EnvJustice

By Amanda Blank

The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) is holding its biannual conference in Reykjavik 13-15 August 2014. EJOLT members will present papers and other presentations, including the Map of Environmental Conflicts. The deadline for submitting paper and poster abstracts is December 1, 2013. The conference’s overall aim is to examine how to “achieve wellbeing and equity within planetary boundaries.” To achieve this aim, the conference will concentrate on three themes that directly relate to the focal topic.

1) Planetary boundaries and resource constraints: examine how resources and the environment constrain the scale of the world economy and how natural resources and the environment need to be managed to support enhanced wellbeing. Particular focus will be given to the Arctic, ecosystem services, and stewardship of the commons in this context.

2) Equity and economic development dynamics: international inequity and inequity within countries and their environmental implications will be discussed. How can economic development be redirected to address the interlinkage of inequity and environmental overuse and destruction? This theme also includes resource transfers between countries and degrowth.

3) A great transition ahead?: There is a widening discussion within both the academic and policy literature about the necessity for, probabilities of, and blockages to a great transition to a more sustainable global economic order. Some refer to conditions that threaten the industrial age (e.g. peak oil) and even the capitalist system as we know it, while others refer to accelerated innovations that will enable capitalist modes of sustainable production and consumption for 9 billion people within planetary boundaries. A growing interest in long-wave theory and socio-metabolic transformation has emerged in the academic and popular literature. This theme focuses on these debates and trends.