Karl Bruckmeier

The Challenge of Evaluating Policies for Promoting the Multifunctionality of Agriculture: When ‘Good’ Questions Cannot be Addressed Quantitatively and ‘Quantitative Answers are not that Good’

This paper examines the problems that arise when seeking to evaluate policies for the multifunctionality of agriculture (MFA) and rural areas. The focus is on the conceptual frameworks, methods, tools and data that are used to evaluate policies and regulations that impact upon or are targeted at agriculture and rural space. The paper builds upon a review of policy evaluation practice and experiences in six different EU member states and a summary review among Central and Eastern European Countries, carried out as part of the EU-funded MULTAGRI research project (for more information on the project see www.multagri.net). The evaluation methods and the agricultural functions that the policies address differ widely between countries. Until now, the focus of MFA has primarily been on nature protection, environmental concerns and landscape conservation. Other dimensions of multifunctionality, such as community services, renewable energy sources, recreation and leisure and linkages with non-agricultural development (for example in gastronomy and tourism) have been largely neglected. As a result, multifunctionality is not yet understood as a way of addressing concerns about economic, social and environmental sustainability. This paper argues that classic evaluation tools, such as cost-benefit analysis and other economic models are not, by themselves sufficient to evaluate the MFA and rural areas. It argues that more comprehensive and integrated approaches need to be adopted, that are more focussed on the potential of agriculture to fulfil new societal goals, contribute to rural employment and improve the viability of rural, particularly less favoured areas (this potential of MFA is described in more detail in the introductory article to this issue). The concluding section argues the need to build better links between quantitative tools and qualitative, discursive and consultative approaches. Ways are sketched out for developing more comprehensive and integrated evaluation approaches that might provide more detailed insights into the complex interrelationships between policy impacts, the MFA and rural areas and their future development. The suggested improvements draw on the notions of joint learning, holistic systems approaches and trans-disciplinary knowledge production.

Swedish pig producers and their perspectives on animal welfare: a case study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the views of Swedish pig producers concerning animal welfare, the schemes practised for animal welfare in Sweden, and the ramifications of animal welfare for Swedish retailers and consumers.Design/methodology/approach – The Swedish study for animal welfare covers a pig‐production sector of 2,794 producers (2005). The pig production study was one of three such studies conducted as part of the EUs Welfare Quality project with semi‐structured interviews (the other two studies were on cattle and poultry production). The stratified sample included 60 pig producers, both conventional and organic, selected from all areas of Sweden.Findings – The main results show a high level of animal care exercised in the Swedish pig production sector. Although there are no specific animal welfare schemes implemented, there is a high level of animal care provided by farmer participation in quality assurance schemes that include animal welfare stipulations, among other criteri...

Resource Use Conflicts and Urban–Rural Resource Use Dynamics in Swedish Coastal Landscapes: Comparison and Synthesis

ABSTRACT In European countries, the coasts are areas with high population density, intensive use of marine and terrestrial resources, and rapid urbanization. Coastal development creates conflicts and further ones are expected through climate change and sea level rise. In this article, the aim is knowledge synthesis for conflict research to support strategies for sustainable coastal zone management. For that purpose an interdisciplinary conceptual framework is elaborated and applied in exemplary conflict analyses. The framework combines knowledge from different fields of environmental and conflict research. In an analysis of 26 local, non-violent resource use conflicts in the Swedish metropolitan coastal areas of Gothenburg and Malmö, the themes of coastal landscape changes, resource management, and conflict analysis are connected in a governance perspective. The data were collected through qualitative, semi-structured interviews and discussions with local stakeholders and experts, document analysis and analysis of articles from local newspapers. The conflict analysis showed the multi-faceted and complex nature of the conflicts. Solutions require interdisciplinary research and knowledge synthesis. Our conclusions relate to the requirements of further development of knowledge integration and approaches to multi-scale environmental governance.

Baltic Seal Reconciliation in Practice

This chapter presents the results of case studies on human-wildlife conflicts conducted in Sweden and Finland. In both cases the conflict is between the conservation of the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and small-scale coastal fishing. The characteristics of the conflict between grey seal protection and fishery can be shown by way of a systematic comparison between the two countries and model regions as done here. Thus one can also better see what can be learned from the comparison of the cases. The main messages from both case studies in the Baltic Sea are formulated with regard to the significance of coastal fishery (as resource manager, not only resource user), with regard to single conflict mitigation measures, such as seal hunting and technical solutions to the conflict, and with regard to a combination of measures and overall approaches to conflict management. All these messages converge to the conclusion that much more can be learned from the management of the seal conflict than the resolution of that specific conflict: one by one the lessons learnt turn out to be steps of a more encompassing strategy of sustainable resource management in the coastal zone.

Thematic Profiles of Social Ecology — The Research on Human Land Use, Food and Biomass Production in European and Global Contexts

The interdisciplinary perspective of social ecology for the critical analysis of global resource flows and the interaction of nature and society structures and directs the analysis of agriculture, food production and land use in specific ways. The use of MEFA and HANPP indicators results in conclusions about the physical limits of human resource use that cannot be made with monetary analyses of resource flows in economics. The conclusions are also specific in their application to assess sustainable development; they do not confirm the simple assumptions in neo-Malthusian studies that population growth always implies growth of resource use that exceeds the carrying capacity of ecosystems. With the development of the social-ecological indicators the carrying capacity concept needs to be differentiated (Rees 1996; see below) and seen in relation to the other indicators — there is no longer a single and simple ecological criterion for measuring the limits of human resource use.

Thematic Profiles of Social Ecology — The Research on Resource Flows and the Physical Economy in a Global Context

The emerging science of social ecology is discussed in this and the following chapter with two of its main research themes and results, (a) global resource flow and (b) land use related to human consumption of biomass and food, before the emerging theoretical framework, including societal relations to nature and societal metabolism, is reviewed (Chapter 6). In the following description of the analysis of societal metabolism, the social ecology of human resource use is reviewed with two guiding questions: 1. How is the controversy about the tragedy of the commons as one focusing on limits of human resource use solved in social ecology? 2. What does the idea of social metabolism and metabolic regimes imply for the empirical study of global resource flows in social ecology?

Sources of Social Ecology — Ecosystems and Natural Resources in Ecological Discourses

Social ecology is first of all ecology with a knowledge core coming from natural scientific ecological research. Ecology is the study of relations between organisms and their environment, according to a classical definition of Haeckel, which has been criticised as abstract or circular by Wiegleb (1992: 66). Wiegleb looked for more empirically oriented definitions, such as that of Begon et al. (analysis of the distribution of individuals, populations and communities in space and time) or Peters (prediction of biomass, productivity and diversity in ecosystems; ibid.). Ecology has during the 20th century become an interdisciplinary subject with a combination of natural and social scientific knowledge, in human, cultural and social ecology, adopting concepts and perspectives from general systems theory, economics and anthropology. Using a double perspective seems characteristic of ecology as well as social ecology today — that of understanding human nature as biological and cultural, studying man—environment relations (including the natural and the social environment) with the core concepts of organism and social actor and coupled social and ecological systems.

Thematic Profiles of Social Ecology — Knowledge Synthesis in a Theory of Interaction of Society and Nature

Social ecology is an interdisciplinary discourse system with open boundaries. A plurality of theories and analytical frameworks can be applied and connected in varying forms for the study of different aspects in the broad theme of interaction of society and nature. For social ecology this theme cannot remain one of an unstructured variety of ideas and concepts from empirical studies, documenting historical cases and the cultural variation of ideas, as, for example, in the history of ideas by Pojman (2006), which summarises the theories of human nature throughout the history of science. Theoretical knowledge synthesis in social ecology is an attempt to integrate the pretheoretical concepts of society, man and nature in a historically specified core theory. This theory allows the interaction between society and nature to be studied and explained for different historical forms of societies with conceptual models as socio-metabolic regimes.

Social Ecology — A Science in Development

Social ecology exposes the possibilities and the limits of interdisciplinary knowledge production through its development and the way in which it learns and organises interdisciplinary knowledge production in a paradigmatic way. Interdisciplinarity in general has raised the awareness of problems with knowledge production and application. Social ecology as interdisciplinary discourse is especially required when the boundaries of social and natural scientific disciplines are transgressed. Natural and social-scientific knowledge cannot easily be projected in a continuum of integrated knowledge and a continuum of interlocking spheres. This became apparent again in the controversy about the Potsdam Manifesto (mentioned in Chapter 6).

Interdisciplinary Research in Society and Nature in the 20th Century

Social ecology as the science of the interaction of society and nature is part of the interdisciplinary environmental research that developed in the 20th century under such names as human, cultural, social or political ecology. The term “social ecology” was used in several discourses in science and policy.