Suchergebnisse

The European Water Framework Directive is shaping a new conception of integrative water protection. In this article, the consequences of the Water Framework Directive in respect to national environmental policy will be discussed in referring to the notion of responsibility which is a central concept of political philosophy and theory. It will be shown that the new conception of integrative water protection entails a fundamental change in European water protection policy and also environmental policy at all. It implies that environmental policy has not only to prevent environmental damage but in particular has to warrant a good status of the environment, such that it must maintain a good status of water or even achieve it if this status does not exist. Achieving and maintaining a good status of the environment is, however, an encompassing task. Thereby, state power and will eventually be overexerted. The threat of such overexertion has to be kept in mind in discussing the perspective of the so called New Environmental Governance. It will be pointed out that the New Environmental Governance is not primarily a form of some sort of democratic participation but rather designed to improve state power in environmental politics.

Integrated assessment of decisions under uncertainty for sustainable development (IANUS) is a method for aiding public decisionmaking that supports efforts towards sustainable development and has a wide range of applications. We introduce the main features of IANUS and illustrate the method by using the results of a case study in the Torgau region (eastern Germany) with conflicts over economic development and groundwater protection in the Elbe River basin. IANUS structures the decision process into four steps: scenario derivation, criteria selection, modelling, and evaluation. Its overall aim is to support the finding of policy solutions in a participatory setting and to extract the information needed for a sound, responsible decision in a clear, transparent manner. The method is designed for use in conflict situations where environmental and socioeconomic effects need to be considered and so an interdisciplinary approach is required. Special emphasis is placed on a broad perception and consideration of uncertainty. Three types of uncertainty are explicitly taken into account by IANUS: development uncertainty (uncertainty about the social, economic and other developments that affect the consequences of decision), model uncertainty (uncertainty associated with the prediction of the effects of decisions), and weight uncertainty (uncertainty about the appropriate weighting of the criteria). The backbone of IANUS is a multicriteria method with the ability to process uncertain information. In the case study the multicriteria method PROMETHEE is used. As PROMETHEE in its basic versions is not able to process uncertain information an extension of this method is developed here and described in detail. One methodological lesson to be learned from the experience of the case study reads that the design of the participation process must be planned and executed carefully to prevent important stakeholders backing out of the participatory evaluation process—as happened with the decisionmakers in the Torgau case study.

An integrated ecological-economic decision-making approach is developed to help local stakeholders decide on land use in rural areas where the conflict between natural resource protection and economic development is pressing. It consists of four methodological steps. In the first step the political options and alternatives for action regarding changes in the land-use pattern are specified in order to derive politically relevant land-use strategies (scenarios). In the second step economic, ecological and social indicators are derived. The third step includes economic modelling (economic input-output model), environmental modelling (modelling of landscape water balance) and the qualitative and quantitative estimation of ecological and environmental effects. These efforts result in the production of a multi-indicator matrix. Finally, the fourth step deals with a combined monetary and multi-criteria evaluation resulting in a ranking of the land-use strategies. The discussion of the decision-making approach concentrates on the necessity of preliminary decisions and the possibility and necessity of stakeholders participation in the decisionmaking process.

The question of how to deal with uncertainty in environmental decision-making is cur-rently attracting considerable attention on the part of scientists as well as of politicians and those involved in government administration. The existence of uncertainty becomes particularly apparent in the field of environmental policy because environmental prob-lems are regarded as highly complex and long-term and because far-reaching changes have to be taken into account; moreover, the knowledge available to practitioners and policy makers alike is often fragmentary and not systemised. One key issue arising from this is the challenge to develop scientific decision support methods that are capable of dealing with uncertainty in a systematic and differentiated way, integrating scientific and practical knowledge. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for perceiving and describing uncertainty in environmental decision-making. It is argued that perceiv-ing and describing uncertainty is an important prerequisite for deciding and acting under uncertainty. The conceptual framework consists of a general definition of uncertainty along with five complementary perspectives on the phenomenon, each highlighting one specific aspect of it. By using the conceptual framework, decision-makers are able to re-flect on their knowledge base with regard to its completeness and reliability and to gain a broad picture of uncertainty from various standpoints. The theoretical ideas presented here are based on two empirical studies looking at how uncertainty is dealt with in the implementation process of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). The rather ab-stract differentiations are illustrated by a number of examples in the form of interview statements and excerpts from the WFD and the WFD guidance documents Impress, Wateco und Proclan.

Ecological Economics inherently faces a challenge akin to sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. In Greek mythology these are two monsters located on opposite sides of a narrow strait, and falling victim to one or other of them is unavoidable. In the recurring process of establishing and refining its conceptual foundations, Ecological Economics runs the risk of, on the one hand, losing important insights by trying to be radically different from mainstream economics and, on the other hand, becoming a redundant appendix to mainstream environmental economics by routinely applying its concepts and methods. We argue that avoiding both fallacies is possible by using Ecological Economics' orientation towards sustainability as a guiding principle. The scientist's power of judgment supports her decision concerning which methods are suitable for tackling a given sustainability problem. The intersubjective quality of judgment prevents the resulting methodological pluralism from drifting toward arbitrariness.

Was bedeutet es, nachhaltig zu leben? Welches Erbe wollen wir unseren Nachkommen hinterlassen? Wer diese Fragen beantworten will, muss weit in die Zukunft blicken. Doch was können wir über die Zukunft wissen? Eine Antwort darauf verlangt, in der Nachhaltigkeitsdebatte der Dimension der Zeit größere Aufmerksamkeit als bisher zu widmen.Die Autoren eröffnen einen neuartigen Zugang zu den Phänomenen der Zeit. Zeitliche Entwicklungen werden so begriffen und dargestellt, dass sich daraus Handreichungen für die Praxis ergeben. Grundlage dafür ist eine interdisziplinäre Konzeption, die es ermöglicht, für Nachhaltigkeitsprobleme relevantes Wissen aus Natur- und Sozialwissenschaft in eine Gesamtsicht zu überführen.Das Buch will zu einem freien und unbefangenen Blick auf die jeweiligen Probleme und Handlungsmöglichkeiten verhelfen. Die entwickelte Konzeption lehrt keine Wissenschaft, sondern ein Können, das zum nachhaltigen Handeln befähigt. Es ist die Kunst langfristig zu denken.Die Autoren sind Wissenschaftler am Leipziger Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung (UFZ) bzw. an der Universität Heidelberg. Sie alle besitzen eine disziplinäre Mehrfachqualifikation der Kombinationen Philosophie-Germanistik-Ökonomik bzw. Mathematik-Physik-Ökonomik und haben jahrzehntelange Erfahrung in interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit

Land is an essential but limited natural resource. We employ the concept of stocks to analyse driving forces for land-use conversion and to assess, whether the German political "30- hectares-goal" is feasible given the current institutional setting. In this paper major driving forces for land-use conversion are identified and underlying stocks and persistent institutional structures as well as their dynamics are investigated. It will be shown that meeting the 30- hectares-goal is unlikely. We further argue that due to persistent stocks and institutional structures land-use conversion from agricultural into urbanised land takes place on smaller time scales than its reconversion. We conclude that demographic change and regional migration processes may result in further land-use conversion even with declining population. Economic structural change as well as an increasing traffic volume will likewise contribute to further land-use conversion.