







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 1 (1): 121–123, April 2018 

 
REPORT 

 

Field notes from the Conference of the 
European Society for Ecological Economics 
(ESEE), Budapest, Hungary, 20–23 June 2017 
 

Julien-François Gerber  
 
After a few years in South Asia, I was able to attend the Conference of the 
European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE) in Budapest, Hungary, 
20–23 June 2017, and to reconnect with some of my European colleagues 
in the field of ecological economics. What follows are best described as 
personal ‘field notes’ and cannot pretend to be ‘objective’ or 
comprehensive. 

Among the regional societies for ecological economics, the ESEE is often 
seen as the one most closely sticking to the original heterodox roots of 
ecological economics. Clive Spash, for example, has convincingly argued 
that there are noticeable differences between the European and American 
schools of ecological economics, which are also reflected in their 
conference programmes. I was thus very curious to see whether the critical 
spirit of the ESEE was still alive. 

Before the conference, a summer school was held for junior researchers. 
After the opening ceremony with ESEE President Irene Ring and the 
subsequent general reception on Tuesday evening, the next three days of 
the conference were intense. There were several morning keynotes, parallel 
panel sessions, poster presentations, and then afternoon keynotes and 
additional parallel panel sessions. It was, thus, a constant struggle to 
decide—between nine simultaneous panels—which had the most 
interesting and relevant presentations. 

 
 International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, the Netherlands; gerber@iss.nl 

Copyright © Gerber 2018. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.28  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.28


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [122] 

Overall, the conference presented a few salient features. First, it was very 
interdisciplinary. This point was emphasized in the conference’s 
introductory text: ‘Academic and practitioner communities must enact 
meaningful participative and mutually empowering activities across 
disciplines and different knowledge systems.’ Accordingly, individual 
presentations ranged from quantitative models of energy transitions to the 
role of emotions in ecological economics, and included several 
presentations on social movements, and even one on the neglected 
treatment of prisons in ecological economics. As a response to this thematic 
variety, no less than eight parallel panel sessions dealt with the problems of 
interdisciplinarity. Ecological economics as ‘the science of sustainability’ (R. 
Costanza) has to be at the forefront of interdisciplinary thinking. 

Secondly, the conference sought to have an impact in promoting critical 
policies. The introductory text of the conference specified that ‘Ecological 
economics can contribute to generating inclusive and reflective research in a 
number of ways: as transformative science; as advocacy for non-human 
beings and future generations; [and] as advocacy for environmental and 
social justice.’ This emphasis on advocacy was palpable throughout the 
conference. The organizers explicitly defined ecological economics as being 
transformative not only at the social level but also, interestingly, at the 
individual level (its insights ‘aim to encourage pathways to individual, 
collective and institutional change’). This welcoming attitude towards 
psychological and relational insights was observable in several 
presentations. 

Third, the conference remained firmly heterodox in its outlook. The 
programme did not include any presentation framed along the standard 
standpoint of (neoclassical) environmental economics with its 
monodisciplinary focus on general equilibrium models with external costs. 
In Europe, authors working along this line share their work at the 
conferences of the European Association of Environmental and Resource 
Economists (EAERE), not at the ESEE. In this way, it would not be wrong 
to say that the ESEE maintains aspects of the non-orthodox spirit of the 
founding fathers like N. Georgescu-Roegen, K.W. Kapp, K. Boulding, C.S. 
Holling, and E.F. Schumacher. 

The ‘hot topics’ at the ESEE this year were related to (1) fundamental 
reflections on the identity of ‘socio-ecological economics’ as an 
interdisciplinary field of inquiry (as mentioned above); (2) the quest for de-
growth alternatives; (3) socio-metabolic analyses; (4) energy transitions; and 
(5) payments for ecosystem services. 

This last topic—payment for ecosystem services—has always been an area 
of scientific and ethical contention within ESEE members and, of course, 



[123] Julien-François Gerber 

among ecological economists worldwide. Some ecological economists are 
sceptical about the possibility and soundness of commodifying ecosystem 
services, but others pragmatically embrace the idea. This opposition was 
exemplified this year in the diverging keynote lectures of Erik Gómez-
Baggethun, who was generally critical of payments for ecosystem services, 
and Unai Pascual, who was in favour of some of them. 

I was surprised, and pleased, to see the remarkable scientific and policy 
effort mobilized by European ecological economists towards clarifying and 
seeking ways of implementing a de-growth project. There were no less than 
twelve parallel panel sessions dealing with different aspects of de-growth or 
post-growth, such as the possible effects on employment, the role of 
technologies, public opinion about it, or the link with environmental justice 
movements. It really is the hot topic! 

Besides the well-known critique of GDP as a useful indicator, there are 
today three main post-growth currents in ecological economics: de-growth, 
a-growth, and steady-state economics. De-growth promotes a ‘civilizational 
change’ towards a society with a smaller metabolism but, more importantly, 
towards a society with a metabolism that has a different structure and 
serves new functions. These new structure and functions are aimed at 
enhancing localized, democratic, and equitable economies, where material 
accumulation no longer holds a prime position in the population’s value 
systems. 

A-growth, for its part, is agnostic about growth: welfare and sustainable 
targets should be carefully defined, and whether these targets require 
growth is simply irrelevant. And steady-state economics promotes non-
growing societies based on a stable material and energy throughput and a 
stable population. European ecological economists work mostly on de-
growth, often around Joan Martinez-Alier and, to a lesser extent, on a-
growth while American ecological economists are more interested in steady-
state economics, frequently around Herman Daly. But the three approaches 
can be seen as complementary. 

This significant momentum of growth-critical approaches is not restricted 
to Western ecological economics; it is triggering debates also in Latin 
America and Asia, as exemplified in our forthcoming volume Post-growth 
thinking in India (co-edited by J.-F. Gerber and Rajeswari S. Raina, Orient 
Blackswan). At the end, I was relieved that the ESEE conferences seem to 
remain vibrant arenas of debates over some of the most pressing 
sustainability questions of our time.  


