354 Verwaltung von Wirtschaft und Umwelt
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This cumulative dissertation investigates food policy councils (FPCs) as potential levers for sustainability transformation. The four research papers included here on this recent phenomenon in Germany present new insights regarding the process of FPCs’ emergence (Emergence paper), the legal conditions which affect their establishment (Legal paper), the different roles of FPCs in policy-making processes (Roles paper) and FPCs’ potential to democratise the food system (Food democracy paper).
Drawing on and contextualizing the results of the four individual studies, the framework paper uses the leverage points concept originally developed by Meadows (1999) and adopted by Abson et al. (2016) as a lens to discuss FPCs’ potential as levers for sustainability transformation. This conceptual background includes three so-called realms of leverage, which are considered to be of particular importance in transformational, solution-oriented sustainability science: first, the change, stability and learning in institutions (re-structure), second, the interactions between people and nature (re-connect) and third, the ways in which knowledge is produced and used (re-think). Framing the findings of the four research papers in terms of these three realms, the framework paper shows that FPCs could serve as cross realm levers, i.e. as interventions that simultaneously address knowledge production, institutional reform and human-nature interactions.
Water is vital for humankind and ecosystems alike. However, population growth, agricultural inten-sification, urbanization, and climate change embody potential hazards and pressures for water re-sources without existing long-term solutions. For two decades now, policy and governance literature has increasingly emphasised the role of learning in finding solutions to environmental policy prob-lems and effectively steering governance practices. Participation of non-state actors in decision mak-ing is widely considered to deliver learning products that support effective outcomes for environ-mental problems. Besides, the institutionalisation of participation through legislation opens up the necessity for (administrative) organizers to learn about participation as a governance mode in order to steer its effective working. Apart from participation, management approaches specifically aiming at driving learning, such as adaptive management (AM), are increasingly endorsed in water govern-ance. Despite the current prominence of learning in the environmental governance literature, evi-dence is lacking on which learning approaches function effectively regarding outcomes, whether participation aids learning, and how learning about successful governance arrangements is most effectively promoted.
This doctoral dissertation aims to contribute to clarification of the potential of learning for water governance. The goal is to trace and understand the environmental impacts of learning through par-ticipation (research aim 1) and adaptive management (research aim 2), and the effect of learning on participation as a governance mode (research aim 3).
For this goal, I engage in a predominantly qualitative research design following the case study method. For every specific research aim cases are selected and analysed qualitatively according to conceptual categories and mechanisms which are defined beforehand. Quantitative studies are used to corroborate the results for research aim 1 and 2 in a mixed-method approach to enhance the valid-ity of results. The empirical research context is European water governance, the implementation of the EU Water Framework and EU Floods Directive (WFD, FD) specifically. Eight cases of participa-tory decision-making across three European countries and five cases of AM in Northern Germany for WFD implementation are examined to identify whether learning in these processes enhanced envi-ronmental outcomes. To detect whether governance learning by public officials occurred, the design of participatory processes for FD implementation in ten German federal states is assessed.
The findings of research aim 1, understanding learning through participation and its effects on water governance, reveal that participatory planning led to learning through improved understandings at an individual and group level. Learning did, however, hardly shape effective outcomes. In the AM cases (research aim 2) managers and participants of implementing networks improved their knowledge as well as capacities, and spread the results. Nonetheless, environmental improvement was not necessarily linked to ecological learning. Regarding learning about participation as a govern-ance mode (research aim 3) all interviewed public officials in German federal states reported some degree of governance learning, which emerged not systematically but primarily drawing on own experiences and intuition.
These findings are condensed into three overarching lessons for learning in water governance: (1) Interactive communication seems to form the overall frame for participant and group learning. Framing of learning experiences turned out to play an important and potentially distorting role, for which professional facilitation and structured knowledge aggregation methods might be an im-portant counterbalance. (2) Learning did not automatically enhance environmental outcomes. It may thus not be an explanatory variable for policy outcomes, but a conditioning or intervening vari-able related to collective action, motivation for participation, and situating the issue at hand at wider societal levels. (3) The concepts of puzzling and powering might help understand learning as a source for effectiveness in the long-term when complemented with interest-based debates for creat-ing sufficient political agency of policy issues. Learning seen as puzzling processes might instruct acceptance and legitimization for new powering efforts. The perpetuation of learning in systematic ways and structures appears to characterize an alternative to this reflexive and strategic interplay, for which the water-related EU directives provide the basis.
These insights are of practical and policy relevance, particularly for policy makers and practitioners in the pursuit of learning. They may further contribute to the academic understanding of learning in water governance and its potential contribution to transforming and adapting water governance re-gimes, as envisioned in the European water-related directives.
Viable communication systems
(2020)
Since the middle of the 20th century, human society experiences a “Great Acceleration” manifesting in historically remarkable growth rates that create severe sustainability problems. The globally exploding potentials of information and knowledge exchange have been and are vital drivers for this acceleration. Society has now come to the point that it requires a “Great Transformation” towards sustainability to ensure the viability of the planet for a vital society. The energy transition plays a central role for this transformation. In this context, human society has developed a comparably good understanding of the necessary infrastructural changes of this transition. For transforming the patterns of energy production and use in an energy transition as part of the “Great Transformation”, this process of change now needs to strengthen its focus on information, communication, and knowledge systems. Human society needs to establish a knowledge system that has the potential to create usable knowledge for sustainability solutions. This requires organizing a communication system that is sufficiently complex, interconnected, and, at the same time, efficient for integrating reflexive, open-ended, inter- and transdisciplinary learning, evaluation, and knowledge co-production processes across multiple levels. This challenge opens a wide field of research.
This cumulative dissertation contributes to research in this direction by applying a systemic sustainability perspective on the content and organization of communication in the field of research on sustainable energy and the operational level of municipal climate action as part of the energy transition. Regarding sustainability, this thesis uses strong sustainability and its principles as a frame for evaluating the content of communication. Regarding the systemic perspective, the thesis particularly relies on the following theories: (i) the human-environment system model by R. Scholz as an overarching framework regarding interactions between humans and nature, (ii) social systems theory by N. Luhmann to reflect the complexity of society, (iii) knowledge management to consider the human character of knowledge and a practice-oriented perspective, and (iv) management cybernetics, in particular, the Viable System Model by S. Beer as a framework to analyze and assess organizational structures. Furthermore, the thesis leverages the potential of text mining as a method to identify and visualize patterns in texts that reflect prevalent paradigms in communication.
The thesis applies the above conceptual and methodological basis in three case studies. Case Study 1 investigates the measures proposed in 16 municipal climate action plans of regional centers in Lower Saxony, Germany. It uses a text mining approach in the form of an Summary interpretation network analysis. It analyzes how different societal subsystems are connected at the semantic level and to what extent sustainability principles can be recognized. Case Study 2 analyzes and reflects paradigms and discursive network structures in international scientific publications on sustainable energy. The study investigates 26533 abstracts published from 1990 to 2016 using a text mining approach, in particular topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation. Case Study 3 turns again to the cases of municipal climate action in Lower Saxony examined in Case Study 1. It examines the involvement of climate action managers of these cities in multilevel knowledge processes. Using design principles for knowledge systems, it evaluates to what extent knowledge is managed in this field across levels for supporting the energy transition and to what extent local innovation potential is leveraged or supported.
The three case studies show that international research on sustainable energy and municipal climate action in Germany provide promising contributions to achieve a transformation towards sustainability but do not fully reflect the complexity of society and still support a growth paradigm, in contrast to a holistic sustainability paradigm. Further, the case studies show that research and local action are actively engaging with the diversity of energy technologies but are lagging in dealing with the socio-epistemic (communication) system, especially with regard to achieving cohesion. Using the example of German municipalities, Case Studies 1 and 3 highlight the challenges of achieving coherent local action for sustainability and bottom-up organizational learning due to incomplete or uncoordinated multilevel knowledge exchange. At the same time, the studies also point out opportunities for supporting the required coherent multilevel learning processes based on local knowledge. This can be achieved, for instance, by strengthening the coordinating role of intermediary organizational units or establishing closer interactions between the local operational units and the national level.
The thesis interprets and synthesizes the results of the three case studies from its systemic sustainability perspective. On this basis, it provides several generalized recommendations that should be followed for establishing viable communication systems, especially but not exclusively in policy-making:
Systemic holism: Consider matter, energy, and information flows as an integrated triplet in the context of scales, structures, and time in the various subsystems. Knowledge society: Focus on the socio-epistemic (communication) system, e.g., using the perspective of knowledge systems and associated design principles considering, for instance, working environments across horizontal and vertical levels, knowledge forms and types, and knowledge processes. Sufficiency communication: Emphasize sufficiency approaches, make it attractive, and find differentiated ways for communicating them. Multilevel cohesion and innovation: Achieve cohesion between the local and higher levels and leverage local innovations while avoiding isolated local action. Organizational interface design: Define the role of organizational units by the interactions they create at the interfaces with and between societal subsystems. Local transdisciplinarity: Support local transdisciplinary approaches integrating various subsystems, especially industry, while coordinating these approaches from a higher level for leveraging local innovation. Digital public system: Exploit existing digital technologies or infrastructures in the public system and recognize the value of data in the public sphere for achieving cohesion. Beyond the above recommendations, this thesis suggests that potential for further research lies in: Advancing nature-inspired systemic frameworks. Understanding the structure and creation of human knowledge. Developing text mining methodologies towards solution-oriented approaches.
Im Zuge der Energiewende wird Strom zunehmend in dezentralen erneuerbaren Energieanlagen produziert und der
Verbraucher für eine regenerative Energieversorgung sensibilisiert. Ökostromprodukte nehmen dadurch einen immer
höheren Stellenwert ein. Regionale Ökostromprodukte haben dabei das Potential, dem Verbraucher die Herkunft seines Stroms nachvollziehbar zu vermitteln und die Vermarktung von Ökostromprodukten zu erleichtern. Diese Arbeit untersucht daher die Frage, inwieweit der regionale Bezug von Ökostrom gegenüber dem Kunden ausgewiesen werden kann. Das Instrument der Stromkennzeichnung kann in Verbindung mit Herkunftsnachweisen eine solche Ausweisung ermöglichen. Die Arbeit zeigt jedoch, dass dies unter den aktuellen rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen an einer zu geringen Wirtschaftlichkeit und mangelnden Vergleichbarkeit der Ökostromprodukte scheitert.
Grünstrukturen und Ausgleichsflächen im Geltungsbereich von Bebauungsplänen (B-Plänen) tragen zu einer ökologischen Aufwertung von Siedlungsflächen sowie zur Steigerung der Lebensqualität für Bewohnerinnen bei. Entscheidend dafür ist die Qualität der Umsetzung. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurden 29 B-Pläne der Hansestadt Lüneburg, die der Eingriffsregelung nach § 1a Abs. 3 BauGB unterliegen, einem Soll-Ist-Vergleich unterzogen. Ergebnis der Erhebung ist, dass Maßnahmen auf öffentlichen Flächen i.d.R. implementiert sind, wobei die Ausdehnung von Privatgär
ten in öffentliche Flächen hinein und z.T. die Pflege problematisch sind. Tendenziell zeigte sich auch, dass Maßnahmen auf Privatflächen weniger oft umgesetzt werden oder nur zufällig vorhanden zu sein scheinen. Hier wird zum
einen die Notwendigkeit eines konsequenteren Vollzugs deutlich; zum anderen sollte im Planungsprozess neben dem ökologischen Mehrwert der Planung die realistische Durchführbarkeit fokussiert werden.
Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel, Ressourcenmangel oder steigende Energiepreisen erfordern eine höhere Energieeffizienz. Der Gebäudesektor ist für hohe Energieverbräuche verantwortlich. Ein Instrument zur Steigerung
der Gebäudeenergieeffizienz ist das Energiespar-Contracting (ESC). Ein externer Contractor verpflichtet sich vertraglich zur Durchführung effizienzsteigernder Maßnahmen eines Gebäudes. Die Aufwendungen werden refinanziert durch realisierte Energiekosteneinsparungen. Obwohl das ESC Vorteile bietet wird es selten angewandt. Die
Arbeit fokussiert sich besonders auf Möglichkeiten und Probleme des ESC als Geschäftsmodell für Stadtwerke. Die Arbeit verknüpft wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse und Praxiswissen und konzentriert sich auf rechtliche Aspekte.
