The
Environmental Regulatory Research Group at the School of Law, University of
Surrey; the Centre for Environmental Strategy in the Faculty of Engineering and
Physical Sciences, University of Surrey and the Environmental Law Program at
The George Washington Law School (with support from the J.B. and Maurice
Shapiro Environmental Conference Fund) will host an international
interdisciplinary workshop on regulatory and institutional frameworks for
markets for ecosystems services to be held at the School of Law, University of
Surrey on 6-7 June 2012.
About
the topic
There
is increasing recognition that using markets to protect and restore ecosystems
and their capacity to provide services is crucial to preserving and maintaining
biodiversity as well as reducing the impact of human-induced climate change.
Whilst the assessment and valuation of these services has received extensive
analysis and advanced assessment tools have been developed by conservation
biologists different skills must be brought to bear to translate these
assessments into institutional and regulatory systems that can protect and
enhance ecosystem services. Consequently, mature methods for analysing and
establishing robust institutional and regulatory frameworks that can lead to
secure market-based conservation practices are still in their early stages of
development. It is clear that regulatory and institutional innovation capable
of making ecosystem protection profitable for private decision makers and
revenue generative for the guardian communities is essential in realising the
economic value of those systems and their services; and securing the imperative
to protect and restore.
The
Workshop
This
workshop seeks to contribute to research and learning on the law and policy on
ecosystems services by focusing on the regulatory and institutional challenges in
creating markets for ecosystems services. Using markets to protect and restore
ecosystems–and the many services they provide–is gradually gaining policy and
institutional legitimacy. But what are the critical regulatory and
institutional considerations? What forms are being pursued to ensure success
and ease of adoption? What regulatory and institutional commonalities are
emerging; and what are the prospects for converging these? What are the
successful institutional and regulatory design features? What challenges remain
in order to achieve these?
The
workshop goal is to enable outcome-oriented interaction between experts,
innovators, and front-end users of these evolving market models to learn about
recent progress, what strategies can be adopted to encourage cross-learning
between different models for regulatory and institutional frameworks, and how
to design new institutional and regulatory mechanisms that can help preserve
ecosystem services? The workshop will enable the development of collaborative projects
between participants on the elaboration of methodological tools for the
development of regulatory and institutional frameworks for ecosystems services.
The
program will take place over 2 days at Surrey and will be hosted by eminent
scholars and practitioners from around the world–thereby providing
comprehensive information and networking opportunities for front-end project
developers and managers, landowners, policymakers, and academics.
We
seek a range of papers, including those arising from empirically-based
fieldwork, action research or reflective and philosophical inquiry that
investigates key aspects of regulatory and institutional frameworks for markets
for ecosystems services as well as law and policy-based analyses of the
advantages and disadvantages of market-based approaches to protecting ecosystem
services.
Workshop
themes
Some
topics of interest include:
·
Critiques
of the latest concepts in developing markets for ecosystem services;
·
Examination
of international case studies on markets involving ecosystem assets and
services;
·
The
consideration of questions regarding appropriate avenues of public
participation in the design and operation of markets for ecosystems services;
·
Identification
of potential partners and investments associated with emerging markets for
carbon, water management and biodiversity habitat;
·
Considerations
of the role of legitimacy, accountability and equity in institutional and
regulatory design
·
Proposals
for new legislative or regulatory mechanisms that would place a price on
ecosystems services and provide payments to preserve those services
·
Identification
of methodologies that highlight institutional and policy lock-ins that prevent
markets in ecosystems services from working efficiently and equitably and
suggestions for strategies for unpicking those lock-ins.
The
workshop is intended to bring together scientists, lawyers, economists and
policy makers from academic institutions, government, non-governmental organisations
and private business to discuss policy-leading theoretical and practical
aspects of the design and maintenance of regulatory and institutional
frameworks for markets for ecosystem services.
Confirmed
speakers
Prof
Alison Clarke, School of Law, University of Surrey, UK
Prof
Veerle Heyveart, Law Department, London School of Economics, UK
Prof
Ana Maria Nusdeo, Faculty of Law, University of San Paulo, Brazil
Prof
Colin Reid, School of Law, Dundee University Law School, UK
Prof
Sue White, School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, UK
Dr
Stuart Whitten, CSIRO Ecosystems Services, Australia
Submissions
Abstracts
for poster presentations, short papers (10 minutes) and research papers (20
minutes) on these themes will be accepted until 31 January 2012. They
should be a maximum of 300 words, in English. Please submit your abstract by
using the submission form below.
Notification
of acceptance will be sent by 15 February 2012.
Deadline for registration is 1 May 2012.
Contact
For
Call for Papers queries, please contact Dr Thoko Kaime (t.kaime@surey.ac.uk).
For administrative matters, please contact Ms Mirela Dumic
(m.dumic@surrey.ac.uk)
Organisers:
Dr
Thoko Kaime, Environmental Regulatory Research Group, School of Law, University
of Surrey
Dr Jonathan Chenoweth, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey
