Suchergebnisse

This essay will focus on experiences from previous research projects and aster courses with the aim of highlighting some core issues and problems regarding large scale infrastructure projects, landscape assessment and compensation measures, especially concerning cultural values in the agricultural landscapes of Scania, the southernmost part of Sweden. Problems, but also possibilities, related to evaluation, mitigation and compensation are discussed. Landscape Observatories as established under the European Landscape Convention are introduced as a possibility for trans-organizational learning around landscape matters in a broad sense. It is concluded that regional landscape observatories could function as hubs for more efficient management of large-scale landscape interventions and contextually relevant mitigation and compensation measures. Incremental changes in the present legislation and administration, which seems to be the prevalent strategy, might not be sufficient in order to safeguard our cultural heritage or be in line with the objectives of international agreements

This paper aims at documenting the experience of the Environmental Research Center at the Royal Scientific Society in stakeholder participation in greywater management (treatment and reuse) in the rural communities in the northeastern Badia of Jordan. Stakeholders participating in the management process included local people, nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations, governmental authorities, scientists and experts from universities and research institutions. The local stakeholders committee, NGOs, CBOs and local people have participated in capacity-building programs, data collection, situation analysis, problems identification, selection of types and locations of treatment technologies and construction and operation of treatment units and reuse projects. Experts, scientists and governmental entities contributed to the development of a treatment technology selection matrix and identification the best technology that suits the study area. The study reveals that the incorporation of input from a broad range of sectors and stakeholders during the project insured cooperative management of the greywater resources and enhanced project quality and ownership.

Wild animals are used for research and management purposes in Sweden and throughout the world. Animals are often subjected to similar procedures and risks of compromised welfare from capture, anesthesia, handling, sampling, marking, and sometimes selective removal. The interpretation of the protection of animals used for scientific purposes in Sweden is based on the EU Directive 2010/63/EU. The purpose of animal use, irrespective if the animal is suffering or not, decides the classification as a research animal, according to Swedish legislation. In Sweden, like in several other European countries, the legislation differs between research and management. Whereas, animal research is generally well-defined and covered in the legislation, wildlife management is not. The protection of wild animals differs depending on the procedure they are subjected to, and how they are classified. In contrast to wildlife management activities, research projects have to implement the 3Rs and must undergo ethical reviews and official animal welfare controls. It is often difficult to define the dividing line between the two categories, e.g., when marking for identification purposes. This gray area creates uncertainty and problems beyond animal welfare, e.g., in Sweden, information that has been collected during management without ethical approval should not be published. The legislation therefore needs to be harmonized. To ensure consistent ethical and welfare assessments for wild animals at the hands of humans, and for the benefit of science and management, we suggest that both research and management procedures are assessed by one single Animal Ethics Committee with expertise in the 3Rs, animal welfare, wildlife population health and One Health. We emphasize the need for increased and improved official animal welfare control, facilitated by compatible legislation and a similar ethical authorization process for all wild animal procedures.

The SURE-Farm project aims to analyse, assess and improve the resilience and sustainability of farming systems in Europe. Farming systems face a whole range of social, ecological, economic and political disturbances and changes, such as sharp market fluctuations, severe weather events, climate change, new technologies, changes in consumer preferences and in governance structures and so forth, operating at a range of scales (local, regional, national and global). Some stresses on the farm system can be predicted (e.g. retirement of farmers), while other shocks are more uncertain and unpredictable (e.g. flooding, sudden price drop, illness). Project's WP2 aims to comprehensively understand farmers' risk behaviour and risk management (RM) decisions, and to develop and test RM strategies and decision support tools that farmers can use to cope with increasing economic, environmental and social uncertainties and risks. WP2 contributes to the development of RM in EU farming systems by understanding and eliciting farmers' risk perceptions and preferences; learning about farmers' adaptive behaviour; learning capacity and preferred improvements of current RM tools; designing and analysing improved strategies to deal with extreme weather; and co-creating improved RM tools and map-related institutional challenges.

Based on a poststructural discourse-theoretical perspective, the aim of this thesis is to critically examine the construction of the Swedish compulsory school's democratic education and its consequences for the teacher subject, in educational policy texts. Set against the backdrop of what is commonly referred to as a crisis of democracy, the study takes its point of departure in changes in educational politics in recent decades and the new national curriculum for the compulsory school in 2011. The thesis uses the poststructural discourse-theory of the political philosophers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as its theoretical and methodological framework. Their main objective has been to revive socialist politics by suggesting a radical, plural democracy as an alternative for a new left. A number of national policy texts were chosen for the analysis. The selection covers official reports and government bills on the Education Act and on the Teacher Education Reform Act, the Education Act, the National Curriculum and a selection of documents from the Swedish National Agency for Education, ranging from 2008 to 2018. The main results show that democratic education rests on a notion of the democratic society which creates relations between a democratic universalism based on individual rights and an unspoken national homogeneity. Democratic education is constructed as a broad and complex task aiming at the fostering of democratic competence, assuring equivalent education and counteracting abusive behaviour. The impact of neoliberal policy and new public management philosophy is evident in the empirical material analysed. The study concludes that democratic education is constructed as part of a management perspective where democracy becomes the means of achieving a goal – the governed subject – which relates to pupils and teachers alike. In addition, the focus on consensus and rational thinking as well as the tendency to locate conflict resolution in the legal sphere contribute to the notion of a school free from abuse. ; I många demokratiska samhällen har skolan ett ansvar att förbereda unga människor för sin roll som demokratiska medborgare. En vanlig utgångspunkt tas i att utbildning om, genom och för demokrati är avgörande för demokratins fortlevnad. I en tid där högerpopulistisk retorik, desinformation och hot mot folkvalda hör till vardagen förefaller det viktigare än någonsin att utbilda för demokrati. Avhandlingens syfte är att kritiskt granska konstruktionen av grundskolans demokratiuppdrag och vilka konsekvenser den får för lärarsubjektet. Baserat på de politiska filosoferna Ernesto Laclaus och Chantal Mouffes poststrukturella teorier om diskurs, hegemoni och radikal demokrati konstrueras ett ramverk för att analysera ett urval av nationella utbildningspolitiska texter mellan 2009 – 2018. Tidigare forskning visar att debatten om det demokrati- och medborgarfostrande uppdraget närmar sig en marknadsliberal position och flera diskurs- eller textanalytiska studier indikerar diskurser och språkbruk som influerats av nyliberal ideologi. Resultatet från studien visar hur uppdraget tar form i relation till mål- och resultatstyrning, dokumentation och kvalitetssäkring där demokratiuppdraget tar form som en del av ett managementperspektiv. En särskild form av styrning i skärningspunkten mellan en juridisk reglering av mellanmänsklig samvaro, deliberativa samtalskvaliteter och betoningen av konsensus resulterar i att demokratiuppdraget konstrueras som den kränkningsfria skolan. Avhandlingens bidrag består i att ställa nya frågor om skolans demokratiuppdrag och belysa hur uppdraget tillskrivs mening och vilka konsekvenserna av detta blir.

The research project described in this article starts out with the hypothesis that new forms of bureaucracy have arisen within public administration as a consequence New Public Management-related reforms which have swept through the West in recent decades. The main goal of these reforms is to make public administrations more business-like and therefore more effective and customer-oriented. Administrations are thereby coming more to resemble businesses and are becoming decentralized while retaining central management and control. Herein lies the danger that NPM reforms will have the effect of creating bureaucratic expansion within these administrations. This situation is paradoxical since the NPM wave builds on the very economic research which has been critical of the phenomenon of bureaucratization within public administration. Within the framework of ongoing efforts to incorporate public activity, a series of new organizational forms has been created, all with a need to justify their activities upward and outward. The bureaucratization of these secondary functions within the decentralized level of the state is the focus of the research project to be undertaken. The project will involve three case studies of NPM-influenced forms of management in a municipality, a hospital, and a college. Adapted from the source document.

With the industrial revolution, the human utilization of the forest took a new turn as wood became a commercial product (Östlund & Zackrisson 2000). Since then, economical considerations have pervaded the public perspective on forest and forestry. However, the awareness of the need for sustainability in the use of the forest resource has also grown, and during the last decades other values have entered the discussion and the practice of forestry. Today, sustainable forest management (SFM) where economical, ecological and social values are all satisfied, is a core element in the development of acceptable forest management practices. Public participation is strongly related to SFM. In some industrialized countries, e.g. Canada, demands for participation in natural resource management have subsequently been incorporated into the legislation (Chambers and Beckley 2003), but in most countries there is no legal demand for participation. In Sweden for example, the only demand for participation in the Forestry Act is consultation before clear cutting in certain areas of reindeer herding. Forest certification, which is now covering extensive areas in several countries, plays an interesting role in the promotion of SFM. However, its main purpose is not public participation and the integration of social values into forestry (Angelstam et al. 2004). Internationally, there is the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This convention has been ratified by Sweden amongst other countries, but it is difficult to make a strict interpretation of it. New approaches and methods are obviously needed in forest management planning to incorporate forest values other than timber production and to help solve conflicts of interest. There have been some attempts made by different types of projects. The Canadian Model Forest concept promotes participation in the work for SFM, and has been tried out in Sweden in the Vilhelmina Model Forest project (Svensson et al. 2004). Some of the LIFE projects sponsored by the European Union are also applications of participation with SFM as the objective; the project "Local Participation in Sustainable Forest Management based on Landscape Analysis" is a Swedish example of a LIFE project sponsored by the European Union (http://www.svo.se/minskog/templates/svo_se_vanlig.asp?id=8001, 2007-01-12). A potentially powerful tool in the work for sustainable forest management (SFM) and participation is multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA), an approach which can make it possible to handle complex decision situations involving conflicting interests and several stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to clarify concepts related to participation and present methods that are applicable in participatory planning. More specifically the following questions will be dealt with: • What is meant by participation? What methods and techniques are available to participatory planning processes? • What is MCDA and what phases do this approach require? In order to illuminate the state of art of participatory planning in forestry, an analysis of a number of case studies is presented.

The current report deals with the effect of transport time and associated transport conditions on animal welfare and meat quality. The work is part of the EU EU and Animal Welfare Agency /Swedish Board of Agriculture, funded project CATRA (QLK5—1999-01507: Minimising stress inducing factors on cattle during handling and transport to improve animal welfare and meat quality: www.bt.slu.se/catra/). The project was composed of eight work packages: Baseline survey, Effect of transport time (below 14 hours and long distance more than 14 hours), Effect of vibration and motion (to be conducted both in laboratory and field conditions), Optimising pre-and post-transport handling, Air quality in the vehicles, cattle transport logistics including route optimisation, and development of control system. The purpose of the project was to gather sufficient data and to develop methods for controlling and minimizing stress inducing factors during handling and transport of cattle; develop guide-lines and recommendation for end-users, such as meat and vehicle industries and the policy makers, to improve animal welfare and meat quality on the European level. This could be fulfilled through optimization of design of handling areas, transport vehicles, and transport-associated conditions, and by promoting an IT-supported effective logistic system. Hence cattle welfare and meat quality will be improved, thereby enhancing the economic competitiveness of producers and abattoirs. As part of CATRA, this part of the project is the work done in Sweden regarding the effect of transport time, with the objective of determining the effect of transport time (up to ll hours) on animal welfare and post mortem meat quality, when cattle are transported from farms to abattoirs by commercial vehicles. The ultimate objective is to optimise transport time in relation to welfare and meat quality taking into consideration other stress inducing factors. Animals on which the experiments performed were cows, heifers, bulls and calves. Response parameters that were considered were: blood parameters (cortisol, glucose, lactate, CK,), clinical parameters (heart rate, postural stability), meat parameters (bruising score, PH-24, tenderness), and ethological parameters. Input parameters considered were parameters for loading facilities (ramps, lifts), penning systems (stocking density, social group, standing orientation, design of loading compartment), air quality (air speed, relative humidity, evenness of temperature in the compartment, level of NH3, CO2), vibration, transport time, resting time, and feeding regimes. Simultaneous and continuous measurement of heart rate, body temperature, air quality parameters, and video recording was conducted from farm to the abattoirs. Blood samples were taken before and after transport, and also during resting. The results obtained indicated that the transport and handling events are stressful for the animals as a whole, and loading and un-loading are among the most stressful events in the studied conditions. Regarding transport time, the results showed that transport time after six hours is particularly stressful for the animals when transported with usual vehicles without special equipments. In this case, it was reported a significant correlation between transport time and animal stress evaluated by physiological parameters. However, less detrimental effect of transport time on meat quality has been observed. It may therefore be concluded that transport time has influences more on animal welfare than meat quality when transported in conventional vehicles. Transport preceding and initiating conditions and processes such as keeping system, preparation, loading, planning and management, as well as unloading and lairage at the end of the transport chain are important challenges bearing various possibilities to improve welfare and meat quality. Loading and unloading facilities (such as ramp, driveways, and side-block) and quality, of floor have significant influence on both welfare and meat quality. Cattle from tied housing systems are more stressed by transport than untied cattle and there is a greater risk to develop bad carcass- and meat quality. As regard to air quality, the concentration level of ammonia and carbon dioxide increase with transport time and it occasionally passes the acceptable level when only natural ventilation is used. During the field experiment no detectable methane has been found. To prevent thermal stress, the installation of mechanical ventilation system (both for cooling and heating purposes) is recommended. The conclusions deduced from the current studies are as follows: - Transport conditions, as a whole is stressful for animals and compromise their welfare. - Loading and unloading activities are the most stress inducing factors identified using the heart rate measurements and behaviour observations - Result of the analysis of blood parameters showed that level of stress correlates with transport time. Calves are most sensitive to transport time followed by bulls, and cows are relatively less sensitive to transport length. - Transport time after six hours is stressful for the animals when transported with usual vehicles without special equipments. However, less detrimental effect of transport time on meat quality has been observed, - The evenness of temperature in the loading pens depends on season and number of stops - Concentration level of ammonia and carbon dioxide increase with transport time and it occasionally passes the acceptable level.

Within urban design there is increasing interest in the close relationshipbetween social, economic and political processes and the production of public spaces. Thisrelationship, however, often remains abstract and is rarely illustrated in empirical studies.This paper introduces an institutionalist understanding to the production of public spaces,whereby emphasis is placed on the analysis of structuring forces and actors as a way toapprehend the complexity of the social processes guiding and influencing the planning,design and management of public spaces. The institutionalist understanding is illustratedin the case study of an urban renewal project in Barcelona. The results of the case studyshow the contrasts and tensions between the structuring forces and the different actorsoperating in the project, how structuring forces favoured the interest and claims of someactors over those of others, and the potential risks and challenges that this has for the useand value of the public spaces produced by the project.

Smallholder farmers are defined as key actors in the implementation of Agenda 2030, based on their importance for food security and poverty reduction, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is also true for South Africa, where smallholder farming has attracted considerable policy attention in an attempt to break the trend of rural poverty and the legacy of the apartheid era. One issue of concern is the long-term decline in arable production in fields, reflecting a wider trend of de-agrarianisation among peasantries and smallholders all over the world. In South Africa this withdrawal from field cultivation is compensated to an extent by intensification in garden cultivation. This thesis explores how smallholders perceive the role of these two different crop cultivation practices in their daily lives. The empirical data were collected during an ethnographic field study in rural South Africa in early 2020 using a variety of qualitative research methods. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of lifeworld and system world together with perspectives of livelihoods, the study shows that household agricultural production is being downscaled, with most households prioritising the continuation of garden cultivation. Garden cultivation draws upon capabilities that most households can access and is viewed as a taken-for-granted activity within the lifeworld of smallholders. Field cultivation emerges as a deliberate choice made by households who are able to access sufficient family labour and financial capital. Furthermore, arable production in fields is based on long-term experience of government involvement, resulting in a commonly shared view that a government presence in field farming is something to be expected even today. It would appear that this commonly shared view enables agricultural projects and certified seeds to be introduced that are disembedded from smallholders' local conditions, mirroring a policy belief in a New Green Revolution for Africa. This finding suggests that garden cultivation can serve as an example of crop cultivation that is attuned to local conditions, indicating the direction smallholders could take if they are to fulfil their role as promoters of sustainable development in line with Agenda 2030.

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.

During much of the 20th century, the national party systems of Western Europe remained largely unchanged. However, beginning in the 1970s, these frozen party systems slowly started to melt. As the number of parties has increased, the question of what explains new party entrance has also attracted more scholarly interest. Despite this increased attention, the study of new political parties still suffers from a structuralist bias. The implication is that the fates of new parties are decided almost exclusively by external factors. Some scholars focus on the institutional environment; others emphasize sociological explanations, such as the formation of new cleavages in society. Yet such non-actor-centred perspectives risk being excessively deterministic. They also struggle to explain why some parties succeed in gaining entrance to legislatures while others, seemingly under the same external circumstances, fail. In this thesis, therefore, a new way to study parties and their path to parliament is proposed. Starting with the notion that external conditions alone cannot explain new party entrance, the thesis takes an agency-based perspective. Three sets of strategies are identified as being important means for a party to influence its chances of getting into parliament. They concern the party's resources, its political project and its external relations. In what ways can supply and management of resources, policies and relations with other parties affect the potential for becoming a parliamentary party? Through four in-depth case studies of new entrants into the Swedish national parliament, the Riksdag, the thesis concludes that there are some important commonalities in their paths to parliament. Especially with regard to their resources and their political project, the empirical evidence supports the initial premise: new party entrance is unthinkable without successful strategic behaviour.

During much of the 20th century, the national party systems of Western Europe remained largely unchanged. However, beginning in the 1970s, these frozen party systems slowly started to melt. As the number of parties has increased, the question of what explains new party entrance has also attracted more scholarly interest. Despite this increased attention, the study of new political parties still suffers from a structuralist bias. The implication is that the fates of new parties are decided almost exclusively by external factors. Some scholars focus on the institutional environment; others emphasize sociological explanations, such as the formation of new cleavages in society. Yet such non-actor-centred perspectives risk being excessively deterministic. They also struggle to explain why some parties succeed in gaining entrance to legislatures while others, seemingly under the same external circumstances, fail. In this thesis, therefore, a new way to study parties and their path to parliament is proposed. Starting with the notion that external conditions alone cannot explain new party entrance, the thesis takes an agency-based perspective. Three sets of strategies are identified as being important means for a party to influence its chances of getting into parliament. They concern the party's resources, its political project and its external relations. In what ways can supply and management of resources, policies and relations with other parties affect the potential for becoming a parliamentary party? Through four in-depth case studies of new entrants into the Swedish national parliament, the Riksdag, the thesis concludes that there are some important commonalities in their paths to parliament. Especially with regard to their resources and their political project, the empirical evidence supports the initial premise: new party entrance is unthinkable without successful strategic behaviour.