Interplay: Exploring Institutional Interaction

"Since the development of the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) Science Plan in 1998 has become an important subject of inquiry. The Science Plan put institutional interaction on the agenda of global change research when only a handful of scholars had raised the general issue. Their work drew attention to the risk of 'treaty congestion' [...] and to an increasing 'regime density' [...] in the international system. Today it is widely recognized that 'the effectiveness of specific institutions often depends not only on their own features but also on their interactions with other institutions' [...]. Many environmental issue areas are cocoverned by several international institutions with governance also involving institutions at lower levels of societal and administrative organization (regional, national, local) [...]." (excerpt

Beyond Intergovernmental Coordination: EU Corporate Foreign Policy Action and the Crisis over Ukraine

Introduction: Since 2014, the European Union (EU) finds itself in the midst of an international crisis over the status and territorial integrity of Ukraine that might have the potential of creating a new conflict among great powers in Europe (Smith 2014, Ferreira-Pereira and Vieira 2014). Moreover, the EU seems to be a major Western player in this conflict– not its member states, nor the United States. The EU seems to behave as a great regional power in its own right that is capable of confronting the newly empowered Russia that is gradually recovering from its defeat upon the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1990. And Russia seems to take the EU serious as a regional power in Europe (Dragneva and Wolczuk 2012, Aslund 2013). This is puzzling for those many observers holding the widely shared belief that the shortcomings of its intergovernmentally organized Common Foreign and Security Policy preclude decisive EU action on issues of high politics

L'alliance DAPA en Colombie

Thomas Oberthür nous explique comment les paysans, les scientifi ques, les transformateurs de produits alimentaires et les détaillants unissent leurs efforts afi n d'améliorer la qualité des produits agricole

Diversification Agriculture Project Alliance (DAPA) in Latin America

Thomas Oberthür explains how farmers, scientists, food processors and retailers are working together to improve the quality of agricultural product

Was bringt eine Weltumweltorganisation? Kooperationstheoretische Anmerkungen zur institutionellen Neuordnung der internationalen Umweltpolitik

"Der Beitrag stellt eine Antwort auf Vorschläge dar, die institutionelle Zersplitterung der internationalen Zusammenarbeit zum Schutz der Umwelt durch die Gründung einer Weltumweltorganisation zu überwinden und gleichzeitig eine Reihe zentraler Probleme der internationalen Umweltzusammenarbeit zu lösen. Dazu werden Organisationen kooperationstheoretisch als Steuerungsinstitutionen mit spezifischen Entscheidungsprozessen konzipiert. Dadurch wird erkennbar, daß wichtige bestehende internationale Umweltregime die Schwelle zur Organisation bereits überschritten haben. Sodann wird die im Vergleich zu anderen Politikfeldern typisch kleinteilige Bearbeitung internationaler Umweltprobleme auf die strukturellen Bedingungen des Politikfeldes 'Umwelt' zurückgeführt. Anschließend werden die beiden zentralen Dimensionen, die Organisation kollektiver Entscheidungsprozesse und der Zuschnitt des bearbeiteten Problemfelds, zu drei Modellen einer möglichen Weltumweltorganisation zusammengeführt. Die abschließende Untersuchung zeigt, daß von einer solchen Organisation aus kooperationstheoretischer Sicht kein wesentlicher Beitrag zur Lösung zentraler Probleme der internationalen Umweltpolitik zu erwarten ist." (Autorenreferat)"The article responds to proposals to overcome the institutional fragmentation of international environmental co-operation by establishing a world environment organisation, at the same time solving several major problems that plague international environmental co-operation. To this end, international organisations are conceptualised as governance institutions characterised by their particular decision-making processes. In this perspective, important existing international environmental regimes have already crossed the threshold of becoming 'organisations'. Furthermore, it is argued that the fragmented framework characteristic of international environmental co-operation as compared to other policy areas is a result of the specific structural conditions of international politics on the environment. Subsequently, the two central dimensions of the argument, i.e. organisation of collective decision-making procedures and delimitation of the issue areas governed, are merged to derive three models of a potential world environment organisation. The concluding assessment shows that such an organisation, from the view of co-operation theory, cannot be expected to contribute significantly to solving the major problems of international environmental politics." (author's abstract

Acute stress response for self-optimizing mechatronic systems

Self-optimizing mechatronic systems react autonomously and flexibly to changing conditions. They are capable of learning and optimize their behavior throughout their life cycle. The paradigm of self-optimization is originally inspired by the behavior of biological systems. The key to the successful development of self-optimizing systems is a conceptual design process that precisely describes the desired system behavior. In the area of mechanical engineering, active principles based on physical effects such as friction or lever are widely used to concretize the construction structure and the behavior. The same approach can be found in the domain of software-engineering with software patterns such as the broker-pattern or the strategy pattern. However there is no appropriate design schema for the development of intelligent mechatronic systems covering the needs to fulfill the paradigm of self-optimization. This article proposes such a schema called Active Patterns for Self-Optimization. It is shown how a catalogue of active patterns can be derived from a set of four basic active patterns. This design approach is validated for a networked mechatronic system in a multiagent setting where the behavior is implemented according to a biologically inspired technique – the neuro-fuzzy learning method.1st IFIP International Conference on Biologically Inspired Cooperative Computing - Mechatronics and Computer ClustersRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Probability modelling to reduce decision uncertainty in environmental niche identification and driving factor analysis: CaNaSTA case studies

Hillside agro-ecosystems have a complex spatial and temporal distribution of natural resources. Farmers generally possess a vast body of knowledge about environmental resources on their farms but this knowledge is largely based on locally observable features rather than generalized knowledge. The lack of process-based knowledge concerning agro-ecosystem function creates uncertainty that obstructs sound decision-making under conditions of rising economic and ecologic pressure in many developing countries. Since the past decade, Precision Agriculture provides tools to reduce uncertainty caused by environmental variation. By describing spatial and temporal variation of the environment, Geographic Information Systems help to detect suitable crops for specific environmental niches and support farmers to find optimal management practices for their plot of land. Hence Precision Agriculture helps to raise the economic benefits of farming, ensures consistent product quality and reduces negative environmental impacts caused by inappropriate management practices. A spatial decision support system called CaNaSTA was developed to aid the decision making process of crop adoption in tropical agriculture. Using Bayesian probability statistics, CaNaSTA integrates trial data, spatial data and expert knowledge and provides maps, tables and graphs analyzing and interpreting the probability distributions of spatial phenomena. The International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) has applied CaNaSTA to three case studies related to tropical agriculture. The first case study identifies niches for specialty coffee production, the second analyses the potential of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) for tropical hillside environments in Colombia. Finally, Canasta was applied to a non-crop related area by performing a study of carbon concentration in tropical soils.