Infomail 04/01

Welcome to the April/May edition of SERI's InfoMail.

The monthly published electronic news bulletin of the Vienna
Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI).

Table of contents

1. SERI-News: General news from SERI and SERI members

2. Project-Overview: News from our projects, our other work and new research fields

3. Friends: Seri and ... (News about co-operation and partnerships)

4. Selected publications: Book reviews and announcements from SERI members and related writers and publishers

5. Links + Other: News about other activities, hints and advice on dates, workshops etc.

6. Going on in Vienna

Announcement of the next SERI brownbag seminars:

Contents

1. SERI-News: General news from SERI and SERI members

SERI Institute News

A group of SERI members gathered in Vienna from 19-22 April and dicussed
further activities. It was agreed to re-formulate and re-organize SERI's
structure in several ways. We will communicate about these reforms later
along with the launch of a new website structure/design.

News on Marcus STEWEN

Since March 2001, Marcus Stewen is representing a professorship in economics
at the University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) Mainz (1/2 time for
one year). He holds lectures in economic policy and macroeconomics.

Visit http://www.fh-mainz.de/ for more on this University.

News on Fritz Hinterberger

Fritz Hinterberger has been appointed as a member of the International
Programme Committee of the 5th International ISEE (Russian Chapter)
Conference in Moscow, September 26-29, 2001.

News on Niki Rosinski

Niki Rosinski speaks on Sustainable Finance at the Annual VOEW Workshop of
the Vereinigung für Ökologische Ökonomie in Berlin. The workshop is
dedicated to the issue "Die Politik allein wird es nicht richten - Akteure
der oekologischen Modernisierung" and is hold on 12 May 2001, Bahntower,
Potsdamer Platz, Berlin.
For further information please refer to http://www.voew.de/.

On May, 15 Niki Rosinski presents his master thesis on Sustainable Finance
at the University of Lueneburg, Germany (www.uni-lueneburg.de).
See www.seri.at/finance-e or www.seri.at/finance-d.

SERI at the ECRP in Lund

Francois Schneider will give two presentations at the Annual meeting of the European Round Table for Cleaner Production (ERCP) in Lund, one on the rebound effect in an ecological information society (see www.seri.at/eis) and one on our approach to regional sustainability (see www.seri.at/regions).

The programme of the ERCP can be found at http://www.lu.se/IIIEE/ercp/

Fritz Hinterberger on the Global material Flows

At a conference on "Human Dimensions Research in Austria and in Central
European Countries" in Graz (visit this website for more), Fritz Hinterberger will present SERI's work on Global Material Flows

2. Project-Overview: News from our projects, our other work and new research fields

SERI supports GNG

On 2-3 April 2001, the Genoa Non-Governmental (GNG) initiative preparing an
NGO consultation on the way to the Gonoa G8 meeting in July held a meeting
in Palazzo Vecchio in Firenze, where a large group of national and international NGOs discussed reccomendations for the Italian G8 presidency.
GNG will reduce a report and initiate an international consultation process on these issues. Fritz Hinterberger, Laura Radiconcini and Wolfgang Sachs contributed in various roles to this meeting.

See www.gnginitiative.net for this initiative and www.seri.at/G8 for our
role in this activity.

Report form the Integration workshop in Brussels

On April 4th, Philipp Schepelmann presented the results of our study on
environmental integration in the European Union at a workshop in Brussels
organized by the Austrian ministry of the environment, entitled The Cardiff
Process after Gothenburg. Evaluating environmental integration.

Talks of the event will be available from www.sustainability.tv later this
month.

Dematerialisation on www.nachhaltigkeit.at

For the Austrian website www.nachhaltigkeit.at SERI prepared a "thema of the
month" on dematerialisation, eco-efficiency and zero emission.

See this page (in German language) at www.nachhaltigkeit.at.

Two Papers on congestion for the IPTS Report

We are currently preparing two articles for the IPTS Report, published by the Institute for Prospective Technology Studies Joint Research Centre of the EU in Sevilla.
One article will review the various ways of measuring congestion, while the
other reviews new technologies to reduce congestion.

You can find more about our work on congestion at
www.seri.at/congestion.htm.

3. Friends: Seri and ... (News about co-operation and partnerships)

SERI would still like to invite post-doc researchers intending to apply for Marie Curie Fellowships to work with SERI or members of the SERI network in other parts of Europe.

See www.cordis.lu/improving/src/hp_mcf.htm for more, or try the links below for detailed information:

http://www.cordis.lu/improving/src/hp_ncp.htm
http://www.cordis.lu/improving/src/mc_tsf_pg.htm
http://improving-mcf.sti.jrc.it/project/
http://www.mariecurie.org/
http://www.cordis.lu/tmr/src/grants1.htm

But we are also looking for interesting places of research to which our researchers could go for some time!

4. Selected publications: Book reviews and announcements from SERI members and related writers and publishers

New paper by Fritz Hinterberger and Fred Luks:

"Dematerialisation, Competitiveness and Employment in a Globalized Economy"

Abstract
This paper documents a revised version of a plenary presentation at the 1998 Biannual Meeting of the International Society for Ecological Economics in Santiago de Chile. Starting form the "magic" triangle of sustainability the authors explore the role of dematerialization and decoupling as well as the fourth (institutional) corner of sustainabilitybefore discussint this both empirically and politically in the framework of a globalized economy.

This paper is published in: M. Munasingh, O. Sunkel and C. de Miguel (Eds.):
"The Sustainabiliy of Long-term growth. Socioeconomic and ecological
perspectivees."
Edward Elgar Publishing; ISBN 1-84064-515-6, pp. 107-135.
See www.e-elgar.co.uk for more.

New paper by Fritz Hinterberger, Ines Omann and Andrea Stocker:

"Employment and environment in a sustainable Europe"

The paper will be presented on at the annual conference of the Austrian Economic Association. See http://noeg2001.wifo.ac.at/prog_fri_mor.htm for details.

For the abstract surf to: www.seri.at/noeg2001.htm.
the paper (pdf, 345 kb)

New publication by Robert Costanza, John Cumberland, Herman Daly, Robert Goodland and Richard Norgaard:

"Einführung in die Ökologische Ökonomik"

The (classical) textbook "Introduction to Ecological Economics" is now available in German - modified and essentially enlarged. The aim of the book is to update the classical American textbook with European experiences including all fields of Ecological Economics.

Co-edited by SERI-member Marcus Stewen (together with Thiemo W. Eser (Trier),Jan A. Schwaab (Mainz),and Irmi Seidl (Zuerich), the text book integrates papers by a lot of leading experts in the field of Ecological Economics from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, including Hermann Bartmann, Hans C. Binswanger, Hans G. Nutzinger, Martin Junkernheinrich, Gerhard Maier-Rigaud, Juerg Minsch, Gerhard Scherhorn, Kai Schlegelmilch, Ernst U. v. Weizsaecker, Hubert Wiggering (Sachverstaendigenrat fuer Umweltfragen) and many more.
You will find also papers by SERI-founders Fritz Hinterberger and Fred Luks.

The text book "Einfuehrung in die Oekologische Oekonomik" is published by
UTB / Lucius&Lucius (ISBN 3-8252-2190-3, 46,- DM).

For more information on this book click here or visit http://www.luciusverlag.com.

5. Links + Other: News about other activities, hints and advice on dates, workshops etc.

"FLOOD BUSH" campaign from FRIENDS OF THE EARTH INTERNATIONAL

FoE started E-PROTEST to give U.S. President Bush a taste of climate change. Everybody who's concerned about the environment policy of the new U.S. government is invited to participate in the new FoE's campaign. The aim is to protest against Bush's climbdown on the UN climate treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol and to "flood" the White House's e-mail server.
FoE's website is providing a letter which you can send to President Bush to express your personal concerns.

To get more information on this campaign or for participation click:
http://www.foeeurope.org/climate/letter.htm.

Conference announcement

Europe & The World Summit on Sustainable Development
European Rio+10 Coalition - Second Annual Progress Conference
European Commission, Borschette Building
Brussels, 10-11 May 2001

Issues considered:
"How can the World Summit on SD make a difference for the world's poor?"
"What initiatives do Europeans have to offer at the WSSD in the fields of: Peoples' empowerment; Acces to basic needs; Right to development and quality of life?"
"What kind of North-South deal can Europe propose in 2002?"

The European Rio+10 Coalition will invite participants to present practical proposals and workable initiatives in each of these areas and to commit themselves to Sharing Responsibilities and Building Partnerships for SD.

Background documents are available on the Objective2002 web site:
www.epe.be/objective2002.

Announcement of the

Annual Meeting of the Austrian Economic Association (NoeG)
Graz, Austria, May 17 - 18

Europe is facing rapid changes of its economic, institutional and political environment:

The Austrian Economic Association offers this year's meeting as an open platform for evaluating the potential of these issues in the context of structural change, economic geography and sustainable development.

For more detailed information on this meeting please got to:
http://noeg2001.wifo.at/

The Finland Future Research Center in Turku invites to the

"Seminar on Scenario Building"
Turku, June 6 - 7, 2001

The idea of the June 2001 seminar/workshop is to focus particularly on scenario building. We would like to take the chance to profit from our common Nordic effort in the field of scenario building.
Generally speaking, day one (June 6) would deal with topics like "The main features of scenario thinking", "The dimensions of scenarios", "Differences in the application of scenarios". On Thursday, June 7, we would then discuss more specific questions as e.g. "Megatrends and weak signals", "The limitation of scenarios" or "Scenario building and strategy work".
The seminar would end with a panel discussion on the topic "Is there a Nordic perspective in the process of scenario building?"

For more information on this seminar and for registration and participation
details please click: http://www.tukkk.fi/tutu/scemese/.

Conference announcement

Sustainability in the Information Society
Environmental Informatics 2001
15th International Symposium
Informatics for Environmental Protection
October 10 to 12, 2001, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Since 1987 the «Informatics for Environmental Protection» symposium has been bringing together people from the scientific, public administration and business communities who develop or use informatics applications in the environmental field. The aim of this annual conference is to document the state of the art in environmental informatics in Europe and to foster the dialog between theory and practice.

The main theme for 2001, Sustainability in the Information Society, has been selected to broaden the scope of the discussion beyond the environmental to encompass the other two dimensions of sustainability, the economic and social. Authors are encouraged to address risks as well as opportunities that Information Society Technologies (ISTs) may create with regard to the goal of sustainability.
The 15th symposium is thus intended both to document progress made in the traditional work fields of environmental informatics and to introduce new issues as indicated by the main theme.

The symposium will be organized in close collaboration with the European Union's IST research and technologies programme to foster the dissemination and early take-up of European research in this domain.

See http://www.empa.ch/iep01 for details and participation.

6. Going on in Vienna

The SERI brownbag seminar

In a loose series of lectures, to which we invite all interested guests, we want to discuss our own work and that of our colleagues. Please bring your own lunch bag!

Announcement of the forthcoming seminars:

Christian Rammel:
"An evolutionary perspective to sustainable development"

Location: SERI office, Schwarzspanierstr. 4/8
Date and time: May, 07th 2001, 2 p.m.

The issues of a long-term horizon, complexity and uncertainty are essential cornerstones of the concept of sustainable development. It will be argued, that conventional economics, based on a mechanistic focus of short-term optimisation can not deal sufficiently with these aspects of sustainability.
Alternatively, an evolutionary perspective is presented giving more room for the dynamics of the human-environment interaction. Attention is given to cultural adaptation, innovation, selection, variability and risk-minimising.
Drawing on evolutionary theories, a possible linkage to policies towards sustainability is addressed.

2nd Announcement of the seminar:

"Ecological Economic Policy"

with Juerg Minsch and Fritz Hinterberger.

Location: SERI office in Vienna.
Date and time: May, 14th 2001, 2 p.m.

Juerg Minsch, professor for sustainable development at the Vienna university of agriculture and Fritz Hinterberger will discuss on the issue of "Ecological Economic Policy".
It seems that an overall and absolute reduction of material flows through industrial economies is by no means being achieved without policies deliberately aiming at such a reduction: rebound effects eat up these gains (food needs a special treatment). And the access to these services/technologies is unevenly distributed.
These problems are a challenge to individual goals and efforts as well as for policy. Both Juerg Minsch and Fritz Hinterberger will give short presentations (20-30 minutes each) introducing a broader discussion.

These were our messages and news for this month. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for detailed information on our projects and for possibilities in co-operation and partnership. It’s a challenge to start an interactive dialogue of exchanging experiences. You are all invited to participate in this process.

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SERI is the first "virtual" research institute with associated researchers all over Europe.

The Sustainable Europe Research Institute, together with a supporting legal association, exists since September 1999 according to Austrian Law. The headquarters have been established in Vienna. We would like to invite you to participate in this undertaking.

The Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI) is a Pan-European think tank aiming to explore sustainable development options for European societies. SERI's research agenda and methodology is based on previous work carried out by Friends of the Earth and the Wuppertal Institute. The Institute aims to develop the concept of environmental space and shows ways to substantially reduce the resource throughput of modern industrial societies. The research carried out by members of SERI supports the dialogue within European civil society. It specifically aims to further develop the exchange of ideas between environmental citizens organisations, governments, trade unions and industry. The scientific dialogue SERI aims to engender is supported by its web page and this newsletter, conferences, meetings as well as publications.

Have a nice day – your SERI-Team.

SERI-Infomail 04/2001
Distributed by Jürgen Schäfer
Managing Editor, SERI-InfoMail
All Rights Reserved.
© SERI 2001 (Vienna / Essen)