Open Access

Die Verringerung des Material- und Ressourcenverbrauchs ist eine wesentliche Herausforderung nachhaltiger Entwicklung. Bislang standen und stehen politische Maßnahmen zur Energieeffizienz im Vordergrund. Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung der Materialeffizienz gewinnen jedoch verstärkt an Bedeutung. Der Erfolg oder Misserfolg politischer Instrumente im Umwelt- und Klimaschutzbereich wird maßgeblich davon abhängen, ob die Instrumente die Fähigkeit besitzen, eine Entkoppelung von Lebensqualität und Ressourcenverbrauch zu erzeugen. Insbesondere im Rahmen der Ökodesign-Richtlinie, aber auch anderer Instrumente der Europäischen Union, sind Ansatzpunkte zur politischen Gestaltung einer ressourcenleichten Langfristökonomie angelegt. Die Dissertation wird schwerpunktmäßig die Governance-Instrumente im Produktbereich der Europäischen Union behandeln. Die Dissertation folgt der Theorie, dass die Produkte der Industriegesellschaft einzeln mehr oder weniger harmlos, in ihrer Menge jedoch die Quelle fast aller Umweltprobleme sind. Zur Erstellung der Dissertation sieht das spezifische Methodendesign die Anwendung eines Kriterienkatalogs zur Bewertung der Steuerungsinstrumente für Langfristökonomie im Produktbereich vor. Darüber hinaus werden die Hauptakteure in Form von Interviews befragt.

Responsibility for sustainability is an action guiding concept which relates the abstract norm of sustainability with concrete action contexts. It thereby specifies what bearers of responsibility ought to do. In this thesis, I introduce the concept of responsibility to economic theory, focusing specifically on individual and governmental responsibility for sustainability. Some of the questions I examine are: how should responsibility be distributed among agents? How can agents, who are responsible for several normative aims, solve trade-offs? Do governmental policies affect individuals’ ability to assume responsibility? How can individuals efficiently induce governments to act responsibly? In Paper 1, A utilitarian notion of responsibility for sustainability, I conceptualize and formalize a utilitarian notion of responsibility for sustainability which I then relate to established normative criteria for assessing intertemporal societal choice. I show that responsibility for sustainability can be unambiguously conceptualized in economic models. Furthermore, I affirm that responsibility may provide action guidance even if the aim of sustainability is not feasible. In Paper 2, Verantwortung von Konsumenten für Nachhaltigkeit, I study consumers’ responsibility for sustainability. Particularly, I specify crucial components of this responsibility in order to analyze the relation of consumers’ private and political responsibility. I show that the responsibility for sustainability of consumers comprises three indispensable obligations of which only one concerns consumers’ consumption choices. In Paper 3, Regulation of morally responsible agents with motivation crowding, I focus on the impact of governmental policies on the motivation of an individual to assume moral responsibility. In particular, I study the regulation of a morally responsible individual with motivation crowding in the context of a negative externality. I show that combining consumption taxes with the provision of perfect information is, in many cases, superior to consumption taxes alone. In Paper 4, Endogenous Environmental Policy when Pollution is Transboundary, I examine how individuals which form lobby groups affect the determination of environmental policy when governments seek not only to maximize welfare, but simultaneous maximize support by lobby groups. More specifically, I consider the case in which two countries are linked through transboundary pollution. Environmental policies adopted by self-interested governments may be more stringent than by social welfare maximizing governments. Furthermore, due to the interaction of distortions the space of optimal policies increases: politically optimal tax rates may be too high or too low to optimally internalize the environmental externality.

Traditional farming landscapes have been created in coexistence of rural dwellers and local ecosystems over long time spans, and can be considered tightly coupled ´social-ecological systems´ (SES). Since these landscapes typically embody exceptionally high levels of biological diversity and multiple socio-cultural values, their protection is critical from a sustainability perspective. Due to the pressures of globalization and social change, however, rural livelihoods and farmland biodiversity are at risk. While the focus of research is often on the Southern hemisphere, there are traditional farming landscapes in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) which are equally affected by rapid change, and thus deserve particular attention. Since the institutional breakdown of socialism in 1989, the CEE states have not only been confronted with an unprecedented socio-economic and environmental transition. Their integration into the multi-level governance regime of the European Union (EU) further resulted in the transformation of decision-making structures and competition within the EU common market. In light of the profound changes traditional farming landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe are confronted with, they serve as a valuable source of learning about the institutional design necessary to harmonize socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation within regional social-ecological systems worldwide. This thesis is the result of an in-depth analysis of one traditional farming landscape of Central and Eastern Europe, namely Southern Transylvania (Romania). Based on empirical research involving diverse stakeholder groups, this thesis assessed the impact of EU policy on the area, the institutional features characterizing local-level governance in Southern Transylvania, and the barriers and bridges towards sustainable rural development. This thesis finds that while rural dwellers are highly dependent on smallholder farming and local ecosystems for their livelihoods, Southern Transylvania is currently confronted with a range of structural development barriers. These are likely to be exacerbated by a governance system consisting of historically grounded ´elite social networks´, and by EU policies which often do not fit rural realities. The findings of this dissertation underline that entrenched informal institutions, political will, and historical legacies play a critical role for the governance of traditional social-ecological systems since these ´social system features´ do not only mediate how external policies act on the local level. They may further restrict local adaptive and innovation capacities which, however, are critical for the transformation towards sustainable development. This thesis further finds that there are no blueprint solutions for the design of rural development strategies. Instead, (supra-) national policies should take better account of local socio-economic and cultural particularities.