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What is ConAccount ? ConAccount is a network
of institutions working on Material Flow Analysis (MFA).
As an open network ConAccount relies on the voluntary initiative of the contributing partners. Participating resesarchers are those which conduct MFA research and provide information about their MFA projects, announce meetings, publications, open positions etc. or contribute to the online provision of publications. ConAccount started in May 1996 as a concerted action titled "Coordination of Regional and National Material Flow Accounting for Environmental Sustainability". It has been coordinated by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in close cooperation with the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Continuing Education (iff) in Vienna, the Centre of Environmental Science of Leiden University (CML), and Statistics Sweden. Until the end of 1997, ConAccount was supported by DGXII. Within this first phase an inventory of about 100 participants was established on the web. This inventory was then replaced through the interactive registration since February 2000 through this website which was established with support of the European Environment Agency (EnviroWindows) . The organization of ConAccount had been prepared by a Steering Committee (SC). First members have been Stefan Bringezu, Wuppertal Institute , Marina Fischer-Kowalski, IFF Vienna (until 9/2003), Viveka Palm, Statistics Sweden , and René Kleijn, CML Leiden. At the ConAccount Conference on 11-12 Sept. 1997, the SC was mandated by the participants to continue with the organisation of the ConAccount process also beyond the first phase which had been supported by the European Commission. In February 2000 the European Enviroment Agency (EEA) nominated the Chairperson of the SC as leader of the ConAccount Interest Group under EnviroWindows, thus also providing support for web based information panels and the up-date of the inventory. At the ConAccount meeting „Quo Vadis MFA?“ 8-10 Oct 2003 in Wuppertal participants indicated that the short history of ConAccount should be continued and that potential options to integrate the activities into the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE) should be further explored. A Research and Development Agenda was defined in 1997 by an interactive process. A workshop in Leiden and a conference in Wuppertal were held in 1997. In 1998 a workshop followed in Amsterdam. In 1999, some colleagues could contribute to a conference held in Vienna. ConAccount meetings were held in 2001 in Stockholm, and in 2003 in Wuppertal. The ConAccount documents are available under our resources . MFA stands for Material Flow Analysis or Material Flow Accounting. It refers to accounts in physical units (usually in terms of tons) comprising the extraction, production, transformation, consumption, recycling, and disposal of materials (e.g. substances, raw materials, base materials, products, manufactures, wastes, emissions to air or water). According to different subjects and various methods, MFA - and thus ConAccount - covers approaches such as substance flow analysis, product flow accounts, material balancing, and bulk material flow accounts. However, ConAccount is generally focussed on studies of (supra-)national and regional scope down to the community and firm level. MFA projects for products and services (within LCA approaches) are not addressed in particular, whereas methodological overlaps are discussed. |