How does the Council work

The Council meet physically during the congress of IALE, where a chair of the Council is elected and plans for the coming period are discussed and decided upon. The Council can also meet physically in conjunction with international meetings between the Congresses, but only for consultations, and not to make formal decisions, as all members may not be able to attend. 

Between the congresses all communication and formal decisions by the Council is made electronically. Members of the council can at any time distribute questions or proposals to the council, being collected by the Chair and added to the agenda for the next meeting. All members of IALE can contact the Chair of the council to get an item on the agenda for an upcoming meeting within ½ a year. At least 4 times a year an electronic meeting will be organised by the Chair of the council. For each meeting, a commented agenda will be distributed together with a response form, making it possible for the members to comment (and eventually vote) on each item on the agenda. The dead-line for response (at least one week, but preferably more) will be followed to make it possible for each member to discuss and/or contact other members before the deadline for decision. The chair collects the responses and produces the minutes from the meeting. These minutes are then distributed before the next meeting. 

The history of the IALE Council

From 1982 to 1991 the Council was the basic democratic institution in IALE, formed as an association of representatives from all the independent regional chapters of Landscape Ecological Societies. The Council formally elected the IALE Executive Committee. By the revision of the IALE Statutes in 1991 individual membership in international IALE was instituted with optional membership in one or more regional chapters as the normal option. Correspondingly the executive committee was subsequently elected directly by the international IALE members, not indirectly by the representatives of the Council.

The new structure resulted in a greater efficiency of the international association and the representation within the IALE Executive Committee, however also resulted in a loss of influence of the regional chapters, as well as a decline in the effort to develop new regional chapters and coordinate the activities of existing regional chapters. 

The Council met during the 4th and 5th congresses in Toulouse (1995) and Snowmass (1999), but no activities happened between the congresses. Since no formal meeting of the Council was held in connection with the 6th IALE Congress in Darwin 2003, the Executive Committee asked the former chairman of the Council (Jesper Brandt, elected in 1999), to continue as chairman and to develop a formal description of the work be performed by the Council.

As a primary condition for a re-establishment of the Council the following goals were established: 

• All elected ordinary members of the Council should be elected according to rules consistent with the statutes of IALE (that is; directly elected by the members, not indirectly by a local E.C. and not IALE-appointed or self-appointed regional contact persons), 
  
• Their should be more elected ordinary members of the Council than members from the Executive Committee, to ensure that the Council will not automatically be overruled by a united Executive Committee. 

These goals were approached in the summer 2006, and the re-established Council started its work in the autumn 2006. In summer 2007 a new chair was elected on a council meeting at the 7th IALE-congress in Wageningen, but because of the chair’s illness came council not to act between the 7th and 8th  congress.  On the council-meeting at the 8th IALE-congress in Beijing, Xiuzhen Li was elected as chair and the Council has started to work again in the autumn 2011.

Further information on the IALE Council

The work of the IALE Council is regulated through part H of the IALE Statutes. For further information on the history of the IALE statutes and the role of the IALE council, see IALE Bulletin Vol. 22 no. 6, December 2004 and Vol. 24 no. 5, November 2006.

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