Interdisciplinary Climate Economics for Nature and Society - ICENS lab

Fostering a future of justice and sustainability

The freshly founded ICENS lab helps shape collective efforts towards a future with a stable global climate system, an innovative thriving green social economy, and a more inclusive world. Its objectives are on one hand, to share knowledge through education, learning, dissemination, and on the other hand, generate knowledge via analysis, research, collaboration, debates, and critical and systems thinking. ICENS lab’s innovative angle is its work ethics governed by three main principles:

  1. Advancing pluralist perspectives on climate economics going beyond the mainstream

  2. Promoting interdisciplinary dialogue, including interactions with the arts and humanities

  3. Pursuing multi-stakeholder engagement for the co-creation of sensible climate answers

We pursue five main interrelated strands of work

Learning, training, education

ICENS lab aids learning, contributes to transformative education, and offers training and capacity building,. It facilitates the sharing of knowledge, on a range of topics pertaining to the economics for sustainability. The focus is on climate change from a systemic and inclusive perspective, cutting across a range of schools of economic thought and in close dialogue with other disciplines. Intended audiences include universities, schools, businesses, the public policy world, multilateral institutions, and civil society.

Generating knowledge

This work stream involves research, analysis, and consultancy projects linked to the economics of climate change mitigation from a pluralist perspective, the shaping of multi-dimensional climate strategies, and systemic interactions between climate, energy, industrial, and social policies.

Connecting economics with the arts

ICENS lab aims to be open and innovative in its approach by acknowledging the role of both reasoning and sentiment in shaping sensible climate action. Connecting economics with the world of arts is critical to empathetically disseminate knowledge, reimagine the purpose of our economies, and instil change.

Linking-the-dots hub

This is a free-access online hub for networking, showcasing good practices, and advancing understanding about how to deliver low-carbon inclusive societies, consider economy-social-environment interactions, account for geopolitical and strategic autonomy perspectives, embrace different schools of economic thought, and cultivate the science and arts interface.

Engaging locally

ICENS lab supports togetherness in local action projects, pragmatism, and community-driven initiatives committed to just net-zero transitions, keen on rethinking social-economic models, and exploring alternative ways of prospering and developing.