Clive L. Spash

Research Groups: “Social Ecological Transformation”, “Public Policy & Governance”, “Development”

a. Current research activities

I have been working on conservations issues and regulatory policy reflecting upon the role of natural sciences versus economics.  This has in part been oriented towards a critique of the neoliberalisation of the environment and its commodification.  I have two recent articles on the topic, one of which critically reviews the policy of ‘offsetting’ of biodiversity loss and environmental damages (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2015a), and the other categories discourses on the environment and the loss of the ecological discourse from policy (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash and Aslaksen, 2015).

Climate change policy and mitigation is an on-going topic of research.  I recently summarised my Australian experience (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2014b). I have work in progress on ethics and economics around the issue.  I have been presenting work on the myths relating to climate policy (in)action.  I have written a critical review of recent promotion of economic growth as a solution (rather than cause) (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2014a).

Another area is synthesising critical social science and realism and integrating social ecological and economic knowledge.  This theoretical work has been appearing in various journal articles (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2012; <link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>2013), and book chapters (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2015b; <link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>c).  As part of this research I am editing a 50 chapter volume on ecological economics and writing a monograph on social ecological economics.

Another area of current activity and though is on the future post-growth society (<link https: www.wu.ac.at typo3>Spash, 2015d).  This also relates to social ecological transformation.  I have been working on issues relatingto topics such as degrowth, steady/stationary state economics and sustainability.  This questions the very meaning of development.

I have two grant applications currently submitted.  Both are in the areas of social ecological transformation, alternative economic and social institutions and governance.

b. Current teaching obligations

M.Sc. Social Ecological Economics & Policy, Interdisciplinary Methodology

M.Sc. Social Ecological Economics & Policy, Ecological economics

M.Sc. Social Ecological Economics & Policy, Deputy Director

Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) Masters in International Management (MIM), Climate Change Strategy Role Play

c. Future plans

I aim to pursue the topic of social ecological transformation, governance and democracy, post-growth society (degrowth, simplicity, sufficiency, stationary/steady state), alternative new economy.  The ideal will be to obtaining funding for post-doctoral and doctoral students in this area.

d. Selected recent works

Spash, C.L. (2012). 'New foundations for ecological economics'. Ecological Economics, 77 (May):36-47.

Spash, C.L. (2013). 'The shallow or the deep ecological economics movement?'. Ecological Economics, 93 (September):351-362.

Spash, C.L. (2014a). 'Better Growth, Helping the Paris COP-out?: Fallacies and Omissions of the New Climate Economy Report'. Vienna: Institute for Environment and Regional Development.

Spash, C.L. (2014b). 'The Politics of Researching Carbon Trading in Australia'. In: Stephan, B. and Lane, R. (eds). The Politics of Carbon Markets. London: Routledge, 191-211.

Spash, C.L. (2015a). 'Bulldozing Biodiversity: The Economics of Optimal Extinction'. Biological Conservation, In Press.

Spash, C.L. (2015b). 'Combining Social, Ecological and Economic Knowledge: How Critical Realism Can Help'. In: Lindner, U. and Mader, D. (eds). Critical Realism Meets Kritische Sozialtheorie. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, forthcoming.

Spash, C.L. (2015c). 'The Content, Direction and Philosophy of Ecological Economics'. In: Martínez Alier, J. and Muradian, R. (eds). Handbook of Ecological Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Spash, C.L. (2015d). 'The future post-growth society'. Development and Change, 46 (2):366-380.

Spash, C.L. and Aslaksen, I. (2015). 'Re-establishing an ecological discourse in the policy debate over how to value ecosystems and biodiversity'. Journal of Environmental Management, 159 (August):245-253.