[sustran] GRF Sustainable Production and Consumption conference

[Philip Vergragt]

 Dear colleague, 
Please see the attached announcement:
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION FOR THE SECOND GRF-SPAC CONFERENCE

Global Transitions to Sustainable Production and Consumption Systems

Fudan University, Shanghai, China
June 8-11, 2014

Lead Organizers

The Global Research Forum on Sustainable Production and Consumption (GRF-SPaC), in collaboration with the Fudan Tyndall Centre and the Exploring the Role of High-Emitting Groups in Accelerating the Transition to a Low-Carbon Society (HEGiATLCS) Research Program (Fudan University), the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), the Integrated Strategies Forum (ISF), One Earth Initiative, and others.

Aims of the Conference

*	To improve understanding of the complex driving forces underlying prevalent and emerging consumerist lifestyles around the world.
*	To generate insights about fostering a necessary transition toward alternative ways of pursuing individual and societal well-being in a technological society cognizant of ecological limits.
*	To contribute to establishment of a vibrant global research community focused on sustainable production and consumption, which is able to advise policy makers, business, and civil society.

Call for Abstracts, Essays, and Session Proposals

Environmental deterioration, climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, as well as inequality and persistent poverty, are all linked to, and driven by, globally unsustainable production and consumption patterns and systems. As the traditional rules of the economic and financial system are called increasingly into question, so do the impacts of the expanding international consumer class. Developing countries are working to overcome privation by growing their economies, while the middle classes in countries such as India and China are adopting increasingly material-intensive lifestyles.

Since the 1992 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the transition to sustainable production and consumption (SPaC) systems has been heralded as a global priority. Accordingly, the United Nations General Assembly launched in 2012 the Ten-Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP). In addition, the International Human Dimensions Program (IHDP) initiated its own ten-year Future Earth research plan. The GRF-SPaC global conference will examine these and other approaches to produce the transdisciplinary knowledge and actions needed to support these activities during the coming decade.

Over the past two decades, extensive research regarding SPaC has been carried out covering issues such as the circular and green economy, the attitude-behavior gap, collaborative consumption, sustainable finance and investment, sustainable procurement, and green supply-chain management. Other work has sought to identify the underlying drivers of contemporary consumer culture and to examine the inherent problems with the prevailing economic growth paradigm. Emerging from this activity is appreciation for the complex challenges of systemic change, though actual progress is hindered by our limited comprehension of the multidimensional barriers that impede diffusion of more sustainable lifestyles and consumer practices. Further inquiry is necessary to understand these complexities and to more effectively guide the transition from research to policy.

This conference provides a unique opportunity for Chinese and Asian SPaC researchers and practitioners to join together with others in the global community. The Second GRF-SPaC conference will be a forum to present and discuss new research outcomes from the Asia-Pacific region, as well as from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and North America. The event will take stock of new issue framings and explore emerging research questions. The scope will cover local and global issues and interconnections across scales, linking regions and researchers. One of the aims is to strengthen the international community of SPaC researchers and practitioners and to open channels of communication with knowledge users in policy making, business, and civil society.

The conference will entail several keynote presentations by internationally renowned scholars and policy makers, academic papers and discussions, and dialogue sessions between researchers and practitioners. The format will integrate across regions and seek to forge global collaborations with other global networks.

We invite interested participants to submit abstracts for papers and essays as well as session proposals. 

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the conference website at https://www.confmanager.com/main.cfm?cid=2724.
Or visit the GRF-SPaC website:
 
http://grf-spc.weebly.com/
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