On June 6th and 7th 2024, the Agora Adaptation team took part in the event Socioecos 2024 “Climate change sustainability and socio-ecological practices”, in Bilbao.
Sociecos 2024 is an international interdisciplinary conference that focuses on analyzing the frontiers of current knowledge on socio-ecological practices.
Climate change has anthropocentric causes, derived from socially organized activities, rooted in certain logic of production and consumption practices, embedded within broader social systems like economic, technical, cultural, and governance structures. Social sciences can highlight these connections and provide deeper insights into the causes and solutions for climate change.
The conference aimed to analyze how the concept of “ecological embeddedness” (notion first coined by Whiteman and Cooper, in a 2000 study of economic sociology, as the extent to which a manager is rooted in the land). To be ecologically embedded is to personally identify with the land, to adhere to beliefs of ecological respect, reciprocity and caretaking to actively gather ecological information and to be physically located in the ecosystems. This concept here is extended to various everyday activities. The conference has sought to point out how this concept could be operationalised in research practice, as a means of exploring the ecological dimensions of many activities and practices of everyday life, such as food consumption, mobility and ways of living.
The event examined socio-ecological practices’ trajectories, characteristics and impacts, in relation to the climate change crisis and emergency, seeking to discuss the most recent challenges and solutions. Paola Mercogliano, Project Coordinator (CMCC Climate), was a keynote speaker, and introduced the AGORA project and its multidisciplinary features and tools, and what the project has so far achieved, supporting the EU Mission Adaptation.
The event also saw the contribution of another AGORA team member, Dmitry Erokhin, PhD (IIASA), who presented the research paper “Spanish Climate Adaptation Policies: a comprehensive analysis of participatory elements”, focusing on policy analysis as a tool to identify and assess possible solutions, best practices and engagement methodologies.
