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Sustainable development aims at addressing economic, social, and environmental concerns, but the current lack of responsive environmental governance hinders progress. Short-term economic development has led to limited actions, unsustainable resource management, and degraded ecosystems. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may continue to fall short of achieving significant progress without a better understanding of how ecosystems contribute to achieving sustainability for all people. Ecosystem governance is an approach that integrates the social and ecological components for improved sustainability and includes principles such as adaptive ecosystem co-management, subsidiarity, and telecoupling framework, as well as principles of democracy and accountability. We explain the importance of ecosystem governance in achieving the SDGs, and suggest some ways to ensure that ecosystem services are meaningfully considered. This paper reflects on how integration of these approaches into policies can enhance the current agenda of sustainability.

The aim of this thesis paper is to integrate three important thematic aspects i.e., improve qualities in the urban ecological situation, provide ideas for handling stormwater flooding and ideas to improve socio-economic aspects for inhabitants. The integration of ideas is illustrated in a masterplan program-sketch in three phases. Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh. Dhaka is a densely populated fast developing city. The chronological changes of the natural setting due to rapid growth of urbanization in Dhaka city creates an imbalance with nature and disrupts urban ecology. The green and blue structures are replaced with built areas and hard surfaces. The situation for urban ecology in the city of Dhaka affects storm water flooding and social wellbeing. The methods used for background knowledge to this proposal are literature reviews, document searches, interviews, GIS analysis and a study of role models from different countries and contexts where a variety of solutions, proposals and functions inspired me in my own sketching. The methods and the background for this thesis were used to formulate guidelines to support the overall program-sketch for the three phases in a masterplan. The first phase program-sketch includes redesigning the informal settlements in Karail into better living conditions for the dwellers according to Patrick Geddes theories by keeping the overall road- and block structure and provide new shelter, job opportunities and adding recreational values to the area. The second phase concentrated on re-establishing of water streams in a green park according to the philosophy of Fredrick Law Olmsted, and in the third phase the former airport Tejgaon to become a large green area for social meetings, recreation activities for the Dhaka city inhabitants and provide job opportunities for the informal dwellers. The discussion on strengths, limitations, challenges, and further development ends with a conclusion that it is of great importance to work integrated with the three thematic aspects urban ecology, storm water flooding and social wellbeing on an overall level and with understanding of the issues among both specialists, politicians, and inhabitants to be able to implement necessary change towards sustainability.

In all parts of the world the sea is a source of life, of energy, of food, of commerce, of fun. Its water, wind, and waves are all in demand – as a playground for pleasure-seekers and nature-lovers, as a highway for international commerce, as a home for unique communities of wildlife and people. All this is also true for the Bothnian Sea, a part of the northern European Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden. The Bothnian Sea is used by two neighbouring highly developed societies. There are many demands on its resources, and its open spaces are highly coveted areas for developments such as wind power farms. This relatively sparsely habitated corner of the world is also, at least at times, a place of wild seas and ancient heritage. Like planning on land, maritime spatial planning is a process that has to incorporate ideals of the public good and the various politically-anchored ways to define this, taking in to account private development interests as well as the physical realities of limited natural resources and fragile ecosystems. This book provides an introduction to the Bothnian Sea and the ideas around maritime spatial planning for its offshore areas. We have tried to present a balance between the perspectives of competing interests. As this has been a pilot initiative, we have not aimed to give you ready answers, but instead try to provoke further debate. The Bothnian Sea and its future are in your hands. The editor

En tredjedel av all mat som produceras försvinner på vägen. Det innebär att en stor del av den negativa miljöpåverkan som livsmedelsproduktionen står för, har skett alldeles i onödan. I EU:s livsmedelsstrategi är matsvinn en av nyckelfrågorna.

The European Commission expects the use of biomass for energy in the EU to increase significantly between 2010 and 2020 to meet a legally binding target to cover at least 20% of EU's total energy use from renewable sources in 2020. According to estimates made by the member states of the EU, the direct supply of biomass from forests is expected to increase by 45% on a volume basis between 2006 and 2020 in response to increasing demand (Beurskens LWM, Hekkenberg M, Vethman P. Renewable energy projections as published in the national renewable energy action plans of the European Member states. ECN and EEA; 2011. http://https://www.ecn.nl/docs/library/report/2010/e10069.pdf [accessed 25.04.2014]; Dees M, Yousef A, Ermert J. Analysis of the quantitative tables of the national renewable energy action plans prepared by the 27 European Union Member States in 2010. BEE working paper D7.2. Biomass Energy Europe project. FELIS Department of Remote Sensing and landscape information Systems, University of Freiburg, Germany; 2011). Our aims were to test the hypotheses that European private forest owners' attitudes towards supplying woody biomass for energy (1) can be explained by their responses to changes in prices and markets and (2) are positive so that the forest biomass share of the EU 2020 renewable energy target can be met. Based on survey data collected in 2010 from 800 private forest owners in Sweden, Germany and Portugal our results show that the respondents' attitudes towards supplying woody biomass for energy cannot be explained as direct responses to changes in prices and markets. Our results, furthermore, imply that European private forest owners cannot be expected to supply the requested amounts of woody biomass for energy to meet the forest biomass share of the EU 2020 renewable energy target, at least if stemwood is to play the important role as studies by Verkerk PJ, Anttila P, Eggers J, Lindner M, Asikainen A. The realisable potential supply of woody biomass from forests in the European Union. For Ecol Manag 2011;261: 2007-2015, UNECE and FAO. The European forest sector outlook study,II 2010-2030. United Nations, New York and Geneva; 2011 [abbreviated to EFSOS II] and Elbersen B, Staritsky I, Hengeveld G, Schelhaas MJ, Naeff H, Bottcher H. Atlas of EU biomass potentials; 2012. Available from: http://www.biomassfutures.eu [accessed 14.10.2013] suggest. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

With continued pressure on biodiversity and ever-growing conflicts with human development, qualified systems for scenario modelling, impact assessment and decision support are urgently needed. Such systems must be able to integrate complex models and information from many sources and do so in a flexible and transparent way. To that end, as well as for other complicated and data-intensive biodiversity research purposes, the concept of LifeWatch has emerged. The idea of LifeWatch is to construct e-infrastructure and virtual laboratories by integrating large data sources, computational capacities, and tools for analysis and modelling in an open, serviceoriented architecture. To be efficient and accurate, a continuous inflow of large quantities of data is essential. However, even with new techniques, government-funded monitoring data and research data will not feed the system with up-to-date species information of sufficient scale and resolution. To fill this void, skilled amateur observers (citizen scientists) can contribute to a very valuable extent. After a preparatory phase, a Swedish LifeWatch (SLW) consortium was initiated in 2011. Swedish LifeWatch developed an infrastructure where all components are accessible through open web services. At the SLW Analysis portal, different formats of species and environmental data can be accessed instantly, and integrated, analysed, visualized and downloaded at selected temporal, spatial or taxonomic scales. Swedish LifeWatch currently provides 46 million species observations from eight different databases, all harmonized according to standardized formats and the Dyntaxa taxonomic backbone database. Almost 40 million of these observations were provided by citizens through the online reporting system named the Species Observation System (SOS) or Artportalen. This paper describes this system, as well as the incentives that make it so successful. The citizen science data in the SOS are accessible, together with data from research and monitoring, in the SLW infrastructure, making the latter a powerful instrument for large-scale data extraction, visualization and analysis.

Heritage cereals, a group of cereals that have not been subjected to modern crop breeding, have been getting attention due to their generally high genetic diversity, traits like high drought and disease tolerance as well as high nutritional values. Knowledge about how consumers relate to heritage cereals in Sweden is limited, and therefore this thesis aims to, firstly, explore acceptance, awareness and preferences among a specific consumer group; students in the agriculture program at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and, secondly, quality perception in relation to heritage cereals among consumers, bakers and retailers, in a Swedish context. The thesis used a mixed-method approach, and is based on quantitative data from a survey to capture perspectives from the student consumer group and semi-structured interviews with bakers and retailers to gain additional perspectives about food quality. The findings from this study suggests that the awareness of heritage cereals is high among the specific consumer group. Bread and pasta make up the most preferred food products, and supermarkets were the most preferred shopping location. Gender had some influence on differences within the group, while high similarities were found between the different educational backgrounds. Results from the survey indicate that taste and Swedish food production are two very important food quality aspects for heritage cereals. Additionally, quality aspects like health, environmental impact, organic and local production were also found to be important to consumers, bakers and retailers. Consuming heritage cereals can also be seen as a tool to support sustainable food systems and different political discourses, avoiding risks associated with industrial farming and express belonging to certain cultural identities. These were also important dimensions of heritage cereal food quality. ; Kulturspannmål, en grupp av spannmål som inte genomgått modern växtförädling, har under de senaste åren fått allt mer uppmärksamhet på grund av ...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the biggest threats against public health in the world. Antimicrobial substances are used within all different sectors and contribute to development of AMR. Global action against irresponsible use of antibiotics and further development of AMR has been of great concern in the last years and risk factors are being pointed out. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have a precarious role in the matter. Insufficient health care systems, poor law enforcement and, high accessibility of over-the-counter drugs (OTCs) are contributing to the unregulated use of antibiotics. Poorly developed surveillance programmes make it hard to correctly analyse the situation of both antimicrobial use (AMU) and AMR. Bangladesh, like its neighbouring countries, faces a lot of challenges regarding public health. One of the major concerns related to public health is access to safe food. Food products can be contaminated with toxins, chemical substances, and microbial organisms, including AMR-bacteria. Furthermore, national programmes for surveillance of AMU and AMR are inadequate. In this study, data from previously done field studies by Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and newly collected information from interviews were put together to analyse the AMR situation in Bangladesh. Sampling of food products (tomato, chicken, fish) from traditional markets and supermarkets was done at three locations representing rural, peri-urban, and urban areas from November 2018 to June 2019. Samples were tested for prevalence of Salmonella spp, Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholerae. Samples positive for bacteria were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility through disc diffusion test. As a supplement to the analysis of samples, questionnaires to the vendors of the food products were made to provide background information. During 2020, statistical analysis of previously collected data and interviews with stakeholders working with AMR was made. The interviews aimed to serve as baseline information about current conditions regarding AMU and AMR. 320 cultivations of 1589 (20.1%) were positive for bacterial prevalence. 319 of these were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility where 203 (63.6%) were found to be multidrug-resistant (MDR) (resistant to three or more antibiotic groups). Furthermore, interviews with stakeholders stated that surveillance of AMU and AMR in Bangladesh is inadequate, especially within the animal and agriculture sector, and that a one health approach on a government level is needed to improve the situation. To be able to fully analyse the AMR situation in Bangladesh, a nation-wide study would need to be conducted, within all sectors, including both AMU and AMR testing.

This thesis investigates the deliberative potential in two communicative initiatives resulting from the 2001 government policy in Swedish nature conservation, A coherent nature conservation policy. The two initiatives, which constitute the empirical material in the thesis are, (1) a national competence development programme that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency ran 2008-2011, Dialogue for nature conservation, and (2) the nature interpretation at naturum, visitor centres at national parks and nature reserves. Data was generated through qualitative interviews with nature conservation administrators at county administrative boards; participant observation at dialogue courses and workshops with researchers and nature interpreters; video analysis of recorded nature interpretation sessions at naturums; documentation from naturum exhibitions; and document and literature studies. The thesis draws from critical theory and clarifies rationales behind communicative practices in nature conservation. The analysis shows that the communicative initiatives are dominated by the instrumental state rationality, circumscribing space for communicative rationality. The 2001 nature conservation policy emphasised communication, but the communicative initiatives did not sufficiently integrate democratic aspects. By identifying the role of meaning-making as a central phenomenon in a communicative process, the thesis indicates how to include democratic dimensions in communicative work. The theoretical contribution of the thesis draws from an analysis of modernity, nature alienation and reconciliation. In the thesis, naturum is identified as a communicative forum with an underdeveloped potential for reconciliatory activities, more precisely deliberations on nature in nature. The thesis contributes to the field of environmental communication through highlighting how communicative practices of nature conservation depend on both communication and materiality.

This article presents the analysis of the news production of El Extra, La Hora and La Gaceta, three written media in Ecuador with the highest national, regional and local circulation respectively. The objective was to determine to what extent their contents are generated from a human rights perspective. Thus, two aspects were addressed: 1) informative production based on the index of violation of rights in the media, and 2) evaluations of journalistic discourse in relation to themes, sources, images and headlines. A mixed approach was used through content analysis and a focus group (FG) in which journalists participated. Among the most relevant results, the predominance of content that violates rights in two of the three media stands out in the indicators overrepresentation of reality and manipulation, although in the indicators ridicule and misuse of language there is no prevalence, there is a significant frequency of content who use language inappropriately and discriminate against individuals or groups. In addition, the differences in the organizational dynamics of the media affect journalistic routines and need to promote permanent training mechanisms on human rights.

The current situation in the field of education demands teachers who are capable of functioning in new learning scenarios where the possibilities offered by ICT for information acquisition and communication processes are enormous. In this sense, it is necessary to have postgraduate programs that contribute to the development of digital skills in teachers. The main purpose of this work is to propose the curricular design for a Master's program in Education, Mention in Management of Learning Mediated by ICT, offered by Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo in Ecuador. For this, a qualitative research was undertaken in order to characterize and determine the most important features of each module of the curriculum. A documentary research design was applied through the PICOC method (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Context). The result of this work was a curricular mesh that consists of 12 study modules wherein aspects such as: digital literacy for the new society were addressed; didactics in new digital environments; the design and development of content and digital resources for learning; new ways of learning and innovating in education; as well as research in educational technology.

English language textbooks are widely used as one of the essential resources in education. In Ecuador, local authorities created specific course books for state schools and high schools called pedagogical modules. Hence, the terms pedagogical textbook, course book, and modules will be used interchangeably. This study aims to explore perceptions of Ecuadorian English as a Foreign Language teachers on implementing the pedagogical modules to state schools, which were provided by the Ministry of Education. Besides, participants will provide perceptions on the connection of the mentioned textbooks with the Ecuadorian National Curriculum. The study includes an exploratory qualitative design using a focus group interview with eight EFL teachers from primary and secondary schools. The focus group interview findings indicated that teachers have both positive and negative perceptions towards using these pedagogical textbooks. Teachers agree that these pedagogical modules promote English learning success in a contextualized and authentic way by connecting aspects from the curriculum and current ELT principles. Nonetheless, all of the teachers indicated that integrating the pedagogical modules to state schools was, in many ways, disorganized. Based on the results, this study suggests constructive changes to specialists in charge of creating and editing EFL pedagogical modules.

Has intra-party democracy deteriorated over time? A widely held view in contemporary party research is that intra-party democracy, especially in traditional mass parties, has deteriorated in the age of the cartel party. This common assessment, however, relies on insufficient empirical evidence, and is scrutinized in the article. The notion of a gradual progress towards the cartel party implicitly shares common characteristics with the classic theory of Michels. In order to investigate the actual fate of intra-party democracy, central aspects of Michels theory are explored over time in a critical case, namely the Swedish SAP. If intra-party democracy is declining, this tendency should be most likely to be observed in this case. Two internal decision-making processes, surrounding two major pension reforms – one expansion in the 1950's and one retrenchment in the 1990's – are compared based on criteria deducted from Michels. Instead of finding a decline in intraparty democracy, the results conclusively demonstrate major improvements. ; Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv

During the spring of 2020, the corona pandemic created an entirely new context for university employees to work within. In a matter of weeks, it became customary to replace physical meetings with digital alternatives whenever possible. Conferences, seminars, meetings and doctoral thesis defences – among other activities – were moved to digital platforms. Meanwhile, many activities were either postponed or cancelled. The crisis resulted in a vast decrease in air travel and significantly reduced physical mobility. Increased digitalisation and reduced emissions from aviation were central to SLU's policies and strategies prior to the corona pandemic. A part of SLU's ambition of becoming a climate-neutral university by 2027 is to significantly reduce emissions from business trips and, since 2016, SLU is requested by the Swedish government to increase the share of digital and travel free meetings. SLU is also developing a new strategy for 2021-2025. A better understanding of the implications of increased digitalisation is highly relevant in this work. This study aims to provide a better understanding of how SLU staff members experienced the drastic reduction in travel and the increased use of digital solutions during the spring of 2020. We also want to shed light on what types of activities – that originally were intended to include a business trip – could be replaced by a digital alternative with maintained or improved quality and what activities that on the contrary were difficult or impossible to carry out using a digital alternative. In order to fulfil our aims, we conducted a mixed-methods study based on semistructured interviews and an online survey. The results from the survey indicate that a majority (83%) of the respondents have experienced that their work in general was either mainly positively affected, equal parts negatively and positively affected, or not affected at all by the decrease in business travel and increase in digital meetings. The respondents also painted a picture as to what activities that can work well and what activities that will be difficult to perform digitally after the corona crisis. Fieldwork stood out as the least suitable activity to perform digitally, as 60% of the respondents could imagine replacing 0% or 0-25% of the fieldwork with digital solutions. What stood out on the opposite side was that a vast majority thought that between 50-100% of project meetings, administrative meetings and seminars could be replaced with digital options. As for workshops, conferences, and reviews and presentation of research, the opinions varied much more. These findings also resonate with the experiences that were brought up in the interviews. Summary Some of the main findings in the interviews was that digital meetings were perceived as more efficient, but that they lacked in terms of social and creative aspects. Furthermore, informants largely agreed that brainstorming, spontaneous discussions and forming of new relationships was harder to achieve digitally. On the other hand, well-structured interactions with a clear agenda between people that had previously met in person worked excellent on digital platforms. Many informants expressed that they were surprised regarding how well the digital meetings had worked and pointed to the many benefits of replacing travel with digital solutions in terms of increased equality, accessibility, efficiency, reduced stress and reduced emissions. Looking forward, participants talked about a better mix of digital and physical activities. Many believed that some activities – for example establishing new relationships and performing fieldwork – to a larger extent than other activities require travel for maintained quality. Other types of activities – such as administrative meetings, project meetings, seminars and presentations – were considered possible to replace with digital solutions to a higher degree with maintained, or even enhanced, quality of work and life. The study concludes: * A majority of the SLU employees that participated in our study reported that it in general had worked well to replace longer business trips with digital alternatives during the spring of 2020. * Our quantitative findings illustrate that an overwhelming majority of the respondents thought that their work and research either had been mainly positively affected, equal parts positively and negatively affected, or not affected at all by them not being able to travel. * Certain types of fieldwork and data collection, as well as activities requiring spontaneous discussions and networking were experienced as the most difficult to perform digitally. * Well-structured interactions with a clear agenda and people that had previously met in person, as well as activities such as administrative meetings, project meetings and seminars, were perceived as most suited to perform digitally. * The study recommends a better mix between digital and physical meetings in a post-corona context. SLU should strategically make use of digital solutions and replace longer business trips to improve the work situation of the employees, the quality of their work in addition to reducing GHG emissions.

In this chapter, essential ecological and societal aspects of the Nordic coastal environment are highlighted. These show that local communities and stakeholders need to be more involved in decision-making because their needs and their ecological knowledge are essentialto this process. This also relates to Aichi targets 14, 15, 16 and 18 (see Lucas et al., 2015). There is the need to improve the monitoring of all types of NCP or ecosystem services and to critically review existing indicators that may be used to track the development of biodiversity and NCP. Only by actively analysing data and creating syntheses, is it possible to understand changes in the ecosystem linking biodiversity and NCP.