Scholarship in international law aims at addressing global forest governance comprehensively. This article reviews the recent contribution Global Forest Governance - Legal Concepts and Policy Trends by Rowena Maguire and puts it into the perspective of recent political and policy science research on global forests. While finding Maguire's volume being a very timely and valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary discussions on international forest governance, we identify some weaknesses which are mostly rooted in methodological critique and a lack of a systematic framework for analysis.
This thesis aims to answer the questions; what and were does peer mediation fit into the theoretical and practical frameworks of mediation? How does peer mediation fit into the retributive legal system as it stands today? What problems can arise with the use of peer mediation, its organizations and with the use of adolescent peer mediators, in a legal perspective? When it comes to the question of where peer mediation has its theoretical framework the hypothesis in this thesis are that peer mediation, with respect to the practical framework, is a hybrid of the settlement driven mediation and the transformative mediation. The theoretical framework comes from the philosophy of restorative justice (RJ), primarily the victim-offender mediation in the sense that if peer mediation per se is not enough it has to bee a whole school approach for it to work. In RJ, the community is as important as the primarily parties, the offender and the offended. In school conflicts, the community is the whole school, and as such it has to bee the whole school that is involved in the conflict management program. The method used in this thesis is the traditional method of jurisprudence combined with two case studies. The first case study is the "Peer mediations Project" that in fact was the starting point for the research. The aim with this case study is too show how peer mediation can work in Sweden, both on an organizational and a practical level. In doing so it also highlights which legal questions that is relevant for this thesis. The second case study is the "Spice conflict". This case study aims to make researcher go deeper in the legal issues as well as to illuminate a school conflict and how it can progress. The fist chapter gives a background for peer mediation and the focus of this thesis, as well as the first contact with the two case studies. Chapter two gives a legal background for the thesis. Chapter three deals with conflict theory and chapter four with schools conflicts and the different programs there is to handle those conflicts. In chapter five the different mediations models are presented more in depth and discussed from at mediation perspective. Chapter six goes deeper into the second case study in an effort to resolve the legal issues that has arisen. In the last chapter there is a discussion which originates from the five Nordic principles of mediation, facilitative, peaceably, freely, confidently and restoratively, in conjunction whit mediation, conflict and legal theory.
This thesis deals with the question of how Swedish society responds when juveniles commit crimes. The focus is social work co-operating with the legal system and the interaction between these two. The aim of this study is to make visible/analyse factors that affect the choice between treatment and correction of juveniles in an emergency situation, when there is a necessity to choose between immediate preventative custody on the one hand, and detention on the other. This study analyses the selection through outcome patterns. Theoretically the base is six concepts; system/practice, and treatment/correction. Together they form a model where the actors (the social services/the police/the attorney/county administrative courts/district courts) on this juvenile field can be situated. The strategies of the actors' decision-making are implied by either norm-rational decision-making or goal-rational decision-making. Empirical data is studied through records of immediate custody and detention of juveniles aged 15-18 years old. The immediate denial of freedom represents, in the Swedish legislation, a process whereby social services and law enforcers meet and decide whether to treat or correct the juvenile. This selection is the focus of the empirical study of this thesis. In 1992, 1998 and 2003 a national overall survey was made of all juveniles aged 15-18 years that have been either in immediate custody or in detention or both. Documentation was obtained from the courts. The results show that the general denial of freedom of juveniles have increased greatly during the years 1992, 1998 and 2003, and especially from 1998 to 2003. Almost all of the acts concern boys, even though girls are making at break-through in 2003. There are differences between the groups that either have been in detention or in immediate custody in ways of "survey-year", "ethnic background", "age" and "categorising of crime". This study shows a large discrepancy between legislation and the legal practice.
This study in contemporary history describes the transformation of the public sphere in Sweden during the period 1969-1999, and analyses the role of information technology and politics in the process. The overall aim of the study is to explain how, and why, the public sphere in Jürgen Habermas sense has deteriorated during a period of rapid technological and political change, when increasing attention has been given to information technology as a new tool for improving democracy and empowering citizens. Theoretical inspiration is drawn from two perspectives within the modern history of technology and sociology of technology; the LTS (Large Technical Systems) and STS (Science, Technology and Society) approaches, as well as from the regime theory concept within political science. This multidisciplinary framework provides the theoretical basis for the study, including terms as socio-technical systems, system builder, technification, interpretative flexibility, stabilization, closing and regime change. In addition, the analysis draws upon previous research in economic history, where focus often has been on the important role of institutions. The term path dependence is central in this tradition. The starting point for the study is the process of a mutual legitimization between citizens and political actors that traditionally has taken place within the public sphere. In return for citizens support and trust, political actors have granted format rights to the public space. Two aspects of this interdependence are addressed: Freedom of speech and citizen's access to public information, and their access to arenas where an exchange of political ideas and opinions is taking place. In the study, the former is a question of the legal system and the limits to freedom of speech in new medias such as the Internet, while the latter concerns citizen's technical means and possibilities to connect to electronic networks. Research interest is concentrated on the formal political system, focusing both actors and structural factors such as technological development, media convergence, ideological change and international integration in the transformation process. Four case studies of institutional changes during formative moments, within what is defined as the legal and the technical infrastructures, are conducted and represent the empirical base of the thesis. The case studies are centered on Swedish governmental commissions, on the government itself and on proceedings in the parliament, and concerns formation and transformation of computer law, as well as the deregulation and privatization of the technical infrastructure. In the latter process Televerket (Swedish Telecom) has been an influential promoter of competition and institutional separation between tele- and data communications, representing a major regime change in favour of market relations in the technical infrastructure. In the area of computer law, the Swedish regime dominated by SCB (Statistics Sweden) was incorporated into a joint European data protection regime, resulting in limitations of freedom of speech on the Internet. These regime changes have also transformed the role of the state, constituting a "net watchers state". Another important finding is that promotion of democracy and improvement of access to the public sphere, never was on the agenda in the political transformation processes studied, although a parallel discourse on democracy and information technology existed throughout the period studied.
Key Points • Understanding the impacts of SDG 16 on forests and people requires attention to the power dynamics that shape how all 17 SDGs are interpreted and implemented across the Global North and South. • As SDGs were agreed upon by nation states, SDG 16 places a strong emphasis on state power and the rule of law. • Yet inclusive governance requires the involvement of diverse actors, and consideration for customary laws and other non-state forms of rulemaking at global to local scales. • Many national laws governing forests and land use favour political elite, large-scale industry actors and international trade. • The development and strengthening of legal frameworks that support all of the SDGs – including those relevant to human rights, income inequalities, land tenure, gender and environmental protection – requires equal or greater priority than law enforcement. Otherwise, law enforcement will reinforce inequities and unsustainable practices. • SDG 16 provides an opportunity to overcome the stereotypes of the Global North as the referential role model for peace and democracy, by highlighting the role of the North in fostering market inequalities and global conflicts, and drawing attention to barriers to democratic and inclusive participation within the Global North. • How transparency, accountability and justice are conceived and prioritised shapes their impact on forests, as well as the degree to which their achievement either empowers forest-dependent peoples or excludes them from meaningful and informed engagement.
The oldest unit of land assessment in Sweden is the attung (lat. octonarius). It is first mentioned in written documents from the late 12th century. When, where and why it was introduced has been much discussed. In this study an investigation of documents mentioning the attung until 1376 is presented together with a statistical processing of data from an earlier work (Dovring 1947). The distribution of land assessed in this unit is restricted to the south-eastern part of the medieval Swedish kingdom. According to an evaluation of some records not discussed before in this context the taxation of real estates in attung units dates from the late 11th century. Most probably the original purpose of the taxation was to create an adequate base for the military levy system. Several indications show that the attung originally corresponded to one family's normal holding of land. The usefulness of the attung for other purposes was soon realised. Besides taxes it also became the base for tenant's land rent, tithes to a particular hospital, compensation for plowing of fallow fields but also for the subdivision of common fields on a pro rata basis. The right to an easement could also be connected to the attung. At the same time a subdivision of the attung unit in several fractions was created which facilitated the trading of landed property. A drastic fall in prices on real estates assessed in the attung unit is observable just after the Black Death. The overall conclusion is that the multi functionality of the attung was something that developed gradually in response to socio-legal ideas from the continent as well as progress in domestic agricultural technology, economy and society.
It may be challenging to see how illegal hunting, a crime that ostensibly proceeds as shoot, shovel and shut up in remote rural communities, at all communicates with the regime. Examining the socio-legal interplay between hunters and state regulation, however, clarifies illegal hunting to be part of a politically motivated pattern of dissent that signals hunters' disenfranchisement from the polity. While few contemporary illegal hunters cut conscientious figures like Robin Hood, their violation of illegitimate law may likewise testify to a profound disjuncture between legality and legitimacy. This is the premise taken in the following research. Here it is observed contemporary Swedish hunters experience the deliberative system pertaining to wildlife and wolf conservation to be systematically stacked against them and unable to serve as a site for critical law-making that provides equal uptake of all voices. One manifestation of their growing disenfranchisement is the establishment of a counterpublic mobilised on the basis of shared semantics for the sorts of deliberative deficits they argue befall them in the present. Within the remit of their counterpublic, hunters undertake and justify illegal hunting along with other forms of disengaging dissent like abstentions, non-compliance, boycotts and conscientious refusals with state agencies. The research captures hunters' dissent in Smith's deliberative disobedience, a deliberative and Habermasian grounded reinterpretation of the more familiar classical theory of civil disobedience. On this perspective, illegal hunting signals a deficit in the deliberative system, which hunters both bypass by taking an alternative conduit for contestation, and draw attention to when they undertake dissent. The dissent in this case study is deconstructed in terms of its grammar—as simultaneously engaging and disengaging with the premises of power—and in terms of its communicative content. Set within the field of Environmental Communication, the dissertation is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to a discussion on the boundaries of political dialogue in the context of civic disenfranchisement: it asks whether some of hunters' dissent may be parsed as a call for a more inclusive debate, or as dialogic acts in themselves. Finally, it presents ways toward short-term and longer-term reconciliation of hunters with the deliberative system, drawing on the work of contestatory citizen mini-publics from the third wave of deliberative democracy.
The Evolution of Ideas About Freedom of Thought. Philosophical-Legal Approach "Thought is free," said Marcus Tullius Cicero in the first century BC. The international society managed to give legal content to the famous quote only at the end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the notorious personalities of all time, philosophers and jurists, mankind has included freedom of thought in the list of fundamental freedoms and civil rights, which belong to every person from birth and which the state cannot deprive. Freedom of thought is an essential condition of a democratic society, of a rule of law. Moreover, this absolutely justified can be considered as the most important value of a prosperous society. Being fully exploited freedom of thought brings benefits only to the individual and to society as a whole. "Gândirea este liberă" afirma Marcus Tullius Cicero în secolul I î.e.n. Societatea internaţională a reuşit să dea conţinut juridic celebrului citat abia la sfârşitul secolului XIX, începutul secolului XX. Datorită eforturilor titanice ale personalităţilor notorii ale tuturor timpurilor, filozofi şi jurişti, omenirea a înscris libertatea de gândire în lista libertăţilor şi drepturilor civile fundamentale, care aparţin fiecărei persoane din momentul naşterii şi de care statul n-o poate priva. Libertatea de gândire este o condiţie esenţială a unei societăţi democratice, a unui stat de drept. Mai mult, aceasta absolut justificat poate fi considerată drept cea mai importantă valoare a unei societăţi prospere. Fiind valorificată plenar, libertatea de gândire aduce doar beneficii, atât individului, cât şi societăţii în ansamblu.
Because of population clustering, it is increasingly difficult for the rural poor to access land in Zambia. Such a clustered space is along the line-of-rail, where more people are looking to make use of land. Simultaneously, in a country where multiple political authorities can perform recognition of land, people also have to balance and navigate within this pluralistic political landscape to enjoy secure access and use of land. As such, property has the potential to improve security and create legitimacy to land. Within 100 yards along the railway, land is in administrative limbo due to the lack of effective control by its legal owner, the state. This thesis investigates the property production in land occupied by rural people along the railway in Southern Province, Zambia, through ethnographic and interview-based fieldwork. With a widened understanding of property that goes beyond juridical interpretations inseparable from law, I show how property making abandons formalised scripts, and instead is performed through contextual and localised orders. Occupants of land along the railway put labour and material investments into the land to reinforce legitimacy, both among each other as well as when facing political authority. With the state as formal owners of railway land, chiefs and headmen (i.e. customary authority) get squeezed by engaging in administering the land since it is outside of their legal jurisdiction. At the same time, state authority also administers and recognizes land, albeit implicitly, when maintenance workers survey the railway tracks. I conclude that these findings together create a whole greater than the sum of its parts of how property production can take place on land in limbo.
This article justifies the role and importance of the separation of powers in modern society and in the state, consisting in the fact that this concept is the instrument of restricting the state power to protect the rights and interests of the person. As a rule, the separation of powers is opposed to the concepts of autocracy, the concentration of power in the hands of one person or one organ. The author recognizes the theory of separation of powers as being ideologically linked to the political legacy of Locke and Montesquieu and notes that the genesis of the theory of separation of powers is associated with the emergence of bourgeois political and legal theories, especially in the 17th century in England, D. Locke being the most authoritative political thinker. However, this theory received a classic formulation in the writings of the remarkable French philosopher, lawyer and illuminator Charles Louis Montesquieu. In this article, the characteristics of the original theories regarding the separation of powers of these prominent thinkers, who completed for the first time the concept of a democratically organized state with the optimal organization of the system of organs of state power, are subject to analysis
This report is based on information collected within the context of the study concerning Community Land Rights in Niassa Province in Mozambique, with special attention paid to the programme implemented by the Malonda Foundation. This programme is supported and financed by the Swedish Government and aims to promote private investment in the province while seeking, during the course of the process, to ensure equitable and beneficial social impact as an explicit objective, in particular for the local population. The study was commissioned by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and the Swedish Embassy in Mozambique, as a contribution to the preparation of continued Swedish support to private sector development in Niassa Province. Provincial and local work was carried out during the period April 29th to may 22nd 2008. The team consisted of Gunilla Åkesson, team leader, from Sida's Helpdesk for Environmental Assessment, Sweden, and André Calengo, legal consultant, Mozambique. Christopher Tanner, FAO's advisor in Mozambique and specialist in the Mozambique Land Law participated as a technical advisor. During the field work the team was accompanied by staff from the Malonda programme: Célia Enusse and Francisco Pangaya, both from the Community Work Unit, Alexandre Chomar, Communications Officer and Belindo Manhiça, official from the Environment Programme.
During the 2000s, Sweden has pursued an active foreign and security policy. This has meant participation in several international military operations and has left many Swedish soldiers and officers with combat experience. Thus, the Swedish parliament decided in 2010 on a political reform of the veterans area, with more extensive societal support, war decorations to express the government recognition of personal sacrifices made in the service and a new medal for courage in combat. Considered as a reward system, it functions as an immaterial and emotionally established incentive, in contrast to the financial and bonus reward systems that are otherwise common. From a governance perspective, this setting is fundamentally interesting. The complexity of military operations and the demands for efficiency in armed combat are in contrast with the democratic state's need to guarantee the rule of law, even from a distance and under difficult conditions. Traditional government is not sufficient because the situation is characterized by high contextual uncertainty and therefore requires more situational adaptive control. Organizing in a professional model implies autonomy for military officials, and this means that there is a form of gap in terms of civilian control. In the dissertation, a concept and an analytical model are formulated to understand this phenomenon, entitled soft norm governance, that also form one of the main results. The model combines four levels of analysis to describe the dynamics of the steering mix: organizational metagovernance, rule control, policy work and professional ethics. One conclusion is that professional ethics has a two-way function in the chain of implementation steering, both as a decisive factor for concrete decision-making, but also as an objective for the government's soft norm governance. Thus, this control gap does not mean absence of control, but that other value-based norm systems govern our actions. In this way, soft norm governance also reaches beyond the scope of the law. The theoretical framework is metagovernance, the idea that the modern state is steering at a distance and with subtle methods, such as by organizational measures. It opens for the importance of soft law, social norms and ethics in governmental steering. The case study of the veterans policy and medal of courage contributes empirically to the specification of these theories. Furthermore, new institutionalism adds an explanatory value with a rationality of action for the officials, a so-called logic of appropriateness based on the professional role and on adaptation to the situation at hand and to applicable rules. Theoretically, the thesis contributes by supplementing with a logic of values, which takes into account the profession's ethical and moral rationality of action, which is particularly important in situations such as armed conflict. The methodological approach combines a structural statistical perspective with a qualitative and understanding-oriented perspective and can, with the support of the analytical model, illuminate both pattern and function. The material base is a total selection from the medal preparation of eight contingents in Afghanistan during the years 2008-2012, i.e. FS16-FS23. It consists of the archive material from the nominations as well as in-depth interviews with responsible commanders at the international units and at the national headquarters, including the Commander-in-Chief.
Already from the title of this dissertation can two important points be made. The first is that the dissertation is about the relationship between central and local government, more specifically in Sweden today. The second point is that this relationship is seen from a balance of power perspective, where the relative power of the actors is an empirical question rather than derived from a given hierarchical structure. Such a perspective is based on analysing the actors as interdependent. The central government can thus be dependent on the local government, as well as the other way around, and this interdependence can vary over time and between policy areas. This perspective differs from that of most studies, which often see the relationship either in terms of steering (that local governments are executing centrally determined policies) or local self-government (that the Swedish local governments has a constitutionally protected right to handle their own affairs within certain legal limits). I argue that both these perspectives take a hierarchical point of departure and are, to a large degree, static in their approaches, which means that they risk not discovering, or have problem explaining, changes in the relation between central and local government. To view the relationship between central and local government as interdependence leads to a focus on the resources that the actors possess. For public organisations the most relevant resources are: authority-related resources, financial resources, political resources, informational resources, and organisational resources. The central government has a power advantage concerning authority and financial and political resources while local governments generally have an advantage in terms of informational and organisational resources. The policy area chosen is Swedish refugee policy. The basic paradox within this area is that the central government grants the refugees asylum but cannot give them a place to live without the permission of the local government. This permission is accomplished through voluntary agreements signed between the National Integration Office and the local governments. It is then the local governments that integrate the refugees to Swedish society by providing housing, education, healthcare and so on while the central government is giving the local government a grant to cover the expenses. The central government has lacked political, informational and authority-related resources. The resource used to compensate for this has been the financial resource. By economic incentives the central government has encouraged local governments to increase their refugee reception. This has been the central government's universal weapon and has been used to reduce its vulnerability as well as its sensitivity. For local governments, authority-related and financial resources have been lacking. The resource that the local governments have had, all the way through the time period studied here, is the organisational resource. This is something that the central government simply cannot provide and this is why there is a relationship of interdependence – just as only the central government has authority in its power base, the local level is the only one with organisational resources.
Illegal hunting has constituted an expression of contested legitimacy of wildlife regulation across the world for centuries. In the following report, we critically engage with the state of the art on the illegal hunting phenomenon. We do so to reveal emerging scholarly perspectives on the crime. Specifically, we aim to capture the complexity of illegal hunting as a socio-political phenomenon rather than an economically motivated crime. To do so, we adopt a critical perspective that pays particular attention to the societal processes that contribute to the criminalization of historically accepted hunting practices. To capture perspectives on illegal hunting, fifteen researchers from various countries participated in an illegal hunting workshop in Copenhagen 16-17th June 2014. A primary contribution of the research workshop was to bring together criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists and geographers, each equipped with their own research perspective, to engage in a critical and interdisciplinary discussion on how to apprehend and constructively address the challenges of illegal hunting in contemporary society. A majority of those that attended were primarily based in the Nordic and the UK context, which motivated a strong focus on the illegal hunting that currently takes places in these countries. Similar trends of illegal hunting were identified across Europe, many of which traced from EU legislation on the reintroduction of large carnivores or other controversial wildlife conservation projects. In the workshop, proceedings took the form of individual presentations, plenary discussions and group work. Common themes that emerged from these presentations were: illegal hunting as communicating socio-political resistance; the targeting of specific species based on its symbolism or environmental history; illegal hunting as symptom of class struggles; the role of rewilding and domestication of nature on wildlife regulation; corruption, complicity and conflicts of loyalty in enforcement, and discrepancies and discontinuities in legality. These themes were framed in an understanding of illegal hunting as a complex, multifaceted expression that transgresses livelihood based motivation. Critical discussions conceptualised illegal hunting as a crime of dissent. This meant situating crimes as everyday forms of resistance against the regulatory regime. In so doing, the relationship between hunters and public authorities was highlighted as a potential source of disenfranchisement. In this interactionist perspective, illegal hunting tells us not just about the rationales of the offenders. It also elucidates the broader context in which non-compliance with regulation serves as symptoms of democratic and legitimacy deficits on the state level. Erratic transitions in legislation and a subsequent discord between legal, cultural and moral norms in society were identified as factors that contribute to the conflict. Crucially, the research workshop and the report contribute with three perspectives. First, it emphasizes the need to uncover the grey areas of complicity in wildlife crime. Previously corruption, bribery and selective law enforcement have been associated with wildlife trafficking in the global south, but this understanding is too blunt for the complicity that exists in many other contexts. Here conflicts of loyalty exist across several strata of society and differ in degrees. In highlighting this fact, we show a more opaque and contingent climate of complicity around illegal hunting in Northern Europe and elsewhere. Second, as crimes of dissent seeking to publicise injustices, illegal hunting and its associated resistance tactics are counterproductive by constituting a 'dialogue of the dead'. With this is mean that such communication is prone to distortion, misunderstanding and exaggeration and does no favors to hunters. There is consequently a need to move to a clarity of messages, as in institutionalised diogue processes. Third, hunting regulation cannot be seen in isolation to the broader differences in society in terms of values, economic factors and development. Research questions for future scholarship concluded the workshop and are summarized in the report. In terms of illuminating the junctures at which additional research is needed, these questions may provide important guidance. Above all, the report is intended as help for policy-makers, wildlife managers and law enforcement in better understanding and responding to the complexities of illegal hunting. We hope this will lead to more long-term preventative measures that address the core of the issue rather than proximate causes. The workshop was organized by the Environmental Communication Division of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The event constituted a part of the FORMAS funded research project Confronting challenges to political legitimacy of the natural resource management regulatory regime in Sweden - the case of illegal hunting in Sweden whose members include Erica von Essen, Dr. Hans Peter Hansen and Dr. Helena Nordström Källström from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Professor Tarla R. Peterson from Texas A&M University and Dr. Nils Peterson from North Carolina State University.
One third of all food produced for human consumption globally is lost or wasted, making food waste a major problem from both an economic, social and environmental perspective. One way of preventing food waste is through legislation. In Sweden, food inspectors have been recommended to work according to the general rules of consideration (GRC) in the Swedish Environmental Code to reduce food waste. However, there is a lack of published information on whether the GRC are applied to reduce food waste at present, and, if so, how this works in practice. Moreover, the lack of a common standard for food waste quantification is a problem recognized by researchers. Thus, the present study aimed to examine whether and how the GRC are or can be applied to prevent food waste. More specifically, the goal was to investigate the attitude of municipal supervisory authorities and other relevant actors towards applying the GRC in food control, and to identify opportunities and / or obstacles to this. This is expected to contribute with knowledge that in the long term can generate supervisory approaches for reduced food waste. A qualitative research method was used including self-administered questionnaires. Answers were obtained from 11 municipalities and six additional actors including courts, national authorities and a private law firm. After a thematic analysis of the data, this was sorted to describe 1) The current situation in municipal supervision / the current application of the GRC according to other actors 2) The attitude towards applying the GRC in supervision for food waste reduction 3) The attitude towards suggested supervisory practices for reducing food wastage. The results showed that most of the actors surveyed did not apply the GRC to food waste currently, and none of them had issued injunctions to prevent food waste. Nevertheless, it was found that applying the GRC to food control could be possible, according to some practical experience in the field and the majority of the respondents' attitudes. No apparent unsolvable obstacles were identified. How the application of the GRC to food waste would work in practice remains to be solved, though. Consequently, the link between the current situation, the attitudes towards applying the GRC in food control as well as the attitudes towards suggested supervisory practices, was found to be ambiguous. Legal contradictions justify the need for further research, which could pursue the development of a supervisory approach for food waste prevention. ; En tredjedel av all mat som produceras globalt går förlorad eller slösas bort, vilket gör matsvinn till ett omfattande problem ur både ett ekonomiskt, socialt och miljömässigt perspektiv. Ett sätt att förebygga matsvinn är genom lagstiftning. I Sverige har livsmedelsinspektörer rekommenderats att arbeta enligt de allmänna hänsynsreglerna i miljöbalken för att minska matsvinnet. Det saknas emellertid publicerad information om huruvida hänsynsreglerna används för att minska matsvinn för närvarande, och hur detta i så fall fungerar i praktiken. Dessutom är avsaknaden av en gemensam standard för kvantifiering av matsvinn ett problem enligt forskare. Den aktuella studien syftade således till att undersöka om och hur miljöbalkens hänsynsregler tillämpas eller kan tillämpas för att förebygga matsvinn. Mer specifikt var målet att undersöka de kommunala tillsynsmyndigheternas och andra relevanta aktörers inställning till att tillämpa hänsynsreglerna i livsmedelskontroll och att identifiera möjligheter och / eller hinder för detta. Detta förväntas bidra med kunskap som på lång sikt kan generera tillsynsstrategier för minskat matsvinn. En kvalitativ forskningsmetod användes med självadministrerade frågeformulär. Svar erhölls från 11 kommuner och sex ytterligare aktörer, såsom domstolar, nationella myndigheter samt en privat juristbyrå. Efter en tematisk analys av den insamlade datan sorterades denna för att beskriva 1) Den aktuella situationen i kommunal tillsyn / den aktuella tillämpningen av hänsynsreglerna enligt andra aktörer 2) Inställningen till att tillämpa miljöbalkens hänsynsregler i tillsyn för att förebygga matsvinn 3) Attityden gentemot föreslagna tillsynspraxis för att förebygga matsvinn. Resultaten visade att majoriteten av de undersökta aktörerna inte tillämpade hänsynsreglerna på matsvinn för närvarande, och att ingen hade skrivit förelägganden för att förebygga matsvinn. Praktiska erfarenheter inom området samt majoriteten av respondenternas attityder avslöjade dock att det skulle kunna vara möjligt att tillämpa hänsynsreglerna mot matsvinn inom livsmedelskontroll. Inga uppenbart olösliga hinder identifierades. Hur tillämpningen av hänsynsreglerna på matsvinn skulle gå till i praktiken återstår dock att lösa. Följaktligen kunde det konstateras att kopplingen mellan den nuvarande situationen, respondenternas inställning till att tillämpa hänsynsreglerna i livsmedelskontrollen samt attityderna gentemot föreslagna tillsynspraxis var tvetydig. Juridiska motsättningar motiverar behovet av ytterligare forskning, som kan driva utvecklingen av en tillsynsstrategi för förebyggande av matsvinn.