Antje Bruns

Universität Trier · Department of Geography/Geosciences

The rising demand for policy-relevant knowledge has supported the emergence of global boundary organizations at the science–policy interface. By synthesizing environmental knowledge for policy-makers, boundary organizations influence how we know and govern sustainability challenges. Therefore, it is essential to better understand what happens in an...

In recent years, the water-energy-food nexus gained traction in science and policy debates to address the relationships between water, energy and food sectors. Inspired by Political Ecology thinking, we advocate for a nexus understanding that acknowledges the political nature of the concept and points to lived and experienced nexus realities. We dr...

This paper explores the articulation and mobilization of Indigenous discourses of energy (in) justice and energy future visions in the struggle over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) in British Columbia, Canada. The TMX is a highly contested fossil fuel project because it leads to the appropriation of First Nations lands, gender v...

Post-Growth Geographies examines the spatial relations of diverse and alternative economies between growth-oriented institutions and multiple socio-ecological crises. The book brings together conceptual and empirical contributions from geography and its neighbouring disciplines and offers different perspectives on the possibilities, demands and cri...

Post-Growth Geographies examines the spatial relations of diverse and alternative economies between growth-oriented institutions and multiple socio-ecological crises. The book brings together conceptual and empirical contributions from geography and its neighbouring disciplines and offers different perspectives on the possibilities, demands and cri...

This paper explores the micro-geographies of water access in the context of a first-class residential neighborhood of Accra served by the city’s networked infrastructure. We focus our analyses on how water is accessed and supplied to six kiosk compounds—privately owned, walled plots of land provisionally inhabited by urban dwellers living in kiosk-...

Zusammenfassung In dem Maße, wie sich Klimawandelanpassung als Handlungsfeld von Kommunen, regionalen Gebietskörperschaften sowie Beratungs- und Planungsbüros verstetigt, findet eine zunehmende Standardisierung und Universalisierung von Konzepten, Ansätzen und Methoden statt. Diese Vereinheitlichung trägt zur Wissensintegration und -diffusion sowie...

In this paper, we analyse the heterogeneity of water supply infrastructure in Accra, Ghana, to understand the politics of water in cities where infrastructural diversity has always been the norm. We do this by extending the use of heterogeneous infrastructure configurations as a heuristic device, shifting the focus and scale of urban political ecol...

Der Band »Postwachstumsgeographien« untersucht die Raumbezüge diverser und alternativer Ökonomien im Spannungsfeld von wachstumsorientierten Institutionen und multiplen sozialökologischen Krisen. Die Beiträge greifen diesen Ansatz erstmals umfassend auf und eröffnen mit konzeptionellen und empirischen Fachbeiträgen aus der Geographie und deren Nach...

In this intervention, we reflect on the potential of environmental justice and climate justice approaches to reveal the politics of climate change adaptation. Taking the attempts at dealing with extreme flooding events in Venice as an example, we illustrate that different dimensions at the core of the environmental justice concept (distributive and...

In and with this new issue of Borders in Perspective we invite you to engage in productive boundary work and encourage you to critically examine the relationship between nature and culture in the Anthropocene. In the current geological epoch of the Anthropocene, in which humankind is seen as the central driving force for global changes in ecologica...

Der Band »Postwachstumsgeographien« untersucht die Raumbezüge diverser und alternativer Ökonomien im Spannungsfeld von wachstumsorientierten Institutionen und multiplen sozialökologischen Krisen. Die Beiträge greifen diesen Ansatz erstmals umfassend auf und eröffnen mit konzeptionellen und empirischen Fachbeiträgen aus der Geographie und deren Nach...

Intensive land-cover changes (LCC) driven by unplanned urbanisation continue to threaten the sustainability of ecological assets in many cities in Africa. Evaluating the nature and processes of these changes is key to understanding the extent to which ecological instability may be affecting sustainability futures. This study employed integrated rem...

In this article we develop a novel analytical framework for situated studies of uneven peri‐urbanisation that resist further dividing Marxist and Situated (Urban) Political Ecology. We conceptualise uneven peri‐urbanisation as a process in which access to the resources mobilised for peri‐urban developments, such as water or land, is rendered uneven...

Zusammenfassung (german) Der Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit dem neuen raumwissenschaftlichen Leitbegriff Transforma-tion auseinander, indem das zugrunde liegende Begründungsnarrativ – nämlich das Anthropo-zän – in den Blick genommen wird. Geschieht dies nämlich nicht, so unterliegt die raumwis-senschaftliche Forschung der Gefahr, zu einer a-politi...

Ecosystem Services (ES) are climate sensitive, vary by seasons, and support the majority of people's livelihoods in Bangladesh. Our research aimed to identify short-term (seasonal) and long-term (2000-2018) qualitative and quantitative dependence of rural livelihoods on ES in the southern wetland areas of Bangladesh. Primary data were collected thr...

Accra, the capital city of Ghana, is characterized by limited networked supply, heterogeneous water providers, and various forms of provision. In this paper, we explore how the people delivering water through water tankers shape the distribution of water across the city. Drawing on empirical descriptions of water sourcing and distribution by truck...

It has become increasingly clear that cities will have to simultaneously undertake both adaptation and mitigation in response to accelerating climate change and the growing demands for meaningful climate action. Here we examine the connections between climate mitigation and climate adaptation, specifically, between low‐carbon energy systems and ext...

This study analyzed and assessed spatio-temporal dynamics of land-use change (LUC) and urban expansion (UE) within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) of Ghana. This region serves as a case to illustrate how a major economic hub and political core area is experiencing massive spatial transformations, resulting in uneven geographies of urban...

Cambridge Core - Environmental Policy, Economics and Law - Urban Climate Politics - edited by Jeroen van der Heijden

In the context of accelerated global socio-environmental change, the Water-Energy-Food Nexus has received increasing attention within science and international politics by promoting integrated resource governance. This study explores the scientific nexus debates from a discourse analytical perspective to reveal knowledge and power relations as well...

Peri-urban spaces are frontiers of privatisation where inequalities in access to land and water evolve. In this article, we analyse a particular mode of land and water privatisation in peri-urban spaces of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), Ghana. We illustrate that in the domain of land, traditional authorities tend to act as private owne...

We ask whether the WBGU report Humanity on the Move, as a major catalyst for urban sustainability science and agency, reproduces ways of thinking that could ultimately contradict the idea of a Great Transformation towards global sustainability. We contest the dominance of Western knowledge on cities and urbanization which shapes much of the report,...

We aimed to assess the long-term (1973–2014) and short-term (pre- and post-monsoon) quantities, values and changes of freshwater ecosystem services (FES) in the wetland areas of Southern Bangladesh using land cover change as a proxy indicator. Bangladesh is a sub-tropical country that receives >80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon and post...

SDG 6 presents a global water agenda and an important opportunity to steer development trajectories towards a water-secure world. Based on semi-structured interviews and a political ecology perspective, this study takes water and SDG 6 as a focal point to analyze the shift from MDGs to SDGs in terms of underlying governance paradigms and policy cha...

With the notion of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus long neglected interlinkages between water, energy, and food are becoming visible. Yet, the diversity in understandings of the Nexus (as an analytical tool and political agenda) is the starting point for our research interest, stemming as it does from a governance perspective. The contributions of this...

Across the planet, interacting threats are converging in urban areas beset with pressures brought on by global processes such as urbanization and climate change, and the challenges of creating water, energy and food (WEF) security for their populations. With an increased probability of floods and other extremes, goes a heightened potential for casc...

The boundary between formal and informal urban development tends to be particularly blurred in African cities. The Densu Delta in western Greater Accra is a prime example where buildings have been erected outside formally regulated urban development, in an ecologically precarious site. As a result, more and more people and structures are exposed to...

While the need for adaptation in response to the effects of global environmental change impacts in cities has been widely recognised, implementation of appropriate strategies and measures to curb them remains a challenge. In the Densu Delta, west of Accra, multiple phenomena of global environmental change interact together, making adaptation a key...

The paper aims to analyze the extent of Ecosystem Service (ESS) based Adaptation (EbA) to climate change in the policy-making process of Bangladesh. The paper is based on a three stage hybrid policy-making cycle: (i) agenda setting; (ii) policy formulation; and (iii) policy implementation stage, where the contributions of EbA can horizontally (on t...

Efforts to meet human water needs only at local scales may cause negative environmental externality and stress on the water system at regional and global scales. Hence, assessing SDG targets requires a broad and in-depth knowledge of the global to local dynamics of water availability and use. Further, Interconnection and trade-offs between differen...

This chapter reflects on land competition from a water perspective. Conceptual thoughts are enriched with evidence drawn from case studies as well as other published studies about both land and water. At the same time, it lays down an analytical framework for these case studies. Starting with a discussion of the inherent relationship between land a...

This chapter introduces competition as a heuristic concept to analyse how specific land use practices establish themselves against possible alternatives. We briefly outline the global importance of land use practices as the material and symbolic basis for people’s livelihoods, particularly the provision of food security and well-being. We chart the...

Water research is introduced from the combined perspectives of natural and social science and cases of citizen and stakeholder coproduction of knowledge. Using the overarching notion of transdisciplinarity, we examine how interdisciplinary and participatory water research has taken place and could be developed further. It becomes apparent that wate...

Zwischen den Schutzgütern Gewässer und Böden bestehen über stoffliche Austauschprozesse sowie die Land- und Raumnutzung enge Kopplungen. Aus rechtlicher und planerischer Perspektive erfahren die zwei Politikfelder aber eine unterschiedlich Aufmerksamkeit: Während sich die Gewässer(schutz)politik durch europäische Vorgaben in den letzten Jahren rasc...

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-33628-2

This chapter introduces competition as a heuristic concept to analyse how specific land use practices establish themselves against possible alternatives. We briefly outline the global importance of land use practices as the material and symbolic basis for people’s livelihoods, particularly the provision of food security and well-being. We chart the...

Zwischen den Schutzgütern Gewässer und Böden bestehen über stoffliche Austauschprozesse sowie die Land- und Raumnutzung enge Kopplungen. Aus rechtlicher und planerischer Perspektive erfahren die zwei Politikfelder aber eine unterschiedlich Aufmerksamkeit: Während sich die Gewässer(schutz)politik durch europäische Vorgaben in den letzten Jahren rasc...

Urban planning can play a potentially meaningful role in managing the risks of climate change. It is, however, unclear to what extent planning practice can be transformed in order to address these risks effectively in the global south. Using Johannesburg in South Africa as an illustrative case and the interrelated challenges of flood risks and info...

The global water crisis is often alluded to in scientific papers and geo-political discourse. However, the lack of a proper definition of what the term ‘water crisis’ means has been routinely overlooked, as much as are the reasons why it is assumed to be truly global in nature. Such generalisations and simplifications in both science and policy ali...

Resilient socio-ecological systems (SESs) can handle negative environmental changes well without regime shifts. In this study, we introduce the concept of spatial resilience and apply it to the assessment, planning, and ecosystem-based management of the urban wetland interface in the Taihu Lake watershed in China. From the assumption that spatial i...

The global water crisis is often alluded to in scientific papers and geo-political discourse. However, the lack of a proper definition of what the term 'water crisis' means has been routinely overlooked, as much as are the reasons why it is assumed to be truly global in nature. Such generalisations and simplifications in both science and policy ali...

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) are commonly viewed to represent an environmental paradigm shift within European Community Law. The research presented here asks whether these approaches lead to changes in regional governance and if so, in what way. The case study analysis employs a governance perspe...

At present, the (re)discovery of the sea as an economic space exposes shortcomings with respect to the use of the marine environment. Offshore wind farming is a case in point that highlights shortcomings with respect to marine spatial planning. Economic interests need to be contrasted with the public perception of coast and sea and visions for thei...

Driven by a range of global developments, marine and coastal areas are faced with profound change. In Germany, the emergence of offshore wind farms is a new permanent large-scale activity which is much debated as a symbol for the increasing 'industrialisation' of coastal and marine waters.Within the research project 'Zukunft Küste - Coastal Futures...

Rhetorically at least, environmental policy in the European Union has taken a shift towards more comprehensive, participative, and co-operative forms of governance. Examples are the 2002 Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) and the 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD). Designed to resolve specific environmental problems, they...

Using the German North Sea coast and large scale development plans for offshore wind farms as examples for changing use patterns, the article describes the scenario approach used in the BMBF funded research project "Zukunft Kueste – Coastal Futures" as a tool for an integrated assessment of potential coastal developments. The approach examines a ra...