Rethinking Sustainability: the ISDRS 2016 Conference

Lisbon, 13-16 July 2016

The 22nd ISDRS conference, titled Rethinking Sustainability Models and Practices: Challenges For The New and Old World Contexts, in Lisbon was very well organized, in the nice setting of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and with a festive dinner in the old monastery of San Jeronimo. Nothing to complain about for the 450+ conference participants (predominantly from Europe and South-America), I would say. The program was well-structured and presented.

The format was, after a keynote speech on the opening morning, to start with presentations, then have two keynote speeches, and continue with presentations. Besides the 6 keynote speeches, there were a total of 332 presentations and over 50 posters.

Classifying these presentations has perhaps been the most difficult task. It seems to be a stage in sustainability science: from a wide background of disciplines and angles, researchers are studying events and processes that are related to (un)sustainable development. The conference program makes it clear that no overarching framework is available yet, according to which such a variety of presentations can be categorized in a satisfactory way. Hence, it was sometimes surprising to find oneself in unexpected company – which can be a blessing if one believes in serendipity. Add to this the large variety in cultures and regions and one has all the ingredients for an interesting, lively, networking and perhaps scientifically advancing conference. See for an overview of the 26 core themes and tracks http://www.isdrsconference.org/page/29/themes-and-tracks/ .

Was the conference worth the several hundreds of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide emissions? ‘The planes fly anyway’ is no longer an acceptable rationalization; the hypothesis that these conferences have a net emission savings in the long term is still to be proven. There were at least 7 participants affiliated with Utrecht University, one of them Walter Vermeulen who as President of the ISDRS has surely made his contribution to the success of this conference.

A couple of summaries and references that might be of interest to colleagues are to be found in the .pdf below, also available via the Knowledge Base page . Evidently, it is not more than a personal snapshot of the many presentations and discussions. The ISDRS website gives access to abstracts of presentations and short bios of the keynote speakers.