ECOSUD 2011 - 8th International Conference on Ecosystems and Sustainable Development

ECOSUD 2011 is the 8th International Conference in the well-established series on Ecosystems and Sustainable Development. The meetings provide a unique forum for the presentation and discussion of recent work on different aspects of ecosystems and sustainable development, including physical sciences and modelling.

This successful series first started in Peniscola, Spain (1997) and continued in Lemnos, Greece (1999); Alicante, Spain (2001); Siena, Italy (2003); Cadiz, Spain (2005); Coimbra, Portugal (2007); and Chianciano Terme, Italy (2009). It was decided to reconvene the conference again in Alicante to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of Ilya Prigogine’s opening of the 2001 meeting which took place at the same university.

Delegates attending ECOSUD 2011 will be invited to submit an expanded version of their paper for publication in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, associated with the Wessex Institute of Technology.

The aim of the conference is to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary communication between scientists, engineers, economists and professionals working in ecological systems and sustainable development. Emphasis will be given to those areas that will most benefit from the application of scientific methods for sustainable development, including the conservation of natural systems around the world. The conference objectives have evolved over the years, seeking to integrate thermodynamics, ecology and economics into “ecodynamics”.

ECOSUD is a challenge for the creation of a new science in line with Prigogine’s statement that “at all levels we observe events associated with the emergence of novelties and narrative elements, which we may associate with the creative power of nature”.