It is a big honour for me to serve as the President of the International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research.
Continuing the good work done by Simone Bastianoni, the main focus of my presidency will be on supporting the process through which Energy Systems Theory, the concept of emergy and emergy accounting become better recognized, understood and appreciated throughout the world in both scientific and policy contexts.
Nowadays, communication is a crucial issue in science. The way we communicate emergy in all its aspects (behaviour, language, etc.) is crucial for the acceptance of emergy and I think that we need to reflect on this issue. In this regard, some mistakes have been made in the past and we need to improve our ability to properly communicate with scientists from all disciplines.
First of all, let’s remind ourselves that emergy is a scientific method and that ISAER is a scientific society. Therefore, we need to stay focused on scientific goals. The members of our society probably have different political views and academic backgrounds and we do need to be inclusive, while working to boost their use of the systems perspective and emergy analysis skills.
Not only the quantity of emergy papers published, but also their quality is another important issue. There are many published emergy papers of poor quality. They are a problem as they reduce the value of the emergy methodology while contributing to spread mistakes and errors to other authors. We need to consider and discuss this problem. Editorial initiatives oriented to increase the quality of emergy publications are important in this context and should be supported.
The previous point is also related to the way emergy is taught. In this regard, the need for an updated emergy university-level textbook is becoming urgent. I invite you to discuss this topic during the meeting of the Executive Council. Also, we do need to ensure good quality emergy courses are available, worldwide. Sergio and Mark and some of you are doing a great service on this matter. However, since resources (time and money) are limited, I suggest starting to use a webinar platform to record and spread emergy seminars and courses worldwide. This approach will surely amplify our potential.
In terms of the so-called “university’s third mission” (i.e., to generate knowledge outside academic environments to the benefit of the social, cultural and economic development), I believe that ISAER can also make an impact by conveying a systems view of the world to very young students. Simone is doing a great job in this regard and more initiatives will come. I have some ideas about this and I will propose them at the meeting of the Executive Council.
Having an impact on young students is probably the most effective way to realize the paradigm shift that we hope for. To be more clear with an example, a 60 year-old economist is unlikely to change his view of the world, no matter how interesting your emergy talk at the next conference will be. Would you give up your systems-thinking view that is so well rooted into your brain? Probably not.
Thomas Kuhn explained why paradigm shifts are so difficult in his nice book “The structure of scientific revolutions”. I invite you to think about and to discuss this point to identify the most effective strategies that ISAER should implement to make a real impact within and outside the academic system.
Finally, in my opinion, we always need to work on improving the organization of our society to ensure its efficient and effective management. A lot of good work has been done in this direction over the last years and I think we should continue in this way. Among other things, I believe we do need to have a policy brief professionally done to spread ISAER and emergy in important scientific and policy contexts. Also, we need to ensure that the website (and related networking activities) and the NEAD database are regularly updated.
I do hope that we will work hard all together to make emergy science better understood and appreciated within the academic systems of the world and at all levels of society.
I thank you all for the support that you will provide to reach these goals.
Pier Paolo Franzese
Naples July 7 , 2019