Pedersen, Anders Branth

Anders Branth Pedersen is Senior Researcher (Political Science) and Head of Section for Environmental Social Science and Geography at the Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University. Anders is associate editor at Ambio (Springer), (2024-); he is a member of the International Editorial Advisory Board at the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning (Taylor & Francis) (since 2017); he is policy expert in the evaluation committee for the BiodivERsA/FACCE-JPI’s Pan-European calls for international research proposals (2014-).

Research

Anders’ research is primarily centered on environmental policy analyses and environmental governance. E.g. through analyses of target group behavior, stakeholder involvement, effectiveness of environmental policies and policy instruments, analyses of implementation barriers and analyses of multi-level environmental governance. He is currently AU partner lead on the Horizon Europe project ‘Towards Carbon Neutrality of Ukranian Cities’ (U_CAN) (2024-2028). He is AU partner lead and WP lead on the project ‘Stakeholder engagement and sustainable restoration of wetlands for water security’ (funded by the Swedish government research council for sustainable development, 2023-2027).  He is part of the EU Horizon project COMMIT2GREEN, supporting eight European cities in developing integrated, participatory greening strategies aimed at achieving climate neutrality and urban resilience. Finally, he is an AU partner in a WP in a research project in Ghana (2019-2025), ‘Building Climate-Resilience into Basin Water Management’, funded by the Danish development organization under the Danish Foreign Ministry.

Teaching and mentoring

Anders is heading a learning programme (since 2022) on Environmental Governance at Local Level which he developed with a colleague for the Danida Fellowship Centre under the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The course attracts participants from developing and transition countries across the world that partner with Denmark. Since 2013, he has been teaching at the Master's in Water & Environment at the Sino-Danish University in Beijing. He has been a supervisor or co-supervisor for 5 PhD students.

Grants and consultancy

Anders has been part of >40 funded national and international research and advisory projects. Since 2006, Anders has been a co-awardee or awardee for research projects obtaining >40 M€ in funding. ABP has been collaborating in research projects with more than 100 research institutions/consultancies across the world, and additionally cities, municipalities and regions in e.g. France, Croatia, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Greece, Bosnien-Hercegovina, the UK, Germany, Ukraine, Sweden and Denmark, and a range of companies.

Policy engagement

In many of Anders’ research projects, policy recommendations has been an integrated part. Furthermore, his section has an annual contract with the Danish environmental ministries providing advisory on environmental economics. The contract is a partnership with University of Copenhagen. Anders has e.g. held invited policy-related presentations about Danish pesticide taxation in the European Parliament (2018) and the German Bundestag (2017).

Awards

Adjunct Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (since 2023), where Anders teaches at the online Master's in Chemical Risk Assessment and Problem Formulation.

Publications – selected examples

• Finger, R., Pedersen, A.B., 2025. Input taxes in agriculture: Experiences and perspectives for European agriculture. Ecological Economics 233, 108575. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2025.108575
• Hardimann, R., Pedersen, A.B., Jensen, A., Dai, K., Petersen, C., 2024. Public Participation and NGO activity in Nature-Based Solutions in Urban areas of China. Nature-Based Solutions. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2024.100183
• Petersen, C., Russel, D., Jensen, A., Pedersen, A.B., Banzhaf, E., Kaltenegger, I., 2024. Walkable maps and policy innovation for nature: a novel methodology for understanding policy learning. International Journal of Qualitative Methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069241254006
• Pedersen, A.B., Hickmann, T., Renn, O., Eckert, N., Jax, K., Lepenies, R., Liu, H-Y., Lyytimäki, J., Reis, S., Rusch, G., 2023. SDGs at the halfway point: How the 17 global goals address risks and wicked problems. Ambio 52, 679–682. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01837-0
• Pedersen, A.B., Nielsen, H.Ø., Daugbjerg, C., 2020. Environmental policy mixes and target group heterogeneity: analysing Danish farmers’ responses to the pesticide taxes. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 22:5, 608-619. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2020.1806047