Ulf Narloch from the Department of Land Economy at Cambridge University is currently working for his PhD as part of Bioversity International’s program on payment for agrobiodiversity conservation services (PACS). Taking into account the many contributions to the 11th ISEE conference, there appear to be three main lessons for further work on payment for ecosystem services (PES) and on-farm conservation of agrobiodiversity, which could significantly contribute to advancing sustainability i...   read more >>

Peter Söderbaumis a professor emeritus of ecologica economics at Mälardalen University, Västerås Sweden. He is member of the editorial committee of Ecological Economics. His latest book is 'Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics' One of my observations from this conference with the International Society for Ecological Economics is that many PhD-students and young researchers were present. They understand the seriousness of the problems faced where a busine...   read more >>

Peter H. May is past president of the International Society for Ecological Economics (2008–2009), professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and associate director of Friends of the Earth – Brazilian Amazon Does Ecological Economics have the ability to cope with short term crises of the capitalist economy, if we are primarily concerned with long-term cumulative phenomena, coevolutionary responses both by nature and institutions? A key area for our work on mac...   read more >>

Diego I. Murguía (Argentina), MSc. Sustainable Resource Management Candidate, Technische Universität München Early from the beginning of the ISEE 2010 conference, the Yasuni-ITT initiative was in my priority list among the sessions as it is at the frontier of the sustainability, ecological economics, environmental economics and political ecology debate. This case clearly shows how science is put into practice in a warm battle between economic, ecological and human imperatives and, moreov...   read more >>

Maria Hildur Maack specializes in the non- technical sides of introducing hydrogen as an energy carrier such as socio –economic and environmental research is currently undertaking a PhD and is project manager for Prepare -H2 This was my first time to meet up with ecological economics. Up to now my only encounter with the discipline has been through books and the journal, - more or less since the 1990s. For me, it was the occasion to watch the giants that adhere to the most important thi...   read more >>

Juliet Schor is professor of sociology at Boston College and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. Her most recent book is 'Plenitude: the new economics of true wealth'. She is one of the keynote speakers at the ISEE conference and expands on her speech in this blog post. In my address to the International Society for Ecological Economics I argued that to reduce ecological footprint and solve the unemployment crisis, hours of work should be reduced. This shares the available...   read more >>

The Broker talked to conference participants about their experience at the ISEE conference 'Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis' in Oldenburg and Bremen, Germany, August 2010. What are the outcomes? What inspired them? And, most importantly, how do they envisage the next step in moving towards a more sustainable economy?   read more >>

The International Society for Ecological Economics conference 2010 gathered more than 750 people providing a refreshing view of the academic thinking around ecological economy. Many sub-themes were explored and assessed, from 70 different culture and nationalities point of view, providing a very interesting state-of-art of where the international scientific community is on those issues. But although the theme of the conference was ‘Advanced sustainability in a time ofcrisis’, strangely...   read more >>

The ISEE 2010 Tuesday sessions by Tim Jackson and Juliet Schor hit on the heart of the economic model (accumulation, growth and consumerism) by proposing innovative visions of how to reform capitalism towards human well-being. Before the talk started, I was feeling interested and curious about new visions to overcome the so widely used, controversial and manipulated concept of ‘sustainability’ in search of new notions. However, at the same time, frankly, I was not expecting to listen to...   read more >>

Forget sustainability, for now. First, we have to get through the bottleneck of the 21st century when the human population will peak at nine billion, the earth’s temperature will increase by 3-5 degrees Celcius and a significant portion of the planet’s biological diversity will disappear. “Two of today’s most overused words are ‘sustainability’ and ‘crisis’”, ISEE President John Gowdy said during the opening ceremony of the ISEE conference. As he introduced the overarching theme of the conf...   read more >>

Prof. Bina Agarwal, Director of the Institute of Economic Growth at the Delhi University and president-elect of the ISEE, talks to The Broker on food security, women farmers, and the impacts of climate change at the ISEE conference 'Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis' in Oldenburg and Bremen, Germany, August 2010.   read more >>

ISEE President John Gowdy talks to The Broker about the challenges ahead in the field of ecological economics at the 2010 ISEE conference 'Advancing Sustainability in a Time of Crisis' in Oldenburg and Bremen, Germany, August 2010.   read more >>

Peter Söderbaum is a professor emeritus of ecologica economics at Mälardalen University, Västerås Sweden. He is member of the editorial committee of Ecological Economics. His latest book is 'Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics' Most ecological economists probably agree that we are facing serious environmental and development problems in society and the economy. We also agree that action is needed. The focus of attention is on ecosystem services and deg...   read more >>

Juliet Schor is professor of sociology at Boston College and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream. Her most recent book is Plenitude: the new economics of true wealth. She is one of the keynote speakers at the ISEE conference Despite the lack of policy progress on climate change and ecosystem degradation there is no shortage of solutions currently on offer. While the specifics may differ, those getting most attention share one characteristic—they focus on technological chang...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders A friend wrote recently saying she wasn’t aware of “ecovillages” that had a strong edge between higher density full community and immediately adjacent open space. Since I think the visual image of such an arrangement is so interesting and important, I’ll just record my response here. Thanks for your note and observation. I have seen some regular villages, not self-con...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders If we take up less room there’s room for all of us, including the other animals and the plants of this planet. There are three largest categories of shrinking back to this generosity of living: 1.) heading toward far fewer of us, leaving room for a smaller “all” of us humans, 2.) reducing the scale and impact of our agriculture system and 3.) building our cities, towns...   read more >>

Richard Registeris a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders Sixty years ago it was the American rush to the suburbs financed by the national government of the USA: GI loans, deductible house interest payments at tax time and free, free at last, thank God all mighty free at last freeways. (Actually, the term was coined by Brooklyn, New York lawyer and urban planner Edward Basset in 1930 but coming on strong only during and since t...   read more >>

Marco Witsche is co-initiator of a cross-party collaboration of sustainability committees of 7 Dutch political parties, and president of the working group Energy Transition of the D66 Platform for Sustainable Development. Momentarily we find ourselves on the highway of one economic crisis leading to another. We are busy bandaging our ill economy where a short-term focus determines the vision at the cost of the long-term consequences. You don’t need to be a socialist or liberal to underst...   read more >>

This selection of videos shows participants at the Second International Conference on Degrowth, discussing the idea of sustainable degrowth and their impressions from the conference. The conference took place in Barcelona in March 2010 and was covered by this blog, see earlier postings for more information. Prof Martinez-Alier - Gobal Alliance for Degrowth Prof. David Barkin - Degrowth and Politics Prof. Toledo Manzur - Decrecimiento y Culturas Indigenas...   read more >>

I used to joke about my unusual life, being a sculptor, environmental activist, development politician. I lived in a mountain village in New Mexico at 9,000 feet (back to the land!), in a studio storefront in Venice, alifornia (loved the art scene), at Paolo Soleri’s experimental town, Arcosanti, Arizona (to reshape cities around the world). Enjoyed enough drugs, sex and rock n roll that Bob Dylan could never accuse me of letting someone else get my kicks for me. (Met him, Joan Baez and Jim...   read more >>

I went to a movie the other night and – my mistake – got there on time: I had to sit through ten minutes of ads, plus four reminders to turn your cell phone off, then previews that went on and on. What’s with this relentless over the top violence? Does everything have to be blown up, glass shattered, blood spattered? What about all those violent video games sucking up hundreds of billions of hours of humanity’s time? Couldn’t something more positive, productive, non-violent and creative hol...   read more >>

Some weeks ago on this blog Richard Register asked what we can learn from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? As BP bosses head for talks with Barack Obama today we came across this video which perhaps provides some comic relief in an otherwise depressing situation.   read more >>

CONFERENCE STATEMENT - CLOSING VERSION - UNEDITED Participants of the Third International Conference on Eco-Efficiency, held in Egmond aan de Zee, The Netherlands, June 9-11, 2010, discussed how to ensure that 8 billion people in developed and (former) developing countries can have a good life by 2050. 1. It was stated that two challenges needed to be fulfilled simultaneously. The environmental challenge is that by 2050 the pressure on the environment needs to be diminished with a f...   read more >>

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On Friday afternoon, June 11, participants of the Eco Efficiency Conference went home with a feeling of being deeply inspired and broader informed in their thinking about the complex field of eco-efficiency. They thanked Gjalt Huppes and his team, co-chairs Paul Ekins, Masanobu Ishikawa and Bas de Leeuw, and other active contributors, for their efforts. Many pledged support for continuing the work in some form, including on the internet. The closing discussion revealed a keen interest in...   read more >>

Paul Ekins said an environmental tax reform is necessary to achieve the goals of eco efficiency. He stressed that this would be a tax shift, not a tax increase. His research has shown that six EU countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) have already implemented environmental tax reforms. Economic impacts have been generally positive, effects on industrial competiiveness have been minimal. Energy demand and emissions have been reduced. "The mindset w...   read more >>

Engineers and social scientists need to work together, said Roland Clift in the plenary session on Friday morning, speaking about Sustainable Consumption and Degrowth. Finding common language is difficult. He observed that in the degrowth debate the basic terms have not yet been defined, which he considered a very necessary first step. One has to understand each others' mindsets and then adress specific problems. The Eco Efficiency Conference however adresses very broad issues, inte...   read more >>

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The plenary meeting of the Egmond Conference on Friday morning June 11 included a Compassion Exercise, facilitated by the Avatar Project Team (www.avatar.nl). Participants contributed to 'increasing the amount of compassion for others', and by doing so got a 'personal sense of peace'. They focused on someone in the conference room, a stranger, from a distance, and repeated to them selves with full attention on that person the following thoughts: 1. "Just like me this person...   read more >>

Participants of the Egmond Eco Efficiency Conference reviewed a draft list of research topics - see an earlier blog post on this topic - and highlighted a few priorities, such as: - consumer behaviour; is the 'no pain no change' slogan really true? Can consumers only be forced to behavioral changes, for instance by feeling 'pain' in their wallet? - is it possible to estimate the potential for eco-innovation, or should the term as such first be better defined? - how to measure welfa...   read more >>

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Lively debates in the Egmond Eco Efficiency Conference in Thursday afternoon's plenary discussion. One of the hot potatoes was the rebound effect, seen as a depressing topic by many, or just talking common sense by others. What's the Problem? How to prevent that gains from eco-efficiency - which are often apart from environmental also monetary, - are used by the consumer to happily and with a clear conscience buy more of the same product or to buy other (and possibly more polluting) pro...   read more >>

Rebound effects and growth have been leading to a failure of the efficiency concept to deliver sustainability. How to overcome the addiction of society to growth? A 12 step method was proposed for a recovery process, including admitting the lock-in, understanding the issue, developing a strategy for change while being explicit of the benefits. A Japanese study indicates that car use and cooking at home needs to be reduced. It was also suggested by the participants of the paralle...   read more >>

The working group observed that relative decoupling has been possible in many countries. Absolute decoupling however yet to be seen on a wide scale. Hopeful signs come from China where good work is being done in eco parks. Chinese paper industry has made significant process as well in water use and traditional pollutants. More international cooperation needed and global incentives on producer responsibility. An idea for setting up a material data library was explored. This datab...   read more >>

The parallel session concluded that meeting efficiency target for transport sector is possible. How? New transportation modes, very light vehicles, fuel efficiency measures .. public policies play a key role: taxation and carbon penalities considered important. As well as changing consumer behavior, convincing them that they can be happy with a small vehicle. Or with no vehicle at all. Key: outreach to industry decision-makers!   read more >>

How to measure eco-efficiency? Read: Static LCA/LCC at micro level: total performance analysis, computational structure, weighting of environmental effects, ISO 207 work. Static assessment at macro level: Eco-factor of Economic Growth. Dynamic assessment: Rebound effects Case study on biofuels showed limits of eco-efficiency approaches. All abstracts are in the conference package, do not hesitate to contact the presenter if you want to know more.   read more >>

Did you know that 85% of food production in developing countries comes from small farms? Scope for efficiency gains! Bigger farms like in Switzerland (dairy) and Spain (cheese, tigernuts) have much to gain as well. 5% effiiciency gain in food sector was said to be possible IF supported by change in consumer behaviour. Too much food is simply wasted, thrown away ..   read more >>

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Participants of the Third International Conference on Eco-Efficiency, held in Egmond aan de Zee, The Netherlands, June 9-11, 2010, discussed how to ensure that 8 billion people in developed and (former) developing countries can have a good life by 2050. 1. It was stated that two challenges needed to be fulfilled simultaneously. The environmental challenge is that by 2050 the pressure on the environment needs to be diminished with a factor 2 to 5 (this means that the environmental stress...   read more >>

Participants discussed the draft statement on Wednesday afternoon. Their comments included: - There should be attention to the implementation challenges of innovation – addressing the obstacles to make it happen, barriers include for instance corporate cultural factors; - Not everybody agreed that eco-innovation would in principle reduce growth; - Not everybody agreed that shifting from work to leisure - or as one participant put it “shifting from paid work to unpaid work” - has s...   read more >>

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1. Technology can do a lot 2. But people need to buy it! 3. Investments needed and a shift away from consumer society. 4. Mindsets need to be changed, but people do not want to be told so. 5. More leisure, less income are interesting thoughts, but if number one indoor leisure activity is 'watching TV' and number one outdoor leisure activity is 'shopping', what will this bring?   read more >>

European Commission says ‘research lacking’ Christian Hudson, DG Environment of the European Commission, said at the Conference that eco-efficiency or resource efficiency is the way to go. A Task Force on the issue has been set this week. Road blocks on the way: lacking research, and an inertia in mindsets at schools of scientific thinking. Integration with fiscal, transport and agricultural policies needed. Lead market approach is the way to go for achie...   read more >>

"The best way to use energy is not to use it" said Gert Jan Kramer, Shell Global Solutions, in the opening session of the Eco-Efficiency Conference. He outlined three 'hard truths', looking at the future until 2050: 1. surge in energy demand 2. supply will struggle to keep up 3. environmental stresses are increasing: not only climate change, and not only for fossil fuels His conclusion: efficiency gains will not do the trick. New? No, Jevons' Paradox said so in ......   read more >>

The Challenge according to Gjalt Huppes as he explained it in the opening session of the Confernce today: 1. We want the good life for 8 billion people by 2050 2. Environmental challenge: by 2050 growth of eco-efficiency with factor 2-5 (means: environmental stress to reduce with 50-80%); 3. Economic challenge: by 2050 4 fold increase of GGP (means: 3.5% p/a, as of now); this is required to eradicate poverty; 4. To meet both environmental and economic/social goals we need to im...   read more >>

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Further Research needed on: 1. Potential for absolute decoupling: how far and how fast to go, can substantial environmental improvements be realised in combination with economic growth? 2. Overall measurement of improvement, with explicit normative weighting of improvement in consumption and production in full supply chains, based on economic analysis and public discussion; 3. Overall impact at macro level of micro level eco-innovation system improvements, and the implication...   read more >>

What will be the challenges for next 50 years? 1. Improving eco-efficiency (environmental pressure per unit of value added/GDP) necessary to cope with increasing affluence and population growth; 2. Reduction of total environmental impact for major environmental stressors required, eg. climate change emissions. 3. Deep improvements in products/technologies eco-efficiency performance needed, on average 3% per year. Balanced ‘win win’ eco innovation not sufficient. Some systems will...   read more >>

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Weblog linked to the Third International Conference on Eco-Efficiency Modelling and Evaluation for Sustainability: Guiding Eco-Innovation and Consumption Gjalt Huppes, Head Department Industrial Ecology CML-IE CML, Institute for Environmental Sciences, Leiden University Global industrialization is coming, with an increasing proportion of the world population leaving poverty. By entering industrialized society the pressures on the environment will further increase. We face the global...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders .....That’s pronounced CAR-cen-taur-OP-olis. While I was living in Lost Angeles in the 1960s, lost in the smog, back when each breath seared your throat and lungs and hot tears rolled down your cheeks under dark mid-day skies, this European journalist came touring through town. He was writing an article about the city of car centaurs, the LA citizens that were half c...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders I was in Korea recently sharing the stage with futurist Jim Dator. He’s head of the Research Center for Future Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Privately he told me he thought signs were very bad, that we probably would not make it, that is, that humanity and the biosphere would undergo catastrophic collapse taking all his futuristic dreams with it. Then...   read more >>

Luke Upchurch works for Consumers International and is attending the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development Prepcom 1. He writes here about the aims of the Green Economy Coalition Let's get one thing straight: the “Green Economy” is not a buzz word, nor a sound bite, nor the nom du jour. It is not a distraction to the discussions on sustainable development – it fundamentally underpins sustainable development. While some may rightly argue that the UN's focus on the Gree...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders Happy Earth Day! Here comes the oil spill! BP’s Deepwater Horizon, state of the art oil drilling platform digging into the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico 5,000 feet below explodes, killed 11 workers, burned into early morning Earth Day April 2010, toppled, sunk and released what may end up as the worst technologically caused natural disaster in American history. Blame...   read more >>

Richard Register is a theorists and author in ecological city design and planning and is President of Ecocity Builders I have noticed that there were few tools offered in my memory of the Degrowth conference for actually bringing in a new economics that embodies degrowth. I followed Joan Martinez-Alier’s links and some of the text of the contents of the publication he mentioned, in an issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production, and it seemed to me, as usual among business people, economi...   read more >>

Giorgos Kallis, ICREA Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Geography, ICTA, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona The end of the conference finds us all exhausted but content. We have been organizing this event for the last year, each Tuesday a team of 10 to 15 dedicated people meeting for hours to think and plan the event to its smallest detail. Organizing an event on such a new topic and creating an effective discussion space for academics from different disciplines, activists and people fr...   read more >>

Gjalt Huppes, Head Department Industrial Ecology CML-IE, CML, Institute for Environmental Sciences, Leiden University We face a number of highly challenging tendencies which require fundamental new approaches to get us on the track of a decent global society. First, the industrial transformation of societies has taken off globally. It is not a matter if but only when and how the majority of the eight or so billion people on earth will participate in it, with global consequences. Next, th...   read more >>

Tom Green, is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia studying ecological economics through the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program On Sunday I join the working group on political strategies. The two dozen people assembled in the courtyard repeatedly return to a big question that begs a satisfactory answer in order to develop viable political strategies for degrowth. Back in the 1970´s, there was a movement to get the industrialized world to recognize ecological l...   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam I have had some trouble visualising what a degrowth future could actually look like. Yesterday Richard Register from the NGO EcoCity Builders, helped me out. The title of the session was ‘making it real. Practical transformations towards degrowth’. ‘Cities are the foundation of the ecological system’ said Richard as he embarked upon a fantastical tour of alternative city images from...   read more >>

Richard Register from Ecocity Builders talks to The Broker about the importance of creating green cities for a degrowth model.   read more >>

David Barkin, Professor of Economics at the Xochimilco Campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in México City, talks with Louise Stoddard about the importance of collective action for well being.   read more >>

Tom Green, is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia studying ecological economics through the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program A group of a dozen of us are engaged in an animated debate, sitting around a table in the historic courtyard of the University of Barcelona, trying to combine hard work and at least some indulgence in this balmy day. We have spent the last twenty minutes struggling to achieve consensus on a half dozen words on our proposal for an income...   read more >>

Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA researcher at ICTA, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona that is hosting the conference. He is an ecological economist with a post-doc from Berkeley and interest on political ecology. What is degrowth? This is a question we often receive these days as organizers of the conference. Not from those who have worked for some years with the idea and have read the works of Latouche, Georgescu-Roegen, Illich, Gorz, Kastoriadis and the like. Or from those who have...   read more >>

Luis Rico Garcia–Amado from Ecologistas en Acción discusses the results of his joint research in the Bolivian Amazon which measured what we can learn from Indigenous people about how the consumption of market goods relates to well being.   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this morning’s poster tour, perhaps an artistic interpretation of research or some beautiful photography of eco systems. After some deliberation I settled on the ‘Degrowth beyond Europe and the West’ tour, which comprised of ten presenters, with both digital and paper posters of varying interest and quality. Not much in the way of creative art, b...   read more >>

Tom Green, is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia studying ecological economics through the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program I´m new at blogging and perhaps its best to learn the ropes at a conference where the discussions don´t quite go so late. On our first day, the last panel wrapped up around 10:00 pm and dinner finished just shy of midnight. Our plenary sessions are taking place in the University of Barcelona´s grand Paranimf auditorium, where we are su...   read more >>

Ellie Perkins of York University talks to Louise Stoddard about the possibilities for greener cities.   read more >>

Frances Roma of Inclusive Democracy talks to Louise Stoddard about the GDP paradox.   read more >>

Jeroen van den Bergh of ICTA/UAB talks to Louise Stoddard at the 2nd Conference on Economic Degrowth, Barcelona, March 2010.   read more >>

Louise Stoddard is the web editor for The Broker and a freelance writer and consultant based in Amsterdam The man sat next to me in the packed conference hall was having trouble tuning in. The first session of the Second Conference on Economic Degrowth had begun and whilst we sat down to discuss de-growth the number of people in the plush wood panelled room was expanding rapidly. It felt more like we were sitting in a church than a university, giant old paintings of royalty and elaborate...   read more >>

Tom Green, is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia studying ecological economics through the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program Only a few hours till the conference begins. I´ve been looking forward to this degrowth conference for months, though not without some trepidation. I cannot embrace the term degrowth enthusiastically—it sounds about as intuitively appealing as undergoing deworming, though in both cases, the end result may be quite desirable. I used to th...   read more >>

Joan Martinez-Alier, Professor of Economics and Economic History at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Could de-growth reduce poverty and avoid climate change? A scientific study coordinated by researchers of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona has recently argued that “The solution both to the economic crisis and to climate change is sustainable economic degrowth”. This is the first major scientific publication in English d...   read more >>