Environmental policy is becoming more and more differentiated. New issues are emerging on the agenda and there is an increasing need to ensure the coherence of environmental policy development. The adaptation to climate change, resource efficiency or green growth for example are  rather new issues on the environmental agenda, while emission control, waste management, the protection of climate or biodiversity are becoming more traditional topics in the environmental realm. Obviously, there are trade-offs but also synergies between these different environmental problems. Funded by the Einstein Foundation, the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and the Environmental Policy Research Centre at the Freie Universität Berlin host a workshop series dealing with the chances and obstacles of integrated environmental governance. The workshops are open to international academics and contribute to an interdisciplinary discussion on integrated environmental governance. How are environmental policy makers dealing with the need to integrate different policy objectives and which institutions, instruments and strategies facilitate integrated environmental governance?

Two workshops are planned to discuss these questions. The first workshop takes place in December 2011 at the Hebrew University Jerusalem. A second workshop is planned and will take place at the Environmental Policy Research Center in Berlin in 2012.

First Workshop: Integrated Environmental Governance: Opportunities and Constraints, 6-7 Dezember im Austrian Hospice, Jerusalem

As environmental politics become more and more differentiated, the need to ensure for coherent environmental policy processes intensifies.  Environmental goals often conflict with each other (e.g. renewable energy production might conflict with nature conservation or low emission electric cars might raise energy consumption), leading to more frequent tensions and trade-offs between different environmental domains. This new generation of environmental problems creates new governance challenges.

To address potentially conflicting and complementary relations between different environmental policies, integrated environmental governance is needed. Integrated environmental governance refers to a process in which all significant environmental consequences of environmental policy decisions are recognized as decision premises, whereby policy options are evaluated on the basis of their effects, and where different policy elements are in accord with each other.

But how are environmental policy makers dealing with the need to integrate and balance between different environmental policy objectives? Which institutions, instruments and strategies are available for integration and which of them were found effective in real life? What are the costs, drawbacks and limits of integrated environmental governance?
In this workshop we will explore the solutions to these questions by discussing the following premises:

1. different issue areas in which  integrated environmental governance become visible (water, energy, urban planning, transportation)
2. governance tools, instruments and approaches for integration (assessing costs and benefits, strategies, planning)
3. capacities, obstacles and requirements for successful and efficient integration

Workshop Program and Participants
Participants: CVs and Abstracts [PDF 184kb]
Directions