Subject: Conference Announcement: US Society for Ecological Economics Conference - Creating Sustainability within Our Midst: Challenge for the 21st Century, New York City, June 23-27, 2007
Posting Date: 3/6/07
The 4th biennial conference of the United States Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) will take place in downtown Manhattan on the campus of Pace University. Partnering with Pace's Institute for Environmental and Regional Studies as a co-sponsor, the conference will offer a variety of themes and special symposia featuring our collective interests as well as regional issues and amenities. The overall theme is “How to achieve sustainability in society?” which is perhaps the most pressing issue of our time.
We welcome co-sponsorship of sessions, and particularly we wish to reach out to ecological, economic, and other professional societies as well as appropriate NGOs. Thus far our co-sponsors include the New York Academy of Sciences Environmental Division, the American Fisheries Society, the Ecological Society of America, the Estuarine Research Federation, Sustainable Hudson Valley, Hudson River Estuary Program, and the United Nations Environment Program.
We also welcome partnering with organizations that share our interests and vision for a sustainable future. We seek financial support in order that we can make the conference as vibrant as possible and so as to help those with limited resources to attend.
Plenary speakers: To date these include Eban Goodstein (Focus the Nation), David Orr (Oberlin College), Mathis Wackernagel (Global Footprint Network), and Robert Costanza (The Gund Institute, University of Vermont). We are also inviting several notables, including Robert Kennedy Jr., New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former Vice President Al Gore.
The conference venue at Pace University is in the heart of downtown New York City, near Chinatown, South Street Seaport, and the financial district. We are organizing events and symposia to take advantage of the regional amenities.
Sessions/symposia: there are 20 planned symposia, discussion groups, and workshops, as well as many contributed sessions. These will cover a wide range of topics, including valuation of ecosystem services, climate change economics, green roofs and green buildings, sustainable development in the Hudson Valley, Hudson River estuary health, sustainable cities, education for sustainability, energy, fisheries, globalization impacts on health care, ecological economics and ecofeminisim, and financial accounting for social and ecological sustainability, among others.
The contributed paper sessions will cover a range of topics, including:
1. Applying ecological economics — successes and challenges
2. Climate change
3. Ecological economics of biodiversity
4. Ecological economics of renewable resources (fisheries, forestry)
5. Education in ecological economics and sustainability
6. Energy
7. Green entrepreneurship
8. Greening the building industry (green buildings, addressing sprawl)
9. Population concerns
10. Regional studies of sustainable development
11. Tradable emissions
12. Scale issues
13. Tragedy of the commons
14. Valuation — methods and issues
15. Other
We anticipate approximately 100 – 125 contributed papers and another 40 – 50 papers within the symposia.
Who We Are:
Ecological economics is a transdisciplinary field of inquiry that facilitates understanding between economists, ecologists and many others interested in real solutions to environmental problems and the integration of new ideas to create a sustainable world. It includes a pre-analytic vision of the economy as a part of the relevant whole, i.e. planet Earth; further, ecological economics recognizes that Earth is a materially finite system. Consequently the field addresses the optimal scale of the economy, efficiency in the allocation of resources (especially ecosystem goods and services), and the equitable distribution of this resource flow.
The U.S. Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) was founded in the spring of 2000 and currently has about 350 members nationwide. These members represent academia, government agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, grassroots organizations, elected government officials and concerned individuals. The USSEE provides a venue for a holistic and strong community of ecological economists, social and natural scientists, and people who care for the well-being of this planet and its inhabitants so as to allow this diverse membership to easily communicate with and learn from each other on a regular basis. We believe this will better enable members of the USSEE to develop solutions to our most pressing economic, social and environmental problems. We present conferences in years that alternate with the International SEE (the parent society), on exciting and timely themes.
Visit our website: www.ussee.org