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In Forschungsprogrammen werden zahlreiche Akteure mit unterschiedlichen Hintergründen und fachlichen Expertisen in Einzel- oder Verbundvorhaben vereint, die jedoch weitestgehend unabhängig voneinander durchgeführt werden. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass gesamtgesellschaftliche Herausforderungen wie die globale Erwärmung zunehmend disziplinübergreifende Lösungsansätze erfordern, sollten Vernetzungs- und Transferprozesse in Forschungsprogrammen stärker in den Fokus rücken. Mit der Implementierung einer Begleitforschung kann dieser Forderung Rechnung getragen werden. Begleitforschung unterscheidet sich in ihrer Herangehensweise und ihrer Zielvorstellung von den „üblichen“ Projekten und kann in unterschiedlichen theoretischen Reinformen auftreten. Verkürzt dargestellt agiert sie entweder (1) inhaltlich komplementär zu den jeweiligen Forschungsprojekten, (2) auf einer Metaebene mit Fokus auf die Prozesse im Forschungsprogramm oder (3) als integrierende, synthetisierende Instanz, für die die Vernetzung der Projekte im Forschungsprogramm sowie der Wissenstransfer von Bedeutung sind. Zwar sind diese Formen analytisch in theoretische Reinformen trennbar, in der Praxis ergibt sich in der Regel jedoch ein Mix aus allen dreien.
In diesem Zusammenhang schließt die vorliegende Dissertation als ergänzende Studie an bisherige Ansätze zum methodischen Handwerkszeug der Begleitforschung an und fokussiert auf folgende Fragestellungen: Auf welcher Basis kann die Vernetzung der Akteure in einem Forschungsprogramm durchgeführt werden, um diese effektiv zusammenzubringen? Welche weiteren methodischen Elemente sollten daran ansetzen, um einen Mehrwert zu generieren, der die Summe der Einzelergebnisse des Forschungsprogrammes übersteigt? Von welcher Art kann dann ein solcher Mehrwert sein und welche Rolle spielt dabei die Begleitforschung?
Das erste methodische Element bildet die Erhebung und Aufbereitung einer Ausgangsdatenbasis. Durch eine auf semantischer Analyse basierenden Verschlagwortung projektbezogener Texte lässt sich eine umfassende Datenbasis aus den Inhalten der Forschungsprojekte generieren. Die Schlagwörter werden dabei anhand eines kontrollierten Vokabulars in einem Schlagwortkatalog strukturiert. Parallel dazu werden sie wiederum den jeweiligen Projekten zugeordnet, wodurch diese thematische Merkmale erhalten. Um thematische Überschneidungen zwischen Forschungsprojekten sichtbar und interpretierbar zu machen, beinhaltet das zweite Element Ansätze zur Visualisierung. Dazu werden die Informationen in einen Netzwerkgraphen transferiert, der sowohl alle im Forschungsprogramm involvierten Projekte als auch die identifizierten Schlagwörter in Relation zueinander abbilden kann. So kann zum Beispiel sichtbar gemacht werden, welche Forschungsprojekte sich auf Basis ihrer Inhalte „näher“ sind als andere. Genau diese Information wird im dritten methodischen Element als Planungsgrundlage für unterschiedliche Veranstaltungsformate wie Arbeitstagungen oder Transferwerkstätten genutzt. Das vierte methodische Element umfasst die Synthesebildung. Diese gestaltet sich als Prozess über den gesamten Zeitraum der Zusammenarbeit zwischen Begleitforschung und den weiteren Forschungsprojekten hinweg, da in die Synthese unter anderem Zwischen-, Teil- und Endergebnisse der Projekte einfließen, genauso wie Inhalte aus den unterschiedlichen Veranstaltungen. Letztendlich ist dieses vierte Element auch das Mittel, um aus den integrierten und synthetisierten Informationen Handlungsempfehlungen für zukünftige Vorhaben abzuleiten.
Die Erarbeitung der methodischen Elemente erfolgte im laufenden Prozess des Begleitforschungsprojektes KlimAgrar, welches der vorliegenden Dissertation als Fallbeispiel dient und dessen Hintergründe in der Thematik Klimaschutz und Klimaanpassung in der Landwirtschaft im Text ausführlich erläutert werden.
While estimated numbers of past and future climate migrants are alarming, the growing empirical evidence suggests that the association between adverse climate-related events and migration is not universally positive. This dissertation seeks to advance our understanding of when and how climate migration emerges by analyzing heterogeneous climatic influences on migration in low- and middle-income countries. To this end, it draws on established economic theories of migration, datasets from physical and social sciences, causal inference techniques and approaches from systematic literature review. In three of its five chapters, I estimate causal effects of processes of climate change on inequality and migration in India and Sub-Saharan Africa. By employing interaction terms and by analyzing sub-samples of data, I explore how these relationships differ for various segments of the population. In the remaining two chapters, I present two systematic literature reviews. First, I undertake a comprehensive meta-regression analysis of the econometric climate migration literature to summarize general climate migration patterns and explain the conflicting findings. Second, motivated by the broad range of approaches in the field, I examine the literature from a methodological perspective to provide best practice guidelines for studying climate migration empirically. Overall, the evidence from this dissertation shows that climatic influences on human migration are highly heterogeneous. Whether adverse climate-related impacts materialize in migration depends on the socio-economic characteristics of the individual households, such as wealth, level of education, agricultural dependence or access to adaptation technologies and insurance. For instance, I show that while adverse climatic shocks are generally associated with an increase in migration in rural India, they reduce migration in the agricultural context of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the average wealth levels are much lower so that households largely cannot afford the upfront costs of moving. I find that unlike local climatic shocks which primarily enhance internal migration to cities and hence accelerate urbanization, shocks transmitted via agricultural producer prices increase migration to neighboring countries, likely due to the simultaneous decrease in real income in nearby urban areas. These findings advance our current understanding by showing when and how economic agents respond to climatic events, thus providing explicit contexts and mechanisms of climate change effects on migration in the future. The resulting collection of findings can guide policy interventions to avoid or mitigate any present and future welfare losses from climate change-related migration choices.
Urbanization and agricultural land use are two of the main drivers of global changes with effects on ecosystem functions and human wellbeing. Green Infrastructure is a new approach in spatial planning contributing to sustainable urban development, and to address urban challenges, such as biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, green economy development, and social cohesion. Because the research focus has been mainly on open green space structures, such as parks, urban forest, green building, street green, but neglected spatial and functional potentials of utilizable agricultural land, this thesis aims at fill this gap.
This cumulative thesis addresses how agricultural land in urban and peri-urban landscapes can contribute to the development of urban green infrastructure as a strategy to promote sustainable urban development. Therefore, a number of different research approaches have been applied. First, a quantitative, GIS-based modeling approach looked at spatial potentials, addressing the heterogeneity of peri-urban landscape that defines agricultural potentials and constraints. Second, a participatory approach was applied, involving stakeholder opinions to evaluate multiple urban functions and benefits. Finally, an evidence synthesis was conducted to assess the current state of research on evidence to support future policy making at different levels.
The results contribute to the conceptual understanding of urban green infrastructures as a strategic spatial planning approach that incorporates inner-urban utilizable agricultural land and the agriculturally dominated landscape at the outer urban fringe. It highlights the proposition that the linkage of peri-urban farmland with the green infrastructure concept can contribute to a network of multifunctional green spaces to provide multiple benefits to the urban system and to successfully address urban challenges. Four strategies are introduced for spatial planning with the contribution of peri-urban farmland to a strategically planned multifunctional network, namely the connecting, the productive, the integrated, and the adapted way. Finally, this thesis sheds light on the opportunities that arise from the integration of the peri- urban farmland in the green infrastructure concept to support transformation towards a more sustainable urban development. In particular, the inherent core planning principle of multifunctionality endorses the idea of co-benefits that are considered crucial to trigger transformative processes.
This work concludes that the linkage of peri-urban farmland with the green infrastructure concept is a promising action field for the development of new pathways for urban transformation towards sustainable urban development. Along with these outcomes, attention is drawn to limitations that remain to be addressed by future research, especially the identification of further mechanisms required to support policy integration at all levels.
Agriculture is one of the most important human activities providing food and more agricultural goods for seven billion people around the world and is of special importance in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of people depends on the agricultural sector for their livelihoods and will suffer from negative climate change impacts on agriculture until the middle and end of the 21st century, even more if weak governments, economic crises or violent conflicts endanger the countries’ food security. The impact of temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns on agricultural vegetation motivated this thesis in the first place. Analyzing the potentials of reducing negative climate change impacts by adapting crop management to changing climate is a second objective of the thesis. As a precondition for simulating climate change impacts on agricultural crops with a global crop model first the timing of sowing in the tropics was improved and validated as this is an important factor determining the length and timing of the crops´ development phases, the occurrence of water stress and final crop yield. Crop yields are projected to decline in most regions which is evident from the results of this thesis, but the uncertainties that exist in climate projections and in the efficiency of adaptation options because of political, economical or institutional obstacles have to be considered. The effect of temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns on crop yields can be analyzed separately and varies in space across the continent. Southern Africa is clearly the region most susceptible to climate change, especially to precipitation changes. The Sahel north of 13° N and parts of Eastern Africa with short growing seasons below 120 days and limited wet season precipitation of less than 500 mm are also vulnerable to precipitation changes while in most other part of East and Central Africa, in contrast, the effect of temperature increase on crops overbalances the precipitation effect and is most pronounced in a band stretching from Angola to Ethiopia in the 2060s. The results of this thesis confirm the findings from previous studies on the magnitude of climate change impact on crops in sub-Saharan Africa but beyond that helps to understand the drivers of these changes and the potential of certain management strategies for adaptation in more detail. Crop yield changes depend on the initial growing conditions, on the magnitude of climate change, and on the crop, cropping system and adaptive capacity of African farmers which is only now evident from this comprehensive study for sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore this study improves the representation of tropical cropping systems in a global crop model and considers the major food crops cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and climate change impacts throughout the continent.