After three years under the wing of ICTP, the Ecological and Environmental Economics (EEE) programme has shed its protective cover and will transfer its operation to Venice.

EEE Finds New Home in Venice

When ICTP agreed to sponsor an ecological and environmental economics (EEE) programme in 2002, it marked a new, innovative strategy in the Centre's 40-year-old quest to build scientific and intellectual capacity in the developing world.
First, the decision pushed the Centre's agenda well beyond physics and mathematics into areas that lie at the interface between the natural and social sciences. In fact, the initiative called for the use of highly sophisticated tools usually associated with physicists and mathematicians (for example, modelling and computer simulations) to examine critical social and economic problems.
Second, ICTP, for the first time in its history, agreed to provide substantial 'seed' money for an 'external' project that would be housed at the Centre's campus in Trieste---that is, money to help launch and nurture the programme during its initial phases of development.
At the same time, the Centre and project organisers also agreed that after three years of ICTP assistance, the programme would have to find its own sources of revenue in order to continue its operations.
Well, the three-year 'incubation' period is now over and the EEE programme is indeed out on its own, having successfully transformed itself from a fledgling operation, nurtured by ICTP, into an independent entity.
Beginning this January, EEE assumed a new name---the International Research Centre on Climate Impacts and Policy; a new headquarters---at Fondazione Giorgio Cini (FGC), on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice; and a new financial base---from FGC, which will not only provide meeting space but computer rooms, guest quarters and a cafeteria. The Fondazione ENI Enrico Mattei, which was one of EEE's original institutional partners, will also continue to sponsor the initiative extending its managerial and administrative expertise to the effort.
"I am thankful for the opportunity that ICTP gave us," says Sir Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey professor of economics at Cambridge University, UK, and one of the chief supervisors of the project. "We have tried our best to make sure that the Centre's investment earned an excellent return---in terms of expanding individual knowledge, strengthening institutional networks, and encouraging extensive and fruitful exchanges between scholars and scientists in the natural and social sciences."
Making good on this pledge, over the past three years EEE has organised 29 workshops and 32 seminars in a wide-range of subject areas that include such topics as property rights in environmental management, ecosystem tourism in southern Africa, and ecological and economic strategies for understanding and mitigating the spread of infectious diseases.
Working closely with ICTP's Physics of Weather and Climate group, EEE has also organised research and training activities that examined climate change issues from an environmental and ecological economics perspective. "This partnership," notes Dasgupta, "will continue and likely strengthen once EEE settles into its new quarters in Venice."
"One of the most pleasing aspects of the EEE's work," says Karl-Göran Mäler, who worked with Dasgupta as co-leader of the initiative, "has been the active involvement of the scientific and scholarly community in developing countries. Six of the EEE's 29 workshops, for example, were held in developing countries, and virtually all of the five books and 13 peer-reviewed articles published as a result of our activities included authors from the developing world."
In addition, in May 2005 EEE organised a workshop for environmental economists from the Middle East and North Africa to explore the possibility of creating a network similar to those that exist in other regions of the world. The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), whose secretariat is located on the ICTP campus, has agreed to host the network's headquarters at its regional office in the new Library of Alexandria in Egypt. "The network is off to a good start," Mäler says, "and we are optimistic that it will gain strength and visibility in the future."
As for the new International Research Centre on Climate Impacts and Policy, two activities are already planned for 2006: a workshop examining integrated climate models for the purpose of assessing climate impacts and policies, scheduled for January, and a workshop on climate change and the future of biodiversity, scheduled for October. The first members of the new Centre's resident research group will also be appointed. When fully staffed, the group is expected to have seven members, each of whom will retain his or her association with the Centre for at least three years.
"The once separate natural and social science communities have moved closer together over the past several years," says Carlo Carraro, professor of econometry and environmental policy at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari and a member of the EEE steering committee. "Each community increasingly realises that a greater understanding of the complex problems that the world faces demands a better understanding of both nature and human nature."
"That's the interface that EEE focussed on," continues Carraro, "and that's the interface that the International Research Centre on Climate Impacts and Policy will continue to focus on by paying particular attention to what is likely the most challenging global problem that we face today: our changing climate. Indeed there may be no more critical issue for the field of ecological and environmental economics to explore, and we are thankful that ICTP has created such a strong foundation for us to do just that."

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