Land use and Biodiversity

Research projects

• The Political Economy of Meat System Transformation
• Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviationg
• PESTROP - Pesticide use in tropical settings

• Wetlands - Social-ecological networks in Swiss wetlands governance

The Political Economy of Meat System Transformation

The industrial food system is a significant contributor to global social and ecological problems. In particular, large-scale production and consumption of meat are threatening the sustainability of the Earth’s ecosystem. According to a recent IPCC special report, preventing runaway climate change and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals soon is unrealistic without significant shifts towards plant-based diets. However, meat consumption is still growing in both developed and emerging economies.

The main objective of this project is to investigate the socio-technical conditions, policy narratives, and feedback dynamics that shape the current regime of meat production and consumption in the world’s top three meat suppliers and demanders – China, the EU and the US.

Thus, the main research questions it seeks to answer are:

• How have public policies evolved to stabilize or destabilize the current meat production and consumption systems in China, the EU and the US?
• To what extent have (policy) narratives and social norms regarding meat consumption and production changed in and diffused across China, the EU and the US? What are the roles of the shocks of COVID-19 and technological innovations (especially the rise of meat substitutes) in driving these changes?
• What are the impacts of changes in narratives and social norms related to meat on individuals’ consumption behaviors, public opinion, and policy actor networks?

The theories and methods used in the project involve political economy, computational social science, environmental psychology, institutional sociology, and transition studies. The research design combines qualitative policy process-tracing, field and survey experimental, social network, and natural language processing methods. They aim to develop empirical analyses of policy processes, shifts in public and media discourses and social norms, and changes in actor coalition networks.

This project builds on transdisciplinary cooperation between various scientific disciplines and decision-makers from international and non-governmental organizations.

The study aims at a high policy impact by continuously integrating insights from policymakers and stakeholders during interactive workshops, regularly publishing policy briefs, and organizing a public conference on meat system transformation.

Project Duration: 2021-2023
Funding: Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS)
Kontakt: Dr. Lukas Fesenfeld (Coordinator), University of Bern; Prof. Dr. Elliott Ash (Co-Coordinator), ETH Zurich; Prof. Dr. Yixian Sun (Prinicpal Member), University of Bath, UK; Prof. Dr. Elke Weber (Principal Member), Princeton University, USA; Dr. Pan He (Principal Member), University of Cardiff, UK; Maiken Maier (Principal Member), University of Bern; Prof. Dr. Bowen Yu, Fudan University, China

Project Link: https://snis.ch/projects/the-political-economy-of-meat-system-transformation/

Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviationg

Social-ecological systems (SES) of forest frontiers in the humid tropics ensure a complex mix of ecosystem service flows that support human well-being locally and provide environmental benefits worldwide. Yet, global forces have come to outweigh local determinants of land use change in these landscapes. Driven by demands for agricultural expansion, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and more, these forces increasingly encompass combined socio-economic and environmental interactions between two or more distant SES. The growing distance between supply and demand has been labeled as “telecoupling” and undermines ecosystem stewardship and SES’ adaptive capacities.

This project will build on research partnerships in Laos, Myanmar and Madagascar, linking case study research in concrete contexts with generalization and modelling. We will assess telecoupling in terms of the impact it has on land use and on ecosystem service flows and human well-being.

The PEGO subproject will identify the actors involved and study their relational patterns by means of Social Network Analysis (SNA). This will then be combined with a GIS-based analysis and modelling of ecosystem services supply. The three elements will inform analysis of the spatial patterns of trade-offs and related winners and losers.

Project Start: Spring 2015, Duration: 4 years
Funding: R4D
Team: Manuel Fischer, Florence Metz, Karin Ingold
Project partners and associate members: Peter Messerli (CDE University of Bern); Adrienne Grêt-Regamey (ETH Zürich); Bruno Salomon Ramamonjisoa (University of Antananarivo); Khamla Phanvilay (National University of Laos); Win Myint (Environmental and Economic Research Institut, Yangon, Myanmar); Gudrun Schwilch (University of Bern); San Win (University of Forestry, Myanmar)

Publication:

• Andriamihaja, O.R.; Metz, F.; Zaehringer, J.G.; Fischer, M.; Messerli, P. (2019). Land Competition under Telecoupling: Distant Actors’ Environmental versus Economic Claims on Land in North-Eastern Madagascar. Sustainability, 11(3), 851. DOI:10.3390/su11030851.

PESTROP - Pesticide use in tropical settings

PESTROP is an inter- and transdisciplinary research project, studying environmental, health and institutional dimensions of pesticide use in tropical settings. The overarching research questions addressed in the two study areas (Costa Rica and Uganda) are: What are the mismatches between institutional determinants of pesticide use and actual practice of pesticide applications on small-scale farms? Which changes in pesticide use practice and policy are needed to efficiently reduce human and environmental exposure to pesticides?
From a political science perspective, we examine the decision-making process and the implementation of public policies for a safer and more sustainable use of pesticides. With the help of a network analysis, we examine preferences for innovative policy instruments at the national level, the exchange of information (political and technical information) between the national and local levels, as well as the role of forums and cooperation. We interview national stakeholders and local street-level bureaucrats to identify the policy network. In addition, we work with social psychologists to better understand the behaviour of individual small farmers and to derive effective political interventions from the psychological evidence.

Funding: Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS)
Team: Ruth Wiedemann, Karin Ingold
Project partners: Mirko Winkler (Swiss TPH); Christian Stamm, Rik Eggen, Philipp Staudacher, Frederik Weiss and Christelle Oltramare (Eawag); Samuel Fuhrimann (University Utrecht); Jennifer Inauen (University of Bern); Ana Maria Mora Mora (Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica); Aggrey Atuhaire (Uganda National Association for Community and Occupational Health); Charles Niwagaba (Makerere University, Uganda)
Project website: Link

Publications:

• Winkler, M. S.; Atuhaire, A.; Fuhrimann, S.; Mora, A.; Niwagaba, C.; Oltramare, C.; Ramírez, F.; Ruepert, C.; Staudacher, Ph.; Weiss, F.; Wiedemann, R.; Eggen, R.; Ingold, K.; Stamm, C. 2019. Environmental exposures, health effects and institutional determinants of pesticide use in two tropical settings. Working Paper.
• PESTROP Policy Brief. 2019. Pesticide use in Smallholder Farms: Challenges and Oppurtunities for Health, Environment and Policy in Uganda.

Wetlands - Social-ecological networks in Swiss wetlands governance

Dealing with ecosystems is challenging. In ecosystems, different ecological processes interact in complex ways. In turn, these processes influence, and are influenced by humans. Ecosystem governance encompasses situations where different organizations from civil society, the private sector and the administration are involved in this.

Ecological relations within an ecosystem can be modeled as a network. Networks can also be used to model the interplay between different organizations involved in the governance of ecosystems. Social-ecological networks combine these two types of networks. They represent a new approach to simultaneously model social and ecological components of ecosystem governance.

Social-ecological network structures allow for an assessment of how ecosystem governance plays out in a given setting. The Wetlands project analyzes such network structures between ecosystems and society, using the example of alluvial plains in Switzerland. On the one hand, this is intended to provide organizations with information that allows them to better coordinate their activities. On the other hand, a comparison of different social-ecological network will be used to isolate structural determinants of successful ecosystem governance, as well as the determinants encouraging the development of such structures.

Project Start: April 2018, Duration: 4 years
Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Team: Manuel Fischer, Mario Angst, Martin Huber
Project partners: Örjan Bodin (Stockholm Resilience Centre)
Project website: Link