Land-use conflicts arise if land is scarce, land-use types are mutually exclusive, and vary in their effects with regard to more than one incongruent policy objective. If these effects depend on the spatial location of the land-use measures the conflict can be mediated through an appropriate...

Among the measures discussed as remedies for CO2 emissions reduction renewable energies are prominent as they already provide marketable alternatives to fossil fuels. This holds true especially for wind power, which has multiplied more than twelve-fold on the global scale from 4,800 MW to over...

This article develops eleven criteria focusing on the relative importance and strength of different, especially socio-economic drivers of and pressures on biodiversity. These refer to the syndrome concept designed to assess global environmental risks and the DPSIR framework developed to guide...

The introduction of conservation-friendly farming measures is an important tool for biodiversity conservation. Recently, a debate has started whether this money is spent effectively, i.e. whether it successfully contributes to conserve biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. Several types of...

Global public good provision (e.g. environmental quality) confronts us with problems demanding both national and international co-operation. However among sovereign nations reaching agreement on mutual public good provision is difficult. Slowing down global warming is just one example. Due to...

Strategies of international risk management, as the implementation of tradable emission permits, feed back to the incentive structure of a treaty, like the Kyoto Protocol. Discussing the Kyoto Protocol the question was: Should there be any restrictions on the trading of emission permits or not?...

Many environmental problems are large scale in terms of geographical units and long-term with regard to time. We therefore find a coincidence of different causes and impacts that qualify the interplay between humans and nature as highly uncertain ("transparency challenge"). In consequence we see...