Background and Objectives: The project area is located in the Ashanti Region of Ghana / West Africa in the transition zone of the moist semideciduous forest and tropical savannah zone. Main land use in this region is subsistence agriculture with large fallow areas. As an alternative land-use, forest plantations are under development by the Ghanaian wood processing company DuPaul Wood Treatment Ltd. Labourers from the surrounding villages are employed as permanent or casual plantation workers. Within three forest plantation projects of approximately 6,000 ha, DuPaul offers an area of 164 ha (referred to as Papasi Plantation) - which is mainly planted with Teak (Tectona grandis) - for research purposes. In return, the company expects consultations to improve the management for sustainable timber and pole production with exotic and native tree species. Results: In a first research approach, the Papasi Plantation was assessed in terms of vegetation classification, timber resources (in qualitative and quantitative terms) and soil and site conditions. A permanent sampling plot system was established to enable long-term monitoring of stand dynamics including observation of stand response to silvicultural treatments. Site conditions are ideally suited for Teak and some stands show exceptionally good growth performances. However, poor weed management and a lack of fire control and silvicultural management led to high mortality and poor growth performance of some stands, resulting in relative low overall growth averages. In a second step, a social baseline study was carried out in the surrounding villages and identified landowner conflicts between some villagers and DuPaul, which could be one reason for the fire damages. However, the study also revealed a general interest for collaboration in agroforestry on DuPaul land on both sides. Thirdly, a silvicultural management concept was elaborated and an improved integration of the rural population into DuPaul's forest plantation projects is already initiated. If landowner conflicts can be solved, the development of forest plantations can contribute significantly to the economic income of rural households while environmental benefits provide long-term opportunities for sustainable development of the region. Funding: GTZ supported PPP-Measure, Foundation
Die aktuelle politische Lage erfordert eine Überprüfung und eventuelle (Neu-) Justierung der Politik. Im Juni 2023 hat die deutsche Bundesregierung zudem erstmals eine nationale Sicherheitsstrategie vorgestellt. Der darin integrierte breite Sicherheitsbegriff umfasst den Schutz der natürlichen Lebensgrundlagen als einen elementaren Pfeiler. Die Aktivitäten, Maßnahmen und Ziele des Umweltressorts sind, auch mit und neben anderen Akteuren, im Ressortkreis wie auch auf europäischer/internationaler Ebene somit relevant für die Sicherheit und die Umsetzung der Strategie. Hieraus ergibt sich Forschungsbedarf, um z.B. eine umweltgerechtere, nachhaltige Sicherheitspolitik bzw. eine krisenpräventivere Umwelt- und Entwicklungspolitik zu gestalten und konkrete Möglichkeiten zur Umsetzung der Ziele der nationalen Sicherheitsstrategie und des immanenten breiten Sicherheitsbegriffes durch die Umweltpolitik in Deutschland aufzuzeigen. Die Analyse von drei noch auszuwählenden Themenfeldern wird abklären, in welchen konkreten Bereichen welche nationalen politischen Maßnahmen in Hinblick vor allem auf die Zuständigkeiten des BMUV auf internationaler Ebene am effektivsten verhindern können, dass 1) Konflikte zu Umweltzerstörung beitragen, 2) Umweltzerstörung zu Konflikten beiträgt und 3) Umweltschutzmaßnahmen zu Konflikten beitragen. Die Erkenntnisse und Herausforderungen sollen mit den Akteuren reflektiert und deren Austausch ermöglicht werden, um eine kohärente Politikgestaltung im Hinblick auf die Ziele zu fördern. Dabei sollen auch gute und schlechte Praxisbeispiele erfasst werden und in die Prozesse einfließen.
In my Phd-study, I examine the resource conflict over industrial logging in the South Moresby area on Haida Gwaii (former Queen Charlotte Islands) from 1974 to 1993. On this remote archipelago on British Columbias west-coast, a fierce dispute over logging practices, land rights, Aboriginal land claims and environmental issues had emerged in the face of devastating logging practices were not only threatening to destroy large parts of Moresby Island but also resulted in the destruction of salmon streams. The two major natural resources available on the islands were at stake during the 'war in the woods.' Together with environmentalist, the Haida First Nation successfully fought for the preservation of Gwaii Haanas (South Moresby Island) with blockades, protests, environmental campaigns, lobbying and legal action. The area is now protected as the 'Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.-' Using a cultural approach combining aspects of 'storytelling,' the 'cultural memory' and 'actor-network-theory' (ANT), the core question arises whether the (Western) dualisms between 'nature' and 'culture' and between 'fact' and 'fiction' should be dissolved. Latour argues that such dualisms and even the separation between the human and non-human world (i.e., the world of things) do not exist. Assmann claims that we do not necessarily remember what has really happened', but what was repeatedly told us to have happened. Along with Thomas King, J. Edward Chamberlin and William Cronon, I stress the point that stories - fictitious or based on facts - do matter. The effect of stories on the way we understand our past, might often be more important than that of 'hard' facts: Stories shape both a societys concept of the past and its present identity. Canada, with its heterogeneous population, is a particularly interesting place to conduct research about different concepts of 'nature' and culture'. Analyzing the different stories that evolved around South Moresby, and taking into account diverging messages of native and non-native stories, offers a new perspective on similar resource conflicts that continue to exist and arise all over the world.
In addition to recognizing natural selection as a universal mechanism in evolution, Darwin also saw the importance of sexual selection, yet the two have been traditionally treated largely in isolation. Here I propose to apply experimental evolution (exposing experimental populations to controlled specific selective pressures over many generations in the laboratory) to the ideally suited model system Tribolium castaneum to explore how these evolutionary forces interact and impact on the key processes underlying biodiversity. Understanding how these fundamental forces, singly and in conjunction, influence species divergence remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Participation of sexual selection in driving speciation is supported by substantial theoretical evidence. Theory further suggests that evolutionary conflicts (such as between the sexes or between host and parasite) might also accelerate extinction. Additional complexity is introduced by including the environmental context, linking back to natural selection. Direct experimental tests of the above concepts are essentially lacking. I will explicitly target this gap by exploiting powerful experimental evolution, incorporating the interplay between sexual selection intensity, host-parasite conflict, and adaptation to increasing temperature. Projects will assess how selection under evolutionary conflict and environmental change affects both adaptation and extinction rates, aiming to elucidate underlying mechanisms. Additionally, building on clear phenotypic divergence in key traits across experimental evolution lines, I will significantly expand on previous work by assessing patterns of divergence in gene expression, concentrating on target genes associated with reproduction, immunity and heat shock. This research will be of particular interest to scientists working in the fields of evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology, but also to ecologists, reproductive biologists, and conservation biologists. As Tribolium beetles are widespread agricultural pests, results will also be relevant to more applied researchers.
Fliessgewässer unterstehen dauernden Veränderungen. Diese können natürlich oder anthropogen bedingt sein. Der Mensch 'korrigiert seine Flüsse und Bäche schon seit Jahrhunderten. Seit der Industrialisierung wurden die Eingriffe jedoch zunehmend stärker und umfangreicher. Ganze Flusssysteme wurden begradigt, Wasserkraftwerke stauen Flüsse über hunderte Kilometer an und Schleusen machen Fliessgewässer wiederum schiffbar. Heutzutage hat sich die Denkweise umgekehrt. Weniger Eingriffe, Rückbau von flussbaulichen Einrichtungen und die Forderung nach mehr Naturnähe bestimmen mittlerweile die Gedanken der Wasserwirtschaft. Erst recht durch die Umsetzung der EU-Wasserrahmenrichtlinie, die im Allgemeinen eine Verbesserung der Gewässer fordert. Laut dieser Forderung müssten einige stark veränderten Fliessgewässer von den Verbauungen 'befreit werden. Die Arbeit soll versuchen aufzuzeigen, wieso es auch wünschenswert wäre alte Eingriffe in die Flüsse zu schützen, weil sie besonders und einmalig sind und sie nach eingehender Überprüfung als kulturhistorische Denkmäler auszuweisen. Deshalb soll geklärt werden wie sich solche flussbauliche Konstruktionen zu kulturhistorischen Bauwerken entwickeln konnten . Infolgedessen soll besonders Wert auf die Identifikation der Bevölkerung und der Erbauer mit den jeweiligen Objekten gelegt werden. Welche Wünsche und Erwartungen hegten die Menschen bei der Erstellung der flussbaulichen Bauwerke? Welche Konflikte traten zutage? Wie hat sich der Stellenwert der Bauwerke über die Zeit bis heute verändert? Um die heutige kulturhistorische Bedeutung von Fließgewässern zu verstehen, ist die Kenntnis über die frühere Beziehung des Menschen, besonders der Flussanwohner, zu ihren Flüssen von besonderer Relevanz. Nur so kann geklärt werden wieso man heute das Interesse besitzt verbaute Flüsse zu erhalten, obwohl Möglichkeiten bestünden sie aus ihrem 'Korsett zu befreien. Diese Fragestellungen sollen am Beispiel des Hochrheins und dem schweizerischen Linthwerk untersucht werden. Als Untersuchungsmethode dienen das Studium und die Analyse diverser schriftlicher Quellen.
Traditional state-centric accounts of climate change governance fail to capture the dynamics that characterise international negotiations on climate change mitigation and adaptation. These accounts are largely based on rational choice models of conflict and cooperation in international relations, which assume that states are unitary actors, and that they act rationally in the pursuit of clearly-defined goals. Because of the nature of their assumptions, rational choice models tend to focus exclusively on the international legal process conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This dissertation, by contrast, adopts a transnational relations approach, which argues that a wider interpretation of governance is required to understand the dynamics of climate change regulation. By defining the constitutive elements of climate change governance, the dissertation aims to highlight the complex web of relationships at national, international, and transnational levels that effect regulatory processes and outcomes, and emphasises the different but complementary roles that states and non-state actors play in climate change governance.
In the mountainous regions of North Vietnam, smallholder farmers try to sustain and improve their livelihoods under conditions of growing population density and land pressure. Livestock husbandry appears as major development opportunity for them. Yet, 'mountainous regions' are heterogeneous, comprising areas near town with favourable access to markets and infrastructure but higher land pressure and remote areas, disadvantaged concerning market and infrastructure access but disposing of larger cropping and pasture areas. Low and unsteady resource availability in marginal areas limits the possibilities for intensification of livestock production. One solution is to increase production efficiency through improved resource utilisation. In animal production this can be realised through the development of sustainable livestock breeding and management programmes, using genotypes with high productive adaptability. Such programmes will have different structures depending on short- and medium-term resource availability, production objectives and production intensity of respective smallholder production systems.Based on the results of phase 1 and 2, D2.3 focuses on planning procedures for livestock breeding and management programmes for four combinations of production systems and species/genotypes, namely production of lean pork with exotic higher-yielding breeds in demand-driven systems, production of branded pork from local Ban pigs including remote, resource-driven pig producers, production of beef in farming systems of different scale, organisational set-up and remoteness, and production of goat meat as niche product in systems in transition. The four programmes will respond to the large heterogeneity of smallholder production systems in the project area. In fulfilment of its research objectives, D2.3 relies on cooperation with sub-projects E4.1 (Product marketing) concerning the design of a pork marketing and quality control system in the frame of village breeding and pork marketing programmes, G1.2 (Innovations and sustainability strategies) and C4.1 (Land use modelling) on integrated modelling concerning the identification of most sustainable development paths for farms of different production intensity, scale, organisational set-up and remoteness, F2.3 (Livelihood risks) for characterisation of smallholder farms using key indicator regarding adoption of technologies in livestock husbandry, A1.3 (Participatory research) on adoption of optimised breeding strategies by farmers, and D5.2 (Aquaculture) on conflicts and complementarities in the use of feed resources for investigated livestock species and fish/aquaculture.
In strict nature reserves and core zones of protected areas hunting and forestry operations are often restricted or banned. However, regarding the management of Wild boar, such hunt-free zones are discussed controversially and can lead to conflict. Hunters whose areas border no-hunting zones (and who have to reimburse farmers for crop damages caused by Wild boar) are concerned that the boars may evade effective population management by staying within the limits of the no-hunting zone, and farmers fear increased crop damage in the surroundings of such areas. Some conservationists are also concerned because Wild boars increasingly root protected habitats and can cause damage to rare plant assemblies. The three-year project Wild boar problem in the vicinity of protected areas by the Game Research Institute (Wildforschungsstelle) at the Centre for Agriculture Baden-Württemberg (LAZBW) aims at investigating if and how no-hunting zones might affect Wild boar activity, movement patterns, home range size, and habitat use, as well as crop damage caused by boars, by comparing these aspects between hunting-free zones and unprotected areas. Although there have already been a number of telemetry studies on Wild boar, including space use in the context of hunting activity, to date there is no study that has specifically investigated spatial and ecological aspects in and around protected areas. My dissertation Ecology of Wild boar Sus scrofa in the vicinity of protected areas is being carried out within the scope of the Game Research Institutes project and apart from the aims outlined above, further aspects of Wild boar ecology will be investigated, especially the role of Wild boar as bio-engineer and habitat creator for other species vs. unwanted damages at protected sites. Twenty-seven Vectronic GPS-GSM satellite collars with integrated activity sensors are available to tag Wild boars in three study areas: the non-protected Altdorfer Forest near Aulendorf with regular hunting activity and forestry, the nature reserve Wurzacher Ried with its ca. 700 ha core zone that is a strict reserve with no human activity, and the Biosphere Reserve Swabian Jura, especially in the surroundings of the former military training area near Münsingen and the 170 ha no-usage-area Föhrenberg.
Combined production of fuels and chemicals from wood This project examines an innovative approach for pre-treating wood in order to produce fuels and chemicals. In this approach, the researchers combine hot water treatment with so-called radical scavengers. Background Biofuels from wood have economic and ecological advantages as compared to fuels from corn starch and sugar cane (costs, availability, no conflict with food production). However, it is much more difficult to transform wood into biofuels. This is because the components of wood-cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin-are strongly interwoven to protect the plant against external forces, in particular. In the production of biofuels, this impedes the enzymatic degradation of cellulose and lignocellulose into their respective sugars, which can subsequently be fermented to produce, for example, bio-ethanol. Therefore, it is necessary to pre-treat the wood in order to break up its structure and improve the enzymatic access. Aim One possible treatment of biomass would be to dissolve it in hot water, but this is hampered by cross-linking reactions of emerging lignin fragments. So-called 'radical scavengers' can stop these undesired reactions and make the wood much more soluble. This procedure is aimed at achieving, on the one hand, a cellulose fraction with improved enzymatic access and, on the other hand, a high-quality lignin fraction. The latter serves as a starting material for the production of aromatic chemicals. Significance The examined approach is aimed at producing fuels and aromatic chemicals which are today still gained from petrochemical resources. This opens up new avenues for gradually replacing fossil oil with biomass.
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