Biennial Conference of Ecological Economists Refines Its
Discipline
H. William Batt
[Reprinted from
GroundSwell, July-August 2007]
As the Ecological Economists approach their twentieth year of
existence, the US association's recent June 23-27, 2007 conference
at Pace University in Manhattan rejoiced in seeing that many
students, and several younger professionals, were educated
specifically in this orientation rather than being converts from
other disciplines. To be sure, the majority of the registrants in
attendance were trained in other conventional disciplines --
economics, biology, physics, mathematics, systems analysis, and even
philosophy. But among the 250 in attendance were perhaps fifty
students, all delighted in feeling themselves at the cusp of
something quite new. They were right to be excited, as several of
the charter members were in attendance as well, those who have
written the textbooks, the readers, and done much of the research
and redefinition on which ecological economics today rests.
Having all the plenary sessions and breakout meetings held in one
place facilitated casual exchanges, even though the university
itself was more preoccupied with offering orientation sessions to
its incoming students. Meetings began promptly at 8:30 am on each of
the four conference days. And people came! -- in some instances
there were no empty seats. Who better to give the opening address
than the renowned scholar from Oberlin College, David Orr, who has
written several books and is widely regarded in the environmental
field. Professor Orr pulled no punches in his first night
presentation: it was heavily political, but extremely well received
by the assembled audience. Against the backdrop of the climate
change news, he talked about the failed leadership of our national
administration, about the default in responsibility by the media,
and about political influence of corporate American power. I'd never
read any of his work, but I certainly now will.
The Monday morning plenary had two speakers. Law professor Eban
Goodstein from Portland Oregon talked about plans to organize
(students especially) next January 31, 2008 in a single national
media and teaching effort on climate change. The website
www.focusthenation.org already lists several major figures who have
agreed to lend their expertise and reputations to the cause of
dramatizing the importance of this challenge. The website video
could have used music that an older generation could tolerate, but
this campaign is, after all, directed to the younger generation that
stands to lose the most if the global warming concerns are ignored.
The second speaker was Mathis Wackernagel, the creator of the "Ecological
Footprint". He had the prior day done an all-day workshop
showing how the ecological footprint can be used as an educational
tool, so his plenary presentation took the longer view: "Twenty
Years after Brundtland: Thinking Inside the Box of Sustainable
Development." For those who may not recall, Norwegian Prime
Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland was the Chairperson of the World
Commission on Environment and Development, the organization which
issued a report in 1987 titled "Our Common Future" and
which quickly made the concept of sustainable development a
household word.
Of particular interest to me was the address of the current
president of the US Society. President Karin Limburg is a faculty
member at the School of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) of
the State University of New York, located in Syracuse. She is
formally trained as a biologist, and specializes in Otolithology,
which I learned (from her website) is the study of earstones in
fish, "the calcereous concretions that serve as part of the
hearing and balance (acoustico-lateralis) system in fishes."
Her research has relied particularly on Hudson River and the Baltic
Sea ecosystems, and resulted in the attendance of several
ichthyologists and others concerned especially with the watershed
areas of the Hudson River. But I didn't learn anything from her
about those things because I was involved in other sessions. Rather
it was her presidential address that interested me. Knowing very
little about biologists and how they get into their specialties, I
was fascinated to learn of the connections she'd made over the years
-- in grad school, in research funded projects, and over the course
of her professional life. Her most important mentors, in fact, were
a Swedish scholar and his wife, demonstrating how much the
scientific community really is a world network. Having recounted a
bit of her own career evolution she talked about how important the
Ecological Economics Association is to her, and how important it is
to increase its size and visibility. Hearing her tell it, as well as
several others, the understanding and integration of economic
studies with the natural systems of the earth is not only
intellectually sound but necessary to our world's continued
existence. Despite the decision to hold the conference in New York
City, and despite the publicity and invitational outreaches made to
all quarters, I was not aware of any reporters or outside observers
there for the duration. That was worrisome.
The Tuesday morning plenary session's lead-off presenter was
Professor Bob Costanza, whose innovative integration of biological
and socio-economic elements and heuristic modeling has been at the
vanguard of Ecol Econ discourse since the organization's inception.
To me what was most impressive is the power of computers and
graphical portrayal of data to dramatize problems and relationships
in an easily comprehensible way. The number of colleagues and
students whose careers have been advanced by his guidance and
collaboration is itself testimony to the growing power of the
discipline. Bob proved to be easily accessible throughout the
conference, tossing out ideas and questions in an inspiring way
throughout the four days of our presence. The printed versions of
many of his papers fail to carry the explanatory power of much of
his work, and I was pleased to learn that much of what he's
exploring is accessible online at the University of Vermont Gund
Institute website. As the founder of the Gund Institute, he is in a
position now to move into realms of inquiry that are limitless in
their scope -- what possible questions are there that are beyond the
boundaries of a discipline known as ecological economics!
The second speaker that morning was Almaz Terrefe, a woman from
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the founder of an ecologically friendly
toilet! The ECOSAN (ecologically sanitary) toilet is designed such
that it easily diverts urine from feces, so that the urine can then
be easily handled as garden nourishment. She how she and her Swedish
husband, Gunder Erdstrom, have taken the design throughout east
Africa, a small and inspiring effort by a husband-wife team that has
profound importance as a solution to water-starved areas of the
world.
Wednesday's plenary began with an address by the President-Elect
of the International Society for Ecological Economics, Peter May,
who came back to the city of his birth from his university position
in Brazil to talk about the "Contradictions between Growth and
Stability: Implications for the Future of Ecological Economics."
As with so many of the presentations, the substance of the material
made optimism difficult, even though the temper of the participants
was pleasant and upbeat. Professor May offered thoughts, among
others, about how the ISEE's conference to be held next year in
Nairobi is unfolding, and what we might expect by way of increased
ecological awareness as studies and news continues to unfold. And
this led right into a panel of five leading figures in the movement
-- all academics and American based except Professor May. I might
add that a decision was made at the business meeting of the society
to hold the next US biennial conference in the Washington DC area.
This was made on the assumption that a new national administration
in Washington will be more hospitable to the perspectives which
Ecological Economics has to offer. The incoming USSEE president, Dr.
Sabine O'Hara, was trained as an ecological economist, has been a
university administrator as well as professor, the President of
Roanoke College, and will shortly assume the leadership of a
non-profit academic organization.
There were from four to eight concurrent breakout sessions after
each day's plenary presentations, and they were wide ranging in
scope and approach. Several, of course, concern matters of climate
change and carbon dependent energy use. Others explored dimensions
of sustainable development and economics. They were as likely to
focus on other parts of the world as problems in the United States.
And many involve questions of a philosophical and/or methodological
nature. Because Ecol Econ is a discipline still defining itself,
there was lots of room for alternative propositions. Costanza's
team, for example, tends to focus on the value of ecosystem services
to the general economy -- how much, for example, a forest is worth
in protecting the biota or to general human welfare. Pricing the
dimensions of nature is a challenge that he has been working on for
several years with the aim of dramatizing the importance of services
that we today typically take for granted. This also involves
exploration of the costs of the degradation of nature and the costs
it imposes upon people in hardship and disease.
An alternate approach is best illustrated in the work of Syracuse
ESF's professor Charlie Hall, who works on matters of energy usage
and costs. The issue of "peak oil," fossil-based energy
sources, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are
questions he contends ought to be the basis upon which all other
discussion is centered. As a way of portraying the alternative
perspectives offered in a light-hearted way, Costanza and Hall
assented to an arm-wrestling match at the end of the second evening,
a challenge which they could not decline because it led off an
auction fund-raiser for the assembled conferees. (Most of the rest
of the items were books donated by authors and publishers on the
subject matter at hand.)
In the final analysis, the range of issues and the depth of
discussion was both inspiring and daunting. One wonders how much
discourse can be contained within the framework of a single
orientation. What the ecological economists agree upon is that the
economy needs to be understood as a partial component of society,
which is itself an element of the environment. This contrasts with
the conventional way that neoclassical economists view natural
resources: as factors to be drawn upon or as "externalities"
to be internalized. As one might expect, there is very little regard
for neoclassical economics among the Ecol Econs, and the conference
welcomed the other dissenting school of economics that has a similar
low regard for the prevailing paradigm: the Georgists. That both of
these paradigms raise the position of nature to a central place in
their framework suggests an opportunity for further cooperation and
exchange, a conclusion which seemed to be welcomed by both
representations.