Philipp Aerni

Verified

Philipp verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Philipp verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at School of Management Fribourg

The term “polycrisis” has become a buzzword to describe the entanglement and reinforcement of multiple global crises that may put the survival of humankind at risk. It builds upon Sustainability Science and its research on the complex interactions of systemic risks. The research approach has its roots in the “Limits to Growth” report published by t...

Rating agencies that assess a company’s environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) impact have been subject to public and academic scrutiny due to divergent and often biased rating outcomes. Concurrently, an evolving regulatory environment mandates publicly listed companies to report on ESG and climate emissions, taking into account supp...

The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP 27) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) held in November 2022 in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt, ended with joint commitments to compensate for loss and damage and increase funds for climate change adaptation in future. This outcome is likely to be supportive of current efforts to render agricultur...

Während in der Politik die Ressourcen "Geld" und "Macht" teilweise handelbar sind und damit politische Tauschgeschäfte ermöglichen, ist dies bei der Ressource "Vertrauen" nicht möglich; denn Vertrauen ist nicht handelbar. Das ist bedauerlich, denn öffentliches Vertrauen hätte eigentlich eine wichtige brückenbildende Funktion. Dieses Buchkapitel zei...

The history of modern plant breeding is implicitly present in everything we cultivate and eat today. Therefore, the strategy in retail marketing to advertise premium organic products as ‘natural’ and therefore ‘safe’, as opposed to products from ‘agro-industry’ and its ‘genetically modified’ (GM) products, is highly misleading. After all, almost al...

Cities have always been places where commerce and production, working and living are physically and functionally integrated. Only with the rise of industry have zoning regulations been introduced to separate these functions in space. However, what is the role of such regulations when industry is digitized, increasingly emission-free, and based on i...

The history of modern plant breeding is implicitly present in everything we cultivate and eat today. Therefore, the strategy in retail marketing to advertise premium organic products as ‘natural’ and therefore ‘safe’, as opposed to products from ‘agro-industry’ and its ‘genetically modified’ (GM) products, is highly misleading. After all, almost al...

Häufig ist die Rede vom Stadt-Land-Graben. Vieles deutet allerdings darauf hin, dass dieser Konflikt primär ein Medienkonstrukt ist. Die Realität ist viel komplizierter und geprägt von gegenseitigen Abhängigkeiten.

The UN Sustainable Development Goal number 8 (SDG8) on inclusive growth and decent work is of crucial importance to low income countries, where poverty rather than affluence is still the main enemy of sustainability. However, many stakeholders in high income countries associate sustainability with 'de-growth'. As such, they take issue with SDG 8, e...

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the private sector plays a key role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After all, sustainable and inclusive economic growth is essential to enable more people to participate in global prosperity. Enc...

This Volume pulls together analyses in relation to efforts to promote the targets of SDG8 on inclusive growth, environmental innovation and improved access to human rights. It covers experiences and studies from the past and present, from large and small companies, from the Global South and North, and from di�erent sectors. Many contributions point...

This book chapter addresses these concerns but also highlights the elitist andpaternalizing character of the degrowth mode of thinking. It reflects the viewpointof a generation that has grown up affluent and is tired of it, which makes sensebecause affluence as such does not provide any meaning, orientation or identity(Eysenck 1990; Aerni and Berna...

Domestizierte Tiere sind seit Jahrtausenden Bestandteil des menschlichen Kulturraums. Diesem anthropologischen Kontext sollten Aktivisten Rechnung tragen – anstatt sich ihres eigenen, moralisch überlegenen Lebenswandels zu rühmen.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at harnessing economic complexity for sustainable and inclusive economic growth by calling for a decade of joint action. In this paper, we show how the action-oriented collaborative culture of complex and competitive economic ecosystems in places outside the major population centers may generate signi...

Over the past 11,000 years, humans have domesticated a wide range of animals for different purposes designed to serve the human economy, society, and religious activities. The resulting mutual dependence between humans and their domestic partners created anthropogenic landscapes designed to sustain and protect their members. In this paper, we revie...

The twenty-first century will likely become known as the century of global urban development. There are several forces that point in this direction: The world has to cope with more people who primarily aim at becoming more affluent. They do so by moving from areas with few economic opportunities, mostly located in disconnected rural regions, to are...

Countries that achieve economic complexity in a holistic way are well-prepared to respond to external shocks through internal processes that may also improve their resilience. This article suggests that the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) can capture this ‘resilience dimension’ of complex economies and assesses their contribution to sustainable cha...

Der Grund für den mangelnden Zugang zu Menschenrechten im Süden ist die Armut, nicht die Präsenz von Schweizer Konzernen.

Die Übernahme des angelsächsischen Bildungssystems fördert hierzulande die disziplinäre Abgrenzung. Interdisziplinaritätund Gesellschaftsrelevanz bleiben allzu oft Lippenbekenntnisse.

Der Vielvölkerstaat Äthiopien gilt seit der Vertreibung des brutalen kommunistischen Regimes unter Haile Mariam Mengistu Anfang der 1990er Jahre als politisch stabiler und wirtschaftlich prosperierender Staat am Horn von Afrika. Diese politische Stabilität hatte allerdings ihren Preis, denn sie ging einher mit dem Aufbau eines autoritären Regimes,...

Die Scheinheiligkeit ist gross, der Moralismus nicht minder: Die Geschichte ist in der Tat noch nicht zu Ende, aber nicht wegen des Coronavirus, wie René Scheu glaubt. Eine Replik.

Die Ausgabe 2020 nimmt mit Subsahara-Afrika erstmals einen geografischen Fokus ein und möchte dazu beitragen, stereotype Vorstellungen aufzubrechen. Kein anderer Kontinent unterliegt so klischeehaften Charakterisierungen wie Afrika, das oft nur im Kontext von Krisen, Kriegen und Katastrophen wahrgenommen wird. Alleine die Wachstumszahlen vermitteln...

The article highlights the challenge of coping with the current regulatory system on agricultural biotechnology in Europe. The author argues that if the current highly preventive process-based regulatory approach continues to be uphold, Europe will be unable to meet its own ambitions to contribute to the numerous Sustainable Development Goals throu...

Die Stäkung der Demokratie in Äthiopien ist erfreulich. Doch der erstarke Ethnonationalismus hat andere Ziele.

This book examines the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local economies, and presents selected case studies of MNEs operating in low income countries. By balancing external social and environmental costs against its corresponding benefits, the book demonstrates that MNEs can have a positive net-impact on local development if they build...

Concerns about the risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture are often framed as an ethical rather than a scientific issue. The ethical issue revolves around the question ‘who are the winners and losers?’ In today’s debate the answer appears to be obvious: the winners are profit-seeking global companies such as Monsanto, while t...

Die Agrarvorlagen, über die wir am 23. September abstimmen, gehen von einer Welt aus, die funktioniert wie im Globi-Buch – oder wie in den Klischees linker Geografielehrer.

Über Nachhaltige Entwicklungshilfe

Die politischen Leitfaden der Gentech-Landwirtschaft: Vorsorgeprinzip

Angesichts des Gezerres um die Auslieferung von Carles Puigdemont setzt sich in der europäischen Öffentlichkeit immer mehr das Narrativ durch, dass Katalonien ein Opfer des spanischen Imperialismus sei. Dabei erzählen die politisch demokratischen Realitäten mit Autonomierechten für die Regionen eine andere Geschichte.

The sociologist Jens Beckert argues that coordination problems increase uncertainty and ultimately prevent the embeddedness of global business in local cultures and economies. The chapter illustrates how foreign investors address these coordination problems by building up a local ecosystem in which they can operate effectively, according to the the...

Emerging large corporations in the 19th century may have caused the disembedding of traditional societies without offering any immediate positive alternative to the originally very repressive system of feudalism. FDI in low-income countries faces similar challenges today. However, MNEs that are willing to embed themselves into the local economy in...

This chapter argues that long-term investments by MNEs in low-income countries require reliable and reasonable national framework conditions. In their efforts to embed themselves into the local economy, MNEs may need the assistance of local civil society and business organizations, supported by development assistance (DA). They must help the local...

This chapter illustrates by means of concrete case studies of Swiss-based multinational companies that invest in low-income countries how embedded MNEs contribute to enhanced access to essential human rights. As such they highlight the shortcomings of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) that frame FDI primarily as a potent...

This chapter argues that democracy may not face its biggest challenge from without, in the form of globalization and authoritarian regimes, but from within, in the form of complacent postmaterialist societies in affluent economies that prefer to stick to their homogeneous and segregated communities rather than engage with society at large. Their vi...

This chapter argues that society and the economy should not be understood as two different realms in the social sciences. After all, economic activities are always embedded in prior social networks. Nevertheless, the implicit assumption that the pursuit of economic interest goes at the expense of social interests is still very much present in the d...

This chapter applies Roland Barthes’ analysis of the mythical accounts that underpinned the belief system of the bourgeois ideology in France during the Cold War period to the contemporary narratives that unite anti-globalization movements today. They have in common a tendency to reduce the complexity of local stories to timeless motives and stereo...

Future demand in agricultural output is supposed to match the needs of 9 billion people with less input of resources. Can we transform our agricultural practices and move behind existing paradigms to develop innovative and sustainable agriculture production systems? A transformation of the regime is needed: a change in the socio-economic system thr...

The need to address transboundary problems in a globalized world highlights the limits of domestic sovereignty. In response to growing global interdependence as a result of trade and technological advances, international law evolved from a system of coordination of international intercourse among a limited number of states to an almost universal sy...

According to Resolution 70/1 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015, a diverse private sector “ranging from micro-enterprises to cooperatives to multinationals” plays an important role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Goal 17 of the SDGs therefore asks governments and civil society to ac...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) plays a crucial role in enabling developing economies to embark on a path of inclusive growth. This applies in particular if local subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are committed to ‘principled embeddedness’ meaning that they are prepared to integrate parts of the local economy into global value chains...

The main barriers to maximize the benefits and minimize the risk of modern agricultural biotechnology for society and the environment are not technical but regulatory in nature. Preventive regulation of agricultural biotechnology must be understood as a policy response to public rather than scientific concerns about the development and use of genet...

In der Schweiz wurde das Gentechmoratorium in der Landwirtschaft zum dritten Mal um vier Jahre verlängert. Warum dieser fast schon ritualisierte Widerstand gegenüber der grünen Gentechnik? Die Forschung legt nahe, dass ein aktives Volksinteresse an einem politischen Thema konkreten Alltagsbezug aufweisen muss. Dies ist beim Thema grüne Gentechnik n...

The demography of cities in the 21st century will be shaped, to a large extent, by migration. This paper argues that the rights-based approach to urban policy advocated in the preparatory work of Habitat III, the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to be held in October 2016 in Quito, Ecuador, may not be conducive to this goa...

Paul Romer hat die Grundsätze der Mainstream-Ökonomie auf den Kopf gestellt. Ob er seine Erkenntnisse als neuer Weltbank-Chefökonom in die Praxis umsetzen kann, bleibt offen. Die Widerstände sind gross

Corporatism is often seen as the way Swiss stakeholders in business and politics handle industrial challenges in a reasonable and flexible way. The following publication argues, however, that the emergence of corporatist structures in the Swiss watch industry has often encouraged rent-seeking and collusion at the expense of the creation of new mark...

In den laufenden internationalen Bestrebungen der Vereinten Nationen Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die nächsten 15 Jahre zu definieren (Post-2015 Agenda) wird der Förderung von innovativem Unternehmertum nach wie vor kaum Bedeutung zugemessen. Implizit wird nämlich angenommen, dass der Unternehmer in seinem Streben nach Gewinn primär sich selbst bereich...

The chapter illustrates the experience with different types of PES projects in Kenya. It starts with the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project (KACP), a PES project designed to make use of voluntary carbon market to compensate farmers for carbon sequestration. Subsequently, the experiences with small-scale and large-scale watershed PES projects are dis...

The concept of payments for environmental services (PES) has its theoretical roots in neoclassical welfare economics. The concept suggests that the degradation of environmental resources is linked to the fact that these resources are considered to be for free. By assigning a monetary value to environmental services, sufficient incentives for market...

This chapter discusses the history of PES in developed and developing countries and illustrates its challenges and opportunities by means of concrete cases. The cases include projects designed to provide different environmental services (clean water, carbon sequestration, biodiversity preservation, etc.) applying different public PES schemes as wel...

By 2030, sixty percent of the world’s population is projected to live in cities. The majority of this growth in urban areas is expected to occur in cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The transition from rural to urban life styles is likely to increase household consumption and will require massive investments in urban infrastructure. How wil...

Welche Rolle spielt die Moral für unser wirtschaftliches Handeln und überhaupt in der Wirtschaft? Steht sie uns vielleicht sogar im Weg? Durch Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen ist das Misstrauen zwischen Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft weiter gestiegen. In Anbetracht dessen stellen die Herausgeber dieses Bandes die Frage, ob wir eine neue Wirtschaftsethik...

Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not we...

Ob ausländische Arbeitskräfte,Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge oder Vertriebene, ein Hauptmotiv von Migranten, ihre Heimat zu verlassen, ist die Aussicht auf eine bessere Zukunft an einem neuen Ort. «Charter cities» könnten Alternativen bieten.

The main barriers to maximize the benefits and minimize the risk of modern agricultural biotechnology for society and the environment are not technical but regulatory in nature. Preventive regulation of agricultural biotechnology must be understood as a policy response to public rather than scientific concerns about the development and use of genet...

In den laufenden internationalen Bestrebungen der Vereinten Nationen Nachhaltigkeitsziele für die nächsten 15 Jahre zu defnieren (Post-2015 Agenda) wird der Förderung von innovativem Unternehmertum nach wie vor kaum Bedeutung zugemessen. Implizit wird nämlich angenommen, dass der Unternehmer in seinem Streben nach Gewinn primär sich selbst bereiche...

Welche Rolle spielt die Moral für unser wirtschaftliches Handeln und überhaupt in der Wirtschaft? Steht sie uns vielleicht sogar im Weg? Durch Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen ist das Misstrauen zwischen Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft weiter gestiegen. In Anbetracht dessen stellen die Herausgeber dieses Bandes die Frage, ob wir eine neue Wirtschaftsethik...

This book addresses the ability of market-based instruments to improve the sustainable provision of environmental services. The author combines field research and insights from the multi-stakeholder dialogue at the FAO to analyze the gap between the predictions provided by theory and the corresponding outcomes in practice. In particular, the author...

Die Unterscheidung gründet auf der Annahme, dass "Agro", also die Agroindustrie, böse und "Öko", für Agrarökologie, gut sei. Dieses Gut-böse-Schema verursacht einen beträchtlichen Kollateralschaden für Gesellschaft und Umwelt, denn eine Zusammenarbeit von staatlichen und nichtstaatlichen Akteuren mit dem Privatsektor für die gemeinsame Erarbeitung...

The contemporary human rights debate is mostly concerned with the protection of people affected by change that is beyond their control. But what about those who make use of their basic economic rights to facilitate economic and social change? Do these agents of change need protection and, if so, how do their activities relate to the current debate...

Biotechnology is a platform technology that may significantly contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Yet biotechnology is hardly ever referred to as a ‘clean technology’. This paper investigates why biotechnology tends to be ignored in this context. A global stakeholder survey on biotechnology and climate change was conducted with...

Was sind die Ursachen hoher Preisvolatilität auf den globalen Agrarmärkten? In der öffentlichen Diskussion wird oft die «Finanzialisierung» des Agrarhandels für die stark schwankenden Nahrungsmittelpreise verantwortlich gemacht. Dabei wird übersehen, dass Preisbewegungen primär auf Veränderungen der Verfügbarkeit von global handelbaren Nahrungsmitt...

Agricultural innovation in low-income tropical countries contributes to a more effective and sustainable use of natural resources and reduces hunger and poverty through economic development in rural areas. Yet, despite numerous recent public and private initiatives to develop capacities for agricultural innovation, such initiatives are often not we...

The international community has made a substantial effort to create awareness and foster research as well as developing inventories and methodologies to combat global warming. It has come a long way. The review and assessment of the most recent scientific, technical and socioeconomic information by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPC...

Nachhaltige Landwirtschaft wird in Wohlstandgesellschaften wie der unseren gerne mit der Förderung von Bio und Fair Trade in Verbindung gebracht. Kaum jemand kennt jedoch Standards der Nachhaltigkeit wie Rainforest Alliance, UTZ (Umwelt- und Sozialbestimmungen), SA8000 (Arbeiterschutz) oder Technoserve (Armutsbekämpfung durch Ermächtigung zum Unter...

Fifteen years of experience with the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) corps and countless national and international risk assessments of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) suggest that the risks related to this new technology are not any different from those already known in conventional agriculture. Despite these reassuring f...

Seit der ersten kommerziellen Einführung einer Gentechpflanze im Jahre 1996 ist einiges passiert, sowohl in den Medien wie auch auf dem Feld. Mittlerweile werden gentechnisch veränderte Nutzpflanzen weltweit von 17,3 Mio. Bauern auf einer Fläche von 170 Mio. Hektaren angebaut. 90 % dieser Bauern sind Kleinbauern in Indien und anderen Entwicklungslä...

Empirical research shows that European governments and retailers are unlikely to be directly punished by taxpayers and consumers if they move away from their anti-GMO positions and policies. However, it is ultimately not the weak attitudes of taxpayers and consumers that matter to governments and retailers but the strong attitudes of the noisy anti...

Humankind shares a common interest in the safety of the products it uses and consumes and an increasing interest in the way the product has been produced. In a globalized world, private standards play a role in ensuring the safety and sustainability of products and production methods. The co-management of the public good 'food safety' by the public...

Despite its potential to address climate change problems, the role of biotechnology is hardly ever touched upon in the global sustainability debate. We wanted to know why. For that purpose, we conducted a global stakeholder survey on biotechnology and climate change. The 55 respondents who completed the survey represent 44 relevant institutions in...

The development of new digital technologies has resulted in significant transformations in daily life, from the arrival of online shopping to more fundamental changes in the ways we work and communicate. Many of these changes raise questions that transcend market access and liberalisation, and demand cooperation and coherent regulatory design. Inte...

This contribution offers a new view on how negative knowledge emerges from the experience of mistakes in firms and factories. In general, negative knowledge relates to the episodic memory, which means to incidents that are in their consequences negative and must be prevented in the future. In a couple of new studies, we can, on the one hand, show t...

General morality is often applied to a concrete political content even if there is very low familiarity with the respective political topic (Turiel, 2002). If this condition is taken into account the treatment of moral issues in class becomes much more situated and more and more procedural in the sense that socially accepted public value system is...

In 2005, the Swiss expressed their negative attitude towards genetic engineering in agriculture by voting in favor of a ban to use genetically modified (GM) crops in domestic agriculture. At the same time, certain GM food products remain approved but are not on offer since retailers assume that consumers would shun labeled GM food. In our study we...

The global food crisis is a clear signal that old belief systems no longer apply. Innovative ideas are necessary to make agriculture simultaneously more inclusive, sustainable and productive. Hybrid models of problem-oriented collaboration involving competent and committed actors in civil society, farmer organizations, government, academia and busi...

Independent of the left-right model of ideological structure, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and agriculture are resented across the political spectrum in Switzerland. In the absence of any real experience with genetically modified (GM) food but faced with continuous exposure to warning messages in the media, conditioned feelings rel...

The International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research (ICABR) held its 15th annual conference near Rome, Italy in June 2011. The theme of the conference was sustainability, and this topic was addressed through numerous presentations from academia, government, and industry. Numerous presentations from developing countries highlighted the adopt...

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) was arguably one the most significant General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) achievements of the 1986–1994 Uruguay Round. It came into effect with the successful establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Yet, while the AoA managed to bring agriculture within the disciplines of the multilateral...

This introduction to the special issue of AgBioForum addresses the articles presented, which are a selection of nine articles presented at the 15th International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy Research Annual Conference (ICABR 2011) and a synthesis of key findings from ICABR 2011. They address questions related to the potential of the new bio-eco...

Most international organizations – including the World Bank, UNCTAD, OECD, UNIDO, WTO and FAO – share the view that there needs to be a global transformation towards a greener economy. However, in the aftermath of the Rio+20 UN Summit, some key issues about the green economy must be clarified to reach a global consensus for collective action. In th...

As in many other protectionist countries, the pressure for agricultural reform in Turkey comes mostly from foreign institutions, be it the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO or the EU. The influence of these institutions on Turkish agricultural policy has however decreased in recent years, and therefore reform efforts have been abandoned in many areas. I...

One of the most signicant economists of our time, Kenneth Arrow, argued over three decades ago that trust has implications for the economy as well as the polity. In the current “economic crisis” his words seem prophetic. For Arrow, trust has not only economic value but also sheer pragmatic value. It simply makes life easier. Like Luhmann, Arrow vie...

The paper deals mainly with the emerging legal issues related to climate change and their interlinkages with the WTO law, human rights law, investment law and environmental law. While the comprehensive international legal regime for climate change is still not established, the guidance in articulating objectives can be found in human rights law; en...

Sustainable urbanization in developing countries will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Especially in Africa where the current rate of urbanization is fastest and cities are least prepared to offer poor migrants decent living conditions through innovative solutions in housing, urban design, education and infrastructure. Sustainabl...

Most countries claim to be committed to sustainable agriculture. Yet, the meaning of the term ‘sustainable agriculture’ is largely shaped by influential stakeholders in the public debate and their respective agendas. The resulting national policies to promote sustainability may therefore not always be conducive to improving the economic, social, an...

This article argues that the current global economic downturn also represents a crisis in discipline-oriented academic thinking, especially in the areas of ethics and economics. These two disciplines are still largely based on rationalist and idealist views of the human being and therefore incompatible with the real nature of the human being as rev...