Understanding the bioeconomy through its instruments: standardizing sustainability, neoliberalizing bioeconomies?

Sustainability standards have been one of the hopefuls for decades when it comes to ensuring the sustainability of biomass for the bioeconomy, especially in the wake of their evolvement from voluntary, non-governmental to hybrid, public–private governance instruments in recent years. In addition to doubts regarding their legitimacy and effectiveness, however, they have also been associated with a neoliberalization of nature that integrates natural resources into a free market logic. Drawing on a conceptual framework that builds on political ecology and the political sociology of policy instruments, this paper challenges this notion. To this end, it examines sustainability standards in three countries/regions particularly prominent for the bioeconomy—the EU, Brazil, and Indonesia—to illustrate how these can be differentiated in terms of their neoliberal orientation, and what can be inferred from this for the orientation and state of the respective bioeconomies. The results show that the introduction of sustainability standards is not necessarily accompanied by a neoliberalization of nature. Rather, it is shown that the standards and their specific designs—and thus also their intrinsic understanding of sustainability as integration—are primarily intended to serve the material interests of the state and the respective industrial factions, for which neoliberal configurations are sometimes seen as rather obstructive, sometimes as rather useful. The sustainability standards, and thus the bioeconomies for which they stand, therefore, rather serve as instruments to stay on the path of modernization and industrial development already taken or envisaged, or, put differently, as strategies to avoid social–ecological transformation.Peer Reviewe

a legitimate approach to account for social aspects in environmental governance?

While initially hailed to be the silver bullet for tackling climate change, reducing oil dependency and providing an opportunity for rural development especially in poorer regions, severe criticism concerning the environmental and social performance of bioenergy has been raised recently. One potential solution for this problem that is increasingly discussed now is the certification of bioenergy. In the wake of this discussion, a broad range of certification initiatives emerged during the last years. However, this issue is predominantly debated in terms of the environmental implications. Accordingly, governmental approaches to this issue often neglect the need for including social aspects into sustainability principles and criteria, most prominently here the EU Renewable Energies Directive (RED). Non-state voluntary certification initiatives, by accounting for the social implications of increased bioenergy production, could therefore be seen as complementary governance instruments that are able to fill the void left by state regulations in this respect. After briefly addressing the reasons why state regulations tend to neglect social aspects concerning this matter, this paper seeks to explore whether voluntary bioenergy certification schemes could really be able to fulfill these hopes and provide the solution for the missing consideration of social criteria for sustainable bioenergy. And how could these private non-state initiatives do so in a politically and democratically legitimate way? So as to deal with these issues from a scientific perspective, a distinct analytical framework to evaluate the legitimacy of private governance is presented. Based on this framework, five voluntary bioenergy certification schemes are selected and their consideration given to its social dimension is examined. In order to address the characteristics of our conception of non-state legitimacy, the actor constellations behind these certification initiatives are analyzed with a view to determine the structural representation of social interests. Furthermore, we also give attention to the control and accountability mechanisms incorporated into the certification schemes that are supposed to safeguard the common welfare-orientation of the initiatives. The results of this analysis shed some light on the particular challenges and bottlenecks of ensuring social sustainability via non-state voluntary certification systems in the bioenergy sector. In the concluding chapter, these results are put into perspective and a more general discussion on the potential of non-state voluntary governance approaches regarding the social dimension of environmental governance are presented.early draf

Visual Pollution Classification using Convolutional Neural Networks

Visual pollution is an impairment on an individual\u27s ability to enjoy their surroundings. It usually takes the form of a messy and chaotic environment that can cause overstimulation of the visual senses. This includes trash, advertisements, construction, electric cables, and similar objects. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are a form of artificial intelligence that use supervised learning to process and classify images. In this research, a CNN processed images of city streets and classified them as polluted or not polluted based on the visual characteristics that it learned from during its training period. The CNN achieved a training accuracy of 98% and a validation accuracy of 80%.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2023/1040/thumbnail.jp

Drone Acceptance and Noise Concerns - Some Findings

Drones are becoming ever more present in public perception. Ranging from parcel delivery to wildlife protection, from precision farming to law enforcement, and from industrial inspection to digital fireworks, many applications are said to have market changing potential. Against this background, nations and institutions around the world are trying to keep up with the dynamic development concerning rules and regulations. Since all of the parties involved anticipate a strong increase in both the number of drones and their range of uses, there is a rising interest in the acceptance of civil drones in the public. Widespread public acceptance can promote the dissemination of new technologies. Conversely, concerns among citizens about the use of drones in their daily environment could pose potential barriers to the further proliferation of civil drones, especially in urban areas. The psychoacoustic properties of drones have repeatedly been discussed as being one such limiting factor. This paper reports results of a representative national study on the social acceptance of civilian drones, taking a closer look at noise considerations. Therefore the results help improve understanding of the perception of civil unmanned aerial vehicles

The production of scientific evidence on indirect land use change and its role in EU biofuels policy

One of the most heatedly debated aspects of EU’s policy on biofuels in recent times concern indirect land use change (ILUC) induced by the production of biofuels. However, when the EU Renewable Energies Directive (RED) adopted in 2008, regulating ILUC was not considered for the time being. Ever since, the fundamental conflicts on biofuels regarding their social and ecological effects crystallize in the debates on ILUC, which is underpinned by the wide range of results of scientific research on the topic. Starting from explaining the concept of ILUC and from conceptual considerations regarding new ways of knowledge production and its use in the policy process, we firstly trace the policy process on biofuels’ ILUC with a special focus on the actors and their stances in this context. Subsequently, mainly by document analysis, we give a detailed overview of the research on biofuels’ ILUC, focusing on which actors are related to the various ILUC studies and on what the relationship between these actors and the studies’ orientations (methodologies, etc.) and outcomes is. The analysis shows how the increase in ILUC research and its characteristics can be related to the societal problems arising from biofuels production, to the actors involved in it, and to their stakes in the issue. This points to the social embeddedness of ILUC research into societal as well as political practices and therefore – at least partly – qualifies it as a new mode of knowledge production. Furthermore, it points to special role scientific evidence plays regarding the policy process on the regulation of ILUC in the EU. In this respect, our observations suggest that, on the one hand, the scientific evidence on biofuels’ ILUC as well as the uncertainty and complexity has been well perceived and taken up in the policy process. On the other hand, however, its role has eventually been reduced to an instrumental one, serving to legitimize and rationalize decisions agreed upon elsewhere beforehand

Eliten unter sich

Unternehmensberatungen beraten auch Politik in neoliberalen Zeiten, in denen viele politische Entscheidungen an ökonomischen Kriterien ausgerichtet werden. Dieser Beitrag zeigt auf, dass ein stadtpolitisches Beratungsprojekt nur vordergründig auf die Stadt selbst fokussiert ist. Die Projekte sind vielmehr ein Vehikel politökonomischer Eliten für die Entfaltung und Stabilisierung ihrer Machtposition. Vier Machtstrategien kommen dabei zum Tragen: die Knüpfung neuer Netzwerke, die Etablierung eines neuen politischen Vokabulars, die Projektisierung des Städtischen durch neue methodische Analyseinstrumente und die Stimulierung einer neuen Handlungsdynamik

Entwicklung eines roboterbasierten Prüfstands für die Ermittlung der Langzeitbetriebsfestigkeit von beweglichen Karosserieteilen

Die Marktbedingungen in der Automobilindustrie sind durch kürzere Entwicklungszeiträume, eine zunehmende Anzahl an Komfortfunktionen und Fahrzeugderivaten sowie steigende Erwartungen an Qualität, Effizienz und Sicherheit geprägt. Die reale Erprobung ist ein kritischer Pfad im Entwicklungsprozess. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt ein neues Prüfsystemkonzept für die Komponentenerprobung, welches diesen Anforderungen Rechnung trägt. Das Herzstück ist eine softwarebasierte Systemarchitektur zur Automatisierung von Prototypentests. Schwerpunkte sind die Flexibilität in der Praxisanwendung, die Ausweitung der Messdatenerfassung mit zweckmäßiger Verwaltung zur Bauteilüberwachung und Fehlerrekonstruktion sowie eine aufgabenorientierte Schnittstelle zur Integration von Robotern. Diese übernehmen die mechanische Betätigung von beweglichen Fahrzeugkomponenten. Anhand von zwei konkreten Beispielen, einem Prüfstand zur Absicherung von Fahrzeugtüren sowie einem Prüfstand für Steifigkeitsmessungen wird die Praxistauglichkeit nachgewiesen

Kritische Stadtforschung: Differenz und Ungleichheiten im Fokus: Beitrag zur Debatte „Was ist Stadt? Was ist Kritik?“

Was kennzeichnet den Gegenstand der Stadtforschung? Was grenzt sie ab von anderen Forschungsfeldern? Diese Fragen mit dem kurzen Hinweis „Stadtforschung ist, was Stadtforscher:innen machen“ abzutun, ist unzufriedenstellend, zum Beispiel wenn es darum gehen soll, Forschungsfragen zu diskutieren oder ein Einführungsbuch herauszugeben. In diesem Diskussionbeitrag werden zwei Antworten auf die Frage „Was ist Stadt?“ vorgestellt: Die erste ist konzeptuell, die zweite versucht, sich der Frage empirisch zu nähern, und unterscheidet sich von Fall zu Fall

Voluntary Bioenergy Certification: A Legitimate Approach to Account for Social Aspects in Environmental Governance?

Abstract While initially hailed to be the silver bullet for tackling climate change, reducing oil dependency and providing an opportunity for rural development especially in poorer regions, severe criticism concerning the environmental and social performance of bioenergy has been raised recently. One potential solution for this problem that is increasingly discussed now is the certification of bioenergy. In the wake of this discussion, a broad range of certification initiatives emerged during the last years. However, this issue is predominantly debated in terms of the environmental implications. Accordingly, governmental approaches to this issue often neglect the need for including social aspects into sustainability principles and criteria, most prominently here the EU Renewable Energies Directive (RED). Non-state voluntary certification initiatives, by accounting for the social implications of increased bioenergy production, could therefore be seen as complementary governance instruments that are able to fill the void left by state regulations in this respect. After briefly addressing the reasons why state regulations tend to neglect social aspects concerning this matter, this paper seeks to explore whether voluntary bioenergy certification schemes could really be able to fulfill these hopes and provide the solution for the missing consideration of social criteria for sustainable bioenergy. And how could these private non-state initiatives do so in a politically and democratically legitimate way? So as to deal with these issues from a scientific perspective, a distinct analytical framework to evaluate the legitimacy of private governance is presented. Based on this framework, five voluntary bioenergy certification schemes are selected and their consideration given to its social dimension is examined. In order to address the characteristics of our conception of non-state legitimacy, the actor constellations behind these certification initiatives are analyzed with a view to determine the structural representation of social interests. Furthermore, we also give attention to the control and accountability mechanisms incorporated into the certification schemes that are supposed to safeguard the common welfare-orientation of the initiatives. The results of this analysis shed some light on the particular challenges and bottlenecks of ensuring social sustainability via non-state voluntary certification systems in the bioenergy sector. In the concluding chapter, these results are put into perspective and a more general discussion on the potential of non-state voluntary governance approaches regarding the social dimension of environmental governance are presented