Suchergebnisse

The article explores the rise, regulation and risks of genetically modified (GM) insect technology in global agriculture. It contributes to the debate on the nexus of science, technology and food security in Science and Technology Studies from an International Relations perspective. The study locates GM insect technology within the context of conceptual debates about global agriculture, transnational entrepreneurship and the pooling of different sources of political authority. It introduces the pooling of political authority as a potential causal mechanism that transmits biotechnical innovations and entrepreneurship to the spread of GM insect technology in the global agri-food regime. The study focusses, especially on Oxitec Limited, the most important business entrepreneur in the field. The empirical findings reveal that Oxitec has pooled moral and technical political authority and has influenced the global rise and regulation of GM insect technology. The contribution discusses the implications of Oxitec's entrepreneurial involvement and identifies the three key challenges concerning the global regulation of GM insect technology: the transboundary scope, the provision of transparency, and the assessment of risks. Finally, the study outlines future areas of research.

In recent years, scholars in global environmental politics have contributed to the development of regional environmental governance (REG) research. This article contributes to the ongoing debate from an international relations perspective. It provides findings from a comprehensive qualitative comparative analysis of the six regional organic agriculture standards (OAS) in Europe, East Africa, the Pacific, Central America, and Asia. Building on research on norm localization, the analysis draws attention to interactions between the global and regional regulatory levels, regional issue-specific normative infrastructures, and the pooling of different sources of political authority by transnational entrepreneurs and regional agents. The analysis serves three purposes in the light of the ongoing debate on REG: (1) to conduct systematic comparative research; (2) to locate regional OAS within the context of conceptual debates about global norm and policy diffusion, critical norm research, policy mobilities, and comparative regionalism; and (3) to outline future areas of research.

Unternehmen avancieren in der Forschung der Internationalen Beziehungen zunehmend zu politischen Akteuren, die an grenzüberschreitenden Normsetzungs- und Normdurchsetzungsprozessen regulativ mitwirken. Die Autorin behandelt die Frage, inwiefern nationale Bedingungen im Herkunftsland noch einen Einfluss auf die freiwillige unternehmerische Normbefolgung ausüben. Sie erschließt die Thematik unter Rückgriff auf Ansätze der Compliance-Forschung und den neoinstitutionalistischen Isomorphismus-Ansatz und belegt den Erklärungswert des Herkunftslands durch einen strukturiert-fokussierten Vergleich der Normanerkennung und Normanwendung deutscher Unternehmen der G500 in der Global Reporting Initiative

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development emphasizes the importance of technology as a pillar for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Technology innovation promises benefits especially for the implementation of SDG 2 to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. Contributing to current debates on SDG implementation, technology innovation, and cross-sectoral governance, we argue that technology innovation carries both the potential to contribute to global goal implementation and the risk of posing new governance challenges. Applying a food-water-technology nexus (FWTN) perspective, we conduct a case study on an emerging technology in urban agricultural production in Germany. The technology connects the wastewater treatment system and the agricultural production system and projects the transformation of a conventional sewage treatment plant into a 'NEWtrient®-Center,' which draws the essential resources for urban hydroponic plant cultivation from municipal wastewater. Building on qualitative and participatory research methods, the study provides deeper insights into the governance implications of FWTN issues stemming from the emerging technology. The analysis shows that this technology has the potential to facilitate SDG implementation, but simultaneously fuels new sector interlinkages between water and food and policy demands that substantiate the need for more integrated policymaking to ensure the smart use of technology to reach the SDGs.

"Unternehmen sind immer häufiger an grenzüberschreitenden Normsetzungs- und Normdurchsetzungsprozessen beteiligt. Die beiden Autoren untersuchen Bedingungen für das Auftreten privatwirtschaftlicher Governance-Beiträge und gehen der Frage nach, unter welchen Voraussetzungen sie wünschbare Beiträge zu Global Governance leisten können. Dabei werden Legitimationsanforderungen und das Selbstlegitimierungspotential transnationaler privater Selbstregulierung betrachtet und Perspektiven für deren Einbettung in eine institutionelle Gesamtarchitektur erörtert." (Autorenreferat)

ZusammenfassungDie Inter- und Transdisziplinarität (ITD) hält seit längerer Zeit Einzug in die Politikwissenschaft und obgleich diese sich regelmäßig mit ihrem Selbstverständnis auseinandersetzt, sind die Konsequenzen von ITD für Forschung und Forschende bislang noch nicht systematisch betrachtet worden. Um Impulse für diese Debatte zu setzen, konzeptualisieren wir ITD als Spektrum zwischen Wissensintegration, Anwendungsbezug und Beteiligung. Wir nutzen die Normenforschung der Internationalen Beziehungen (IB) als theoretischen Referenzrahmen, um die ITD als normative Dynamik zu beschreiben, zu analysieren und zu reflektieren. Autoethnografisch und mittels teilnehmender Beobachtung untersuchen wir ITD als normative Dynamik anhand von drei Forschungsprojekten im Bereich der Nachhaltigkeit. Konkret fragen wir, welche Implikationen die ITD für Forschende und Forschung in der Politikwissenschaft hat. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass ITD sowohl Chancen als auch Herausforderungen bietet. Vor dem Hintergrund der Wissensintegration diskutieren wir die Bedeutung einer an den großen gesellschaftlichen Fragen teilhabenden Politikwissenschaft im Kontrast zu den Präferenzen der ITD für ein bestimmtes Wissens- und Forschungsverständnis. Den Anwendungsbezug der ITD reflektieren wir im Hinblick auf die Möglichkeiten zur Problemlösung und Outputorientierung. Zudem betrachten wir das Teilhabepostulat der ITD und wägen potenzielle demokratisierende Effekte mit den Bedingungen ab, unter denen diese realisiert werden könnten. Abschließend gehen wir darauf ein, wo weitere Forschung sinnvoll erscheint, um die Reflexion über ITD weiter fortzuschreiben.

AbstractThe Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) highlights the role of arguments and emotions included in stories to influence the policy process. Most applications refer to highly politicized issues. How are narratives used in less politicized debates? This paper applies the NPF to two debates within the European Parliament (EP) which generally gain less public media attention than national debates. By conducting a discourse network analysis of two policy debates on agri‐food technologies in the EP, we show that both debates do not rely as much on emotions as compared to public debates, but are to a greater degree based on argumentative and scientifically grounded reasoning. The use of the NPF characters of victims, villains, and heroes are fairly limited. Instead, the recently introduced character of the beneficiary is used frequently to highlight the advantages and benefits of the preferred policies.

The 2030 Agenda of the United Nations comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 sub-targets which serve as a global reference point for the transition to sustainability. The agenda acknowledges that different issues such as poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, environmental degradation, among others, are intertwined and can therefore only be addressed together. Implementing the SDGs as an 'indivisible whole' represents the actual litmus test for the success of the 2030 Agenda. The main challenge is accomplishing a more integrated approach to sustainable development that encompasses new governance frameworks for enabling and managing systemic transformations. This thematic issue addresses the question whether and how the SDGs set off processes of societal transformation, for which cooperation between state and non-state actors at all political levels (global, regional, national, sub-national), in different societal spheres (politics, society, and economy), and across various sectors (energy, transportation, food, etc.) are indispensable. In this editorial, we first introduce the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs by providing an overview of the architecture of the agenda and the key challenges of the current implementation phase. In a second step, we present the eleven contributions that make up the thematic issue clustering them around three themes: integration, governance challenges, and implementation.