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Seventh international conference on "Current Issues of Sustainable Development" 16-17 April 2007, Opole, Poland

Sustainable Development has become an integrated part of European Union policy and has, as a consequence, gained importance for national and regional authorities, as well as for business. In practice, sustainable development often implies that economic growth has to be reconciled with social and environmental goals. An interesting issue is whether sustainable growth is feasible -- growth without negative social and environmental consequences. The concept of growth can be analysed at different levels: economic growth, growth and expansion of urban areas, growth of small and medium size enterprises (SME), growth of production in particular sectors, etc. This conference invites papers from scholars from disciplines involved in issues of sustainable development, e.g. economics, geography, environmental sciences, natural sciences, legal sciences, social sciences. Topics to be discussed are:

• The application of economic theories, in particular theories of property rights, institutions and governance, etc., to issues of sustainable development.
• The application of scientific theories to issues of sustainable development, preferably from an interdisciplinary point of view.
• Sustainable enterprise -- e.g. tools for companies, in particular SME, such as resource or life cycle management and corporate foresight.
• Unsustainable trends at different levels of scale (local, national, EU, global ).
• Issues of governance at different levels of scale (local, national, EU, global).
• Policy making for Sustainable Development: policy coherence, the importance of prices and incentives for sustainable development, investment in science and technology, stakeholder involvement (citizens, business, NGO's).
• Priorities in the sustainable development of urban areas; Priorities in the sustainable development of rural areas.
• Competing priorities in sustainable development and issues of competence at local, national, EU and global level.