Von Environmental Governance zu Landscape Governance: Multi-Level-Governance und Politics of Scale

Governance has definitely become a very iridescent concept in recent years. The term is widely used, meanwhile, in almost all social-science disciplines as well as in the political process. The intention of this paper is not so much to clarify these sometimes vague meanings but to highlight some special characteristics of environmental governance connected with the restructuring of the spatial dimensions of politics. It starts from the assumption that the quest for multi-level decision making is particularly pressing for environmental governance. However, multi-level governance raises concern about the constitution of various spatial levels and their relationships with each other, as discussed under the term of politics of scale. Moreover, it is argued that for environmental governance the spatial reference is strongly connected with another challenge, which concerns the question of how to deal with the biophysical conditions of particular places? The term landscape governance is introduced to tackle this question without referring to an ontologically given space. Thus, landscape governance deals with the interconnections between socially constructed spaces (the politics of scale) and 'natural' conditions of places. For this task, the concept of societal relationships with nature is introduced and applied to the term 'landscape' as a bridging concept between social and natural sciences. The paper illustrates the approach of landscape governance with examples of problem-oriented interdisciplinary research at the UFZ-Centre for Environmental research in Leipzig, eastern Germany. --Environmental governance,scale,politics of scale,landscape,societal relationships with nature

Shaping Relationships with Nature – Adaptation to Climate Change as a Challenge for Society

Climate change has become a highly politicised issue over the last couple of years. In particular adaptation to climate change raises fundamental conceptual challenges concerning the interplay of societal and biophysical processes. The paper discusses some of these challenges and introduces a theoretical concept able to improve our understanding of the complex interactions between nature and society. The concept of ‘societal relationships with nature’, which originated in the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ of critical theory, provides a dialectic approach towards these complex interactions able to deal with the societal causes of climate change as much as with the repercussions of global warming on societies, including the claim for balancing mitigation and adaptation needs. Basically, the goal of sustainable development has returned on the agenda in a new form: To what extent are societies in the ‘North’ and ‘South’ respectively able to deal with the vulnerabilities created or heightened by climate change? In this context, the spatial dimension of climate policy at and between the different spatial scales is becoming an ever more pressing problem, which is illustrated using the transformation of ecosystem services as a case study

Regimes in Global Environmental Governance and the Internationalization of the State: The Case of Biodiversity Politics

Scholarly debates on the relative (in-)effectiveness of global environmental governance increasingly focus on problems of cooperation across regime boundaries and on the missing knowledge base for such interlinkages. Global environmental change and related politics are increasingly seen as taking place in a complex field in which several ecological processes are interlinked – e.g. climate change, biodiversity, water, and land-use change – and these processes are deeply interconnected with societal processes, such as food supply and nutrition and the economic and financial crisis. We argue that institutionalist approaches have their merits but they are nevertheless inadequate because they do not seriously address questions concerning the root causes of problems, power, and domination. Furthermore, they do not critically scrutinise how the political institutions of current global environmental governance may in fact support broader socio-economic and political developments. This could effectively undermine the supposed goals of global environmental governance institutions and could seriously threaten other social or ecological processes. Informed by critical research on global environmental governance and adding to this literature insight from critical state theory, we develop an understanding of the internationalized state as well as its role and function in globalized capitalism. We illustrate our argument with recent developments in international biodiversity politics. We show that the predominant forms of politics are not very effective with respect to the ongoing erosion of biodiversity. However, the complicated and conflictive political processes within an apparatus of the internationalised state are mainly in line with hegemonic developments and dominant interest, i.e. the increasing valorization of biodiversity and especially of genetic resources

Regimes in Global Environmental Governance and the Internationalization of the State: The Case of Biodiversity Politics

Scholarly debates on the relative (in-)effectiveness of global environmental governance increasingly focus on problems of cooperation across regime boundaries and on the missing knowledge base for such interlinkages. Global environmental change and related politics are increasingly seen as taking place in a complex field in which several ecological processes are interlinked – e.g. climate change, biodiversity, water, and land-use change – and these processes are deeply interconnected with societal processes, such as food supply and nutrition and the economic and financial crisis. We argue that institutionalist approaches have their merits but they are nevertheless inadequate because they do not seriously address questions concerning the root causes of problems, power, and domination. Furthermore, they do not critically scrutinise how the political institutions of current global environmental governance may in fact support broader socio-economic and political developments. This could effectively undermine the supposed goals of global environmental governance institutions and could seriously threaten other social or ecological processes. Informed by critical research on global environmental governance and adding to this literature insight from critical state theory, we develop an understanding of the internationalized state as well as its role and function in globalized capitalism. We illustrate our argument with recent developments in international biodiversity politics. We show that the predominant forms of politics are not very effective with respect to the ongoing erosion of biodiversity. However, the complicated and conflictive political processes within an apparatus of the internationalised state are mainly in line with hegemonic developments and dominant interest, i.e. the increasing valorization of biodiversity and especially of genetic resources

Verdichtungen zweiter Ordnung: Die Internationalisierung des Staates aus einer neo-poulantzianischen Perspektive

This article develops an understanding of the internationalisation of the state, inspired by critical approaches to state theory, regulation theory and the concept of scale which was developed in critical geography. International state apparatuses and the integral state – in an Gramscian sense – are analysed with the concept of a „material condensation of societal power relations of second order“. The example of international environmental politics is briefly developed and some open questions for research and emancipatory politics are formulated

Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise the cases of the IPCC and the IPBES

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation

Handling a messy world: lessons learned when trying to make the ecosystem services concept operational

The concept of ecosystem services is widely used in the scientific literature and increasingly also in policy and practice. Nevertheless, operationalising the concept, i.e. putting it into practice, is still a challenge. We describe the approach of the EU-project OpenNESS (Operationalisation of Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital), which was created in response to this challenge to critically evaluate the concept when applied to real world problems at different scales and in different policy sectors. General requirements for operationalization, the relevance of conceptual frameworks and lessons learnt from 27 case study applications are synthesized in a set of guiding principles. We also briefly describe some integrative tools as developed in OpenNESS which support the implementation of the principles. The guiding principles are grouped under three major headlines: “Defining the problem and opening up the problem space”, “Considering ethical issues” and “Assessing alternative methods, tools and actions”. Real world problems are often “wicked” problems, which at first are seldom clear-cut and well-defined, but often rather complex and subject to differing interpretations and interests. We take account of that complexity and emphasise that there is not one simple and straightforward way to approach real world problems involving ecosystem services. The principles and tools presented are meant to provide some guidance for tackling this complexity by means of a transdisciplinary methodology that facilitates the operationalisation of the ecosystem services concept

Towards a national ecosystem assessment in Germany

We present options for a National Ecosystem Assessment in Germany (NEA-DE) that could inform decision-makers on the state and trends of ecosystems and ecosystem services. Characterizing a NEA-DE, we argue that its cross-sectoral, integrative approach would have the advantages of increased scientific understanding, addressing specific policy questions and creating science-policy dialogues. Challenges include objections against a utilitarian perspective, reservations concerning power relations, and responsibilities concerning the funding

Comments and illustrations of the WFUMB CEUS liver guidelines: Rare benign focal liver lesion, part I.

Improved detection and characterization of common focal liver lesions (FLL) are the main topics of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (WFUMB) guidelines on the use of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS). On stateof-the-art CEUS imaging, to create a library of rare FLL, especially concerning their atypical imaging characteristics, might be helpful for improving clinical diagnostic efficiency. In this review, we aim to summarize the ultrasound and CEUS features of rare benign FLL. Currently there are limited reports and images published

Combining policy analyses, exploratory scenarios, and integrated modelling to assess land use policy options

Scenario-based approaches provide decision makers with accessible storylines of potential future changes. The parameterisation of such storylines as input variables for integrated assessment models allows using models as a test bed for assessing the effects of alternative land use policy options in different scenarios. However, the potential of this kind of policy-screening analysis can be further improved by assessing the institutional compatibility of the policy options under review. The aim of this paper is to explore the added value of combining institutions-oriented policy analyses with scenario-modelling approaches for improved assessments of EU land use policy options. We describe an expert-based, stepwise process to combine four scenario storylines and two integrated assessment model approaches (CLIMSAVE & IMAGE-GLOBIO) with a procedure for institutional compatibility assessment. Among the subsidies we assessed were those for technology-driven intensification of agricultural production, which would contribute to decreasing demand for cropland across a range of scenarios. In regionalised policy designs, they also contribute to ecological effectiveness, and higher costs of governing. Subsidies to promote biomass production can have negative effects on ecosystems including land conversion, conversion of grassland into cropland as well as conversion of natural forests into managed forests. These effects can to some extent be mitigated by careful policy design which considers the institutional context and features cross-sectoral coordination. An integrated Ecosystem Services Framework policy could accommodate regionalised policy designs and cross-sectoral coordination, however, it can operate only under specific circumstances and needs particular efforts. Rural development approaches are another alternative which feature expansion of cropland by means of a large-scale, bottom-up transformation based on voluntary changes in behaviour, flexibility, participation, and local and regional collaboration. Apart from a vast number of interdisciplinary lessons learned, we also gained insights from the science-policy interface. A weak EU appeared as a plausible scenario from a scientific perspective, given the current political environment. However, it appreaded to be unacceptable at EU level policy making. We decided to maintain scientific independence and looked at policy options also in the context of a weak EU yielding environmentally beneficial opportunities for regional decision making at the expense of relevance of our scenarios to EU level policy makers