TA-Institutionen und -Programme

The Erasmus Centre for Environmental Studies (ECES) was founded in 1984. The core of the ECES-research is a multi-disciplinary approach to societal aspects of environmental problems. The diffusion and adoption of innovations, beneficial for the environment, are focal points in the research questions. The term innovation is broadly defined and comprehends both concrete technologies and products as well as systems and concepts. The research aims at the relationship between, on the one side, the application of technology and, on the other side, the societal conditions under which technology can be applied. Empirical research is done within industries and their surroundings of stakeholders as, among others, competitors, governmental regulatory organizations, environmental movements and consumers.

Several studies deal with one or more of the following research questions: 

• Which factors and actors are important in the process of adoption and diffusion of environmental innovations and/or innovations beneficial for the environment?
• What are relevant conditions for the optimization of the transfer of knowledge of environmental innovations? 
• To which degree will basic conditions and situational factors of different nature (business economics, institutional, social) influence the development and dissemination of environmental innovations? 
• How can these factors be manipulated and politically influenced?

Since several years now, 'Sustainable Development' is the central theme in governmental policies in many countries in the world. In the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan (1989), 'Sustainable Development' is operationalized into three targets: 

• energy-extensivation;
• the pursuit of structural source-oriented measurements;
• volume-oriented measurements.

Numerous times, the development and dissemination of environmental innovations have been pointed out as crucial to the realisation of these targets. Not only 'Clean Technology' innovations, but also concepts for social and cultural innovations, are more and more explored. Concrete illustrations are environmental care systems for companies, car-pooling, the development and purchase of environmentally sound products, innovative policy-strategies and decision-making processes.

The research programs of the ECES cover the three mentioned targets of Dutch environmental policy. Factors and actors that influence environmental management in industry (research program Cleaner Production) are the focal points.

Research programs and projects

The research questions are elaborated in four coherent research programs: 

• research program Energy-Extensivation
• research program Cleaner Production
• research program Traffic and Transport
• research program Integrated Water Management.

In these research programs, the relationship between application of technology and the conditions for application of technology are explored in two theoretical approaches: 

• top-down, the systems approach of relatively autonomous technology development;
• bottom-up, a process of social change with sustainable economical, ecological and technological development.

These approaches are being analyzed in a scientific framework of an interaction or network model, in which the relevant variables in policies in a dynamic goalsetting process of the interaction between relatively autonomous and mutually independent actors will be examined.

Research of these variables involve several levels of interaction: 

• macro-level / governmental policies:
  Conditions for innovations of organizational management, resources and technologies in relation to governmental policies, policy-development, the use of policy instruments. 
• macro and meso-level / transfer of knowledge:
  Conditions for application of technology in relation to the transfer of knowledge and the transfer infrastructure; research of both the organization and procedures of the existing infrastructure for the transfer of knowledge as well as the development of instruments like (computerised) databanks. 
• micro-level:
  Conditions for innovations within organizations beneficial for the environment.

The following major projects are currently in operation: 

• Industrial Ecosystems (1994 - 1997)
• Management Accounting as a Tool of Environmental Management (ECOMAC, 1996-1998)
• Towards a Sustainable Municipal Waste Management Policy in Europe: National Institutional Trajectories and the European Harmonisation Process (SustainWaste, 1996 - 1999).
• The effectiveness of instruments for environmental policies in the field of industry: the management of packaging, hazardous wastes and CFC's (Instrufect, 1996 - 1998).
• Sustainable Water Management in International River Basins (1995-1999).

Prof. Dr. W.A. Hafkamp, Director
Erasmus Centre for Environmental Studies
Department of Environmental Science
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Postbus 1738, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Tel.: + 31 10 4082050