June 20th Abstracts

Day 3: June 20th        10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.       Parallel Sessions 4

4A: Science Center A 154

• Tania Briceno (Chief Economist, IEG)

Re-Engineering Incentives for a Nature-Dependent Economy: The Case for Natural Asset Companies

ABSTRACT: It has been estimated that $44 trillion (over half of global GDP) is significantly dependent on nature, yet financial markets treat ecosystem service contributions as externalities, excluding them from strategic decision-making. Meanwhile, the biodiversity finance gap is often estimated at roughly $700 billion per year, creating a costly deficit that threatens long-term economic resilience and prosperity. 

This presentation introduces Natural Asset Companies (NACs) as an institutional innovation designed to re-engineer economic incentives by translating ecological performance into investable propositions within the financial system.

Grounded in ecological economics and aligned with SEEA Ecosystem Accounting, this talk outlines how standardized measures can integrate key ecological metrics such as ecosystem condition indicators and capacity-to-produce measures to quantified ecosystem service flows and ultimately value estimates that are decision-useful for finance. We explore how this is feasible despite challenges such as uncertainty in methods and data, incomplete legal and property-rights frameworks, and the needed safeguards to ensure equitable distributional outcomes. 

The presentation compares NACs with other emerging financial value drivers as well as nature credits, focusing on incentive structures and durability. It concludes with research questions for assessing how NACs can scale responsibly while respecting plural values and avoiding perverse incentives.

• Moderated session

  • Rumi Shammin (Professor, Oberlin College) - Moderator and Session Chair
    Loss and Damages in South Asia in the context of climate change:  Case studies from Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

  • The focus will be on assessing the extent of damage, issues of equity and distribution of losses. By situating loss and damage within broader development debate, this session aims to advance theoretical clarity and empirical understanding of climate impacts that go beyond adaptation.

  • Presenters: Prof. Enamul Haque (Director General, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies) and Prof. Pranab Mukhopadhyay (Goa University, India)

4B: Science Center A 155

• Amitrajeet A. Batabyal (Distinguished Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology)
  - Session Chair
  Two Forms of Taxation, Majority Voting, and Water Pollution Cleanup in the Ganges

ABSTRACT: Pollution in the Ganges river in India is particularly serious in a few locations such as Kanpur, because of the activities of tanneries, and in Varanasi, because of religious tourism. On the assumption that cleaning decisions are decentralized, we analyze the implications of two kinds of taxation and majority voting for pollution cleanup. First, we examine how a poll tax on citizens of the locality under study and majority voting together affect total pollution cleanup. Second, we study how a proportional tax on the citizens of the relevant locality and majority voting together impact aggregate pollution cleanup. Finally, for alternate income distributions, we discuss which of the two preceding cleanup amounts is closer to the efficient amount of cleanup. 

• Louison Cahen-Fourot (Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark)

Breaking the tragedy of the horizon?  The environmental turn in monetary regimes and capital accumulation regimes

ABSTRACT: The “greening” of monetary policy and financial regulation is spreading. This environmental turn may mean more than merely a set of technical adjustments to central banks operations and risk management by financial institutions. In post-World War II capitalism, significant changes in the forms taken by money, in the modalities of its issuance, of its circulation and in the basis of its valuation heralded equally substantial mutations in the broader political economy. Changes in monetary regimes turned out to be early signs of structural changes in the patterns of capital accumulation. We take stock of this environmental turn in monetary regimes, keeping in mind that such changes co-evolve with the other institutional forms governing the society. We assemble a comprehensive database of policies integrating environmental criteria into monetary policy and financial regulation to date. We characterize the main varieties of green monetary regimes. Further, we analyze whether specific green monetary arrangements can be explained by the institutional configuration surrounding a country’s environmental state and other factors. We conclude by discussing the consequences of the greening of the monetary regime for social-ecological transformation in different institutional contexts as well as for the overall consistency and stability of capital accumulation regimes.

• Mohanasundari Thangavel (Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore)
  Restoring Resilience through Tribal Traditions: A Case Study of the Halma Watershed Models in Jhabua, Central India.

ABSTRACT: Jhabua district in western MP is tribal-dominated region facing ecological fragility and socio-economic marginalization due to rainfed farming, undulating land and weak groundwater systems. The Bhil tribal community initiated a traditional collective practice known as Halma to restore degraded watersheds through community-led action. This study examines the impact of Halma-based watershed interventions on changes in cultivated land and cropping patterns in Jhabua. A mixed-method approach was used by combining surveys from 90 households, observations, and key interviews. The results show a significant increase in cultivated areas across all crops, with the most notable expansion observed in rabi crops, particularly wheat and gram. Regression results indicate a positive and significant relationship between improved access to water sources and the expansion of cultivated land. Interventions contributed to improved water availability, reduced seasonal migration, enhanced food security, and strengthened community cohesion. The study highlights the effectiveness of culturally rooted, community-driven watershed management as a sustainable and resilient model for rural development.

4C: Science Center A 254 (DeGrowth Track)

• Moderated session

• Stella Martinez McShera and Lauren Goetze of PivotAll - Moderators  
  From Case Studies to Systemic Change: Local Business Strategy as the Pivot Point Towards a Degrowth Economy   

• Through translating degrowth theory into tangible actions, PivotAll will be facilitating this workshop that explores how we can reshape the building blocks of our economy for a degrowth future.

4D: Science Center A 255 (DeGrowth Track)

• Seema Purushothaman (Adjunct Senior Fellow, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, India; President, Indian Society fo Ecological Economics)
  Ecological Insecurity- the new frontier of inequality: the case of Karnataka, India
  Session Chair

ABSTRACT: Development is increasingly recognised as more than economic growth and multidimensional in nature. Interconnectedness of the multiple dimensions of development like equality and quality of life necessitates concurrent treatment and solutions for diverse development issues. Noting the conspicuous absence of ecological drivers of inequality in studies on development disparities in the state of Karnataka, this paper traces the interface between development inequalities and ecological changes in Karnataka and contributes to the discourse on the nexus between poverty, Climate Change (CC) and inequality. It posits that with increasing ecological insecurity, inequality may not show an inverted-U relationship with economic growth in Karnataka. Clustering districts across three ecological regions, it unpacks the differential occurrence and outcomes of ecological insecurity to life across rural and urban landscapes, based on available data on temperature, rainfall, droughts, rainfall, floods, forests, rural commons, wildfires, quality of agricultural land and climate change vulnerability.  District-wise data on 12 variables representing composite indicators of multiple dimensions of poverty, inequality and CC vulnerability indicates that development of historically poorer districts will soon be a bigger challenge.  It emphasizes the role of designing contextual and concurrent strategies to ensure that ecological insecurity does not reinforce or widen regional and socio-economic inequalities. Keywords: Climate change, ecological insecurity, multidimensional poverty, multidimensional inequality, Karnataka

• Andrew Flachs (Associate Professor, Purdue University)
  Feeding the world as if people mattered

ABSTRACT: If the ecology of colonial capitalism is a hierarchical plantation, then the ecology of mutual aid is a dense garden that grows gifts to repay intimate debts. Social reproduction theory offers a lens to explore how the material and social fabrics of society are formed, illuminating value that is otherwise externalized in capitalist accounting. While social reproduction theory offers a robust vocabulary for describing how class, identity, and other ways of being in society are formed, this approach rarely links lived experiences within broader political ecologies. Through a combination of historical and ethnographic analyses drawn from nearly 20 years of fieldwork in Bosnia, India, and the US midwest, this talk considers not only how social reproduction work reproduces socioeconomic conditions and class relations, but also how this work reproduces physical landscapes that generate future possibilities for organizing life. Agriculture is a particularly illuminating site to describe how work reproduces social relationships while continually creating a landscape in which diverse life can thrive or suffer. Through an analysis of social reproduction, this talk discusses everything that grows from agrarian communities beyond yields and capital.

• Henri Chevalier (PhD Student, University of Waterloo, Canada)
  The Treadmill of Farming: Cost-Price Squeeze, Growth Imperatives and the Political Economy of Canadian Agriculture

ABSTRACT: This paper investigates the structural drivers of growth imperatives in Canadian agriculture by analysing how the cost-price squeeze, the agricultural treadmill, and corporate concentration jointly compel farms to expand output and capital intensity merely to remain viable. The research asks: (1) How do input and output market power, technological change, financialization and government policy generate microeconomic growth imperatives at the farm level? (2) How do these dynamics translate into rising biophysical throughput and socio-metabolic lock-ins?
Methodologically, the study develops an interdisciplinary ecological political economy framework and integrates it with social-metabolic analysis. Empirically, it combines long-term Statistics Canada financial and production series with a sectoral case study of Québec's cranberry industry to trace the interaction between profitability constraints, capital deepening, and material throughput.
The analysis shows that farmers face two mutually reinforcing constraints: a rising break-even production threshold driven by stagnant farmgate prices (price squeeze) and escalating fixed costs (cost squeeze), and a profit-generation “reinvestment obligation produced by treadmill-driven technological modernization. These dynamics compel continuous capital accumulation and output expansion, locking farms into increasingly complex, fixed-capital-intensive systems and raising the metabolic “floor” of agricultural production” requiring ever-greater flows of energy, materials, and ecological throughput. Broadly, the analysis suggests that easing these structural pressures will require policy approaches that decouple farm viability from capital accumulation and high-throughput growth.

Day 3: June 20th      3:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Parallel Sessions 5

5A: Science Center A 154

• Rich Howarth (Professor, Dartmouth University)
  Authors: Mavrommati, G., R.S.D. Calder, A.M. Gazar, R. Howarth, C.A Jackson.
  Deliberative Valuation Workshops on Decarbonization in New England
  Session Chair

ABSTRACT: Valuations emerging from deliberative-based workshops hold unique democratic legitimacy, as they result from the deliberation of a diverse cross-section of society. The elicitation process fosters meaningful interaction among participants and provides access to expert knowledge, promoting social learning and the development of shared meanings and values, often transforming individual preferences into shared social values. We conducted two deliberative valuation workshops in New England on the topic of decarbonization and analyzed results quantitatively and qualitatively. Tradeoffs weights between clean energy attributes were compared, along with non-monetary attribute shadow prices. Themes of deliberation will be discussed to provide more in-depth context to these results. Results suggest that economic and ecological attributes carry the most weight in participants' tradeoff decisions and are considered most important by residents. In contrast, aesthetic concerns related to clean energy infrastructure–such as transmission lines, solar farms, and offshore wind farms–are viewed as less significant, even though aesthetic concerns are frequently cited by organized opposition to renewable energy projects. Overall, this work provides a template to identify decarbonization pathways that not only push New England forward on their path to net-zero emissions but also achieve high community acceptance. 

• Drew C Pendergrass (Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Science, Oberlin College)
  Multidimensional information channels aid economic planning within planetary boundaries

ABSTRACT: Ecological overshoot has intensified the need for robust frameworks that align economic activity with planetary boundaries. While environmental footprint indicators offer biophysical insights, their influence on actual economic activity remains limited. Simultaneously, recent work in democratic economic planning has highlighted the importance of having multiple nonmonetary criteria for making decisions. This paper compares market-driven environmental approaches, which denominate environmental impacts in money via taxes or tradeable commodities, with a theoretical multi-dimensional information system. Drawing on economic control theory advanced by JÃ9nos Kornai, we argue that market-based emissions controls which are strong enough to meet ambitious global agreements, like limiting warming to well-below 2°C, have difficulty coordinating a transition in a way which avoids negative outcomes including price instability and energy poverty. We illustrate these arguments using a dynamic input-output model, which demonstrates that a price system which forces all information into a single scalar quantity (money) behaves pathologically in the case of supply and demand mismatches. We find that market instabilities vanish when we replace money with a token-based system which disaggregates costs into a multidimensional system denominated in units of carbon, labor time, and so on. We argue that Kornai’s dual theory of prices aligns with our modeling results. 

• Manal Amina Zehani (Undergraduate Student, American University of Sharjah, UAE)
  Structural and Attitudinal Determinants of Emissions Embodied in Trade: A State-Level Analysis

ABSTRACT: This study provides the first comprehensive state-level assessment of consumption-based emissions (CBE) and the balance of emissions embodied in trade (BEET) for the United States using annual panel data from 2012-2019. Using newly released EPA Consumption-Based Emissions Inventory summaries, the analysis decomposes BEET into its CBE and production-based emissions (PBE) components and evaluates their structural and attitudinal determinants within an extended STIRPAT framework. The results show that structural and energy-system characteristics are the dominant predictors of BEET, CBE, and PBE. Among attitudinal variables, reported personal experience with the effects of climate change is the only consistently significant predictor: it narrows the CBE-PBE gap while simultaneously increasing both CBE and PBE individually, reflecting its strong correlation with emissions-intensive state structures. Other attitudinal measures lose significance once structural controls are included, suggesting a partial attitude-behavior gap in embodied-emissions outcomes. These findings highlight the primacy of structural constraints over preferences in shaping states’ embodied emissions profiles.

5B: Nancy Schrom Dye Lecture Hall (Room A162) Lightning Presentations

• Nina Smolyar (PhD Student, University of Vermont)
  Spirituality as a Tool for Navigating Social-Ecological Complexity in Degrowth
  Session Chair

ABSTRACT: "Degrowth, a praxis-oriented framework within ecological economics, responds to social-ecological crises by calling for a deliberate reduction of global economic throughput alongside the cultivation of social cohesion, democratic participation, and care. While degrowth scholarship has developed robust critiques of growth-oriented economics, it increasingly recognizes that navigating complex social-ecological challenges requires not only policy tools and institutional reforms, but also cultural and subjective resources. One such resource “spirituality” remains largely undertheorized within the economics of degrowth.
This presentation draws on an in-progress literature review and conceptual framework that examines whether and how spirituality can be understood as a pathway for degrowth: shaping values, sustaining engagement, supporting ethical and critical reflection, and enabling collective sense-making amid uncertainty. The talk situates spirituality within broader debates in ecological economics, social movements, and sustainability studies, highlighting how meaning-making practices and inner reorientations may complement structural economic change.
The presentation will outline a forthcoming empirical research design exploring how degrowth scholars and practitioners engage–explicitly or implicitly–with spiritual or contemplative dimensions in their work. By framing spirituality as a potential tool for navigating complexity rather than a private belief system, this contribution invites discussion on expanding the analytical and practical repertoire of degrowth praxis. 

• Garrett, P, Siegel (Undergraduate Student, Bard College)
  Enactment of policies to address global warming

ABSTRACT: This paper addresses the necessity of immediate action in terms of Global Warming and how policy can allow time for a permanent solution. It speaks about what type of action could be taken to reduce the threat of global warming by using case studies of the eradication of smallpox and the repairing of the hole in the ozone layer. These examples show the type of policy that has been effective, namely methods that focus on positive incentives rather than punitive measures. Even though some ecological economists argue that climate change is too global a problem to address primarily with policy, and instead argue for what Erik Olin Wright calls ruptural or interstitial strategies, this article argues the symbiotic method is the most practical in the current situation. It speaks to how policy, in a form of symbiotic method, is the only method fast enough to create the change we need in the time limit presented to us. This paper concludes that an international committee needs to be created, and one which has the power and resources to provide the tools to reduce the threat of global warming.

• Latifa Salangi (PhD Student, Michigan State University)
  Institutions as drivers of development/underdevelopment

ABSTRACT: Institutions are widely seen as vital to development, yet their role in fragile states like Afghanistan is less understood. Despite billions of dollars in aid over the past twenty years, Afghanistan still faces ongoing conflict, poverty, and underdevelopment. This study examines how institutions influence development paths and aid effectiveness in fragile states, focusing mainly on Afghanistan. It explores questions like: How do institutions affect development outcomes, and what impact do they have on foreign aid's success?
Methodologically, in this study, we employ a mixed-methods design. Qualitatively, it draws on semi-structured interviews with development practitioners who have been directly involved in designing and implementing projects in Afghanistan, exploring how formal and informal institutional arrangements condition project success or failure. Quantitatively, it analyzes trends in Afghanistan’s Human Development Index using secondary data from international sources to assess how institutional changes correlate with development indicators over time.
Preliminary expectations suggest a complex relationship between institutions and development, were weak, and low-quality institutions can reverse the intended impacts of development assistances. By studying institutional dynamics in a fragile context, not only it could contribute to fill the gap in the literature but also it will help policy makers to design and implement development projects that are context related and in consideration of the country's institutions.

• Rita Francesca Peress (Undergraduate Student, Bard College)
  The Devaluation of Care-work by Temporal Abbreviation 

ABSTRACT: Historically, economics functioned less as a hard science than contemporary neoclassical economics suggests. As this “scientization” was exponentially hardened by the rise of neoliberal economics, the discipline began simplifying and unifying competing theories to establish universal standards for value communication. Ecological economists are arguing that this scientized paradigm has not benefited welfare (globally and intera-nationally), and instead has perpetuated injustices. Instead, we should re-orient away from the doctrine of rent-seeking efficiency and towards equitable human-needs provisioning. While many simplifications have been re-evaluated in this objective, one that has thus far evaded serious interrogation is the simplification and shortening of temporal cycles. I argue that the abbreviated temporal cycles in neoclassical economics systematically undervalues processes that yield benefits over extended periods - using care-work as an exemplary case. I argue this by discussing the feminist and ecological economists distinction between production time versus reproduction time by pulling on the Wages for Housework movement’s belief that remuneration would cause system failure, and by discussing societies that focalize commonized care-work. Care-work has immense, and intuitively understood, value; The important question, thus, is what systemic preconceptions do we hold that are blinding us to this value, so we may dispel injustices.

• Timothy Jacob Linaberry  (Lead Coordinator, Project Downshift: A Care Collective)
  Identifying and Strengthening Local Economies of Care: Project Downshift

ABSTRACT: In an era of increasing helplessness - learned and perceived - what can be done to reinvigorate localism, mutual aid, and overall well-being? Project Downshift provides a blueprint to synthesize social, economic, and ecological elements so that communities can easily highlight, recognize, and strengthen themselves in the face of a rapidly deteriorating federal element. In Baltimore, we are constructing a collective centered around care, building an umbrella that contains four main arms: coaching and educational; local currency and time-bank; a guide and directory; a cultural festival.
Each arm is an independent thread that can function on its own, but over time the threads intertwine, building a robust local system centered around care. The coaching arm serves as an (re)orientation, providing bespoke programs for individuals and organizations that deconstruct mainstream narratives in favor of pathways towards perseverance. The local currency and time-bank builds financial resilience and partnerships. The guide outlines the community participants, highlighting and mapping the collaborative network. The festival provides a reoccurring community gathering space to celebrate, embrace, and strengthen the wins.
In this presentation, we will outline a framework we have devised specifically for Baltimore, Maryland - but can be adapted and adopted for almost any locality.

• Cindy McPherson Frantz  (Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies and Science, Oberlin College)
  Building Support for Tax Increases Through Climate Messaging

ABSTRACT: Mitigating and preparing for climate change will take substantial economic investment.  In the absence of federal leadership, communities must plan and fund mitigation and adaptation efforts.  We report the results of an online experiment evaluating the impact of local climate information on perceptions of climate threat and support for raising revenue to fight climate change through increasing taxes. Participants from two urban areas (Chicago, New York) watched one of three videos that talked about climate change impacts as well as mitigation and adaptation strategies underway: one that presented global-level information only, a second that presented global and hyper-local information about their city, the third presented global and hyper-local information about the other city.  Afterwards, participants were asked how much they supported raising local taxes by $3,000/year to fund climate policies. We hypothesized that interacting with localized predictions, particularly those of one’s own city, would reduce the psychological distance of climate change by bringing these impacts home (literally), thus increasing concern and willingness to pay. Results indicated that exposure to local climate messaging increased the threat of climate change more than exposure to global messaging. Both global and local messaging increased willingness to pay more taxes. 

5C: Science Center A 155 (DeGrowth Track)

Joshua C. Farley (Professor, University of Vermont)
The Implications of Modeling the Ecological Economy as a Complex Adaptive System
Session Chair

• ABSTRACT: Farley and Ament are revising the textbook Ecological Economics to reflect advances in our field and changes to the planetary system.  We seek feedback on our proposals, including integrating the science of complex adaptive systems (CAS).  We highlight four changes this perspective imposes on our field. First, positive feedback loops are common, appearing in most firms as downward sloping supply curves, resulting in growth imperatives toward monopoly. Society, however, faces large ecological and social costs of such growth. Second, CAS require constant influxes of energy/matter to maintain themselves in far-from-equilibrium states. Constant adaptations of constituent components continuously change the complex whole, rendering equilibrium and optimization futile goals. Third, CAS have profound implications for statistical analysis, including their tendency toward power-law distributions, which describe income, wealth, and other economic variables.  Totals and means, such as GDP or per capita GDP, provide no information about the typical agent. Fourth, monetary systems are highly complex social relations. Interest rate policy, IS-LM models, and other equilibrium-focused, atomistic approaches are limited in their effectiveness. This presentation explains why CAS generate these outcomes and their implications for ecological economic theory and application. 

Stephen A. Marshall (Master of Science Graduate Student,  University of Vermont), Burlington, USA
Relational Science: How To

• ABSTRACT: Equity, justice, inclusion, and respect for the dignity of life are foundational commitments of Ecological Economics. Each depends on relational conditions: how people belong, coordinate, provide care, maintain accountability or build community. Yet within the scholarship of Ecological Economics, these relational aspects are rarely treated as primary centers of concern, creating a persistent mismatch between USSEE's stated values, and the policy that scholarship can justify.
  Relational Science extends existing EE theory and labor by making relationality itself investigable. Situating relational structures in the foreground, and not as context, RS draws attention to the circulation of information about action, impact, learning, adaptation, and the relationships that make it all happen. This circulation, RS claims, is the core function of community, and its smooth flow or obstruction, helps explain why some communities thrive, while others stagnate, break down, or dysfunction. By foregrounding relational conditions, Relational Science enables EE to diagnose the predictive power of research and policy.
  This author’s session introduces Relational Science, outlines the Epistemology of Relational Sovereignty, describes how relational information circulates, presents a working lexicon for relational analysis, and discusses approaches for observing relational dynamics within the sovereignty and lived experience of participants.

Terry Bensel (Professor, Environmental Science & Sustainability, Allegheny College)
From Pre-Analytic Vision to Planetary Boundaries: 30+ Years of Teaching Ecological Economics

• ABSTRACT: The emergence of Ecological Economics as a discipline occurred only a few years before I began my career as a college professor. The experience of teaching Ecological Economics from when it was just beginning until now – 21 sections of the course and over 400 students in 32 years – provides a perspective both on how the discipline, as well as our students, have changed. As such, this paper reviews some of the ways in which Ecological Economics has evolved as a field since the late-1980s, and how this has changed the way I approach teaching the subject. It also considers, from a more subjective stance, how student reaction to and engagement with Ecological Economics concepts has evolved over time and how that has impacted my teaching. In general, and at least for my students who are primarily Environmental Science majors, there has been a growing skepticism and even outright cynicism toward what might be considered more mainstream economic approaches to addressing environmental challenges. This paper discusses the forms that these changes have taken and how they have allowed me to link more recently developed concepts and approaches (such as planetary boundaries) with “core” Ecological Economics principles from over three decades ago.