Suchergebnisse

How does the international climate policy frameworks influence the domestic institutional responses to climate mitigation in emerging economies? And how, in turn, do domestic institutions and politics in emerging economies influence the fate of international climate policy frameworks? The thesis provides answers to these questions by studying domestic engagements with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions in three emerging economies – India, Brazil, and South Africa. The thesis specifically studies how these engagements were influenced by the domestic institutional context provided by national climate policy, norms, and institutional capacity in the three countries. Drawing upon the variations in the engagements with nationally appropriate mitigation actions, made visible by use of the policy cycle as a heuristic device, the thesis informs the implementation of another nascent, yet prevalent, international climate policy framework – Nationally Determined Contributions. The thesis identifies how engagements with nationally appropriate mitigation actions varied in India, Brazil, and South Africa in agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation. In cases where international support is considered crucial for taking mitigation actions, external factors such as lack of clarity on definitional aspects and availability of international support can hamper the prospects of such frameworks at the agenda-setting and policy formulation stages. Efforts to engage with these frameworks under this uncertainty are held back by non-decisions, overriding national climate policy, as well as by uneven inter-ministerial coordination. The thesis argues that successful implementation of upcoming Nationally Determined Contributions will be influenced by a country's ability to align them with its national climate policy, localization of the transnational norms, and the extent to which efforts to enhance institutional capacity for coordinating the implementation of national climate policy are made. In sum, the effective implementation of International Climate Policy Frameworks will be dependent on the willingness of the state to provide oversight and coordination, and clarity on the availability of international support. ; Hur influerar ramverken för internationell klimatpolicy nationella institutionella åtgärder för att begränsa utsläpp av växthusgaser i framväxande ekonomier? Och hur påverkar, i sin tur, dessa länders nationella institutioner och politik dessa ramverk för internationell klimatpolicy? Denna avhandling studerar nationella engagemang i Nationellt lämpliga utsläppsminskande åtgärder (s.k. NAMAs) i tre framväxande ekonomier – Indien, Brasilien, och Sydafrika. Avhandlingen studerar i synnerhet hur dessa engagemang har påverkats av de tre ländernas nationella klimatpolicy, normer, och institutionella kapacitet. Genom att använda policycykeln som heuristiskt analysverktyg identifierar avhandlingen variationer i hur länderna utvecklat sitt engagemang i NAMAs. Avhandlingen visar att och hur engagemang med nationellt lämpliga utsläppsminskande åtgärder varierar mellan Indien, Brasilien, och Sydafrika vad det gäller fastställande av dagordning, policyformulering, beslutsfattande, implementering, och policyutvärdering. I de fall internationellt stöd anses vara avgörande för att vidta utsläppsminskande åtgärder kan externa faktorer såsom bristande definition av de internationella policyramverken för åtgärder samt tillgänglighet på internationellt stöd försvåra utsikterna för att internationella ramverk tas upp i de nationella dagordnings- och policyformuleringsstadierna. Arbetet med dessa ramverk försvåras även av icke-beslut och ojämn interministeriell koordinering samt om tvingande nationell klimatpolicy inte ligger i linje med de internationella besluten. Avhandlingens slutsatser har betydelse för implementeringen av ett annat framväxande ramverk för internationell klimatpolicy: Nationellt fastställda bidrag (s.k. NDC:er). En framgångsrik implementering av NDC:er kommer att influeras av en stats förmåga att anpassa dem till nationell klimatpolicy samt transnationella normer, så att dessa överensstämmer eller jämkas med nationella normer, samt den institutionella kapaciteten för att koordinera implementering av nationell klimatpolicy. En effektiv implementering av ramverk för internationell klimatpolicy kommer, sammanfattningsvis, att vara beroende av staters villighet att tillhandahålla tillsyn och koordinering, samt tydlighet vad gäller tillgänglighet till internationellt stöd.

Today humankind is facing numerous sustainability challenges that require us to question CO2 intensive practices like those present in the transport and energy sector. To meet those challenges, many countries have adopted ambitious climate targets. Achieving such targets requires an understanding of the wider socio-technical context of transitions. The aim of this licentiate thesis is therefore to analyse such socio-technical transitions towards low-emission futures enabled by the electrification of passenger cars and high voltage grid development. A combination of different transitions theories (for ex. Multi-level perspective and Technological innovation systems) and institutional theory has been used. To reach the aim paper I analyses the climate impacts of electric vehicles (EVs) and policy measures to achieve a breakthrough scenario for EVs. The results show that a mixture of short and long term policies are needed that take into account the technology development stage and behavioural aspects of EV adopters. Paper II addresses the need to include the high voltage transmission grid and its planning procedures as a central part of debates on transitions. Therefore the opportunities, challenges and reasons for conflict in the established regime are studied. The results show that in order to achieve a sustainable grid development regime, it is necessary to spend time on achieving legitimacy and social sustainability. The third paper uses semi-structured expert interviews and focuses on innovation dynamics for EV adoption. By focusing on dynamics instead of single policy measures, it is possible to grasp interactions within a niche, but also in between a niche, regime and landscape. The results show that strong initial technology legitimacy was needed to start substantial innovation dynamics. This could be further strengthened with a strong and broad coalition of actors. Both those factors led, if present, to an improved variety and match of policy instruments. As such this thesis has shown that transitions are ...

The current research on systems thinking criticizes the additive nature of green chemistry (GC) not being supportive of systems thinking to achieve holism in its practices. This paper argues that systems thinking should comprise of the social issues, and, therefore, it studies renowned papers by GC pioneers and reviews on the field regarding how they address the social dimension of sustainability. It points out how GC has ignored social sustainability in its discourses, practices, and evaluations, leading to a reductionist interpretation of sustainability. Then, this paper presents some challenges to be overcome in order to achieve balanced sustainability. A systemic chemical thinking is advocated, considering chemistry in culture and chemistry as culture, expanding the chemistry rationality from ontological and technological dimensions into the epistemological and ethical ones. It is then discussed how chemistry education can help to promote sustainability in a broad and systemic way.

This thesis is a contribution to feminist laboratory studies and a critical engagement with the natural sciences, or more precisely research on the biochemical workings and deadly relations of Alzheimer's disease emanating from a year of field work in a Drosophila fly lab. The natural sciences have been a point of fascination within the field of gender studies for decades. Such sciences produce knowledge on what gets to count as nature and natural, healthy or sick, normal or not, and they have done it with great societal authority and impact throughout European modernity. However, feminist technoscience scholars argue that science and knowledge is socially produced, and political too. Concepts such as nature, animal, human, body, sex, and life itself are not simply given natural realities but phenomena processed through the naturecultures of the laboratory. Situated within such theoretical and methodological approaches, this thesis wonders how scientific facts about Alzheimer's disease are made in the lab today. What kinds of realities, bodies and ethico-political concerns are enacted? Who gets to live and who gets to die in everyday laboratory practices? Theoretically, the thesis is grounded, particularly, within Karen Barad's agential realism and posthumanist performativity, and as such it accounts for human and nonhuman entanglements through which AD is performed in the lab in relational ways. In other words, the thesis explores how AD is enacted in the bodies of transgenic fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), as these flies embody the disease, live and die with it. Last but not least, the thesis explores the materialities of death, dying, embodiment and biological waste in a biochemistry lab as constitutive parts of the produced knowledge about AD. ; Denna avhandling utgör ett bidrag till feministiska laboratoriestudier och är en kritisk analys av naturvetenskaperna. Närmare bestämt är det en feministisk studie av forskning om Alzheimers sjukdom, dess biokemiska verkningar och dödliga relationer utifrån ett års fältarbete som labbtekniker i ett fluglabb. Naturvetenskaperna har under decennier fascinerat genusforskare. Dessa discipliner formar kunskapen om vad som räknas som natur och naturligt, hälsa och sjukdom, normalt eller inte, och de har gjort så med stor samhällelig auktoritet genom Europeisk modernitet. Forskare inom feministiska teknovetenskapliga studier har länge hävdat att vetenskap också är social praktik med politiska implikationer. Begrepp som natur, djur, mänskligt eller kropp, kön och livet självt kan inte tas för givna utan formas också i laboratoriets naturkultur. Med utgångspunkt i sådana feministiska teknovetenskaplig teoribildningar och metodologiska utgångspunkter bearbetar denna avhandling frågor om hur vetenskapliga fakta om Alzheimers sjukdom skapas i laboratoriet idag. Vilka kroppar, verkligheter och etisk-politiska förhållningssätt aktualiseras? Vem får leva och vem får dö i vardagliga laboratoriepraktiker? Teoretiskt bygger avhandlingen framför allt på Karen Barads agentiella realism när den diskuterar sammanvävningen mellan mänskligt och icke-mänskligt, samt det som kallas posthumanistisk performativitet, i relation till Alzheimers sjukdom som den förkroppsligas i transgena fruktflugor (Drosophila melanogaster) i laboratoriet. I särskilt fokus står relationerna som skapas inom den biokemiska forskningen kring död, biologiskt avfall och kroppslighet.

This thesis concerns the development of the self-regulation of advertising in Sweden from 1950 until 1971. Self-regulation was initiated in the 1930s due to a business desire to regulate fair competition in marketing, and while it initially was a minor operation, the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by extensive development. When self-regulation was overtaken by state policies in 1971, it included several interlocking systems, of which parts survived the introduction of the state regime. The thesis' aim has been to analyze how the rapid regime transitions in the self-regulation regime can be understood. The existing literature identifies four major transitions that occurred during the studied time period. To understand them, the thesis has studied the policy processes leading up to these transitions. Focus has been on the business interest organizations that controlled the regime and their regulatory strategies. Theoretically, the analysis has departed from the hypothesis that tensions between these organizations, due to their members' different market interests and varying levels of exposure to regulation and public badwill, to a significant degree informed their strategic choices as well as policy outcomes. The results show that the policy processes preceding the regime transitions were characterized by internal tensions, whereby organizations representing advertisers, and to a lesser degree media carriers, due to their members' higher level of exposure to regulation and public badwill, successfully supported stronger market policing, while ad agencies, being less exposed, as well as a peak industry organization for the proliferation of marketing largely opposed such measures, preferring a more lenient regulation. However, due to increased exposure to regulation and bad will, the ad agencies finally abandoned their opposition and took the lead in regulatory innovation through the introduction of an extensive clearance program that survived the launch of the state regime, becoming a key component in the co-regulatory structure that followed.

Using a conflict transformation framework, this article demonstrates that positive transformations have taken place in the South China Sea between 1991 and 2007. Even though these transformations have been weakened in recent years, particularly regarding the actor aspect, it is concluded that a major armed conflict is still highly unlikely. ; ArticleType: research-article / Full publication date: May/June 2015 / Copyright © 2015 University of California Press