Suchergebnisse

enth.

"Seit einem im Jahre 1999 ergangenen Gerichtsurteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofes für
Menschenrechte (EGMR) zur Zwangsmitgliedschaft in französischen Jagdvereinen und der
im Jahre 2002 angekündigten Novellierung des Bundesjagdgesetzes, gibt es in Deutschland
eine rege juristische und politische Debatte um die Aufhebung der Pflichtmitgliedschaft
einzelner Grundeigentümer in Jagdgenossenschaften. Alle Eigentümer von land-, forst- oder
fischereiwirtschaftlich nutzbaren Flächen unter 75 ha sind in Deutschland zur Mitgliedschaft
in gemeinschaftlichen Jagdbezirken, sog. Jagdgenossenschaften, zwangsverpflichtet. Der
vorliegende Beitrag erweitert die bisherige juristische und politische Debatte um eine
institutionenökonomische Perspektive. Dabei werden die Auswirkungen einer Aufhebung der
Zwangsmitgliedschaft auf (1) die Jagdgenossenschaft selbst, (2) die Transaktionskosten des
Wildtiermanagements, (3) die Wildtierpoulation sowie (4) die Verteilung von Kosten und
Nutzen auf unterschiedliche Akteurgruppen analysiert. Die Analyse kommt zu dem Schluss,
dass Zwang im Fall von Wildtiermanagement aus ökonomischen Gründen durchaus
gerechtfertigt sein kann, solange die Kostenvorteile der Zwangsmitgliedschaft die
Nutzenverluste jagdablehnender Grundeigentümer überwiegen. Angesichts einer
zunehmenden Heterogenität der Nutzungsinteressen an Wildtieren, stehen
Jagdgenossenschaften jedoch vor der Herausforderung, neue Mechanismen des
Interessenausgleichs und der Konfliktregulierung zu entwickeln." (Autorenrefererat)

"All Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) have been going through a severe agricultural depression since their centrally planned economies collapsed in the early 1990s. It has now become clear that the transition process is far more complex and is likely to be much more protracted than was first expected. The agricultural policies of the Communist era resulted in considerable environmental problems, which are still present to varying degrees even after a considerable decrease in agricultural inputs during the past ten years. On the other hand, CEECs still retain a significant proportion of Europe's biodiversity. The existing low input and low intensity agriculture practised in these countries can be perceived in certain respects as an opportunity for environmental sustainability in the agricultural sector. However, in view of future EU membership and accompanying policies, the question is to what extent the requirements of environmental protection and nature conservation will be taken into account in the CEECs' policy formation. The paper presents a preliminary survey of agri-environmental problems and relevant regulations in the Central and Eastern European Countries and identifies future challenges for their agri-environmental policy formation." (author's abstract)

"Water for irrigation and irrigation infrastructure are both common pool resources, due to their low excludability and high rivalry. The well-known common pool resource dilemma is often the consequence. Collective action may be a way how societies can overcome this dilemma. First results from a three-month empirical field study in Bulgaria are presented trying to explain how actor groups characteristics, such as lack of trust between community members and effective institutional settings at the local level, such as information asymmetry, limited sanctioning and enforcement mechanisms and almost no monitoring mechanisms provide conditions under which opportunistic behaviour dominates. The effective rules-in-use in local communities are presented. The simplest example is watering crops without paying the water price. Individuals will use their power to maintain their opportunistic strategies and, consequently, they will not agree to any rule change. Moreover, the actors' attitude towards collective action is very pessimistic. This has a crucial impact on the evolving of credible commitment which is one prerequisite for collective action. The effects on water management can be severe and the common pool resource dilemma situation may continue. This article questions if there are additional influencing variables inherited from the transformation process that will have an impact on the institutional change and constrain the emergence of collective action solutions. The discussion is based on empirical material from Varbiza village in the south of Bulgaria." (author's abstract)

"Die Mehrdimensionalität des sozialwissenschaftlichen Verständnisses von Institutionen stellt
eine besondere Herausforderung an deren Analyse. Woraus bestehen Institutionen? Die
umfangreiche Literatur über Institutionen bietet mehrere Kategorisierungen an, die über die
analytische Differenzierung zwischen formellen und informellen Institutionen hinausgehen,
u.a. auch für das Handlungsfeld Wasserwirtschaft. Im Rahmen einer IRS-Studie ist eine
erweiterte Systematik entwickelt worden, die eine komplexe institutionelle Konfiguration
nach Kernkomponenten und Schlüsselmerkmalen kategorisiert. In dem Beitrag wird diese
Systematik am Beispiel der institutionellen Regelung der Wasserwirtschaft in Deutschland
erläutert und ihre Anwendung zur Erforschung der Anpassungsfähigkeit einzelner
Bestandteile einer institutionellen Konfiguration gegenüber neuen Anforderungen aufgezeigt." (Autorenreferat)

"In most countries of the world, a sustainable agriculture is both an important and difficult issue. The agricultural sector in Central and Eastern European is confronted by two large problems at the same time: transition processes and sustainability. The purpose of this paper is, in the first place, to make clear that the institutional setting is very important. Second, it gives an overview of the literature on sustainability, institutions and institutional innovation. The phenomenon sustainability encompassing three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. Institutions are not always exogenous and right so that economic agents will behave in the 'correct' (that is efficient) manner. The non-marketable attributes of agricultural land use such as wildlife and landscape and the quality of soil, water and air create market failure. How-ever, they are important for sustainability. With a lack of markets to realise sustainability, there is a strong incentive to develop institutions capable of changing the farmerżs behaviour in ways that will achieve the unachievable via market signals alone. Direct government production is likely to be superior, if the government may not know what it wants and if the contract party has a strong tendency to reduce costs, but this is accompanied by a reduction in (non-contractable) quality. However, in general, both situations do not apply to sustainable agriculture. Type of government intervention has consequence for property rights. Under influence of changes in the institutional environment, the opinion about the protection of the property rights is shifting. The economic valuation of changes in the quality of soil, water, wildlife and landscape depends on if the change taking place either below or above the reference level. From the actual behaviour of the government, it can be concluded that the reference level is being used more and more as a watershed to the question of the allocation of property rights and the use of charges or compensation." (author's abstract)

"This paper aims at explaining the role and importance of the evolution of institutions for sustainable agri-environments during the transition process by referring to examples of agri-environmental problems faced in Central and Eastern European countries. It is often stated that the replacement of institutional structures in post socialist countries would bring a unique opportunity to implement new policies and institutions needed to ensure that economic growth is environmentally sustainable. This idea stems from the assumption that the breakdown of the socialist system resembles that (of the Schumpeterian type) of creative destruction - a process that incessantly revolutionizes economic structures from within. However, not all kinds of institutions, especially at local level, can simply be implemented, and even more, not incessantly. Instead, they evolve as a response to ecosystem and social system characteristics, and this is a rather slow process. A central question therefore is whether the required institutional arrangements for achieving sustainability in the area of agri-environmental resource management can be built more easily in periods of transition as they fill institutional gaps, or whether processes of transition make institution building a more difficult and far more time consuming task than previously thought. Above all, we want to find out, how these two processes of institution building at different scales affect the sustainable management of resources such as water and biodiversity in agriculture? It will become clear that the agri-environmental problem areas faced during transition are complex and dynamic and require adequate institutions both by political design and from the grassroots, to be developed by the respective actors involved. Transition from centrally planned to pluralistic systems has to be considered as a particular and in some respect non-typical process of institutional change. Popular theories of institutional change do not necessarily apply. The privatisation experience from many CEE countries will serve as an example. Finally, we will provide some examples of missing or insufficient interaction between political actors or agencies and people in CEE countries. Substantial investments into social and human capital, particularly regarding informal institutions are needed for institutions of sustainability to evolve." (author's abstract)

This paper aims at explaining the importance of the democracy stance as compared to the efficiency stance in order to deal with complexity in biodiversity conservation. While the efficiency stance refers to the realm of relatively simple systems, individual rationality, and instrumental values, the complexity stance transcends these boundaries into the realm of complex systems, social rationality and intrinsic values. We argue that the task of biodiversity conservation is impossible to achieve in economically efficient ways, because (a) it is impossible to come to a (fully informed) complete account of all values, not only because it is costly but also because (b) moral values are involved which (by their nature) exclude themselves from being accounted for, and (c) biodiversity conservation can be regarded as an end in itself instead of only a means towards an end. The point we raise is, that in order to cope with biodiversity conservation we need to apply valuation methods which are from the complexity stance, take better account of intrinsic values and feelings, as well as consider social rationality. Economic valuation methods are themselves 'value articulating institutions' and as biodiversity conservation confronts us with the complexity of social-ecological systems, the choice of the 'value articulating institutions' needs to consider their ability to capture instrumental and intrinsic values of biodiversity. We demonstrate a method, based on cybernetics, which is able to take into account the issues raised.

"In this paper agricultural land markets are regarded as organisations, which allows to take the effect of the social embeddedness of exchange into account. The markets-as-organisations approach suggests that markets are governed by an internal 'constitution' containing rules on dissemination of information, control procedures and sanctioning mechanisms that provide advantages to members. The design of the market constitution is believed to be strongly influenced by the constellation of actors and their characteristics. In order to investigate the validity of this assumption the study chooses a comparative approach that analyses the content of land market rules in settings with different actor constellations and tries to find out why they have been established in this way. Both qualitative and quantitative data collected in three village case studies and a survey in two structurally different regions of Poland is used. The results underline that the internal constitution of the organisation 'land market' is designed to serve members' interests by decreasing transaction costs and protecting community welfare and also support the expectation that the rules differ according to actor constellations." (author's abstract)

"In the light of a growing number of unstabilized regions of warfare or post-war conditions, this paper investigates how civilians survive in the context of a civil war. It analyzes livelihood strategies of farmers in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka. The analytical framework is based on a revised form of DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods approach placing particular attention on the institutional reproduction of household capital assets in the war economy. The paper delineates a three pillar model of household livelihood strategies focusing on how households (i) cope with the increased level of risk and uncertainty, (ii) adjust their economic and social household assets for economic survival, and how they (iii) use their social and political assets as livelihood strategies. Empirically, the paper analyses four local case studies from the east of Sri Lanka. A key conclusion from the empirical studies was that even though the four case studies were located geographically very close, their livelihood outcomes differed considerably depending on the very specific local political geography. The role of social and political assets is thereby essential: While social assets (extended family networks) were important to absorb migrants, political assets (alliances with power holders) were instrumental in enabling individuals, households or economic actors to stabilize or even expand their livelihood options and opportunities. Hence, civilians are not all victims, some may also be culprits in the political economy of warfare. From a perspective of war-winners and losers, war can be both, a threat and an opportunity, often at the same time." (author's abstract)

"This study aims at explaining property right changes in selected areas of Afar region in Ethiopia. Based on primary and secondary data, explanations are given on the existing types of land use arrangements and how the traditional communal rights of pastoralists have been changing. Both communal rights and individualized rights exist the latter being introduced with the establishment of commercial farms. The state is identified as one driving force behind property right changes especially in one study site (Ambash), which is suitable for irrigated agriculture whereas its direct intervention is minimal in other sites. The coercive interventions started in 1960s have had detrimental impacts on the livelihoods of pastoral households. In addition to the state as a change agent, natural as well as socioeconomic challenges are important in explaining the current changes in land use arrangements." (author's abstract)

"Today, decentralised sewage disposal plants are increasingly accepted as permanent solution
in rural areas. However, it is still debated in which cases they are more appropriate than
central systems. The following paper deals with technological and institutional aspects of this
problem. It poses the questions, which problems will arise if decentralised systems gain
ground, which solutions may be necessary and how do these solutions affect the costs of
decentralised systems? Although decentralised systems can keep up with central systems regarding costs for investment and operation as well as treatment efficiency, they still fail to meet quality standards in everyday life. To achieve a better compliance, technological as well as
institutional approaches seem to be necessary. First, technologies of treatment plants, process
control and maintenance should be optimized. Second, governmental controlling institutions
must be adjusted. On the one hand, this is due to the increasing number of autonomous
stakeholders involved. On the other hand, this is caused by the public good character of waste
water treatment once it exceeds the basic needs of households. Thus, easy riding of
households occurs. Better controlling institutions may not only minimise easy riding but also
foster technological progress. Together, technological progress as well as new controlling
institutions will influence private and social costs of decentralised systems and thus their
range of use." (author's abstract)