Module 0600
Analyzing ecosystem services governance: methods for linking demand, supply, and policy instruments
Course organizer
Dr. Cheng Chen, cheng.chen@zalf.de
Course lecturers
- Dr. Cheng Chen, cheng.chen@zalf.de
- Dr. Claudia Sattler, csattler@zalf.de
- Dr. Tobias Vorlaufer, tobias.vorlaufer@zalf.de
- Dr. Christoph Schulze, christoph.schulze@zalf.de
Course venue
Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Str. 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany
Course description
Since the emergence of the concept of ecosystem services in the late 1990s, governance has increasingly been understood as a mode of societal coordination that goes beyond state-led, hierarchical approaches and recognizes the role of institutions, markets, and collective action. In recent years, this perspective has further evolved toward hybrid and co-developed governance arrangements, where public, private, and civil society actors jointly shape the demand and supply of ecosystem services.
In the agricultural context, this includes not only public policy instruments, such as regulations and EU Common Agricultural Policy (agri-environmental and climate measures, AECMs, and collective approaches), but also market-based and private sector initiatives (e.g., standards, labels, biodiversity credits, and corporate reporting frameworks). These instruments play a key role in structuring incentives on the supply side (farmers and land managers) while increasingly responding to societal and market demand for ecosystem services.
At the same time, sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change require moving from isolated policy instruments toward integrated, system-oriented approaches. These developments unfold within complex and interconnected social-ecological systems and raise important methodological challenges:
- How can we analyze governance arrangements that coordinate demand and supply across multiple actors, instruments, and scales?
- How can we understand the interaction between public policies, markets, and collective action?
- And how can we support real-world transformation in practice, for example through co-development processes in living labs and other experimental settings?
This course addresses these questions by combining conceptual foundations with a strong focus on methods for the integrated analysis of ecosystem services governance, with particular attention to co-development processes, stakeholder engagement, and decision-support in real-world contexts.
The course introduces key challenges of ecosystem services governance and provides hands-on experience with selected qualitative and quantitative methods that support the analysis and design of governance approaches aimed at aligning the demand and supply of ecosystem services.
Course outline
- Introduction to:
- challenges of ecosystem services governance
- overview of methods for stakeholder involvement and in living labs into the research process
- Presentation and application of selected qualitative and quantitative methods for the assessment of governance approaches aimed at the sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services:
- Social Network Analysis (SNA) with the participatory Net-Map tool
- Experimental methods for causal inference, with a deep dive on Discrete Choice Experiments
- Q-methodology to study stakeholder viewpoints
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and archetype analysis
Teaching methods:
In person only; lectures 50%, exercises and group work 50%
Grading: Participation 50 %, exercises and group work 50%
Credit points: 3 credits
References
A list of relevant literature will be provided in advance (we aim for four weeks before the starting of the course).
Language of instruction: English
Contact
For further information please contact Dr. Cheng Chen, cheng.chen@zalf.de
Working Group “value networks for new products”
The Innovation Center for Agricultural System Transformation (IAT)
Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research