The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan faces a severe water crisis. The Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) in Jordan estimated the annual per capita share of water for domestic uses at 147 cubic meters in 2010 and 126 cubic meters in 2015 indicating a continuous decline in the ability of Jordan's...

Land is an essential but limited natural resource. We employ the concept of stocks to analysedriving forces for land-use conversion and to assess, whether the German political “30-hectares-goal” is feasible given the current institutional setting. In this paper major drivingforces for...

The question of how to deal with uncertainty in environmental decision-making is cur-rently attracting considerable attention on the part of scientists as well as of politicians and those involved in government administration. The existence of uncertainty becomes particularly apparent in the...

The European Water Framework Directive is shaping a new conception of integrative water protection. In this article, the consequences of the Water Framework Directive in respect to national environmental policy will be discussed in referring to the notion of responsibility which is a central...

In this paper a method is developed to derive prices for natural goods from information about material and energy flows within ecosystems. The derivation is based on an analogy between ecological and economic systems: both systems are characterized by flows of material and energy. To derive...

An integrated ecological-economic decision-making approach is developed to help local stakeholders decide on land use in rural areas where the conflict between natural resource protection and economic development is pressing. It consists of four methodological steps. In the first step the...

In der politischen Diskussion werden für den Erhalt der biologischen Vielfalt in der Regel ökonomische Argumente vorgebracht: Biodiversität sollte als ökonomisches Gut betrachtet werden. Dem Rückgang der Vielfalt sei entgegenzutreten, indem man die Auswirkungen menschlicher Aktivitäten auf...

IANUS is a method for aiding public decision-making that supports efforts towards sustainable development and has a wide range of application. IANUS stands for Integrated Assessment of Decisions uNder Uncertainty for Sustainable Development. This paper introduces the main features of IANUS and...

Governance has definitely become a very iridescent concept in recent years. The term is widely used, meanwhile, in almost all social-science disciplines as well as in the political process. The intention of this paper is not so much to clarify these sometimes vague meanings but to highlight some...