Governing (with) ecosystem services: Changing Problematisations and Rationalities of Governing in German Nature and Landscape Policies

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Markus Leibenath
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 320283583

"Ecosystem services" (ESS) has become a key term of the international, the European and increasingly also the German debates on nature conservation and landscape management. It may be regarded as an indicator of a programmatic reorientation of biodiversity policies in an economic vein. It has hardly been studied hitherto how governing in the policy area "nature conservation and landscape management" is changing in Germany with the increased use of the term "ecosystem services". For instance, does an economisation or neoliberalisation of nature and landscape occur, that is, an expansion of the application of economic and market-based principles, as is often described at the international level? Or do counteracting forces prevail that end up reinforcing the well-established relationship of governmental regulation, civil society involvement and market forces? Or is a specific novel understanding of nature and landscape policies developing in the course of the ESS discourses currently being produced in Germany? - These fundamental questions lie at the heart of the proposed project. The aim is to study ESS discourses in Germany from the perspective of governmentality research. It is to be analysed how nature conservation and landscape management are debated in connection with the economically influenced ESS concept. The focus is on the problematisations and rationalities of governing in the policy area "nature conservation and landscape management", in particular on the dynamics of changes in these problematisations and rationalities in Germany. Closely related is the question which changes are to be observed in how the objects of these policies (that is, nature, landscape, biological diversity, planning etc.) are constituted as a part of problematisations and whether even entirely new objects arise in the course of the ES discourses. The project is conceived as a discourse analysis, relying on quantitative lexicometric methods as well as on qualitative empirical methods such as document analyses, semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Among others, the initiatives "Nature capital Germany - TEEB DE" and "Implementation of Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy in Germany" (MAES DE) are to be studied in depth.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants