Source: Theesfeld 2019, Colorado USA

Who privatizes the rain?
When natural resources become scarce, the society changes their property rights. How does this process happen? Does it in any way lead to a commercialization and thus excluding users from the resource? What other forms of governance could be developed for sustainable shared use of resources? How can one learn that?

Welcome to the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy

The specialty of the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy is studying its three policy areas in an integrated way. This allows research and scientific analysis that reflects the manifold demands of society on today’s agricultural producers. The starting point however is of course the natural resources used in agriculture. Then, institutions – intelligently designed governance systems – are crucial to using the resources in a sustainable way and to preserve them. Our research focus is therefore governance and policy research towards sustainable natural resource use.

As societies face challenges like climate change and population growth, how can we develop forward-looking policies and measures to help individuals and organizations make the adaptations that will be required? To conduct policy analysis and evaluation we draw on theories of institutional economics, political science and resource economics. In doing so, we develop qualitative and quantitative methods to study formal and informal coordination mechanisms of complex socio-ecological-technical systems.

Our research is relevant for today’s society and is essential to communication between science, society and policy.

Leader of the Department

Prof. Dr. Insa Theesfeld

Phone: +49 345 55 22 510

insa.theesfeld[at]landw.uni-halle.de

Research Focus

• Applied, problem-oriented: the „Land-Water-Energy Nexus“
• Methodologically sophisticated, policy-relevant: Development of the PICA
• Theoretical, interdisciplinary: social-ecological research

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