The main motivation for sustainable development, as defined in the Brundtland report, is to care for other humans - for the world's poor and for unborn people. Traditional economic models use the motivation to increase one's own well-being as the main motivation for action....

Using the capability approach, we analyse a recent conflict around nature conservation in the city of Leipzig, Germany. Following its concept of flood protection, a state authority felled thousands of trees in a highly popular nature protection area, which culminated in public protests and...

Participation is said to improve decisions on environmental conflicts. When investigating 16 case studies of participatory processes in European Water and Biodiversity Governance, which necessarily is multi-level, the picture becomes blurred: many different forms of participation can be...

International aid projects in post-communist countries were meant to support the existing systems of environmental protection during the transition period and also to introduce new standards of environmental governance. This paper looks at the role project evaluations can play in fulfilling...

This report constitutes the main deliverable of WorkPackage 2 of GoverNat, "Assessing multilevel activities in water and biodiversity governance", dealing with an assessment of state-ofthe- art European water and biodiversity governance, based on the analysis of a series of casestudies developed...

Invasive species are one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Therefore, national strategies are developed to deal with biological invasions. Economic evaluation as a tool of policy advice has to take into account three challenges: (1) reflecting ecological knowledge, which is...

An assessment of the consequences of biological invasions and of the measures taken against must be at the base of each social decision in this field. Three forms of uncertainty can be distinguished that make such a decision difficult to take: (1) factual uncertainty, which encompasses not only...

The politically influential idea of sustainable development is closely tied to the concept of inter- and intragenerational justice without clarifying these concepts and their relationship. In developing an account of human development, the capability approach conceptualizes parts of...