TIK-Seminar: Changing paradigms - Making the transition towards a bio-based economy possible

Professor Piergiuseppe Morone will talk about transitioning to a bio-based economy which involves more than just technological changes, but also big societal and institutional changes as much as the development of radically new technologies.

Abstract

Significant changes are ahead of us: most notably, the world’s population is projected to increase by almost one billion people within the next decade and the global middle class is expected to nearly triple by 2030. These trends add pressure to the world economic system and environment: greenhouse gas emissions keep growing at global scale, materials and energy sources are fast approaching their physical limits, and the amount of waste produced under the current system seems to be reaching a new peak.

Against this background, a transition from a society heavily based on mass consumption, uncontrolled waste generation, and heavy fossil-fuels exploitation toward one based on resource-efficiency, new production and consumption behaviours, waste reduction, reuse, and valorization, seems a desirable and much-needed feat. This change involves a paradigm shift, which goes beyond technological change – it involves big societal and institutional changes as much as the development of radically new technologies and would give rise, in a long-term perspective, to the beginning of a new long wave of sustained (and sustainable) growth.

About the speaker

Piergiuseppe Morone is an economist with an interest in evolutionary theory applied especially to sustainable innovation studies. As a postgraduate student he was trained at SPRU-Sussex University where he received in 2003 his PhD in Science & Technology Policy with a thesis on innovation economics, investigating the relation between social network architectures and speed of diffusion of knowledge and innovations. He is now a Professor of Economic Policy at Unitelma Sapienza – University of Rome with a strong interest in green innovation and sustainability transitions pushing his research at the interface between innovation, food & agricultural economics and green chemistry, an area of enquiry that has attracted growing attention among social scientists over the last decade. His work regularly appears in prestigious and highly impacted innovation and environmental economics journals. He is vice-chair and Management Committee member of the Cost Action TD1203 on Food waste valorisation and he is also an Editor of Open Agriculture, open access journal by De Gruyter Open.

 

To register for the seminar: please send an e-mail to j.s.gonzalez@tik.uio.no with the title "Seminar Morone".

Publisert 15. sep. 2016 10:29 - Sist endret 15. sep. 2016 14:14