Governing for Sustainable Agriculture in the EU: Promoting Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration

Governing for Sustainable Agriculture in the EU: Promoting Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration Von der Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg zur Erlangung des Grades Doktorin der Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Politikwissenschaften - Dr. rer. pol. - genehmigte Dissertation von Sarah Velten geboren am 28. August 1984 in Speyer Eingereicht am: 28. Januar 2019 Mündliche Verteidigung (Disputation) am: 27. März 2019 Erstbetreuer und –gutachter: Prof. Dr. Jens Newig Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Julia Leventon Drittgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Dr. Martina Schäfer Die einzelnen Beiträge des kumulativen Dissertationsvorhabens sind oder werden ggf. inkl. des Rahmen- papiers wie folgt veröffentlicht: Leventon, J., Schaal, T., Velten, S., Dänhardt, J., Fischer, J., Abson, D.J., Newig, J., 2017. Collaboration or fragmentation? Biodiversity management through the common agricultural policy. Land Use Policy 64, 1– 12. Leventon, J., Schaal, T., Velten, S., Fischer, J., Newig, J., 2019. Landscape Scale Biodiversity Governance: Scenarios for reshaping spaces of governance. Environmental Policy and Governance 46 (1), 1-15. Velten, S., Leventon, J., Jager, N.W., Newig, J., 2015. What is sustainable agriculture? - A systematic re- view. Sustainability 7 (6), 7833–7865. Velten, S., Schaal, T., Leventon, J., Hanspach, J., Newig, J., Fischer, J, 2018. Rethinking biodiversity governance in European agricultural landscapes: Acceptability of alternative governance scenarios. Land Use Policy 77, 84-93. Velten, S., Jager, N., Newig, J., forthcoming. Success of Collaboration for sustainable agriculture: a case study meta-analysis. Environment, Development and Sustainability. Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019 ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................................ v Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................ vii 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 2 Conceptual Background ..................................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Sustainable agriculture ................................................................................................................................... 4 2.2 Governance ................................................................................................................................................... 5 2.3 Collaboration .................................................................................................................................................. 7 3 Research Context: The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) .............................................................................. 8 4 Research design and methodology .................................................................................................................... 9 5 Results and discussion ..................................................................................................................................... 14 5.1 Sub-aim 1 – Concept .................................................................................................................................... 14 5.2 Sub-aim 2 – Status-quo ................................................................................................................................ 16 5.3 Sub-aim 3 – Ways forward ............................................................................................................................ 17 5.3.1 Top-down perspective: Governance systems that facilitate collaboration for sustainable agriculture......... 17 5.3.2 Bottom-up perspective: Success of local and regional collaboratives for a more sustainable agriculture ... 19 5.4 Methodological reflection .............................................................................................................................. 20 6 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................................... 21 References ........................................................................................................................................................... 23 Annex ................................................................................................................................................................... 30 iii iv Acknowledgements On my long, exciting, exhausting, inspiring, tiring, confident, confused, mind-boggling, and mind-opening journey I have crossed paths and travelled alongside many marvelous personalities, who offered their support, advice, and encouragement, so my journey could come to its merited end. It is now on me to restitute, even if it is merely my deepest gratitude. First and foremost, my gratitude goes to my supervisors and examiners, Prof. Dr. Jens Newig and Prof. Dr. Julia Mildorfova-Leventon for their professional guidance and personal patience, their concise and constructive critique as well as their open doors, open ears, and open minds. I am also very grateful to Prof. Dr. Dr. Martina Schäfer for sparing neither trouble nor expense to supervise my dissertation as external examiner. Special thanks go to Dr. Nicolas Jager, whom I consider an additional, though unofficial supervisor of this dissertation. Substantial tasks of my dissertation would have been insurmountable heights for me without his advice, support, and expertise, in general and especially regarding the conduct of statistical analyses in R (probably, his enthusiasm for climbing helped overcoming these obstacles, too). In a similar vein, I would like to thank Tamara Schaal for being an excellent colleague on our common quest of the MULTAGRI project, which came along the road of my PhD. Always dedicated, reliable, positive, organized, and attentive, I can hardly imagine a better partner for such a task. Also Stephanie Jahn and Jan Hanspach deserve my gratitude for their additional expertise and support mainly but not only in statistical matters as well as Hanna Weber for her efficient, patient, persistent, and coherent hands-on support on the data collection for one part of this dissertation. A great support – especially in the first, very insecure and confusing stage of my PhD – were Alisa Weber, Lisa-Britt Fischer, Lotte Lutz and Dr. Nataly Jürges. In our regular peer group meetings they provided me with orientation, kept up my motivation, and offered ideas and support in organizational and content-related matters of my PhD. Not to be spared from my thanks are all other former and current members of the research group Governance, Participation and Sustainability for cheerful gatherings, constructive discussions, and truly collegial company. Last but not least, I am deeply grateful to my family and friends, who supported me in the most varied ways and have provided nothing less but the inspiration and motivation to venture on and continue a journey that should culminate in a dissertation hoping to contribute to a better world. Writing this dissertation was made possible with the financial support of the Lüneburg Innovation Incubator project, TM 1.4. v vi Abstract Over 25 years after the UNCED conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, agriculture in the European Union (EU) has below the line not come much closer to being sustainable. By now, efforts to promote sustainability in agriculture have predominantly been based on “mainstream science”. This has resulted in strategies directed mainly at agricultural production, measures targeted at individual farms, and a major focus on technology-centered solutions. Yet, there have been many claims emphasizing that such approaches are insufficient to deal with wicked, sustainability-related problems. Rather, it has been argued, we need to question the governance of sustainability issues, i.e. who makes which decisions in which way. A central aspect of sustainability governance is collaboration, which has been lauded for its benefits but also criticized for its challenges. The potential benefits of collaboration have apparently been recognized also in the context of EU agriculture. Yet, there has been a lack of holistic consideration of how collaboration can be systematically integrat- ed and promoted in the governance of EU agriculture. Sustainable agriculture cannot only be encouraged through changes in the overall governance system but also through the support of existing and emerging small-scale collaborative initiatives for sustainable agriculture. Indeed, there has been substantial research on the conditions that influence success of similar collaborative initiatives. However, the knowledge result- ing from this research remains rather scattered and does not allow for the identification of overall patterns. Additionally, little of this research specifically focuses on sustainable agriculture. What is more, the promo- tion of collaboration for sustainable agriculture is further complicated by the lack of clarity of the meaning of sustainable agriculture, which is an inherently ambiguous and contested concept. This cumulative dissertation aims to address these gaps by contributing to a better understanding of how collaboration can be facilitated and

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