Volker Mauerhofer

Multifunctionality of floodplain landscapes: relating management options to ecosystem services

The concept of green infrastructure has been recently taken up by the European Commission for ensuring the provision of ecosystem services (ESS). It aims at the supply of multiple ESS in a given landscape, however, the effects of a full suite of management options on multiple ESS and landscape multifunctionality have rarely been assessed. In this paper we use European floodplain landscapes as example to develop an expert based qualitative conceptual model for the assessment of impacts of landscape scale interventions on multifunctionality. European floodplain landscapes are particularly useful for such approach as they originally provided a high variety and quantity of ESS that has declined due to the strong human impact these landscapes have experienced. We provide an overview of the effects of floodplain management options on landscape multifunctionality by assessing the effects of 38 floodplain management interventions on 21 relevant ESS, as well as on overall ESS supply. We found that restoration and rehabilitation consistently increased the multifunctionality of the landscape by enhancing supply of provisioning, regulation/maintenance, and cultural services. In contrast, conventional technical regulation measures and interventions related to extraction, infrastructure and intensive land use cause decrease in multifunctionality and negative effects for the supply of all three aspects of ESS. The overview of the effects of interventions shall provide guidance for decision makers at multiple governance levels. The presented conceptual model could be effectively applied for other landscapes that have potential for a supply of a high diversity of ESS.

From polluter pays to provider gets: distribution of rights and costs under payments for ecosystem services

Should society have the right to freely available clean air and water, or should people be required to pay for these as commodities just as they do for many other goods or services that they consume? With this question and further questions on environmental governance in mind, we reviewed the paradigm shift in natural resource management from the polluter pays principle (PPP), which focuses on polluters and enforcement of thresholds, to the principle of payments for ecosystem services (PES), which emphasizes provider-based economic approaches. Given that there are conflicts of interest over natural resources and ecosystem services (ESs), these conflicts could be resolved through rights and/or cost assignments via third-party intervention, i.e., by the “state,” or through private compensation beyond initial regulation and state-initiated assignments of cost. Our analysis includes an in-depth literature review and a description of existing policies on ESs. We also examine the so-called Coase theorem based on a “neutral” situation where no rights or costs are distributed in advance. This theorem provides room for the PPP approaches and the provider-gets approaches. Both of these approaches should ensure, given certain assumptions, an economically efficient allocation of resources; however, they still ignore two indispensable issues, namely, the ecologically sustainable scale and inherent qualities of ecosystems and the distributional effects. With regard to the relationship between these two sets of approaches and their respective relationship to the legal framework, PES programs can evolve instead of PPP where no regulations are in place, existing regulations are deemed to be insufficiently formulated, or regulations are not enforced at all. We also further address some critical issues that can arise when PES programs evolve instead of PPP in practice, such as the general necessity of PES to coexist with basic rights and legal obligations, inappropriate lexicographic claims from providers of ESs, alongside claims for potential damages and the relationship of PES with the intrinsic motivation of service providers. Critically, insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that by replacing the earlier PPP doctrine with the “provider-gets” principle, rights are redistributed from the public to the service provider with important distributional implications for society. Therefore, the replacement of PPP with PES includes obstacles as well as opportunities, in particular for the relationship between rich and poor, and developing and developed countries.

Legal Framework for Biosphere Reserves as Learning Sites for Sustainable Development: A Comparative Analysis of Ukraine and Sweden

The Biosphere Reserve (BR) concept aims at encouraging sustainable development (SD) towards sustainability on the ground by promoting three core functions: conservation, development, and logistic support. Sweden and Ukraine exemplify the diverse governance contexts that BRs need to cope with. We assessed how the BR concept and its core functions are captured in national legislations. The results show that the core functions are in different ways reflected in legal documents in both countries. While in Ukraine the BR concept is incorporated into legislation, in Sweden the concept is used as a soft law. In Ukraine managers desired stronger legal enforcement, while in Sweden managers avoided emphasis on legislation when collaborating with local stakeholders. Hence, BR implementation have adapted to different political cultures by development of diverse approaches. We conclude that a stronger legal support might not be needed for BRs, rather SD needs to be recognized as an integrated place-based process at multiple levels.

Missing links: how individual’s can contribute to reserve policy enforcement on the example of the European Union

This comment looks at opportunities available to individuals alone or as a member of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to enforce reserve policy at the EU level to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation. Based on a literature review, recent developments in certain EU policies (i.e., Nature Conservation Policy, Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Policy, Århus—Public Participation and Access to Justice) are assessed by means of a SEPO analysis. SEPO is a French acronym that stands for the successes (succès), failures (echècs), potentials (potentialités), and obstacles (obstacles). This method aims to analyse a situation from four dimensions of the past (successes and failures) and future (potentials and obstacles). The analysis shows different ways in which individuals can contribute to reserve policy enforcement (i.e., by public interest complaint based on private rights) and identifies public funding opportunities for research and management of reserves. Some of these mechanisms have just recently been introduced (e.g., Århus rights and several funding opportunities). Not surprisingly, the widest set of opportunities is provided by the Nature Conservation Policy. The other three policies (Common Agricultural Policy, Regional Policy, Århus—Public Participation and Access to Justice) touch on reserve conservation only in an additional way, either horizontally or vertically. The analysis also identifies inter-linkages between the different policies with regard to reserve conservation, which may be used by individuals to enforce policy either in a protective or cooperative way.

Multifunctional floodplain management and biodiversity effects: a knowledge synthesis for six European countries

Floodplain ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots and supply multiple ecosystem services. At the same time they are often prone to human pressures that increasingly impact their intactness. Multifunctional floodplain management can be defined as a management approach aimed at a balanced supply of multiple ecosystem services that serve the needs of the local residents, but also those of off-site populations that are directly or indirectly impacted by floodplain management and policies. Multifunctional floodplain management has been recently proposed as a key concept to reconcile biodiversity and ecosystem services with the various human pressures and their driving forces. In this paper we present biophysics and management history of floodplains and review recent multifunctional management approaches and evidence for their biodiversity effects for the six European countries Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary and the Ukraine. Multifunctional use of floodplains is an increasingly important strategy in some countries, for instance in the Netherlands and Hungary, and management of floodplains goes hand in hand with sustainable economic activities resulting in flood safety and biodiversity conservation. As a result, biodiversity is increasing in some of the areas where multifunctional floodplain management approaches are implemented. We conclude that for efficient use of management resources and ecosystem services, consensual solutions need to be realized and biodiversity needs to be mainstreamed into management activities to maximize ecosystem service provision and potential human benefits. Multifunctionality is more successful where a broad range of stakeholders with diverse expertise and interests are involved in all stages of planning and implementation.

Lose less instead of win more: the failure of decoupling and perspectives for competition in a degrowth economy

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the likely failure in the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation, and also intends to offer perspectives on the new role of competition in a steady state or a degrowth economy. The analysis is based on five different scenarios, and uses the European Union as an example. It is concluded that we must prepare ourselves for a potential incompatibility between sustainability and economic growth. In this respect one can say that the current EU situation is in some ways already quite close to an economic system without growth, although far from sustainable as yet. Two of the four perspectives developed, regarding the new role of competition in an economy without growth, indicate an increase of direct and indirect competition over resources. The other two perspectives point out that regulatory public intervention as well as financial intervention will increase in order to ensure that - despite the revised role of competition - the poorest are still given a chance to develop (e.g. through basic minimum incomes), even in a degrowth economy.

3-D Sustainability and Its Contribution to Governance Assessment in Legal Terms: Examples and Perspectives

Environmental, social and economic capitals, capacities and carrying capacities provide the theoretical construct of the three dimensions of a sustainable development. Based thereon, this chapter aims firstly to provide a conceptual overview on two main objectives of multilevel rule of law systems that should be addressed when adapting these systems towards a more sustainable direction. This first aim is addressed based on ‘3-D Sustainability’, a concept offering six flexibly applicable decision-making criteria for priority setting between these sustainability dimensions based on the burden of proof in the sense of the precautionary principle. The theoretical application of these criteria on several real-world examples of legislative acts indicates the concept’s usefulness in practice. The two main objectives identified within this first aim are to stay through international environmental policy within the environmentally sustainable scale and to politically define flexible legal trade-off mechanisms, which more sustainably deal with conflicts among these sustainability dimensions. Secondly, the chapter strives to identify ways to strengthen the application of the existing international environmental legislation. Thus, several innovative mechanisms are identified that overcome current implementation and enforcement deadlocks, without changing existing laws, but also increasing its direct effect. In summary, the chapter innovatively offers—based on ongoing research—several solution proposals for addressing in a sustainable manner geopolitical and organizational scales as well as trade-offs when it comes to re-writing existing environmental legal institutions (de lege ferenda). It further provides proposals for the innovative implementation of existing normative regimes without modifying legal text (de lege lata).

A Global Conceptual Framework for Categorizing Environmental Change Based on Property Rights and Compensation

The paper offers a new conceptual framework based on property rights and financial compensation in different nature conservation situations in order to provide a globally applicable system for the assessment of participation of public and private stakeholders in envisaged changes within those situations. These situations of change represent a modification from conservation toward non-conservation and vice versa. The framework distinguishes further between governance systems based on command and control as wells as on negotiation. Within these main change situations and governance types, the framework allows the distribution of change situations into 8 main sections. These main sections are further separated into 32 sub-sections by means of different property right and compensations situations among public and private stakeholders. The theoretical utility of this new framework is then demonstrated by testing it by means of a random sample of 74 papers (25 %) out of representative 297 papers from the academic literature dealing with property rights. These 74 papers provided practical examples for situations of change in conservation as evidence for most of the 32 sub-section. Several papers provide examples for more than one sub-section. The allocation of papers to these different subsections is described and discussed in detail. This widely possible allocation proofs in general the global applicability and usefulness of the new framework. The framework also proofed to be appropriate for formally (rule of law based) and informally (customary law based) institutionalized situations where rights are given to public and private stakeholders for other practical cases of public participation.

Wildökologische Korridorplanung in der öffentlich- und zivilrechtlichen Raumordnung

Wildökologische Korridore stehen in einem thematischen Spannungsfeld zwischen verschiedenen Bereichen des öffentlichen Rechts, wie Straßen-, Bau- und Raumordnungsrecht sowie Jagd- und Naturschutzrecht, und dem privaten Recht. Daraus ergeben sich aber auch viele Möglichkeiten der rechtlichen Umsetzung solcher Korridore, fanden sie doch juristisch bislang erst eher geringfügige Beachtung. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird zunächst eine Definition wildökologischer Korridore unternommen sowie zudem ein Überblick über völker-, europa- und bundesstaatsrechtliche Grundlagen gegeben. Danach werden verschiedene zivil- und insb öffentlich-rechtliche Instrumente (einschließlich des verwaltungsrechtlichen Vertrages und der Vertragsraumordnung) in Hinblick auf ihre Tauglichkeit zugunsten einer vermehrten und verstärkten Sicherung wildökologischer Korridore näher untersucht.