
Research unit: CEESE – Centre d’Etudes Economiques et Sociales de l’Environnement
Researchers: Sandrine Meyer, Marek Hudon
Project: IRHiS
The CEESE was set up shortly after the first United Nations Conference on the human environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. It is made up of a multidisciplinary research team which devotes its activities to the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the interactions between the economy and the environment. The research undertaken deals mainly with the following areas :
- Economic and environmental research on the quality of water.
- Studies on the economic, social and environmental impacts of the policies tackling climate effects.
- Study on the economic impacts of measures aiming at adapting to climate change (floods).
- Damage costs to the environment, human health and buildings (externalities – damage costs methods, contingent evaluation, replacement cost – applied to air and coastal pollution).
- Economic, social and environmental evaluation of “environmentally-friendlier” technologies (“clean” vehicles; (micro-)cogeneration, batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles, etc.).
- Analysis of the economic change in the environmental field according to an evolutionary perspective.
- Studies on mobility and its impacts (air pollution, noise, energy consumption, etc.).
- Financial and economic instruments (emission allowances/credits, flexible mechanisms, green certificates, taxes, etc.).
- Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses.
- Indicators of sustainable development (applications to transport and the urban context).
- Management tools (LCA and EMAS).
These studies meet two principal objectives. Thus, on the hand they assist the decision-takers to work out environmental policies in a present or future economic and social context and, on the other, they contribute to fundamental research into relations between the economy and the environment.
A large part of the research carried out at the CEESE takes place on the basis of networks (e.g.: the 6th European research framework program, CEN/ISS, COST) or/and in partnership with other Belgian and European universities.
The CEESE is now affiliated to the Centre Emile Bernheim (Research Institute in Management Sciences of the Solvay Business School), of the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (ULB).