HONORARY RECOGNITION 2025
Monica Eberle
Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC)
Monica Eberle is awarded with a special honorary recognition for her long-standing commitment to the Association. She has served as EAERE Secretary General for twenty years. Previously, she contributed to the organisation of the first World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists – WCERE in 1998 and the first EAERE Summer Schools starting from 2000.
“Daniel Kahneman’s favourite equation was:
success=talent + luck
Great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck
When I became President of EAERE in January 2004, I had a lot of luck: My term coincided with the appointment of Monica as Secretary General of the organization. Up to this point, EAERE had managed quite well with a very part time administration where the secretariat was mostly hosted by the incumbent President; attendance at the early EAERE conferences was low – around 200, about 25% of current levels; funding needs were modest, and decision-making was informal. But the costs of this approach were soon manifest:
In 2004 we were at a point of inflection: conference attendance was growing rapidly, the internet revolution was upon us, ambitions and activities of the organization were expanding in many directions. But there were few financial or up-to-date membership or other records to hand, and no granular knowledge of who was to host the next EAERE meeting. My hubris quickly turned to panic: the most plausible scenario was to be first EAERE President to preside over chaos and failure – no EAERE meeting, financial delinquency and professional ignominy loomed.
But Monica doesn’t do panic: she set about successfully retrieving some records, found the host of our next EAERE meeting and worked with him to deliver a great meeting in Budapest.
Thomas Edison told us that ‘Vision without execution is hallucination’. Monica doesn’t do hallucination either. She does know how to convert a vision into outcomes.
Together, we addressed the financial hiatus by introducing an additional fee payable by those registering for our annual conference, and we introduced the awards recognizing exceptional achievement in the worlds of scholarship and policy practitioners, with the late David Pearce and Jos Delbeke as the respective awardees.
In the face of the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges, Monica demonstrated exceptional resilience in swiftly adapting to the new reality. Together with the Council headed by Christian Gollier, her role was key in transforming in-person events into engaging online formats and turning adversity in an opportunity to reduce environmental impact and expand the association’s reach like never before.
Over the past twenty years, we have been so lucky to have our midst a person who addressed crises as they arose with exemplary efficiency, who steered us away from mine fields and towards the light, and who designed and delivered ways to achieve new outcomes. And she combined substance with style. Her smile can light a room, and lift the most depressed to see new possibilities.
On behalf of all of us, Thank You Monica, and good luck with your new job as Manager of the European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE). They are so lucky to have you.”
Tribute message to Monica Eberle by Frank Convery, EAERE Fellow and former President (2004-2005)
