CFP: Manchester Green Political Theory Workshop

Workshops in Political Theory Sixth Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
2-4 September 2009

Workshop on GREEN POLITICAL THEORY
Conveners: Stijn Neuteleers (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Corey MacIver
(University of Oxford, UK)

The management of environmental problems and the rise of the environmental movement pose significant challenges for contemporary political philosophy. These challenges can be found both on a global level and on a local level. At the global level, for instance, climate change is one of the major issues in real-life international politics and has induced a growing debate on the ethics of climate change (global distributive justice, intergenerational justice, etc.). At the local policy level, we are confronted, on the one hand, with the conflict of environmental values with other values such as economic growth and justice. On the other hand, we have to deal with conflicts among environmental values themselves (biodiversity, restoration, wilderness, etc.). Our political and economic instruments and theories have difficulties to cope with these challenges e.g. cost-benefit analysis, value of privacy, discount rates, aggregative models of democracy, etc. The broad field of political philosophy and the environment tries to provide answers to these challenges.
The workshop aims to cover a broad range of green political theory topics such as:
- Ethics and politics of climate change
- Democracy and the environment
- Public policy and the environment
- Environmental citizenship
- Environmental justice
- Green economics
- Environmental decision-making

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper) to stijn.neuteleers@econ.kuleuven.be and corey.maciver@nuffield.ox.ac.uk by April 30, 2008.

Practical information (registration, fees, etc.) can be found on the conference website.

CFP: Climate Change

Call for Papers

What: Climate Change: A Conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice
Where: Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
When: August 19-21, 2009

Please send abstracts (500-800 words) for paper proposals to climateandjustice@gmail.com no later than May 1st. Applicants will know of their acceptance by May 15th. Quality papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection of the conference proceedings. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, as travel funding has been set aside to aid exemplary graduate student presenters. For more information, please see the conference website: www.climateandjustice.org. The site will be continually updated with travel and lodging information, the conference schedule, and other useful information as it becomes available. If you have further questions, please contact Sarah at sbkenehan@gmail.com.

Keynote speakers:
Simon Caney, Oxford
Lukas Meyer, Graz University
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington

Conference Abstract: Since the late 1980s climate change has been centre-stage in the international policy arena. However, as of yet, little has been done to incorporate all global players while at the same time catalysing the type of action that must be taken in order to combat this problem. There are likely many reasons for this current inaction, including but surely not limited to: questions surrounding climate science and predictions; questions concerning the most effective way to cope with the problem; and questions relating to the fair distribution of the burden of dealing with climate change. The focus of this conference will be to discuss the latter issue, i.e. the role of justice as it arises in the context of climate change. Justice related issues emerge in the debate over climate change policy on many levels. First, and probably most obviously, it must be determined what role each global actor will play in any coordinated effort to mitigate climate change. The answer to this question is not straightforward, as there are numerous factors that must be considered, including whether rights to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) should be divided equally among all nations, or whether rights to emit should be a function of the geographical placement of a nation, the population of a nation, the level of development of a nation, or even perhaps some combination of these elements. Second, and intimately related to the first issue, it has to be decided to what degree (if any) a nation’s historical emissions ought to be considered. As with the first issue, there is no clear-cut way to work through this problem, since there are seemingly justifiable reasons for engaging in all of the following: severely limiting the largest historical emitters’ claims to present and future emissions, considering only the historical record from the point in time in which a nation could reasonably have known of the harm it was contributing to, or, alternatively, agreeing that historical emissions should have no weight in the discussion, but rather all nations should agree on a fair emissions target from the present forward. Third, it must be determined to what degree (if any) future people ought to be taken into consideration when establishing climate change policy, since it has been predicted that the effects of climate change will stretch far into the future. Addressing this question requires having discussions on how future people can have justice claims on current people, what those justice claims might be, and how far into the future these claims reach. Fourth, it must be determined what types of entities have viable justice claims. Is it only individual persons that can make coherent justice claims? Or can nations, industries, businesses, non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the like have and make meaningful justice claims? Finally, we must determine the level of responsibility individual actors have in mitigating and adapting to climate change, since it is not evident whether this responsibility falls only on nations, or whether it also rests with individuals, businesses, and industries, as well. Clearly then, the issue of justice and climate change is both complex and requires immediate attention.

CFP: Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship

8th Global Conference
Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship
Friday 10th July - Sunday 12th July 2008
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers
Environmental Ethics, Sustainability and Education
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference aims to explore the role of ecology and environmental thinking in the context of contemporary society and international affairs, and assess the implications for our understandings of fairness, justice and global citizenship. 'Environmental justice' is conceived broadly as reflecting not only justice in the context of human communities but also towards other species, ecosystems, habitats, landscapes, succeeding generations and the environment as a whole. The 8th Global Conference on Ecological Justice and Global Citizenship will explicitly explore environmental ethics and sustainability. We are looking for papers which investigate and question the relationships of power and equity in the environmental context. Among these relationships, our environmental ethic has a central role, not only in terms of explaining current attitudes towards the environment, nature and natural resource use, but also the potential role it may play in shaping the future and enabling us to live more sustainably. In particular papers are sought which explore the role of education in shaping a modern environmental ethic, and the inherent challenges which accompany that role.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on any of the following indicative themes:
* Environmental ethics
o New and emerging thinkers and trends of thought on environmental ethics
o The role and place of environmental protest in shaping our ethic
o Indigenous environmental ethics: relations between humans and 'nature'
o Property rights and private interests vs. pooling of human and ecological resources
o The need for greater multi- and trans-disciplinary collaboration
* Sustainability
o Engaging citizens in the processes of achieving increased sustainability
o The role of civil society: communities taking responsibility for the local environment
o Corporate Social Responsibility: transparency and accountability
o Achieving responsible consumption and production
o The role of NGOs in environmental and sustainability awareness raising
* Environmental education
o Teaching citizenship, identity and ethics
o Designing the ecological curriculum
o Integrating the concept of ‘sustainability’ and environmental awareness and education in the primary, secondary and higher education sectors
o The integration of distinct disciplines: The role of behavioural science in environmental education

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th February 2009. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 5th June 2009. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to all Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstractWe acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs: Erika Techera, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia. E-mail: erika.techera@law.mq.edu.au
S. Ram Vemuri, School of Law and Business,Faculty of Law, Business and Arts, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT 0909, Australia. E-mail: ram.vemuri@cdu.edu.au
Rob Fisher, Network Founder and Leader, Inter-Disciplinary.Net, Freeland, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. E-mail: ejgc8@inter-disciplinary.net

Perspectives are sought from
* people engaged in actor network theory, agriculture and agricultural economics, the built environment disciplines, conflict resolution and mediation, critical geography, environmental studies, human development and ecology, industrial relations and design, law and the legal professions, philosophy and ethics, political science and international affairs, public policy and advising, social sciences, sociology of science, theology, urban studies and western European studies
* people in the public and private sectors who are involved in planning and project development, policy-making and implementation, and negotiation and mediation at national and international levels
* people in Governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations, voluntary sector bodies, environmental charities and groups, business and professional associations

All papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may be invited to go forward for development into 20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed ISBN hard copy volume. Multiple themed volumes are in print and/or in press from previous meetings of the project.The conference is sponsored by Inter-Disciplinary.Net as part of the 'Probing the Boundaries' programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

For further details about the project please visit: http://www.interdisciplinary.net/ptb/ejgc/ejgc.htm
For further details about the conference please visit: http://www.interdisciplinary.net/ptb/ejgc/ejgc8/cfp.htm

CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate ...

Interesting CFP for a panel at the 2009 ECPR...

CFP: Cosmopolitan Ethics and Climate Change Panel at 2009 ECPR

ECPR 2009 Potsdam, Germany

Panel: "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" 

The latest science of climate change shows that massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will be needed by mid-century to avert extreme, possibly catastrophic, harm to Earth?s climate system. Yet, despite ongoing and sometimes intense diplomatic efforts over two decades, governments of the world have been unable to agree to anything near the kind of regulation of pollution that would be required to achieve these cuts. This failure can be attributed to the nature of the climate change regime, which is premised on negotiations among states seeking to protect or promote their relatively narrow national interests. An alternative (or at least a supplement) to this interstate approach can be found in cosmopolitan conceptions of world affairs. 

Cosmopolitanism offers politically viable alternatives to the status quo regime that are just, practical and efficacious. This panel aims to highlight these alternatives, focusing especially on how cosmopolitan ideas might be moved from the realm of philosophy to the practical politics and policies of climate change. My aim in proposing this panel is to bring together people who believe that cosmopolitan philosophy and ethics can offer practical and workable alternatives to the prevailing state-centric climate change regime. I hope that we can gather a collection of papers, and have a lively discussion, on how cosmopolitanism can inform the climate change regime generally and policies and behaviors in particular. Put another way, the objective is not to develop cosmopolitan philosophy related to climate change as much as it is to enhance policies and practices through (practical) cosmopolitan ethics.

We can have up to seven papers in the panel comprising up to five presenters and two additional 'tabled' papers (the tabled papers can be discussed during the panel but the authors would not actually do a presentation; I'm assuming this limitation is simply to avoid having too many speakers using the allotted time, which seems a reasonable requirement). If we are fortunate enough to have seven quality papers,
it is my hope that we can collect them together in a book manuscript for submission to a university press and/or as a special issue of a scholarly journal. With this in mind, I hope the papers can be well-developed, in the range of 9,000-12,000 words (and possibly a bit longer if authors feel the need).

Please do consider proposing a paper for the panel. For guidelines on how to submit a paper proposal, please go to this website: http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/howtosubmit.asp. The SECTION is "Green Politics" (no. 13). The PANEL is "Improving the Climate Regime: Cosmopolitan Solutions" (no. 210). More information for paper givers can be found here: 

http://www.ecpr.org.uk/potsdam/files/paper_proposals_guidelines_and_deadlines.pdf
Please note that the DEADLINE for paper proposals is 1 February 2009