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Dieses Arbeitspapier analysiert die Ernährungssicherheit mit ihren vier Dimensionen physische Verfügbarkeit, wirtschaftlicher und physischer Zugang, Nahrungsmittelnutzung und -verwertung sowie Stabilität, die Ökonomie und Ökologie der Nahrungsmittelproduktion (Pflanzen, Fleisch, Fisch), die Risikofaktoren für die Ernährungssicherheit und die geopolitischen Aktivitäten. Die Nahrungsmittelproduktion stieg in den letzten 50 Jahren um fast das 2,2-fache und konnte das Bevölkerungswachstum kompensieren, doch die Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) schätzt, dass die Nahrungsmittelproduktion von 2015 bis 2050 um 60% steigen muss. Das Wachstum wurde durch eine Kombination aus verstärkter Bewässerung, Düngemitteln, Pestiziden, gentechnisch veränderten Organismen zum Schutz der Pflanzen vor schädlichen Insekten und Pestiziden sowie einem allgemeinen Trend zu größeren Farmen und Monokulturen erreicht. Probleme sind Nitratüberladung, Pestizidbelastung, Rückgang von Insekten, Bestäubung und Vögeln, Verlust der Artenvielfalt sowie Verlust von Ackerland. Intelligente Landwirtschaft (Smart farming) basierend auf dem Internet der Dinge, 5G-Netzwerken, Drohnen und künstlicher Intelligenz kann zu einer effektiveren und ökologischeren Ressourcennutzung führen. In den letzten 50 Jahren hat sich die Fleischproduktion mehr als verdreifacht. Für die Fleischproduktion werden Flächen für Weiden und die Futtermittelproduktion benötigt. Fleischersatzprodukte und Alternativen wie Mock Food, Fleisch aus Zellkulturen und Insekten haben einen kleinen, aber wachsenden Markt. Ein weiteres Problem sind tierische Emissionen wie Kohlendioxid und Methan. n den letzten 50 Jahren hat sich die Fischproduktion fast vervierfacht. Etwa ein Drittel der Fischbestände sind überfischt und einige Arten befinden sich in einem kritischen Zustand. Die USA waren im Jahr 2020 der größte Lebensmittelexporteur, während Asien der größte Nettoimporteur war. Europa ist seit 2013 ein Nettoexporteur. Während Afrikas Importe und Exporte bis Mitte der 1970er Jahre ausgeglichen waren, wird die Kluft zwischen Importen und Exporten immer größer. Der globale Lebensmittelmarkt wird zunehmend von einigen wenigen multinationalen Unternehmen dominiert, vom Saatgut bis zum Supermarkt. Die kritischsten Risikofaktoren für die Ernährungssicherheit sind der Klimawandel mit Bodenverlust und Wasserknappheit. Wasserverschwendung und niedrige Wasserpreise sind Treiber der Wasserknappheit, z.B. durch übermäßige Nutzung von Grundwasser und Aquiferen. Eine neue Bedrohung ist die globale Kontamination mit Mikroplastik. Nach der Lebensmittelpreiskrise von 2007/2008 wurden Lebensmittel als strategische Ressource erkannt, was zu vermehrten ausländischen Direktinvestitionen führte. Die Black Sea Grain Initiative zeigt die Verwundbarkeit globaler Versorgungsketten und die Möglichkeit, Lebensmittel als Waffen zu nutzen. Es gibt internationale Wasserkonflikte mit dem Grand-Ethiopian-Renaissance-Staudamm und dem grenzüberschreitenden Wasserstreit zwischen Indien und China. Zusammenfassend konnte die Lebensmittel-, Fleisch- und Fischproduktion erfolgreich gesteigert werden, um das Bevölkerungswachstum und den zunehmenden Fleischkonsum auszugleichen; Hunger und Unterernährung bestehen jedoch weiterhin. Hauptrisikofaktoren für die zukünftige Ernährungssicherheit sind Klimawandel, Landverlust und Wasserknappheit. Als Reaktion darauf wird Nahrung als strategische Ressource angesehen, was zu geopolitischen Aktivitäten und Verteilungskonflikten führt.

The paper analyzes the food security with the four dimensions physical availability, economic and physical access, food use/utilization and stability, the economy and ecology of food production (plants, meat, fish), the risk factors for food security and the geopolitical activities. The food production increased almost 2.2 times in the past 50 years and was able to compensate the population growth, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that the food production must increase from 2015 to 2050 by 60%. The growth was achieved by a combination of increased irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to protect plants from harmful insects and pesticides and a general trend to larger farms and monocultures. Issues are nitrate overload, pesticide contamination, reduction of insects, pollination and birds, loss of biodiversity and land loss and degradation. Smart or precision farming based on the Internet of Things, 5 G networks, drones and Artificial Intelligence may lead to a more effective and ecologic resource use. Over the past 50 years, meat production has more than tripled. Meat production requires land for pastures and animal feed production. Meat replacements and alternatives like mock food, meat from cell cultures and insects have a small, but growing market. Another issue are livestock emissions like carbon dioxide and methane. In the past 50 years, fish production has increased by almost 4 times. Approximately one-third of the fish resources are overfished and some species are in a critical condition. The USA were the largest exporter of food in 2020 while Asia was the largest net importer. Europe was a net importer of food for many decades, but became a net exporter since 2013. While Africa’s imports and exports were balanced until the mid 1970ies, the gap between imports and exports is widening. The global food market is increasingly dominated by a few multinational companies from seeds to supermarkets. The most critical risk factors for food security are climate change with soil loss and water scarcity due to higher temperatures, extreme weather with storms, droughts (and floods with continued soil loss due to wind and water erosion. Water waste and low water prices are drivers of water scarcity, e.g., by overuse of groundwater resources like aquifers. A new threat to freshwater is the global contamination with microplastic. After the food price crisis from 2007/2008, food was recognized as strategic resource leading to land lease and buying, also known as Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) or more critically as ‘land grabbing’ to prevent bottlenecks in the long term. The Black Sea Grain Initiative demonstrates the vulnerability of global food supply chains and the possibility to weaponize food. Two international water conflicts are ongoing with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam GERD in East Africa and the India-China Transboundary Water Dispute. In summary, the food, meat, and fish production could be successfully increased to compensate the population growth and the increasing meat consumption, but hunger and undernourishment still exist. Main risk factors for future food security are climate change, land loss and water scarcity. In response, food is seen as strategic resource resulting in geopolitical activities and food and water conflicts.

Lithium ist ein silberweißes Metall, das eine Schlüsselrolle in der Dekarbonisierungsstrategie zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels spielt, zu der auch die Entwicklung und Förderung von Elektro- und Hybridautos mit Lithium-Ionen-Batterien als Energiespeichermedium gehört. Durch die Dekarbonisierung soll auch der massive Kapitaltransfer von den Industriestaaten zu den Öl- und Gasproduzenten deutlich reduziert werden. Der schnell wachsende Lithiumbedarf für Lithium-Ionen-Batterien führte zu verstärkten Explorationsaktivitäten und einem Anstieg der bekannten Lithiumreserven und -ressourcen. Derzeit scheint es möglich, den stark steigenden Lithiumbedarf durch Produktionssteigerungen und Explorationen zu decken, es bestehen jedoch verschiedene Unsicherheiten, da Batterien sehr hochwertige Lithiumverbindungen benötigen. Neue Bergbauprojekte und Fördertechnologien sind unsichere und langfristige Vorhaben. Die Recyclingquote von Batterien nimmt stetig zu, das Recycling von Lithium ist jedoch immer noch technisch anspruchsvoll und Batterien aus wiedergewonnenem Lithium haben möglicherweise nicht die gleiche Qualität. Darüber hinaus ist die Batterieproduktion auch von anderen kritischen Metallen wie Kobalt und Nickel abhängig. Die Produktion von Mineralien wie Lithium, Kobalt, Nickel und Graphit muss bis 2050 um fast 500% gesteigert werden, um der wachsenden Nachfrage nach sauberen Energietechnologien gerecht zu werden. China hat im letzten Jahrzehnt seine geopolitische Rolle durch systematische strategische Investitionen gestärkt und produziert mittlerweile 60% der weltweiten Lithiumprodukte und 75% aller Lithium-Ionen-Batterien. Das Land ist führend in den Bereichen Raffinierung, Herstellung von Batteriekomponenten, Batteriemontage, Großserienproduktion in Gigafactories und Recycling. In einem größeren Zusammenhang werden Rohstoffe wie Lithium, Nickel, Kobalt, Graphit, Kupfer und Seltene Erden nicht nur für Elektro- und Hybridautos benötigt, sondern sind auch für andere saubere Energieprodukte wie Sonnenkollektoren und Windturbinen unerlässlich. China produziert mehr als 70% der weltweiten Solarmodule und hat fast 50% der weltweiten Produktionskapazität für Windkraftanlagen. Ein weiteres wichtiges strategisches Thema ist der wachsende Energiebedarf für Elektro- und Hybridautos und andere saubere Technologien, der die Kapazitäten und Stabilität der Stromnetze überfordern könnte. Aus westlicher Sicht zielte die Dekarbonisierungsstrategie darauf ab, langjährige Abhängigkeiten von Öl- und Gaslieferanten und den Kapitaltransfer zu reduzieren. Die Situation am Lithiummarkt zeigt, dass die Wende zu erneuerbaren und sauberen Energien neue Abhängigkeiten und Kapitaltransfers schafft. Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass Lithium aus ökologischer, technischer und geopolitischer Sicht eine Schlüsselressource mit vielen Unsicherheiten für die Zukunft ist.

Lithium is a silvery-white metal that plays a key role in the decarbonization strategy to fight climate change which includes the development and promotion of electric and hybrid cars with Lithium-ion batteries as energy storage medium. The decarbonization should also significantly reduce the massive capital transfer from the industry states to the oil and gas producers. The rapidly growing lithium demand for Lithium-ion batteries led to intensified exploration activities and an increase of known lithium reserves and resources. Currently, it seems possible to cover the rapidly rising lithium demand by production increases and exploration, but there are various uncertainties as batteries need very high-grade lithium compounds. New mining projects and extraction technologies are uncertain long‐term plans. The recycling quote of batteries is steadily increasing, but lithium recycling is still technically challenging and batteries made from recovered lithium might not have the same quality. In addition, the battery production is dependent from other critical metals like cobalt and nickel as well. The production of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite will need to increase by nearly 500% by 2050 to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies. In the past decade, China has strengthened its geopolitical role by systematic strategic investments and meanwhile produces 60% of the world’s lithium products and 75% of all lithium-ion batteries. It is leading in refining, battery component production, battery assembly, large-scale production in Gigafactories and recycling. In a bigger picture, raw materials as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, copper, and rare earth elements are not only needed for electric and hybrid cars, but are essential for other clean energy products like solar panels and wind turbines as well. China produces more than 70% of the world’s solar modules and has almost 50% of the global wind turbine manufacturing capacity. Another critical strategic issue is the growing energy need for electric and hybrid cars and other clean technologies which may stretch the capacities and stability of electric grids. From the Western perspective, the decarbonization strategy aimed to reduce long-standing dependencies from oil and gas suppliers and to reduce the capital transfer. The situation on the Lithium market shows that the turn to renewable and clean energies creates new dependencies and capital transfers. In summary, lithium is a key resource from an ecological, technical, and geopolitical perspective with many uncertainties for the future.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO with headquarter in Beijing was founded in 2001 as successor of the Shanghai Five group from 1996. The SCO stepwise expanded by new member states and in 2022/23, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt got the status of dialogue partners; United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait may follow soon. The SCO is an inter-governmental organization based on the principle of non-interference in sovereign states’ internal affairs formulated as ‚Shanghai Spirit’. The SCO has an institutional structure with a Secretariat, a Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS, Tashkent), regular meetings, multi-national military exercises (Peace Mission) and it supports economic cooperation between member states. The SCO is an alternative global governance model to the alliance model of the West (NATO, EU, Quad) and covers now most of the Eurasian landmass and approximately 40% of the world population, but it is not a military alliance and does not aim to integrate the member states into supranational frameworks. The initial focus on security later shifted to economic issues and now also to energy policy. As various member states have their own geopolitical agenda (e.g., China, Russia, India, Iran and so on), Western analysts sometimes doubt the relevance of the SCO, but it allows its member states a diversification and balancing of their security-related, economic, and diplomatic activities, by this getting more political freedom of action. The SCO activities are well aligned with Chinas ‘circle of friends’ and partnership concept of foreign policy and many SCO states have a bilateral partnership with China, e.g., Saudi-Arabia and Iran. Based on this, the co-incidence of the SCO expansion and the trilateral agreement from 2023 between China, Saudi-Arabia, and Iran to restore the Saudi-Iranian relations is not surprising. The United Arab Emirates also have good relations to China and are now restoring their relation to Iran as well. In summary, the current SCO expansion is a further step to a multipolar world order and is challenging the security architecture of the United States for the MENA region.

Die Shanghaier Organisation für Zusammenarbeit SOZ (engl. Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO) mit Sitz in Peking wurde 2001 als Nachfolger der Shanghai Five-Gruppe aus dem Jahr 1996 gegründet. Die SOZ wurde schrittweise um neue Mitgliedsstaaten erweitert und 2022/23 erhielten Saudi-Arabien, Katar und Ägypten den Status von Dialogpartnern; die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate, Bahrain und Kuwait könnten bald folgen. Die SOZ ist eine zwischenstaatliche Organisation, die auf dem als „Shanghai Spirit“ formulierten Prinzip der Nichteinmischung in die inneren Angelegenheiten souveräner Staaten basiert. Die SOZ verfügt über eine institutionelle Struktur mit einem Sekretariat, einer regionalen Anti-Terror-Struktur (RATS, Taschkent), regelmäßigen Treffen, multinationalen Militärübungen (Peace Mission) und unterstützt die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Mitgliedstaaten. Die SOZ ist ein alternatives Weltordnungs- (Global-Governance)-Modell zum Bündnismodell des Westens (NATO, EU, Quad) und umfasst mittlerweile den größten Teil der eurasischen Landmasse und etwa 40% der Weltbevölkerung, ist aber kein Militärbündnis und strebt nicht danach, die Mitgliedstaaten in einen supranationalen Rahmen einzubinden. Der anfängliche Fokus auf Sicherheit verlagerte sich später auf wirtschaftliche Fragen und nun auch auf die Energiepolitik. Da verschiedene Mitgliedstaaten ihre eigene geopolitische Agenda haben (z.B. China, Russland, Indien, Iran usw.), bezweifeln westliche Analysten manchmal die Relevanz der SOZ, aber sie ermöglicht ihren Mitgliedstaaten eine Diversifizierung und einen Ausgleich ihrer sicherheitspolitischen, wirtschaftlichen und diplomatischen Aktivitäten und erhalten dadurch mehr politische Handlungsfreiheit. Die SOZ-Aktivitäten sind gut auf Chinas „Freundeskreis“- und Partnerschaftskonzept der Außenpolitik abgestimmt, und viele SOZ-Staaten haben eine bilaterale Partnerschaft mit China, z.B. Saudi-Arabien und Iran. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist das Zusammentreffen der SOZ-Erweiterung und des trilateralen Abkommens von 2023 zwischen China, Saudi-Arabien und dem Iran zur Wiederherstellung der Saudi-iranischen Beziehungen nicht überraschend. Auch die Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate haben gute Beziehungen zu China und stellen nun auch ihre Beziehungen zum Iran wieder her. Zusammenfassend ist die aktuelle SOZ-Erweiterung ein weiterer Schritt hin zu einer multipolaren Weltordnung und fordert die Sicherheitsarchitektur der Vereinigten Staaten für den Nahen Osten und Nordafrika heraus.

Against the backdrop of global environmental degradation and the need for structural as well as individual change in consumption and production, this dissertation addresses the question of whether and how other-regarding preferences are related to pro-environmental behavior including approval of structural change. In a review of experimental studies on this interface as well as the implementation of own experiments, it is investigated whether – as assumed by some theories –there is a causal and positive relationship between both elements, through which mechanisms, for whom and with under which conditions this link becomes effective. It can be concluded that strengthening and activating other-regarding preferences can lead to more pro-environmental behavior, moderated by various factors such as existing preferences and behavioral costs. From the comparison with interventions for more environmental protection that address people's self-interest, no clear result could be drawn as to which approach is more effective. In an online study with a German sample, we showed that perspective-taking with a person affected by environmental degradation is not sufficient to influence costly behavior, but increases valuation of and perception of oneness to the person – partly depending on who and where this other person is. Further, we showed that people in Germany were less likely to sign a petition for more climate protection if the affected person lived in India rather than Germany. We found preliminary evidence that people with strong racist attitudes began to reject policies when the name of the person involved was of non-German origin, even if the person lived in Germany. In a second experiment in the context of corporate sustainability, neither a discourse around corporate responsibility nor a discourse around a "business case" for sustainability led to greater pro-environmental engagement among participants. At the same time, we were able to show that the "business case" discourse reduced the willingness to bear costs for environmental protection that could not be justified by indirect profits.

Scientific evidence shows that climate change increases the frequency of climate extremes across the globe. These climate extremes exogenously pressure local resource users by causing destruction of natural resources, often affecting ecosystems that already have deteriorated due to overexploitation in the past. The future state of natural resources and entire ecosystems is thereby determined by both exogenous (climate) and endogenous (management by resource users) dynamics. The combination of both the uncertain changing environmental conditions and manmade overexploitation will make the sustainable management of natural resources by local resource users more challenging in the future. Depending on the underlying ecosystem dynamics, the combination of overexploitation and climate extremes may cause sudden abrupt shifts in natural resources if a resource is driven to its critical threshold (tipping point). These shifts are termed regime shifts. In its most drastic form, a regime shift results in the collapse of the resource with severe economic consequences. Ecological and meteorological warning and forecast systems could potentially warn of approaching regime shifts and climate extremes, thereby motivating the resource users for more sustainable resource management and investments in protective adaptation. Self-governance of natural resources highly depends on collective action. Resource users need to cooperate and coordinate their resource extraction strategies to keep a resource at a sustainable level of regrowth and to prevent it reaching a critical threshold. Policy makers and ecologists must decide when and how to inform local resource users about the potential threat of crossing critical thresholds. However, critical thresholds are often unknown and ecological early warning signals only provide uncertain threshold knowledge. Knowing if the communication of early imprecise threshold information bears a risk to hamper collective action is thus critical. In addition, in some cases, individual adaptation behaviour determines how far an individual experiences economic losses due to climate extremes. In these cases, the issue is not about collective action, but rather about individuals’ responsiveness to early warnings. To further understand human behaviour in the light of the aforementioned ecological dynamics, three economic experiments were designed and implemented. The results of these experiments are presented in the three academic papers of this thesis (Chapter 2 to 4): The first paper, titled “The interaction of shock experience and threshold knowledge in natural resource management”, was co-authored by myself with Aneeque Javaid and Stefanie Engel (Chapter 2). This paper addresses the lack of evidence in the literature on the impact of the interaction of exogenously and endogenously driven change in ecosystems on collective action. To analyse this interaction and find the main driver of change in groups’ resource extraction strategies, a novel, (quasi-) continuous-time common-pool resource (CPR) experiment was designed and implemented in the laboratory. The CPR experiment incorporates both dynamics: an unexpected exogenous shock that causes resource scarcity and a critical threshold, at which the resource collapses. The impact of initial resource scarcity on groups’ extraction behaviour is compared to the impact of shock driven scarcity. Furthermore, the effect of shock experience on extraction strategies in the future is assessed. The results indicate that while group members cooperate less when experiencing an exogenous shock to their resource, the knowledge of a critical threshold still motivates successful coordination. However, cooperation amongst group members and efficiency of resource extraction is more sensitive to the resource scarcity itself, than the experience of an exogenous shock. There is no significant effect of shock experience on group’s future extraction strategies. The second paper, “Are imprecise early warnings a potential benefit or threat to sustainable resource management?”, was co-authored by myself with Tobias Vorlaufer and Stefanie Engel (Chapter 3). This paper asks whether an imprecise early threshold warning alters cooperation amongst resource users and analyses if there is a danger of deteriorating individuals’ responses to the certain threshold knowledge by giving an imprecise early warning. On the one hand, imprecise early warnings could raise awareness about the resource’s dynamics and thus, encourage collective action. On the other hand, imprecise early warnings could be taken as a sign of an inevitable upcoming loss of the resource. Thus, resource users increase their individual extraction efforts and collective action fails. To assess the effect of imprecise early warnings on collective action, two additional treatments for the CPR experiment were designed and implemented. The two treatments differ in the degree of uncertainty about the threshold level in the beginning. While groups in both treatments know of the critical threshold, only one treatment receives an imprecise early threshold warning in form of a known threshold range. The experimental results show no effect of such an imprecise early warning on cooperation and coordination amongst group members in comparison to groups who only know of the mere threshold existence. The third paper, “False and missed alarms in seasonal forecasts affect individual adaptation choices”, was again co-authored by myself with Tobias Vorlaufer and Stefanie Engel (Chapter 4). It analyses the effect of varying forecast accuracy on individuals’ responsiveness to climate forecast systems. Climate extremes can result in economic losses if individuals are not adequately prepared. The effect of climate forecast systems however, likely depends on their accuracy and individuals’ responsiveness to inaccurate climate warnings. An online experiment was designed and implemented to assess individuals’ responsiveness to climate forecasts that issue potentially inaccurate warnings about approaching climate extremes leading to the experience of false and/or missed alarms. The results of this experiment indicate that experiencing false alarms more frequently leads to a decrease in individuals’ adaptation investments in response to future warnings (so called “cry-wolf-effect”), but has no impact on individuals’ responsiveness to the forecast if no warning is issued. In contrast, experiencing missed alarms more frequently leads to an increase in individuals’ responsiveness and investment in adaptation regardless whether or not a warning is issued by future forecasts. Individuals who experienced missed alarms more frequently react more sensitive on warnings per se than individuals without this experience. If they receive a warning their adaptation behaviour is less affected by the forecasted probability of the extreme climate event. This thesis extends the understanding of human behaviour in light of changing ecosystem dynamics and provides more information regarding how natural resource management can be improved by using forecast and ecological prediction systems. The improved understanding of interactions between human behaviour and ecosystem change contributes to the exchange between policy makers, social scientists, ecologists and resource users.

Doing justice to local knowledge and contexts in sustainability transformations requires multi-actor collaboration and broad stakeholder participation in environmental governance and management. Assumptions from network and collaborative governance have therefore led to the rise of co-management, in which decision-making power and management responsibility are shared among state and non-state actors interacting in knowledge partnerships. Yet despite normative claims, key challenges for many co-management approaches – especially in the environmental realm – remain to (1) navigate through tensions over meaning and competing narratives, (2) deal with blurred roles of authority and responsibilities due to decentralization, and (3) manage socio-historical pasts, where cooperation and conflict are entangled in actor relationships. Over the years, scientific communities debating the suitability of these collaborative processes have warned about viewing collaborative approaches as a magic bullet for targeting environmental problems. This thesis seeks to contribute to the debate and adds a complementary perspective on collaborative governance and co-management arrangements by examining the context-dependent social dynamics that arise when a group of actors involved in collaborative approaches negotiate and implement environmental governance and management measures. It therefore asks: How do the social dynamics between actors shape governance networks and influence collaborative governance arrangements? The first part of this thesis addresses the social dynamics of movements toward sustainable futures and related narratives of vision and identity. It argues that narratives regarding vision and identity accompany sustainability transitions and collective behavior change and that these influence and reflect social dynamics on a broader scale. Yet narratives are often reduced to a shorthand – an abbreviated (though affective) narrative expression such as a slogan, song, dance or image, which is memorable and readily communicable across the community and beyond. These abbreviated forms are referred to as concise affective narrative expressions (CANEs), which consist of a characteristic piece extracted from the complete narrative for a memorable, easily communicable, and affective verbal or visual representation of a core message. Furthermore, the challenges of collaboration described above became evident in the case study. The case study describes a regional cooperation consisting of different state actors and stakeholders from agriculture, forestry, water management and hunting. These actors discuss how to implement the Natura 2000 regulation in current land and forest management. The social dynamics of collaboration in the case were investigated by means of an interdisciplinary conceptual framework based on narrative and social network theory called the relational narrative approach. This framework is built on the assumption that the social relational structure between actors, and the stories they tell, is a co-production of narratives and dynamics at the group level. The mechanisms that influence emerging dynamics are (1) the interplay between collaborative relationships and narrative congruence between individual actors, (2) the characteristics of actors, and (3) the actors’ embeddedness in the wider social structure (which will be detailed in Paper II, presented as part of this thesis). The idea of narrative congruence is detailed in Paper III with the aim of exploring the phenomenon of a common narrative and to examine which social drivers shape the emergence of a common narrative among diverse actors involved in co-management. The argument in this part suggests that frequent interaction between two actors and a trusted leader with many reciprocal ties of trust are significant drivers that support the emergence of narrative congruence. Despite regular interaction between participants in the regional cooperation, the findings set out in Paper IV imply that these actors are unable to co-create a common narrative that would break the patterns of conflict and antagonistic perceptions of identity. Instead of a common narrative that would presumably facilitate the development of collaborative ties between agents, two opposing narratives are reproduced that vie with each other over power and competencies when it comes to appropriate management planning in the Natura 2000 areas – thus generating an “us versus them” dynamic. This polarization into two opposing sub-groups is however not transferred to the relationships that participants of this particular regional cooperation initiative have with one another. On the contrary, the regional cooperation is a network “supported by many shoulders”, the actors involved are familiar with each other and several coordinators and mediators among the actors ensure that a great deal of exchange occurs among participants. This thesis concludes by discussing three insights gleaned from this research undertaking. First, social dynamics are ubiquitous and intangible phenomena whose mechanisms influence multi-actor interaction in collaborative governance and management. Second, these intangible forces can be studied, explained and made manifest by way of the narratives that actors tell and the social relations and societal embeddedness of actors. Third, common narratives evolve around a trusted leader with many ties of trust to other actors and require frequent encounters and long-term nurturing in order to arise from multi-actor collaborations.