Thomas Bauler

Science?policy challenges for biodiversity, public health and urbanization: examples from Belgium

Internationally, the importance of a coordinated effort to protect both biodiversity and public health is more and more recognized. These issues are often concentrated or particularly challenging in urban areas, and therefore on-going urbanization worldwide raises particular issues both for the conservation of living natural resources and for population health strategies. These challenges include significant difficulties associated with sustainable management of urban ecosystems, urban development planning, social cohesion and public health. An important element of the challenge is the need to interface between different forms of knowledge and different actors from science and policy. We illustrate this with examples from Belgium, showcasing concrete cases of human–nature interaction. To better tackle these challenges, since 2011, actors in science, policy and the broader Belgian society have launched a number of initiatives to deal in a more integrated manner with combined biodiversity and public health challenges in the face of ongoing urbanization. This emerging community of practice in Belgium exemplifies the importance of interfacing at different levels. (1) Bridges must be built between science and the complex biodiversity/ecosystem–human/public health–urbanization phenomena. (2) Bridges between different professional communities and disciplines are urgently needed. (3) Closer collaboration between science and policy, and between science and societal practice is needed. Moreover, within each of these communities closer collaboration between specialized sections is needed.

Towards a governance of sustainable consumption transitions: how institutional factors influence emerging local food systems in Belgium

System innovations and transitions in the realm of sustainable consumption policies will seldom emerge automatically from the present socio-political and socio-technical contexts. This paper explores a set of perspectives related to the governance of transitions and develops their application to the relatively unexplored governance of sustainable consumption transitions. Empirical material stems from an extensive case study which analyses a food consumption niche in the form of collectively organised local food systems (LFS) in Belgium. More specifically, we analyse and discuss the institutional contexts and socio-political configurations within which the investigated system innovation cases are embedded. The results explore the role of governmental interplay in fostering innovative consumption practices for a transition towards a more sustainable, autonomous, citizen-based, LFS.

Ecosystem Services in Belgian Environmental Policy Making: Expectations and Challenges Linked to the Conceptualization and Valuation of Ecosystem Services

An ecosystem services (ES) approach seems to entail two different, but intertwined, mechanisms: (1) the adoption of the conceptual framework of ES, as a particular (instrumental) angle from which to analyze the linkages between people and the environment; and (2) the experimentation with a set of ES (e)valuation tools and instruments in order to reduce complexities through the adoption of economic/monetary values wherever suitable. This chapter explores both mechanisms—with respect to the conceptualization and to the valuation of ES—at the level of Belgian environmental policy making.

Ecosystem Services Governance: Managing Complexity?

Abstract Ecosystem governance deals with the management of not only the ecosystem, but also of related social aspects such as decision making, social interaction, and power relations. Taking a closer look at this social side of ecological issues, we learn that these issues are not straightforward or self-evident: What to take into account when describing and analyzing social-ecological systems and how to manage them in practice is open to a diversity of approaches. A common denominator and key question of these approaches seems to be how to deal with the complexity that comes with it. In this chapter we will present a diversity of approaches to ecosystem governance and draw some lessons for complexity management.

Emergent transformation games: Exploring social innovation agency and activation through the case of the Belgian electricity blackout threat

The persistence of current societal problems has given rise to a quest for transformative social innovations. As social innovation actors seek to become change makers, it has been suggested that they need to play into impactful macrodevelopments or “game-changers”. Here, we aim to deepen the understanding of the social innovation agency in these transformation games. We analyze assumptions about the game metaphor, invoking insights from actor-network theory. The very emergence of transformation games is identified as a crucial but easily overlooked issue. As explored through the recent electricity blackout threat in Belgium, some current transformation games are populated with largely passive players. This illustrative case demonstrates that socially innovative agency cannot be presupposed. In some transformation games, the crucial game-changing effect is to start the game by activating the players.

Inquiring into the Governance of Ecosystem Services: An Introduction.

The present chapter develops a brief, introductory account of some of the more stringent perspectives and proposals on how to inquire into the governance of ecosystem services. The objective is not to provide a state-of-the-art document, but to propose a limited set of contingent domains of inquiry. The double shift from government to governance and from ecosystems/species as the object of steering to ecosystem services drastically opens the set of domains of inquiry into recognizing more complexity, more processes, more actors, more natures of actors, more dynamics, more networks, more scales, and more times. We conclude that while embracing knowledge diversity has been considered a strategy for taking into account the many faces of complexity, the foreclosure of knowledge-providing mechanisms is an obvious issue of power that should be subjected to closer inquiry in socioecological governance thinking.

A TRANSITIONS STUDIES PERSPECTIVE ON THE SOCIAL ECONOMY; EXPLORING INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND CAPTURE IN FLEMISH ‘INSERTION’ PRACTICES

Current persistent challenges of sustainable and equitable development call for systemic technical and social innovations. The ´ insertion´ practices of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) can be considered examples of such innovation efforts. The underlying rationales and institutional frameworks have been elaborated extensively in social economy scholarship. However, as WISEs are frequently reported to fall victim to pressures towards isomorphism or ‘capture’ by incumbent institutional structures, transitions theory seems worthwhile to invoke in order to develop a dynamic understanding of these processes. As illustrated through case study data on the Flemish social economy, it is highlighted how ´insertion´ displays longitudinal dynamics of institutional capture that are similar to those observed in sustainability transitions more generally. This empirical analysis helps to identify the scope for fruitful paradigmatic interplay between transitions studies and social economy scholarship.

Institutionalized Evaluations of Sustainable Development in Belgium: The Future of a Federal Sustainability Impact Assessment Process

This chapter aims to draw a synthetic overview of the state of the art with regard to the evaluation of sustainable development, understood here as institutionalized processes in public authorities, in Belgium. This publication is linked to the Sustainability Impact Assessment project, and has been first presented at the EASY-ECO conference in 2005.

Exploring the Feasibility of Sustainability Impact Assessment Procedures for Federal Policies in Belgium

Since September 2004, Belgium built the first steps towards institutionalizing at its federal level an evaluation scheme1 which aims to integrate evaluation patterns of a Regulatory Impact Assessment with the Belgian Sustainable Development (SD) agenda (Belgian Federal Government, 2004-a). While the very basic inter-departmental responsibilities attached to this resulting Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) have been clarified by the initial regulation, all other parts of this future SIA-scheme appear to be very loosely determined for the time being.The current paper will focus its attention on to presenting an ongoing (July 2004 – February 2006) research project which aims to explore whether and how such a SIA-scheme could be applied to the federal level of Belgian government. The paper will provide a description of the first steps of the research project. More specifically, it will address issues related to the supply and the demand sides of SIA. The supply side will be covered through an analysis of major points to take into account when designing such an assessment. Issues related to the demand side have been identified through face-to-face interviews which aimed at gaining knowledge of the understanding, dangers and opportunities, experiences and expertise, as well as institutional challenges perceived both by stakeholders and civil servants. The results of the interviews will be presented in the second part of the paper.