Dimitrios Zikos

• Habilitation in Agricultural Economics
• Professor at SRH University Berlin

Environmental peacebuilding represents a paradigm shift from a nexus of environmental scarcity to one of environmental peace. It rests on the assumption that the biophysical environment’s inherent characteristics can act as incentives for cooperation and peace, rather than violence and competition. Based on this, environmental peacebuilding present...

The study of conflicts over natural resources is neither governed by a coherent set of theories nor limited by strict disciplinary boundaries. Rather, it encompasses a multitude of conceptions grounded within a wide array of disciplines and epistemological assumptions concerning the links between institutional change and conflicts, often concluding...

Joint Forest Management (JFM) is a form of participatory forest governance that aims for protection, conservation and sustainable use of forest resources by involving local communities. The JFM reforms have been promoted to address forest and land degradation, as vital in reducing institutional uncertainty in complex environments and strengthening...

In the mainstream development debate during recent years, among others, there have been two influential camps opposing each other. The first one identifies the environmental context, the “natural” variable, as the ultimate cause that determines the socio-economic development trajectory of a society. The second influential approach argues that “the...

Agriculture is widely recognized as a solution to food insecurity and poverty, especially in rural areas. However, 75% of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and agriculture is the primary source of their livelihood. One may wonder if the observed correlation between agriculture and poverty also suggests causation. If that is the case, then what...

European Protected Areas (PAs) are facing today complex and highly diverse challenges. Farm management structures have changed over time and traditional low-intensity farming systems have become unprofitable leading to either abandonment or intensification of farming practices. These changes have contributed to the environmental degradation of biod...

Extreme environmental variations, as a phenomenon deriving from climate change, led to an exacerbated uncertainty on water availability and increased the likelihood of conflicts regarding water-dependent activities such as agriculture. In this paper, we investigate the role of conflict resolution mechanisms—one of Ostrom’s acclaimed Design Principl...

Collective behaviors and participatory models could be hampered by the presence of ambiguity that reflects the multiplicity of interpretations that different actors bring to a modeling exercise. Despite commonly overlooked in modeling, how ambiguity in subjective problem frames is embraced determines the quality of the participatory modeling proces...

Extreme environmental variations (EV), as a phenomenon deriving from climate change (CC), led to an exacerbated uncertainty on water availability and increased the likelihood of conflicts regarding water-dependent activities such as agriculture. In this paper, we investigate the role of conflict resolution mechanisms -one of Ostrom’s acclaimed Desi...

Evidence suggests that policies frequently fail due, on the one side, to a simplification of the uncertainty and complexity associated with stakeholders’ problem-understanding and, on the other side, due to the lack of methodologies for innovative generation of policy alternatives. This work describes a methodology based on the integration of Probl...

Collective behaviors and participatory models could be hampered by the presence of ambiguity that reflects the multiplicity of interpretations that different actors bring to a modeling exercise. Despite commonly overlooked in modeling, how ambiguity in subjective problem frames is embraced determines the quality of the participatory modeling proces...

This paper presents a diagnostic approach to the role and capacity of governments to facilitate local collective action and alleviate environmental problems. The paper adds to a nascent scholarship aiming to conciliate theories on "governance by government" and "governance by self-organization". We adopt two premises for that purpose: (1) policy in...

This paper presents a diagnostic approach to the role and capacity of governments to facilitate local collective action and alleviate environmental problems. The paper adds to a nascent scholarship aiming to conciliate theories on "governance by government" and "governance by self-organization". We adopt two premises for that purpose: (1) policy in...

The governance of common-pool resources, such as irrigation systems, is a highly debated topic in research. Numerous studies suggest that actors can successfully manage these resources through cooperation, especially in hybrid governance structures, if they are able to design and enforce their own rules. Thereby, certain factors, such as the compos...

This paper employs laboratory and framed field experiments to investigate factors influencing the behavior of irrigation users, with an emphasis on the effects of exogenously and endogenously designed allocation rules. The experiments were conducted with 36 groups of farmers and students from China, India and Vietnam. The results show that physical...

The paper investigates actions and decisions of agricultural resource users and explores their implications for institutional change and natural resource management in the post-socialist context of Central Asia. More specifically, the authors propose a novel methodological approach for the aforementioned context to support policy-relevant research...

This paper draws on institutional and experimental economics to investigate the role of exogenous and endogenous rules in irrigation systems. The hypotheses we examine argue that despite the differences between socio-economic and political settings, (1) endogenous rule-crafting can help water users to overcome appropriation and provision dilemmas i...

The pressures on European water resources arise from the natural variability in water availability and climatic changes, but they are also linked to national and international social, environmental and economic policies. In Europe, the problem of water scarcity is particularly intense in the Mediterranean region while water quality is traditionally...

Over the past decades, an increasing number of research studies have explored the linkages between the biophysical environment, environmental scarcity and violent conflicts. Contrary to the viewpoints concerning those linkages, environmental change and cooperation have emerged over the last decade as a potential pathway for conflict resolution. Thi...

Over the past decades, an increasing number of research studies have explored the linkages between the biophysical environment, environmental scarcity and violent conflicts. Contrary to the viewpoints concerning those linkages, environmental change and cooperation have emerged over the last decade as a potential pathway for conflict resolution. Thi...

The chapters of this volume deal with a multitude of issues, illustrating a panorama of social sciences’ perspectives on water governance, groundwater management, infrastructure development, and on water use behaviour and education. Most of the chapters have a strong empirical focus and deal with specific case studies, while some also address the o...

Forty years after the division of Cyprus, the unstable political agenda still prevents a meaningful bi-communal discourse on the joint management of natural resources , especially water, a vital resource for all islanders. Until now, both communities have deployed unilateral, tactical methods to securitise the water discourse by linking it to high...

How to best govern natural resources in order to enable a sustainable way of handling them is what both research and practice aim to achieve. Empirical findings from several studies indicate that resource users are able to successfully cooperate in the management of common pool resources and solve social dilemmas through self-governance arrangement...

a b s t r a c t All major Indian cities face a severe transport crisis, with the number of cars on the road increasing every day. Policy makers are trying to keep pace with this growth by supplying more roads, largely neglecting demand-side policy measures. We have developed an economic experiment to investigate behavioral responses of citizens to...

The Sustainable Hyderabad Project has over the course of its implementation generated knowledge towards improved understanding of the problems of climate change and energy efficiency in the complex transformation process that Hyderabad is undergoing. It has further identified potentials to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and vulnerabilities of va...

The paper starts with a review of the literature addressing the different tools through which the state can exert an influence on cooperation at local levels. Using game theory, we model the incentive structure of different action situations underlying water management issues to specify how the state may intervene to promote collective action. The...

An alternative approach on peace building and reconciliation on the politically troubled and water-scarce Island of Cyprus

The paper discusses the potential of action research to meet the challenges entailed in institutional design for urban water management. Our overall aim is to briefly present action research and discuss its methodological merits with regard to the challenges posed by the different conceptual bases for extrapolating the effects of institutional desi...

We explore the links between Cyprus’s colonial past, divided present, and current water scarcity. With reference to the concept of fit, we tackle the question of whether we can observe fit in settings where institutions for collective action work differently than we would expect. We perform a secondary analysis of interview materials on Cyprus's wa...

An extensive macroscopic and microscopic study of traffic congestion in the city of Hyderabad is provided in this paper. At the macroscopic level, the general factors causing traffic congestion are discussed mainly under three spectrums: physical, behavioural and institutional. At microscopic level, the existing utilisation of road space by heterog...

The transport sector in the Indian Megacity of Hyderabad, contributes extensively to the climate change through pollution by means of vehicle emissions. The current discourses of Indian urban planning and vehicular pollution abatement largely ignore the human behavioral aspects and mainly focus on the improvement of transport infrastructure. Hence,...

In context of the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, conventional hierarchies and dominant logics in the metropolitan area of Volos, Greece, are challenged indirectly, in a “Trojan-horse” like way. The basic characteristic of the water sector in Volos Urban Area is the absolute dominance of centralized services (Municipal Enterpris...

The paper provides critical reflections beyond the mere rehearsal of existing arguments and theories of participation within the Water Framework Directive. Following a critical overview of the pilot river basin projects, originally aimed at testing in practice the provisions of the WFD, the paper addresses empirically questions related to participa...

The governance of common pool resources (CPR) implies establishing compatibility between ecosystems and social systems and enforcing governance institutions as essential links to maintain the capacity of socio-ecological systems. In the given context a behavioural experiment with a CPR was conducted, inspired by the innovative work of recent Nobel...

The predicted effects of climate change on regions with fragile ecosystems and high dependency on natural resources, such as the Mediterranean basin, call for an improved and holistic resource management. Such a holistic approach would be enriched by the inclusion of the perceptions of the appropriators and the decision makers. The aim of this stud...

Tackling the inter-communal conflict in Cyprus via the common problem of water scarcity reveals a unique opportunity. Conducting a water metabolism analysis for each community, enables to illustrate the commonalities/differences in water consumption patterns within different economic sectors and household profiles. This will reveal how both communi...

Effectively evaluating the governance of natural resources is a precondition for its improvement in contexts of change. In order to do so, one can use methods for evaluating (1) the outcome of a governance process or (2) the governance process itself. Outcome‐oriented and process‐oriented approaches have different strengths and weaknesses. This pap...

The notion of sustainability in the urban water sector refers to a multi-dimensional spectrum of balancing social, environmental and economic interests. The supply-oriented traditional infrastructure notions in the domestic water supply developed around the perception of water as a “public good” and the market-based logic that succeeded them failed...

This paper combines the work from two European research projects (“Achieving Sustainable and Innovative Policies through Participatory Governance in a Multi-Level Context” and “New Intermediary Services and the Transformation of Urban Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal Systems in Europe”). Together with conclusions and findings taken from the aut...

This paper combines the work from two case studies to draw some conclusions about the negotiated context of 'multi-level governance' on water resource management issues. The context is set up on the literature about Water Governance and in terms of the European Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). The cases are described focusing on the ttransla...

2000/60/ΕΕ και το Ελληνικό σχέδιο νό-µου (Ν.3199) για την διαχείριση των υδάτων, θέτουν τις βάσεις για µια νέα προσέγγιση στη διαχείριση των υδατικών πόρων και εισάγουν την έννοια της συµµετοχής. Η παρούσα εργασία µελετά την πόλη του Βόλου, µια σηµαντική αστική περιοχή, που παρου-σιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον καθώς ανήκει στο υδατικό διαµέρι-σµα Θεσσ...

The extraordinary importance of agriculture for Turkey sets special requirements for the water sector. Thus, water management is strongly oriented towards securing agricultural production. Consequently, liberalisation and commercialization processes are slow, with the state remaining the dominant actor. However, decentralisation of the water supply...

This policy brief presents an introduction to multi-level governance of water resources in the European context, focussing on participatory processes. A total of 49 interviews were conducted with practitioners involved in water and biodiversity governance in 11 countries: people working in public administrations, academia, NGOs and private consulta...

This paper is based on action research conducted during the implementation of the European funded research projects "New Intermediary Services and the Transformation of Urban Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal Systems in Europe" from 2003 to 2005. Through the following up of an informal social network for the sustainable water resource management...

Condensed abstract: The paper argues the role of the civil society and the participation of various actors with different - even conflicting - interests as a key for sustainable water resource management. In both rural (espe- cially in coastal areas and Islands) and urban agglomerations of Greece, a member state of the European Union with extreme g...