Martin Janicke – författare

Seit Ende der 80er Jahre gehen Pionierländer des Umweltschutzes neue Wege. Hintergrund ist das Konzept der nachhaltigen Entwicklung, wie es die 1992 in Rio de Janeiro beschlossene Agenda 21 formuliert. Im Kern handelt es sich um eine strategische Umweltplanung mit weitreichenden Konsequenzen für andere Politikfelder. Rund vier Fünftel der Industrieländer verfügen bereits über die eine oder andere Form solcher Planung. In Deutschland hingegen kommt dieser Prozeß bisher nur mühsam voran. Was tut sich in den Vorreiterländern einer strategisch orientierten Umweltpolitik? Was sind die Chancen und Vorzüge einer kooperativen Umweltplanung? Und was ergibt sich daraus für Deutschland? Dies sind die Fragen, denen sich dieses Buch widmet. Der Stand der internationalen Entwicklung wird von namhaften Wissenschaftlern im Überblick dargestellt. Das Buch ist sowohl für Umwelt-, Planungs- und Politikwissenschaftler als auch für Praktiker in Politik, Wirtschaft und Verbänden von Nutzen.

This book is a collection of systematically prepared case studies describing the environmental policy ofthirteen countriesin terms ofcapacity-building. Capacity for environmental policy and management, as the concept is used in this volume, has been defined broadly as a society''s "ability (...) to devise and implement solutions to environmental issues as part of a wider effort to achieve sustainable development" (OECD). Since the late 1960s capacity-building in environmental policy and management can be observed across the world. It may have made insufficient progress as yet from an environmentalist point of view, but it has produced some remarkable results, and not only in the industrialised world. In the first chapter we present the conceptual framework that underlies the national case studies. In the course ofour research project the authors ofthe book met together twice to discuss this framework in the light of the national experi­ ences and to harmonise their approaches. In this way we have tried to offer more than a collection of individual and incoherent case studies, focusing only on specific environmental problems, institutions, actors, or instruments. The idea behind this book is to give a systematic, comparative overview ofthe fundamental conditions under which environmental policies is practised in selected countries.

In zunehmendem Maße wird deutlich, daß Veränderungen in der Umwelt über komplexe Rückkoppelungen in alle Bereiche der menschlichen Existenz einwirken. Naturwissenschaftliche Feststellungen müssen daher von sozialwissenschaftlichen Analysen begleitet werden mit dem Ziel, Handlungsansätze für Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zu erarbeiten. Das vorliegende Buch, von kompetenten Wissenschaftlern zusammengestellt, erlaubt dem Leser, die Bedeutung langfristiger Umweltveränderungen und Herausforderungen für die Zukunft zu erkennen.

Structural change in basic industries is usually interpreted as an autonomous economic process. Some authors claim that there is a tendency to use the "end of the era of materials", thus resulting in a decline of the basic industries. Such a process would obviously benefit the environment. Classic economic theories, which deal with structural change in a rather holistic way, correspond to this trend, predicting either a shift towards manufacturing and services or a relocation of old basic industries to developing countries. On the basis of this dematerialization hypothesis, comparative case studies analyze in detail the driving forces behind industrial restructuring with regard to different industries and countries in Europe, where such a decline has been observed in recent years.

This book is the second collection of systematic case studies describing national environmental policies in 17 countries in terms of capacity building (see Appen­ dix). The OECD defines environmental capacity building as "a society''s ability to identify and solve environmental problems. " While various institutions, including UNEP, FAO, World Bank and OECD, have hitherto used the terms environmental capacity and capacity building almost exclusively with reference to developing countries, we have extended the concepts to industrialized countries, as well. The first collection, edited by Martin Janicke, Helge Joergens (both Free University Berlin) and Helmut Weidner (Social Science Research Center Berlin), was pub­ lished in 1997 under the title "National Environmental Policies - A Comparative Study of Capacity-Building" (Berlin, etc. : Springer Verlag). It included 13 studies of countries. As in the first volume, chapter I presents the conceptual framework underlying the national case studies. It is a slightly shorter version of the corresponding chap­ ter in volume I. The design of all case studies in the two volumes is largely con­ gruent with this conceptual framework. Although the various sections of the stud­ ies do not always have identical titles and subtitles, the central elements of the capacity-building approach have been applied in all cases.