Suchergebnisse

Large cities around the world are faced with severe challenges that make life difficult for the growing population. These problems include air pollution, flooding, urban heat island effect and windstorms. Now there is a strong emphasis on resilience. Urban forestry, generally defined as the management of trees in cities for human well-being, has been suggested as a strategy that can help cities manage these problems. However, urban forestry especially in developing countries faces several problems and research gaps that must be addressed before the benefits can be realized. Across Ghana, a crisis of urban forest decline prevails. Increasingly, problems in urban forestry are related to land access and exclusion, unclear institutional framework for governance and challenges related to low public support and participation in decision making processes and the use of urban forests resources. It was against these backgrounds that the study was conducted. The specific objectives were to: (1) assess public perceptions and attitudes toward urban forestry, (2) analyse the institutional framework for urban forest governance and (3) explore how access to land affects urban forestry development. These are crucial but little studied issues in Ghana to date. Drawing on a case study approach with mixed methods in the city of Kumasi, Ghana, the overall goal of the dissertation was to contribute to policy recommendations for improving urban forestry in the study area as well as to contribute to scientific literature on access and institutions. Data for the study were collected over a period of six months using both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and techniques. Sources of secondary data included journal articles, monographs, archival records, Ghanaian newspaper publications as well as published and unpublished official reports of government organizations in Ghana. Primary data sources included a survey of 396 randomly selected urban residents from three different residential classes in Kumasi using questionnaires and Likert scales. It also involved interviews with 57 experts and key informants who were selected on the basis of their level of knowledge and involvement on the subject matter. Specifically, for objective one, that public perception and attitude toward urban forestry were being assessed, the study used stratified random sampling technique to interview as many as 132 respondents per each residential class in Kumasi. For objectives two and three, institutional and access analysis involved interviews with experts using purposive sampling technique. Data collected in the study was analysed using content analysis, descriptive statistics and two types of statistical tests; (a) 'the Pearson's Chi-square Test of independence (χ2) and (b) Kruskal Wallis H test' of differences between responses of respondents. For objective one, the results showed that citizens in Kumasi genuinely care about urban forest and trees and found them important but were not satisfied with the current state of management. The respondents found issues related to lack of safety in public parks and gardens, destruction of utility lines and buildings by urban trees among the most pressing problems associated with urban forestry in Kumasi. There were more similarities in opinion than differences between respondents in terms of perception. Moreover, socioeconomic and demographic factors explained perceptions only to some extent. Many respondents were willing to pay money for urban forestry development. The results revealed that the age of respondents, education and income were not significant factors affecting people's perception and attitude towards urban forestry in the study area. For objective two, the study found out that institutions in terms of rules and regulations affect urban forestry outcomes. In spite of the benefits derived from urban forestry, Ghana's urban forestry management efforts are being undermined by institutional challenges such as lack of tenure security for parks and gardens, overconcentration of land property rights to chiefs and traditional authorities, overreliance on common fund for urban forestry development and ineffective decentralization system in Ghana. For urban forestry institutions to succeed, six action situations including financing, planning, policy and strategic direction, conflict resolution as well as monitoring needed to be considered. For objective three, the results from access analysis showed that legal means (right based way) constitute only one set of mechanisms amongst many other factors by which access to land affects urban forestry development. Other means such as violent evictions and theft (rights-denied mechanisms of access) also characterized how access to land affects urban forestry development in the case study area. Against these backgrounds, policy makers in Ghana should consider a mix of recommendations to help improve urban forestry in the study area. These include access regulations and creation of land banks for urban forestry development; security of tenure and simplification of land allocation procedures for establishing parks and gardens; adequate financing and budgeting for urban forestry development; institutionalization of urban forestry activities in spatial and development plans; active public and private sector engagement as well as selection of tree species that will provide continuous ecosystem services such as shade provision and reduction of temperature in the city. In addition, the institutional arrangement for urban forestry in Ghana is not well structured and needs a proper restructuring.

Since the middle of the seventeenth century, the "Regierungskanzlei" (government chancellery )in Glückstadt was an authority under the auspices of the central authorities in Copenhagen. It performed important tasks of administration and legal administration in the royal territories of the Duchies of Schleswig andHolstein. The Supreme Court carried out supervision in administrativematters mainly in the areas of church, school, pauper police, economics anddyke. When the Judiciary and Administration were separated from each otherin 1834, the administrative responsibilities of the Supreme Court weretransferred to the newly formed Schleswig-Holstein government. Under thenew designation of "Schleswig´s Landdicasterien", the Supreme Court ofGottorf ("Gottorfer Obergericht") henceforth acted only as a pure judicialauthority which was subordinated to the Superior Court of Appeal in Kiel.The archival materials of the "Gottorfer Obergericht" as presented in thispublication were delivered by and by to the LandesarchivSchleswig-Holstein. The profound and modern edition of the archival Materials is mainly relevant for local research.The publication brings together the concordances 13A and 13B for the firsttime. The aim of this work is to facilitate access to and work with thearchival materials.

Die archäologische Erschließung von bislang über 1000 Relikten ehemaliger Holzkohlemeiler im Vorfeld des Braunkohletagebaues Jänschwalde in der Niederlausitz führte zu einer umfassenden Untersuchung des örtlichen vorindustriellen Kulturlandschaftswandels. In diesem Kontext sollte der Hauptabnehmer der hier produzierten Holzkohle, das Peitzer Eisenhüttenwerk, auch aus historiographischer Perspektive eingehender untersucht werden. Ziel der vorliegenden Dissertation ist demnach die Bewertung des Einflusses, den der Betrieb des Werkes auf die Kulturlandschaft im Untersuchungsgebiet ausübte. Neben der quellenbasierten Aufarbeitung der Werksgeschichte wurde hierbei vor allem die Organisation der Rohstoffnutzung hinsichtlich Erschließung, Transport und Verbrauch aller für die Eisenproduktion benötigten Ressourcen, wie auch der zugehörigen Abbaugebiete und Forstreviere analysiert. Die angewandte Methodik folgte der gängigen historiographischen Arbeitspraxis der Quellenkritik einschlägiger archivalischer Dokumente und der Literaturanalyse. Dabei zeigte sich unter anderem, dass der Einfluss des Hüttenwerkes nicht isoliert vom Geflecht staatlicher Wirtschaftsinteressen betrachtet werden kann, sondern nur ein in zeitlicher Perspektive veränderlich gewichteter Aspekt in den Erwägungen zur wirtschaftlichen Inwertsetzung der Landschaft darstellte. Die durch äußere und innere Faktoren eingeschränkte Eisenproduktion, die sich nahezu durch die gesamte Betriebszeit des Hüttenwerkes zog sowie die gleichzeitige stetig angestiegene Konkurrenz in- und ausländischer Eisenproduzenten führte im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts zu einem zunehmenden Bedeutungsverlust des Werkes innerhalb der wirtschaftlichen Erwägungen Preußens. In gleichem Maße nahm die potentielle Einflussnahme des Werkes auf die Kulturlandschaft ab, da auch der Zugriff auf das Holz immer stärker reglementiert wurde. Dennoch stellte das Peitzer Eisenhüttenwerk ein Symbol für den vorindustriellen Wandel einer Kulturlandschaft dar, die vornehmlich mit der industriellen Braunkohleförderung in Verbindung gebracht wird. ; The archaeological excavation of more than 1000 relicts of former charcoal hearths in the lignite mine Jänschwalde (Niederlausitz, Brandenburg, Germany) was the starting point to extensively study the local change of the cultural landscape during preindustrial times. In this context the main consumer of the produced charcoal, which was the ironwork Peitz, should be studied in detail using a historiographical approach. The dissertation aims to evaluate the influence of the ironwork on the cultural landscape development. In addition to the theoretical review of the ironwork history, based upon sources particularly the organisation of using raw materials concerning coverage, transport and consumption of resources needed for the iron production as well as corresponding excavation areas and forest territories have been analysed. The applied methods follow the common historiographical practice of source criticism of relevant archival documents and the synthesis of literature. In doing so, among other things, it became apparent that the influence of the ironwork cannot be considered separately from the network of governmental business interests but represented an in temporal perspective variably weighted aspect in the considerations about the economic development of landscape. The production of iron – restricted by external and internal criteria almost the entire working period of the ironwork – and the simultaneous steadily increasing rivalry of domestic and foreign producers of iron resulted in an incremental loss of significance of the ironwork within Prussian economic contemplations in the course of the 18th century. To the same degree the potential exertion of influence of the ironwork on the cultural landscape decreased since the access to wood had been regulated more and more as well. Nevertheless the ironwork Peitz represented a symbol of the preindustrial change of a cultural landscape which in particular is associated with the industrial extraction of lignite.

A multi-sectorial regime of protection including international treaties, conservation and security measures, demand reduction campaigns and quasi-military interventions has been established to protect rhinos. Despite these efforts, the poaching of rhinos and trafficking of rhino horn continue unabated. This dissertation asks why the illegal market in rhinoceros horn is so resilient in spite of the myriad measures employed to disrupt it. A theoretical approach grounded in the sociology of markets is applied to explain the structure and functioning of the illegal market. The project follows flows of rhino horn from the source in southern Africa to illegal markets in Southeast Asia. The multi-sited ethnography included participant observations, interviews and focus groups with 416 informants during fourteen months of fieldwork. The sample comprised of, amongst others, convicted and active rhino poachers, smugglers and kingpins, private rhino breeders and hunting outfitters, African and Asian law enforcement officials, as well as affected local communities and Asian consumers. Court files, CITES trade data, archival materials, newspaper reports and social media posts were also analysed to supplement findings and to verify and triangulate data from interviews, focus groups and observations. Central to the analysis is the concept of "contested illegality", a legitimization mechanism employed by market participants along the different segments of the horn supply chain. These actors' implicit or explicit contestation of the state-sponsored label of illegality serves as a legitimising and enabling mechanism, facilitating participation in gray or illegal markets for rhino horn. The research identified fluid interfaces between legal, illegal and gray markets, with recurring actors who have access to transnational trade structures, and who also possess market and product knowledge, as well as information about the regulatory regime and its loopholes. It is against the background of colonial, apartheid and neoliberal exploitation and marginalization of local communities that a second argument is introduced: the path dependency of conservation paradigms. Underpinning rhino conservation and regulation are archaic and elitist conservation regimes that discount the potential for harmonious relationships between local communities and wildlife. The increasing militarization of anti-poaching measures and green land grabs are exacerbating the rhino problem by alienating communities further from conservation areas and wild animals. The third argument looks at how actors deal with coordination problems in transnational illegal markets. Resolving the coordination problems of cooperation, value and competition are considered essential to the operation of formal markets. It is argued that the problem of security provides an additional and crucial obstacle to actors transacting in markets. The systematic analysis of flows between the researched sites of production, distribution and consumption of rhino horn shows that the social embeddedness of actors facilitates the flourishing of illegal markets in ways that escape an effective enforcement of CITES regulations.

Ten cultural-historical case studies investigate how deaths in war were dealt with based on soldier graves of the Second World War. In this dissertation, the resting places of the fallen German soldiers offer a unique perspective in the evaluation of death during a violent conflict and in the post-war period. The examination frame extends from 1939 to the present and follows the reception and importance of the graves and the fallen in military, politics and society. Some single chapters of this thesis have been already published or are intended for publication. Methodologically, the study consists of empirical work, such as the analysis of unpublished archival sources, as well as hermeneutical tools in the form of interviews, surveys, local documentation, and field studies of burial sites and exhumations. Two terms – hero glorification and signs of reconciliation – illustrate the differences in how the meaning of the graves and their dead soldiers was perceived. This difference highlights the change in values and meaning that the graves had to face. In the Second World War, the Wehrmacht responded to the nearly five million German casualties with mythical hero stories, propaganda and parades, but also with an elaborate administration system and rules concerning the dead and their graves. The instructions for the soldier's death included details about the material and inscription of the gravestone to the identification of unknown dead. The graves sustained a structure and organization in accordance with a modern military grave system. The claim to a single grave and the registration and notification of the relatives was included in the Wehrmacht. The denotation of the dead as heroes and their resting places as heroes' graves (Heldengräber) and heroes' groves (Heldenhaine) shows the attempt to integrate them into the ideology and propaganda of the National Socialist regime. However, the management of graves, as well as the cult of heroes, had to fail due to the reality of war – i.e., the number of casualties, the chaotic conditions at the front and the defeat of the Germans. The hero's glorification could not be maintained after the end of the war. In post-war society, an attempt was made to defuse the symbolism of military death and put it into a neutral and harmless context other than National Socialism. The continuation of the graves' management, the search for unknown resting places and the construction of cemeteries could no longer be operated by the military. Under the slogan of reconciliation and the expression of peace and understanding instead, access to the Wehrmacht graves was reached first in Western Europe, after 1989 in Eastern Europe by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. The Volksbund builds and cares for cemeteries and exhumes the remains until the present. This effort is still being made by the Germans today and illustrates the importance of war graves care in modern international context. The studies show how mutable and dependent are the meaning and symbolism of the death of a soldier within different political and social constructs and epochs. In these studies, the range of soldiers' graves as a research topic is clarified and further perspectives for questions and investigation contexts are shown. The investigation of German soldiers' graves of the Second World War in terms of their relevance is of particular importance. The fact that great efforts are still being made to find and maintain the resting places of dead soldiers more than 70 years after the war demonstrates the political dimension of the war dead and their graves. Above all, the distinctiveness of these objects as resting places for German soldiers makes an interesting and even controversial topic for science, politics and society not only in Germany but also in other European countries.

Diese Dissertation untersucht die Entwicklung der diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Frankreich, den USA und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Zeitraum von 1969-1980. Auf breiter multiarchivarischer Quellengrundlage rekonstruiert sie die interdependente Außenpolitik dieser drei Staaten im Kontext zentraler Themenkomplexe der 1970er Jahre: des Aufstiegs und Verfalls der Entspannungspolitik, des Streits um den Status quo in Europa, die Deutsche Frage und die Zukunft Berlins, der internationalen Wirtschafts- und Währungskrise, der Debatte um Sicherheit und Zukunft des westlichen Bündnisses und des NATO-Doppelbeschlusses. Ebenso betrachtet werden eine Reihe von regionalen Ereignissen und Konflikten mit weitreichenden Auswirkungen wie der Jom-Kippur-Krieg, die Portugiesische Revolution oder die sowjetische Invasion Afghanistans. Die Untersuchung folgt der zentralen, theoretisch motivierten Fragestellung, in welchem Maß staatliche Außenpolitik und diplomatische Beziehungen von individuellen Akteuren an der Spitze der Regierungen, ihren Agenden, Sichtweisen und persönlichen Beziehungen zu internationalen Partnern geprägt wurden oder in welchem Maß deren Entscheidungsfindung andererseits durch strukturelle Faktoren geopolitischer, ökonomischer oder politischer Natur definiert und limitiert wurde. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, fokussiert sich die Dissertation auf die Analyse von Regierungswechseln und deren Auswirkungen auf Kontinuität und Wandel der Außenpolitik. Die Narrative umfasst sieben solcher Regierungswechsel: von Bundeskanzler Kurt Georg Kiesinger zu Willy Brandt (1969) und von Brandt zu Helmut Schmidt (1974) in Bonn, von Präsident Charles de Gaulle zu Georges Pompidou (1969) und von Pompidou zu Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (1974) in Paris sowie von Lyndon B. Johnson zu Richard M. Nixon (1969), von Nixon zu Gerald R. Ford (1974) und von Ford zu Jimmy Carter (1977) in Washington. Abseits eines Spektrums empirisch fundierter Erkenntnisse über die Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen der 1970er Jahre belegt diese Arbeit vor allem hochgradig personalisierte und exklusive außenpolitische Entscheidungsstrukturen und eine deutliche Abhängigkeit der Qualität intergouvernementaler Beziehungen von den persönlichen Beziehungen außenpolitischer Führungspersönlichkeiten. Zugleich werden jedoch strukturelle Grenzen ihres Handlungsspielraums im internationalen System deutlich, die von Faktoren wie militärischer Sicherheit und geopolitischer Lage, Zugang zu Ressourcen und ökonomischer Leistungsfähigkeit sowie politischem Druck aus dem In- und Ausland abhängen. Die Dissertation kommt zu dem zentralen Ergebnis, dass Regierungswechsel zwar bisweilen drastische Einschnitte in Inhalt und Stil der auswärtigen Beziehungen nach sich zogen und Bonn, Paris und Washington im Laufe der Dekade mit vielerlei neuen Herausforderungen konfrontiert wurden, dass in der Gesamtschau jedoch pfadabhängige strukturelle Druckszenarien zu höherer politischer Kontinuität im internationalen System führten, als oft mit den für tiefgreifenden historischen Wandel bekannten 1970er Jahren assoziiert wird. ; This dissertation researches the evolving diplomatic relationship between France, the United States, and the Federal Republic of Germany in the years from 1969 to 1980. Based on a broad range of archival sources from all three States, it reconstructs their interdependent foreign policy in the context of the great issues of the 1970s: the rise and fall of détente, the fight for the European status quo, the German question and the future of Berlin, the international economic and monetary crisis, the security and future of the Western Alliance, the NATO dual track decision, as well as a spectrum of regional events and conflicts with far-reaching consequences, such as the Yom Kippur war, the Portuguese Revolution, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At the heart of the inquiry lies the theoretically motivated question to which degree foreign policy and diplomatic relations were shaped by individual actors on the highest level of Government and their personal agendas, perspectives, and relations with their international partners, or to which degree, on the other hand, their decision-making was defined and limited by structural factors of geostrategic, economic or political nature. To answer this question, the dissertation focuses on analyzing government change and its impact on foreign policy. The narrative encompasses seven such changes of Government: in Bonn, from Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger to Willy Brandt (1969) and from Brandt to Helmut Schmidt (1974), in Paris, from President Charles de Gaulle to Georges Pompidou (1969) and from Pompidou to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (1974), and in Washington, from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Richard M. Nixon (1969), from Nixon to Gerald R. Ford (1974), and from Ford to Jimmy Carter (1977). Apart from a range of empirically founded insights into the history of international relations of the 1970s, findings of this work include a highly personalized and exclusive mode of foreign policy decision-making, a high dependence of the quality of intergovernmental relations on the personal relations of foreign policy leaders, and yet, at the same time, clear structural limitations to their maneuverability in the international system, depending on factors such as military security and geopolitical positioning, access to resources and economic capability, and political pressures from the domestic and international levels. This dissertation argues that, while government changes sometimes drastically altered the content and tone of foreign relations, and while many new challenges arose for Bonn, Paris, and Washington throughout the decade, path-dependent structural pressures led to a higher degree of political continuity in the international system than is often associated with the famously transformative 1970s.