333.7 Natürliche Ressourcen, Energie und Umwelt
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (82)
- Bachelor Thesis (13)
- Master's Thesis (9)
- Working Paper (8)
- Habilitation (1)
- ResearchPaper (1)
Keywords
- Nachhaltigkeit (34)
- Biodiversität (8)
- Sustainability (7)
- Landwirtschaft (6)
- Energiewende (4)
- Erneuerbare Energien (3)
- Kulturlandschaft (3)
- Lüneburg (3)
- Pestizid (3)
- Suffizienz (3)
Institute
- Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit (52)
- Nachhaltigkeitsmgmt./-ökologie (20)
- Institut für Nachhaltigkeitssteuerung (INSUGO) (12)
- Institut für Nachhaltige Chemie und Umweltchemie (INUC) (9)
- Institut für Ökologie (IE) (9)
- Frühere Fachbereiche (6)
- Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften (4)
- Institut für Ethik und Transdisziplinäre Nachhaltigkeitsforschung (IETSR) (3)
- Chemie (2)
- Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften (2)
Global climate change and environmental degradation are largely caused by human activity, thus progress towards a sustainable future will require large-scale changes to human behavior. Human-nature connectedness (HNC) - a measure of cognitive, emotional, spiritual and biophysical linkages to natural places - has been identified as a positive predictor of sustainability attitudes and behaviors. While calls to "reconnect to nature" in order to foster sustainability outcomes have become common across science, policy and practice, there remains a great deal of uncertainty, speculation, and conceptual vagueness around how this ought to be implemented. The overarching aim of this thesis is to advance conceptual and empirical understandings of HNC as a leverage point for pro-environmental outcomes and sustainability transformation. In particular, the thesis attempts to assess the nuances of the HNC-PEB (pro-environmental behavior) relationship by investigating the scalar relationships between where someone feels connected to nature and where someone acts pro-environmentally. This research was conducted through conceptual exploration, systematic literature reviews using hierarchical cluster analysis, and empirical case studies relying on structural equation modeling and two-step cluster analysis. The relationship between HNC and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors was investigated in a small microregion of Transylvania, Romania, where traditional relationships with the land and changing socio-economic characteristics provided an interesting case study in which to explore these connections. The key findings can be organized into three sections: Section A, which addresses HNC and its potential for sustainability transformation; Section B, which addresses HNC as a determinant of PEB outcomes, and Section C, which explores the relationships between human-nature connectedness and energy conservation norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Results cumulatively suggest that HNC is a multidimensional construct that requires greater integration across heterogeneous disciplinary and methodological boundaries in order to reach its potential for meaningful sustainability transformation. Results also highlight the critical need to adopt systemic approaches to understanding how interactions between human-nature connections, norms, attitudes, and behaviors are hindering or promoting sustainability outcomes.
Supporting sustainability transformation through research requires, in equal parts, knowledge about complex problems and knowledge that supports individual and collective action to change the system. Recasting the conditions, characteristics, and modes of research processes that address these needs leads to solution-oriented research in sustainability science. This is supported by systematically analyzing the system’s dynamics, envisioning the desired future target state, and by engaging and designing strategic pathways. In addition, learning and capacity building are important crosscutting processes for co-producing required knowledge. In research, we use sophisticated representations as mediators between theories and objects of interest, depicted as visualizations, models, and simulations. They simplify, idealize, and store large and dense amounts of information. Representations are already employed in the service of sustainability, e.g., in communication about climate change. Understanding them as tools to facilitate processes, dialogue, mutual learning, shared understanding, and communication can yield contributions to knowledge processes of analyzing, envisioning, and engaging, and has implications on the design of the sustainability solution. Therefore I ask, what role do representations and representational practices play in the generation of sustainability solutions in different knowledge processes? Four empirical case studies applying rough set analysis, multivariate statistics, systematic literature review, and expert interviews target this research question. The overall aim of this dissertation is to contribute to a stronger foundation and the role of representation in sustainability science. This includes: (i) to explore and conceptualize representations for the three knowledge processes along selected characteristics and mechanisms; (ii) to understand representational practices as tools and embedded into larger methodological frameworks; (iii) to understand the connection between representation and (mutual) learning in sustainability science. Results point toward crosscutting mechanisms of representations for knowledge processes and the need to build representational literacy to responsible design and participate in representational practices for sustainability.
Increasingly, researchers are expected to work in collaborative interdisciplinary teams to tackle more complex and interrelated problems. However, the prospect of collaborating with others, from different disciplines, exerts countervailing forces on researchers. There is the lure of transcending the limitations of one's own knowledge, methods and conventions, belonging to diverse intellectual communities and tackling, together, ambitious research topics. On the other hand, there is the risk that collaborating across disciplinary boundaries will be taxing, confounding at times, with no guarantee of success. This thesis is about collaborative interdisciplinary research from the perspective of a formative accompanying researcher. The author accompanied an interdisciplinary research team in the field of sustainability over three years for the duration of a collaborative project. Formative accompanying research (FAR) is an approach to "research into research" that learns about, with and for a collaborative interdisciplinary team. The author found - through immersion in the literature, her own daily experiences of collaborating, and her observations – that interdisciplinary collaboration is very difficult. It requires a basic understanding and appreciation of other disciplines and methods, as well as the skills to integrate research inquiries and findings across diverse epistemologies. It also requires awareness that collaborative interdisciplinary research is more than an intellectual task of knowledge creation. Other factors matter, such as interpersonal relationships, power differentials, different research tempos and a sense of belonging. And these factors have an impact on processes and outcomes of collaborative knowledge creation. Knowing this implies a willingness to keep learning and to tolerate discomfort so as to cultivate deeper levels of collaborative capacity. The author discovered that in these deeper levels lie skills for staying with inevitable tensions, for talking and listening to generate new understanding together, and for applying a researcher's frank curiosity to oneself too. A formative accompanying researcher, who is part of the team she is researching, has to navigate delicate terrain. In this thesis, the author develops a FAR methodology that takes seriously the questions of positionality and relationality, and reflects on the experiences of putting these into practice. A FAR practice involves remaining in dynamic movement between observing and participating, between exercising curiosity and care, and between the researchers' own sense of impartiality and investment in relation to the issues at hand. There is merit in furthering the methodology and practice of FAR on its own terms. This includes attending to the skills required by a formative accompanying researcher to remain oriented within the concentric circles of research, relationship and loyalty that make up a collaborative team. There is also the question of how FAR, and other forms of research into research, can help to advance collaborative interdisciplinary research. The author argues for creating the conditions in research teams that would enable treating collaboration as a capacity to develop, and that would facilitate team members' receptivity to learning with FAR. Furthermore, she explores dilemmas of intervening as a formative accompanying researcher and of sustaining dynamic positionality over the long-term.
Through the expansion of human activities, humanity has evolved to become a driving force of global environmental change and influences a substantial and growing part of natural ecosystem trophic interactions and energy flows. However, by constructing and building its own niche, human distance from nature increased remarkably during the last decades due to processes of globalization and urbanization. This increasing disconnect has both material and immaterial consequences for how humans interact and connect with nature. Indeed, many regions across the world have disconnected themselves from the productivity of their regional environment by: (1) accessing biological products from distant places through international trade, and (2) using non-renewable resources from outside the biosphere to boost the productivity of their natural environment. Both mechanisms allow for greater resource use then would be possible otherwise, but also involve complex sustainability challenges and lead to fundamentally different feedbacks between humans and the environment. This dissertation empirically investigates the sustainability of biophysical human-nature connections and disconnections from a social-ecological systems perspective. The results provide new insights and concrete knowledge about biophysical human-nature disconnections and its sustainability implications, including pervasive issues of injustice. Through international trade and reliance on non-renewables, particularly higher-income regions appropriate an unproportional large share of global resources. Moreover, by enabling seemingly unconstrained consumption of resources and simultaneous conservation of regional ecosystems, increasing regional disconnectedness stimulates the misconception of decoupling. Whereas, in fact, the biophysically most disconnected regions exhibit the highest resource footprints and are, therefore, responsible for the largest environmental damages. The increasing biophysical disconnect between humans and nature effectively works to circumvent limitations and self-constraining feedbacks of natural cycles. The circumvention of environmental constraints is a crucial feature of niche construction. Human niche construction refers to the process of modifying natural environments to make them more useful for society. To ease integration of the chapters in this thesis, the framework paper uses human niche construction theory to understand the mechanisms and drivers behind increasing biophysical disconnections. The theory is employed to explain causal relationships and unsustainable trajectories from a holistic perspective. Moreover, as a process-oriented approach, it allows connecting the empirically assessed states of disconnectedness with insights about interventions and change for sustainability. For a sustainability transformation already entered paths of disconnectedness must be reversed to enable a genuine reconnection of human activities to the biosphere and its natural cycles. This thesis highlights the unsustainability of disconnectedness and opens up debate about how knowledge around sustainable human niche construction can be leveraged for a reconnection of humans to nature.
The German energy system is under transformation. The so-called Energiewende (in English, Energy turn) relies, among other things, on renewable energies for building a more sustainable energy system. Regions (Landkreise) are one relevant level where different administrative bodies make decisions and plans both for the implementation and for the use of renewable energies. However, in order to realize the goals of the Energiewende, developments in the wider society are necessary. This is why scientific research can and should foster such developments with more research on the social aspects of energy-related topics. The present work contributes to the understanding of transition processes towards a sustainable use of regional renewable energy by focusing on the role of contextual conditions, practical experiences, and temporal dynamics in the implementation and use of renewable energy in German regions. In this way, this work wants to contribute fostering the development of regional energy transition strategies for the realization of the Energiewende. The conceptual background for this piece of transformation research lies in three bodies of literature dealing respectively with transitions of socio-technical systems, transformations of socioecological systems, and time ecology. From a critical engagement with this literature, three main results have emerged. First, an evidence-based, spatially distinct analysis of contextual conditions for the use of renewable energy in all German regions has resulted in the identification of nine types of regions, so-called energy context types. Second, empirical research on practices in regional settings learned from the knowhow of actors from regional administration has shown that political and economic conditions are crucial as well as that process management, exchange, and learning are helpful for renewable energy implementation. Third, conceptual work about a deeper understanding of the temporal dimensions of transformation processes has made it possible to point out a three-step approach to include temporal dynamics into sustainability transformations management - the time-in-transformations-approach. The literature suggests that regions need to be treated individually; but developing an energy transition strategy for each region individually would be extremely resource intensive. Overall, this work outlines a compromise for a more efficient approach towards regional energy transition strategies which still considers the individuality of regions. As a result, the author suggests to develop generic regional energy transition strategies that are adapted to each of the nine energy context types of German regions, that include the experiences of practitioners, and that consider temporal dynamics of transformation processes. Transdisciplinary research is a promising approach to meet many of the challenges for the realization of the Energiewende.
The fact that digitalization comes along with a lot of negative effects onto the environment is slightly known in the case of energy consumption by hardware, especially regarding mobile devices, having a limited battery life. However, awareness of environmental issues of software, being the driver of hardware, is mainly missing, even if the research field addressing corresponding issues is growing. Thus, the doctoral thesis at hand addresses the question How to draw (a) developers and (b) usersattention to environmental issues of software? By presenting (a) a calculation method of the carbon footprint of software projects and (b) a concept for an eco-label for software products, evaluated by a user survey, the doctoral thesis provides two strategies how to draw the attention to environmental issues of software. Summarizing, this thesis can act as a basis for further research in bridging from science to society in the context of environmental issues of software. Its findings can be seen as starting points for practical implementations of methods and tools supporting a more environmentally friendly way of developing software and informing about environmental issues of software usage. In order to get the implementation of the research results of the thesis going, it highlights practical implications for diverse groups of stakeholders - researchers, certifiers, public administration and professional purchasers, and environmental associations - that have been identified as being important for the practical implementation of the presented concepts and, thus, represent the target group of the doctoral thesis.
Die Agenda 2030 der Vereinten Nationen und diverse daraus abgeleitete Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien setzen einen zeitlich fest definierten Rahmen bis in das Jahr 2030. Für die Umsetzung dieser Strategien sind zwei Aspekte entscheidend - ein fundiertes inhaltliches Verständnis von politischer Strategie und ein darauf aufbauendes praxistaugliches Instrument, das den politischen Strategen bei einer erfolgreichen Umsetzung und Implementierung einer Strategie unterstützt. Diese Arbeit möchte zu beiden Aspekten einen Beitrag leisten. Zum einen wird aus der Zusammenführung von Theorie und Praxis die Natur des inhaltlichen politischen Strategiebegriffs erforscht. Zum anderen wird darauf aufbauend ein praxis- und erfahrungsorientiertes Anwendungsmodell entwickelt, das typische potentielle Herausforderungen und entsprechende potentielle Handlungsoptionen je Strategieabschnitt benennt. Durch die Subsumierung von Erfahrungswissen unterstützt das Modell dabei vor allem das praktische Urteilsvermögen des politischen Strategen bei der Erreichung politikstrategischer Ziele. Um zu dem praxisrelevanten Anwendungsmodell zu gelangen ist es notwendig, sich zuvor Klarheit über die besonderen Anforderungen und Herausforderungen des speziellen politischen Strategiebegriffs zu verschaffen. Die politische Umwelt mit ihren spezifischen Mechanismen unterscheidet sich fundamental von den bisher bekannten Strategiefeldern Militär und Betriebswirtschaft. Da eine Strategie immer die konkrete Umweltsituation und die individuellen Situationsmerkmale berücksichtigen muss, ist - wie diese Arbeit zeigt - eine simple Übertragung strategischer Allgemeinplätze aus Militär und Ökonomie von vornherein zum Scheitern verurteilt.
Agrobiodiversität besitzt vielfältigen ökologischen, ökonomischen und sozio-kulturellen Wert. Sie ist eine grundlegende Voraussetzung für zukünftige Nutzungen und steht gleichzeitig in einem besonderen Verhältnis zu menschlichem Handeln. Zwar basiert Agrobiodiversität auf Natur, sie ist jedoch wesentlich durch landwirtschaftliche Tätigkeiten gestaltet worden und kann ohne weitere Nutzung durch den Menschen nicht erhalten und erneuert werden. Die vorliegende Dissertation analysiert die Gestaltung gesellschaftlicher Naturverhältnisse in der ländlichen Entwicklung am Beispiel der nachhaltigen Nutzung von Agrobiodiversität. Schutz und Nutzung von Agrobiodiversität wird hierfür in einem ersten Schritt als sozial-ökologisches Phänomen konzipiert. Daran schließen sich Analysen auf agrarpolitischer und landwirtschaftlich praktischer Ebene an. Anhand einer Analyse der der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik der Europäischen Union (GAP) und im speziellen der Politik zur ländlichen Entwicklung wird deutlich, dass eine programmatische Orientierung an Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung besteht und das Paradigma einer multifunktionalen Landwirtschaft integrierende Ansätze bietet. Diese Ansätze werden jedoch weiterhin vor dem Hintergrund einer unhinterfragten Logik realisiert, die davon ausgeht, dass naturerhaltendes Wirtschaften nicht wettbewerbsfähig sein kann. Die GAP löst somit die hierarchische Trennung zwischen Schutz und Nutzung von Agrobiodiversität nicht auf. Trotz der Wirkmächtigkeit der GAP kann mittels der Fallstudie "Arche-Region Flusslandschaft Elbe" an einem konkreten Beispiel aus der landwirtschaftlichen Praxis dargestellt werden, wie nachhaltige Agrobiodiversitätsnutzung umgesetzt wird. Aus den Ergebnissen der Fallstudie werden abschließend Schlussfolgerungen für eine Weiterentwicklung der Politik zur ländlichen Entwicklung und EU-Agrarpolitik im Allgemeinen abgeleitet.
Wood-pastures have been present in Europe for thousands of years. This form of grazed landscape, combining herbaceous vegetation with trees and shrubs, has often co-evolved with its human users into complex social-ecological systems (SES). Wood-pastures are associated with high cultural and biodiversity values and are an example of the sustainable use of resources. However, due to their often relatively labour-intensive management and low productivity, large areas of wood-pastures have been lost over the last century. The loss of these areas means not only the loss of biodiversity on both local and landscape scales, but also the loss of traditional farming and cultural heritage in some regions. Across the European Union, wood-pastures are facing different problems and are embedded in different social systems and ecological environments. Yet they are all affected by global change and common European policies. To understand the challenges for wood-pastures in a changing world, a holistic approach combining different disciplines is needed. This dissertation therefore is analyzing wood-pastures across Europe as a Social-ecological System, combining ecology and social science with the aim to identify the barriers and drivers for wood-pastures persistence into the future.
A solid knowledge about nature is essential to understand the consequences of biodiversity loss, the limitation of natural resources and the need for a sustainable development. Inspired by these challenges, the researcher investigated in her dissertation seed predation, an important ecosystem function, as part of citizen science project. As seed predation has only rarely been investigated along urban-rural gradients and to integrate the question if the background (urban vs. rural) of primary school children affects their environmental knowledge, she selected study sites in and around Lüneburg and Hamburg, in Northern Germany. In her ecological experiments, it was found that slugs are important seed predators that independently of urbanization predated about 30% of all seeds in the anthropogenically used landscapes investigated. Also, for the first time, primary school children could be integrated in a citizen science approach into this research and it could be shown that even seven year old children can record data as reliable as a scientist. Finally, the researcher investigated the native species knowledge from the children taking part as citizen scientists in her research, considering possible differences due to their urban or rural background. Contrary to her expectation, the urban or rural background had no significant effect on the species knowledge. However, the work provides a good foundation to transfer the approach of introducing a basic foundation of a taxonomical species concept in primary school to foster further understanding on biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
The research aims to assess the sustainability of rural electrification efforts based on off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems in three Andean countries: Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. Although deployment of off-grid PV solutions for rural electrification began in the early 1990s in the Andean region, most of the projects turned out to be unsustainable and did not last. Prior efforts have addressed the different issues and barriers that plagued these projects and inhibited their sustainability. However, these prior analyses were mostly quantitative; systematic qualitative evaluations have been scarce. In this thesis, the researcher addresses the following research question: "Are the rural electrification programs (based on off-grid PV Systems) in the Andean countries sustainable?" In order to answer this research question, he conducted an exhaustive qualitative document analysis complemented by semi-structured expert interviews. The interviewees included experts from different ministries, project managers from leading Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), public and private companies ' representatives, supervisors, and researchers. Although the author also describes several relevant PV-based electrification efforts in the Andean countries, the research was aimed at providing an overall picture of the rural electrification efforts in these countries, rather than measuring the success or failure of specific projects. The gathered information allowed me to assess the sustainability of rural electrification efforts in the Andean countries. This assessment was based on a set of indicators corresponding to the four dimensions of sustainability considered in this thesis: institutional, economical, environmental, and socio-cultural. It was found that Ecuador and Chile have consistently failed to ensure mechanisms for the operation and maintenance of the deployed off-grid systems, which has made these solutions in poor Chilean and Ecuadorian communities inevitably unsustainable. Although Peru has adopted a cross-tariff scheme, the Peruvian case shows that ensuring the funding of off-grid PV solutions is not enough. Peruvian officials appear to be unaware of the importance of local participation (local values and lifestyles are constantly disregarded) and most of the projects have been designed without the participation and engagement of the communities, which has often led to project failures and payment defaults. Although each country has its particular challenges, it was found that the three Andean countries have consistently neglected the importance of strong formal institutions with a flexible and decentralized structure, which in turn significantly compromised the rural electrification effort in these countries.
Neben dem Klimawandel und der Verstädterung zählt der Verlust biologischer und kultureller Vielfalt mit unberechenbaren Konsequenzen für die Bereitstellung von Ökosystemdienstleistungen zu den größten Herausforderungen der Zukunft, auch in UNESCO-Biosphärenreservaten, die Modellregionen für nachhaltige Entwicklung sind. Deshalb wurden durch die vorliegende Studie erstmalig Ökosystemdienstleistungen im UNESCO-Biosphärenreservat Schaalsee erfasst und bewertet. Dort sind insgesamt 39 Ökosystemdienstleistungen nachzuweisen, wobei räumliche Unterschiede hinsichtlich der Zonierung zu beobachten sind: Je strenger der Schutzstatus, desto geringer ist die Anzahl an nutzbaren Ökosystemdienstleistungen. Mittels Q-Methode wurden fünf unterschiedliche Werteperspektiven auf die bereitgestellten Ökosystemdienstleistungen identifiziert: 1) Übereinstimmung mit der Biosphärenreservats-Idee, 2) Regionalität mit dem Streitpunkt Kultur, die als a) entbehrlicher Luxus oder b) elementarer Lebensinhalt wahrgenommen wird, 3) Landwirtschaft und Nostalgie sowie 4) Vorsorge durch natürliche Regulierungsleistungen. Alle Perspektiven stimmen darin überein, dass die Vielfalt der Natur und sauberes Trinkwasser sowie die meisten regulierenden Ökosystemdienstleistungen von großer Wichtigkeit sind. Die Ergebnisse der Erfassung können als Grundlage zur weiteren Untersuchung der Ökosystemdienstleistungen im UNESCO Biosphärenreservat Schaalsee verwendet werden.
Among all attenuation processes, biodegradation plays one of the most important role and is one of the most desirable processes in the environment. To assess biodegradation, a variety of biodegradation test procedures have been developed by several international organizations. OECD guidelines for ready biodegradability testing represent one of the most prominent group of internationally used screening biodegradation tests (series 301A-F). These tests are usually very simple in their designs and allow for the fast and cheap screening of biodegradability. However, because of their stringency, the test conditions are not close to simulating environmental conditions and may lead to unrealistic results. To overcome these limitations, OECD introduced simulation tests which are designed to investigate the behavior of chemicals in specified environmentally relevant compartments. Despite the fact that simulation tests give more insight into the fate of chemicals in the environment, they are not applied frequently as they are often tedious, time consuming and expensive. Consequently, there is a need to provide a new biodegradation testing method that would combine complex testing environment as in simulation tests, easiness in handling and good data repeatability as in screening biodegradation tests. Another challenge is an adaption of the existing biodegradation testing methods to new types of samples, i.e. mixtures of transformation products (TPs). The research on the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment gained momentum in the 1990s; since then, it has been growing. Their presence in the environment is a wellestablished fact. A wide range of pharmaceuticals is continuously detected in many environmental compartments such as surface waters, soils, sediments, or ground waters. After pharmaceuticals reach the natural aquatic environment they may undergo a number of processes such as: photolysis (under direct sunlight), hydrolysis, oxidation and reduction reactions, sorption, biodegradation (by bacteria of fungi), and bioaccumulation. These processes, may cause their elimination from aquatic environment, if reaction is complete, or creation of new compounds i.e., transformation products (TPs). What is more, processes, like chlorination and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), such as H2O2/UV, O3/UV, TiO2/UV, Fenton, and photo-Fenton, or UV treatment which might be applied in water or wastewater treatment, may also lead to the TPs introduction into aquatic environment. The research on the TPs brings many new challenges. From one side, there is a constant need for the the development of a sensitive and reliable analytical separation, detection, and structure elucidation methods. Additionally, there is a need for the preparation of appropriate assays for the investigation of properties of new compounds, especially those answering the question if TPs pose a higher risk to the aquatic ecosystems than their parent compounds. Among numerous groups of pharmaceuticals, two are of great importance: antibiotics since they might promote emergence and maintenance of antimicrobial resistance in the aquatic environment; and cytostatic drugs. Cytostatic drugs can exert carcinogenic, mutagenic and/or teratogenic effects in animals and humans. The challenges of biodegradation testing presented in this thesis, encompasses these different areas of interest and was divided into three objectives: 1) Identification of the knowledge gaps and data distribution of the two groups of pharmaceuticals antibiotics and cytostatic drugs (article I); 2) Increasing the knowledge on biodegradation of cytostatic drugs and their TPs (articles II, III, and IV) and 3) Establishment of a biodegradation test with closer to simulation tests conditions, that could be affordable and to support better understanding on processes in water sediment interface construction - screening water-sediment test. Further validation of the test with an insight into sorption and desorption processes (articles V and VI).
Loss of natural and semi-natural habitat due to increasing human land use for agriculture and housing has led to widespread declines in bee pollinator diversity and abundance, which raised global concerns about the stability of pollination services. Bee population dynamics depend on floral resource diversity and availability in the surrounding landscape, and loss of plant biodiversity may thus directly impair the fitness of individual bee species. However, whether and how plant and resource diversity and availability affect foraging patterns, resource intake, resource quantity and nutrient quality and ultimately fitness of generalist social bees remains unclear. In this thesis, we placed hives of the Australian eusocial stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae, Meliponini) in natural habitat (subtropical forests) and two landscapes differently altered by humans (suburban gardens and macadamia plantations), varying in plant species richness, resource abundance and respective habitat patch size. Foraging patterns and resource intake were compared between landscapes in different seasons and colony growth and fitness were monitored over two and a half years. Bee foraging activity, pollen and sugar intake, diversity of collected pollen and resin resources, resource quantity (colony food stores), colony fitness (brood volume, queenand worker reproduction) and colony growth overwhelmingly increased with plant species richness in the surrounding habitat. However, plant species richness and thus bee fitness was highest in gardens, not in natural forests, as bees in gardens benefited from the continuous floral resource availability of both natural and exotic plants across seasons. In contrast, foraging rates and success, forager orientation and consequently colony fitness was largely reduced in plantations. While bees maximized diversity of collected resources, collecting more diverse resources did however not increase resource functionality and nutritional quality, which appeared to be primarily driven by the surrounding plant community in our study. Conversely, individual worker fitness (body fat and size) was not affected by available resource diversity and abundance, showing that colonies seem not to increase the nutritional investment in single workers, but in overall worker population size. This thesis consequently revealed the outstanding role of plant biodiversity as a key driver of (social) bee fitness by providing more foraging resources, even when only small but florally diverse patches are available.
The dissertation project focuses on empirically investigating consumers' attitudes, motivations and purchasing decisions regarding sustainable products. The focus on this micro perspective, however, does not reflect consumers' roles within the transformation towards sustainable consumption. Therefore, the present framework paper puts the included papers into a greater context and evaluates the findings on a meta-level by applying an enhanced transition management theory. The analysis underlines that consumers' limited personal capabilities are an underlying reason for unsustainable practices. Therefore, the active engagement not only of consumers, but also of companies is required if the transformation is to be successful. If companies actively support consumers in making sustainable choices, consumers can engage in sustainable consumption with only low cognitive efforts. On this basis, genuine sustainable choices are enabled. The dissertation provides practical implications by highlighting potential measures which will help to promote sustainable products from niches to mainstream. In sum, the dissertation project enhances academic understanding of consumers´ sustainable purchasing behavior and reveals the potential of integrating such insights into the management of transformations towards sustainable consumption.
This thesis aims at contributing to the better understanding of the roles of international and domestic institutional and governance patterns for corporate sustainability practices. By combining governance and new institutionalism approaches it bridges the gap between the close look at specific corporate sustainability (CS) policies and the broader view on institutional frameworks. The qualitative comparative approach aims to provide deeper insights on the implementation of different governance schemes by transnational corporations ((TNC). Finally, the conclusions might allow for the development of a) recommendations for the balancing of TNCs' CS management between global and domestic requirements, and b) policy recommendations in the field of CS governance. The overarching research question is as follows: What role do national governance patterns play in comparison to global governance practices in shaping the corporate sustainability (CS) management of transnational corporations (TNCs)? In order to further operationalize this research objective, it is structured into three subquestions: (1) What are relevant institutional factors and global governance patterns for corporate sustainability/ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? (2) What are relevant institutional factors and national governance patterns for corporate sustainability/CSR in Germany, the US, and India? (3) How do these national and global governance patterns influence TNCs' CS management? The first two questions aim at tracing the institutional framework and governance patterns at both national and international levels by identifying norms, stakeholder expectations, prevalent modes of governance and actors involved in governance processes. On this basis, the third question targets TNCs' reaction to internationally varying governance patterns. Here, it is of main interest how relevant governance instruments are perceived by business actors and to which extent their sustainability management at the companies' headquarters and subsidiaries reflect global and national institutional and governance patterns. In order to answer these questions, literature research and a structured qualitative analysis have been conducted. The concepts of CS and CSR build the basis to analyze how TNCs and their subsidiaries manage their social and ecological corporate responsibilities. Against this conceptual background, the research question is approached empirically by the means of an international comparison. Three institutionally highly diverse countries were chosen: Germany, India and the US. India, an emerging market economy, was included to increase the diversity of the sample and to close the research gap indicated above. In order to identify the differences in governance for CS in these three countries, document analyses and 42 guideline-based interviews with experts from governments, NGOs, trade unions and trade associations were carried out. At the same time, global governance instruments for corporate sustainability – which are already relatively well researched - were identified by analyzing the relevant secondary literature. In a second step, in order to explore how TNCs strategically deal with the multitude of different governance approaches at their headquarters and subsidiaries, three case studies of Germany-headquartered transnational corporations in the chemical and engineering industries (Siemens, BASF and Bayer) have been conducted.
In der Wasser- und Abwasseruntersuchung hat der Summenparameter eine heraus-ragende Bedeutung. Sowohl in der gesetzlichen Überwachung als auch der Bemes-sung von Abwasserbehandlungsanlagen werden Belastungen vielfach über die Zu-sammenfassung von Einzelstoffen in Stoffgruppen ausgedrückt. Stoffgruppen lassen sich mit Hilfe von Summenparametern zuverlässig und im Vergleich zu Einzelstoffen mit geringerem Aufwand bestimmen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden die Verfahrens-grundlagen der Summenparameter und ihre Verwendung in der Wasser- und Abwas-seruntersuchung erläutert. Ein bedeutender wie auch umstrittener Summenparameter ist der AOX - Adsorbier-bare organisch gebundene Halogene (AOX). Bedeutend ist er deshalb, weil er ein ord-nungs- und abgaberechtlich relevanter Abwasserparameter ist. Umstritten ist er unter anderem, weil er ursprünglich für andere Zwecke als die Abwasseruntersuchung ent-wickelt wurde. Seinerzeit war der AOX ein Überwachungsparameter für Trinkwasser. Als Abwasserparameter dient er zur Erfassung einer im Abwasser unerwünschten Stoffgruppe, der besorgnisauslösende Eigenschaften wie Persistenz, Bioakkumulier-barkeit und Toxizität (PBT-Eigenschaften) zugeschrieben wird. Im zweiten Teil der Ar-beit wurden exemplarisch am Parameter AOX die Zusammenhänge zwischen Stoff-parametern und besorgnisauslösenden Eigenschaften bzw. Wirkungen der ausge-wählten parameterausmachenden Substanzen untersucht. Die Untersuchungsergeb-nisse wurden vor allem in Zusammenhang mit der Ermittlung und Verankerung von Mindestanforderungen für das Einleiten von Abwasser bewertet.