Creating the future we want

April 10, 2018

Tian-Shan Policy Center (TSPC) at AUCA, Center for Environment and Development (СЕD) of Division of Economics and Environmental Studies at AUCA in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH are organizing a guest lecture by Prof. Robert Costanza.

«Our current socio-ecological regime and its set of interconnected worldviews, institutions, and technologies all support the goal of unlimited growth of material production and consumption as a proxy for quality of life. However, abundant evidence shows that, beyond a certain threshold, further material growth only marginally contributes to improvement in the quality of life. Not only does further material growth not meet humanity’s central goal, there is mounting evidence that it creates significant roadblocks to sustainability through increasing inequality, resource constraints (i.e., peak everything, water limitations), and sink constraints (i.e., climate disruption, biodiversity loss, pollution). Overcoming these roadblocks and creating a sustainable and desirable future will require an integrated, systems-level redesign of our socio-ecological regime and economic paradigm focused explicitly and directly on the goal of sustainable quality of life and well-being rather than the proxy of unlimited material growth. It will require the recognition and measurement of the substantial contributions of natural and social capital to sustainable well-being», –  Robert Costanza.

Professor Robert Costanza is a Vice-Chancellor’s Chair in Public Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He is also currently a Senior Fellow at the National Council on Science and the Environment in Washington DC, a Senior Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Stockholm, Sweden, an Affiliate Fellow at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, a de Tao Master of Ecological Economics at the deTao Masters Academy in Shanghai, China, and co-chair of the Ecosystem Services Partnership. Professor Costanza’s transdisciplinary research integrates the study of humans and the rest of nature to address research, policy and management issues at multiple time and space scales, from small watersheds to the global system. He is co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics and was founding chief editor of the society’s journal Ecological Economics. He currently serves on the editorial board of ten other international academic journals. He is also founding co-editor in chief of Solutions a unique hybrid academic/popular journal. Funding chief editor of the society’s journal Ecological Economics. He currently serves on the editorial board of ten other international academic j journals. He is also founding co-editor in chief of Solutions a unique hybrid academic/popular journal.urn

Venue: AUCA Forum, Aaly Tokombaev Street 7/6, Bishkek

Time: Friday, April 13, 2018, 17:00 – 19:00

 Agenda

The lecture will be in English.  Translation into the Russian language will be provided.

To confirm your participation, please contact Margarita Lazutkina (phone: 0555 11 55 40,  e-mail: lazutkina_m@auca.kg).

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