IEES

Changes in the IEES administration

After an intermezzo with a new administrator that caused a lot of chaos in IEES' administration, our old administrator Eva Linde is back in charge. Eva is situated at the Center for Ecological Engineering Tartu, Estonia. She'll be the one who makes sure that you will receive the journal (if you have included it in your membership) and will send the membership bills in January. Welcome back to the team, Eva.

Contact Eva Linde, IEES administration:

Correspondents

Dr. Yedes Adou is the new "eye" for the EcoEng-Newsletter in Japan. We are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration and welcome him as our correspondent.

Dr Yedes Adou holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Travaux Publics (ENSTP), Côte d'Ivoire, a M.S. in Geophysics (Atmospheric Physics) from the Université Nationale de Cote d'Ivoire, as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Global Environment Engineering from Kyoto University, Japan.

He has several years of professional, academic, and research experiences in international organizations, local governments and industries. With the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, Dr Adou was involved in sanitation issues, and was in charge of promoting the use of low-cost sanitation technologies in poor settlements of different African cities. At the academic level, Adou has taught at various Japanese colleges.

Presently, Dr Adou is the Principal Researcher with an environmental R&D firm based in Japan. His research interests and activities are in the investigation of biological and physicochemical processes for waste treatment, the development of mathematical models, the reuse and minimization of wastewater, and the development of appropriate and low-cost sanitation systems for developing countries.

Contact Yedes Adou:

IEES board

Board meeting in Tartu and 10^th Anniversary of IEES celebrations

By Björn Guterstam, IEES board

What is IEES and what is the benefit of being a member? Good questions, that demand answers to those who have made efforts to wonder.

Another, more implicit, question is what did IEES achieve during its first decade? Being among the founding members, I would (suggest to) use the outreach of IEES through our website as one indicator of success. Another would be the number of members (currently about 120) as an indicator of the opposite. In between come the many IEES conferences and the established Ecological Engineering Centres that indicate the relevance to still keep IEES going.

The current board, that met in Tartu consists mainly of founding members since 1993 but also of new capacities. Anja Bruell is a landscape architect at present supporting the US colleagues and Heinz-Peter Mang has recently joined IEES as a representative of GTZ Ecosan. Both board members have finally given Germany an extremely skilled and active representation.

When it comes to the hosts of the Tartu meeting, I can only state that Estonia seems to have a natural resource in its many eco-engineers. Their legacy in applied ecology must be correlated to the inspiring environment of the smoke sauna. How could we better celebrate the 10^th anniversary than gathering in a smoke sauna in the countryside of Tartu?

The warm Estonian atmosphere inspired our minds to brainstorm about the future. We thought that IEES is closely related to the renewable energy movement in promoting sustainable infrastructure solutions. There is a need for improving networking, lobbying, and marketing as well as to meet demands of capacity building.

The Tartu meeting outcome can consequently be summarised in a strategy for the 2^nd IEES decade to be implemented by four work groups:

• 1: Ecological Engineering Scope & Content (Contact: Dr. Hein van Bohemen)
• 2: Ecological Engineering marketing (Contact: Anja Bruell, description see next section)
• 3: Lobbying & Networking (Contact: Björn Guterstam)
• 4: Curricula group (Contact: Prof. Petter Jenssen)

The details of each work group including definition of tasks are in preparation. Comments from IEES members are most welcome.

Björn Guterstam,
IEES Board, 6 November 2003.

IEES workgroup 

By Anja Bruell, IEES board, Germany

Members

Anja Bruell, Grit Bürgow (Aquatectura), Georges Dumont (Seecon)

Interaction with other workgroups

Picture

Objectives

The market for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)and professionals in the IEES core field: Sustainable water and nutrient management shall be developed. IEES shall take on a new role as a leading partner for SME in these fields.

Background

10 years of IEES case studies show that EE systems are performing well and can be competitive, but yet are not being widely implemented.

Tasks

• Identify main strategic business units and unique selling propositions of sustainable water and nutrient management systems
• Identify SME and professionals of different countries (focus on European market) doing business in these fields
• Research activities, former studies, market analysis of other organisations
• Identify market barriers from the experience of selected professionals
• Develop strategies to overcome market barriers with respect to regional conditions
• Develop linkages to other fields i.e. renewable energy, sustainable architecture
• Develop a marketing concept
• Develop products and services

Organizational Structure

Core group with selected partners, periodic expert meetings, symposiums

Potential Outcomes

Proposals for policy consulting, possibly a marketing event, i.e. fair

Next Steps

Write project proposal, find source of funding