I would like to call your attention to a call for papers for a workshop that might be of interest to doctoral students and early career researchers - these open panels will be alongside a series of round tables with prominent invited scholars and practitioners.
Best, Jörg CALL FOR PAPERS REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE (REGov): Interdisciplinary Approaches, Theoretical Issues, Comparative Designs www.reg-observatory.org Geneva, Switzerland June 16-18, 2010 Workshop Background As world leaders and climate change experts intensify negotiations over the outlines of a future global regime, there is growing recognition that actual mitigation and adaptation will have to take place much closer to home. In other environmental issue areas as well, the transaction costs of servicing global regimes, as well as a creeping “global convention fatigue,” are producing a shift in the locus of impetus, implementation, and innovation to regional levels. Compared to global approaches, initiatives with a regional focus – regions are understood here as areas that (a) include all or parts of more than one nation state and (b) serve as locus for cohesive action by various stakeholders – can benefit from enhanced commonalities in a particular environmental challenge, greater familiarity with key actors, and the ability to tailor mitigative action to a smaller than global constituency. The objective of the workshop is to look “beyond Copenhagen” and assess the state of the art in regional environmental governance. Although there is a long history of work about regions in different disciplines, a recent review concluded that (a) the nature of “regions” have mostly been assumed rather than explained, (b) the substantive focus has largely been international security and economic integration, and (c) the dearth of comparative work has undermined progress both in theory and practice. The proposed workshop seeks to address these shortcomings through an explicit emphasis on an interdisciplinary dialogue, encompassing comparative perspectives as well as practical value. Workshop Scope The REGov workshop is designed as an encounter between scholars and practitioners. In addition to six thematic roundtable discussions with invited participants, there will be four open panels with 4-5 presentations. We welcome proposals for the open panels that fit under one or more of the following workshop themes: Theme 1: What is a region? Theme 2: Environmental regions in multi-level governance Theme 3: Regional economic dynamics and the environment Theme 4: Regional security and the environment Theme 5: New environmental regionalism Theme 6: Environmental regionalization, democracy, and civil society Abstracts Abstracts of 400-500 words must be sent as e-mail attachments to [email protected] by January 15, 2010. We especially encourage submissions by doctoral students and early career researchers in the fields of political, human, and economic geography; international relations; international political economy; and political science. Please indicate the theme(s) your abstract best fits, include up to five keywords, and omit your name and institutional affiliation from the attachment. All abstracts will be evaluated in double-blind peer-review by at least three experts. Notifications will be made on March 1, 2010. Finalized papers submitted for the workshop will be published in a proceedings. Fees Thanks to generous financial contributions from the Swiss Network for International Studies, the University of Geneva, and the Mountain Research Initiative, there will be no conference fee. Participants will be responsible for funding their own travel and accommodation. Workshop Organization The REGov workshop is a collaborative initiative of the University of Geneva, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, and University of New Hampshire. Further information is available at http://www.reg-observatory.org. We look forward to your proposals! The REGov Organizing Committee Bernard Debarbieux – University of Geneva Jörg Balsiger – ETH Zurich Miriam Prys – ETH Zurich Liliana Andonova – Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Stacy VanDeveer – University of New Hampshire Andreas Klinke – Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology Juliet Fall – University of Geneva -- Jörg Balsiger Senior Researcher Institute for Environmental Decisions ETH Zurich Universitätsstrasse 22, Room CHN K 78 CH-8092 Zurich Tel.: 00 41 44 632 4961 Email: [email protected]
