Green Economy for Smart and Sustainable Cities: Ecosystems, Economy, Policy
The executive Smart and Sustainable Cities Oxford Summer School in Ecological Economics 2019 will take place 25-31 August 2019, St Hugh’s College, Oxford. The very special features of the school will be a visit to Lord Norman Foster’s Studio and the Mayor of London Office, keynotes from United Nations and the Club of Rome and exciting interactive sessions. Apply today via: http://environmenteurope.org/
Our breaking news that Mr Raf Tuts, Director, Programme Division, UN-Habitat will be giving a special talk at the School to take place at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. We are also pleased to announce participation of Lord Norman Foster’s Studio, Foster and Partners and the Mayor of London Office in the School.This year the School is devoted to Green Economy for Smart and Sustainable Cities: Ecosystems, Economy, Policy. The programme includes confirmed interventions from The Club of Rome, UN HABITAT, UNDP, The Open University, Greater London Authority, Foster and Partners, Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Institute of Sustainable Development Strategies and Environment Europe.
Mr Raf Tuts (UN HABITAT), Prof. Herbert Girardet (The Club of Rome), Prof. David Orr (Oberlin College, USA), Prof. Dhiru Thadani (ISOCARP), Dr Stanislav Shmelev (Environment Europe Ltd), John W. Taylor (UNDP), Prof. Dave Elliott (The Open University), Peter Massini (Greater London Authority), Prof. Irina Shmeleva (Institute of Sustainable Development Strategies) have confirmed their participation in the School.
The United Nations projects that 68% of global population will live in cities by 2050. This means that we urgently need a new strategic direction for greening our cities and making them smart to reduce the environmental impact of their performance, increase employment and economic viability, and to enhance the quality of life. Such a task requires a thorough assessment of sustainability and smart urban performance to establish areas of improvement, understand the inter-sectoral connections, find and neutralise the most important drivers of CO2 emissions, establish which policies, design approaches and transformations could be most successful to make our cities more sustainable.
The School will address key elements of the new economy transformation, exploring the cutting edge methods and policy applications in ecological economics. With a clear sustainable development focus, it will draw on the expertise of a range of disciplines: economics, ecology, physics, environmental sciences, sociology, psychology, complex systems theory, etc. to address the current challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, water shortages, social cohesion and achieving sustainability. The course will be composed of a theoretical and applied modules and will address three key elements of the new economy transformation: an industrial ecology approach, multiple criteria methods for decision making and new tools for measuring progress. A particular focus of this forum will be on the synergies between smart and sustainable dimensions in the urban context and how smart technologies could enhance in the urban sustainability performance.
In the theoretical part, it will analyze the concept of economy-environment interactions and industrial ecology, which highlights the importance of intersectoral flows of matter and energy required for the production of the goods and services. The method of environmentally extended input-output analysis, actively used for policy applications around the world, will be introduced to illustrate this approach. Ideas of interdisciplinary synthesis and methodological pluralism will be introduced alongside institutional economic approaches. Next, it will explore the system of tools for decision making based on multicriteria methods, used for policy appraisal, which applied at different levels could shift the patterns of decisions making towards more socially equitable and more environmentally friendly as well as economically sound decisions. Acting as a bridge to the policy module, the final theoretical session will criticise existing approaches to measure macro sustainability performance and will introduce new conceptual tools for the assessment of progress. A particular attention will be paid to ecosystems, the impacts of the economy on the ecosystems and alternative ecosystem services assessment and valuation techniques in the urban context.
The applied module will be taught by active professionals and experts, who advise international organizations, national and city governments around the world and have experience working with EU institutions. The School will draw on the EU experience of environmental policy and will focus in its applied part on green fiscal reform, climate change, renewable energy, multidimensional poverty measurement, smart and sustainable cities and values. The scope of sustainability issues addressed during the Summer School, covering not only economic and environmental, but also social sustainability, will make this Summer School truly unique. Our very special guest this year will be Mr Raf Tuts of United Nations HABITAT with a talk on the New Urban Agenda and a visit to the Mayor of London office accompanied with a tour of leading Foster and Partners architectural studio.
The course is designed for multiple points of entry and could be helpful for PhD students, government experts, representatives of international organizations and business. The course will give participants an opportunity to explore key methodologies for ecological-economic analysis and to apply these to various case studies. Oxford Summer and Winter Schools in Ecological Economics organized by Environment Europe attracted participants from 55 countries, including Canada, USA, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Iceland, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Latvia, Morocco, Ghana, Nigeria, China, India, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.
We are immensely pleased that our new book, Shmelev S.E., ed. (2019) Sustainable Cities Reimagined: Multidimensional Assessment and Smart Solutions, Routledge: https://www.routledge.com/
We are looking forward to welcoming everyone to Oxford.
