2010 Conference June 17–20 Portland, Oregon
Theme: Many Shades of Green

Julian Agyeman
Toward a Just Sustainability

7 PM Thursday evening, June 17

Evans Hall (open to the public)

The predominant orientation of sustainability among high income nations is environmental. The environmental sustainability discourse is dominant in environmental organizations, businesses and in governments. This discourse is exclusive rather than inclusive and focuses only on inter-generational, not intra-generational equity, or social justice in the present generation. It perpetuates what I call the "equity deficit" of environmental sustainability. My paper will focus on "just sustainability": improving the quality of human life now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, while living within the limits of supporting ecosystems. Just sustainability balances environmental protection with an equal commitment to social justice, thereby overcoming the equity deficit of the current orientation and discourse of sustainability.

Dr. Agyeman is Professor and Chair of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, and Affiliate Professor in Environmental Justice and Sustainability at the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies (HRISS) at The University of South Australia, Adelaide. He is also Contributing Editor to Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and a member of the editorial boards of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, The Journal of Environmental Education, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, and the Australian Journal of Environmental Education.

F. Stuart "Terry" Chapin
Ecosystem and Planetary Stewardship: An Action-Oriented Framework for Addressing Sustainability in a Rapidly Changing World

6:30 PM Friday evening, June 18

AESS 2010 banquet, Fields Dining Hall (registered attendees only)

Given the rapid rate of global environmental change, there is an urgent need to reorient society’s relationship to the biosphere. Planetary stewardship provides a framework for understanding society’s impacts on the climate system and for suggesting ways to minimize many of these impacts. Given the directional nature of recent and likely future changes, we must manage for trajectories of future change rather than for historical conditions. However, this is challenging because of inevitable surprises. Resilience provides a framework for remaining flexible enough to respond effectively to unexpected future changes. Since there is no single “best” management solution, there are opportunities to experiment and explore different options that might be preferred under different social-ecological circumstances. This will require creative thinking by people trained broadly in environmental studies and sciences.

Dr. Chapin is a faculty member in the Institute of Arctic Biology and the Department of Biology and Wildlife at the University of Alaska. He is also the principal investigator of the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, and director of a graduate educational program in Resilience and Adaptation.

Mike Davis

12 noon Saturday, June 19

AESS 2010 plenary luncheon, Fields Dining Hall (registered attendees only)

Can global demands for social justice and a higher standard of living be squared with the urgencies of reducing carbon emissions and consumption footprints? This talk will reflect upon two of the twentieth century's most  important (if inadvertent) large-scale experiments in "green urbanism": (1)  the Soviet Constructivists' attempts to mitigate the 1920s housing crisis with public luxury, and (2) the New Deal's last hurrah -  the "rational consumption" movement on the American WWII homefront.

Dr. Davis is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, and an editor of the New Left Review. He also contributes to the British monthly Socialist Review, the organ of the Socialist Workers Party of Great Britain. As a journalist and essayist, Davis has written frequently for, among others, The Nation and New Statesman.