Description:
The disappointing outcome from the United Nations Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change in December 2009 affected many social researchers who had hoped that the world leaders would shine a guiding light towards a sustainable development paradigm shift in society. A guiding light that would provide a clear pathway for all the world’s citizens to an environmentally safe and equitable “Spaceship Earth” (Boulding, 1966). Much discussion arose after this failed summit about the need for ‘bottom-up’ adaptation and resilience as the alternative. Valuable as such an approach is to address the environmental concerns, its incremental change and modest institutional reforms limit the extent of sustainable development. Paradigm shift requires creative destruction of the type Joseph Schumpeter advocated when in times of crisis. Innovation lies at the heart of such a radical approach. Based on the need to raise the profile of this innovation approach to sustainable development, the Research Network on Innovation – the sponsor of this journal – decided to organise the next biennial Spirit of Innovation conference around the theme ‘Environment, Innovation and Sustainable Development’. Thus was that on the 7th and 8th October 2010, the “Spirit of Innovation IV” Forum was held at the Euromed Management School in Marseille.
Description:
A clear path to the new eco-sustainable techno-economic paradigm is mapped out in Courvisanos (2009a) using a framework for innovation and investment developed from the seminal work of Adolph Lowe and Michal Kalecki. This theoretical framework is based around three elements that are crucial to achieving this eco-sustainable paradigm: (i) cumulative effective demand for eco-sustainable products, services and processes, (ii) ecological rules for capital investment to ensure resource saving and long-term carrying capacity, and (iii) iterative flexible public and private planning and monitoring processes to allow ecologically sustainable innovation to be supported by infrastructure, R&D and learning and development systems. This path was specifically applied in Courvisanos (2009a) to regional (non-metropolitan) Australia, an area of food and fibre production that is fragile because of drought, fire and massive storms due to ecological degradation and greenhouse warming. The heartland of regional Australia is the nation’s food bowl, the Murray-Darling River Basin (MDRB), which is under great stress due to salination and drought. There also is great rainfall variability with huge floods due to climate change, as became evident in 2010. A path for resolution of the concerns of specific regional and corporate interests along the whole Murray-Darling river system has not yet emerged. What is required is an eco-sustainable framework that addresses these issues in a holistic manner.
Description:
A clear path to the new eco-sustainable techno-economic paradigm is mapped out in Courvisanos (2009a) using a framework for innovation and investment developed from the seminal work of Adolph Lowe and Michal Kalecki. This theoretical framework is based around three elements that are crucial to achieving this eco-sustainable paradigm: (i) cumulative effective demand for eco-sustainable products, services and processes, (ii) ecological rules for capital investment to ensure resource saving and long-term carrying capacity, and (iii) iterative flexible public and private planning and monitoring processes to allow ecologically sustainable innovation to be supported by infrastructure, R&D and learning and development systems. This path was specifically applied in Courvisanos (2009a) to regional (non-metropolitan) Australia, an area of food and fibre production that is fragile because of drought, fire and massive storms due to ecological degradation and greenhouse warming. The heartland of regional Australia is the nation’s food bowl, the Murray-Darling River Basin (MDRB), which is under great stress due to salination and drought. There also is great rainfall variability with huge floods due to climate change, as became evident in 2010. A path for resolution of the concerns of specific regional and corporate interests along the whole Murray-Darling river system has not yet emerged. What is required is an eco-sustainable framework that addresses these issues in a holistic manner.