governance problems and decision-making needs

Researchers and policy makers agreed that we need to take measures now to respond to climate change impacts in the future. As the EU, its Member States and regions start to organise their adaptation efforts, it is important to understand the institutional contexts and potential challenges that might arise in the course of developing and implementing adaptation policies. This paper gives an overview of governance problems and decision-making needs that policy makers currently face. Based on empirical research in eight European countries, we mapped out the institutional context in which adaptation decisions are made and identified ten categories of needs as perceived by core policy-makers. We found no significant patterns as to why certain countries have specific needs, but there are indications that the needs change during the adaptation planning process and that Central and Eastern European countries might benefit from EU coordination efforts

Romania and cross-border regional development at the external EU borders

Grenzüberschreitende Regionalentwicklung ist das Mittel der Europäischen Union um das Ziel europäischer Kohäsion und Integration zu erreichen. Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit ist der Motor grenzüberschreitender Regionalentwicklung. Während an den Binnengrenzen der EU bereits beträchtliche Erfolge erzielt wurden, stehen die Staaten an den östlichen Außengrenzen der Union noch ganz am Anfang. Überdies sind die Grenzregionen in diesen Gebieten mit unvergleichbar schwierigeren Ausgangssituationen konfrontiert (kommunistische Herrschaft und folgende politische und wirtschaftliche Unsicherheit). Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit beschäftigt sich zum einen mit der Frage der wissenschaftlichen Analyse von grenzüberschreitender Zusammenarbeit mittels Governance-Konzepten. Andererseits sollen die Mehrebenen-Aspekte dargestellt und anhand dieser in Kombination mit Feldforschungsmethoden der Status-quo in der rumänisch-serbischen Grenzregion erarbeitet werden. Überdies wird die Korrelation zwischen europäischen Vorstellungen grenzüberschreitender Zusammenarbeit und der regionalen und lokalen Realität überprüft. Die Arbeit soll ein Anstoß für weitere fundierte und systematisierte Forschungsarbeit zum Themengebiet Grenzüberschreitende Regionalentwicklung an den EU-Außengrenzen geben.Cross-border regional development is a means of the EU to achieve European cohesion and integration. Cross-border cooperation (CBC) is the driving force for cross-border regional development. So far at the internal EU borders successful CBC has been accomplished; however, the external borders in the East are only at the beginning. For a few years they have been faced with incomparably more difficult challenges than many border regions in Western Europe. The communist past and unstable political and economic years in the 1990s are the source of many of these challenges. This thesis tries to find a scientific analysis tool on the basis of governance concepts in order to scrutinise CBC. It explains the multi-level context of CBC in Romania on the basis of which the status-quo of CBC at the Romanian-Serbian border was elaborated. Finally the hypothesis will be tested, whether EU visions of CBC coincide with the regional and local realities in the border region. The thesis shall provide an incentive for further, more detailed and systematic research in the field of Cross-border Regional Development at the External EU Borders

Insurance, public assistance and household flood risk reduction: a comparative study of Austria, England and Romania

In light of increasing losses from floods many researchers and policy makers are looking for ways to encourage flood risk reduction among communities, business, and households. In this study we investigate risk reduction behavior at the household level in three European Union (EU) Member States with fundamentally different insurance and compensation schemes. We try to understand if and how insurance and public assistance influence private risk reduction behavior. Data was collected using a telephone survey (n=1,849) of household decision makers in flood-prone areas. We show that insurance overall is positively associated with private risk reduction behavior. Warranties, premium discounts, and information provision with respect to risk reduction may be an explanation for this positive relationship in the case of structural measures. Public incentives for risk-reduction measures by means of financial and in-kind support, and particularly through the provision of information are also associated with enhancing risk reduction. In this study public compensation is not negatively associated with private risk reduction behavior. This does not disprove such a relationship, but the negative effect may be mitigated by factors related to respondent’s capacity to implement measures or social norms that were not included in the analysis. The data suggests that large-scale flood protection infrastructure creates a sense of security that is associated with a lower level of preparedness. Across the board there is ample room to improve both public and private policies to provide effective incentives for household level risk reduction

Bioenergy production and sustainable development: Science base for policymaking remains limited

The possibility of using bioenergy as a climate change mitigation measure has sparked a discussion of whether and how bioenergy production contributes to sustainable development. We undertook a systematic review of the scientific literature to illuminate this relationship and found a limited scientific basis for policymaking. Our results indicate that knowledge on the sustainable development impacts of bioenergy production is concentrated in a few well‐studied countries, focuses on environmental and economic impacts, and mostly relates to dedicated agricultural biomass plantations. The scope and methodological approaches in studies differ widely and only a small share of the studies sufficiently reports on context and/or baseline conditions, which makes it difficult to get a general understanding of the attribution of impacts. Nevertheless, we identified regional patterns of positive or negative impacts for all categories – environmental, economic, institutional, social and technological. In general, economic and technological impacts were more frequently reported as positive, while social and environmental impacts were more frequently reported as negative (with the exception of impacts on direct substitution of GHG emission from fossil fuel). More focused and transparent research is needed to validate these patterns and develop a strong science underpinning for establishing policies and governance agreements that prevent/mitigate negative and promote positive impacts from bioenergy production

Drought risk and drought risk management strategies among Austrian crop farmers

So far, droughts have not been a main concern for high-income countries, including Austria. However, the effects of climate change will likely cause droughts to occur more frequently and with greater severity also in Austria particularly (Hochrainer-Stigler et al. 2018). Particularly Austrian farmers have frequently been affected by drought over the past decade, and scientific research predicts a continuation of this trend. Targeted efforts at relevant policymaking have been increasing in parallel in different sectors and domains, however, no concerted drought risk management strategies – neither for the agricultural sector nor at a cross sectoral level – are available. This working paper presents a survey that we designed and conducted to investigate Austrian cropping farmers’ perceptions of and experiences with drought risk and its management. The aim was to inform policy making at different levels to design both targeted and integrated drought risk management strategies. The working paper includes a description of the data collection process and the survey design, as well as a detailed characterization of the sample and the data collected. This document thus highlights the main findings of the survey and serves as a background document for further, more detailed analysis. The work presented is part of the ACRP-funded FARM project. For more information on the project, please consult www.iiasa.ac.at/farm. For more information on the conceptual context as well as Austrian governance landscape for drought see Hanger-Kopp and Palka 202

Practitioner perspectives of disaster resilience in international development

Disaster resilience is now the subject of countless scientific and policy publications and initiatives within the international development sector, yet little insight is available on the perspectives and experiences of the practitioners tasked with implementing it. If disaster resilience is going to contribute to arresting growing disaster risk, it is essential that the expert insight, realities and needs of practitioners are amplified in the discourse. Through in-depth interviews with INGO staff working on disaster resilience across the developing world, we seek to understand how the concept is being understood and used in practice. We compare practitioner perspectives to scientific and policy-oriented goals for, and critiques of, resilience in the disaster and development space. We find that practitioners perceive the resilience paradigm to be driving a genuine shift towards better programming. At the same time, the concern that resilience is a vague buzzword which reinforces the status quo cannot be discredited. The usefulness of resilience as a boundary object within the science-practice interface, and the success of resilience in achieving its goals, is dependent upon scientists, policy-makers, and donors more actively engaging with the insights and experience of practitioners. We identify a number of avenues for this interaction that have high salience for practitioners.ISSN:2212-420

Decision spaces in agricultural risk management: a mental model study of Austrian crop farmers

Drought has become a dominant climate risk both around the world and in Europe, adding to the already challenging task of farming and governing the agricultural sector under climate change. Drought risk management is extremely complex. Apart from irrigation, most drought risk management options have more than one goal and may potentially have negative trade-offs with other risk management objectives. Moreover, government regulations and market mechanisms influence farmers' decision-making. However, previous studies, both in developed and in developing countries, have predominantly focused on attitudinal and structural influencing factors on farmers' risk management behavior. In this paper, we comprehensively investigate farmers' decision spaces with respect to drought risk management. We address two applied research questions: (1) What are farmers' preferred drought risk management measures? (2) From a farmer's perspective, what are the dominant factors influencing drought risk management decisions? We find that farmers primarily think of production-based rather than financial measures with respect to drought risk management. At the same time, natural and technical constraints and enabling factors dominate their mental decision space, followed by public and private institutional aspects. This research provides a basis for the design of integrated and holistic drought risk management policy and the drought risk governance needed for sustainable use of land and water resources such as needed to address systemic risks and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, we introduce a novel approach using mental models extracted from interviews to explore cognitive representations of farmers' decision spaces. This approach has the potential to complement mainstream research using standardized surveys and behavioral models to analyze drivers of risk management.ISSN:1387-585XISSN:1573-297

An Ontological Analysis of Justice

IT systems design and architecture have many similarities with the design of organisations and institutions. Both pay attention to social concepts such as rules, norms, and values. Justice is one of the key concepts that can be relevant for any institutional design from a systems perspective. This paper outlines an ontology of justice based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). We envisage that it can support designers in recognising and addressing the issues of justice during systems design and analysis, including elicitation of requirements, rules analysis, systems evaluation, and policy analysis

An Ontological Analysis of Justice

IT systems design and architecture have many similarities with the design of organisations and institutions. Both pay attention to social concepts such as rules, norms, and values. Justice is one of the key concepts that can be relevant for any institutional design from a systems perspective. This paper outlines an ontology of justice based on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). We envisage that it can support designers in recognising and addressing the issues of justice during systems design and analysis, including elicitation of requirements, rules analysis, systems evaluation, and policy analysis