Learning and Teaching Ecological Economics with Civil Society Organizations

The European FP7 CEECEC project (2008-2010) grew out of the attempt to shorten the distance  between academic Ecological Economics, and the "activist knowledge" of Civil Society Organizations. The original idea was to ask environmental non-governmental organization to write reports on case studies of their own choice, and then turn these reports into chapters of an on-line Handbook of ecological economics. The civil society organizations involved are the CSE from India (environmental investments in water harvesting), Accion Ecologica from Ecuador (mining conflicts in the Cordillera del Condor), the CED from Cameroon (conflicts on deforestation), Endemit from Serbia (con-management of a natural park), Sunce from Croatia (marine biodiversity conservation), Rebraf from Brazil (REDD - avoided deforestation), VODO from Belgium (corporate accountability and liability), ASUD from Italy (waste mismanagement in Campania, and the TAV conflict in Val di Susa). Academic partners have been ICTA-UAB (coordinator), SERI, Univ. Libre de Bruxelles, Gepama (Univ. Buenos Aires), ECOMAN (Lisbon), IFF (Vienna). The on-line Handbook is ready at the end of 2009 (and freely available at www.ceecec.net). A trial on-line course of ecological economics based on the Handbook will be run in February-April 2010. Students taking the course will be NGOs members but also university students, public administrators. In San Diego, results and the difficulties in carrying out the project, and future prospects for teaching and learning ecological economics with environmental non-governmental organizations, will be discussed.