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News from ICTP 115 - Commentary
After three years under the wing of ICTP, the Ecological and Environmental Economics (EEE) programme has shed its protective cover and will transfer its operation to Venice.
EEE Finds New Home in Venice
When ICTP agreed to sponsor an
ecological and environmental economics (EEE) programme in 2002,
it marked a new, innovative strategy in the Centre's 40-year-old
quest to build scientific and intellectual capacity in the developing
world.
First, the decision pushed the Centre's agenda well beyond physics
and mathematics into areas that lie at the interface between the
natural and social sciences. In fact, the initiative called for
the use of highly sophisticated tools usually associated with
physicists and mathematicians (for example, modelling and computer
simulations) to examine critical social and economic problems.
Second, ICTP, for the first time in its history, agreed to provide
substantial 'seed' money for an 'external' project that would
be housed at the Centre's campus in Trieste---that is, money to
help launch and nurture the programme during its initial phases
of development.
At the same time, the Centre and project organisers also agreed
that after three years of ICTP assistance, the programme would
have to find its own sources of revenue in order to continue its
operations.
Well, the three-year 'incubation' period is now over and the EEE
programme is indeed out on its own, having successfully transformed
itself from a fledgling operation, nurtured by ICTP, into an independent
entity.
Beginning this January, EEE assumed a new name---the International
Research Centre on Climate Impacts and Policy; a new headquarters---at
Fondazione Giorgio Cini (FGC), on the island of San Giorgio
Maggiore, in Venice; and a new financial base---from FGC, which
will not only provide meeting space but computer rooms, guest
quarters and a cafeteria. The Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei,
which was one of EEE's original institutional partners, will also
continue to sponsor the initiative extending its managerial and
administrative expertise to the effort.
"I am thankful for the opportunity that ICTP gave us,"
says Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey professor of economics
at Cambridge University, UK, and one of the chief supervisors
of the project. "We have tried our best to make sure that
the Centre's investment earned an excellent return---in terms
of expanding individual knowledge, strengthening institutional
networks, and encouraging extensive and fruitful exchanges between
scholars and scientists in the natural and social sciences."
Making good on this pledge, over the past three years EEE has
organised 29 workshops and 32 seminars in a wide-range of subject
areas that include such topics as property rights in environmental
management, ecosystem tourism in southern Africa, and ecological
and economic strategies for understanding and mitigating the spread
of infectious diseases.
Working closely with ICTP's Physics of Weather and Climate group,
EEE has also organised research and training activities that examined
climate change issues from an environmental and ecological economics
perspective. "This partnership," notes Dasgupta, "will
continue and likely strengthen once EEE settles into its new quarters
in Venice."
"One of the most pleasing aspects of the EEE's work,"
says Karl-Göran Mäler, who worked with Dasgupta as co-leader
of the initiative, "has been the active involvement of the
scientific and scholarly community in developing countries. Six
of the EEE's 29 workshops, for example, were held in developing
countries, and virtually all of the five books and 13 peer-reviewed
articles published as a result of our activities included authors
from the developing world."
In addition, in May 2005 EEE organised a workshop for environmental
economists from the Middle East and North Africa to explore the
possibility of creating a network similar to those that exist
in other regions of the world. The Academy of Sciences for the
Developing World (TWAS), whose secretariat is located on the ICTP
campus, has agreed to host the network's headquarters at its regional
office in the new Library of Alexandria in Egypt. "The network
is off to a good start," Mäler says, "and we are
optimistic that it will gain strength and visibility in the future."
As for the new International Research Centre on Climate Impacts
and Policy, two activities are already planned for 2006: a workshop
examining integrated climate models for the purpose of assessing
climate impacts and policies, scheduled for January, and a workshop
on climate change and the future of biodiversity, scheduled for
October. The first members of the new Centre's resident research
group will also be appointed. When fully staffed, the group is
expected to have seven members, each of whom will retain his or
her association with the Centre for at least three years.
"The once separate natural and social science communities
have moved closer together over the past several years,"
says Carlo Carraro, professor of econometry and environmental
policy at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari and a member
of the EEE steering committee. "Each community increasingly
realises that a greater understanding of the complex problems
that the world faces demands a better understanding of both nature
and human nature."
"That's the interface that EEE focussed on," continues
Carraro, "and that's the interface that the International
Research Centre on Climate Impacts and Policy will continue to
focus on by paying particular attention to what is likely the
most challenging global problem that we face today: our changing
climate. Indeed there may be no more critical issue for the field
of ecological and environmental economics to explore, and we are
thankful that ICTP has created such a strong foundation for us
to do just that."