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European Association
of Environmental and Resource Economists
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President Correspondence
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
This is my first correspondence published in our Newsletter as EAERE President. It is my pleasure to start by thanking my predecessor, Frank Convery, for the great quality he brought to this job during the two years of his Presidential term. It has been a great honour to work with him and the other colleagues on the Council. It is my privilege to take over and serve EAERE as President for the next two years.
I would like to welcome the three new members of our Council, Thomas Sterner (President-Elect), Santiago Rubio and Sjak Smulders. Our new members along with our continuing Council members - Frank Convery (Past President), Katrin Millock and Nick Hanley, Monica Eberle (secretary-general), and I - will do our best to provide continuity over the coming year.
The first meeting of the new Council took place in Venice very recently, on May 5th-6th. On that occasion the Council started to put into practice the motions approved at our last Extra-Ordinary General Assembly of members held in Brussels, on November 18th, 2005. In particular, the Council created a new Association in Italy. Founding members were the current EAERE Council, along with Karl-Göran Mäler and Ignazio Musu, who represented the group of colleagues who created our Association in Germany over fifteen years ago.
The next Council’s actions will be to take all the necessary steps to dissolve the Association in Germany. Former Presidents Rüdiger Pethig and Klaus Conrad were given special authorization to act on behalf of EAERE for this purpose.
The establishment of EAERE with its legal seat in Italy is expected to bring the Association a number of benefits. In fact, former Councils encountered many bureaucratic problems in the past. Under its new legal framework, EAERE will be better able to manage and control its legal issues with autonomy and professionalism, for the benefit of the membership, since consolidation of the legal seat and the Permanent Secretariat in the same location, and the handling of all legal matters in a common language provides obvious advantages in terms of efficiency.
During our last meeting, the Council completed the process of selecting the location and local organisers of our annual conference in 2008. It was a difficult decision in view of the high quality proposals the Council received. The Council decided to entrust the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) with this task, and Thomas Sterner will be chairing the Local Organising Committee.We hope to have a similar number of high quality proposals for the 2009 conference.
The Venice Council meeting was also an occasion for the Programme Co-chairs of the EAERE 2007 Annual Conference (Thessaloniki, Greece) - Aart de Zeeuw and Eftichios Sartzetakis - to update the Council about their progress. Preparations for the conference look very promising! Further information is forthcoming.
As regards the current year, our annual meeting will be part of the Third World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics, to be held in Kyoto (Japan) on July 3-7, 2006. EAERE is one of the main sponsors of this event. Michael Rauscher, the Co-Chair of the Programme Committee on behalf of EAERE, has provided us further details about the upcoming Kyoto programme on page 20. On page 21 you will find information about the DWP Commemorative Symposium being organised by Ed Barbier on behalf of EAERE to honour our late colleague David Pearce. The 2006 Eric Kempe prize (see http://www.eaere.org/ek.html ) will be awarded at the Kyoto conference. This award is one of the most important tributes given by our Association.
In this issue of our Newsletter (page 7), you will also find information about the new arrangements that have been made - thanks to Ian Bateman and Kerry Turner, ERE co-editors - in order to streamline the paper submissions, review and editorial system of the EAERE official journal. This is an important achievement that will give more power and greater efficiency to our journal.
Just prior to the Third World Congress (from June 25th to July 1st), our annual Summer School will be taking place in Venice. EAERE and its partners in this project, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and the VeniceInternationalUniversity, are pleased to confirm that the European Commission awarded funds to cover almost all the costs of our 2006-2009 Summer Schools. I would like to take this opportunity to thank, in particular, the FEEM staff for this important achievement that provides recognition of the success of our Summer School series. Further information about the EAERE-FEEM-VIU Summer School series is provided in this Newsletter on page 8.
In terms of membership side, I would like to thank the EAERE supporters (listed on page 4) and EAERE country representatives (listed at http://www.eaere.org/country.html), who encouraged new members to join our Association. I would also like to welcome all the new EAERE members, both from the individual and institutional side. As regards the latter, you will find our call for institutional membership on page 4. The addition of new institutional members will enable our Association to broaden its objectives, and all the income from institutional memberships will be used to pursue the Association’s aims. At the moment, our only Institutional Member is TEN Center – Thematic Environmental Networks (Venice International University, Venice, Italy), which EAERE thanks very much for having promptly responded to our invitation, even before the massive circulation of this opportunity. We hope that many other institutions (companies, research institutes, universities, departments, etc) will respond positively to our call.
Regarding direct research supporting activities in Environmental and Resource Economics, EAERE’s strategy is to provide, through the Summer School, advanced courses in frontier research topics to graduate students. EAERE is considering expanding this activity by supporting initiatives for similar types of advanced courses and by cooperating with other Associations towards this goal.
Finally, I would like to encourage you to use both our Newsletter and website to post workshop announcements, job offers, and information relevant to our profession. We would like our Association to offer an arena in which to exchange opinions about the role that environmental economics serves in Europe and beyond: our Newsletter and website have been designed as tools to make this real.
Our next appointment is in Kyoto, for our Annual General Assembly of members. The exact timing and location, as well as the meeting agenda, will be circulated in due time.
I look forward to meeting you and the colleagues of our sister Associations in Kyoto.
Sincerely,
Anastasios Xepapadeas
EAERE President
Past Correspondence
