The concept of sustainable development encompasses economic, social and environmental goals with the use of sustainable techniques for, e.g., better agricultural production, energy use, natural resources management or urban planning. Sustainable development is more than a global theory. It is becoming a necessity at the regional and local level. Sustainability of a region addresses the issue of improving quality of inhabitants’ life within the limitations of the global environment. Therefore, a sustainably developing region is wellbeing oriented.
Sustainable development is understood in the category of economic development assuming the availability of certain resources in the region, but as well the region’s capacity to manage them. Therefore, there are two approaches to sustainable development in the region, the product oriented and the process oriented. The first approach is the sustainable development value (e.g. a change, an outcome) that the region provides to its users, while the second approach focuses on processes occurring in the region illustrated in building regional or local development strategies.
It is expected that especially in the European Union the sustainable development principles will be integrated into regional development practices.
We aim to attract the academic contribution on the state-of-the-art or directions of sustainable regional development. We invite interdisciplinary research on challenges and new approaches to the sustainable regional development. The goal of this session is to create a compass for the future of regions development and sustainability. This compass will help to understand the necessary direction for the regional policymaking on the national and the EU levels.
In particular, we look for new indicators, new technologies, new methodologies and new ideas in the following topics (however not limited to) that cover sustainable regional development:
- regional economics
- energy and natural resources
- agriculture and environment
- labor market
- urban planning
- health and consumer economics
Panel organizers: Katarzyna Kurek and Johan van Ophem (Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands)
Please send submissions via e-mail to: Katarzyna Kurek (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Dr. Johan van Ophem (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
The submission deadline is September 1, 2020. Notification of acceptance: 5 September 2020.