Assessing Global Change from a Regional Perspective

Global change has become eminent in our everyday lives. Slowly, but noticeably, the faces surrounding us represent the international global community. Climate doomsday is as present as ethnical and religious controversy. The press reports how eastern German women to flee the catastrophic economic conditions that prevail after the fall of socialism, while catastrophic flooding is haunting the eastern German men who quail in solitude and welfare transfers. And to top it all, this flooding – resulting from global climate change – determines the outcome of national elections. Listening to politicians, global terrorism seems to be a worse threat to the wellbeing of the German citizens than demographic change, and the population is still indecisive if some additional days of beer garden weather aren’t worth the little bit of desertification in the third world. In this work I attempt to highlight some of these issues and to catch a glimpse of the local effects of global change. I will particularly focus on industrial water usage and domestic migration. This work has been funded by the German Federal Office for Education and Research as part of the GLOWA project. This interdisciplinary project aims to explore the effects of global change on the water cycles in different regions of the world. This thesis is devoted to the GLOWA-Danube sub-project which investigates the Upper-Danube Catchment Area. Part of the funds are bound to supporting graduate students and should as a result, facilitate the development of the GLOWA project by the successful completion of relevant dissertations.