11th
Biennial Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics:
ISEE 2010: Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis
22 - 25 August 2010
Oldenburg and Bremen, Germany
FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
1 Conference Theme
Ecological systems and their services to humans have been exposed to
stress, exploitation and destruction for decades. Biodiversity is being
lost at an almost unprecedented pace. Climate change will bring about
rapid and unpredictable changes in the earth's entire biophysical system.
There are thus massive indications of a crisis of ecosystems caused
by human activity. In 2008 the global financial system collapsed and
pushed many economies towards crisis. A deregulated banking sector
acted outside the boundaries of safe and trustworthy operations resulting
in a collapse of confidence in economic institutions not seen since
the 1930s. Economic breakdowns in many countries have already
generated dramatic social problems adding to existing poverty, hunger
and inequality.
But times of crisis are also times of opportunity. The financial meltdown
has led to a renaissance in public responsibility and an avalanche of
stimulus packages that stand against the neo-liberal creed
of minimal government. While many of these measures follow conventional
lines of unsustainable economic practices, there is a growing awareness
for the need for active public policies to create more sustainable economic
structures and processes to combat both economic and ecological crises.
Green recovery, a global Green New Deal, and a green energy revolution
are catch phrases that now find their way into governance and policy
making processes.
In 2010 the United Nation's Millennium Development goals will be a
decade old and there will only be five years left to achieve them. Meeting
their challenge requires bold and concerted action on global, national
and local levels and across societal groups and organisations in the
global North and the South. With the entirety of closely connected social,
health, economic and ecological goals the Millennium Development Goals
guide an integrated approach to development and human well-being that
goes beyond the usual polarisation between development and environmental
goals.
In this situation, ecological economics is poised to play a leading
role in addressing these global challenges. The rapidly changing patterns
of economic, political, and economic systems necessitate integrated
and innovative analyses, ideas, concepts and solutions. Ecological economics
seems well prepared for this call as a field that has pioneered in integrating
ecological and social concerns into economic analyses and practical
solutions. It has united scientists, practitioners and decision makers
from various disciplinary backgrounds in innovative and participatory
research and decision-making processes. In particular, ecological economists
have argued strongly against concepts of neo-liberalism and unregulated
financial systems. They developed novel approaches to understand economic
processes as inextricably linked and dependent on ecological support
systems as well as the social
institutions in which they are embedded. The field has a long tradition
in finding solutions to practical as well as conceptual problems of
social well-being, economic development and ecological sustainability.
Since the last ISEE conference held in Europe in 1994, the community
has come a long way and evolved tremendously. From the early dichotomy
between environmental economics and ecological economics, more dialogue
and collaboration between the fields has emerged to address problems
of sustainability. Overlapping research interests now common to both
ecological and environmental economics include integrated modelling,
agent-based modelling, valuation of ecosystem services, market based
policy instruments, multi-criteria evaluation, and the economics of
adapting to environmental change. The size the climate change challenge
and dire state of the earth's ecosystems necessitate further exchange
and cooperation to gain a unified voice in the political domain. The
2010 ISEE conference will emphasize this exchange and debate.
Since the early days, ecological economics has always been a field
of methodological diversity, transdisciplinary work, and it has now
significantly developed its standards for scientific rigour as well
as
its social and policy relevance. It has been driven by ideas of fairness
and justice among humans and between humans and the natural world. This
thematic scope reaches out to a great variety of related disciplines
such as conventional economics and ecology, political science, sociology,
management, biology, physics and engineering. The necessary cross-disciplinary
collaboration requires bridging concepts between research and society
in a solutions-oriented manner. While, on the one hand, the field has
grown stronger in its analytical understanding of the interactions between
humans and the ecosystems in which they live, the link to governance
questions and practical application has become
ever more challenging and urgent. This point of interconnections between
the various disciplines of ecological economics and the systems of environmental
governance and practice will therefore form one central focus of the
2010 conference.
We particularly invite contributions to the conference that address
the following main themes:
* *Climate Change* -- causes, impacts, mitigation, adaptation, and
policy options
* *Energy* -- renewable energy, energy flows, peak oil, green stimulus
policies, energy and entropy, alternative energy and energy distribution
technology
* *Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services *-- valuation issues and policy
integration
* *Land Use* -- including coastal zone management, water issues, ecosystem
restoration, bioregionalism
* *Ecology* -- complex systems, economy-ecology modelling, theoretical
ecology
* *Dematerialization and De-Growth* -- industrial ecology, eco-efficiency,
sustainable consumption and production
* *Sustainable Development* - environment and industrial development,
inequalities between rich and poor, indigenous rights and wisdoms, environmental
colonialism and debt, environmental GDP
of the poor, sustainability and self-actualization
* *Environmental Ethics and Values* -- norms, ethical concepts, environmental
values and decision-making
* *Governance and Public Policy* -- green macroeconomics, recapturing
the public space in an age of neo-liberalism, Green New Deal, green
recovery, politics and public participation in decision making
* *Knowledge and social learning* -- knowledge systems, dynamics and
mechanisms of social learning and change in economic and policy processes
* *Green Business *-- corporate social responsibility, ecological economics
of the firm, industrial ecology, trade and taxation, incentives and
entrepreneurship **
* *Heterodox Economics* -- opportunities after the crisis for institutional,
evolutionary, post-keynesian, post-autistic economics, synergies with
ecological economics
* *Transdisciplinarity* -- post normal science, sustainability science,
transdisciplinary research designs, participatory methods, methodological
and theoretical challenges
* *Teaching Ecological Economics** --* curriculum development, practical
experiences, learning as sustainability**
2 Abstract Submission
There will be five tracks for abstract submissions:
* Long presentation (approx. 15 min. presentation on the basis of
a full paper)
* Short presentation (approx. 5 min. presentation within a discussion
session)
* Poster presentation
* Special sessions (on the basis of full papers with up to four 15 min.
presentations organised by a session chair)
* Discussion sessions (thematically focused session with about four
short presentations organised by a session chair).
All of them require an online abstract submission of max. 400 words
via the conference website at: www.isee2010.org. Online submission will
be open starting 15 September 2009. Deadline is *31 October 2009*.
Submissions will be reviewed by an international review panel before
being accepted.
For full paper presentations, the paper has to be submitted no later
than 1 July 2010. Full papers can also be submitted before 31 October
2009. Session proposals must include an abstract introducing the
rationale of the session, the name of the session chair(s), and the
abstracts of the individual contributions (can be submitted individually
if relevance to the session is mentioned). Alternative innovative formats
are welcome in coordination with the conference organisers.
Conference organisers are undertaking all efforts to ensure funding
to reimburse travel costs and participation fees of presenters coming
from non-OECD countries and of young researchers.
3 Conference Website
www.isee2010.org
4 Conference Venue
The 11^th ISEE Conference will be organised in the adjacent cities
of Oldenburg and Bremen in Northwestern Germany. Both hosts, Bremen
and Oldenburg University have a strong record in ecological economic
research and teaching and are centres of interdisciplinary environmental
and sustainability research with a strong focus on social science and
economic dimensions of sustainability problems.
The conference will have different formats including full plenaries
for all participants, semi-plenaries with keynote speeches held in parallel
and different formats of parallel sessions, including a discussion
session for innovative ideas or short project outlines. In addition,
a poster session will be organised with short presentations of poster
presenters.
Prior to the conference, a number of pre-conference events like workshops,
regional chapter meetings, book authors meetings and alike will be scheduled
on Friday and Saturday 20 -21 August 2010. The
official conference will start on Sunday 22 August in the afternoon
with an inauguration ceremony and a reception. It will continue with
the scientific sessions on Monday to Wednesday (23 -- 25 August 2010).
The conference dinner is scheduled for 24 August 2010 to be held in
Bremen.
5 Executive Committee
* Professor Klaus Eisenack, Oldenburg University
* Dr. Katharine Farrell, Autonomous University of Barcelona
* Professor Michael Flitner, Bremen University
* Professor John Gowdy, Rennselear Polytechnic Institute, ISEE President
elect
* Dr. Pushpam Kumar, University of Liverpool
* Dr. Felix Rauschmayer, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
Leipzig
* Professor Peter May, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, ISEE
President
* Dr. Inge Røpke, Technical University of Denmark
* Professor Bernd Siebenhüner, Oldenburg University (Chair)
6 Partners & Sponsors (preliminary)
* European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE)
* Earth System Governance Project, a Core Project of the International
Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP)
* German Association for Ecological-Economic Research (Vereinigung für
ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung, VÖW)
* German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
* German Association for Ecological Economics (Vereinigung für
Ökologische Ökonomie, VÖÖ)
* German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF)
* The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) Programme
--
Prof. Dr. Bernd Siebenhuener
Ecological Economics
School of Computing Science, Business Administration, Economics and
Law
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
26111 Oldenburg
GERMANY
phone: ++49/441/798-4366
fax: ++49/441/798-4379
Email: bernd.siebenhuener@uni-oldenburg.de
URL: www.uni-oldenburg.de/ecoeco |