Suchergebnisse

The study conceptualizes economic forest sustainability as "the forest-related income and economic well-being sustained over time" and then compares Lithuania and Sweden at different scales. Sweden adopts a holistic perspective of the forest sector, where forestry and forest industries are perceived as a well-integrated economic branch. Forestry is expected to deliver raw material to forest industries, at the same time creating good preconditions for profitable forest management. Forest owners are given large freedom to act according to market signals and their own household needs, while the resulting intensive forest management cumulatively leads to a significant contribution to the country's welfare. Lithuania, in contrast, lacks an integrated sector perspective, forestry and forest industries being regarded as two separate realms. Private forest property rights are severely constrained by numerous legislative stipulations, leading to a significant reduction of economic value in production forests. On top of that, thirty percent of private owners face additional restrictions through forestland zoning, leading to further substantial loss of economic value. We suggest several measures for improving the economic forest sustainability in Lithuania, where a genuine national forest program could serve as a suitable bearing medium.

This thesis focuses on pro-kurdish activism in Turkey during 2005–2009. It is based on a large number of interviews conducted with activists within the Diyarbakır area. The form of activism that this study seeks to describe is civil and political activism conducted within the legal framework ofTurkey's judicial system and international law.The purpose of this thesis is to examine what kind of resistance strategies are used by pro-Kurdish political activists in Turkey, focusing on how these strategies are reflected in the language used by the respondents. The main question posed in the thesis is: What resistance strategies are used within the pro-Kurdish movement in Turkey? Two additional questions were also posed in order to make it possible to answer the main question. The first of these is: What external conditions influence pro-Kurdish mobilization in Turkey during the study's time frame? In order to answer this question a theoretical framework is used that includes theories about ethnopolitical mobilization and political opportunity structures. The second question is: What resistance strategies are reflected in the language used by the pro-Kurdish activists?An important resistance strategy used by the pro-Kurdish activists is to adapt the language used in public communication to the legal and political environment in which they find themselves. They make linguistic choices in order to convey political messages while minimizing the legal consequences of doing so. The resistance strategies reflected in the interviews with the activists also include efforts to build organizations and cooperations at different levels, ranging from the international to the local level. Resistance strategies also include choices regarding what medium and language to use in promoting pro-Kurdish politics.

Sustainable approaches for waste management and sanitation are key to deal with the environmental and health challenges that growing urbanization is creating around the world. Implementing systems that allow to reuse resources contained in the organic waste streams (OWS) is an approach that can bring many benefits, especially in low-medium income areas as the Latin American and Caribbean region, where excreta, wastewater, and waste are not properly managed. The transformation towards these systems requires not only technological changes, but also changes in the way that urban waste and wastewater are governed. The aim of this study was to assess the capacity of the town of Chía (Colombia) to govern the transition towards resource-oriented sanitation and waste management systems. The Governance Capacity Framework (GCF) was used as a method to evaluate the governance capacity of the town to implement these systems. The assessment revealed that the capacity of Chía to govern the implementation of resource-oriented sanitation and waste management systems was low. Furthermore, governance factors that could be hindering the implementation of these systems were identified. Low level of knowledge of resource recovery from OWS in the public spheres, insufficient collaboration and communication across sectors and institutions that had competences on waste management and sanitation, short-term vision within the local decision-making processes and insufficient incentives to support local entrepreneurship on circular economy. Despite these challenges, analysis also revealed the existence of public-private partnerships and entrepreneurs working in successful initiatives linked with resource-oriented systems in Chía and other towns of Cundinamarca county. The study concluded that in Chía there was a gap between local initiatives of resource recovery from OWS that brought environmental, economic, and social benefits at small scale and its inclusion in the local and regional governance systems. Findings of this study touches upon many governance aspects such as knowledge, legislation, financing and even culture. Further research is needed to look closer to each of those and make concrete, feasible and effective proposals that bring change with a long-term sustainability vision. Finally, when analysing the results of the evaluation and making future proposals, strengths, and shortcomings of applying the GCF as an analytical tool for a specific case study like Chía need to be considered.

About 45% of the anthropogenic nitrogen loads from Sweden reaching the seas come from arable land. Within the work of the national environmental quality objective "No eutrophication", the Swedish government determined an environmental goal of reducing the nitrogen loads from arable land to the seas south of the sea of Åland by at least 50% compared with the level year 1985 level (to 38500 ton N year⁻¹). This goal should be reached by year 2020. The present programme contains legislation, extension service, economical management, research and development work and monitoring. Research and development work included in the programme are both aiming to promote technical development mainly in the domain of management of manure and growing catch crops. Despite the progress in reducing amount of available N for leaching, the variability in N loads between years remains, mainly due to the great variability in annual runoff. Controlled drainage has the potential to moderate this variability in annual runoff and to a certain degree control the timing of the outflow and even further reduce the amount of available N for leaching. Field experiments conducted in the South of Sweden between 1996 and 2001, show that controlled drainage has a great potential to regulate unnecessary drainage outflow from cropland and subsequently reduce nutrients leaching. However, the applicability of the technique in large scale in Sweden has not yet been evaluated which is the task of this project. The aim of the project was to assess the potential of arable land in the coastal areas of Southern Sweden suitable for controlled drainage. Some topographical and agro hydrological site conditions need to be present to en sure feasible and practical management of a controlled drainage system. The following six conditions indicate if a site is suitable for controlled drainage or not: the site needs to have drainage demand under natural conditions, level topography (slope 2%. Soil maps at a scale of 1:50000, 1:100000 and 1:1 000000 were used to classify the soil texture after assumed hydraulic conductivity into three classes; high, medium and low hydraulic conductivity. The depth of observations was 0.5 m. In order to identify land use, maps at a scale of 1:50 000 were used. After the data had been reclassified with the geographic information system software Arc info 8.2, the information was merged. The land identified as cultivated land was then further divided into five classes, classes l to 4 and other cultivated land, with decreasing suitability for controlled drainage. More than 720000 ha of cultivated land were included in the study of which 21 % was classified as highly suitable, 13% suitable regarding topography and hydraulic conductivity and 6% with some suitability. Since not all the land require drainage the total number of 289 000 ha with suitability will after more detailed investigations be reduced. Additional data will be brought into the evaluation, such as existing information on the drainage situation of the land. Furthermore, validation of the result will be performed by field survey in small catchments.

There is no doubt now that energy is fundamental to our development. Global energy trends such as higher energy demand and prices, big differences across regions, structural changes in an oil and gas industry increasingly dominated by national companies, the prospect of irreversible climate change, as well as demand for energy security all highlight the need for a rapid transition to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign energy system. The search for energy alternatives involving locally available and renewable resources is one of the main concerns of governments, scientists and business people worldwide. As researchers tackle problems according to global trends, an overwhelming body of research focusing on bioenergy in relation to other types of renewable energy might illustrate the role bioenergy has as the most important renewable energy source for the near and medium-term future. Thus, analyzing the amount of existing research, we found that about 50% (4,911 records) of 9,724 renewable energy records available were bioenergy records. We also found that publications on each of the four main sources of biomass (agriculture, forest, waste and other) represent about one quarter of the 4,911 bioenergy records retrieved. Biomass – the fourth largest energy source after coal, oil and natural gas - is the largest and most important renewable energy option at present and can be used to produce different forms of energy. As a result, it is, together with the other renewable energy options, capable of providing all the energy services required in a modern society, both locally and in most parts of the world. Renewability and versatility are, among many other aspects, important advantages of biomass as an energy source. Moreover, compared to other renewables, biomass resources are common and widespread across the globe. The sustainability potential of global biomass for energy is widely recognized. For example, the annual global primary production of biomass is equivalent to the 4,500 EJ of solar energy captured each year. About 5% of this energy, or 225 EJ, should cover almost 50% of the world's total primary energy demand at present. These 225 EJ are in line with other estimates which assume a sustainable annual bioenergy market of 270 EJ. However, the 50 EJ biomass contributed to global primary energy demand of 470 EJ in 2007, mainly in the form of traditional non-commercial biomass, is only 10% of the global primary energy demand. The potential for energy from biomass depends in part on land availability. Currently, the amount of land devoted to growing energy crops for biomass fuels is only 0.19% of the world's total land area and only 0.5-1.7% of global agricultural land. Although the large potential of algae as a resource of biomass for energy is not taken into consideration in this report, there are results that demonstrate that algae can, in principle, be used as a renewable energy source. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the report leads to a simple conclusion: Biomass potential for energy production is promising. In most cases, shifting the energy mix from fossil fuels to renewables can now be done using existing technology. Investors in many cases have a reasonably short pay-back because of good availability of lowcost biomass fuels. The latter is of course dependant on local incentives, however. Overall, the future of bioenergy is also to a large extent determined by policy. Thus, an annual bioenergy supply covering global energy demand in 2050, superseding 1,000 EJ, should be possible with sufficient political support. Global production of biomass and biofuel is growing rapidly due to the increasing price of fossil fuels, growing environmental concerns, and considerations regarding the security and diversification of energy supply. There are many scenarios that predict a high potential for biomass in the future. There have also been many studies performed in recent decades to estimate the future demand and supply of bioenergy. Overall, the world's bioenergy potential seems to be large enough to meet the global energy demand in 2050. The current stock of standing forest is a large reservoir of bioenergy and in line with the theoretical potential of biomass energy. However, most of the research studies on biomass potentials ignore existing studies on demand and supply of wood, despite the extensive literature and data on the subject. Taking into account data from a variety of international sources, rough estimates of the energy production potential of woody biomass from forestry show that, in theory, the demand for wood fuel and industrial roundwood in 2050 can be met, without further deforestation, although regional shortages may occur. However, the shift in the energy mix requires much more investment in infrastructure, equipment and in some cases R&D. Moreover, a prerequisite for achieving bioenergy's substantially high potential in all regions is replacing current inefficient and low-intensive management systems with best practices and technologies.

In this dissertation, the Swedish transport aid constitutes a case study with the aim of empirically testing the presence of institutional path dependency. In New Institutional Economics the concept institutional path dependency is used for analyzing why institutions that do not promote growth are developed even when better solutions are available. In this study, institutional path dependency is defined in the following way: institutional path dependency is when new institutional conditions develop in a way that maintains an economic and social practice within the sector of the economy that the institutional condition regulates. The transport aid was introduced in 1971 and is a part of Swedish regional policy. The transport aid is allocated to certain goods-producing companies in northern Sweden in order to subsidize their cost of transportation. The aim was that these companies would strengthen their ability to compete in markets in southern Sweden and abroad. In order to perform a test of the existence of path dependency, three criteria for path dependence were defined. The first of these criteria is that new institutional conditions arise with a maintained practice within the regulated sector. The second criterion for path dependency is that the institutional condition subsists when there are other alternatives which are better and well-known from the point of view of public economy. A third criterion for path dependency is that an institutional condition is given a new legitimacy when interest groups state new motives for it. The study has shown that a practice from the previous traffic policy has lived on in the institutional condition of the transport aid, through a continued subsidization of the cost of transportation similar to a historical tradition in early railway policy (for example in the Norrland tariff). A relatively large part of the transport aid has in practice been subsidizing transports of relatively unprocessed goods, which was a reason for the criticism that the transport aid received in previous studies. A practice from earlier traffic policy, which entailed leveled costs of transportation, has been difficult to combine in practice with goals from regional policy that have emphasized growth and industrial development. This indicates a path dependent development of the transport aid, since it's practice seems to be related to another "path" than main stream regional policy. Since the transport aid was continuously criticized in parliamentary reports and debates for conserving the economic structure in the support area and for distorting the competition on the transport market, there was probably a certain pressure to change the transport aid or replace it with other measures that were more neutral with regard to competition. This pressure of change was brought to a head in the parliamentary resolution from 1990, when the Government suggested radical changes in the design and organization of the transport aid. The Government bill was however rejected by Parliament, and the transport aid continued in the same form as before. Therefore, the transport aid has not followed changes in regional policy at large, neither with regard to organization nor formal goals, in spite of the fact that both the Government and the officials in the Transport Council (the administrative organization) have urged on an adjustment of the transport aid to fit the general direction of the regional policy at large. If the general direction of the regional policy in the 80s and 90s reflects a more growth oriented economic policy, then the transport aid has resisted institutional change, in spite of the fact that better and more well-known alternatives have existed with regard to promoting growth. The second criterion for institutional path dependency may therefore be considered fulfilled. Interest groups have on several occasions expanded the base for legitimacy of the transport aid by presenting new arguments to support it. One example of expanded legitimacy is that the transport aid was directed towards small and medium-sized companies in the 1980s. Such arguments were not presented when the transport aid was introduced in 1970, but was later emphasized by members of the Center Party and the Social Democratic Party. An interesting aspect of this institutional change is that the new motives also were characterized by ideological preferences for equality, since the transport aid with the help of this change would be able to support small firms in their competition with large firms in the same sector. This supports the assertion that the legitimacy of the transport aid has been derived from informal ideological preferences for equality rather than ideological preferences for growth, though the formal goals for the transport aid have been growth related. The conclusion is consequently that interest groups over time have managed to establish a stronger ideological legitimacy for the transport aid. All three criteria for institutional path dependency can therefore be considered fulfilled in the case of the transport aid. ; digitalisering@umu