value articulation for more critically responsive, fair, and engaging solutions. Co-creation is about realisations, indeed, about taking coordinated co-creative processes all the way to the ends-in-view, to the fulfilled purpose and emerged side-effects.
 
Co-creation calls for transdisciplinary research and abductive logic of reasoning. Transdisciplinary science is supposed to help policy processes to produce improved practical effects and novel conceptions and theories about the societal and economic processes behind these improved practical effects. The general purpose of transdisciplinary science is to bring about something that is not yet in existence; this is exactly why the transdisciplinary science must often follow the abductive logic of reasoning. Deduction sustains the theoretical core ideals and the assumption of a particular social practice. In a strict sense, deduction does not produce new knowledge: it only may affirm the hypothesis. Induction goes from particulars to generals deriving knowledge from empirical experience based upon a system of handling data. Inductive inference is not, however, necessary inference, as is deduction.
 
For Peirce (CP 5.189) abduction is a capacity for “the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis.” However, abduction is not only about adopting the hypothesis but “it is the only logical operation which introduces a novel idea” (Peirce CP 5.171). As Thomas Alexander (2013, 163) reminded us, abduction is “an imaginative effort of understanding.” Abduction is the logic for co-creation. A commitment to co-creation is simply a quest for critical responsiveness in the face of well-intended but surprising policy realisations (Hiedanpää & Bromley 2016, 236). In such a process, the purpose is to co-create and co-select a reasonable practice. We might also say that this is a pragmatist maxim for democratic creativity (e.g., Gouinlock 1999).
 
As the perpetuity of wolf problems in Finland have indicated, participatory co-design of policy instruments, co-construction of policies, and co-production of knowledge do not necessarily suffice to untangle a complex problematic situation. The problem may have been that the government, its administration and transdisciplinary wildlife research (our work) have not had the will, skills or resources to walk, critically and adaptively, through the implementation and enforcement of new institutional adjustments and policy designs. As so often happens at the critical, almost securely late stage of implementation, transactions are left to take their own spontaneous course, and the results soon turn to side-effects. However, as is evident, co-creation is easier said than done.
 
References
 
Alexander, Thomas. (2013) The Human Eros: Eco-Ontology and the Aesthetics of Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anon (2015) Management plan for the wolf population in Finland. Helsinki: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
Beck, Ulrich (2016) The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Deacon, Terrence (2012) Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Gouinlock, James (1999) Dewey: Creative Intelligence and Emergent Reality. Rosenthal, S.B., Hausman, C.R. and Anderson, T. (Eds.) Classical American Pragmatism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Hayek von, Friedrich (1982) Law, Legislation and Liberty. London: Routledge. 
Hiedanpää, Juha & Daniel W. Bromley (2016) Environmental Heresies: The Quest for Reasonable. London: Macmillan.
Kauffman, Stuart A. (2016) Humanity in a Creative Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, Thomas (2012) Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peirce, Charles S. (1934) Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (vols. 1–6) and A. Burks (vols. 7–8). 8 eds., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sen, Amartya (2009) The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

 



Mainstreaming stakeholder participation for ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation

by Rita Lopes (CENSE, FCT/New University of Lisbon)

Ecosystem Services and biodiversity conservation are in the spotlight both in research and policy agendas. In Cancun (Mexico), more than 190 Governments worked together to decide on stopping biodiversity loss worldwide. The UN Biodiversity Conference COP13 on Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Well-being, gathered in the beginning of December the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Global challenges, as this one, need innovative measures, but also global commitment and joint forces. Around two-thirds of the global Aichi Biodiversity Targets are currently far from being achieved by 2020, which may lead to severe consequences, even in the context of achieving other global agendas such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change or the Sustainable Development Goals. As pointed out by the Chair of IPBES, Sir Robert Watson, “The Aichi Targets must be achieved, because biodiversity and ecosystems services are central to human well-being."

Such key targets include: a) “mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society” (strategic goal A), “by 2020, at latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably” (Target 1); and b) “enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building” (strategic goal E), as well as other targets which talk about effective participation, showing the importance of raising awareness and engaging stakeholder groups in this process.

Ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation were always central to the field of Ecological Economics. In the last years the debate on how to integrate multiple values of ecosystem services has been intensified among ecological economists, with several studies emerging within this theme, showing avenues for how this integration can help protecting ecosystems. So, how to achieve effective assessment and conservation processes? The outcomes of recent studies point for the need of society engagement, through governments and different stakeholder groups.

Participation is central and must play a key role in finding bridges, identifying common thoughts and alternatives, sharing experiences, co-producing knowledge and promoting transdisciplinarity towards ecosystem services and biodiversity preservation. This can be done by implementing structured participatory approaches to support decision-making allowing the engagement of interested parties, in order to achieve more informed and better management of ecosystems and the services they provide.

Studies investigating and integrating participation in the assessment of ecosystem services have been recently conducted with promising results,. For example, in an experiment conducted in a coastal and marine protected area in Portugal, we have found that through the implementation of a structured participatory process to assess and articulate multiple values of ecosystem services, a shared understanding is fostered when participants are brought together at the same table. This experience was based on an integrated participatory framework that includes a three-stage process engaging stakeholders in collaborative scoping, causal mapping and articulation of multiple values. The deliberative process has driven changes in participants’ initial mental models and created new insights, namely by recognizing the ecosystem services delivered by the area, the identification of threats and links with human wellbeing and supporting the screening of their importance. After that, stakeholders were able to develop conceptual models depicting the structure underlying the causal relations of specific ecosystem services, and also how they are linked, advancing an integrated vision capable of identifying key levers to manage the system. Having participants deliberating on alternatives for specific projects and conflicts also expanded perceptions on affected ES, and supported the formalization of multiple evaluation criteria and decision rules.

This illustrative case highlights some of the key benefits of mainstreaming stakeholder participation, namely by raising awareness and commitment towards ecosystem services and biodiversity preservation. Enabling factors for successful participation include the early and continued engagement of stakeholders and the combination of different tools and methods triggering articulation of economic, social and ecological values.

In conclusion, scientific information and tacit knowledge on functioning of the underlying socio-ecological systems should be combined if we want to stop biodiversity loss and increase the conservation of ecosystem services. Engagement of interested parties brings instrumental and substantive inputs for problem definition stages and for finding solutions and implementing strategies, plans and programs. With more attention being given to the development of new approaches capable of integrating multiple value dimensions, we need to not only mainstream these concepts across society, but also to promote active stakeholder participation in decision-making processes affecting ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation.
Martín-López, B., E. Gómez-Baggethun, M. García-Llorente and C. Montes, 2014.  Trade-offs across value-domains in ecosystem service assessment. Ecological Indicators, 37: 220–28.
Riper C. and Kyle G. .2014. Capturing multiple values of ecosystem services shaped by environmental worldviews: A spatial analysis. Journal of Environmental Management, 145: 374-384.
Bredin, Y., Lindhjem, H., van Dijk, J., and Linnell, J. 2015. Mapping value plurality towards ecosystem services in the case of Norwegian wildlife management: A Q analysis. Ecological Economics, 118: 198-206.
Lopes, R. and Videira, N. 2013. Valuing marine and coastal ecosystem services: An integrated participatory framework. Ocean and Coastal Management, 84: 153-163.
Lopes, R. and Videira, N. 2016. A collaborative approach for scoping ecosystem services with stakeholders: The case of Arrábida Natural Park. Environmental Management, 58 (2): 323-342.

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4. Reflections on ESEE and ecological economics

What ecological economics needs to advance
by Arild Vatn


What does it mean to you to be an ecological economist?

It means that there are limits to how much humans can “intervene” in natural systems without causing malfunction. These interventions not only threaten other species, but may even threaten our own sustenance. This raises fundamental ethical questions regarding both inter- and intra-generational justice. Ecological economics acknowledges that these limits are not fixed, nor easy to define. There are technical aspects related to lack of knowledge— uncertainty and ignorance. There are value issues related to which changes are acceptable and which are not.

Ecological economics brings ethical questions back into our analyses as economists. It implies a search for languages and for fora where we can express and decide on these ethical dilemmas. It implies a search for institutions that are able to foster responsible decisionmaking and ensure sustainable futures. It implies a search for economic systems that can develop within limits and that are able to define necessary precautionary strategies. So ecological economics is a mix of positive and normative analyses going beyond the standard definition of efficiency. It is not about neo-classically founded analyses just expanded to include the environment. It is about rethinking what the characteristics of our biophysical environments imply for the way we act and interact with other humans and with nature at large.

What has ecological economics achieved?

Ecological economics has put emphasis on the above—on limits, on human–environment interactions, on ignorance, on value pluralism, on the need for changing the structure of economic systems. It has developed against strong forces, both professionally and politically. While we have managed to establish organisations and good fora for discussion, creation of new ideas and our own journals, the mainstream still stays strong. Hence, we continue to be a minority voice, which for many of us implies working in interdisciplinary departments. While ecological economics is interdisciplinary, the power of the mainstream to keep us straddling the margins of the discipline presents a major challenge.

What would a world ruled by ecological economists look like?

I do not think we should aim for ruling the world. We should aim for developing ideas that could be democratically accepted as the “new rule”. To inform the debate about what that world could look like, I would emphasise the following “utopian” thoughts. At the basis should lie a new vision about human and societal development that emphasises justice and needs. High levels of human welfare are possible with much lower levels of consumption than in present-day western societies. It is important to ensure ecological space to allow those living in outright poverty to meet their basic needs. The key concept in ensuring this—I propose—is responsibility. This means responsible consumers, political authorities and firms. While emphasis on the consumer is important, I do not think it is possible to develop sustainable futures without starting with the basic economic institutions. Today’s institutions foster economic growth. They even depend on it. To get on a sustainable track, we need some very demanding changes. We need to create production units that can function well and be creative without being dependent on an expanding economy. This means creating firms that are not based on individual rationality—profit maximisation—but on social rationality. It demands changes in both ownership structures and the form and functioning of the financial sector. Rules for international trade need to be reformulated to facilitate this transition. No less.

Where should ecological economics be heading?

The changes I have described are very demanding. Keeping the right direction in mind, I think ecological economists can play a very important role in developing research that can inform a process of transformation. But ecological economics needs to take on one more step to advance. We need to engage in the development of a theory of human action—to understand why we act the way we do. So far, we have either used—implicitly—the theory of rational choice, or we have gone further and endorsed theories of plural values. While the latter development is very important, thinking about economic systems demands more of us.

There may be various ways to proceed. Personally, I engage in incorporating insights from institutional theory into ecological economics. I find institutional theory offers great opportunities for advances as it acknowledges the relationships between the institutions we develop and the motivations we hold. As humans hold plural values, we seem to be able to act based on different kinds of motivations. Understanding the relationship between institutions and action is crucial to support the creation of sustainable futures. We can then help develop ideas for systemic changes. We need, however, to move quickly, as time is now probably the most limited resource we have.


Arild Vatn is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He is a former President of ESEE (2006-2010) and the 2016 winner of the Kenneth Boulding Award.

Interviewer: Dan O’Neill

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5. Events, jobs and publications

Call for papers: The New Climate Economy after the Paris Accord, Journal of Economic Policy

The journal «Politica Economica/Journal of Economic Policy» is inviting submissions of papers on the implications of the Paris Accord for environmental and energy economics and policy to be published in a special issue to appear in the Winter 2017. The topic of choice is « The New Climate Economy after the Paris Accord».

Deadline for submissions: February 28, 2017

More information

 
 
Call for Papers: Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Sustainability

We would like to invite you to publish in the first issue of the Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Sustainability (JMRS). The Journal aims to promote sustainability across a wide range of disciplines. Each issue will be dedicated to the sustainability dimension of a single discipline. The topic of the first issue has been chosen as “Ecological Planning and Sustainability”.

Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2017

 

Job offer: Endowed Assistant Professor in Ecological Economics & Environmental Policy

Loyola University Chicago’s (LUC), Institute of Environmental Sustainability (IES) invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track endowed position at the rank of Assistant Professor/Advanced Assistant Professor, beginning fall 2017.  

Deadline for applications: January 6,, 2017.

More information

 

Job offer: Impact Evaluator at University of Leeds postdoctoral level

Would you like to be part of an exciting new research project mitigating the risks of floods and droughts, improving water quality and bringing significant benefits to the economy, environment and wider society? Do you have a PhD in Environmental/Ecological Economics or Quantitative Environmental Social Science? The Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) is a £6 million investment over five years. The candidate will be reporting to the Programme Manager, leading the evaluation function of the iCASP programme.

Deadline for applications: January 8, 2017

More information 

 
 
Job offer: Postdoctoral position based at the IIES-UNAM, México

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in collaboration with the Intergovernmental Sciency-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) offers a postdoctoral postition. The postition has been created to support the work of a TEchnical Support Unit (TSU) focused on the multiple conceptualizations of the values of nature and its contributions to people. The position is a 2-year postition starting Augudt 2017.

Deadline for applications: January 18, 2017.

More information

 

Job offers: Two Research and Teaching Fellow / PhD Positions on Ecosystem Services

The Chair of Ecosystem Services at the International Institute Zittau / TU Dresden in Germany (Prof. Irene Ring) invites applications for two positions of a Research Fellow / PhD Position on governance and valuation of ecosystem services, preferably related to the following topics:
1) Ecosystem services in economic accounting
2) Ecosystem services in intergovernmental fiscal relations
These posts entail 50% of the fulltime weekly hours, offering a contract of 3 years. Very good English and German language and communication skills are required. The posts also involve teaching in English language in the newly introduced MSc Programmes of “Ecosystem Services” and “Biodiversity and Collection Management”.

Deadline for applications: January 9, 2017.

More information

 
 
New Issue: Environmental Values Vol.25, No.6, December 2016
 
Editorial: Faults of Our Rationality? by Claudia Carter
An Engineering Approach to Sustainable Decision Making. by Kelly Bryck
Regime Learning in Global Environmental Governance. by Bernd Hackmann
Geographers Versus Managers: Expert Influence on the Construction of Values Underlying Flood Insurance in the United States. by Emmy Bergsma
Environmental Injustice, Political Agency and the Challenge of Creating Healthier Communities. by Megs S. Gendreau
Equity and ITQs: About Fair Distribution in Quota Management Systems in Fisheries. by Ralf Doering, Leyre Goti, Lorena Fricke, Katharina Jantzen
 
Recently posted articles forthcoming in future issues
 
Matthew Kopec, ‘Game theory and the self-fulfilling climate tragedy
Ben Dixon, ‘Value pluralism and consistency maximisation in the writings of Aldo Leopold
Nir Barak, ‘Hundertwasser: Inspiration for environmental ethics
Jean-Pierre Del Corso, Thi Dieu Phuong Geneviève Nguyen, Charilaos Kephaliacos, ‘Acceptance of a payment for ecosystem services programme
 
Recently posted reviews forthcoming in future issues
 
Toby Svoboda Duties Regarding Nature: A Kantian Environmental Ethic

Martin Schönfeld
Hugh P. McDonald Environmental Philosophy: A Revaluation of Cosmopolitan Ethics from an Ecocentric Standpoint
Daniel Crescenzo
Simon P. James Environmental Philosophy: An Introduction
Francesco Carpanini
Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick (eds) Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology and Culture
Svein Anders Noer Lie
 

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