A politics of confrontation for sustainable development governance

This paper proposes an alternative qualitative vision on sustainable development that could inspire a global ethics for societal development and intergenerational accountability and, at the same time, expose specific responsibilities for policy, the private sector, science and civil society. The vantage point would be viewing sustainable development as a convergence of interests on three ‘policy levels’: Normative integration: a ‘meta-level’ that starts from an interpretation of the concept of sustainable development as a meta-norm under which every human socio-economic activity would need to ‘fit’; Pragmatic assemblage: a ‘medium level’ that concentrates on the ‘building blocks’ of sustainable development and their interrelation; Pragmatic assimilation: a ‘ground level’ that focuses on how and why specific actors formulate own responsibilities and (eventually) take corresponding action; The motivation is that, whatever our stake or concern is as citizens, communities, companies or institutions, we all have a joint interest in making these levels ‘work’. The challenge for sustainable development governance is then to ‘succesfully connect’ the levels, as this would unveil specific requirements for the way we make sense about our behaviour and rationalise it in view of the totality. Today, the political view is that ‘we know what (science tells us) to do’ and that governance is about organising our ‘good intentions’ into a coherent totality (see ‘the green economy’). The general assumption is that this is a complex but feasible exercise ‘if everybody shows political will’. This contribution argues that this approach is wrong, as this still provides ways for actors to escape specific responsibilities that are crucial for sustainable development. The presentation will elaborate on why and how the three-level picture of sustainable development governance would also make explicit these responsibilities and sketch required institutional approaches for a ‘politics of confrontation’ that would set this view in practice

Ethics for Radiation Protection in Medicine

This book presents an up to date ethical framework for radiological protection in medicine. It is consistent with the requirements of the system of radiation protection and with the expectations of medical ethics. It presents an approach rooted in the medical tradition, and alert to contemporary social expectations. It provides readers with a practical framework against which they can assess the safety and acceptability of medical procedures, including patients’ concerns. It will be an invaluable reference for radiologists, radiation oncologists, regulators, medical physicists, technologists, other practitioners, as well as academics, researchers and students of radiation protection in medicine. Features: An authoritative and accessible guide, authored by a team who have contributed to defining the area internationally Includes numerous practical examples/clinical scenarios that illustrate the approach, presenting a pragmatic approach, rather than dwelling on philosophical theories Informed by the latest developments in the thinking of international organization

Ethics for Radiation Protection in Medicine

This book presents an up to date ethical framework for radiological protection in medicine. It is consistent with the requirements of the system of radiation protection and with the expectations of medical ethics. It presents an approach rooted in the medical tradition, and alert to contemporary social expectations. It provides readers with a practical framework against which they can assess the safety and acceptability of medical procedures, including patients’ concerns. It will be an invaluable reference for radiologists, radiation oncologists, regulators, medical physicists, technologists, other practitioners, as well as academics, researchers and students of radiation protection in medicine. Features: An authoritative and accessible guide, authored by a team who have contributed to defining the area internationally Includes numerous practical examples/clinical scenarios that illustrate the approach, presenting a pragmatic approach, rather than dwelling on philosophical theories Informed by the latest developments in the thinking of international organization

Multi-criteria group decision support with linguistic variables in long-term scenarios for Belgian energy policy

Real world decisions often made in the presence of multiple, conflicting, and incommensurate criteria. Decision making requires multiple perspectives of different individuals as more decisions are made now in groups than ever before. This is particularly true when the decision environment becomes more complex such as sustainability policies study in environmental and energy sectors. Group decision making processes judgments or solutions for decision problems based on the input and feedback of multiple individuals. Multi-criteria decision and evaluation problems at tactical and strategic levels in practice involve fuzziness in terms of linguistic variables vis-à-vis criteria, weights, and decision maker judgments. Relevant alternatives or scenarios are evaluated according to a number of desired criteria. A fuzzy multi-criteria group decision software tool is developed to analyze long-term scenarios for Belgian energy policy in this paper

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY POLICY INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT “SEPIA” - Final Report

audience: researcher, professionalThe report summarizes a 3 years research program aimed at developping long term sustainable scenarios for Belgian the energy system. The research included expert participation, stakeholders assessment, quantitative modelling and fuzzy-logic analysis of the assessments. It produced three scenarios for a sustainable energy system in Belgium 2050.SEPIA Sustainable energy policy integrated assessmen

Revised Strategic Research Agenda for Social Sciences and Humanities in Radiation Protection

This document describes the research priorities and the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in radiation protection for the next 20 years. It also reports on the results of a first gap analysis. The SSH SRA is a living document, under constant development through the engagement of the SSH community in radiation protection field and other stakeholders, especially technical and research platforms. To this end, the SSH community in radiation protection field will structure and enhance dialogue at the European level among the different stakeholders, fostering the sharing of knowledge and information among various disciplines working on aspects of radiation protection and identify the SSH research needs in the field of radiation protection. The objective of Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in radiation protection is to contribute towards improvement of the Radiation Protection (RP) system by coordinating European SSH research in the field of radiation protection; supporting education and training; knowledge management and sharing; and identifying SSH state of the art across domains. It is only by enabling SSH research to play a fuller and stronger role through a coordinated SRA mechanism that societal perspectives on research relating to radiation protection will be realised. The SSH SRA has been developed through a broad stakeholder engagement process. The research topics to be included in the SSH SRA have been collected through various activities carried out in the H2020 projects CONCERT and the FP7 projects OPERRA, PREPARE and EAGLE, notably the RICOMET 2015, 2016 an RICOMET 2017 conferences and Symposium on Ethics of Environmental Health, as well as in dialogues with members of the radiation protection platforms, carried out in a context of the CONCERT 2.6 task group. These research topics have been prioritised for the first time at the Radiation Protection Week in Oxford (19-23 September 2016) with task 2.6 members, SSH community and platforms, and further debated upon at the RICOMET Conference 2017 (June 27th to 29th, Vienna) with a large audience. The version summarised in this report is the most recent revision on of the SSH SRA (D2.8 and D2.10)