CALL FOR PAPERS

Dear Colleagues,

we kindly invite papers for a common workshop on "Governance and Life 
Cycle Analysis. Opportunities for going beyond ISO-LCA", to be held in 
Brussels from 27-28 September 2007. Please find attached the Call for 
Papers with all necessary information.

Best regards
Henrik Vagt


"GOVERNANCE AND LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS"
Opportunities for going beyond ISO-LCA

Open Workshop within the EU-funded project "CALCAS – Co-ordination 
Action for Innovation in Life-Cycle Analysis for Sustainability"

The Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU), Berlin/D, and the 
Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Heidelberg & Berlin/D, 
in co-operation with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, 
Energy and the Environment (ENEA), Bologna/I, the Institute of 
Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden/NL, and UNEP, invite papers for a 
common workshop to be held

from 27-28 SEPTEMBER 2007 in BRUSSELS

Scientific experts from the fields of Life Cycle approaches as well as 
researchers on governance aspects, policy observers as well as experts 
from public policy and administration, especially representatives from 
UN, OECD, EU and environment agencies will be brought together at the 
meeting. A special focus of the workshop will be to further the 
interdisciplinary exchange within these branches of research. We also 
invite representatives from civil society (NGOs etc.), business 
community, and government.

Aims of the Workshop:

The changing character of environmental challenges during the last 
decades is mirrored by a change in the political and institutional 
framework conditions. Governance for sustainable development has to cope 
with the ongoing depletion of abiotic and especially biotic resources, 
the overuse of natural resources (like water and landscape) and 
unsustainable emission rates from current consumption and production 
patterns.
However, despite some successes in the development and implementation of 
environmental policies in many countries, no effective institutions and 
steering capacities have evolved so far that internalise non-market 
effects or compensate the failure of markets. There is no single actor 
able to deal with these challenges. Instead, collective and co-operative 
actions of social, economic, financial and political institutions and 
organisations are needed to change the present unsustainable pathway. 
Politics are taking place on a multitude of different levels and 
sectors, the choice of the right regulatory instruments is seldom clear, 
numerous stakeholders are involved at all stages of policy making, and 
new actors and actor constellations are appearing on the stage. In 
brief, policy making has changed, from a hierarchical perspective with 
the state as main actor to a more polycentric, multi-stakeholder and 
multilevel policy with an increasing importance of societal mechanisms 
not directly influenced by policies. In terms of coordination, new 
governance may be sketched as a form of network coordination based on 
communicative interactions, with each participant reflecting 
sustainability considerations to a certain degree. This variant of 
coordination is contrasted to horizontal market coordination, or a top 
down, rather hierarchical coordination.
During the past years this change in actor constellations has been 
accompanied by the emergence of so called “new” instruments in 
environmental governance, which can be characterised by a higher level 
of discretion for the target groups in contrast to traditional 
command-and-control approaches. Examples of such instruments are 
economic instruments, framework legislation or a stronger commitment to 
self-regulatory models. However, this focus on new instruments with a 
higher level of discretion does not necessarily imply a complete 
withdrawal of public actors. New modes of governance often take place 
“in the shadow of hierarchy”, leaving coercion as a dominant mechanism 
intact and thus still allowing public authorities to play a decisive role.
One new direction in discussions about new governance deals with the 
role of information generation and transmission and goal-orientation: 
“Knowledge for transition” aims to steer industry, agriculture, energy 
production, important actor groups (e.g. associations, NGOs), and other 
users of environmental resources and ecosystems. Life cycle approaches 
can play a dominant role in this regard. Within knowledge based 
approaches of governance in general, the generation, transmission and 
distribution of knowledge for reducing environmental pressures aims for 
decentralised, nevertheless collectively oriented decisions. However, 
while the value of knowledge based approaches for new forms of 
governance is generally accepted, there exists no general rule to 
explain at what point in the policy cycle these tools should be used, 
i.e. whether during the process of policy formulation, implementation or 
evaluation.
The relation between the broad background of policy development and the 
advances in LCA is considered from different points within the workshop:
- To what extent are political or societal goals and objectives 
considered within LCA?
- Are new and persistent environmental problems taken into account?
- To what extent are approaches for LCA providing the necessary 
knowledge base for governmental and societal actors to align their 
decisions according to the requirements of sustainable development?
The workshop will put special emphasis on learning from international 
experiences like case-studies, empirical findings or evaluations. We 
especially encourage scientists from outside Europe to participate in 
the meeting and to develop new questions based on their own research or 
problems in their respective countries.
A thematic focus will be laid on the development of sustainable waste 
management and recycling plans and the role of LCA. Researchers dealing 
with these aspects are especially invited to share their insights at the 
workshop.
On the background of these challenges, we aim to organise the discussion 
of the workshop along three different topics:

1. Inputs of policies and institutions for the construction of LCA

Future development of LCA and other assessment tools cannot be separated 
from important – primary environmental – goal settings, provided by 
variables and indicators of e.g. international, European or national 
environmental policies or the respective more comprehensive sustainable 
development strategies. From these overall strategy processes, 
indicators and objectives have to be derived for LCA to make a relevant 
contribution for the implementation of sustainable development. Even if 
the outcome may be that the micro level questions are essential in the 
end, the meso and macro level questions may bring focus to the relevance 
of the micro level, and may help shape micro level questions.
This first topic will deal with questions like:
- Are there any existing (scientific) studies or experiences relating to 
sustainability goal-orientation and LCA? Which research projects could 
be identified in order to analyse conditions for goal implementation on 
the micro level of LCA?
- Which criteria should be used for the selection of international or 
national Sustainable Development Strategies in order to give inputs to 
LCA development? How can contradictory goals be dealt with in LCA-findings?
- How are mandatory or voluntary environmental objectives dealt with in 
LCA-studies?
- Is it important to focus on the most important branches and industries 
or on dirty industries in the case of integrating sustainability goals?
- Are there possibilities to develop a broader Life Cycle Thinking, 
backed up by life cycle modelling?

2. Pressures from persistent environmental problems for the construction 
of LCA

Environmental Policies have succeeded in solving a number of 
environmental problems during the past decades. However, there remains a 
considerable amount of increasingly relevant problems that seem to be 
particularly hard to manage and thus “persistent”, such as the loss of 
biodiversity, climate change coming along with the overuse of natural 
resources, or the ongoing use of dangerous chemical substances. Finding 
solutions for them is not only constrained by technical circumstances. 
The persistent character of these problems is furthermore determined on 
a socio-economic dimension: the problem’s public perception is often 
weak, its origin not clear and technical or marketable (“win-win”) 
solutions are not available. Additionally, some industrial sectors 
simply rely on an extensive use of the environment as a basis for their 
production.
This second topic will deal with questions like:
- How can persistent environmental problems be properly incorporated in 
the methodology of LCA?
- How and where can LCA be utilised in the value chain in order to 
obtain the desired results, i.e. making material flows cleaner and more 
sustainable? Are knowledge based instruments like LCA at all suitable to 
solve persistent problems with their complex socio-economic background?
- Which inputs can be derived from other related research strands like 
the environmental flows debate or integrated chain management?
The role of LCA in the context of these socio-economic aspects of 
persistent problems has yet to be clarified. In relation to Topic 3 
(below) the crucial question for governance remains how to deal with the 
different results generated by LCA. The trading off of different 
sustainability issues and the discussions between proponents of weak or 
strong sustainability must be kept in mind when dealing with LCA. LCA 
may be able to provide the necessary information for dealing with 
environmental issues, but any decision how to adopt these results and to 
apply LCA where necessary will be left to the relevant actors in 
governance for sustainability.

3. Analyses of LCA as a knowledge base for sustainable governance

Life-Cycle Assessment can play a double role in the observed changing of 
governance patterns: LCA “stands” for a new type of knowledge generation 
and communication; it becomes a tool forming the scientific basis for 
public decision making. However, LCA possesses the “risks” of 
uncertainty, of methodological pluralism and of missing acceptance due 
to “open” scientific processes. In addition to that LCA also supports 
the active role of stakeholders, business and society within their 
contexts of decision-making.
This third topic will deal with questions like
- To what extent and how can LCA contribute to new forms of governance 
(as summarised in the previous sections) and to a better and leaner 
regulation?
- Which experiences exist with regard to LCA as an information 
generating tool in policy formulation? Could LCA provide public decision 
makers with better information during policy implementation? Is LCA used 
as a tool for policy revision and reformulation?
- Which experiences exist about direct or indirect incentives by policy 
about the application of LCA within business and society?
Abstracts dealing with this third topic should be based on conceptual 
and/or theoretical insights or based on empirical findings in areas like 
environmental-oriented product policy, the regulation of hazardous 
substances, waste management or resource management.

Documentation and expected results of the Workshop:
We are aiming to publish the most relevant papers in a special issue of 
a major international journal.

How to participate:
The workshop will be held in English. Please send your paper proposals 
by e-mail to [log in to unmask] The e-mail should contain
(1) the title of the proposed paper or presentation,
(2) the abstract of max. 1 page A4, Arial 10 single-spaced (i.e. around 
500-600 words – longer abstracts will be rejected. No graphs, 
references, tables etc. in the abstract, please),
(3) the complete address and professional affiliation of all (co)-author(s).
The deadline for proposals is 1 MAY 2007. All submissions will be peer 
reviewed by a group of experts from the scientific field. Notification 
of the decision will be sent by e-mail no later than 1 JUNE 2007. Full 
papers/presentations are expected by 10 SEPTEMBER 2007.

Further information about the workshop will be available at 
http://www.fu-berlin.de/ffu/calcas

Dr. Frieder Rubik
Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW)
Office Heidelberg
phone: ++49-6221-649160
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Henrik Vagt
Freie Universität Berlin
Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU)
phone: ++49-30-83854490
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