The USSEE is excited to announce the launch of our 2021 Webinar Series: The Post-Covid Economy: Centering Justice, Sustaining Ecosystems.
Our first event in this series is titled Fundamentals of Ecological Economics in Today’s World, and will be held Thursday January 28th at 3pm EST by speakers Phil Warsaw and Regina Ostergaard-Klem.
Follow the Eventbrite Link here for more details, and to register for this free event!
Abstract: This webinar will provide a primer on Ecological Economics, with a focus on the foundations of the discipline related to environmental justice, and sustaining ecosystems that are becoming even more apparent and relevant in today’s world. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting fallout have shone light on the ongoing disparities economic, health, social and ecological crises, their unevenness among multiple social lines, and the inability of a perpetual growth economy in remediating these crises. This inadequacy calls for the biophysical limits of the planet while centering equity in economic systems, which is at the core of Ecological Economics. This seminar will both cover the fundamentals of Ecological Economics and outline what an ecological economic response to COVID-19 might look like. The event will consist of approximately 40 minutes of presentation, followed by 20 minutes of open discussion.
Speaker Bios:
Dr. Ostergaard-Klem is an associate professor of environmental science in the College of Natural and Computational Sciences at Hawai’i Pacific University. Her research focuses on the design, development, and roll out of the Genuine Progress Indicator for the state of Hawaii as a supplemental indicator to gross state product and exploring the role of ecological economics in developing sustainability competencies in undergraduate and graduate students.
Dr. Warsaw is an Assistant Professor of Ecological Economics and Environmental Justice in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University. Broadly, his research takes an interdisciplinary approach to questions of environmental justice, economic development, and sustainability, combining approaches from economics and the other social sciences, such as the use of critical theory.
Building Resilient Economies in a Time of Uncertainty
April 16, 2021
The United States Society for Ecological Economics (USSEE) announces a call for abstracts for our first virtual poster conference on the theme, “Building Resilient Economies in a Time of Uncertainty”. The conference aims to highlight the multiple uncertainties of our time, including the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental and racial injustice, unprecedented wildfires, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and ongoing impacts of climate change. The objective of the conference is to provide students with an opportunity to present their work and receive feedback from members of the ecological economics community.
We welcome abstracts from undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers that explore themes related to ecological economics within the context or at the intersection of one of the following contemporary sub-themes:
Climate and energy
Ecosystem services, measurement, and valuation
Environmental justice, racial equity, and Indigenous issues
Natural capital, governance, management, and policy
Scale, ecological limits, and degrowth
Abstracts should include the following information
Presenting author’s name, affiliation, and e-mail address
Presenter category (i.e., undergraduate, Master’s, or PhD student, postdoctoral)
Title of the poster presentation
Body of the Abstract up to 300 words, including Background, Research Question, and Methods, in which the objective of the study and the methods are described; and Results and Conclusions, in which results of the study and their implications are discussed.
To submit an abstract, complete the Abstract Submission Form. Abstracts will be accepted through January 31, 2021, and notifications of acceptance will be provided by February 12, 2021, along with instructions for submission of the poster (as a PowerPoint presentation file) and a brief recorded audio presentation of no more than five minutes. The deadline for submission of posters will be Friday, April 2. All presenters must be registered as members of USSEE by the time of submission of posters. To become a member of USSEE and the International Society for Ecological Economics, see this link. Note that students can become a member for an annual membership fee of only $15.
The conference will take place on Friday, April 16, 3:00 – 5:00pm Eastern time, and will include facilitated breakout sessions according to conference sub-themes. We hope that you will submit your Abstractand join USSEE today!
A special issue, Sustainable Economic Development, will be published in the journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). The special issue focuses on the rationale for human behavioral change to establish sustainable economic development and invites papers from social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. The themes of focus in this issue (see below) are dominated by questions that, in being answered, may provide the catalyst to drive behavioral change through fostering understanding. Other related themes are encouraged. If you have questions, please email m.venkatesan@northeastern.edu.
Special Issue Themes:
Why is sustainability an important objective?
How does culture affect economic systems and what impact does an economic system, in turn, have on culture?
Why has a single economic framework dominated the definition of progress?
How can an alternative indicator of progress be implemented?
What is the purpose of an economic system?
How can sustainability be presented as a universal human value?
What are the most significant impediments to achieving a sustainability focus when it comes to
economic progress?
How can we engage stakeholders to promote sustainability values?
The manuscript submission deadline is: 15 March 2021.
We hope that you will consider contributing to this special issue! Please circulate this call among your colleagues or interested parties you may know.
Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050, IF 2.576) is an international, cross-disciplinary, scholarly and open access journal of environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings. Which is indexed by the Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index, please see http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/indexing/. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers. Please visit the journal’s website at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/ for the journal’s aims and scope, instructions for authors, editorial board members and other details.
Join the winning author Bathsheba Demuth for a virtual book club event
The Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont (UVM), in partnership with the U.S. Society of Ecological Economics, today announced the inaugural winner of the Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics.
The prize, which celebrates outstanding writing on the environmental limits of a finite planet, is awarded to the book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth of Brown University.
Floating Coast is the first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters between Russia and Canada, exploring the relationship between capitalism, communism, Arctic ecology, and indigenous peoples over 200 years.
“Floating Coast was the unanimous choice of our judges because it brings the core principles of Ecological Economics to life through an important, timely subject and vivid, compelling writing,” said Taylor Ricketts, Director of the Gund Institute for Environment. “This fine historyof the Arctic, one of our most imperiled environments, is a perfectselection for the inaugural Zencey Prize.”
Named after pioneering scholar Eric Zencey (1954-2019), the Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics was created in 2018 to recognize the best current affairs book or long-form journalism that advances public understanding of real-world environmental challenges using the principles of ecological economics, a field that explores the relationship between economics and Earth’s limited natural resources.
“Eric Zencey was a model of how to bring complex, important environmental concerns to a wide audience,” said Bathsheba Demuth, an environmental historian who lived with indigenous people in the region, and drew from archival sources, while writing Floating Coast. “It is humbling and inspiring to be awarded this prize in his memory, and I hope to carry on his tradition.”
Demuth is an Assistant Professor of History & Environment and Society at Brown University and a Fellow of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, specializing in the United States and Russia, and in the history of energy and past climates. She has lived in and studied Arctic communities across Europe, Asia and North America.
A virtual award ceremony and public book club event with Bathsheba Demuth will be co-presented by UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and the U.S. Society of Ecological Economics on March 10 from 1-2:30 pm Eastern. Register for the Zoom event.
The Zencey Prize includes a $4,000 prize, which is expected to grow over time through philanthropy.
Runners up include:
A Finer Future: Creating an Economy in Service to Life by L. Hunter Lovins, Stewart Wallis, Anders Wijkman, and John Fullerton, investigates the gravity of global ecological economic challenges, while maintaining hope for the future.
Ecological Footprint: Managing our Biocapacity Budgetby Mathis Wackernagel and Bert Beyers, explores the ecological footprint, a metric used by the ecological economics community to measure the biological capacity of Earth.
The Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics is awarded every two years. The next call for submissions will be announced in Fall 2021.
As a writer, thinker, teacher, and public intellectual, Eric Zencey (1954-2019) worked to bring ecological economics – a system for understanding the political, economic, social, and environmental challenges facing our civilization – out of the academy. The Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics honors that work and encourages others to continue it.
Born in Delaware and holding a PhD in political philosophy and the history of science, Zencey made substantial contributions to understanding the biophysical foundations of the economy during his career at the University of Vermont and Washington University in St. Louis. He believed that infinite economic growth is impossible on a finite planet, because the laws of thermodynamics apply to economic systems.
Zencey is author of four books, including The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy (UPNE); Greening Vermont: Towards a Sustainable State (with Elizabeth Courtney); and Virgin Forest (U of Georgia Press), a collection of essays on history, ecology, and culture. His first book was the internationally best-selling novel and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Panama. His writing has appeared in media outlets ranging from The New York Timesand the Chronicle of Higher Education to Adbusters.
Zencey has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller-Bellagio Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
In Vermont and Missouri, Zencey has been a pioneer in the compilation of and advocacy for the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a more comprehensive measure of economic, social, and environmental health than GDP. His efforts led directly to Vermont becoming one of the first states in the nation to adopt GPI measurement.
Zencey’s affiliations at UVM included the Gund Institute, the Political Science Dept., the Honors College, the Center for Research on Vermont, and the Center for Rural Studies. At Washington University, his appointments included teaching and research positions in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Sam Fox School for Design and Visual Art. Zencey also served as chair of the online history department at SUNY Empire State College, and taught in the college’s international programs, chiefly in Prague.
The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) at York University, Toronto, invites highly qualified candidates to apply for a tenure-track professorial stream position in Ecological Economics at the rank of Assistant Professor, to commence July 1, 2021. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval.
A PhD in a relevant field is required, as is the ability to bridge different disciplines and/or knowledge systems in addressing real-world problems that link ecology and economics. We encourage candidates from Indigenous, racialized, and marginalized communities to apply.
We are seeking outstanding candidates to contribute to the Faculty’s long tradition of applied expertise in ecological economics. In addition to specialization in ecological economics, expertise in one or more of the following areas is preferred: social-ecological systems and economics; biophysical economics; environmental and/or climate justice; nature-based solutions and approaches to climate change; systems theory, modelling and practice; degrowth economics; feminist ecological economics; sustainability assessment and resource accounting; non-Western and decolonizing approaches to ecological economics; the ecological footprint; participatory methods in ecological economics; commons; care economies; community-based green economies; non-market valuation; ecologically unequal exchange; equity and innovation in ecological economics. The successful candidate will be competent in the application of quantitative and/or qualitative research methods in ecological economics.
The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) at York University explicitly addresses the distinct yet interconnected challenges of environmental change and urbanization, with a focus on innovating diverse transitions to a sustainable and just future. EUC champions interdisciplinarity through curricular programs and scholarship; emphasizes field-based and experiential learning to enhance understanding of biophysical processes and social potentials; embraces global perspectives so that this understanding is derived from a broad range of places; and pursues community-engaged endeavours to generate meaningful scholarship and to train active citizens, innovators and leaders. As a community, we believe that making positive change requires bold and diverse thinking, ambitious action, and community engagement. We are inclusive and devoted to making the world a better place for all. EUC is currently home to five undergraduate programs leading to BES, BA and BSc degrees, Master’s programs in Environmental Studies (MES and MES/JD), Geography (MA and MSc), and Planning (MES); doctoral programs in Environmental Studies (PhD) and Geography (PhD); as well as a number of undergraduate certificates and graduate diplomas. See https://EUC.YorkU.ca/programs/ .
York University champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Through cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design, diverse experiential learning and a supportive community environment, our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni.
York University has a policy on Accommodation in Employment for Persons with Disabilities and is committed to working towards a barrier-free workplace and to expanding the accessibility of the workplace to persons with disabilities. Candidates who require accommodation during the selection process are invited to contact Professor Alice Hovorka, Dean of the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, at EUCDean@YorkU.ca.
York University is an Affirmative Action (AA) employer and strongly values diversity, including gender and sexual diversity, within its community. The AA Program applies to women, members of visible minorities (members of racialized groups), Aboriginal (Indigenous) people and persons with disabilities. Applicants are encouraged to self-identify in all categories that are applicable. The AA program can be found at http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/ or by calling the AA line at 416-736-5713. Applicants wishing to self-identify as part of York University’s Affirmative Action program can do so by downloading, completing and submitting the form found at: http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/affirmative-action/self-identification-form/. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens, permanent residents and Indigenous peoples in Canada will be given priority. No application will be considered without a completed mandatory Work Status Declaration form which can be found at http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/affirmative-action/work-authorization-form.
We invite suitable candidates to submit the following:
1. a cover letter outlining your qualifications for the position as described above;
2. a curriculum vitae;
3. a maximum two-page document describing your short and long-term research interests;
4. sample publications (a maximum of two);
5. a one-page statement describing your teaching philosophy, a list of possible courses in our curriculum that you could teach, and additional teaching interests;
6. the contact information for at least three referees with knowledge of your work and/or recognized expertise (at least two of the references must be academic). Letters of reference will be solicited by the Search Committee for long-listed candidates and should not be sent with the initial application.
Materials should be sent electronically to the email address below by 7 January 2021.
Lisa Dennis
Secretary to the Ecological Economics Hiring Committee
Video recordings are available for the global on-line symposium of the International Degrowth Network and the International Society for Ecological Economics on the theme of “Economy and Livelihoods after Covid-19” held September 1st-5th, 2020. Each day has one video (about 4-5 hours in length) containing all sessions for that day.
Day 1: Tuesday 1st September
Session 1: On the possible alliance between degrowth and ecological economics: Would an alliance between ecological economics and degrowth help both communities achieve their shared goals for a better future, post COVID-19? If yes, how do we strengthen it?
Introduction: Rationale of the roundtable by Joshua Farley and Federico Demaria
Speakers: Ecological economics: Bina Agarwal (Confirmed), Julia Steinberger (Confirmed) and Emanuele Campiglio (TBC). Degrowth (Confirmed): Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Ksenija Hanacek, Matthias Schmelzer.
Session 2: Gender, livelihood and the impact of Covid: This session is organized by the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA). It contains intersectional feminist reflections on Covid-19 and the politics of social reproduction, the Care Income, and the politics of care and commons in a context of ecological crisis. After a brief introduction to FaDA by Corinna Dengler, who hosts this session alongside Katy Wiese, we are looking forward to mini-inputs (7-10 minutes) by:
Anna Saave on the pandemic as an opening for a care-full radical transformation;
Manuela Zechner on the politics of care and commons in a context of ecological crisis.
Following these inputs, there will be time to discuss the question how care can be organized in a degrowth society that strives for both intersectional gender and environmental justice first amongst the panelists and later on with the audience.
Session 3: Post COVID-19 challenges and options for green recovery in sub Saharan Africa: Rashid Hassan, 2020 Boulding Prize Winner
Day 2: Wednesday September 2nd
Sessions 4 and 5: Indigenous and Black communities and the impact of Covid: This session will be drawn from members of indigenous and black communities. Themes will include: consideration of the impact of Covid, environmental injustices and the new authoritarianism on black and indigenous communities; perspectives on creating and strengthening social and economic alternatives.
Session 4 Confirmed speakers:
Ailton Krenak (Brazil)
Felipe Milanez (Brazil)
Yanet Carhuajulca (Perú)
Translators: Roldan Muradia (Venezuela/USA) and Peter may (USA)
Moderator: Tamara Goddard ( Saulteaux [pronounced Soto] First Nation, western Canada)
Session 5 Confirmed speakers:
Manuel May (Mexico)
Annie Moon (Navajo Nation, USA)
Kevin Williams (Black American, USA)
Josefina Skerk (Sami/Swedish)
Moderator: Tamara Goddard (Saulteaux First Nation, western Canada)
Day 3: Thursday September 3rd
Session 6: Class, livelihoods and alternative production: This session will consider the impact of Covid and an ecological economy after Covid through class and livelihood. It will draw on movements by labour to shift to alternative systems of production. How can production be redirected in more democratic ways to meet human needs? It will draw on the experience of the Lucas Plan, applying the lessons to the present context, and of the occupied factory in Milan, RiMaflow
Confirmed speakers:
Hilary Wainwright (editor of Red Pepper)
Phil Asquith (Lucas Workers Combine)
Mick Cooney (Lucas Workers Combine)
Luca Federici (RiMaflow)
Mario Pansera (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Moderator: Maeve Cohen (Rethinking Economics, UK
Session 7: Reflections: Making change happen: This session will reflect on the week’s colloquium discussions. The panel will be drawn from authors of recent books on degrowth and ecological economics. Themes might include: strategies and policies; incumbent interests and power; political mobilisation; responding to the new authoritarianism; social movements.
Confirmed speakers:
Vincent Liegey (France/Hungary)
Susan Paulson (USA)
Neera Singh
Bathsheba Demuth (USA)
Rajeswari Raina (India)
Moderators: Mark Burton (UK) and Valeria Andreoni (Italy/UK)
Session 7a: A special intervention: Stuart Scott (USA), introduced by Clóvis Cvalcanti (Brazil)
Criminal Indictment of the Meme of Money & Growth Economics for the Destruction of Humanity & Nature
Day 4: Friday September 4th
Interventions from the Arts Session 8: Decentralising Political Economies: Decentralizing Political Economies is an open-source research platform launching in September 2020. Set up as a long-term collaboration between The City Lab at Liverpool John Moores University, the Whitworth Art Gallery and The Association of Arte Útil, it explores the idea of usership in art through the implementation of real-world 1:1 scale projects in which artworks are themselves open-ended and functioning projects in the real world.
This session will introduce notions of ‘usership’ and the ‘constituent-led’ in art and art institutions. In discussion with artist Owen Griffiths, whose recent projects include a community growing garden, the session will consider alternative modes of ownership and rethinking livelihood in the context of civic space and urban landscapes.
Speakers:
Poppy Bowers (The Whitworth, The University of Manchester)
John Byrne (Liverpool John Moores University, School of Art and Design/City Lab)
Session 9: Art and Degrowth. Reflecting on DegrowthFest, a community art exploration: From 14-16th August, art installations and happenings emerged throughout the Old North End neighbourhood of Burlington, Vermont. Through these art pieces, community members explored what crises reveal, and what we want to bring forward toward desirable futures and leave behind along the way. Many contributions also engaged with degrowth as a concept and movement. They are all available in a virtual gallery, for which we are seeking more contributions.
In this session, some of DegrowthFest’s organizers will reflect on the event and open space to discuss community art projects as a way to learn together about degrowth and other important ideas for transformation.
Participants, all from DegrowBTV, Vermont, USA:
Meg Egler
Sam Bliss
Kristian Brevik
Lindsay Barbieri (to be confirmed)
Session 10: Altamira 2042: Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha will introduce an on-line showing of Altamira 2042. She will lead a discussion following the showing. Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha is an actress, director and researcher. For the past 5 years, she has developed the ”Riverbank Project”, about rivers, buiúnas and fireflies, an art research dedicated to listening and amplifying the testimony of Brazilian rivers that are living an experience of catastrophe. This project was conceived as a response to the Anthropocene, defined here as “the moment when men cease to fear catastrophe to become the catastrophe themselves”.
Altamira 2042 is a performative installation created from the testimony of the Xingu River about the Belo Monte dam. A polyphony of beings, languages, sounds and noises take over the space to open up the audience’s attention to voices that so many try to silence.
Led Speakers and Flash drives become techno-shamanic devices carrying and amplifying both human and non-human voices, heard on the Xingu banks: riverside people, the Araweté indigenous people, the Juruna indigenous people, the city’s attorney, Altamira’s journalists, ambientalists, rappers, artists, city sounds, and also the Forest, the animals, the rain and the Xingu River itself. The performance contains nudity.
Overview: Solving complex environmental problems requires extensive discussions and studies conducted by researchers from diverse disciplines including the natural and social sciences. Solutions to these environmental challenges usually depend on conceptual models of how these systems are linked and the essential processes within them, also known as coupled-human natural systems or socio-ecological systems. As an ecologist with The Water Institute of the Gulf, Dr. Baustian has learned to work with social scientists to study the complex linkages between these systems and to develop modeling tools that represent the essential processes within them. This webinar will provide insights on how collaborations can be most effective between natural and social scientists, providing examples from the speaker’s past and current research projects.
Speaker Bio: Melissa M. Baustian, Ph.D. is a Coastal Ecologist with The Water Institute of the Gulf. She has more than 15 years of experience in researching the ecological responses of aquatic ecosystems to nutrient enrichment, eutrophication and hypoxia. She has extensive research experience studying the benthic ecology of the low-oxygen area, known as the “Dead Zone”, in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Baustian’s current research is focused on providing technical support in the data collection and development, and application of analyses and ecosystem models to examine nutrient-related dynamics from restoration efforts in Louisiana’s coastal zone. She is also examining climate change related effects on coastal vegetation and ecosystem processes. In addition to being a researcher at the Water Institute, Dr. Baustian is the Director for the RESTORE Act Center of Excellence for Louisiana where she leads the administration of a competitive coastal research grants program. She is also adjunct faculty in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
The International Society for Ecological Economics 2020 conference had origionally been scheduled for September 1-5, 2020 in Manchester, UK as a joint meeting with Degrowth (Europe). The pandemic led to the decision earlier this year to postpone the in-person meeting to July 2021, and instead to host a virtual symposium to be held on the original conference date in September titled “Economy and Livelihoods After Covid-19”.
Newly elected board member terms will begin immediately, joining current board members Robert Richardson (President), John Sorrentino (Secretary Treasurer), Regina Ostergaard-Klem (Member at Large), and Susan Santone (Member at Large)
The board also extends our thanks and gratitude to outgoing members Jim Kahn (Past-President), Georgia Mavrommati (Member at Large), Andrew Gerard (Graduate Student Representative), and Emma Rice (Undergraduate Student Representative).
The United States Society for Ecological Economics seeks to advance a just and sustainable society. Recent events have demonstrated once again that structural racism persists in our national economy and throughout our society, and it remains a barrier to the just and sustainable society we seek. Furthermore, longstanding institutional racism and inequality have been exposed and laid bare during the covid-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected communities of color. To that end, USSEE stands in solidarity with protesters in cities and towns across this nation, and we support the Black Lives Matter movement. We choose to align our organization with partners and friends in ways that serve and support humanity, particularly those communities that have been further marginalized or harmed by recent events. As a professional society, we seek to understand our world and better human lives, and we are committed to advancing economic, social, and environmental justice for all communities.
Transforming the Economy for a Just and Sustainable World
