https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/17729 2026-05-04T05:32:04Z 2026-05-04T05:32:04Z Pinar, Mehmet Agliardi, Elettra Stengos, Thanasis https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19254 2019-12-11T18:16:30Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

A new index of environmental quality Pinar, Mehmet; Agliardi, Elettra; Stengos, Thanasis A weighting scheme is proposed to construct a new index of environmental quality for different countries using an approach that relies on consistent tests for stochastic dominance (SD) efficiency. The test statistics and the estimators are computed using mixed integer programming methods. The variables that are considered include countries greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water pollution and forest bene ts, as from the dataset of the World Bank. In the overall index of environmental quality land without forest contributes the most (with a weight around 71%), GHG emissions contribute with around 25% and water pollution contributes less (with around 4%). Moreover, countries are ranked according to their index of environmental quality and their rankings are compared with those of the Kyoto Protocol and alternative environmental indices. Then, employing a complementary SD approach, pairwise SD tests are employed to examine the dynamic progress of each separate variable over time, from 1990 to 2010, within 5-year horizons. Furthermore, pairwise SD tests are used to examine the major industry contributors to the GHG emissions and water pollution at any given time, to uncover the industry which contributes the most to total emissions and water pollution. It turns out that the components that are assigned high (low) weights in the SD approach are the ones that are the driving/fast-moving (holding back/slow-moving) variables in the sub- indices of GHG emissions and water pollution.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Meskens, Gaston https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19097 2019-12-11T18:16:28Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

A politics of confrontation for sustainable development governance Meskens, Gaston This paper proposes an alternative qualitative vision on sustainable development that could inspire a global ethics for societal development and intergenerational accountability and, at the same time, expose specific responsibilities for policy, the private sector, science and civil society. The vantage point would be viewing sustainable development as a convergence of interests on three ‘policy levels’: Normative integration: a ‘meta-level’ that starts from an interpretation of the concept of sustainable development as a meta-norm under which every human socio-economic activity would need to ‘fit’; Pragmatic assemblage: a ‘medium level’ that concentrates on the ‘building blocks’ of sustainable development and their interrelation; Pragmatic assimilation: a ‘ground level’ that focuses on how and why specific actors formulate own responsibilities and (eventually) take corresponding action; The motivation is that, whatever our stake or concern is as citizens, communities, companies or institutions, we all have a joint interest in making these levels ‘work’. The challenge for sustainable development governance is then to ‘succesfully connect’ the levels, as this would unveil specific requirements for the way we make sense about our behaviour and rationalise it in view of the totality. Today, the political view is that ‘we know what (science tells us) to do’ and that governance is about organising our ‘good intentions’ into a coherent totality (see ‘the green economy’). The general assumption is that this is a complex but feasible exercise ‘if everybody shows political will’. This contribution argues that this approach is wrong, as this still provides ways for actors to escape specific responsibilities that are crucial for sustainable development. The presentation will elaborate on why and how the three-level picture of sustainable development governance would also make explicit these responsibilities and sketch required institutional approaches for a ‘politics of confrontation’ that would set this view in practice.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Rahder, Micha https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19155 2019-12-11T18:16:30Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

A Reserve Full of Rooftops: Technology, Scale, and Meaning in Remote Monitoring of Human Populations in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve Rahder, Micha

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Djordjevic, Dusan Balsiger, Jörg https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19346 2019-12-11T18:16:32Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

A view from the mountains: National involvement in Southeast European regionalization Djordjevic, Dusan; Balsiger, Jörg

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z