EASY-ECO Saarbrücken Conference

Conference Topic and Call for Papers

The Saarland Conference will showcase activities of sustainable development projects and programmes from all over the world, highlighting their different approaches for measuring both their impacts and the sustainability of these. The conference aims at forming a dialogue between science and the practise of evaluation of projects and programmes which foster sustainable development.

The organisation committee encourages scientists and descision makers from all disciplines and areas dealing with questions of sustainability to attend the conference and present the outcomes of their research and /or case studies in line with the following workgroup themes:

• Evaluation of sustainability communication
  Some authors expect the concept of sustainability difficult for mass communication, giving a starting point for a lot of projects to develop communication concepts aiming at different target groups (cf. young people, consumers, landlords, enterprises, the public etc.). The papers expected in this session should address the question, how the impact of such kind of projects can be evaluated and which kinds of problems occur in doing so. Furthermore, the need for new evaluation methods concerning the communication of sustainability will be discussed during the conference.
   
• Nongovernmental Organizations and Sustainable Development
  It is the purpose of this section to showcase empirical work that reports and theoretical modeling that outlines the role of citizen participation through NGOs in sustainable development and sustainable community development. This section is particularly interested in empirical work that reports on the impact of Agenda 21/ citizen participation initiatives and sustainable development. This section invites case studies, comparative case studies, and meta-analyses of projects focusing upon a combination of sustainable development, sustainable community development and citizen participation.
   
• Evaluation of Sustainability in Development Cooperation
  The concept of sustainability is fiercely discussed in development cooperation. Yet, at the moment, consensus is not in sight. Generally, there is a differentiation between sustainability on the macro level of societies and the level of policies. To reach societal targets and to implement policies, programmes on the micro level are needed. The extent of sustainable impacts of programmes is another subject matter of the debate on sustainability in development cooperation. In this session, the different concepts on both levels are to be discussed and analysed in their consequences for development cooperation.
   
• Monitoring and Evaluation of National Strategies, Programs and Projects for Sustainable Development
  This section invites papers on methods for assessing progress in implementing strategies on sustainable development on national as well as on program and project levels. Thus, the session aims on bringing together different methods of monitoring and evaluation as well as on the possibility of comparing these different methods.
   
• Evaluation of Energy Efficiency
  The session focuses on methods for evaluating energy efficiency: Which methods exist already, and how can the quality of assessment procedures evaluating energy efficiency and their contribution to the governance of sustainable development be improved? This includes questions of the integration of social, technical, economic and ecological aspects in evaluations.
   
• Evaluation of programmes and projects on sustainability oriented innovation in private and public enterprises
  Innovation is often discussed as one driving factor for sustainability centred development. Technical innovations are mainly based at the level of enterprises. Various programmes try to support enterprises, which develop or implement sustainability oriented innovations. This can be especially process and product innovations for producers and service providers and also system technologies for infrastructure providers. In this workgroup evaluation methods will be discussed how this kind of programmes works, and how their success and effects can be measured.
   
• Evaluation of Regional Development Projects
  The key slogan of the 1992 Rio Conference “Think globally, act locally” puts an important task over to the local level and regional planning process. A broad variety of projects has been implemented to improve local activities supporting sustainable development. Among them are, for instance, Local Agenda 21 initiatives to implement new governance structures, rural development plans to combine agriculture with natural protection and the adaption of forestry management practises to other parts of national management. This section invites all kinds of papers related to evaluation of such kind of regional development initiatives.
   
• Systems thinking-influenced approaches for the evaluation of sustainable development projects and programmes
  This session explores questions such as: What is the relevance and applicability of systems thinking to evaluations dealing with sustainable development? What contributions can systems thinking make and what are the difficulties and pitfalls of transferring it into the evaluation practice for sustainable development projects and programs? Which insights can be gained from evaluations using approaches with systems thinking characteristics (such as Outcome Mapping, the Most Significant Change Technique, ...)?

Besides the above outlined sections the organizers welcome papers from all fields concerning evaluation and sustainable development.

Abstracts can be submitted until March 13, 2006. Authors will be informed about the acceptance of their abstracts by March 17, 2006. Full papers should be received by the organisers by June 30, 2006. Please send your abstracts per e-mail in PDF- or Word-format (500 words) to the local oganizers (easy@ceval.de) and a copy to Markus Hametner (markus.hametner@wu-wien.ac.at).