The Greening of the Global Auto Industry in a Period of Crisis

Veranstalter: Ulrich Jürgens, Antje Blöcker (WZB), Bernard Julien (Université Montesquieu Bordeaux), Tommaso Pardi (Ecoles des Hautes Etudes er Sciences Sociales, Paris)

Within the framework for Gerpisa’s 5th International Research Programme, “Sustainable Development and the Automobile Industry”, the 18th International meeting calls on researchers to examine the different dimensions of the sustainability of the automobile’s development. While the principles of sustainable development tend to highlight automobile firms’ social and environmental responsabilities, the current crisis has focused attention on the economic sustainability of many of the firms within the industry. With governments at both regional and national level called upon to invest heavily to preserve the automobile sector, a political dimension of sustainability has also emerged. A new series of compromises is emerging as these four dimensions of sustainability interact, termed The Second Automobie Revolution.

The 2010 International Meeting calls for contributions on the development of knowledge and analysis of the questions that are currently being asked across the global economy, at every stage of the value chain, across all corporate fonctions and at all levels of public intervention. It is no longer only the traditional participants within the automobile system that are involved as new actors emerge whose future role within the industry is generating much speculation and interest from both investors and researchers.