Jornadas sobre Cambio Climático: Administración, Ciudadanía y Empresa
y 4 de Junio en Vitoria-Gasteiz
El Profesor Anil Markandya participara en la Mesa Redonda “Adaptación al Cambio” en la que también participarán Oscar Santa Coloma, José Manuel Moreno y Francisco Olearraga en el evento realizado por el Ayuntamiento de Vitoria, el Departamento de Medio Ambiente y el Ente Vasco de la Energía (EVE).
Las Jornadas contaran con la participación de representantes políticos, científicos, técnicos, mundo empresarial y las principales organizaciones ecologistas. Los objetivos principales del evento son:
• Movilizar y motivar a otras ciudades españolas a sumarse a la iniciativa europea del Pacto de los Alcaldes, difundiendo el compromiso adquirido por Vitoria-Gasteiz y otros ciudades como Santander y Barcelona.
• Generar un espacio en el que los responsables políticos del Gobierno Vasco puedan explicar y comunicar las principales líneas de trabajo de las políticas convergentes de energía y cambio climático.
• Poner de manifiesto la necesidad de la acción conjunta y coordinada de instituciones, empresas, organizaciones sociales y agentes científico-tecnológicos para lograr objetivos ambiciosos de mitigación y adaptación
• Implicar y sumar a la sociedad civil organizada, a las empresas, a las ONG, a las asociaciones de vecinos de los barrios y a concejales, y a los directores y técnicos municipales sobre el cambio climático y el papel que deben desempeñar las ciudades para contribuir a la solución del problema.
The 3rd International Conference on Eco-Efficiency
Modelling and Evaluation for Sustainability: Guiding Eco-Innovation and Consumption in Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands 9-11 June 2010
Prof Anil Markandya participated in the 3rd International Conference on Eco-Efficiency which took place in Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands, with a presentation titled "Beyond Current Practices: The Role of the External Costs of Carbon in Climate Decision-Making".
Fourth World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists
The Fourth World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, a joint initiative of EAERE and AERE, was held in Montreal, June 28 to July 2, 2010, on the campus of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
The hosts were ESG UQAM and CIREQ. ESG UQAM is the business school of UQAM and CIREQ (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche en Economie Quantitative) is an economics research center supported by the Université de Montréal, McGill University and Concordia University.
Summer School 2010
Miramar Palace Paseo Miraconcha, 48, San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa, SpainSummer School 2010
"Climate Change: zooming in on the problem and its solution"
Director: Prof. Anil Markandya (BC3 Basque Centre for Climate Change – Klima Aldaketa Ikergai)
The objective of the summer school is to offer an updated view of the ongoing trends in the frontier of Climate Change research. The school will be designed to study Climate Change issue from a multidisciplinary approach, allowing for an integrated view and understanding of the problem. Different editions of the school might specialise in different approaches to the analysis of Climate Change.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: A system dynamics approach to waste management: the case of Naples
Dr. Maria Federica Di Nola
UPV/EHU
The problem of waste management is complex in nature, involving major issues such as the increasing production of waste, the generation of a wide variety of emissions, impacts on human health and environmental threats. In this paper a system dynamics model is proposed to better understand this complex problem, taking Naples as a case study. The aim of the model is to explain the underpinning reasons behind the waste crisis the city is experiencing and to assess the costs derived from the emergency. With this purpose the model considers (a) demographic variables; (b) alternative waste treatment options; (c) costs associated with each option; (d) environmental awareness and (e) institutional constraints.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Climate Challenges for European Critical Infrastructure Protection: Nuclear Power and Water Supply
Dr. Stefan Vögele
Senior researcher at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany
During the heat waves in 2003 and 2006 nuclear power plants in several European countries had to reduce or shut down production due to reduced access to cooling water, regulation on maximum temperature of the return water and other limitations in the cooling system. Such nuclear power supply disruptions may have a significant impact on the energy supply security in Europe as nuclear power accounts for 28% of total power supply, each nuclear reactor accounts for a considerable amount of power and nuclear reactors are typically located in the same geographical area with access to the same source of cooling water. One way of addressing this risk of energy supply disruptions is through the application of supranational legislation and action plans, such as those developed in the European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) and the corresponding legislation. In the 2005 Green Paper on the EPCIP, the need to help reducing threats directed towards critical infrastructures such as for example energy and water supply was acknowledged. Such threats may come from terrorism, natural disasters and accidents. In our study we build a case for including climate-induced disruptions of electricity supply in the EPCIP and suggest how EPCIP should be amended to better cope with such threats.
Workshop: Fast-action GHG emissions mitigation strategies: Strengthening the Montreal Protocol and other measures to reduce non-CO2 GHG emissions.
Workshop
"Fast-action GHG emissions mitigation strategies: Strengthening the Montreal Protocol and other measures to reduce non-CO2 GHG emissions."
Prof. Mario Molina
Professor Molina is one of the world’s most influential researchers in atmospheric chemistry. His seminal research about the destroying effects that chlorofluorocarbons have on the ozone layer ultimately led to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. This was the first international agreement to effectively tackle a global environmental problem caused by human activities.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Challenges and perspectives in ecosystem services assessment and valuation: towards a new science of integrated human/natural systems
Dr. Ferdinando Villa,
Research Professor in BC3.
Despite the wide recognition of the notion of ecosystem services as an instrument to support the fair accounting of natural capital and an important aid in informing sustainable development, the science to quantify their provision, usage and flow between natural producers and human beneficiaries has developed slowly. A large part of Dr. Villa's career has been dedicated to developing scientific instruments to overcome the natural inertia of the mainstream conceptualization and to promote a quantum leap in the science of ecosystem services, allowing the notion to become a sound base for policy.
One of the results of the research carried on by Dr. Villa and his team is the ARIES (ARtificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services) technology, which will be the focus of the seminar. Using a formal knowledge base and automated machine reasoning, ARIES studies all the data relevant to specific ecosystem service assessment questions in a given area and constructs a cause-and-effect, ad-hoc picture of how ecological and economic factors interact. The result of an ARIES user session is a dynamic environmental asset analysis that spatially quantifies the provision, use, and dynamics of flow of ecosystem services in the area. Users can explore effects of policy changes and external pressures (such as climate change) through a scenario analysis module. ARIES incorporates a valuation module to assess potential and realized economic values and a biodiversity module to estimate values of protected areas for human well-being and threats to protected species. An ARIES analysis includes documentation and references that document and justify operations, datasets, and models used to create it.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Environmental problems: How can System Dynamics complement Economics?
Professor Erling Moxnes
Systems Dynamic Group, University of Bergen, Norway
Dynamics complicate understanding. It took 2000 years before Newton corrected Aristotle’s misunderstanding of velocity. Economic systems are harder to understand than the velocity of objects, and it is not surprising that dynamics are still not well understood in economics. I will concentrate on two dynamic phenomena, cycles and overshoots.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Misperceptions of the dynamics of climate change and of policy instruments
Dr. Sanjay Sharma
Dean and Professor of Management,
Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont (USA)
There is a wide gap between recommendations and actual reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Decisions to reduce emissions rely on politicians and their electorates. They may have good reasons to delay initiatives, however, they may also be confused by contradictory information and they may unable to perceive consequences of neither emissions nor policy initiatives. One challenge is to consider causes of climate change in addition to observations. Another is to realize that the climate problem is coupled to the problem of fossil energy depletion. A third is to understand the consequences of delays both when it comes to effects of emissions and to development of alternative technologies. Regarding policies, one major challenge is to understand how environmental taxes work. Most misperceptions seem to bias policies towards inaction. In my analysis of misperceptions I will draw on laboratory experiments, simulation models and observations of debates and policy making.
