Thesis Topic Brochure May 2016
Thesis Topic Brochure May 2016
Thesis Topic Brochure May 2016
2016
Website: http://www.wageningenur.nl/enp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Environmental.Policy
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Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................... 5
This brochure ................................................................................... 5
Thesis Supervisors ........................................................................... 7
Research programme of the Environmental Policy Group .............. 8
Thesis topics .................................................................................. 11
Sustainable Food Transformations ................................................ 11
Sustainable Urban Infrastructures................................................. 17
Governing Environmental Mobilities............................................. 26
Governing Marine Futures............................................................. 35
Climate Governance ...................................................................... 43
Previous thesis titles ...................................................................... 50
Internships ..................................................................................... 53
How to get started… ...................................................................... 55
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Introduction
This brochure
This brochure presents a list of topics or themes for students who wish to
pursue their MSc thesis at the Environmental Policy Group. The purpose of
this brochure is to attract students to write an MSc thesis within the
domain of environmental policy and to provide inspiration to those who
wish to formulate their own thesis topic. The ENP group very much
stimulates students to develop their own ideas and research questions.
The topics presented in this brochure have been identified as interesting
topical areas by ENP staff members and can be used as a starting point or
source of inspiration while proposing your own thesis topic.
The topics and themes presented in this brochure are often linked to
research lines and running projects of staff members. This increases the
interest and commitment of staff members in the thesis research and the
impact of the knowledge generated. The thesis topics will be presented
categorized in the three research areas of the Environmental Policy Group
(for an overview see following section). Further information on the
content and running projects under each of these research areas check out
the ENP website: www.wageningenur.nl/enp
Besides potential thesis topics and themes this brochure includes a list of
recently completed ENP MSc theses, a list of companies and organizations
where ENP MSc students have recently performed internships, and the
next steps in the thesis writing process.
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Internship possibilities are published on the ENP facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Environmental.Policy. For inspiration or more
information you can also check the education pages of the ENP website:
http://www.wageningenur.nl/enp .
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Thesis Supervisors
Dr. Ingrid Boas Prof. dr. Peter Oosterveer
[email protected] [email protected]
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Research programme of the Environmental Policy
Group
The mission of the Environmental Policy chair group (ENP) is to develop
innovative ways of analysing and understanding social and political
transformations of the environment. Core to this mission is the analysis of
how and to what extent environmental considerations become
incorporated into and change modernisation and globalisation processes,
and the design of environmental governance arrangements that extend
across multiple levels and spatial scales.
The research programme of ENP is divided into five parallel thematic areas
that represent key, contemporary global environmental challenges (see
Figure 1). First, reflecting the challenges of ongoing population growth and
distributive challenges of global nutrition, ENP explores the governance
and practices of sustainable food transformations. Second, the design and
governance of sustainable urban infrastructures, exploring the dynamic
nature of cities and their regional and global environmental footprint.
Third, the challenges involved in global environmental mobilities
associated with tourism, migration and transport. Fourth, the marine
governance theme incorporates research on the largest single largest
global environmental resource, exploring issues related to spatial planning,
fisheries and offshore infrastructures. And fifth, climate governance, with
analysis focusing on both global and regional climate policies and their
intersection with strategies for renewable energy provision.
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Next to thesis topics on these five core themes we welcome ambitious and
interested students to discuss and explore a more theoretical or
methodological thesis topic. Examples could be:
- Theories of modernity in sociology and political science
- Analysing globalisation from a non-western point of view
- The role of material objects in social theories
- Theories of social practices and sustainable consumption
- Transparency and accountability in reflexive modernity
- Sociological theories of mobilities
- Etc.
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Thesis topics
Sustainable Food Transformations
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food to regionally different cultures of consumption as well as different
structures of the food provision systems.
Contact persons: Gert Spaargaren and Peter Oosterveer.
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Circular models of production and consumption
Industrial ecology, Cradle-to-cradle, circular economy: these are all models
that aim at moving from 'linear' to 'circular' modes of production and
consumption. Particularly Cradle-to-cradle and circular economy have a
wide appeal to companies, designers, and policy makers. Upon a closer
look, however, such models are not as easily applicable as the success
stories suggest as they require a fundamental change in production and
consumption practices. What are, effectively, the potentials of these
models in promoting sustainable production and consumption? How can
they be better understood, especially from a social scientific perspective?
And how can policy makers and companies make progress in this field?
Students are invited to research these questions with a focus on specific
companies (Desso, Interface co, Adidas, G-star) industrial sectors (clothing,
shipping, dairy, etc.) or on specific aspects (closed loop recycling,
certification, stakeholder relationships, etc.).
Contact persons: Kris van Koppen, Judith van Leeuwen
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Sustainable Urban Infrastructures
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practices and demand? To which extent does the division between
‘developing’ and ‘developed’ countries hold when looking at household
energy demand? This topic is part of a project involving ENP and the
DEMAND Centre at Lancaster University (UK) which studies and compares
energy practices in Europe and Southeast Asia. Students can work within
this framework or develop their own approach, including in other
geographical areas.
Contact person: Mattijs Smits
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Grid operators are regional public corporations responsible for distribution
of electricity over existing infrastructure which they own and maintain.
They are the key responsible for balancing demand and supply in the
regional distribution grids. Now that electricity supply becomes distributed
as well, with the electricity production by energy cooperatives and
individual households, the challenge for grid operators is to manage this
patchwork of production and consumption sites in order to keep the
balance between demand and supply. ENP is working in a new research
project with Enexis, a regional grid operator that offers opportunities for
thesis research in the area of smart grids, smart meters, domestic
consumers and energy cooperatives.
Contact person: Bas van Vliet, supervisors: Bas van Vliet, Robin Smale, Gert
Spaargaren
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environmental transparency and information disclosure for urban citizens.
Contact person: Bas van Vliet, Ingrid Boas
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includes questions such as who participates in deciding what is measured
and how? Who participates in data collection, and what skills and
expertise are required? Possible case studies include contestations over
the visualisation of environmental degradation, the creation of open
hardware for biodiversity monitoring, and ‘sustainability hackatons’
organised by city administrations. Your thesis project will be connected to
the development of a new ENP project on this theme and may include
contributing to a scientific publication.
Supervisors: Sanneke Kloppenburg, Ingrid Boas
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study research between various cities in North and South.
Contact person: Bas van Vliet
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Smart Cities
Many cities around the world now frame themselves as a smart city. In the
most ideal form a smart city can be understood as a city in which smart
technologies will make it sustainable, safe and comfortable and as a city
that will enable citizens to have more control over their surroundings
(Zandbergen 2015). And all this should happen in a very efficient manner
facilitated by smart technologies. But how “smart” are cities really, and to
what extent is this based on a democratic process involving the urban civil
society? What is the role of big ICT companies in steering the smart city
versus small innovative-startups and citizen- initiatives? How are city
governments adjusting to the “smart” nature of its city? These are
questions a master thesis can address.
Supervisors: Ingrid Boas, Sanneke Kloppenburg
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scales. Sometimes, they ‘fail’ and move quietly to the background, but
sometimes, they lead to lasting changes at national or even international
level. How can we study these environmental movements? How do they
transform something seemingly neutral, like energy, into a ‘matter of
concern’? What is the influence of movements on local and national
energy policy and vice versa? Students are encouraged to explore these
questions through existing research and networks in countries like
Thailand and Myanmar, or in other parts of the world.
Contact person: Mattijs Smits
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Governing Environmental Mobilities
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practices our understanding of the behavioural dynamics of water uses can
be enlarged. In addition, the research can focus on innovative measures
suggested by providers of water and tourism services and assess their
effectiveness in relation to the dynamics of the tourism related water use
practices, such as smart water meters, rainwater harvesting, recycle
showers, etc. An in-depth case study in one of many water scarce tourism
destinations (for example islands) forms the empirical basis of your thesis.
Contact person: Machiel Lamers
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Mitigating the global environmental impact of tourism mobility
The considerable contribution of tourism to global environmental change
(i.e. greenhouse gas emissions) has fairly recently started to receive
attention from NGOs, researchers, consumers, and policy makers. The role
of this growing awareness on tourism consumption, in particular in cases
of holiday choice, has not been investigated much. Transport and mobility
has a dominant position in tourism practices, in particular for hyper-mobile
tourist consumers (i.e. those that go on multiple long haul trips per year).
There appears to be a growing group of consumers that wish to be/are
green (in their daily lives: food, dwelling), but also hyper-mobile (travel
around the world: for leisure and work). In the face of shifting norms and
values due to global climate change this combination seems to be
incommensurable. Is this incommensurability recognized by tourists? To
what extent are tourists, tourism organizers, and tourism regulators aware
of the global environmental impact of their traveling behavior, and do they
find it problematic? Is there scope for developing carbon budgets for
tourists?
Contact person: Machiel Lamers
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topic could also be how EU legislation on this topic has been developed
and will be implemented. Or how innovative governance measures such as
certification schemes could move this debate forward.
Contact person: Judith van Leeuwen
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loops within value chains is being proposed as a solution to simultaneously
deal with wasting waste as well as with growing scarcity of natural
resources. But in terms of their regulation and steering, global production
networks exist separately from global recycling networks. Little empirical
research is done into how do these networks look like, how they are
different and how they are governed? Where rest the power? What are
the geopolitics of waste and of resources? Do we see redefinitions of
waste as a consequence of new corporate environmental strategies, urban
mining or circular economy initiatives? In addition, integration of these
two networks seems needed in order to close material loops and to allow
waste becoming a new resources. Analysing specific global production and
recycling networks, also between North and South, would give us much
more information on alternatives for virgin mining, and of the problems
and complication that come along with that. Focus of an MSc –thesis on
this topic could be on certain materials (e.g. plastic, rare metals) or on
specific products.
Contact person: Judith van Leeuwen
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Governing Marine Futures
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students to investigate the new roles of these actors in shifting tuna
fisheries management from regulatory to ‘incentivised’ management
approaches. Field work sites are negotiable but can include Indonesia, the
Philippines, Thailand, and Fiji.
Contact person: Simon Bush
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Marine Infrastructural Projects: new ways of building with nature
Marine Infrastructural projects (MIPs) are large construction works in a
marine environment, such as the development of ports, land reclamation,
the construction of islands and all kind of constructions of flood
protection. More and more environmental objectives are taken in
consideration in the development of these projects. An example is the
Dutch innovation programme program “Building with Nature”. The focus
of this programme is an understanding of the specific ecosystem dynamics,
and taking them as a basis for the design of the project. The program
focuses on developing ‘eco-dynamic design principles’. These are the
technical building blocks that allow practitioners in the field to plan and
design marine infrastructural projects using ecosystem based dynamics.
This research projects evaluates the possibilities of building with nature in
Marine Infrastructural projects.
Contact persons: Jan van Tatenhove
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Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD):
generating co-benefits?
REDD is being widely embraced by policymakers, funding agencies and
other actors as a promising strategy to cost-effectively reduce greenhouse
gas emissions in addressing climate change. REDD (and its successor
REDD+) aims to create financial incentives for forest conservation and
sustainable use, through compensating developing country forest owners
and users for the carbon stabilized in standing forests. Important global
REDD+ initiatives include the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility of the
World Bank (FCPF) and the UN-REDD programme. Both are actively
supporting developing countries in preparing for REDD+. Yet many
questions about REDD+ remain, including whether it can deliver so-called
co-benefits (i.e. reduce carbon emissions and improve forest governance/
reduce deforestation). MSc thesis research can focus on various aspects,
including: the prospects of different REDD design options to deliver co-
benefits; the evolution and practices of specific global REDD+ initiatives,
such as the World Bank’s FCPF or the UN-REDD programme; debates and
developments relating to REDD+ in a specific developing country such as
India, Indonesia or Ghana etc.; and how private governance initiatives such
as the Forest Stewardship Council are interacting with REDD+.
Contact person: Aarti Gupta
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Previous thesis titles
Lowering the Peaks, Assessing the role of an energy cooperative on
practices in the smart grid
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in the Mediterranean Sea.
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The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). An analysis of the state of play
in Uganda.
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Internships
Another possibility for formulating a thesis topic would be to link it to an
internship. Recent developments at public or private organizations where
students perform their internship might provide an excellent case study to
be worked out in a MSc thesis on environmental policy. If you would opt
for a thesis research opportunity associated to an internship thorough
consultation with the ENP thesis coordinator is needed. The following
organizations have functioned as internship for MSc environmental policy
students:
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How to get started…
Exploring research topics
If you intend to do an ENP thesis, please explore which research areas or
topics you want to address. Use this brochure, the ENP website
(www.wageningenur.nl/enp) for research themes the group is currently
working on; and browse through previous thesis titles and summaries
presented under the education section of the website. Exploring different
topics with the thesis coordinator or an ENP examiner is of course also
possible.
Thesis ring
Since 2015, ENP offers an extra mode of supervision through a Thesis Ring.
This is a group of 6 ENP thesis students in various stages of their thesis
project that present and discuss their “work-in-progress” with their fellow
students. The discussion meetings are scheduled once every two weeks
and they are moderated by a PhD student at the ENP group. Every MSc
thesis student at ENP will be part of one of the two running Thesis Rings at
ENP. By taking part, you are able to present your work at least twice during
your thesis project and that you receive feedback from 5 peers. You will be
contacted to join a Thesis Ring soon after your registration as ENP thesis
student.
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Notes…
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