Current Courses

Current Courses

Felipe Benra

Balancing social and ecological criteria for the design of payment for ecosystem services programs

Providing solutions to environmental and social issues is a common target of environmental policy. However, environmental and social issues are often assessed separately, generating unbalanced policy outcomes. An example is a policy that considers only environmental efficiency, but it is not socially just, or a policy that focuses only on social aspects but neglects environmental efficiency aspects. In order to avoid these types of unbalanced situations and to contribute to solving many of the “wicked” problems we will focus on a concrete policy instrument: Payment for Ecosystem Services. Payment for Ecosystem Services are spatially explicit market-based instruments that are increasingly including equity aspects (i.e., social variables), that should increase the positive effects and acceptance of these policies.

In this seminar, students will learn spatial aspects designing a Payment for Ecosystem Services Program (PESP) using terrestrial ecosystems of southern Chile as a case study, focusing on interactions between societal and environmental systems. In the first part of the course, students will be introduced to core applied spatial analysis concepts, databases and ways to model and map ecosystem services, along with other environmental and social criteria. For instance, students will learn how to map and model ecosystem services and how to combine that with social spatial variables. This will provide a focus and understanding relevant interactions in the design of PESP. In the second part of the course, students will develop an own project in a selected subset of the study area and develop a spatial project on with the aim of designing a “balanced” PESP.

Ziel: Students will learn applied aspects of the design of Payment for Ecosystem Services in terrestrial ecosystems.

Interacting Shocks in the Anthropocene

Realization of the global assemblage of human-created buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and other artifacts—the “technosphere”—has been achieved at the cost of significant degradation of the biosphere. Consequences are increasingly evident in the form of crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical conflicts, etc.—that interact and reinforce one another to form a global “polycrisis”. At the core of these dynamics lie dominant economic institutions and schools of thought that have historically prioritized growth and efficiency over sustainability and resilience. Responding to polycrisis calls for a transformation of economic knowledge itself.

Crises is an ambivalent concept. From its conception in ancient Greek as a moment of decision in an uncertain context, it now refers to prolonged and volatile turmoil unfolding across multiple scales and dimensions. From a social-ecological systems viewpoint, a crisis can be decomposed into two interlinked processes: shocks and creeping changes. Shocks are abrupt, often nonlinear events with noticeable impacts that disrupt the structure or functioning of a system—examples include wildfires, pandemics, or market crashes. They act as exogenous disturbances that can catalyze systemic reorganization. Creeping changes, by contrast, are gradual, cumulative processes that unfold over extended periods, typically lacking a clear onset. These processes—such as democratic backsliding, antimicrobial resistance, etc.—can degrade the stability and adaptive capacity of a system through altering its internal configuration and increasing sensitivity to external perturbations.

Shocks and creeping changes interact through dynamic feedbacks that altogether undermine a system's resilience (i.e., the capacity to deal with change, through persistence, adaptation or transformation).

Ziel: To understand the context of the polycrisis and its ramifications for human life. To think about shocks and creeping changes as constantly occuring events that are interconnected and present in our lives. Understanding compounding, cascading and multi-hazard events will be a key elements of investigation. Students will describe shock events from their own lived experiences and add them to a global database.

Current Courses

Sarah Gottwald

Sustainable urban transformation of a cross-border city - a social-ecological systems approach

CONTENT:

Currently there are two apparently opposing trends regarding national borders: growing nationalism demanding for more border protection or even border closure, and simultaneously very high cross-border mobility. While sometimes treated as rather abstract concepts or pass-through/transition areas within the European Union, cross-border regions are home to almost 40% of Europe’s population. This means, living close to the border or even cross-border is part of their everyday life, and tangible as well as intangible values are attributed to various places along and across the border. A specific case is the double city of Słubice and Frankfurt(Oder) at the Polish-German border. Every day, thousands of people cross the border at the inner-city bridge over the Odra river. Here, abstract border and cross-border debates become very concrete and localized. The city governments aim for a sustainable cross-border city center that integrates the border bridge as the central points in an urban area of a ca. 1km radius, which is the focus of current planning activities.

Our course connects directly to these activities. In a participatory process citizen came up with four main topics of interest for future urban development: mobility, urban green, places of encounter, and social activities. Together with the research project Move’n’Sense, based at Leuphana and the University of Life Science in Wroclaw, these key topics have been further explored using a participatory mapping survey. Additionally, this course draws on the activities and results of a previous Master TD project (summer term 24 and winter term 24/25). These entail insights on (1) the relation between cross-border identity and perception of common challenges and conservation intention of the Odra river; (2) more-than human perspectives and diverse value frames; (3) different perspectives for a specific urban planning case; (4) visions for a pedestrian Odra border bridge to foster social cohesion and human-nature interaction. In this course, students will work together with different local practice partners contributing to solve local challenges associated to the above-mentioned topics.

PROCESS:

Part 1 Definition of research objective and design

The objectives of the first part are to gain an overview of all preceding work, form groups according to the students’ individual interests, to develop a basic understanding of project management, and to establish a first contact with local practice partners. At the end of this part, the students are set up in their team, know their (potential) practice partners, have developed fist research questions and/or hypothesis, and have designed their transdisciplinary study. Tentative 3 sessions until end of April.

Part 2 Co-creation of knowledge

The aim of the second part is to create some solution-oriented and transferable knowledge through cooperative research. The students will apply a method of choice that fits the research questions, their expertise and practice partners’ capacities and needs, and analyze and evaluate data. At the end of this part student groups have gathered data based on sound scientific research methods that responds their research questions and are valuable for practice partners. This part will include an excursion of 2 to 3 days. Tentative 7 sessions (including excursion) until mid June.

Part 3 Knowledge re-integration

The aim of this part is to interpret your results in cooperation with practice partners and peers to develop a knowledge re-integration strategy. At the end of this part the students have finalized their data analysis and received feedback. Tentative 2 sessions until beginning of July.

Part 4 knowledge communication and dissemination

The aim of the final part is to develop an artifact (end product or strategy for communication and dissemination) and present this to practice partners and/or local community, and peers. Tentative 2 sessions, until end of lecture time.

Ziel: COURSE OBJECTIVES:

1. Students are able to co-create visions with local stakeholders for the study area through the application of transdisciplinary knowledge and methods.

2. Students are able to understand and evaluate the process through critical self-reflection to learn from their experience and to improve the process in future projects.

Current Courses