Michel Ortland

The emergence of collective action: the role of narratives in social networks

Project responsibilities:    C3

Michel Ortland has been a PhD student in the Research Training Group “Ecological Regime Shifts and Systemic Risk in Coupled Social-Ecological Systems (ECORISK)” since October 2024. Within the subproject C3, “Governance Designs in Telecoupled Problem Situations”, he focuses on the analysis of novel regulations for supply chains between the Global North and the Global South. In this context, he investigates the risks of ecological regime change in telecoupled agricultural systems. His research focuses on how governance designs can bridge the distance and the associated lack of transparency and gaps in responsibility between (agricultural) producers and consumers by making transnational operating companies more responsible for environmental and social risks along the supply chain. He is investigating how the state level and the corporate level interact with each other and to what extent these interactions influence the implementation of sustainable practices. His work is being supervised by Prof. Dr. Andrea Lenschow.
Michel Ortland completed his Bachelor's degree in Geography and Economics and Ethics at the University of Vechta. He then finished his Master's degree in Economic and Social Geography at Osnabrück University. In his master's thesis entitled “Sustainability standards in the Costa Rican pineapple value chain: An analysis of new governance dynamics and their impact on sustainability”, he examined different regulatory processes and their consequences for sustainability. The research was part of the project “Transformative Research and Capacity Building to Protect Livelihoods and Biodiversity in Costa Rica”. The three-month research stay in Costa Rica took place in close cooperation with the Universidad Técnica Nacional (UTN) and was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).