Peter Feindt

• PhD
• Professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

As climate change escalates, the Berlin-Brandenburg region faces new challenges. Climate change-induced extreme events including droughts, heatwaves, and floods, are expected to cause new conflicts to emerge and aggravate existing ones. To guide future research, we engaged a transdisciplinary academic community of experts to co-develop a list of ke...

Groß Glienicker Lake and Sacrower Lake are two lakes in the Berlin-Brandenburg region that are facing significant challenges due to declining water levels associated with climate change. A mixed-method approach was employed, incorporating ethnographic research methods, a household survey and stakeholder workshops, in order to elicit perceptions on...

Der Klimawandel wirkt sich räumlich höchst differenziert auf den Wasserhaushalt aus. Ein Forschungsprojekt in Berlin-Brandenburg zeigt die Komplexität der Anpassungs-Governance selbst auf kleinräumiger Ebene und wie sie von inter- und transdisziplinärer Forschung begleitet werden kann.

Despite beneficial cardiovascular effects, substantial long-term modulation of food pattern could only be achieved in a limited number of participants. The impact of attitude towards healthy nutrition (ATHN) on successful modulation of dietary behavior is unclear, especially in the elderly. We aimed to analyze whether the personal ATHN influences 1...

Agricultural policies in OECD countries, which had treated farming as an exceptional sector that needs and deserves extensive state support, have been partially transformed by liberal and multi-functionalist influences since the mid-1980s. The ensuing post-exceptionalist policy arrangements entail significant tensions between old and new ideas, ins...

Wolves (Canis lupus) are recolonizing Germany and confront pastoral farmers with the potential threat of livestock depredation. Protection measures such as wolf-deterring fences are considered indispensable for preventing carnivore attacks on livestock but require pro-active implementation by farmers. Drivers of farmers’ intention to adopt protecti...

Multiple crises and challenges in the food sector are driving a rising need for innovative food production methods that could provide a growing urban population with high-quality, sustainable and healthy food while strengthening the resilience of food systems. Controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) in urban areas has been proposed as one possible...

Recent research has pointed to the need to investigate policy learning under conditions of contingency and ambiguity. The Multiple Streams Framework seems particularly suited to addressing policy-making in such a context, but also appears to be at odds with policy learning approaches. Against the background of the literature, and the framework’s as...

This methodological brief offers comprehensive guidance on how to study the core objectives (the what) of the ENFASYS project, which focuses on facilitating transitions to resilient and sustainable agricultural systems. Purpose: The brief addresses the central question: How can ENFASYS support societal actors in understanding and addressing lock...

Against the background of climate change and scarce non-renewable resources, transforming the fossil-based toward a bio-based economy is considered crucial for sustainable development. Numerous countries have released governmental strategies outlining their bioeconomy visions. This study examines the bioeconomy visions presented in 78 policy docume...

Agricultural intensification and landscape homogenisation are major drivers of biodiversity loss in European agricultural landscapes. Improvements require changes in farming practices, but empirical evidence on farmers’ motivations underlying their on-farm biodiversity management remains fragmented. To date, there is no aggregated overview of behav...

Value chains that generate an increased willingness to pay among consumers by offering enhanced levels of sustainability are widely discussed as an important strategy for creating new business opportunities and fostering food system transformation. Previous research has highlighted the importance of governance arrangements to secure the trust neces...

The concept of food democracy has been developed to articulate norms and ideals of democracy as a counterpressure to ‘food control’ from concentrated and transnational corporate power in the agri-food system. Yet to date, a comprehensive overview is missing to identify the various elements and dimensions of food democracy conceptualizations and to...

Der Beitrag untersucht die Eignung des Nudging-Ansatzes für das Design von Politikinstrumenten in der Agrarumweltpolitik am Beispiel Sachsens. Eine systematische Literaturrecherche ergab 26 Fallbeispiele von Nudges aus dem Bereich Land- bzw. Forstwirtschaft mit einem Fokus auf Natur- und Umweltschutz. Diese zeigen ein Potenzial, durch den Einsatz v...

Environmental policy integration (EPI), that is, the incorporation of environmental concerns in non-environmental policy areas, has been widely adopted in public policies. However, EPI research has found much discrepancy between environmental objectives and actual implementation. This paper argues that analyzing EPI in the context of policy mixes w...

Producing enough healthy food for a globally growing urban population within planetary boundaries requires more resource-efficient and localized food production systems. Controlled-environmental food production systems (CEFPS) are a widely discussed new approach for sustainable food production in urban contexts. However, little research has address...

Angesichts vielfältiger Krisen wächst die Sorge um die Resilienz der Agrar- und Ernährungssysteme, aber auch um den sozialen Zusammenhalt im Hinblick auf Landwirtschaft und Ernährung. Der Beitrag stellt diese Diskussionen in den Horizont der Debatten um eine erforderliche Transformation. Er beleuchtet den Zusammenhang zwischen Resilienz, sozialem Z...

EU budget and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have closely co-evolved. Farm support requires large shares of the EU budget, enabled by a hybrid CAP discourse that combines productivist, market-liberal and multifunctionalist ideas for coordination and legitimation among diverse constituencies. Facing funding shortfalls after Brexit and complaints a...

Water pollution from intensive livestock husbandry is a persistent social-ecological problem. Since remedies require attention to the slurry–water nexus among practitioners, the agricultural press is a strategic entry point for agenda setting. Systematic content analysis can provide insights into how farming practices and sustainability issues are...

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe's ag...

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe's ag...

The concept of resilience has been increasingly adopted on the EU's policy agenda as a principle for agri‐food policymaking. However, resilience is an ambiguous concept, allowing for different understandings and uses in the context of agri‐food policymaking. This study analyses whether and how resilience is framed and contributes to framing in the...

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe's ag...

Accumulating shocks and long-term stresses, such as trade conflicts, climate change and deteriorating public trust in agricultural practices have raised concerns about the resilience of Europe’s diverse farming systems. The SURE-Farm approach aims to systematically assess the resilience capacities of farming systems, i.e. regional constellations of...

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe's ag...

What exactly is resilience and how can it be enhanced? Farming systems in Europe are rapidly evolving while at the same time being under threat, as seen by the disappearance of dozens of farms every day. Farming systems must become more resilient in response to growing economic, environmental, institutional, and social challenges facing Europe's ag...

This chapter aims to synthesize key findings from the SURE-Farm project. We first discuss possible amendments to the framework to assess the resilience of farming systems. We then review why many of Europe’s farming systems face a formidable and structural resilience crisis. While emphasizing the diversity of resilience capacities, challenges and n...

Der Wissenschaftliche Beirat für Biodiversität und Genetische Ressourcen (WBBGR) regt eine aktive Mitwirkung des Bundesministeriums für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (BMEL) an der laufenden Erarbeitung einer neuen Nationalen Biodiversitätsstrategie (NBS) an. Da etwa 50% Deutschlands von landwirtschaftlicher Nutzfläche und knapp 30% von Wald bedeckt...

Forests play a key role in a bio-based economy by providing renewable materials, mitigating climate change, and accommodating biodiversity. However, forests experience massive increases in stresses in their ecological and socioeconomic environments, threatening forest ecosystem services supply. Alleviating those stresses is hampered by conflicting...

Die Ernährung einer wachsenden Weltbevölkerung, die daraus resultierende Ressourcenbeanspruchung und Umweltbelastung sowie die zunehmende Flächenkonkurrenz stellen die Nahrungsmittelproduktion vor großen Herausforderungen. Für eine nachhaltige, ressourcen-effiziente und anpassungsfähige Nahrungsmittelproduktion stellen modulare biobasierte Produkti...

European agriculture is facing tremendous challenges related to the rapid decrease in farm populations, competitiveness on open markets and the preservation of natural resources. Grasslands, which are highly significant for nature conservation often face land-use competition with arable cropping, urbanisation and other uses. Farmers need dedicated...

Die Agrarpolitik galt lange als Extremfall eines exzeptionalistischen Politikfelds, in dem auf Basis sektorspezifischer Policy-Ideen ein privilegierter Zugang von produzenteninteressen institutionell abgesichert und die Etablierung sektorspezifischer Policy-Instrumente ermöglicht wurden. Die erheblichen Veränderungen der GAP seit 1992 lassen sich a...

The Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 was a watershed moment in the international climate change discourse, reinforcing controversy and polarization between climate sceptics and climate activists. Simultaneously, the blogosphere, known as a place for polarized mobilization, became a proliferating forum for both camps. Building on Dryzek’s and Carva...

CONTEXT The ability of a farm to cope with challenges is often conceptualised as resilience. Although improving resilience of farms is a major policy goal in the European Union, the current state of resilience is often unknown. Previous resilience assessments have been based either on pre-defined indicators or on perceptions. In particular, empiric...

Die Ausgestaltung der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik (GAP) der Europäischen Union (EU) ist eine komplexe Policy-Design-Aufgabe. Die GAP verfolgt verschiedene Ziele, die mit unterschiedlichen Politikinstrumenten erreicht werden sollen. Bislang hat die GAP kaum dazu beigetragen, die Umweltwirkungen der Landwirtschaft großflächig zu verbessern. Die ökologis...

Greater resilience is needed for farms to deal with shocks and disturbances originating from economic, environmental, social and institutional challenges, with resilience achieved by adequate adaptive governance. This study focuses on the resilience capacity of farms in the context of multi-level adaptive governance. We define adaptive governance a...

Context Resilience is the ability to deal with shocks and stresses, including the unknown and previously unimaginable, such as the Covid-19 crisis. Objective This paper assesses (i) how different farming systems were exposed to the crisis, (ii) which resilience capacities were revealed and (iii) how resilience was enabled or constrained by the far...

Building on the conceptualisation of 'the local' in gender and development discourse, we explore how national and sub-national policy actors in Uganda perceive gender equality policy in the context of agriculture and climate change, to assess the potential of localised solutions to achieve gender equality. Using data from national and sub-national...

Support for financial risk management tools (SFFRMT) has become part of many agricultural policy portfolios in response to new risks or to replace traditional income support. This paper analyses under which conditions various policy feedback mechanisms can lead to lock-in effects of SFFRMT. A conceptual analysis identifies potential resource, incen...

One of the aims of the post‐2020 Common Agricultural Policy ( CAP ) is to improve the resilience of Europe's farming systems. The CAP of the budget period 2014–2020, however, has insufficiently supported the resilience of farming systems. The ongoing CAP reform process offers an appropriate opportunity to integrate a broader perspective on resilien...

Climate change makes coastal communities more vulnerable to floods associated with storm surges and sea level rise, requiring both adaptation and mitigation measures. Moreover, proper understanding of flood risks and their potential impacts on climate change appears to be a communication challenge. In climate change communication, the effect of fra...

The European Commission has emphasised that a more resilient farming sector is required to better respond to current and future economic, societal, and environmental challenges. Consequently, supporting resilience has become an important aim of the proposals of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2020. However, interactions between public pol...

Das Diskussionspapier „Ackerbaustrategie 2035 – Perspektiven für einen produktiven und vielfältigen Pflanzenbau“ des BMEL zeigt anhand von sechs Leitlinien und zwölf dazugehörigen Handlungsfeldern Optionen für die Verbesserung des deutschen Ackerbaus auf. Es enthält viele sinnvolle Ansätze. Allerdings greift das Papier bezüglich des Erhalts und der...

The resilience of social-ecological systems (SES) has become a major concern in environmental policy. The ongoing transition towards a bio-based economy essentially aims to address resilience challenges of the fossil-based economy. Its success depends on the resilience of the SES and bio-based production systems (BBPS) on which the bioeconomy rests...

Zusammenfassung: Das Diskussionspapier „Ackerbaustrategie 2035 – Perspektiven für einen produktiven und vielfältigen Pflanzenbau“ des BMEL zeigt anhand von sechs Leitlinien und zwölf dazugehörigen Handlungsfeldern Optionen für die Verbesserung des deutschen Ackerbaus auf. Es enthält viele sinnvolle Ansätze. Allerdings greift das Papier bezüglich de...

Many farming systems in Europe are struggling to respond to accumulating economic, environmental, institutional and social challenges. From a resilience perspective, they need three distinct capacities to continue delivering products, income and public goods: robustness, adaptability and transformability. Based on a structured assessment of the res...

This article introduces a multidimensional concept of (de)politicization, comprising strategy, process and outcome, in order to set the stage for a theoretical model that connects (de)politicization to policy change. The politicization/depoliticization– policy change (PDPC) model facilitates hypothesizing the relationship between different types an...

Forests and forest-relevant policies in Europe face a wide array of challenges in a rapidly changing world. Issues such as Brexit, the new European Parliament and European Commission, and the recent European Green Deal proposal are certain to affect policymaking, as are the as-yet unknown impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19). A new science-policy...

Making agriculture sustainable is a global challenge. In the European Union (EU), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is failing with respect to biodiversity, climate, soil, land degradation as well as socio‐economic challenges. The European Commission's proposal for a CAP post‐2020 provides a scope for enhanced sustainability. However, it also al...

Berichte über Landwirtschaft (ISSN 2196-5099)

et X# signataires Rendre l'agriculture durable est un défi d'ampleur globale. En Union Européenne, la Politique Agricole Commune (PAC) est en train d'échouer en matière de biodiversité, de climat, des sols mais aussi des enjeux socio-économiques, surtout dans les zones rurales. La proposition de la Commission Européenne pour une PAC post-2020 perme...

Agri-environmental schemes have been introduced in numerous countries to combat biodiversity loss in agrarian landscapes that are important for both food production and biodiversity. The successful operation of such schemes depends strongly upon trust between actors involved, as well as trust in institutions that govern these schemes. However, the...

Disconnects between farming and urban systems are widely seen as impairing the resilience of biobased production systems (BBPSs). However, the institutional mechanisms that underlie these resilience problems are not well understood. In this explorative paper, which integrates elements from institutional and resilience theory, we develop a framework...

For improving sustainability and resilience of EU farming system, the current state needs to be assessed, before being able to move on to future scenarios. Assessing sustainability and resilience of farming systems is a multi-faceted research challenge in terms of the scientific domains and scales of integration (farm, household, farming system lev...

Agricultural systems in Europe face accumulating economic, ecological and societal challenges, raising concerns about their resilience to shocks and stresses. These resilience issues need to be addressed with a focus on the regional context in which farming systems operate because farms, farmers' organizations, service suppliers and supply chain ac...

The food democracy discourse has emerged as a normatively grounded critique of an increasingly transnational agri-food system and its dominant co-regulatory mode of governance, where private and public norms and standards interact with public policy and regulation in complex ways. Analyzing competing agri-food discourses through a legitimacy lens c...

The food democracy discourse has emerged as a normatively grounded critique of an increasingly transnational agri-food system and its dominant co-regulatory mode of governance, where private and public norms and standards interact with public policy and regulation in complex ways. Analyzing competing agri-food discourses through a legitimacy lens c...

Die Studie untersucht das Potenzial von Risikomanagement-Instrumenten, Policy-Feedback zu erzeugen, wodurch ein Politikwandel in der Zukunft stabilisiert werden kann (Lock-in Effekt). Die durchgeführte Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) von 25 staatlich geförderten landwirtschaftlichen Risikomanagement-Instrumenten in OECD-Ländern identifiziert...

Zusammenfassung Auf Basis einer systematischen Literaturrecherche umreißt dieses Kapitel den Sachstand zu den Wechselwirkungen zwischen Landwirtschaft und natürlichen Ressourcen in Deutschland. Der Fokus liegt auf der Beeinflussung der Naturressourcen Boden, biologische Vielfalt, Klima, Landschaftsbild, Luft und Wasser durch die Wirkfaktoren stoffl...

Zusammenfassung Das Schlusskapitel reflektiert die Vorgehensweise des ZA-NExUS-Projekts, fasst die wesentlichen Ergebnisse zusammen und formuliert den weiteren Forschungs- und Entwicklungsbedarf. ZA-NExUS wird als entschieden inter- und transdisziplinäres Projekt an der Schnittstelle von Wissenschaft und Politik beschrieben, dessen fächerübergreife...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Kapitel präsentiert ein Leitbild für eine multifunktionale, natur- und umweltverträgliche Landwirtschaft sowie 15 Leitlinien für eine zukunftsfähige Agrarpolitik. Leitbild und Leitlinien versuchen, eine Brücke zwischen der derzeit vorherrschenden Produktions- und Einkommensorientierung der Agrarpolitik und den Anliegen des Na...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Kapitel diskutiert die verschiedenen Instrumente der Agrarpolitik im Hinblick auf ihren Beitrag zur Realisierung des Leitbilds einer multifunktionalen, natur- und umweltverträglichen Landwirtschaft: Ordnungsrecht und gesetzliche Mindeststandards für die landwirtschaftliche Praxis, Budgetausstattung und -aufteilung, flächenbez...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Kapitel stellt eine Analyse der Stärken, Schwächen, Chancen und Risiken der gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik der EU aus Sicht des Natur- und Umweltschutzes vor. Das Ergebnis ist ambivalent: Einerseits bildet die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik einen stabilen institutionellen Rahmen mit guter Finanzausstattung und vielen umweltpolitischen Ins...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Kapitel formuliert und bewertet drei strategische Optionen für den ergebnisorientierteren Einsatz der erheblichen Finanzmittel der Agrarpolitik: (1) eine stärkere Verknüpfung der Direktzahlungen mit der Erbringung von öffentlichen Leistungen, etwa durch anspruchsvollere Cross-Compliance- und Greening-Anforderungen, (2) eine M...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Kapitel zeigt auf, dass eine institutionelle Pfadabhängigkeit der Gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik der Europäischen Union zu einer historisch verfestigten Sonderstellung des Agrarsektors geführt hat. In der Folge dominieren einkommenspolitische Ziele die Agrarpolitik. Natur- und Umweltschutzanliegen bleiben randständig und müssen vor...

Zusammenfassung Dieses Policy-Paper ist das wichtigste Ergebnis des ZA-NExUS-Projekts, das wissenschaftlich basierte Optionen für die künftige Ausgestaltung der Agrarpolitik aus der Perspektive des Natur- und Umweltschutzes formulieren sollte. Es wurde im Januar 2017 auf einer Pressekonferenz mit der damaligen Bundesministerin Dr. Barbara Hendricks...

Since the mid-1990s, discourse analysis has become an increasingly established framework in environmental policy analysis. The field has diversified in terms of conceptual approaches, methods, topics, and geographies. This special issue revisits trends and traditions regarding theoretical and methodological approaches, ‘old’ and ‘new’ discourses, a...

Strategies to empower women in development contexts frequently address their authority to take decisions within their household, including decisions that are taken jointly by couples. Assessing empowerment in joint decision-making has traditionally followed a dichotomous approach: decisions are either joint or not, with the former associated with w...

Motivation Gender mainstreaming has been increasingly viewed as a fundamental element of agricultural climate adaptation policies. However, the expectation that gender‐mainstreaming efforts would contribute towards greater gender equality has been mostly disappointed. Our starting point is this disjuncture between a firm establishment of the gender...

This article contributes to current research about determinants of climate change and flood risk perception, and intentions to take adaptive measures. We propose a research model that distinguishes between vulnerability and severity components of perceived risks, and adds perceived adaptive capacity as a third factor to predict the intention to tak...

Background: Meat, an important source of protein and other nutrients in human diets, is one of the major drivers of global environmental change in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use, animal welfare, human health and directions of breeding. Novel alternatives, including novel meat proxies (cultured meat, plant-based meat alternati...

While the international norm on gender mainstreaming, UN-backed since 1995, has been widely adopted in national policies, gender inequalities are rarely systematically addressed on the ground. To explain this limited effectiveness, this paper takes a discourse analytical perspective on gender policy and budgeting, with a focus on the translation of...

Planning and implementation of regional climate change adaptation requires new, integrated governance arrangements that often involve public and private actors. Although entrepreneurship is widely considered an important part of such arrangements, little is known about the conditions that enable it, and its actual role is under-researched. Through...

Using focus groups, the research analyses the mental and social processes through which consumers form perceptions and opinions about unfamiliar technologies and the derived products, taking the perception of nanotechnology and nano-products, GM and GM products as example. Our findings suggest that limited understanding of the technological princip...

Precision livestock farming (PLF) is the management of livestock using the principles and technology of process engineering. Key to PLF is the dense monitoring of variegated parameters, including animal growth, output of produce (e.g. milk, eggs), diseases, animal behaviour, and the physical environment (e.g. thermal micro-environment, ammonia emis...

Elaborated in publications on transition management, sustainability governance and deliberative environmental governance, ‘reflexive governance’ addresses concerns about social-ecological vulnerabilities, flawed conceptualisations of human-nature relations fragmented governance regimes and conditions for a sustainability transition. Key barriers to...

Insekten sind essenzielle Bestandteile von Ökosystemen. Sie zersetzen unter anderem organische Materie, bestäuben einen Großteil der Pflanzen und dienen vielen anderen Tieren als Nahrungsgrundlage. So generieren sie viele Leistungen, wie die Bestäubung von Nutzpflanzen oder die biologische Schädlingskontrolle, die wir täglich verwenden und auf die...

Die Afrikanische Schweinepest ist auf Grund ihrer Ausbreitung im osteuropäischen Raum (Baltische Staaten, Polen, Tschechien) seit dem Winter 2017/2018 eine reale Bedrohung der einheimischen genetischen Ressourcen bei Schweinen in Deutschland. Die Tötung der Tierbestände von mittelbar und unmittelbar betroffenen Betrieben kann erhebliche Konsequenze...

Climate change, (a) biotic stresses and environmental degradation are adversely affecting the sustenance of farming communities in Africa. Addressing such challenges requires effective collective action and coordination among stakeholders, which often prove difficult to achieve. Timely and context-specific information on relevant environmental dyna...

Societies worldwide are investing considerable resources into the safe development and use of nanomaterials. Although each of these protective efforts is crucial for governing the risks of nanomaterials, they are insufficient in isolation. What is missing is a more integrative governance approach that goes beyond legislation. Development of this ap...

Malaria remains a major threat to public health. Long-Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets (LLINs) and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) have been widely adopted as important malaria prevention and control interventions and have contributed to significant reduction in malaria incidence. However, recently malaria resurgence has been reported in different c...

European agriculture is facing tremendous challenges related to the rapid decrease of farm populations, competitiveness on open markets and the preservation of natural resources on finite areas. Grasslands, which are highly significant for nature conservation, often face land-use competition with arable cropping, urbanisation and other uses. Farmer...

The environmental impacts of agriculture give cause for concern in many areas. This paper proposes a new architecture for a sustainability-oriented agricultural policy that aims to secure public goods, conserve nature and protect the environment while at the same time fostering the transition of the agricultural sector in the face of new challenges...