Events

5th International Conference on Industrial Ecology "Transitions Toward Sustainability"

Location: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, Portugal

The road toward sustainability poses many challenges with many areas of human needs to be dealt (e.g. food production and consumption, mobility, energy supply and use, communication, etc.). New ways of thinking, acting, and being are urgently needed.

There are many dimensions on which sustainability depends, including technical, socio-economic, cultural, spatial, environmental preservation, distribution of wealth, etc. Achieving sustainability therefore requires a multitude of changes identified by different disciplines as ‘system innovation’, ‘regime transformation’, ‘industrial transformation’, ‘technological transition’, or ‘socio-economic paradigm shift’. The term “transition” covers all of these and its direction and speed are determined by the collective innovation decisions of various actors involved.

The notion of transition has increasingly gained attention over the past years, in academic as well as in policy arenas. Policy makers are especially interested in transitions since incremental change is thought by many to be insufficient to lead toward sustainability. Transition is perceived as a policy objective that has great potential to guide solutions to current problems in various domains.

To stimulate transitions toward sustainability we need to build a strong knowledge base in this field. Industrial Ecology, as a framework for capturing both theoretical and practical knowledge, should contribute in many areas, including the following selected to shape this conference:

• Sustainable consumption
• Designing sustainable cities – the urban and the social metabolisms
• Industrial Ecology tools for sustainability
• Visions on new IE-based paradigms towards sustainability
• Sustainable resource management
• Managing end-of-life products
• Industrial symbiosis
• Eco-design: products and services of the future
• Industrial Ecology in developing countries
• Environmentally Extended Input Output Analysis

For further information regarding registration please see the following link. You may also register online.

2009 ISIE Conference website