The President’s greeting on the 2019 threshold
Dear Collegues and Friends –
I would like to remind you that the mission of ISEE consists of extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between ‘nature’s household’ (ecosystems) and ‘humanity’s household’ (the economy).
Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. Its activities are related to the fact that it draws on and integrates elements of physics, ecological science, biology, economics, psychology, anthropology, ethnoscience, political science, sociology, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics.
I hope that in 2019 we can deepen our commitment to the work that the ISEE must do to promote the orchestration of knowledges that Ecological Economics represents. Our duty should be the promotion of a science committed to human well-being, to the pursuit of happiness – the enjoyment of life, in Georgescu’s words.
ISEE has everything to fulfill that role, in line with what Daly proposes with respect to the steady-state economy; in line also with the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, and the forty-six-year experience of Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness philosophy.
— Clóvis Cavalcanti
