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Institut
- Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit (92) (entfernen)
To respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, scholars from various disciplines increasingly emphasize that a mere outer transformation is insufficient and that we also need an inner transformation that addresses deep leverage points. Yet, the open questions are how the inner and outer dimensions relate to each other and how inner transformation might lead to outer transformation. How we attempt to answer these questions is determined by our dominant paradigm. Paradigms define how we understand and shape the world, and thus, they define how we conceptualize challenges, such as inner and outer transformation. Various authors argue that the dominant paradigm, which is characterized by reductionism, empiricism, dualism, and determinism, might be a root cause for insufficiently addressing sustainability challenges. As an alternative, many argue for a relational paradigm, which understands complex phenomena in terms of constitutive processes and relations. A relational paradigm might offer possibilities to reconceptualize inner and outer transformation in the Anthropocene and might shed new light on how to integrate both in sustainability science. Yet, it is still being determined how a relational paradigm can contribute to the understanding of inner and outer transformations towards sustainability in the Anthropocene. Therefore, this dissertation's overarching scope is to contribute to systems change towards a more social-ecological future by generating insights into and exploring possibilities of a relational paradigm for inner and outer transformation in the Anthropocene. This thesis is divided into three sub-questions. The first research question aims to increase the theoretical understanding of a relational paradigm. The second research question aims to develop a transformative educational case study grounded in a relational, justice-oriented approach. The third research question aims to analyze how a relational paradigm might contribute to policies and practices for sustainable lifestyles. The results indicate that inner and outer transformation in the Anthropocene can be reconceptualized as paradigm-ing relationality in the Ecocene. "Paradigm-ing" as an active verb, reconceptualizes inner and outer transformation into ontologies, epistemologies, ethics, and socialecological realities that are ongoing, nonhierarchical, nonlinear, dynamic, co-creative processes of intra-action. The Ecocene decenters the human and attends to what we might be able to intra-actand become-with. These insights can offer unexplored perspectives to address sustainability challenges and increase our capacities to respond in novel ways.
Environmental governance beyond borders: Governing telecoupled systems towards sustainability
(2023)
This doctoral dissertation analyses the environmental governance of long-distance social-ecological interactions in telecoupled systems in two issue domains: global commodity chains and infrastructure projects as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Although both domains involve different governance actors, institutions and processes, they both concern the question of how the involved actors develop governance structures and institutional responses to telecoupling. This dissertation aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how to govern environmental problems that are associated with global flows. Since many multilateral environmental governance initiatives have not yet produced the desired solutions to global problems, particular attention is directed at unilateral state-led governance approaches. This dissertation addresses the questions of (1) how to achieve a spatial fit between the scale of telecoupled systems and the scale of governance institutions, (2) how governance actors exercise agency in governing telecoupled systems, and (3) how state actors can govern the domestic and foreign environmental effects of telecoupled flows. The results show that creating a spatial fit in the governance of global commodity flows is challenging because boundary and resolution mismatches can emerge. Boundary mismatches denote situations where social-ecological problems transcend established jurisdictional boundaries, whereas resolution mismatches refer to governance institutions that have too coarse a spatial resolution to allow them to address the specific aspects of social-ecological problems effectively. No single governance institution is likely to avoid all mismatches, which highlights the need to align multiple governance approaches to effectively govern telecoupled systems.
Existing institutions no longer appear to be sufficiently capable to deal with the complexity and uncertainty associated with the wicked problem of sustainability. Achieving the required sustainability transformation will thus require purposeful reform of existing institutional frameworks. However, existing research on the governance of sustainability of sustainability transformations has strongly focused on innovation and the more "creative" aspects of these processes, blinding our view to the fact that they go hand with the failure, decline or dismantling of institutions that are no longer considered functional or desirable. This doctoral dissertation thus seeks to better understand how institutional failure and decline can contribute productively to sustainability transformations and how such dynamics in institutional arrangements can serve to restructure existing institutional systems. A systematic review of the conceptual literature served to provide a concise synthesis of the research on "failure" and "decline" in the institutional literature, providing important first insights into their potentially productive functions. This was followed up by an archetype analysis of the productive functions of failure and decline, drawing on a wide range of literatures. This research identified five archetypical pathways: (1) crises triggering institutional adaptations toward sustainability, (2) systematic learning from failure and breakdown, (3) the purposeful destabilisation of unsustainable institutions, (4) making a virtue of inevitable decline, and (5) active and reflective decision making in the face of decline instead of leaving it to chance. Empirical case studies looking at the German energy transition and efforts to phase out coal in the Powering Past Coal Alliance served to provide more insights on (a) how to effectively harness "windows of opportunity" for change, and (b) the governance mechanisms used by governments to actively remove institutions. Results indicate that the lock-in of existing technologies, regulations and practices can throw up important obstacles for sustainability transformations. The intentional or unintentional destabilisation of the status quo may thus be required to enable healthy renewal within a system. This process required active and reflective management to avoid the irreversible loss of desirable institutional elements. Instruments such as "sunset clauses" and "experimental legislation" may serve as important tools to learn through "trial and error", whilst limiting the possible damage done by failure. Focusing on the subject of scale, this analysis finds that the level at which failure occurs is likely to determine the degree of change that can be achieved. Failures at the policy-level are most likely to merely lead to changes to the tools and instruments used by policy makers. This research thus suggests that failures on the polity- and political level may be required to achieve transformative changes to existing power structures, belief-systems and paradigms. Finally, this research briefly touches on the role of actor and agency in the governance of sustainabilitytransformations through failure and decline. It finds that actors may play an important role in causing a system or one of its elements to fail and in shaping the way events are come to be perceived.
Social insects like honeybees (Apis mellifera) and stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) face a relatively high risk to be attacked by pests and pathogens. To decrease the risk of infection, in addition to an innate immune system, these species have evolved various cooperative defense mechanisms which contribute to the overall health of the colonies and are therefore also referred to as social immunity. The collection and use of plant resin is another important strategy of social immunity. Resin is a sticky, often aromatic substance with antimicrobial and deterrent properties secreted by plants for protection of the vegetative tissue. Honeybees and stingless bees take advantage of these properties by using resins for nest construction (often mixtures of resin and wax called "propolis" or "cerumen") and as defense against pests and pathogens. Plant resins, thus, play a crucial role for the ecology of these species and are an important resource for them. Nevertheless, how bees exploit available resin sources and if resin collection can protect colonies from diseases received comparatively little attention in the past. Therefore the aim of this thesis is to provide new insights into the plant origin and significance as well as the influence of resin resource diversity on bee colony health. For honeybees (A. mellifera) in temperate regions, precise information about which resin sources they use is largely lacking. By chemical comparing bee-collected resins and tree resins, the researcher traced back the resin sources used by individual bees. Results show that honeybees collect distinct resin types that are related to different tree species (several poplar species: Populus balsamifera, P. xcanadensis; Betula alba; Aesculus hippocastanum; several poplar species). With this study, the author provided the first evidence, that A. mellifera in temperate regions use a variety of different tree species as resin sources and, moreover, show preferences for specific resin sources. Furthermore, the researcher conducted an experimental field study in which she investigated whether propolis, as it is naturally deposited in the nests, can protect honeybee colonies against some of the most important pathogens (Varroa destructor mite, Deformed Wing Virus). The results of this study showed that propolis in (semi-) natural conditions can increase the disease resistance of honeybee colonies, underscoring the importance of resins for honeybee health. Resin collection by stingless bees is comparatively well studied and it is known that these species commonly forage on a variety of different plant species. To increase knowledge on whether and how bees may profit from a diversity of resin resources, the researcheer tested how the protective function of a resin varied among different sources (and their mixtures) and various potential aggressors (predators, parasites and pathogens). The results of this study revealed that resins from different trees vary in their effectivity against different target organisms. Moreover, resin blends were more effective than some of the individual resins, suggesting that bees can benefit from a variety of resin resources. In summary, honeybees in temperate regions, similar to tropical stingless bees, use a variety of different tree species as resin sources. Because resins from different tree species varied in their protective function, this indicates that bees can profit from a variety of different resins/resin sources by improving the defense against diverse pests and pathogens. Conversely, the lack of resin had a negative impact on the disease resistance of colonies. Consequently, availability as well as the variety of suitable resin sources is of great importance for the health of bees.
To improve the properties of thermochemical heat storage materials, salt mixtures were evaluated for their heat storage capacity and cycle stability as part of the innovation incubator project "Thermochemical battery" of the Leuphana university Lüneburg. Based on naturally occurring compound minerals, 16 sulfates, 18 chlorides and 5 chloride multi-mixtures, 18 bromides and 5 intermixtures between sulfates, chlorides and bromides were synthesized either from liquid solution or by dry mixing for TGA/DSC screening before continuing the heat storage evaluation with five different measurement setups at a laboratory scale. The TGA/DSC analysis served as a screening process to reduce the number of testing materials for the upscaled experiments. The evaluation process consisted of a three-cycle dehydration/hydration measurement at Tmax=100°C and Tmax=200°C. In case of the bromide samples a measurement of hydration conditions with Tmax=110°C and a water flow at e=18.68mbar, were added to the procedure to detect the maximum water uptake temperature. Also, a single dehydration to a temperature of Tmax=500°C was implemented to observe melting behavior and to easier calculate the samples’ stages of hydration from the remaining anhydrous mass. Materials which showed high energy storage density and improved cycle stability during this first evaluation were cleared for multi-cycle measurements of 10 to 25 dehydration and hydration cycles at Tmax = 100 to 120°C and the evaluations at m=20 to 100g scale. An estimate for the specific heat capacities at different temperatures of the materials which passed the initial stage was calculated from the TGA/DSC results as well. The laboratory scale measurement setup went through five stages of refining, which led to reducing the intended maximum sample mass from m=100g to m=20g. A switch from supplied liquid water to water vapor as the used reactant was also implemented in exchange for improved dehydration conditions. Introducing a vacuum pump for evaporating the water limited the influence of outside heat sources during hydration and in-situ dehydration was enabled as to not disturb the state the samples were settling in between measurements. Baseline calculation from blanc measurements with glass powder and attempts to calculate the specific heat capacity cp of the tested materials by 6 applying the Joule-Lenz-law to the measurement apparatus was another step of method development. The evaluation process of the laboratory scale tests at the final setting consisted of 1 to 5 cycle measurements of in-situ dehydration and hydrations with applied vacuum for t=30 minutes at p~30mbar. Upscaling the sample mass to m=20g allowed for a close observation of different material behaviors. Agglomeration, melting and dissolving of the m=10mg samples during the TGA/DSC analysis can be deducted from the recorded measurement curves and the state of the sample after measurement. However, at laboratory scale the visible volume changes, observed sample consistency after agglomeration and an automatic removal of molten and dissolved sample mass during the measurement allowed for a better characterization and understanding of the magnitude of the actual changes. This was done for the first time, particularly for mixed salts. Of the original number of 62 samples, 4 mixtures which passed the initial TGA/DSC screening namely {2MgCl2+ KCl}, {2MgCl2+CaCl2}, {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} and {2ZnCl2 + CaCl2} were chosen for further evaluation. The multi-cycle TGA/DSC measurements of {2MgCl2+ KCl}, {2MgCl2+CaCl2} and {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} showed an improved cycle stability for all three materials over the untreated educts. Of the four materials {2ZnCl2 + CaCl2} displayed the strongest deliquescence during hydration in the upscaled experimental setup. {2MgCl2+CaCl2} proved to be the most stable material regarding the heat storage density. The {MgCl2} content of the mixture is likely to partially or completely react to {Mg(OH)Cl} at temperatures of T>110°C, which however does not impede the heat storage density. {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} displayed a low melting point in hydrated state, causing a fast material loss. This makes it an undesirable storage material. A lower heating rate may still help to avoid an early melting. The {2MgCl2+KCl} mixture was the most temperature stable of the mixtures showing no melting or dissolving behavior. A reaction of the {MgCl2} component of the mixture to {Mg(OH)Cl} was not observed within the applied temperature range of T=25 to 200°C.
Tropical ecosystems are critical for biodiversity conservation and local people’s livelihood sustenance. However, these ecosystems are under high pressure from land-use and land cover (LULC) change, which is further projected to intensify and increase rapidly, thereby affecting biodiversity and the provisioning of vital ecosystem services (ES). It is thus important to understand how LULC might change in the future and how such changes could affect biodiversity and ES provisioning in a given landscape of tropical ecosystems. Scenario planning has become an increasingly popular tool and technique to produce narrative scenarios of the future landscape change. Thus, quantifying changes under different land-use scenarios could be a means to elucidate the synergies and trade-offs within the scenarios. In this dissertation, the author examines the future of biodiversity and ES provisioning for different plausible land-use scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia. First, he translates four future plausible narrative social-ecological land-use scenarios ("Gain over grain", "Coffee and conservation", "Mining green gold" and "Food first") developed for southwestern Ethiopia by participatory scenario planning into spatially explicit LULC scenario maps. Results showed distinct LULC changes under each scenario. Second, the author investigates the impact of these land-use scenarios on biodiversity by specifically modelling woody plant species richness in farmland and forest. Both indicators of human disturbance and environmental conditions were used. Third, he also investigates the effect of these land-use scenarios on woody plant-based ES provisioning by combining woody plant species with household surveys on how woody plants were used by the local community. He models and predicts the current and future availability of woody plant-based ES under the four scenarios of landscape change. Overall, the findings of this dissertation show the importance of integrating future land-use mapping with participatory, narrative-based scenarios to assess the social-ecological outcomes of alternative futures. The spatially explicit maps of LULC change, biodiversity and ES (at different scales) could be used as a valuable input to support stakeholders and decision-makers to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different development trajectories on ecosystems and human well-being and to avoid or minimize future undesirable consequences. To this end, apart from the benefits of coffee production under "Mining green gold" and crop production under "Food first" scenarios, the findings under these scenarios of large-scale agricultural intensification point to a potentially high loss of biodiversity and ES. These two scenarios could have a negative long-term impact on ecosystems and human well-being. Finally, the "Coffee and conservation" scenario, which involves the creation of a new biosphere reserve, appears to be the most sustainable scenario. This scenario could result in a sustainably managed, diversified landscape which could make major contributions to biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the region and beyond.
Climate change and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen affect biodiversity patterns and functions of forest ecosystems worldwide. Many studies have quantified tree growth responses to single global change drivers, but less is known about the interaction effects of these drivers at the plant and ecosystem level. In the present study, the authors conducted a full-factorial greenhouse experiment to analyse single and combined effects of nitrogen fertilization (N treatment) and drought (D treatment) on 16 morphological and chemical response variables of one-year-old Fagus sylvatica seedlings originating from eight different seed families from the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain). Drought exerted the strongest effect on response variables, reflected by decreasing biomass production. However, D and N treatments interacted for some of the response variables, indicating that N fertilization has the potential to strengthen the negative effects of drought (with both antagonistic and amplifying interactions). For example, combined effects of N and D treatments caused a sevenfold increase of necrotic leaf biomass. The authors hypothesize that increasing drought sensitivity was mainly attributable to a significant reduction of the root biomass in combined N and D treatments, limiting the plants' capability to satisfy their water demands. Significant seed family effects and interactions of seed family with N and D treatments across response variables suggest a high within-population genetic variability. In conclusion, the findings indicated a high drought sensitivity of Cantabrian beech populations, but also interaction effects of N and D on growth responses of beech seedlings.
The overall aim of this thesis is to develop empirical probabilistic frameworks that help to quantify the impacts of temporal and spatial scale dependencies and model uncertainties of climate projections regarding precipitation-dependent parameters. The thesis is structured in four articles. Article one is the first study that analyzed climate projections from the spatially highly resolved regional climate model (RCM) ensemble EURO-CORDEX. Additionally, the significance and the robustness of the projected changes are analyzed, and improvements related to the higher horizontal resolution of the new data set are discussed. A major finding is, that RCM simulations provide higher daily precipitation intensities, which are missing in the global climate model (GCM) simulations, and that they show a significantly different climate change of daily precipitation intensities with a smoother shift from low towards high intensities. The second article elaborates on impacts of temporal and spatial aggregation on extreme precipitation intensities. By combining radar data with cloud observations, the different temporal and spatial scaling behavior of stratiform and convective type precipitation events can be analyzed for the first time. The separation between convective and stratiform type events also allows to quantify the contribution of convective events to the extremes. Further, it is shown that temporal averaging has similar effects on the precipitation distribution as spatial averaging. Associated pairs of temporal and spatial resolutions that show comparable intensity distributions are identified. Using precipitation data from radar observations, a gauge station network and a spatially highly resolved regional climate model, the third paper optimizes the process that finds associated temporal and spatial scales (see second article). This information is used to develop a method that adjusts point measurements to the temporal and spatial scale of a previously defined model grid. The study shows that this procedure can be used to improve bias-adjustment methods in areas with a low gauge station density. It is known that the EURO-CORDEX ensemble overestimates precipitation and shows a common cold bias in the Alpine region. The fourth article evaluates how these biases are changing the temperature distribution and the temperature dependency of precipitation-frequencies. These biases are a source of uncertainty that is not captured by the robustness tests performed in the first article. A probabilistic-decomposition-framework is developed to quantify the impact of these biases on precipitation-frequency changes and to investigate causes for the ensemble spread.
Over the past two decades, transitions research has witnessed rapid development. However, there is still a notable gap in our understanding of sustainability transitions in conflict settings and the role of international organizations in these transitions. Little is known about the dynamics of power, limiting and facilitating factors, and the role of (international) actors in sustainability transitions in conflict settings. This dissertation seeks to make contributions to these discussions by examining energy transitions in Afghanistan, a conflict-affected country, between 2001 and 2021. It specifically focuses on the involvement of international development organizations, shedding light on their role in energy access, institutional change, and imagining Afghanistan's future energy system development. After security, access to affordable energy is frequently reported to be Afghanistan's most pressing need. Following the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001, billions of dollars and dozens of international development organizations poured into Afghanistan to support the reconstruction of the country including its energy sector. Between 2001 and 2021, the government of Afghanistan and the international development organizations worked on various aspects of energy system development despite on-going insurgency and threats against infrastructural projects. In 2021, the Taliban regained power, resulting in the suspension of operations for most development organizations, with only a few humanitarian agencies remaining active. Within this context, this thesis explores topics such as the country's energy potential and policy, the role of international development organizations in the energy sector, and visions for a future energy system in Afghanistan. The research conducted for this thesis employed a qualitative case study approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews and document analysis.
Sustainable landscape development is the main goal of decision makers worldwide. Achieving this goal in the long term leads to achieving social, economic and environmental sustainability. Remote sensing has been playing an essential role in monitoring remote areas. This study has employed part of the role of remote sensing in supporting the direction of decision makers towards sustainable landscape development. The study has focused on some of the main elements affecting sustainable environment: land uses, specifically agricultural land uses, water quality, forests, and water hazards such as floods. Three research programs were undertaken to investigate the role of Terrasar-x imagery, as a source of remote sensing data, in monitoring the environment and achieving the previous stated elements. The investigation was intended to investigate the effectiveness of TSX imagery in identifying the cropping pattern of selected study areas by employing a pixel-based supervised maximum likelihood classifier, as published in Paper I, assessment of the efficiency of using TSX imagery in determining land use and the flood risk maps by applying an object-based decision tree classifier as published in Paper II, and determination of the potential of inferential statistics tests such as the two samples Z-test and multivariate analysis, for example Factor Analysis, for identifying the kind of forest canopy, based on the backscattering coefficient of TSX imagery of forest plots, as presented in Paper III. Papers I and II covered two pilot areas in the Lower Saxonian Elbe Valley Biosphere Reserve “das Biosphärenreservat "Niedersächsische Elbtalaue" around Walmsburger Werder and Wehninger Werder. Paper III focused on the Fuhrberger Feld water protection area near Hanover in Germany. The inputs for this research were mainly SAR Imagery and the ground truth data collected from field surveys, in addition to databases, geo-databases and maps. The study presented in Paper I used two filters to decrease speckle noise namely De-Grandi as multi-temporal speckle filter, and Lee as an adaptive filter. A multi-temporal classification method was used to identify the different crops using a pixel-based maximum likelihood classifier. The classification accuracy was assessed based on the external user accuracy for each crop, the external producer accuracy for each crop, the Kappa index and the external total accuracy for the entire classification. Three cropping pattern maps were produced namely the cropping pattern map of Wehninger Werder in 2011 and the cropping pattern maps of Walmsburger Werder in 2010 and in 2011. The study showed that image filtering was essential for enhancing the accuracy of crop classification. The multi-temporal filter De-Grandi enhanced the producer accuracy by about 10% compared to the Lee filter. Furthermore, gathering and utilizing large ground truth data greatly enhanced the accuracy of the classification. The research verified that using sequence images covering the growing season usually improved the classification results. The results exposed the effect of the polarization and demonstrate that the majority of the classifications produced according to the crop calendar had higher total producer accuracy than using all acquisitions. The study demonstrated undertaken in Paper II applied the decision tree object-based classifier in determining the major land uses and the inundation extent areas in 2011 and 2013 using the Lee-filtered imagery. Based on the maps produced for the land uses and inundation areas, the hazard areas due to the floods in 2011 and 2013 were identified. The study illustrated that 95% of the inundated area was classified correctly, that 90% of vegetated lands were accurately determined, and around 80% of the forest and the residential areas were correctly recognized. The research undertaken in Paper III statistically analyzed the backscattering coefficient of the Lee-filtered TSX in some forest plots by the Factor Analysis and two sample Z-test. The study showed that Factor analysis tools succeeded in differentiating between the coniferous forest and the deciduous forest and mixed forest, but failed to discriminate between the deciduous and the mixed forest. On one hand, only one factor was extracted for each sample plot of the coniferous forest with approximately equal loadings during the whole acquisition period from March 2008 to January 2009. On the other hand, two factors were extracted for each deciduous or mixed forest sample plot, where one factor had high loadings during the leaf-on period from May to October, and the other one had high loadings during the leaf-off period from November to April. Furthermore, the research revealed that the two sample Z-test enabled not only differentiation between the deciduous and the mixed forest against the coniferous forest, but also discrimination between deciduous forest and the mixed forest. Statistically significant differences were observed between the mean backscatter values of the HH-polarized acquisitions for the deciduous forest and the mixed forest during the leaf-off period, but no statistically significant difference was found during the leaf-on period. Moreover, plot samples for the deciduous forest had slightly higher mean backscattering coefficients than those for the mixed forest during the leaf-off period.