This article provides a short account of the international climate negotiations that took place in Bonn from 16 to 27 July 2001. After the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change failed in November 2000, the Parties had decided to suspend the meeting. The ministers present at the resumed session successfully adopted the "Bonn Agreement to the Kyoto Protocol", a set of political compromises for the most contentious issues left open by the Kyoto Protocol. Although many details had been transferred to the Seventh Conference of the Parties, November 2001 in Marrakesh, Morocco, the Bonn Agreement already paved the way for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its entry into force. The Marrakesh Accord adopted on 10 November 2001 transforms, with a few exceptions, this political agreement into bindinglegal text.
Strategic Environmental Assessment aims to incorporate environmental and sustainability considerations into strategic decision making processes, such as the formulation of policies, plans and programmes. In order to be effective, the assessment must take the real decision making process as the departure point. Existing SEA approaches are frequently tailored after an EIA model conceived from a rational perspective on decision making. However, there are good reasons to assume that most strategic decision making processes are characterised by a bounded rationality. Furthermore, the predictability of environmental consequences generally becomes weaker at strategic levels than at the project level and complexity increases in terms of the numbers of actors involved in the decision. This paper examines various theoretical perspectives to decision making and discusses the implications for decision support in general and SEA in particular. The authors argue that the design of the SEA must be more sensitive to the real characteristics of the decision making context.
The paper examines the "Declaration of German Industry on Global Warming Prevention (DGWP)" in its updated version of 1996. The analysis draws on the findings of empirical case studies in the cement and glass sector as well as on a general analysis of the policy process including monitoring experience so far. The findings emphasise the weak impact of the agreement on the most important driving forces for industrial energy consumption. However, an improved design and a more stringent procedural framework would allow better advantage to be taken of the particular strengths of the approach. The paper concludes by making a number of recommendations that would improve the scope and quality of commitments, and would enhance learning effects during the course of the policy process.
The contribution of natural resources and ecosystems to economic processes still remains under-assessed by market evaluation and productivity analysis. Following the historical lines of the classical productivity debate ranging from the French Physiocrats to early neoclassical growth theories, the productivity concept underwent a gradual transformation from its previous understanding based on natural resources and other environmental factors to its contemporary narrow notion. This paper claims that the course of the classical debate has shaped the scope of predominant contemporary analysis. Except for some very recent findings, multifactor productivity largely focusses on a two-factor model. Material Flow Analysis (MFA) provides a useful step for widening the measurement and notion of productivity.
International climate policy is one of the most fascinating issues in foreign policy, yet in recent years it has become one of the most contentious. The failure of the conference in The Hague revealed, among other things, strongunderlying rifts in the transatlantic relationship. As the self-acclaimed worldleader, the United States is not in a position to exert leadership in this vital area owing to a mixture of constitutional constraints and an ever-growing cultural dependence on fossil fuels such as oil and gas. It therefore falls to the European Union to take up this challenge. This will require careful coalition building with the rest of the world as well as confidence in the ability of Europe to develop a united position, to stick to that position and to translate the rules of the Kyoto Protocol into stringent domestic climate policy. The climate change regime is at a crossroads. At the resumed COP-6 con-ference, the Parties must decide whether to continue the process under theassumption ‘that global problems require global solutions’ or whether to turn to the more regional concept of "think globally, act locally". In either case, steering climate policy in this century on to a successful path will require the skills and dedication not only of natural scientists and technology developers, but also of those in the foreign policy community.
Sustainable development is the globally embraced paradigm for integrating environment and development policies. Agreement ends with attempts at quantifying the elusive notion of sustainability. A contentious debate among "environmentalists" and "environmental economists" has brought about a confusing proliferation of indicators and policy advice on sustainable development. Generating a common language by means of integrated physical and monetary environmental accounting could moderate the debate. Economic and ecological sustainability is thus distinguished and operationalised in terms of capital maintenance and dematerialisation of economic activity. Empirical results presented are not conclusive, however. Moreover, the reconciliation of environmental and economic policies requires more than comparable statistics strategies and instruments of environmental cost internalisation need to be evaluated and combined with those of raising resource productivity. A social compact between government and civil society should provide the necessary support for achieving consensus and partnership. The sustained implementation of sustainable development depends on it.
Gemeinsames Umweltmanagement in Unternehmensnetzwerken : das Beispiel der Eco-Industrial Parks
(2000)
Der Beitrag erörtert Möglichkeiten und Grenzen eines gemeinsamen Umweltmanagement in Unternehmensnetzwerken am Beispiel von ökologisch ausgerichtete Industrieansiedlungen ("Eco-Industrial Parks"). Der erste Teil untersucht Netzwerke als marktnahe Institutionen. Es wird dargestellt, dass vertikale und horizontale Netzwerkformen die Produktions-, Entsorgungs- und Transaktionskosten von Unternehmen absenken können. Technologische sowie kognitiv-institutionelle Pfadabhängigkeiten können diesen Vorteil begrenzen. Im Umweltmanagement können über Netzwerke Kosten abgesenkt sowie Innovationen angestoßen werden. Im zweiten Teil werden Eco-Industrial Parks analysiert. Als Fallbeispiele werden Kalundborg, Fairfield, Burnside, Brownsville und Kitakyushu betrachtet. Der Beitrag kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Startphase der Parks Anlass zu vorsichtigem Optimismus gibt. Augenmerk sollten der Ausgestaltung institutioneller Kooperationsformen für eine kontinuierliche Umweltentlastung sowie Prüfverfahren gelten.
Sustainability as defined by the Brundtland Commission, is a composite and thus ambitious policy target. It comprises environmental, economic, social, and institutional criteria with equal importance. Because of this complexity the first step of a (Local) Agenda 21 process should be to develop a vision of a sustainable society - a "leitbild" - useful as a compass, not a road map (or, even worse, a blueprint), attached by indicators that help to measure progress, distance to target, and failures of plans or their implementations. In the following article a model is proposed how local sustainability indicators can be developed and how they can help to reduce the complexity of sustainability and to concretize a program for the Local Agenda 21. To get a practical impression of the theoretical presentation an example is given in the last part of the article. It shows the experiences made while developing sustainability indicators in the City of Iserlohn.
It is not the scarcity of resources that constitutes environmental problems, but their use, the physical throughput of our economies. Material flows are a proxy for the totality of the unspecific environmental risks from human activities. As a strategic goal, an increase of the life-cycle-wide resource productivity by a factor 10 is suggested, including the materials bought and sold and the not-valued materials: we have to take into account the product itself and its "ecological rucksack". Material flows are best measured at the input side of the economy, where their number as well as the number of entry gates is limited. Thus here regulation and economic incentives can work more efficiently and less bureaucratically than today. The material intensity of products and services can be expressed as MIPS, the material input per unit of service, and as TMR, the total material requirement on the macro level, an important element in physical input–output tables.
Dematerialization, MIPS and factor 10 : physical sustainability indicators as a social device
(1999)
Global climate
(1999)
The discussion of sustainable development focused attention on new environmental goals and raised the issue of improving resource productivity. A first step towards sustainability would be to slow-down and reduce the man-induced movements of materials: this is the focus of dematerialization approach which emphasizes what socialist countries used to neglect most – minimizing the use of scarce input factors. This paper applies the dematerialization approach to the discussion on sustainable development in central and eastern Europe. In the early 1990s all countries in eastern Europe have developed new environmental programs which mainly focus on reducing pollution. Environmental strategies focusing on reducing emissions are important but not sufficient for reaching sustainability. A new orientation in the environmental policy in the young market economies is required. Dematerialization approach can be a new option for environmental policy in central and eastern Europe. Dematerialization requires a mix of instruments. Important role can be played by an ecological fiscal reform which covers ecological tax reform and the restructuring of subsidies.
Statisticians avoid getting involved in data analysis, leaving data users on their own in interpreting the results of their work. This is particularly unfortunate in a new area of applied statistics such as environmental accounting with which few are really familiar. Earlier this year data producers and users explored, in a national seminar, possible policy applications of the results of a "green accounting" project in the Philippines. The main findings of the author's contribution to the seminar, on which the present paper is based, are that environmental accounts: (1) present evidence of sustainable economic performance in the country during the relatively short-time period of 1988–1994; (2) provide information for environmental cost internalization; (3) may guide investment to environmentally sound production processes; (4) help to specify and monitor policies of natural wealth conservation, distribution and management; and (5) reveal major data gaps. The paper concludes that environmental accounts help to assess the sustainability of economic growth in terms of broadly defined capital maintenance. The sustainability of development, however, would have to be measured by alternative or supplementary physical indicators linked to quantifiable standards or targets.
The European Commission has established the Eco Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS) to promote and institutionalize corporate environmental management and environmental audits. This article summarizes a study primarily concerned with the execution of an ecoaudit in a medium-sized furniture enterprise according to the rules of EMAS. Material flow accounting was used to assess and analyze the "gate-to-gate" and "cradle-to-grave" environmental impacts related to the firm's products and activities. A resource management strategy was developed that permits the determination of methods for firm-specific material flow management, product management, and ecological product design to improve environmental performance as seen from the vantage point of resource efficiency.
Global climate
(1998)
This report will first provide a brief account of the political developments that led to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Second, it will provide a preliminary analysis of the Kyoto Protocol itself, and, third, it will assess the prospects for the further development of international climate policy and law in 1998 and beyond. Developments outside of the Kyoto negotiations will be included to further elucidate the actual international negotiations.
Differences in climate change policy in Germany and the U.S. from a political science perspective
(1998)
International and national climate change policies may either mutually support or block each other. The international political debate can on the one hand be a driving force, mainly because of its "agenda-setting" power for the national political debate, but on the other hand the outcome of international climate change policy depends on the capability of national governments to formulate adequate political goals and programs, and to have the power for their realisation and implementation in the national political process.
The following analysis will focus on the differences in climate change policy in Gerrnany and the United States. From a po1itical science perspective, it has to deal with the determinants and restrictions of the policy-making processes and their impact on policy formulation and implementation in both countries. Two kinds of determinants will be considered: structural "internal" determinants deriving from the specific setting and mode of operation of the political-administrative systems, and external determinants, such as public opinion, the role of the media. interest groups, and cultural values, which favour or restrict the process of a pro-active climate change policy.
"Joint Implementation" (JI) is considered by many participants in the international negotiations on aclimate protocol to be an important economic instrument for the implementation of greenhouse gas obligations. Apart from a wide range of problems that still have to be resolved on the project level, the institutional and procedural design of such a mechanism is of vital importance. Because JI has a "perverse incentive" to overstate results achieved by individual projects, careful reporting, monitoring and verification procedures are essential. Furthermore, the institutional structure must reconcile the sometimes conflicting demands of overall effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This paper explores the possible design of a future international mechanism for JI and makes recommendations with regard to the institutional and procedural requirements.
Five years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the hesitancy of developed countries is turning out to be the main impediment to implementing an effective policy for sustainable development. Alongside the further development of international environmental regimes, setting up national action plans is necessary to close the action-gap in the North. However, this can only succeed if the action plans include binding objectives that can be monitored and evaluated. Current national strategies for sustainable development only meet this criterion in exceptional cases; in most cases only qualitatively and legally nonbinding objectives are included. In the present paper, a suggestion for a cluster of environmental policy targets is put forth, which - using Germany as an example - establishes the sustainability concept at the national level. Particular emphasis is placed on the normative dimension of target setting.
The issue or concept of "sustainable development" entered onto the public and political agenda only relatively recently, and, five years after signing Agenda 21, perceptions of it are still ambiguous. A review of organisational adjustments and of German communications to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development shows that the German government's level of commitment to Agenda 21 is still low. This view is supported by an assessment of developments, and the Government's poor performance so far, in three institutional indicators. However, there is evidence that some incremental steps towards a sustainability transition are being taken as in some areas of business and industry and local government attitudes are begining to change. In addition, awareness of sustainable development is being raised by the efforts of non‐governmental organisations and the scientific community. Generally though, the lack of institutional reorganisation is the major obstacle to a German sustainability transition. This is an expression of the generally low priority of environmental and global development issues in the aftermath of German unification and the related economic and social problems. The traditional economic paradigm where economic growth is believed to be the precondition for welfare prevails and is considered by a majority of decision‐makers not to be compatible with the sustainability transition.
Global climate
(1997)
Eine neue Stahl-Welt
(1996)
In the discourse about sustainable development, "constant natural capital" is frequently referred to as a criterion for ecological sustainability. But what is "natural capital"? The concept will be analyzed by presenting arguments in favour of using the term and different versions of sustainability (strong and weak). Subsequently, a critique of the "natural capital" concept is brought forward, from an ecological as well as from an economic perspective. Following this critique, the use of material inputs and the material input per unit of service (MIPS) as a measure for the environmental impact potential is suggested. Dematerialisation is understood to be an alternative management rule for sustainability. In conclusion, a change of perspective is proposed. Due to the conceptual and measurement problems associated with the "constant-natural-capital" criterion (which refers to a stock), it seems more reasonable from a scientific as well as from a practical perspective to add flows (i.e. material inputs) to a decision criterion for whether a development is sustainable or not.
Ökologische Steuerreform : Pro gegen Kontra ; eine Antwort auf die häufigsten Einwände der Kritiker
(1996)
Sustainable development, as it emerged in Agenda 21 from the Rio conference in 1992, will only be meaningful when it touches the lives of ordinary people; then it becomes a reality. Local Agenda 21 (LA21) seeks to achieve that objective. This article assesses the origins of LA21, reviews its social and political significance, and considers its prospects in the light of case study experience emerging from the UK, Germany and Norway, focusing on the role of local government as a major stakeholder in Agenda 21 (A21). The range of response to LA21 has proved to be varied. A successful transformation to a more sustainable world will require visionary political leadership, supportive administrations, networks of experience sharing, alliances with non‐governmental organisations and local industry, and effective community mobilisation. All of that, in turn, requires equally supportive economic and social policy backing from national governments. This article will indicate that, not surprisingly, it is the domestic political context, nationally and locally, which in the main determines the speed and nature of response to LA21, now and in the future. By understanding and being aware of these contexts, factors impeding progress towards LA21 may be addressed, whilst at the same time retaining the diversity of response which is an essential part of local sustainability.
Global climate
(2007)