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Marsilius Bridge Seminars Winter Semester 2022/23
POLITICAL ACTION AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY FOR SUSTAINABILITY:
THE BIOECONOMY PERSPECTIVE

Mk Studien Einzelplakate Ws22 23 Political

 

https://lsf.uni-heidelberg.de/qisserver/rds?state=verpublish&status=init&vmfile=no&moduleCall=webInfo&publishConfFile=webInfo&publishSubDir=veranstaltung&veranstaltung.veranstid=381565&purge=y&topitem=lectures&subitem=editlecture

 

 

 

 

 

Jale Tosun has been appointed to the Fellwow

of Marsilius Kolleg Heidelberg

for the period from 2022, October 1st to 2023, September 30th

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Climate Action: bringing together scientists, policy makers, the public and businessesClimate Action

Jale Tosun is the editor of the new founded journal Climate Action, published by Springer Nature

 

 

 

Marsilius-Brückenseminar Summer Term 2021

 

Transboundary Water Conflict Resolution: The Israel-Arab Case

 

 

Current Press Information

 

Heidelberg, 13 July 2020
No. 54/2020


Biodiversity in the Agricultural Landscape
State of Baden-Württemberg funds interdisciplinary research project on
ecological farming


How does ecological farming influence plant biodiversity in the agricultural landscape? Are there
positive effects on the landscape level if, for instance, ecological varieties are raised and fields
cultivated sustainably? What is the impact of a fluid transition from conventional to ecological
farming? These questions are the focus of the AgroBioDiv research project, which combines the
respective expertise of Heidelberg University researchers in biology and political science. In
addition to exploring biodiversity, the Heidelberg scientists also strive to investigate how policy
and public management can support preserving biological diversity in agriculture. The four-year
research project headed by Prof. Dr Marcus Koch and Prof. Dr Jale Tosun has approximately
400,000 euros in funding from the State of Baden-Württemberg.

“With the progressive loss of biological diversity in traditional agricultural landscapes, so-called
agrobiodiversity is a cornerstone in the ecological fabric of a landscape that has a wide variety of
plants, animals, and especially insects,” states Prof. Koch. “Ecological farming generally has a
positive effect on biodiversity. By expanding such farmland, the potential for preserving biological
diversity is considerable, especially when managed cohesively.” Against this backdrop, the
Heidelberg researchers will study the interrelationship of cultivated seed and plant material, crop
type and varietal diversity, along with the diversity of wild vegetation. They hope their findings will
point to how agriculture could be oriented in the transformation from conventional to ecological
farming.

The studies are being conducted in selected regions – the city of Heidelberg, the Lake Constance
bio-region, and other locations in Baden-Württemberg. The research is participatory in nature and
includes interest groups from agriculture, nature conservation, and the economy, among them
growers and farmers, marketers and consumers as well as so-called citizen scientists. “With a
view towards the political-administrative process, we also wish to explore what instruments are
best suited to achieve a sustainable transformation of conventional agriculture into ecological
farming,” explains Prof. Tosun. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers will also
study how to raise greater awareness for promoting agrobiodiversity.

Marcus Koch heads the Biodiversity and Plant Systematics division at the Centre for Organismal
Studies. The biologist is also director of Heidelberg University’s Botanical Garden. He is
especially interested in the research of evolution and biodiversity. Jale Tosun teaches and
researches at the Institute for Political Science. Her work concentrates on comparative public
policy, particularly in the fields of environment, energy, climate change, and sustainability.

The “Ecological Varieties for Biodiversity and Climate Protection” project, known as AgroBioDiv
for short, is part of the “Ecological Farming” research programme launched by the State of BadenWürttemberg. Work at Heidelberg University began in July of this year. The state programme
aims to bundle thematic research and further develop research activities with non-academic
actors. Over the next few years, Baden-Württemberg is funding four collaborations at three
universities with a total of 1.2 million euros.

Internet information:
Homepage Marcus Koch – https://www.cos.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/m.koch?l=_e
Homepage Jale Tosun – https://www.uniheidelberg.de/politikwissenschaften/personal/tosun/person/index_en.html
“Ecological Farming” research programme – https://oekolandbauforschung-bw.unihohenheim.de/start-seite
AgroBioDiv project – https://oekolandbauforschung-bw.uni-hohenheim.de/agrobiodiv_hintergrund

Contact:
Prof. Dr Marcus Koch
Centre for Organismal Studies
Phone +49 6221 54-4655
marcus.koch@cos.uni-heidelberg.de

Prof. Dr Jale Tosun
Institute for Political Science
Phone +49 6221 54-3726
jale.tosun@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de
 

 

 

Heidelberg, 2 June 2020 
No. 42/2020 

Reducing Carbon Emissions in the Economy 

International ERC project: Heidelberg political scientists to research climate 
policy 

How can the economy be restructured to lower carbon emissions? What steps towards 
decarbonisation have nations already taken and how successful have they been? These are the 
questions to be addressed in a research project whose participants include scientists from the 
Institute for Political Science at Heidelberg University. Prof. Dr Jale Tosun will head up the work in 
Heidelberg which will start at the beginning of 2021. The work is part of a project based at the 
University of East Anglia (Great Britain), which the European Research Council (ERC) is funding 
with an ERC Advanced Grant for leading researchers. A total of nearly 2.4 million euros has been 
granted for the project. Approximately 530,000 euros is earmarked for the research in Heidelberg. 

In the “Deep Decarbonisation: The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps” 
(DeepDCarb) project, coordinated by Prof. Dr Andrew Jordan of the University of East Anglia, the 
researchers first want to gain a fundamental understanding of climate policy action throughout the 
world. Datasets from the past 30 years that depict the activities of 41 countries with different 
levels of economic development will be used as a basis. The researchers will then look more 
closely at the processes that have already brought about the passage of climate policy laws and 
enactments in the past. “Further on, we will link political science research with approaches from 
the behavioural sciences. The central question is how should decision-making situations be set 
up to achieve long-term goals, like reducing global warming to 1.5 degrees,” explains Prof. Tosun. 

The researchers in Heidelberg will be creating empirical models to measure climate policy action 
and thus explain how climate policy is developed. “In past projects, we already developed 
approaches to measure legislative activities in this area for a large number of nations and over 
long periods of observation,” adds Prof. Tosun. “With our research activities in the DeepDCarb 
project, we plan to continue this work and facilitate insights that can be implemented in practice 
and thus benefit policy and public administration.” 

Internet information: 
Homepage of Jale Tosun – www.uni-
heidelberg.de/politikwissenschaften/personal/tosun/person/index_en.html 

Contact: 
Prof. Dr Jale Tosun 
Institute for Political Science 
Phone +49 6221 54-3726 

 

 

"Untapping” tap water consumption in Europe

 

https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/untapping-tap-water-consumption-in-europe/

 

In the last decades, Europeans have witnessed the creation of a market for bottled water as a supposedly safer alternative to tap water. In many European countries, people prefer to drink bottled water despite the fact that tap water quality standards in the European Union (EU) are high and the water is not only safe for drinking, but also less expensive and more environmentally friendly.  

Recent political commitments to mitigate climate change and achieve sustainable development, as well as societal pressure to improve access to water, induced the EU Commission to “untap” tap water and encourage European citizens to reduce their consumption of bottled water. Moreover, numerous initiatives have formed in most EU member states, which are determined to increase the use of tap water and are guided by the goal to lower costs for consumers, as well as to curb the use of raw materials, plastic waste, and carbon dioxide emission.

In a recent review published in WIREs Water, researchers Jale Tosun, Ulrike Scherer, Simon Schaub and Herald Horn identify different types of initiatives founded by public and private actors in order to promote tap water. The most recent of these initiatives is a law proposal by the regional government of Wallonia, Belgium that intends to oblige restaurants and public places to provide tap water free of charge. Reservations among citizens persist, however. “Improving access to tap water is a first step, but dissatisfaction with the odor and taste of tap water and health-related concerns prevent individuals from drinking (more) tap water,” explains Scherer. Schaub argues that “tasting events such as those organized by the Spanish city of Zaragoza and partners can help to dispel reservations against the sensory qualities of tap water.”

When taking together the various initiatives that aim to promote tap water, three overarching strategies can be identified that aim to enhance access to tap water, improving its quality, and increasing transparency of the benefits of its consumption for human health and the environment. “The studies reviewed indicate that a combination of these strategies is promising for bringing about the intended behavioral changes. However, when reviewing the literature, we discovered that there is considerable leeway for future research,” contends Tosun.

For example, it appears promising to investigate people’s trust in water providers and test whether individuals living in neighborhoods with private water services display a different water drinking behavior than individuals living in neighborhoods where tap water is supplied by publicly owned utilities. Pertinent research indicates that satisfaction with the management of water services is an important determinant of whether individuals prefer tap water to bottled water. Therefore, it might not be objective sensory qualities of tap water or related health concerns that determine the individuals’ drinking-water choices, but additional factors that affect their preference.

To be sure, in most EU states, “tap water is of very high quality and is delivered 24 hours per day and seven days per week directly at the point of use. Consequently, there is a gap between the objective quality of tap water and individuals’ subjective perception that explains why the potential of tap water has remained untapped so far,” explains Horn. Policymakers need to address this gap in order to change individuals’ water-drinking behavior to shift from bottled water to tap water and contribute to environment protection and climate change mitigation.

Written by: Jale Tosun, Ulrike Scherer, Simon Schaub, and Harald Horn

Reference: J. Tosun, et al. ‘Making Europe go from Bottles to the Tap: Political and societal attempts to induce behavioural change‘, WIREs Water (2020). DOI: 10.1002/wat2.1435

 

 

 

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