LIST OF PANELS

This panel seeks to question the approaches and assumptions found in both environmental policies and energy conservation policies. Do the dramatic challenges that all humanity face currently in this Anthropocene epoch force a commensurate change in the analytical approaches of academics? Core examples of this include the question of whether environmental policy, often with a focus on end of pipe remediation, has the required theoretical and empirical focus to deal with the massive challenge of climate change and biodiversity loss? Are more integrated approaches necessary, such as that argued by the circular economy literature (Leipold 2021)? Does the current environmental policy tradition (and its academic study) ignore normative issues relating to social justice (e.g. questions of equity, intergenerational justice) and the integration between human and non-human experiences? The perspective underlying this potential change is to recognize that "normative" is a broad concept with many dimensions, including that society may have normative obligation to flora, fauna, ecology and survival of the world, as well as the issues of social justice, both among today's people and across generations. At the same time, are the current foci neglecting other imperative issues and processes (e.g. UN Sustainable Development Goals - Hartley 2021)? Another illustration of the challenges the fields face is the ‘return’ of energy security and focus on re-building economies post Covid (Brown and Huntington 2008).  Other important considerations include the role of crisis itself.  Is there no longer the same amount of space for ‘normal’ environmental and energy policy making, or does the focus on crisis distort the policy picture and essential decision-making?  Should public policy and its study calibrate its approach to deal with prolonged turbulence and prolonged sequences of crises (Ansell et al. 2017, Ladi and Wolff 2021)?  There are increasing signs of public policy studies reassessing its approaches to understanding our biosphere (e.g. Biermann 2021); what balance needs to be struck in terms of innovation versus retention of past learning and ideas?

This panel asks participants to present analytical frameworks and research strategies that take into account the current rapid evolution of environmental policy thinking, and push analytical, conceptual and empirical innovation in these fields. The core research question is for authors to showcase innovative ways of thinking about the future trajectory of environmental and energy conservation policy. How do we go about re-thinking assumptions, categorizations and other policy studies conceptualizations and how do we develop new and/or interdisciplinary thinking? Participants are encouraged (but not required) to take a comparative perspective to show how policy-makers in different territories, policy areas approach this question. Participants will be asked to debate whether or not they accept the proposition that the changing nature of environmental and energy problems requires both new policy studies approaches as well as new policy solutions (and if so what pathways will deliver on these requirements). Participants should also consider whether there are important gaps in the field of study, but also whether the efforts to extend our analytical endeavours leaves us vulnerable to overlooking important elements of current public policy and its study.

This panel asks participants to present analytical frameworks and research strategies that take into account the current rapid evolution of environmental policy thinking, and push analytical, conceptual and empirical innovation in environmental and energy conservation policy studies. The core research question/agenda is for authors to showcase innovative ways of thinking about the future trajectory in these policy areas. This call acknowledges the push to think about the environment and sustainability in new ways. Does this endeavour require us to have new understandings of the biosphere and the policy problems, revise our views of the conditions in which decisions are made, reconsider the normative implications of both the policy decisions and the academic investigation, reassess which actors and forces have been highlighted and which ones have been ignored and build new analytical frameworks and concepts to advance our field? The panel welcomes both papers that concentrate analytically on framing one or more of these conceptual elements and those that pursue empirical investigations to explore these topics. Critical reflections of the field as well as systematic literature reviews that explicitly tackle the panel themes and draw conclusions are welcome. Although the panel seeks to be forward looking, it recognizes the importance of temporal perspective and grounding, and therefore does not specify any particular time frame (given the increasingly important weighting towards considerations of the Anthropocene). We welcome papers that focus on any geographic area and environmental/conservation/sustainability area. We invite papers that focus on different policy actors and processes (e.g. environment agencies and governance, corporations and production cycles and so forth) to tackle these questions. We also encourage but do not require authors to take a comparative perspective. All theoretical frameworks and methodologies are welcomed. We particularly encourage those seeking to find innovative interdisciplinary, socioeconomic, and cross-sector linkages; innovations of interest here may also extend to changes in socioeconomic production processes and arrangements, as well as linkages across economic and policy sectors.

At least one of the chairs will present on site, so the panel will be onsite. Other panel members can participate online.