Silke Beck

A Democracy Paradox in Studies of Science and Technology

Today many scholars seem to agree that citizens should be involved in expert deliberations on science and technology issues. This interest in public deliberation has gained attraction in many practical settings, especially in the European Union, and holds the promise of more legitimate governance of science and technology. In this article, the authors draw on the European Commission’s (EC) report ‘‘Taking the European Knowledge Society Seriously’’ to ask how legitimate these efforts to ‘‘democratize’’ scientific expertise really are. While the report borrows from deliberative democrats’ normative accounts of legitimacy, the authors identify a tension between the principles for legitimate rule prescribed by deliberative democratic theory and the report’s celebration of diversity and dissent. While this inconsistency suggests that the legitimacy of deliberative governance arrangements is justified on empirical rather than normative grounds, it remains an open question whether studies of science and technology offer enough empirical support for such a justification. In this article, the authors address this pressing question and propose three possible responses.

Stakeholder Engagement in the Making: IPBES Legitimization Politics

A growing number of expert organizations aim to provide knowledge for global environmental policy-making. Recently, there have also been explicit calls for stakeholder engagement at the global level to make scientific knowledge relevant and usable on the ground. The newly established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is one of the first international expert organizations to have systematically developed a strategy for stakeholder engagement in its own right. In this article, we analyze the emergence of this strategy. Employing the concept “politics of legitimation,” we examine how and for what reasons stakeholder engagement was introduced, justified, and finally endorsed, as well as its effects. The article explores the process of institutionalizing stakeholder engagement, as well as reconstructing the contestation of the operative norms (membership, tasks, and accountability) regulating the rules for this engagement. We conclude by discussing the broader importance of the findings for IPBES, as well as for international expert organizations in general.

The Co-production of Scale and Power: The Case of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between scale and power in the context of scientific assessments. Scientific advisory boards and assessment processes strongly influence how the spatial dimensions of environmental problems are defined and thus how power relations are reconfigured accordingly across scales and levels. The question of scale along with its implications for policy-making has become a contested factor in the design of such assessment processes. In particular, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) has dealt explicitly with the issue of scale and how it is related to decision-making across institutional levels. Starting out from a critical reading of experiences with the MA, this paper analyses the design process of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in terms of how issues of scale are being addressed. Section 2 presents the analytical framework. It combines the scholarly literature on critical state theory and science and technology studies. Both approaches challenge notions of scale as ‘natural’, ‘fixed’, bounded spatial units. They draw our attention to scalar configurations ‘in the making’ and highlight the need to take the relationships between knowledge and power seriously. The concluding section argues that the selection of scale is a matter of political contestation and normative choice rather than of purely scientific judgement. Using the MA and IPBES examples we show that although assessments are often seen as a means to achieve unbiased, rational solutions by ‘keeping politics out of policy’ (Haas, 1992), there is a need to better understand their inherent connection to the distribution of power and to implicit forms of delegation.

Integrierte Systemlösungen als Strategie für eine nachhaltige und exportstarke Wasserwirtschaft

In den nächsten Jahren werden sich bereits abzeichnende Probleme der Wasserknappheit und -qualität weiter zunehmen. Weltweit steht demnach die Wasserwirtscha vor komplexen Herausforderungen: ■ Das weltweite Bevölkerungswachstum auf rund 9,3 Mrd. Menschen im Jahr 2050 führt zu einer vermehrten Nachfrage nach Wasser. ■ Zugleich steigen auch der Wohlstand und somit die Ansprüche eines Teils der Menschen. Bereits 2030 besteht das Risiko, dass die Nachfrage nach Wasser global das nachhaltig nutzbare Dargebot um 40 % überschreitet, wenn nicht die Wasserproduktivität stark verbessert wird [1]. ■ Da mehr als 50 Prozent der Weltbevölkerung in weiterhin stark wachsenden urbanen Agglomerationen leben, sind Antworten auf den steigenden städtischen Wasserbedarf erforderlich; auch in informellen Siedlungen ist die Abwasserentsorgung zu organisieren [2]. ■ 3,2 Mrd. Menschen sind an eine angemessene Sanitärversorgung anzuschließen. Der Zeitrahmen des entsprechenden UN-Milleniumziels droht sowohl aus politisch-institutionellen als auch aus sozio-kulturellen Gründen gesprengt zu werden. [3]. ■ Auch in der Siedlungswasserwirtscha der Industrieländer besteht hoher Investitionsund Erneuerungsbedarf (zudem sind die komplementären häuslichen Wasser-Infrastrukturen in Altbauten erneuerungsbedür ig). ■ Zusätzlicher Handlungsbedarf entsteht, weil sich die sozio-ökonomischen und auch die klimatischen Randbedingungen dynamisch verändern; zudem lassen Mikroschadsto e weiteren Regelungsbedarf entstehen. Die siedlungswasserwirtschaftlichen Netze und Anlagen sind an diesen sich verändernden Rahmen anzupassen. Das alles wird sich auf den globalen Wasserund Abwassermarkt auswirken: Auf Grund des bestehenden Investitionsbedarfs werden erhebliche Umsatzsteigerungen erwartet. Weltweit wird das Investitionsvolumen rund 400 bis 500 Mrd. Euro jährlich betragen [4]. Das ISOE-Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung identi zierte gemeinsam mit dem Fraunhofer Institut für Systemund Innovationsforschung sowie dem Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung in einem vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Förderkennzeichen 02WT0820) geförderten Verbundprojekt „Wasser 2050: Nachhaltige wasserwirtschaftliche Systemlösungen – künftige Chancen für die deutsche Wasserwirtschaft“ langfristige Zielstellungen für nachhaltige Innovationen sowie deren Erfolgsbedingungen.

Rice ecosystem services in South-east Asia

Josef Settele · Kong Luen Heong · Ingolf Kühn · Stefan Klotz · Joachim H. Spangenberg · Gertrudo Arida · Alexis Beaurepaire · Silke Beck · Erwin Bergmeier · Benjamin Burkhard · Roland Brandl · Jesus Victor Bustamante · Adam Butler · Jimmy Cabbigat · Xuan Canh Le · Josie Lynn A. Catindig · Van Chien Ho · Quoc Cuong Le · Kinh Bac Dang · Monina Escalada · Christophe Dominik · Markus Franzén · Oliver Fried · Christoph Görg · Volker Grescho · Sabine Grossmann · Geoff M. Gurr · Buyung A. R. Hadi · Huu Hai Le · Alexander Harpke · Annika L. Hass · Norbert Hirneisen · Finbarr G. Horgan · Stefan Hotes · Yuzuru Isoda · Reinhold Jahn · Helen Kettle · Anika Klotzbücher · Thimo Klotzbücher · Fanny Langerwisch · Wai‐Hong Loke · Yu‐Pin Lin · Zhongxian Lu · Keng‐Yeang Lum · Damasa B. Magcale‐Macandog · Glenn Marion · Leonardo Marquez · Felix Müller · Hung Manh Nguyen · Quynh Anh Nguyen · Van Sinh Nguyen · Jürgen Ott · Lyubomir Penev · Hong Thai Pham · Nico Radermacher · Beatriz Rodriguez‐Labajos · Christina Sann · Cornelia Sattler · Martin Schädler · Stefan Scheu · Anja Schmidt · Julian Schrader · Oliver Schweiger · Ralf Seppelt · Kukiat Soitong · Pavel Stoev · Susanne Stoll‐Kleemann · Vera Tekken · Kirsten Thonicke · Bianca Tilliger · Kai Tobias · Y. Andi Trisyono · Thanh Truong Dao · Teja Tscharntke · Quang Tuan Le · Manfred Türke · Tomáš Václavík · Doris Vetterlein · Sylvia ’Bong’ Villareal · Kim Chi Vu · Quynh Vu · Wolfgang W. Weisser · Catrin Westphal · Zengrong Zhu · Martin Wiemers

Analyzing the Policy Framework for Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract This chapter explores how policies and policy-making perform to support climate change adaptation. It reflects on different tools that have been presented in Chapters 2–5 and that can be deployed to support decision-making. It also discusses how current adaptation measures operate to enhance the capacity to respond to climate change impacts in a coherent manner across sectors. In this the chapter draws on a database of tools that were developed as part of the Bottom-Up Adaptation Strategies for a Sustainable Europe project to support climate change adaptation. It also draws on an analysis of EU, national, and sectoral adaptation policy-making to document: (1) the mix of tools that have been used to develop adaptation policy in the EU, national policy contexts, and a number of different contexts; (2) the policy challenges of delivering climate change adaptation specifically related to autonomous and planned adaptation, public–private decision-making, bottom-up adaptation policy-making, and policy implementation; and (3) the extent to which adaptation has been mainstream in key sectoral polices in the EU from the supranational to the local level.