Environmental policy instruments and their effects on innovation

The influence of environmental policy on innovative behaviour of companies has so far received little attention in scientific discourse. Based on recent literature, the paper analyzes the impact of requirements, levies, permits, liability laws, and the EC‐eco‐audit regulation with respect to the generation of environmentally benign innovations. Most theoretical studies come to the conclusion that direct requirements provide little incentives for dynamic effects and that emission taxes and permits are better instruments to promote innovations. However, the empirical studies show that the dynamic effects of environmental policy instruments in practice partly differ from the ideal instruments analyzed in theoretical studies.     

The Environmental Performance of Participatory and Collaborative Governance: A Framework of Causal Mechanisms

Many have advocated for collaborative governance and the participation of citizens and stakeholders on the basis that it can improve the environmental outcomes of public decision making, as compared to traditional, top‐down decision making. Others, however, point to the potential negative effects of participation and collaboration on environmental outcomes. This article draws on several literatures to identify five clusters of causal mechanisms describing the relationship between participation and environmental outcomes. We distinguish (i) mechanisms that describe how participation impacts on the environmental standard of outputs, from (ii) mechanisms relating to the implementation of outputs. Three mechanism clusters focus on the role of representation of environmental concerns, participants' environmental knowledge, and dialogical interaction in decision making. Two further clusters elaborate on the role of acceptance, conflict resolution, and collaborative networks for the implementation of decisions. In addition to the mechanisms, linking independent with dependent variables, we identify the conditions under which participation may lead to better (or worse) environmental outcomes. This helps to resolve apparent contradictions in the literature. We conclude by outlining avenues for research that builds on this framework for analysis.     

Tetraethylene glycol thermooxidation and the influence of certain compounds relevant to conserved archaeological wood

The degradation of tetraethylene glycol (TEG) was studied at 70 °C under dry air and nitrogen. Degradation products were detected using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). They were mono-, di- and tri-ethylene glycol, mono- and di-formates of mono-, di-, tri- and tetra-ethylene glycol and formic acid. The rate of TEG degradation was significantly decreased by approximately 10 mmol/l KI, FeCl₃, Cu(CH₃COO)₂, MnO₂ and CuSO₄, small amounts of fresh oak wood sawdust and gypsum-containing scrapings from the wood surface of the Vasa ship in Stockholm. Thus certain salts and natural components of archaeological wood are able to inhibit oxidative degradation of TEG. NaFe₃(SO₄)₂(OH)₆ (Natrojarosite), FeS₂ (pyrite), FeSO₄, Fe₂(SO₄)₃, NiCl₂, NiSO₄, Fe, Cu, Fe₂O₃, CuO, NaHSO₄ and natrojarosite-containing scrapings from the Vasa had no major effect on the rate of oxidation.     

The Wreck of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pettu</Emphasis> as an Example for Nineteenth Century Rural Shipbuilding in South-Western Finland

Although the design and construction of wooden merchant vessels in the nineteenth century is generally considered to be well understood, the excavation and subsequent analysis of the wreck of the wooden Finnish topsail schooner Pettu (1865) revealed a number of unexpected features, which prompted the authors to take a closer look at the ship. In the following study, it will be attempted to gain an insight into the society that produced and used the merchant vessel through a detailed analysis of its construction and an investigation into the concept behind its design. The wreck of the Pettu, which, considering its loss in 1893, is barely covered by the 100 year rule in Danish heritage legislation, is a good example for the archaeological potential of even relatively ‘modern’ wreck sites, adding to their significance.     

Combined Pb–Sr isotopic analysis in provenancing late Roman iron raw materials in the territory of Sagalassos (SW Turkey)

In early Roman times, iron was likely supplied to the city of Sagalassos through the smelting of close-by hematite ores. In the early Byzantine period, magnetite–titanite placer sands in some instances could have been exploited for its iron. For the intermediate late Roman period, however, the source of the locally used iron was unknown. Pb and Sr isotopic analyses of iron ores from the area of Camoluk, just south of the territory of Sagalassos, and of late Roman iron artefacts from the antique city itself, reveal a very close resemblance. This makes the use of the Camoluk ores to supply Sagalassos with raw iron in the late Roman period likely. It is also shown that combined Pb and Sr isotopic analyses provides a powerful tool to distinguish chronological groups of iron provenance and a technique that can determine the nature and source of iron raw materials used.     

We are never alone: a conversation on bio art with Eduardo Kac

Brazilian-born artist Eduardo Kac’s (Rio de Janeiro, 1962) work has raised eyebrows especially for his ‘transgenic art’ projects, among others: Genesis, 1999; GFP Bunny, 2000; The Eight Day, 2001; Natural History of the Enigma, 2003/08. In all of these, Kac and his scientific collaborators realize genetic interventions into living organisms at the same time as they trigger audience reactions to these from playful kinds of interaction that is integrated into the works’ open and dynamic creative process. Yet whereas the ethical and political challenges Kac’s work poses have sparked lively debates within and beyond the realm of the arts – can and must art engage with the ‘creative’ potentials of biotechnology and genetics? Do these not in fact (as Vilém Flusser and others have suggested) hold the key to realizing the vanguardist dream of merging art and life? Or should the artist, from the vantage point of his own creative practice, not rather warn us against the ethical and political risks involved in genetic engineering? – much less attention has been paid to the way Kac’s art also continues and transforms a particular legacy of post-concretist, ambient and performance art in Latin America.

Kac himself has referred to Brazilian artists Flávio de Carvalho, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark as informing his interest in open, participative forms, which characterize both his transgenic and his earlier ‘tele-presence’ art projects. Other Latin American artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have been producing intriguing engagements with living materials, multispecies habitats and organic remains, including such diverse names as Luis Fernando Benedit, Nicola Constantino, Nuno Ramos, or Teresa Margolles. In a conversation with Jens Andermann and Gabriel Giorgi at the University of Zurich’s Center of Latin American Studies on March 12, 2015, Kac addressed the way in which his work might be seen as continuing or challenging long-standing representations of the New World as a repository of ‘nature’, from colonial chronicles of discovery to contemporary discourses of biodiversity and conservation. To what extent is bio art – and the questions it raises about the Anthropocene as a threshold of radical biopolitical convergence between ‘history’ and ‘nature’ – necessarily ‘transcultural’ and planetary in its extension?