333.7 Natürliche Ressourcen, Energie und Umwelt
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.
Diese Arbeit stellt eine Pionierarbeit zum Thema Keyline Design als ganzheitliches Gestaltungskonzept für landwirtschaftliche Betriebe im deutschsprachigen Raum dar und ist aus der Zusammenarbeit mit Akteuren der Gemeinschaft Schloss Tempelhof in Süddeutschland entstanden. Keyline Design hat zum Ziel, durch systematische Planung von landwirtschaftlicher Flächennutzung und Tiefenlockerung in einem topographieabhängigen Kultivierungsmuster, die Bodenfruchtbarkeit zu steigern sowie Wasserfluss auf Landschaften kontrolliert zu nutzen und gleichmäßig zu verteilen. Vor dem Hintergrund von Bodendegradation durch landwirtschaftliche Praktiken und sich verändernde klimatische Bedingungen, stellen divers gestaltete Landschaften eine wichtige Anpassungsstrategie zum Schutz gegen Extremwetterereignisse dar. Keyline Design hat bisher innerhalb dieses Diskurses in Zentral- und Nordeuropa wenig Beachtung erfahren. Für die transdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit wurde innerhalb dieser Arbeit eine Vorgehensweise zur Erstellung eines Keyline Entwicklungsszenarios entwickelt: Mithilfe eines transdisziplinären Arbeitstreffens und einem online Fragebogen wurden die Ziele und Entwicklungswünsche der 140 Personen umfassenden Gemeinschaft Schloss Tempelhof erfasst und auf Basis eines Keyline Kultivierungsmusters ein Entwicklungsszenario für die landwirtschaftliche Flächennutzung erstellt. Keyline Design wurde als Planungskonzept für die topographieabhängige Integration von Agroforstsystemen, wie Pufferzonen, Waldweiden und Alley Cropping, sowie für die Platzierung von Wasserkörpern genutzt. Die Ergebnisse des Entwicklungsszenarios zeigen, dass das erarbeitete Kultivierungsmuster von der Topographie abhängig ist, die Ausgestaltung des Szenarios jedoch vor allem vom Kontext der Akteure.
Traditional farming landscapes typically support exceptional biodiversity. They evolved as tightly coupled social-ecological systems, in which traditional human land-use shaped highly heterogeneous landscapes. However, these landscapes are under severe threats of land-use change which potentially pose direct threats to biodiversity, in particular through land-use intensification and land abandonment. Navigating biodiversity conservation in such changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the drivers that maintain the social-ecological system. This dissertation aimed to identify system properties that facilitate biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscape, focusing specifically on birds and large carnivores in the rapidly changing traditional farmland region of Southern Transylvania, Romania. In order to identify these properties, I first examined the effects of local and landscape scale land-use patterns on birds and large carnivores and how they may be affected by future land-use change (Chapters II-V). Second, to gauge the role of particular traditional land-use elements for biodiversity I focused on the conservation value of traditional wood pastures (Chapters VI-VIII). Third, I took a social-ecological systems approach to understand how links between the social and ecological parts of the system affect human-bear coexistence (Chapters IV and IX). Bird diversity was supported by the broad gradients of woody vegetation cover and compositional heterogeneity. Land-use intensification, and hence the loss of woody vegetation cover and homogenization of land covers, would thus negatively affect biodiversity. This was especially evident from predictions on the distribution of the corncrake (Crex crex) in response to potential future land cover homogenization. Here, a moderate reduction of land cover diversity could drastically reduce the extent of corncrake habitat. Further results showed that the brown bear (Ursus arctos) would mainly be affected by land-use change through the fragmentation of large forest blocks, especially if land-use change would reduce habitat connectivity to the presumed source population in the Carpathian Mountains. Moreover, this dissertation revealed that large carnivores (brown bear and wolf, Canis lupus) may have important and often ignored roles in structuring the ecosystem of traditional farming landscapes by limiting herbivores. Wood pastures were found to have a high conservation value. The combination of low-intensity used grasslands with old scattered trees provided important supplementary habitat for different forest species such as woodpeckers and the brown bear. Worryingly, current management of wood pastures differed from traditional techniques in several aspects, which may threaten their persistence in the landscape. The majority of people had a positive perception on human-bear coexistence. The use of traditional sheep herding techniques combined with the tolerance of some shepherds to occasional livestock predation facilitated coexistence in a region where both carnivores and livestock are present. More generally, the genuine links between people and their environment were important drivers of people´s positive views on coexistence. However, perceived failures of top-down managing institutions could potentially erode these links and reduce people´s tolerance towards bears. Through the consideration of two different animal taxa, this dissertation revealed six important system properties facilitating biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscapes. Similar proportions of the main land-use types (arable land, grassland, and forests) support species richness at the regional scale possible through habitat connectivity and continuous spill-over between land-use types. Heterogeneous landscapes can further support biodiversity through complementation and supplementation of habitat at the landscape scale. Gradients of woody vegetation cover and heterogeneity, supported biodiversity at both local and landscape scales possibly through the provision of a wide range of resources. The heterogeneous character of the landscape is tightly linked to traditional land-use practices, which also maintain specific traditional land-use elements and facilitate human-carnivore coexistence. Top-down limitation of large carnivores on herbivores possibly enhances vegetation growth and tree regeneration. The genuine links between humans and nature support human-bear coexistence, and these links may form the core of people´s values and sustainable use of natural resources.
Conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services
(2012)
The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services: (1) global justice between different people of the present generation ("intragenerational justice"); (2) justice between people of different generations ("intergenerational justice"). International sustainability policy attaches equal normative importance to both objectives of justice. Accordingly, environmental philosophers ethically justify that people living today and people living in the future have equal rights to certain basic goods, including ecosystems and their services (e.g. Feinberg 1981, Visser’t Hooft 2007). Whereas ideal theories of sustainability and justice do not recognize interdependencies between intragenerational and intergenerational justice, conflicts in attaining the justices possibly arise in policy implementation. Identifying and preventing such conflicts is fundamental to devise an ethically legitimate, politically consistent and actually effective sustainability policy. This dissertation systematically investigates conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services. Human wellbeing depends on the services provided by ecosystems. Yet, humans substantially degrade world’s ecosystems, and therewith cause the loss of important ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 26ff.). The idea of sustainability demands to use ecosystem services in accordance with the two objectives of intragenerational justice and intergenerational justice. Reality, however, is far from attaining these objectives: Both today’s global poor and future persons are, resp. will be, disproportionately affected by the loss of vital ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 62, 85). Especially severe affected are the rural poor who directly depend on local ecosystem services for food, income and health. The political discourse on the relationship between the objectives of intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services (‘justice-relationship’) is blurred. Further, the political discourse lacks a common understanding of justice in ecosystem-use and a systematic reflection on the actual ‘justice-relationship’, such as on the factors that cause conflicts between the two justices. In this dissertation, I investigate the ‘justice-relationship’ along three central questions: • What conception(s) of justice can adequately address the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services? • How must sustainability policy be designed to enhance both intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services? • (How) Can economics be helpful for characterizing and assessing trade-offs between the two justices? I approach these questions both generally and by the example of a case study, the MASIPAG farmer network in the Philippines. Methodologically, I combine a normative and a positive analysis of the relationship between intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services: The normative analysis serves the explication, justification and reflection of the norms underlying the ‘justice-relationship’; the positive analysis serves the description of the ‘justice-relationship’ in the sustainability discourse and in practical contexts, as well as the provision of explanations on the determinants of the ‘justice-relationship’. As methodological approach, I apply the “comprehensive multi-level approach” as developed by Baumgärtner et al. (2008) – investigating the ‘justice-relationship’ simultaneously on the three levels of (i) concept, (ii) model and (iii) case study.