Innovationen und Trends

Januar 201

frameworks and methods for impact assessment

This study provides an overview of existing approaches and methods for assessing the environmental impacts of trade and trade-related activities. It considers both approaches that are tailored to the assessment of trade- environment linkages and more generic approaches for environmental assessment and analyzes their respective usability in the context of trade-related development cooperation. The study thereby aims to contribute to a more extensive use of such tools, while improving the practice and application of environmental assessments of trade-related policies and programs. In doing so, the study will complement the existing study on the assessment of the socio- economic impacts from trade carried out by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)1. The study is divided into two parts. Part I begins with a brief discussion on trade-related development cooperation followed by a short overview of the debate on trade, development and the environment. Next it provides an overview of existing approaches to conceptualizing environmental impacts from trade-related activities. After this, it provides a general introduction to impact assessment (IA) and the assessment of environmental impacts in this context. It closes with a brief overview of the assessment of environmental aspects in German development cooperation. Part II provides a more detailed review of existing frameworks and methods for assessing the environmental impacts from trade-related policies and programs

Verbesserung der strategischen umweltpolitischen Beratung im Kontext des Leitbilds Nachhaltiger Entwicklung

Das in diesem Bericht vorgestellte Vorhaben untersuchte die Frage, wie die Relevanz der Nach-haltigkeitsforschung für die Politikgestaltung in Deutschland erhöht werden kann? Ziel war es, Handlungsempfehlungen zu erarbeiten, die die Akteure der Nachhaltigkeitsforschung in die Lage versetzen, die Qualität von Forschungsprozessen und Forschungsergebnissen zu erhöhen und sichern. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, wurde zunächst ein Überblick über die Akteure der Nachhaltigkeitsforschung in Deutschland erstellt. Dieser Überblick diente zur Auswahl von Fall-studien in Form von abgeschlossenen Forschungsvorhaben aus zwei Themenfeldern der Nach-haltigkeitsforschung. Die ausgewählten Vorhaben wurden daraufhin untersucht, was fördernde oder hemmende Bedingungen für einen gelingenden Wissenstransfer zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik sind. Die Ergebnisse dieser empirischen Untersuchung wurden in so genannte An-forderungsprofile für eine politikrelevante Nachhaltigkeitsforschung übersetzt. Die Profile wur-den jeweils für Forschungsförderer oder Auftraggeber, Forschende und Akteure aus der Politik formuliert. Anhand konkreter Anforderungen zeigen die Profile den drei Akteursgruppen, was sie gezielt tun können, damit politisch anschlussfähige Forschungsergebnisse entstehen. Ergän-zend wurde untersucht, wie die Profile bei der ressortübergreifenden Aufstellung von For-schungsprogrammen verwendet werden können. Dabei zeigte sich, dass die einzelnen Anfor-derungen Kriterien für die Programmentwicklung sowie für die Bewertung von Förderanträ-gen, Angeboten, Verwertungsplänen und Forschungsprogrammen liefern.The R&D; project presented in this report addressed the question “How can the relevance of sustainability research for policy making in Germany be increased?” The project aimed at de-veloping guidance for the actors of sustainability research that would help them increase and ensure the quality of research processes and research outcomes. In order to achieve this goal first an overview of the actors of sustainability research in Germany was compiled. Using this overview, case studies in terms of completed research projects in two thematic areas of sustai-nability research were selected. The selected projects were then analyzed by asking ‘What are supporting or inhibiting conditions for a successful knowledge transfer between science and policy?’ The results of this empirical study were translated into so called requirements profiles for a policy relevant sustainability research. The profiles were formulated separately for three different groups of actors: research funding agencies, researchers, and policy makers. Contain-ing concrete requirements, these profiles show actors what they can do specifically to achieve policy-relevant research results. In a complementary line of investigation options for using the profiles in the interdepartmental preparation of research programs were identified. It turned out that the specific requirements provide a basis for establishing criteria for program devel-opment as well as for preparing evaluations of grant applications, proposals, implementation plans and research programs

Verteilungswirkungen umweltpolitischer Maßnahmen und Instrumente

This study develops a methodology to assess the distributional effects of environmental policy instru-ments and measures. This method takes into consideration the economic as well as social and envi-ronmental effects. As a first step, the state of the art of the conceptualization of distributional effects was resumed. This overview combines the state of the art in research as well as the current practice of policy impact assessment and the guidelines in this context. Based on this theoretical overview, the authors developed a method to analyze distributional effects. This analysis consists of three main steps: 1) scoping phase, 2) relevance test, 3) in-depth analysis. The result chain analysis constitutes the basis of the scoping phase to identify possible direct and indirect effects of a policy. For the effects that were identified as relevant, an in-depth analysis is undertaken. The first step of this analysis is an assessment of the distributional effects of the status quo. The analysis of the current state serves as a “business as usual” scenario, which can be used for a comparison with the suggested new policy in-strument. First, the in-depth analysis for both, the analysis of the status quo as well as the assessment of the policy instrument, consists of an analysis of the current state of the art based on a literature re-view. Secondly, the economic effects of the instrument are simulated with the micro-economic model IZAΨMOD. This method was applied in five case studies. The instruments examined are: 1) Abolishment of the commuting allowance, 2) A revision of the speed limits on highways, country roads, and in built-up areas, 3) Incentives for promoting energy-focused building refurbishment, 4) A replacement program for cooling appliances in combination with a counselling programme on household energy saving, and 5) a modification of the taxation of the private use of company cars

Stories that Change Our World? Narratives of the Sustainable Economy

Narratives are shaping our understanding of the world. They convey values and norms and point to desirable future developments. In this way, they justify and legitimize political actions and social practices. Once a narrative has emerged and this world view is supported by broad societal groups, narratives can provide powerful momentum to trigger innovation and changes in the course of action. Narratives, however, are not necessarily based on evidence and precise categories, but can instead be vague and ambiguous in order to be acceptable and attractive to different actors. However, the more open and inclusive a narrative is, the less impact can be expected. We investigate whether there is a shared narrative in research for the sustainable economy and how this can be evaluated in terms of its potential societal impact. The paper carves out the visions for the future that have been underlying the research projects conducted within the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funding programme “The Sustainable Economy”. It then analyzes whether these visions are compatible with narratives dominating societal discourse on the sustainable economy, and concludes how the use of visions and narratives in research can contribute to fostering societal transformations

institutional innovation from the bottom up?

A sustainable economy fulfills societal needs in a fundamentally different way to the current economic system. Improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies or practices appear insufficient for achieving sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. Disruptive, systemic and transformational changes appear necessary in order to replace existing technologies and practices to establish a sustainable economy. Such innovations often start out in niches; however, the scaling up and the ultimate replacement of current socio-technical systems requires governance to allow for the coordination of actors, the reorganization of socio-technical systems and the mobilization and allocation of resources. As governmental institutions are part of the current (non-sustainable) systems and thereby fail to provide coherent, integrated and transformative governance, we explore whether institutional innovation from non-state actors can step in to provide governance of transformation processes. Based on explorative qualitative case studies of networks in the food sector, city planning and reporting tools, we analyze the potential of bottom-up institutional innovations to coordinate actors in transformation processes

Transformationspfade der Zivilgesellschaft?

Für eine erfolgreiche Nachhaltigkeitspolitik sind neue Allianzen nötig. Welche Rolle könnendabei Umwelt-, Sozial- und Wohlfahrtsverbände sowie Gewerkschaften spielen? Welche Rahmenbedingungen sind für eine solche kooperative Mitgestaltung hilfreich