The 22^nd YHYS Colloquium:
Public or private sustainability?

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu campus
November 24–25, 2016

The purpose of the YHYS 2016 research colloquium, ‘Public or Private Sustainability?’, is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss the causes and implications of the expansion and diversification of governmental and non-governmental norms for environmental governance. The organisers of the colloquium welcome sessions and individual papers that discuss the issues of public and private means for governing sustainability.

At the core of colloquium theme there is the observation that the means for governing the ways in which societies deal with the physical environment is characterised by a tension between public policies and private governance arrangements. On one hand, these is, increasingly, an expansion of governmental normative authority towards multiple overlapping, complementary and competing normative authorities on international, regional, national and local levels. On the other hand, recent decades have witnessed an expansion of principles, strategies, norms and policies by the private sector to engage with issues of sustainability and responsibility. What are the driving forces behind these arrangements? Which kinds of governance arrangements create the best results in terms of sustainability locally and globally?

The keynote speakers are: Karin Bäckstrand, Professor, Stockholm University, Harro van Asselt, Professor, UEF and Helga Pülzl, Dr., Senior Researcher, European Forest Institute – Central Eastern European Regional Office EFICEEC and Institute of Forest,  Environmental and Natural Resource Policy, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU)
Abstracts between 200-300 words can be submitted to 5 working groups through the e-lomake (same as the registration).