International Conference on Sustainability Evaluation – Call for Abstracts released

The Conference is open for contributions and the Call for Abstracts is now released.

The EPOS project establishes a network of leading European institutions that are active in the field of policy evaluation with a focus on environment and sustainability.

The network creates a platform to discuss and compare different methods of policy evaluation; it aims to strengthen socio-ecological aspects in evaluation. In discussions with both researchers as well as practitioners in consulting, politics and administration the conference in summer 2009 wants to add to the understanding of sustainability evaluation by addressing the following questions: What is sustainability evaluation's contribution to policy development and implementation? How should sustainability evaluations be designed to affect political decision-making? How can one strengthen sustainability goals and impacts in policy evaluation and assessment? How can the quality of sustainability evaluations be improved?

Networking is an important goal of the conference. Therefore, the program of the conference is open for contributions from European scientist and practitioners. The Call for Abstracts is now published and can be downloaded on the project-homepage (http://www.ecologic.eu/soef/epos/download/EPOS_Call_for_Abstracts.pdf). Submissions are possible until January, 31st, 2009.

The conference is organised by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOEW) (http://www.ioew.de) and Ecologic Institute for International and European Environmental Policy (http://www.ecologic.eu). EPOS (Evaluating Policies for Sustainable Development) is a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework of socio-ecological research (SOEF). The main focus of the project is policy evaluation with a focus on sustainability issues. Together with nine partners across Europe, the network is concerned with the evaluation of policies, political strategies, programmes, and instruments.