Regular Tracks in English

The global challenges arising from the ecological crisis require changes in human behavior at all levels, including businesses, governments, communities and individuals. The belief still prevails that in order to meet the basic needs of the population, accelerated economic growth is necessary, despite the fact that there is already a greater dissemination of the ideals of sustainable development. There are important demands regarding social, environmental and economic issues, some new practices and proposals are already being proposed and implemented. Economic models currently in place will not be able to avoid radical change, as the socio-economic system is changing and self-organizing in a way that is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with existing theory. It is understood that socioeconomic and environmental performance must go hand in hand, the natural environment is central to economic activity and growth, providing the necessary resources to produce goods and services and absorbing and processing unwanted by-products (pollution and waste). There is a dilemma or rather a contradiction, which has not yet been resolved, of how to appease the appetite for economic growth, still today based on the gross domestic product, with the urgent and increasingly recognized need to incorporate development practices sustainable broadly. Faced with this challenging contradiction, some proposals have emerged, but they have still been considered as independent silos, being conducted in isolation, creating distinct areas of knowledge and not in an interdisciplinary way, as the complexity of the problem requires. In this way, proposals such as the green economy, sustainable economy, circular economy, and economy of functionality and cooperation, among others, have emerged and have been discussed and implemented, but several criticisms and limitations have been pointed out.

The objective of this track is to discuss the necessary conditions for a paradigm shift in socioeconomic and ecological development, as well as to discuss and present proposals that present the necessary conceptual framework to meet current demands, which have been identified as new economies or environmental economies, here understood and presented as eco-economies. Participants are invited to share case studies and/or bibliographic reviews on topics related to eco-economies and the transition to the sustainable future we need.

The need for an energy transition is undeniable. Given the dire urgency for climate action, we cannot continue to build our energy systems around fossil fuels, and we must change what has already been built (energy systems, urban form, building envelopes, social norms, etc.) to match the required scale of emissions reductions to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees of global warming alive. However, energy system transitions and transformations will have potentially huge impacts on individuals and communities, thus creating a sense of trepidation around them. Through this regular track we want to invite conference participants to explore energy transitions and transformations through the lens of their implications for society, moving beyond technical assessments. In particular, there are three main areas which we consider require further discussion:

First, energy poverty: there are large portions of the global population who do not have access to adequate energy to meet their needs. Furthermore, even though households might have access energy it might be unaffordable or unsafe. The issue of energy poverty is prevalent across Global South and Global North countries, and it has a direct impact on individual and community wellbeing. Therefore, we invite contributions that try to understand the phenomenon in detail, it’s causes and potential solutions. The underlying question is how to meet everyone’s energy needs within the boundaries of a climate compatible energy transition/transformation.

Second, energy excess: on the opposite side of the spectrum to energy poverty lies energy excess, where households use a disproportionate amount of energy. Emerging research suggests that high amounts of energy use do not necessarily translate into higher levels of wellbeing, and might even imply reduced wellbeing. Therefore, we encourage submissions that explore what constitutes excess levels of energy use, its effect on wellbeing and the implications of energy demand reduction for top energy users.

Third, energy democracy: currently most energy systems are highly centralized and governed in a top-down fashion. However, if energy transitions and transformations are to properly avoid the trepidations surrounding potential job losses, potential detrimental effects on wellbeing from reduced demand, etc., more democratic involvement is key. Therefore, we welcome studies on how to improve democratic engagement in the design and function of energy systems (including for instance decentralized energy systems, energy prosumers, and other alternative models of energy provisioning).

Our hope is for the track to bring together researchers working on energy from different perspectives, in order to constructively challenge and enrich each other’s work as we try to tackle the complex issue of energy in our societies.

The ecological economics discourse is in a period of transition, with increasing interest in the discourse coming along with the now irrefutable abundance of evidence that the contemporary macro-economic model and associated analytics are leading humanity into, if not now through, a period of massive social and ecological upheaval. This has lead to a flurry of new ecological economics theory becoming popular and widely spoken, while less deeply, at times, reflected: ranging from permutations of degrowth discourses, to post-keynesean heterodox explorations of applied ecological economics, to new methods of monetary valuation and a range of new value theory work, including relational values and Critical Realism arguments, with some setting out new narratives, while others build up on established work, revisting and reinterpreting origin discourses, such as those represented by Georgescu-Roegen’s bioeconomy, Funtowicz and Ravetz’s post-normal science, Boulding’s reconstruction of economics and Ostrom’s institutional economics, to name but a few. What is still desperately needed at present is writing forward into the future, visions and explorations of how ecological economics theory, and therefrom derived methodologies and practice, can effectively engage and address the socio-ecological challenges facing humanity at the close of the first quater of the present century: to, as Faber, Peterson and Schiller put it, “…investigate how sustainable development is possible.” This session aims to create a space for theory based interventions that aspire to do just that, be they pure theory or with methodological or practice orientations. Interventions should aim to review, revive or write forward established ecological economics thoery and/or explore and create new ecological economics theory. Interventions are invited from across the ecological economics spectrum and may include root discipline orientations deriving from any disciplinary background, mixed of backgrounds and/or from practicioner perspectives. They should, however, be clearly oriented toward addressing theoretical questions regarding, as it were, how and why one or another or multiple ecological economic phenomena, situation(s) or problematic(s) is/are, and what this form of being implies with regard to how the phenomena might be expected to develop over time, into the future. While normative explorations regarding what that how and why might imply are welcome, they need not be included in the intervention. Absolutely central, however, is clear consideration of both ecological and economic aspects of the topic presented, and ideally, also of the charater of their ecological economic relationship.

As Boavenura de Sousa Santos claims in “Another knowledge is possible” (2007), “there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice”. The assumed universality of western, Eurocentric knowledge has been the key driver of social injustice, epistemicides and culturecides across the Global South, since the colonisation to the present moment (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). As Lahsen and Turnhout (2021) argue, hiding behind misguided assumptions of “scientific neutrality”, the sustainability science has become the main barrier for justice, sustainability, and transformative change.

In this panel we present theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers that explore what ‘scientific truths’ need unlearning in in socio-ecological practice. We are interested in contributions that deal with unlearning colonial, capitalist and extractivist identities and assumptions, norms, values and belief systems, as well as extrativist research methodologies. Such contributions should explore and expose the intimate connection between science, colonialism, and capitalism, as well as the pedagogies of whiteness and the injustices of colonial language (Parry 2022), among other forms of epistemic injustice. They should provide insights into where, how, and why the dominant western knowledge and science reinforces hegemonic values, interests, and truths, while delegitimising and erasing other knowledge systems and ways of knowing.

There is an emerging body of literature that is challenging the universality of western science, the human centrism and domination, extractivist human-nature relations, mainstream utilitarian, patriarchal and human-centric “scientific truths”. While mostly general in scope, such misguided scientific truths are increasingly questioned in academic debates, related to nature conservation (e.g. convivial conservation), economics (e.g. postgrowth and degrowth) and climate change (atmospheric and climate colonialism). We will aim to present similar critical social science contributions and perspectives offering insights from social-ecological practice that end up creating sites of multiple injustices. Contributions from Indigenous, decolonial and feminist political ecology and similar perspectives are welcome, as are contributions that apply, explore and advance pluralist knowledges, citizen sciences, intercultural and embodied spaces of science cultivation.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have been promoted since the 1990s by global institutions, conservation NGOs, and both national and regional governments to incentivise landowners to maintain biodiversity and forest cover, as well as to restore or enhance the provision of ecosystem services. PES has permeated the environmental global policy agenda because it promises a direct conservation approach that simultaneously tackles environmental protection and poverty reduction. Latin America dominates PES implementation, with the Costa Rican (1998), Mexican (2003) and Brazilian (2007) national programmes being three of the most emblematic cases in the world.

To date, there are more than 550 PES initiatives of different focuses and scales of implementation worldwide. Despite such growing traction and popularity, various concerns continue to affect PES acceptance in policy and academic circles. These include, for example, the PES attempt to monetise and exchange ecosystem functions, their limited environmental effectiveness or ability to reduce poverty or inequality, and their potential risks for motivation crowding out, meaning that payments can, over time, diminish people’s pre-existing motivations to protect their environment.

This regular track welcomes qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research papers that contribute to current debates regarding PES effectiveness over the short and long term. Research that looks into gender, livelihoods, motivational, and community well-being effects are of particularly interest, as well as studies using remote sensing instruments to explore land-use changes induced by payments over time. While the track focus is on PES, research exploring other incentive-based instruments such as carbon markets or REDD+ are also highly encouraged to apply.

Increasing concern about the global linked problems of environmental degradation, climate change, poverty and inequality is not matched by progress towards addressing these issues on the global scale needed. Even for wealthy countries, significant challenges remain to accomplishing the majority of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon in 2015 (Schmidt-Traub et al. 2017). Similarly, commitments at the Conference of Parties to address climate change have not been met (Olabisi et al., 2022). This is concerning, because sustainability scholars have identified these linked issues of climate change and inequality as posing serious threats to the stability and viability of human society on the planet (Steffen et al. 2018).

Some scholars argue that the lack of progress towards the SDGs has to do with the ‘shallow’ nature of the leverage points that have been activated in trying to achieve them (Davelaar 2021), which is inconsistent with the complex and interconnected nature of the sustainability transformation needed. Meadows in her seminal book Thinking in Systems defines leverage points as sites of intervention in a system where small actions lead to a significant shift in system behavior. Meadows and other scholars suggest that leverage points may be arranged along a gradient from ‘shallow’ (easier to effect, but less likely to lead to transformative change) to ‘deep’ (more difficult to enact, but capable of bringing about significant change) (Abson et al. 2017). The deepest leverage points are proposed to be those which deal with system rules, system goals and paradigms and the ability to change system structure to achieve those goals. A growing chorus of sustainability scholars from disciplines ranging from ecology to philosophy to economics is calling for a re-examination of the goals of our global economic and social systems, and a re-design of those systems based on paradigms focused on human and ecological wellbeing–in other words, the activation of deep leverage points (Raworth 2017; Steffen et. al. 2018).

Activating deep leverage points calls for ideas rooted in transdisciplinary inquiry and an understanding of system complexity. The field of ecological economics is uniquely suited to provide these solutions. We welcome submissions to this track that address deep leverage points for a sustainability transition. The emphasis should be on changing system rules, goals, and paradigms. Submissions may range from the theoretical to the practical and may address any type of deep system transformation—economic, political, social, cultural, ecological, or combinations of the foregoing. We welcome creative modes of presentation and challenges to dominant paradigms.

References:

Abson, D.J., Fischer, J., Leventon, J. et al. Leverage points for sustainability transformation. Ambio 46, 30–39 (2017).<

Davelaar, D. Transformation for sustainability: a deep leverage points approach. Sustain Sci 16, 727–747 (2021).<

Olabisi, M., R. B. Richardson & A. O. Adelaja (2022) The next global crisis: Africa’s renewable energy financing gap, Climate and Development<

Raworth K. 2017. Doughnut economics : seven ways to think like a 21st century economist. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont.<

Schmidt-Traub, G., Kroll, C., Teksoz, K. et al. National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards. Nature Geosci 10, 547–555 (2017).<

Steffen W, J Rockström, K Richardson, TM Lenton, C Folke, D Liverman, CP Summerhayes, AD Barnosky et al. 2018. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. PNAS 115<

Agroecology, to many who are willing to see the substantive economics of modern agrifood systems, has definitely passed the proof of concept stage. Despite this, it has not been institutionalized in national and international policies for sustainable agrifood systems. The papers in this track explore why. They ask how a substantive understanding of the economy arising from several agroecological experiments can contribute to new ways of knowing and governing not just agrifood systems but the overarching social ecological economic order.  

Evidence from agroecology yield increasing awareness and possible alternative models that look beyond conventional conceptualizations of labour and land productivity.  There is evidence that tropical agriculture systems exhibit a Lewis trap of surplus labour leading to low (energy/calorie) productivity (despite high land productivity), even as they are governed by policies formulated to enable the desirable Lewis path. The much desired structural transformation has not happened in the tropical agriculture production systems, and countries remain predominantly agrarian. As theorized based on the development experience of the Western/Northern temperate agriculture systems, contributions of labour and land productivity for agricultural and economic growth and for food security are ubiquitous today.  Yet, multiple and higher order interactions in agroecological systems demand new models, concepts and theories of production, productivity, interactions and relations.  

We invite papers in this track, that point to the material intensity, physical trade balance and social metabolism of agroecological systems. The key argument is that little can be achieved to transform energy guzzling agriculture maintained by unsustainable fossil fuel subsidies, as long as agriculture is conceptualized and performance assessed exclusively in the formalism of  mainstream economics.   The papers may explore how on-going agroecological transformations and their political fallouts are being questioned from mainstream neoclassical/development economics lens, even as communities, their solidarity economics and local governments actuate social provisioning and ecological justice, and cultivate the norm making and norm changing capacities of communities. The papers can analyse the substantive economics of the production and productivity, social and ecological wellbeing, justice and diversity outcomes achieved in agroecological systems.  

We invite papers that explore four mutually complementing themes, on: 

1. How agroecology presents opportunities to revise concepts of productivity, input intensity and ecological intensity and wellbeing, as well as opportunities for deliberating and creating new ways of mass movement, policy engagement and institutionalization of agroecology;   

2. How meso level agroecological experiments offer lessons on the economy as an institutional system embedded in larger social and environmental dynamics, and how clear substantive economic evaluation of tangible and intangible resources and property rights regimes need to be included in mainstream agrifood knowledge systems and in policy mechanisms; )

3. How prevalent knowledge-policy relationships evident in agrifood systems are inimical to agroecological systems, human and planetary health, and how different strategies including theoretical and conceptual re-framings have been deliberated and used to counter these knowledge-policy contents and directions;  

4.  How agroecological systems are part of a holistic post-growth scenario, with local and meso-level value networks providing lessons for new agricultural knowledge, science and technology and for robust deliberative policy making and implementing mechanisms that map and measure key interactions and relations and remain accountable and liable for unsustainable outcomes and consequences. 

Agroforestry systems (AFSs) are considered paradigms of sustainability that enhance biodiversity, provide adaptation and mitigation to climate change, and sustain multiple ecosystem services such as food, fiber, and energy production. These systems are used to restore degraded ecosystems, and as tools for rural development. However, these systems may also involve management costs and tradeoffs, or represent suboptimal solutions for some of the organisms and actors that AFSs claim to benefit.

In this session, we invite colleagues to engage in a critical understanding of the interplay between different social and ecological dimensions of viable AFSs. Are AFS important resources for the transition towards sustainability in rural landscapes? What are the benefits and what are potential dynamics that may limit their effective establishment or socioecological functionality in the long term? We are interested in creating a space in which we learn about the multidimensional performance of AFSs, the conditions necessary for their establishment and sustainability, and the extent to which AFSs promote socio-ecological justice and well-being. We welcome contributions* from different theoretical and methodological approaches including and going beyond the following:

• Nature’s contributions to people, people’s contributions to nature, and relational values in AFSs
• Biodiversity, climatic, and biophysical responses to AFSs, and implications for the sustainability of local economic practices
• Temporal dynamics, social and ecological, of AFSs
• Incentives to encourage AFSs and outcomes ––positive and negative–– of previously used incentives
• Designing incentives in AFSs: who gets to participate?
• Challenges to the transition toward AFSs
• Spillover effects of the establishment of AFSs
• Distribution of benefits in AFSs
• Gendered dynamics in AFSs
• The role of value chains, business models, and voluntary sustainability standards in the establishment of AFSs
• Enrollment and participation of farmers to advance and implement AFSs

*The session will be held in English but we expect the participation of Spanish-speaking colleagues, for which we encourage participants to translate their slides into Spanish.

Global environmental change is the greatest threat to the world´s socioeconomic and life-supporting systems. This situation requires a profound transformation in the models of production and consumption worldwide. The pressing challenges faced imply deep and radical transformative change for social-ecological systems. We understand transformative change as the ability of a social-ecological system to create fundamentally different interactions when the social, ecological and economic structures make the current system unsustainable and unviable. This regular track proposes analyzing the contributions of the circular economy to transformative changes with a special focus on the management of a primary sector such as forestry. We understand the circular economy as a model of production and consumption that involves sharing, reusing, repairing, renewing and recycling existing materials and products as many times as possible to create added value beyond the economy itself. The principle of keeping materials and products in use for as long as possible by making efficient management and optimizing durability also includes the need for radically different ways to value primary resources. Furthermore, cyclical strategies not only aim at the reintroduction of materials in new production processes in order to reduce the extraction of primary resources but also include the role of consumers and producers in generating cyclical economic trends. The objective of the circular economy is to minimize the ecological footprint of our production and consumption system and to contribute to reducing or stopping environmental degradation.

By making emphasis on the forestry sector, we recognise that forests are one of the most important resource reservoirs and environments on the planet and a fundamental element of the circular economy, offering opportunities for the development of new materials whose residues can generate new uses with greater added value. It is common for the potential contribution of the forestry sector to global environmental change mitigation to be partially addressed and focused on the extractive forest sector. For example, the use of wood in construction offers the opportunity to contribute to climate mitigation and resilience; since the buildings themselves can act as carbon deposits, allowing a circular vision of forest value chains from forest management, to the use of forest products and their use in buildings both at a structural level and in interior design. However, there is also many aspects of the circular economy that are based on the activities of local communities and regional consumers of forest products that can improve the role of forests in global environmental change mitigation. This regular track welcomes inter and transdisciplinary abstracts including but not limited to the fields of engineering, architecture, forest sciences, Geography, Economy, and Social and Ecological sciences. The included abstracts aim at illustrating the role of the different aspects of the circular economy of forests and forest products, as well as the adaptative and organizational aspects of it, to the transformation of social-ecological systems.

This regular track advocates “Business Ecological Economics” defined as an applied sub-field that is concerned with applying concepts and theories of ecological economics to concrete business contexts, and thereby facilitates sustainability transition, critical thinking, and change. Various authors have shown the superiority of ecological economics (with its bio-physical indicators, social metabolism, entropy perspective) against conventional, neoclassical economics with hermetic features, outdated and obsolete assumptions such as rational preference; utility maximation and profits maximation in dealing with environmental problems and to achieve sustainability. Notwithstanding its methodological rigor, strength as well as deep sustainability expertise and know how, ecological economics has not made a big impact on conventional economics and in business practice (Daly, 2007). This is disappointing as sustainability solutions are utterly needed and requested as firms and governments are increasingly hiring consultancies for sustainability advise. While critical voices like Mariana Mazzucato claim that ‘The McKinseys and the Deloittes have no expertise in the areas that they’re advising in’.

Universities and Business Schools often have acknowledged the need for sustainability education and increasingly implemented courses on “Sustainable Business”, “Ökologische Betriebswirtschaftslehre” and the like. However, in these courses often tools are proposed such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental Social Governance (ESG), which draw on neoclassical or environmental economics-based ideas such as the triple bottom line concept and thereby often justify and reinforce “weak sustainability” notions such as exchangeability of natural and human capital or commensurability of values (Weber et al. 2023). Cases that are taught in Business Schools often deal with sustainability leaders like Vale, sixth place in Corporate Human Rights Benchmark before its second deadly dam disaster in three years (Slavin, 2019), or WeBuild formerly Impregilo-Salini, highest ranked construction company globally in terms of transparency and sustainability (Webuild 2017) despite environmental injustices and controversies surrounding 38 large hydropower schemes built by the firm (Bontempi et al. 2021). A more critical, realistic, profound form of sustainability rankings and ratings and a way of counter-reporting is the EJATLAS (ejolt.org), which maps and confronts environmental injustices of firms is hardly taught at Business Schools, despite increased calls for critical teaching on sustainability.

The purpose of the regular track is to propose ideas to overcome this trap, and to include critical ecological economics notions, in core business curricula but also in industry practice and related policy making. Papers presented in this special session may contribute to one or more of the following research questions:

• How can ecological economics inform the theory of the firm ?
• How can alternative concepts like “counter-reporting” (Bontempi, 2021), “corporate social irresponsibility” (e.g. Weber et al. 2023), “firm as private commons” (Chassagnon, 2016), “incommensurability of values” (Martinez-Alier, 1995), and “power based view of the firm” (Chassagnon, 2014) inform a Ecological Economics based view of the Firm?
• What can we learn from ecological economists and predecessors like Kapp, Polanyi, Georgescu-Roegen, Daly, Martinez-Alier, Holling, Bellamy Foster, and Harvey on business administration and management of the firm?
• How can ecological economic tools and instruments of valuation such as Energy Return on Investment (EROI) be applied by firms ?

One of the most pressing challenges in the field of Ecological Economics is the integration of transdisciplinary perspectives. Transdisciplinary research goes beyond interdisciplinary research by bringing together, preferably from the scratch, researchers, practitioners, and other actors with different types of knowledge and expertise to co-create new knowledge and place-based solutions. This requires not only an understanding of different disciplinary perspectives but also the recognition of the multiple ways of knowing, doing, being, and feeling. The transdisciplinary literature has emphasised social learning and the key roles of reflexivity, collaboration, negotiation, integration, and systems thinking in supporting this. By embracing transdisciplinary approaches and practices, ecological economics has the potential to coproduce knowledge with the society that makes transformational change a real possibility.

The field of ecological economics has, in fact, actively sought to incorporate transdisciplinary perspectives. For example, degrowth and environmental justice movements often bring together the voices of academics, activists, creatives, indigenous and local communities, and others that challenge the dominant economic paradigms and ecological distribution conflicts. Although challenging, including this plurality of voices, has demonstrated interesting outcomes when it comes to better understanding the complex relations between environment and society while providing new meanings to issues such as sustainability and development.

This regular track will explore, compare, and critically appraise diverse transdisciplinary approaches to social-ecological transformations, including theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions, as well as applications. The regular track aims to present empirical cases that show the role of transdisciplinary perspectives in ecological economics, as well as the challenges that transdisciplinary collectives and processes often have to deal with. The track will discuss issues such as the emergence and origin of transdisciplinary collaborations, the role of participants, and processes for knowledge integration and for building the legitimacy of marginalized knowledges. The track is open to explore also instances where those processes have failed and what can be learned from those failures.

The multidimensional crisis since colonialism has served as a context for the emergence of critical theories that highlight the incompatibility between an economic system oriented towards infinite growth in a finite planet.

One of the many concepts explaining this is degrowth. Originating from Europe, degrowth has sparked multiple discussions, analyses and actions on repoliticizing the debate for socio-ecological justice and equity. However the concept is neither new nor unique. Similar proposal are present in different geographies of the world, and known with different terms such as eco-swaraj, vivir sabroso, or buen vivir. Many of these concepts have gone from being life horizons of specific communities to become references for the construction of alternatives to neoliberalism, development and capitalism.

Each of these proposals bears the mark of the place of enunciation in which they are constituted. Degrowth seeks, with its own autonomy, to denounce the pillar on which the economic, social and cultural organization of the global North is constituted, recognizing the responsibility of the latter for the excessive consumption of matter and energy, implicit in the dominant “imperial way of life” in this geography. The notions of Buen Vivir, Ubuntu or Vivir sabroso, on the other hand, claim ways of life and forms of community organization that are rooted in experiences that precede the expansion of capitalist colonial modernity or that are constituted within the framework of resistance against it.

Despite these differences, degrowth, ecoswaraj, Buen Vivir and Vivir Sabroso share their character of radical critique of capitalism, the forms of domination through which the world system has been configured over centuries and the specific type of human-nature relationship that it imposes. It is clear that the struggle against global capitalism and the global environmental crisis generated by it requires global political articulations that can only result from a dialogue between the global North and the global South on equal footing.

The present axis of discussion seeks to identify the current state of this convergence, as it manifests itself in the academic, activist and political spheres, and even in the formulation of public policies. The expected outcome is to build bridges of dialogue between critical theories and practices that allow for a correct articulation of struggles and theories, where ontological plurality is always respected. Some of the topics that papers seeking to participate in this may address include:

• Convergences between post-growth horizons coming from different geographies.
• Concrete implications of the principle of common but differentiated responsibility.
• Political and programmatic challenges that, for a post-growth horizon, imply the current relations between center and periphery of the world economy.
• Experiences of anti-capitalist articulation between the global North and South.
• Historical analyses that understand the current relations between the global North and the global South, including their respective critical theories.
• Critiques from the global South to critical theories of the North such as degrowth and possible solutions to these observations.

Special note: This track is complementary to another track submitted by Jorge Forero, Alex Samaniego and Miriam Lang in spanish. The aim is to have two tracks with the same concept but different languages for more participation, and the chairs will take the responsibility of creating a dialogue between them during or after the conference.

The Ecozoic is a post- or counter-anthropocene narrative that originates in the work of environmental philosopher Thomas Berry. It is theorized as an era characterized by mutually enhancing relations between humans and the community of life. This is a meaningful narrative for the ontological pre-analytic vision of the human economy embedded in ecological relations, represented by the unifying image of the human economy situated within human society and the biosphere of our planet. This narrative is the foundation of Ecological Economics, and it offers a normative framing of the transdisciplinary work done, and to be done, to imagine socially just and ecologically informed sustainability transitions to a post-growth era.

The narrative of the Ecozoic does not displace other powerful transition narratives, but can be used in solidarity with the efforts of normative, localized, historically specific, pluriversal narratives, and future-visioning practices around the world. Ecological Economics is uniquely positioned to do transdisciplinary work towards a post-growth Ecozoic era by incorporating a socio-ecological framework grounded in empirical biophysical and social research with flexibility and humility to draw from multiple knowledges including heterodox schools of economics and beyond.

This track aims to emphasize research and theorizing that is grounded in both empirical work and a ‘strong sustainability’ (Pelenc & Ballet, 2015) and ‘deep ecological economics’ (Spash, 2013) transition narrative, whether or not the concept of the Ecozoic is explicitly used. We hope this track will result in submissions of transdisciplinary work in Ecological Economics that situates research within a transformative process and holds clear normative positions.

This track is broad enough to welcome papers on the following areas: ecological macroeconomics; economics education and pedagogies; energy transitions; rethinking monetary and financial systems; biophysical economics; participatory action research; theorizing transdisciplinarity; planetary boundaries; alternatives to development; system dynamics; rethinking ecosystem services valuation; rethinking global economies; degrowth; and post-growth, among others.

Objectives:
Engage ecological economists with the vision for the Ecozoic. Encouraging the exploration, clarification, and re-conceptualization of normative transition narratives within ecological economics. Weave a research and action pathway towards the Ecozoic through networks and collaborations of co-learning and co-creation.

Resources cited:
Pelenc, J., & Ballet, J. (2015). Strong sustainability, critical natural capital and the capability approach. Ecological economics, 112, 36-44. Spash, C. L. (2013). The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?. Ecological Economics, 93, 351-362.

Addressing sustainability crises requires actionable interdisciplinary science based on a foundation of partnership among academics and broader society. Universities and research centers around the world have made significant progress toward establishing collaborative, interdisciplinary initiatives in sustainability science. However, more needs to be done to support the career development of sustainability scholars whose work is often team-based and outreach-oriented. Given the extensive work on how universities can produce scholarship to meaningfully address sustainability challenges, we ask: Do current career paths, and structures incentivize and facilitate the required collaboration? How do we construct a system that can allow for the healthy development of meaningful careers that contribute to the advancement of knowledge and sustainability and allow people to achieve personal and professional goals?

In this session, we invite colleagues from academia, industry, research centers, NGOs, government, public and private funding institutions, and social organizations to share their experiences and engage in a critical discussion around practical and institutional opportunities and barriers that incentivize/discourage individuals with diverse backgrounds from pursuing a career in the sustainability space. We welcome contributions from diverse fields to engage in a lively session around different career development aspects, including:

• Skills that make scholars competitive in academic and non-academic positions for sustainability
• Perceived bias and opportunities in academia and outside academia toward singular vs. interdisciplinary careers.
• Timing, funds, alternative performance metrics, and communication channels required for interdisciplinary research
• Expectations for interdisciplinary researchers and the standards to which they will be held for measuring performance and evaluating promotion
• Norms and culture that underpin the hiring and promotion of interdisciplinary positions.
• New technologies to scale and facilitate interdisciplinary research and career development.
• Intellectual freedom to follow projects that will provide meaningful improvements in sustainability knowledge and conservation.

The conversion of natural ecosystems for agricultural land use and mineral extraction is one of the main drivers of global biodiversity loss and climate change and has severe impacts on local livelihoods, social fabrics and biocultural diversity. Despite the scientific evidence linking land use changes and extractive industries to social-ecological degradation, the frontiers of global value chains continue to expand.

The current international regime that governs agricultural commodities (e.g., meat, coffee, cocoa, palm oil) and minerals, links the distant territories of extraction and production with the places of processing and final consumption, through material flows of goods, services, finance and immaterial flows of discourses and knowledge. At the same time, this telecoupling also disconnects the spaces of consumption from accounting for local socio-ecological and territorial impacts related to the production of these commodities. Resultantly, we observe an increasing demand for agricultural commodities and minerals while witnessing a social-ecological transformation of the territories of production involving structural shifts in e.g. labour, infrastructure, logistics, finance, and legislation.

New private and public governance approaches emerge in these multi-level and multi-actor constellations, such as the EU’s regulation of deforestation free supply chains or the new EU Corporate Social Responsibility Directive. Yet, we still know little about the extent these approaches account for the complex social-ecological interactions and effects occurring within telecoupled systems, including the multiple social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts in production systems, and potential leakage effects that might occur across different geographies and territorial realities.

The objective of this track is to present evidence and discuss how governing change creates unruly and inadvertent exclusions, authorizations and social-ecological transformations. We aim to collect the latest available evidence and identify leverage points and blind spots in private and public governance approaches of global value chains. We encourage submissions that shed light on the micro and macro conditions that may facilitate the mitigation of environmental and social impacts across value chains. Submissions can cover a wide range of experiences from a diversity of countries, regions, and commodity chains, including submissions that acknowledge and reflect on the epistemic plurality in global value chain governance across scale.

In particular, we are looking for contributions that:

• provide insights on the functioning of telecoupled global value chains, i.e. actors involved, their power links and relations, material and immaterial flows of goods and services, finance, discourses and knowledge along the chains; how this has been analysed (concepts, methods);
• critically analyse existing and envisioned public and private governance approaches across the value chain as to whether and how such governance arrangements are able to tackle negative environmental and social impacts in telecoupled systems;
• assess the social-ecological and biocultural effects along the global value chains, with an environmental justice lens;
• discuss different conceptualization of territories as social construct that have material and immaterial aspects connected over specific space-time articulations.

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) has gained widespread prominence as a flagship solution for ecological challenges (Bishop & Hill, 2014). Under these schemes, land users adopt conservation-friendly practices (e.g. water regulation and carbon sequestration through good forest management) in exchange for conditional payments by those who benefit from the ES (e.g. urban water users, and carbon-polluting industries seeking to offset their emissions). As of 2018, the popularity of PES has translated into over 550 active programs known to operate globally at local, regional, and national levels and with an estimated US$ 36-42 billion in annual transactions (Salzman et al., 2018). While PES has received much attention, evidence regarding the environmental and social outcomes of PES projects is far from unequivocal (Muradian et al., 2013). Policy makers and scientists have been evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of PES to assess their relevance as a conservation tool, and determine which programmes have “failed” or “succeeded” (e.g. Martin-Ortega et al., 2019; Liu & Kontoleon, 2018; Börner et al., 2017; Ezzine-de-Blas et al., 2016; Raes et al., 2016; Schomers & Matzdorf, 2013). Most studies examine particular aspects of PES institutional design, the additionality of attained ecosystem goods and services of interest through project implementation, or the distribution of costs, benefits, and livelihood impacts.

By over-emphasizing design principles, what is largely absent in PES assessments is the underlying value frameworks that shape the politics of knowledge production, informing how and by whom PES “success” is defined and whether these programs are fit for purpose within specific contexts in the first place. While premised as a market-based transaction, the design and implementation of such payment programs is shaped by diverging value frameworks predicated on the intersection between contextually-specific socio-cultural relations, historical asymmetric relations of power in the governance of land and resources, emergent ecological processes, and ongoing economic land-use drivers. The absence of other epistemic positions and alternative understandings in PES science risks creating PES policies that are socially misadjusted, lead to environmental justice concerns and to social conflicts.

This track builds on a newly compiled large-scale systematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature on PES research (the “ePEStemology” database; Kolinjivadi et al, forthcoming), which identifies how plural epistemologies and power geographies influence assessments of PES success or failure. The objective of this track is to critically discuss the criteria and underlying (often implicit) assumptions that guide the definition of “success” and “failure” of PES and how this results in material implications for people and nature in practice. We are specially interested in in-depth empirical assessments of case studies that analyze who defines these success criteria, what epistemological basis and interests lie at the heart of such definitions, how this translates into particular methodologies/methods being used in evaluating/assessing PES case studies and what the consequences are in terms of (in)visibilizing some views, perspectives and practices in the field. Through the presentation of a wide range of case studies from multiple regions, we want to promote a critical discussion on how scientific assessments on PES are constructed and to what extent they acknowledge or erase the experiences, knowledge and value frameworks of the actors that are confronted with the implementation of these policies in the field.

For various decades, ecological economists have contested the dominance of neoclassical monetary-based valuation of nature and have called for the recognition of value pluralism and the challenge of incommensurability. To some extent, this positionality has been reflected in theoretical and applied approaches towards value pluralism (e.g. integrated valuation of ecosystem services; development and use of the notions of shared and relational values). Furthermore, this approach has gained ground in the science-policy arena with the Values Assessment (VA) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released in 2022.

The VA is already having a very significant impact in academia and the media. The report emphasizes the diversity of values of nature and how such diversity is actually being (or not) addressed in different types of decision-making. The assessment introduces an inclusive typology of plural values based on different worldviews and knowledge systems. It also looks into >50 valuation methods as value-articulating institutions. In addition, it provides evidence from the literature and uses multiple case studies about the potential for reaching better outcomes for people and nature (and their interrelationships) when the diversity of voices and values are recognized and allowed to enter into decision-making processes. The report also assesses how and which types of nature’s values are incorporated in more than 450 future scenarios, with emphasis on four sustainability pathways (l green economy, degrowth, Earth stewardship and Nature protection). Lastly, the report highlights the current opportunities and obstacles that societies and sectors face to embed the diversity of values about nature and plural valuation into decision-making processes.

This track will bring together researchers and practitioners on the field of plural valuation of nature, as well as experts who have participated in the VA, to reflect on how nature´s values could and need to be leveraged for a more sustainable and just world. Particularly, the track will reflect on: i) the role of ecological economics viz-a-viz other disciplines and knowledge traditions (e.g. political ecology) in such research/practice agenda; and ii) how current developments in plural valuation together with the VA results could be fostered within the ecological economics community.

The session will allow the interaction and discussion between researchers and practitioners, with the objective of moving forward value pluralism within and beyond the international ecological economics community while paying attention to regional and local contexts.

Environmental concerns linked to the impacts of the climate and biodiversity crisis are increasing and forcing the adoption of green initiatives by business. Climate change and other impacts are however not evenly distributed across society. Frequently, those that have contributed the least to environmental changes suffer in disproportionate numbers. Environmental Justice (EJ) movements emerge from “ecological distribution conflicts” that are born from the highly uneven distribution of natural resources and environmental damages (Martinez-Alier, 2003). The EJ movement has the potential to address some of the inequities of these impacts. However, the movement is rather sceptical of corporate initiatives that seek to advance social or environmental goals and is well aware of the lack of accountability of companies that cause human rights violations and environmental harms (Bontempi et al., 2021; Saes et al., 2021).

The purpose of this Regular Track (RT) is to explore the political economy and political ecology of corporate-EJ dynamics addressing how environmental conflicts result from corporate strategies. The political economy perspective exhibits the broader picture on the firm’s sectorial activity such as extraction. While the political ecology perspective reveals power imbalances, and forms of externalising environmental bads to disenfranchised groups. By doing so, both perspectives make visible the limitations and problems of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. CSR schemes are programmes adopted voluntarily by corporations to address the negative reputation of their operations. They have been criticised for reinforcing the power of multinational corporations because they focus more on generating benefits for the corporations than for society (Banerjee, 2008). The EJ perspective, which has been intensively discussed in the field of ecological economics, can benefit from critical management studies and its analytical tools to politicise and problematize corporate strategies from the perspective of justice. Moreover, employing a EJ perspective on business helps to enlarge the range of promising paths to transformation of existing power relations, for instance by exploring genuine participatory processes and the involvement of non-corporate actors in CSR deliberative processes.

This RT draws on several theoretical fields, adopting a critical approach to business and CSR as a means of addressing the advancement of the EJ global movement. It aims to enlarge understanding about corporate-EJ dynamics, exploring political ecology/economy perspectives to unpack power relations and the ethical concerns at play. We aim to follow a Paper Discussion Workshop structure, with interactive participation and in-depth discussion of the papers. The ultimate goal is to advance theoretical and empirical understandings aiming potential submissions to the “Call for Papers – Business and Environmental Justice: a Political Economy Perspective” in the Journal of Business Ethics by January 2024. (https://link.springer.com/collections/fgeicdaiih).

References
Banerjee, S. B. (2008). Corporate social responsibility—The good, the bad, and the ugly. Crit. Sociol., 34(1), 51–79.
Bontempi, A., Del Bene D., De Felice, L., (2021). Counter-reporting sustainability from the bottom-up: the case of a dam builder. J. Bus. Ethics, 1-26.
Martinez-Alier, J. (2003). The Environmentalism of the poor: a study of ecological conflicts and valuation. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Saes, B.M., Del Bene, D., Neyra, R., Wagner, L., Martinez-Alier, J. (2021). Environmental justice and corporate social irresponsibility: the case of the mining company Vale S.A. Amb.&Soc., vol. 24.

Supply-side climate ideas and initiatives aim to directly reduce the extraction of fossil fuels, as opposed to the overwhelming majority of existing climate policies whose objective is to cut the consumption of fossil fuels. The enactment of effective policies to leave fossil fuels in the ground seems currently unfeasible and fossil fuel realism discourages us from thinking and articulating alternatives to fossil fuel capitalism. Social movements have taken the lead in campaigning to leave fossil fuels in the ground and make concrete policy proposals to keep specific and then global fossil fuel reserves unextracted. The introduction of policies to keep fossil fuels in the ground can both be initiated and have galvanizing effects for environmental justice organizations. This track presents ideas and initiatives led by social movements to think and move beyond fossil capitalism. The departure point of the track is that demand- and supply-side initiatives can be complementary and synergic. Nevertheless, the path to enacting effective supply side initiatives is likely to be conflictual at various political and geographical scales.The track welcomes contributions along these broad themes:

The role of social movements in expressing the need for and developing proposals and practices of socially and environmentally just alternatives to fossil capitalism. The contributions can include case studies as well as broader analyses of historical experiences of successful, unsuccessful, and mixed experiences. Contributions discussing the potential of environmental conflicts to play a productive role in resisting and moving beyond fossil capitalism would be particularly welcome.

Reflections on the role on the potential and duty of academics to act as scholar activists and contribute to keeping fossil fuels underground. For example, direct experience as well as analyses of scientists’ strategies to promote just transitions would be welcome. Analyses of the ethics and feasibility of determining the rights to (partial) compensation for the right holders over unburnable fossil fuel reserves, vis-à-vis the rights of communities affected by the impacts of past fossil fuel extraction both in terms of climate change adaptation and local socio-environmental impacts of past and current fossil fuel extraction.

Reflections on how proposals and contentious actions by social movements can contribute to establishing anti fossil fuel extraction norms and policies. These strategies include but are not limited to divestment campaigns, boycotts, direct action, legal mobilization, and disruption of greenwashing and corporate social irresponsibility practices and marketing.

In a world facing multiple intersecting crises, in particular the climate emergency, biodiversity loss and persisting social deprivations, the question of finding futures that are both sustainable and provide wellbeing for all is paramount. In this context, how we understand wellbeing will determine the imaginaries, narratives, possibilities and steps towards more hopeful futures. Through this regular track we want to invite conference participant to explore three main gaps in the literature.

First, the theoretical propositions behind eudaimonic understandings of wellbeing (e.g. human needs and capabilities frameworks) seem to be well aligned to sustainability objectives. However, others have also highlighted the potential of hedonic pursuits of wellbeing (e.g. alternative hedonism, happiness, life satisfaction, negative and positive affect) to contribute to efforts towards sustainability. Currently within the academic community there is no consensus on whether these approaches are mutually exclusive, fundamentally contradictory or complementary in certain ways. Thus, there is a gap in knowledge around synergies and contradictions between different understandings of wellbeing.

Second, the discourses around wellbeing in current socio-economic and political spheres varies widely and are usually vague, making it difficult to ascertain what is actually meant by wellbeing. Moreover, the way in which individuals and societies understand wellbeing is also varied and deeply influenced by the broader political and economic context. Therefore, there is a gap in the study of social understandings of wellbeing (what politicians/citizens mean, as well as cross-cultural understandings), how they are shaped and how they can be changed, as well as the political and economic assumptions of what constitutes wellbeing.

And third, there is a need for more empirical research on talking to individuals and communities about the intersection between sustainability and wellbeing. There have been some interesting developments in the last decade based on Max-Neef’s Human Scale Development approach, Di Giulio and Defila’s theory of protected needs and other approaches. However, questions remain around the potential of these approaches to result in real-world sustainable change, scalability and cross-cultural applicability.

This regular track aims to explore the intersection between sustainability and wellbeing. We invite abstracts that address the gaps highlighted above, through studies that might include for example:

• Theoretical explorations of how different understandings of wellbeing align or not, and how, with sustainable futures.
• Empirical studies (quantitative or qualitative) on how to achieve wellbeing for all while staying within sustainable environmental limits.
• Theoretical or empirical explorations of the wellbeing implications of different sustainability policies, and vice versa, the sustainability implications of policies that aim to improve people’s wellbeing.
• Methodological innovations in evaluating the current intersection between sustainability and wellbeing, and/or imagining potential futures where both sustainability and wellbeing are achieved.
• Political and/or popular discourse analysis of wellbeing and sustainability, including transdisciplinary approaches.
• Contributions exploring the linkages between wellbeing perspectives and theoretical approaches used in sustainability studies (e.g. socio-technical transition or social practice perspectives).

For nearly a century, we have been building large hydropower dams. First in the Global North (mostly in the US and Europe) and since the 1970’s mostly in the Global South. In both hemispheres, governments promoted the building of hydropower dams on the grounds that they would provide inexpensive energy supplies, facilitate rural electrification, and promote economic development. All this began to change with the environmental awakening in 1968 that began to question the rosy view that was commonly promoted. The damage to the rivers in terms of their ecology, and to biodiversity began to be concerning and the economic damage that dams inflicted on resettled people began to make the promise of a better tomorrow seem a mirage. In this panel, we invite papers that are looking at the impacts caused by hydroelectric dams using a variety of frameworks and methods. We argue dams are inevitably destructive and that even their greenness and sustainability are questionable. The need for this panel arises from the recent claim by the International Hydropower Association, an industry lobbying group, that prepared a document for COP26 in Glasgow which argued that to meet the goals of the Paris Accords, it would be necessary to double the production of hydropower globally by 2050. While IHA suggests that this doubling would occur in a sustainable way, there is little if any evidence that the hydropower sector has ever been able to meet the social or environmental promises that were made. Doubling hydropower production would be a disaster for people and the environment.

Justification and Objective:

• Most global agreements on environment turn out to be subservient to trade pacts
• This makes the trajectory of environmental progress two steps backward after a step ahead
• Both trade & environmental agreements also reflect and reinforce existing political-economic inequalities
• The same anomaly is seen at other scales of analysis: regional, national & sub national
• There is a severe dearth of discussions about the power play within and across trade & environmental pacts
• The objective of this track is to bring together discussions that expose the tradeoffs of this skewed stature of trade & environmental agreements and the cost of this skeweness to humanity as a whole, specifically in reinforcing inequlities and ecological catastrophes to civilisations