Inputs zur gesellschaftlichen Entscheidungsfindung

Transitioning economic sectors towards more sustainable futures is a major global challenge, in particular for non-OECD countries. Policymakers in these countries are confronted with a double challenge: how to implement cleaner technologies and infrastructures while at the same time promoting rapid industrial development. In catch-up studies, this trade-off has been increasingly interpreted as providing windows of opportunity for gaining strong leadership in new generations of cleantech industries. In this paper, we maintain that in order to specify how these windows of opportunity can be endogenized, a deeper understanding is needed about whether, how and by whom the directionality of innovation systems can be influenced. For this purpose, we propose an analytical approach that draws on the technological innovation system framework extending the current understanding of directionality in two ways: first, we complement the prevalent top-down perspective with a bottom-up view exemplified by the institutional entrepreneurship literature. Second, we posit that the focus has to be shifted from the manufacturing of single technologies to the transformation of entire socio-technical systems. The presented framework is validated by a case study on recent shifts in the dominant technology in China's urban water management sector. Major changes in the country's sectoral selection environment led membrane bioreactor technology to become the dominant design in urban water management - a development that is unmatched in any other country in the world. Owing to these transformations, China's technology firms outcompete multinational players and therefore they show strong potentials for industrial leapfrogging. However, although the promise to solve environmental problems played a decisive role in the shaping of the selection environment, it remains unclear whether the observed transformation leads the way to a more sustainable sector structure in the longer run. The case, however, still enables us to specify how windows of opportunity can be endogenized through the interplay of different actors trying to shape different layers of the selection environment in a specific sector.

Theories of policymaking often focus on subsystems within a larger, overarching governance system. However, subsystem identification is complicated by the complexity of governance systems, characterized by multiple, interrelated issues, multi‐level interactions, and a diverse set of organizations. This study suggests an empirical, bottom‐up methodology to identify subsystems. Subsystems are identified based on bundles of similar observed organizational activity. The study further suggests a set of three elementary criteria to classify individual subsystems. In order to prove the value of the methodology, subsystems are identified through cluster analysis, and subsequently classified in a study of Swiss water governance. Results suggest that Swiss water governance can be understood as a network of overlapping subsystems connected by boundary penetrating organizations, with high‐conflict and quiet politics subgroups. The study shows that a principled analysis of subsystems as the interconnected, constituent parts of complex governance systems offers insights into important contextual factors shaping outcomes. Such insights are prerequisite knowledge in order to understand and navigate complex systems for researchers and practitioners alike.

In densely populated areas, surface waters are affected by many sources of pollution. Besides classical pollutants like nutrients and organic matter that lead to eutrophication, micropollutants from various point- and non-point sources are getting more attention by water quality managers. For cost-effective management an integrated assessment is needed that takes into account all relevant pollutants and all sources of pollution within a catchment. Due to the difficulty of identifying and quantifying sources of pollution and the need for considering long-term changes in boundary conditions, typically substantial uncertainty exists about the consequences of potential management alternatives to improve surface water quality. We therefore need integrated assessment methods that are able to deal with multiple objectives and account for various sources of uncertainty.
This paper aims to contribute to integrated, prospective water management by combining a) multi-criteria decision support methods to structure the decision process and quantify preferences, b) integrated water quality modelling to predict consequences of management alternatives accounting for uncertainty, and c) scenario planning to consider uncertainty from potential future climate and socio-economic developments, to evaluate the future cost-effectiveness of water quality management alternatives at the catchment scale. It aims to demonstrate the usefulness of multi-attribute value functions for water quality assessment to i) propagate uncertainties throughout the entire assessment procedure, ii) facilitate the aggregation of multiple objectives while avoiding discretization errors when using categories for sub-objectives, iii) transparently communicate the results. We show how to use such multi-attribute value functions for model-based decision support in water quality management.
We showcase the procedure for the Mönchaltorfer Aa catchment on the Swiss Plateau. We evaluate ten different water quality management alternatives, including current practice, that tackle macro- and micropollutants from a wide spectrum of agricultural and urban sources. We evaluate costs and water quality effects of the alternatives under four different socio-economic scenarios for the horizon 2050 under present and future climate projections and visualize their uncertainty. While the performance of alternatives is catchment specific, the methods can be transferred to other places and other management situations. Results confirm the need for cross-sectoral coordination of different management actions and interdisciplinary collaboration to support the development of prospective strategies to improve water quality.

Large regional programs to restore riverine habitat for fish and aquatic organisms have become common throughout North America, Europe, and elsewhere. Evaluating the effectiveness of projects implemented under these programs - sometimes called programmatic monitoring and evaluation - has proven challenging, and little guidance exists on programmatic monitoring and evaluation approaches and their effectiveness. In this paper, we review different approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of river restoration projects implemented across a region. These programmatic monitoring and evaluation approaches include case studies, meta-analyses, multiple before–after control–impact (mBACI), extensive posttreatment (EPT), intensively monitored watersheds (IMWs), and hybrid programmatic approaches that use a combination of different experimental designs. For each approach, we discuss the pros and cons as well as provide examples. The most appropriate approach depends in part on the questions that the programmatic monitoring and evaluation strives to address, the spatial and temporal scale at which detection of a response is expected, and the scale of inference. Case studies and mBACI approaches can answer questions about individual projects but have several limitations in terms of cost, timely results, and feasibility. A meta-analysis, which can provide broadly applicable results, is dependent upon a large number of case studies being completed. The EPT approach can provide relatively quick and easy-to-interpret results, but it requires a large population of completed projects and careful selection of controls. The IMW approach has been broadly applied in western North America but has had limited success and appears to be tractable only in small catchments where restoration and monitoring can be well controlled. Based on results from recent efforts in the USA and Europe, the most feasible programmatic monitoring and evaluation approach in terms of cost, implementability, and production of timely results appears to be a hybrid approach that uses a combination of the EPT and mBACI approaches.

Over the past decade, water professionals have begun to focus on a new paradigm for urban water systems, which entails the recovery of resources from wastewater, the integration of engineered and natural systems, and coordination among agencies managing different facets of water systems. In the San Francisco Bay Area, planning for nutrient management serves as an exemplary model of this transition. We employed a variety of methodological approaches including stakeholder analysis, multi-criteria decision-making weight elicitation, and document analysis to understand and support decision-making in this context. Based on interviews with 32 stakeholders, we delineate goals that are considered to be important for achieving the new paradigm and we highlight management strategies that can help reach these goals. We identify and analyze the social, institutional, and technical impediments to planning and implementing multi-benefit wastewater infrastructure projects and identify strategies to overcome some of these challenges. Transitioning to a new paradigm for urban water infrastructure will require stakeholders to proactively forge collaborative relationships, jointly define a shared vision and objectives, and build new rules to overcome limitations of current institutional policies.