[voew-listserver] Governance and LCA - Call for Papers
- From: Henrik Vagt <hvagt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: voew-listserver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:12:50 +0100
CALL FOR PAPERS
Dear Colleagues,
we kindly invite papers for a common workshop on "Governance and Life
Cycle Analysis. Opportunities for going beyond ISO-LCA", to be held in
Brussels from 27-28 September 2007. Please find attached the Call for
Papers with all necessary information.
Best regards
Henrik Vagt
"GOVERNANCE AND LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS"
Opportunities for going beyond ISO-LCA
Open Workshop within the EU-funded project "CALCAS – Co-ordination
Action for Innovation in Life-Cycle Analysis for Sustainability"
The Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU), Berlin/D, and the
Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Heidelberg & Berlin/D,
in co-operation with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies,
Energy and the Environment (ENEA), Bologna/I, the Institute of
Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden/NL, and UNEP, invite papers for a
common workshop to be held
from 27-28 SEPTEMBER 2007 in BRUSSELS
Scientific experts from the fields of Life Cycle approaches as well as
researchers on governance aspects, policy observers as well as experts
from public policy and administration, especially representatives from
UN, OECD, EU and environment agencies will be brought together at the
meeting. A special focus of the workshop will be to further the
interdisciplinary exchange within these branches of research. We also
invite representatives from civil society (NGOs etc.), business
community, and government.
Aims of the Workshop:
The changing character of environmental challenges during the last
decades is mirrored by a change in the political and institutional
framework conditions. Governance for sustainable development has to cope
with the ongoing depletion of abiotic and especially biotic resources,
the overuse of natural resources (like water and landscape) and
unsustainable emission rates from current consumption and production
patterns.
However, despite some successes in the development and implementation of
environmental policies in many countries, no effective institutions and
steering capacities have evolved so far that internalise non-market
effects or compensate the failure of markets. There is no single actor
able to deal with these challenges. Instead, collective and co-operative
actions of social, economic, financial and political institutions and
organisations are needed to change the present unsustainable pathway.
Politics are taking place on a multitude of different levels and
sectors, the choice of the right regulatory instruments is seldom clear,
numerous stakeholders are involved at all stages of policy making, and
new actors and actor constellations are appearing on the stage. In
brief, policy making has changed, from a hierarchical perspective with
the state as main actor to a more polycentric, multi-stakeholder and
multilevel policy with an increasing importance of societal mechanisms
not directly influenced by policies. In terms of coordination, new
governance may be sketched as a form of network coordination based on
communicative interactions, with each participant reflecting
sustainability considerations to a certain degree. This variant of
coordination is contrasted to horizontal market coordination, or a top
down, rather hierarchical coordination.
During the past years this change in actor constellations has been
accompanied by the emergence of so called “new” instruments in
environmental governance, which can be characterised by a higher level
of discretion for the target groups in contrast to traditional
command-and-control approaches. Examples of such instruments are
economic instruments, framework legislation or a stronger commitment to
self-regulatory models. However, this focus on new instruments with a
higher level of discretion does not necessarily imply a complete
withdrawal of public actors. New modes of governance often take place
“in the shadow of hierarchy”, leaving coercion as a dominant mechanism
intact and thus still allowing public authorities to play a decisive role.
One new direction in discussions about new governance deals with the
role of information generation and transmission and goal-orientation:
“Knowledge for transition” aims to steer industry, agriculture, energy
production, important actor groups (e.g. associations, NGOs), and other
users of environmental resources and ecosystems. Life cycle approaches
can play a dominant role in this regard. Within knowledge based
approaches of governance in general, the generation, transmission and
distribution of knowledge for reducing environmental pressures aims for
decentralised, nevertheless collectively oriented decisions. However,
while the value of knowledge based approaches for new forms of
governance is generally accepted, there exists no general rule to
explain at what point in the policy cycle these tools should be used,
i.e. whether during the process of policy formulation, implementation or
evaluation.
The relation between the broad background of policy development and the
advances in LCA is considered from different points within the workshop:
- To what extent are political or societal goals and objectives
considered within LCA?
- Are new and persistent environmental problems taken into account?
- To what extent are approaches for LCA providing the necessary
knowledge base for governmental and societal actors to align their
decisions according to the requirements of sustainable development?
The workshop will put special emphasis on learning from international
experiences like case-studies, empirical findings or evaluations. We
especially encourage scientists from outside Europe to participate in
the meeting and to develop new questions based on their own research or
problems in their respective countries.
A thematic focus will be laid on the development of sustainable waste
management and recycling plans and the role of LCA. Researchers dealing
with these aspects are especially invited to share their insights at the
workshop.
On the background of these challenges, we aim to organise the discussion
of the workshop along three different topics:
1. Inputs of policies and institutions for the construction of LCA
Future development of LCA and other assessment tools cannot be separated
from important – primary environmental – goal settings, provided by
variables and indicators of e.g. international, European or national
environmental policies or the respective more comprehensive sustainable
development strategies. From these overall strategy processes,
indicators and objectives have to be derived for LCA to make a relevant
contribution for the implementation of sustainable development. Even if
the outcome may be that the micro level questions are essential in the
end, the meso and macro level questions may bring focus to the relevance
of the micro level, and may help shape micro level questions.
This first topic will deal with questions like:
- Are there any existing (scientific) studies or experiences relating to
sustainability goal-orientation and LCA? Which research projects could
be identified in order to analyse conditions for goal implementation on
the micro level of LCA?
- Which criteria should be used for the selection of international or
national Sustainable Development Strategies in order to give inputs to
LCA development? How can contradictory goals be dealt with in LCA-findings?
- How are mandatory or voluntary environmental objectives dealt with in
LCA-studies?
- Is it important to focus on the most important branches and industries
or on dirty industries in the case of integrating sustainability goals?
- Are there possibilities to develop a broader Life Cycle Thinking,
backed up by life cycle modelling?
2. Pressures from persistent environmental problems for the construction
of LCA
Environmental Policies have succeeded in solving a number of
environmental problems during the past decades. However, there remains a
considerable amount of increasingly relevant problems that seem to be
particularly hard to manage and thus “persistent”, such as the loss of
biodiversity, climate change coming along with the overuse of natural
resources, or the ongoing use of dangerous chemical substances. Finding
solutions for them is not only constrained by technical circumstances.
The persistent character of these problems is furthermore determined on
a socio-economic dimension: the problem’s public perception is often
weak, its origin not clear and technical or marketable (“win-win”)
solutions are not available. Additionally, some industrial sectors
simply rely on an extensive use of the environment as a basis for their
production.
This second topic will deal with questions like:
- How can persistent environmental problems be properly incorporated in
the methodology of LCA?
- How and where can LCA be utilised in the value chain in order to
obtain the desired results, i.e. making material flows cleaner and more
sustainable? Are knowledge based instruments like LCA at all suitable to
solve persistent problems with their complex socio-economic background?
- Which inputs can be derived from other related research strands like
the environmental flows debate or integrated chain management?
The role of LCA in the context of these socio-economic aspects of
persistent problems has yet to be clarified. In relation to Topic 3
(below) the crucial question for governance remains how to deal with the
different results generated by LCA. The trading off of different
sustainability issues and the discussions between proponents of weak or
strong sustainability must be kept in mind when dealing with LCA. LCA
may be able to provide the necessary information for dealing with
environmental issues, but any decision how to adopt these results and to
apply LCA where necessary will be left to the relevant actors in
governance for sustainability.
3. Analyses of LCA as a knowledge base for sustainable governance
Life-Cycle Assessment can play a double role in the observed changing of
governance patterns: LCA “stands” for a new type of knowledge generation
and communication; it becomes a tool forming the scientific basis for
public decision making. However, LCA possesses the “risks” of
uncertainty, of methodological pluralism and of missing acceptance due
to “open” scientific processes. In addition to that LCA also supports
the active role of stakeholders, business and society within their
contexts of decision-making.
This third topic will deal with questions like
- To what extent and how can LCA contribute to new forms of governance
(as summarised in the previous sections) and to a better and leaner
regulation?
- Which experiences exist with regard to LCA as an information
generating tool in policy formulation? Could LCA provide public decision
makers with better information during policy implementation? Is LCA used
as a tool for policy revision and reformulation?
- Which experiences exist about direct or indirect incentives by policy
about the application of LCA within business and society?
Abstracts dealing with this third topic should be based on conceptual
and/or theoretical insights or based on empirical findings in areas like
environmental-oriented product policy, the regulation of hazardous
substances, waste management or resource management.
Documentation and expected results of the Workshop:
We are aiming to publish the most relevant papers in a special issue of
a major international journal.
How to participate:
The workshop will be held in English. Please send your paper proposals
by e-mail to hvagt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The e-mail should contain
(1) the title of the proposed paper or presentation,
(2) the abstract of max. 1 page A4, Arial 10 single-spaced (i.e. around
500-600 words – longer abstracts will be rejected. No graphs,
references, tables etc. in the abstract, please),
(3) the complete address and professional affiliation of all (co)-author(s).
The deadline for proposals is 1 MAY 2007. All submissions will be peer
reviewed by a group of experts from the scientific field. Notification
of the decision will be sent by e-mail no later than 1 JUNE 2007. Full
papers/presentations are expected by 10 SEPTEMBER 2007.
Further information about the workshop will be available at
http://www.fu-berlin.de/ffu/calcas
Dr. Frieder Rubik
Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW)
Office Heidelberg
phone: ++49-6221-649160
frieder.rubik@xxxxxxx
Henrik Vagt
Freie Universität Berlin
Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU)
phone: ++49-30-83854490
hvagt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Other related posts:
- » [voew-listserver] Governance and LCA - Call for Papers
