Publication Archive

latest SERI publications

Value pluralism and economic valuation – defendable if well done

Spangenberg, J.H., Settele, J.(2016)

in press

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The world we see shapes the world we make

Joachim H. Spangenberg

Int. J. Sustainable Development 19 (2016)

How the underlying ontologies lead to different recommendations from environmental and ecological economics – the Green Economy example

Since the beginning of the decade, the discussion on sustainable development has lost inprominence, being gradually replaced by a debate on the “Green Economy” (UNEP 2011)family of concepts, including the “Green New Deal” (UNEP 2009), “Green Growth”(OECD 2011) or a “Global Marshall Plan for a...

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The Corporate Human Development Index CHDI: a tool for corporate social sustainability management and reporting

Joachim H. Spangenberg

Journal of Cleaner Production 23.12.2015

Sustainable development is one of the dominant societal and political discourses around the world now, and the Human Development Index HDI has become an important issue of debate in many countries but so far there is a lack of perspective regarding the impact of the HDI issues on corporate management, and vice versa. The paper suggests a transparent, easy-to-communicate supplement to the existing, often complex and...

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Stakeholder involvement in ESS research and governance: Between conceptual ambition and practical experiences – risks, challenges and tested tools

Joachim H. Spangenberg, Christoph Görg, Josef Settele

Ecosystem ServicesVolume 16, December 2015, Pages 201–211

Conceptually, stakeholder participation in the governance of ecosystem services (ESS) is necessary for several reasons, some of them well-known for sustainability governance in general but some more specific for ecosystem services. In particular the failure of monetary valuation to provide meaningful valuation instruments requires participation of a representative diversity of...

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Assessing eco-system services for informing land-use decisions: a step-wise approach for place-based ecosystem service assessments

Förster, J., Barkmann, J., Fricke, R., Hotes, S., Kleyer, M., Kobbe, S., Kübler, D., Rumbaur, C., Siegmund-Schultze, M., Seppelt, R., Settele, J., Spangenberg, J.H., Tekken, V., Vaclavik, T., Wittmer, H.

Ecology and Society 20(3): 31 (2015)

Assessments of ecosystem services (ES), that aim at informing decisions on land management, are increasing in number around the globe. Despite selected success stories, evidence for ES information being used in decision making is weak, partly because ES...

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Indicators for Sustainable Development

Spangenberg, J.H. - Michael Redclift, Delyse Springett (Eds.)

Routledge International Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 20. ISBN 978-0-415-83842-9, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxford, UK: 308-322

This Handbook gives a comprehensive, international and cutting-edge overview of Sustainable Development. It integrates the key imperatives of sustainable development, namely institutional, environmental, social and economic, and calls for greater participation, social...

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Escaping the lock-in of continuous insecticide spraying in rice: Developing an integrated ecological and socio-political DPSIR analysis

J.H. Spangenberg, J.-M. Douguet, J. Settele, K.L. Heong

Ecological Modelling, Volume 295, 10 January 2015, Pages 188–195

A narrow perception of causality chains can be counterproductive and self-defeating, as the case of pesticide use in Asian rice production shows. Using the Driving Forces – Pressures – State – Impact – Response (DPSIR) scheme developed by EEA and Eurostat we analyse the logic inherent to the application of insecticides. Its underlying biology-to-society perspective considers...

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The Ecosystem Service Cascade: further developing the metaphor

Joachim H. Spangenberg, Christina von Haaren, Josef Settele

Ecological Economics, Volume 104, August 2014, Pages 22-32

Integrating societal processes to accommodate social processes and planning, and the case of bioenergy.

The ‘cascade model’ of ecosystem service generation and valuation highlights the links between biophysical aspects/biodiversity and human well-being, in particular for the case of marginal changes, but does not include societal processes. Services seem to flow effortlessly...

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