EIGEN

Project period: July 2010 – June 2013

Project description:

In the context of the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services under uncertainty, we study potential trade-offs between the three objectives contained in the general norm of sustainability: (i) intergenerational justice, (ii) intragenerational justice, and (iii) economic efficiency.

We analyze the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services under uncertainty both at the conceptual level and in the applied practical field of biodiversity and fishery policy. The project employs an inter- and transdisciplinary methodology. We integrate philosophical expertise in the conceptual analysis, and we consider ecological relationships in dynamic and stochastic ecological-economic modeling.

The research questions are developed in discussions with our praxis partners (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Environment Programme, German Fishery Association). This leads to analyses and conceptions of an efficient and just sustainability policy for ecosystem services which can serve as building blocks for sustainable fishery and biodiversity policies. To achieve this, user-specific workshops are held to discuss results from the project with the praxis partners. Due to the inter- and transdisciplinary nature of the project we are simultaneously working on three levels of abstraction:

1. Conceptual clarification of the equity goals in the concept of sustainability,

2. Generic ecological-economic modeling of human-nature relationships,

3. Case studies in the area of fishery and biodiversity policy.

Principal investigators:

Prof. Dr. Stefan Baumgärtner (Coordinator)

Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Department of Sustainability Sciences and Department of Economics 

Prof. Dr. Martin Quaas

Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany, Department of Economics

Scientific collaborators:

Prof. Dr. Christian Becker, Pennsylvania State University, USA, Department of Philosophy

Dr. Ralf Döring, Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institute, Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas, Forestry and Fisheries, Hamburg, Germany

Dr. Jörn Schmidt and Dr. Rüdiger Voss, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, DFG-Cluster of Excellence “The Future Ocean”

Praxis partners:

German Fishery Association, Hamburg, Germany

Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal, Canada

United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenia

Contact persons: Prof. Dr. Stefan Baumgärtner, Nikolai Hoberg, Klara Stumpf, Stefanie Glotzbach.