The underlying research project was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the funding programme Research for the Reduction of Land Consumption and for Sustainable Land Management (REFINA). REFINA is implemented by the BMBF in cooperation with the Federal...

In this article, Professor Kaswan argues that hoped-for greenhouse gas reductions cannot be achieved without reducing consumption. Given their control over land use and buildings, cities can play a key role in reducing consumption. She argues that, while existing federal proposals for a...

Urban land governance is one of the central challenges not just for urban but also more broadly for global development in times of rapid urbanisation. This paper advances a fresh perspective to look at urban land by exploring to what extent it could be characterised as a resource curse problem....

Ramsar Resolution XI.17 requested the Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel to report on the state of the world’s wetlands and their services to people. As a contribution to this task, this Briefing Note summarizes and highlights for Contracting Parties and other decision makers...

Over the last twenty years, there has been a growing fascination within public and academic circles about the livelihood of islands with small populations and territory which are present in each of the world's great oceans. The Small Island Tourism Economies analysed in this paper vary...

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the perspectives of China to become less dependent on gas imports in future. This paper tries to forecast the future production of natural gas in China and demand for imports. The key problem is to what extent China can become the second country after the...

This paper contributes to this debate on the substantial risk-adjusted returns to real estate by first constructing a panel of housing risk premia for 13 OECD countries over a long sample period (1966: Q3 to 2004:Q4), and then exploring the relationship of these risk premia to changes in the...

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out, especially when sea levels are rising. We study this construction using spatially disaggregated data on the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. We document nine stylized facts, including a sizeable...

Construction on low elevation coastal zones is risky for both residents and taxpayers who bail them out, especially when sea levels are rising. We study this construction using spatially disaggregated data on the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts. We document nine stylized facts, including a sizeable...

Is it possible to count the earth's population from outer space? The answer is yes, in urban areas it is possible. However, this can only be done in an indirect manner: by identifying physical objects in the urban landscape in earth observation data and using these to estimate the number of...