This is an interesting time for Socio-Economic Metabolism
research. Over the past few years we’ve seen prices for primary resources
rising and becoming more volatile which has meant that natural resource use has
gained in political recognition and prominence. At the same time, the
relationship between metabolism and environmental impacts, including climate
change, has become more widely appreciated. Take Australia as an example: On 1
July Australia became one of the first countries that have legislated a price
on carbon by taxing large polluters. Of course there are many exemptions, and
compensation is paid to trade exposed companies and lower income households,
but the new legislation still represents a serious political attempt to reduce
emissions. Australia is also moving to a resource rent tax to replace its royalties
regime for mining companies, and is planning to invest the gains from the new
tax into regional infrastructure, the pension system and lowered company tax for
small and medium enterprises. These significant changes demonstrate the
importance natural resources and emissions currently have in public policy in
Australia.
I suppose the same is true internationally. The information
we provide with our science has become more relevant to policy making and
business planning. This was also reflected in the recent Gordon
Research Conference which, for the first time, asked about the contribution
of Industrial Ecology research to the huge global questions of food security, and
supply security of strategic natural resources in the face of growing
population and consumption.
While many of the environmental problems we are facing today
are of a global nature, national policy imperatives and antagonism prevail, as was
apparent from the recent Rio+20 meetings. It remains an important question for
all of us, I suppose, how the scientific information we provide can be turned
into relevant knowledge for other groups in society. I certainly still feel challenged
explain how our research is meaningful and might be turned into political
action if we are to turn the looming environmental and natural resource use
crisis around. One way to approach this question would be to better integrate
social science with industrial ecology research. Another way is to focus more
on the policy insights that our research can bring when we meet in Darmstadt and Beijing later this year.
As scientists, we are used to writing journal papers, books
and project reports but engage much less with more broadly accessible media. This
means that we only rarely need to express our findings in a generally
accessible way. I have recently written a number of small pieces for
conventional media but there is a lot more we could do, especially in times of
modern communication media.
There is more mundane business to report. For the first time
our board has a treasurer in Hiroki Tanikawa form Nagoya University and a member
responsible for outreach and communication in Shi Lei from Tsinghua University.
Our section has only a very small budget, sourced through income from our
section conferences, but even a small amount of money requires a dedicated
person to look after it. Communication will be a focus over the next two years,
and we plan to finalise the section’s web presence. We have also increased our
capacity through co-opting Makarand Dehejia as a board member. He brings his
extensive knowledge about governance and the corporate sector to the board.
The new board members are as follows:
- Heinz Schandl (chair)
- Helga Weisz (vice-chair)
- Hiroki Tanikawa (treasurer)
- Shi Lei (outreach and publicity)
- Kazuyo Matsubae-Yokoyama
- Daniel Mueller
- Makarand Dehejia (co-opted)
- Katy Roelich (student representative)
I wish all of you who reside in the Northern Hemisphere a
nice and relaxing holiday season and hope that the winter in the Southern Hemisphere
shows some mercy to people like me who suffer in the cold weather.
Heinz Schandl
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