Dear colleagues,
The International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) will hold its 5th International Conference, ISIE 2009, from June 21-24, 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal.
The theme of the conference is Transition towards Sustainability, with the following conference topics: - Sustainable consumption
- Designing sustainable cities the urban and the social metabolisms
- Industrial Ecology (IE) 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
Abstracts are invited on any of these topics and can be submitted until December 12, 2008 at
http://isie2009.com/
Abstracts will be reviewed by the Technical Committee. Authors will be notified of abstract approval and form of presentation (oral or poster) by January 16, 2009. Contributions from emerging countries are particularly welcome.
For further details please visit the conference website at http://isie2009.com/ (please bookmark this webpage. There is a similarly called website for another conference that uses the suffix *.org instead of *.com).
Looking forward to seeing you in Lisbon,
best wishes from the Conference Secretariat!
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Conference theme: Transition towards Sustainability
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.
In a transition within a complex socio-technical-ecological system, both the technical as well as the social/cultural dimensions change drastically. This emphasis on the co-evolution of technical and societal change distinguishes transitions from incremental processes, which are primarily characterized by technical change (through successive generations of technologies) with relatively little alteration of the societal embedding of these technologies.
The International Society for Industrial Ecology, ISIE, promotes Industrial Ecology (IE) as a way of finding innovative solutions to complicated environmental problems and facilitates communication among scientists, engineers, policymakers, managers and advocates who are interested in how environmental concerns and economic activities can be better integrated. The mission of the ISIE is to promote the use of industrial ecology in research, education, policy, community development, and industrial practices.
The field of Industrial Ecology has adopted and developed rigorous tools for assessing the environmental impacts of products, processes, industrial sectors and economies at local, regional and global scales. These include methods of life cycle assessment, material and energy flow analysis, applied thermodynamics, risk assessment, input-output analysis, and resource economics. These methods serve: in the design of green products and processes, e.g., green buildings, eco-industrial parks; in assessing technological change, dematerialization and decarbonization; and in developing policy to encourage product stewardship and environmental protection.
The ISIE, has a worldwide membership of about 500 leading scientists and engineers broadly concerned with the technical foundations of sustainable development. The membership, from academia, industry and government, has expertise in the technological development and societal progression towards industrial systems that are compatible with the functioning of natural ecosystems, e.g., efficient use of energy, material recycling and non-polluting. Many members of the society are advisors to national governments on matters of environmental technology and policy.
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Reid J. Lifset, Assoc. Dir.<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab> School of Forestry & Env. Studies
Industrial Environmental Mgmt. Program<x-tab> </x-tab>Yale University
Editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>205 Prospect Street
203-432-6949 (tel) -5912 (fax)<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>New Haven, CT 06511-2189 USA
reid.lifset@yale.edu
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Reid J. Lifset, Assoc. Dir.<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab> School of Forestry & Env. Studies
Industrial Environmental Mgmt. Program<x-tab> </x-tab>Yale University
Editor, Journal of Industrial Ecology<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>205 Prospect Street
203-432-6949 (tel) -5912 (fax)<x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab><x-tab> </x-tab>New Haven, CT 06511-2189 USA
reid.lifset@yale.edu
</x-sigsep>