Suchergebnisse

Since the beginning of the 21st century, bioeconomy development has gained increasing attention across the globe, both in academia and in the political arena. Attracted by its potential of decoupling economic growth from fossil resource use and carbon emission, many countries and international organizations have set up strategies promoting bioeconomy transition. To date, one of the most controversial topics in academic debates is whether the bioeconomy transition will necessarily lead to a more sustainable future. However, these debates seem not to extend to the political sphere. The bioeconomy transition is mostly described as an overarching solution to reconcile economic, ecological and social goals with one package. In Finland, the first national strategy with the theme of the bioeconomy was published in 2014. In this thesis, I seek to ponder whether, in accordance with the political framings, we can firmly believe that bioeconomy can truly contribute to a sustainable future. The aim is to study: how is the idea of sustainable development discursively integrated, constructed and communicated to the public in the Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy? To answer this research question, I use the argumentative turn approach to policy analysis as well as discourse analysis as analytical methods, and literature on sustainable development and sustainability as theoretical lenses. The empirical findings demonstrate that the economic dimension dominates the discourse of Finnish bioeconomy strategy. The statements about business generation and biomass exploitation accounts for the majority of sustainability-related statements throughout the whole policy paper, while the degree of integrating ecological concerns is weak. The social dimension is largely omitted. The conceptualization of sustainability in the Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy is incomplete and skewed. Second, I found the policy arguments are mainly about building favorable business environment, enhancing competitiveness, promoting technology R&D and innovation, and ensuring the availability of natural resources. The discourse of sustainable development, the discourse of ecological modernization and the discourse of neoliberalism significantly shape the policy arguments. The sustainable development discourse works to define the sustainable development in bioeconomy from a normative perspective, that is, a sustainable development based on economic growth. Further, the discourses of ecological modernization and neoliberalism work together to illustrate how to achieve such a kind of sustainable development, that is, through technology and market. Finally, I found the industrial forest-based sectors very dominant in the whole policy, and the public sector represented by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry tends to stand on their side. Based on the shared goals of economic growth, the dominant parties strive to grasp the economic opportunities of bioeconomy in the name of sustainable development. They proactively respond to the global challenges by argumentatively defining what they mean by sustainable bioeconomy development. They avoided tackling the fundamental conflicts between growth and planetary boundaries; rather, they adopted a "go around" strategy by framing a sustainable bioeconomy aligned with economic growth. On this basis, I provide policy recommendations. Firstly, it is urgent to abandon the obsession with economic growth that depends on overexploitation of natural resources. More focus should be put on, for instance, the circularity of resources, increasing long lifespan bio-based products, and the unproductive services that concentrate on human health and wellbeing. My second recommendation draws on the understanding that public participation is a vital component of sustainable development. I suggest that it would be beneficial to engage actors at the grass-roots level, inside and outside the traditionally powerful industries. In addition, the innovators specializing on bio-based health care solutions, and the non-resource-based service providers should be given more support through the upcoming strategy and implementing programmes. Moreover, I suggest that more channels could be established to initiate public discussion. In addition to the positive sides of bioeconomy, the potential risks and challenges should be openly discussed as well. Opening discussion space is the way to absorb knowledges produced by farmers and forest owners, to listen citizen's needs and meanings, and eventually to arouse enthusiasm for public participation.

Pt. 1: Introduction Pt. 2: Globalization and fairness : the debate Pt. 3: Responding to globalization : public institutions present and future Pt. 4: Responding to globalization in East Asia Pt. 5: Conclusions

Rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) retrofitting can greatly reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, thus contributing to carbon neutrality. Effective assessment of carbon emission reduction has become an urgent challenge for the government and for business enterprises. In this study, we propose a method to assess accurately the potential reduction of long-term carbon emission by installing solar PV on rooftops. This is achieved using the joint action of GF-2 satellite images, Point of Interest (POI) data, and meteorological data. Firstly, we introduce a building extraction method that extends the DeepLabv3+ by fusing the contextual information of building rooftops in GF-2 images through multi-sensory fields. Secondly, a ridgeline detection algorithm for rooftop classification is proposed, based on the Hough transform and Canny edge detection. POI semantic information is used to calculate the usable area under different subsidy policies. Finally, a multilayer perceptron (MLP) is constructed for long-term PV electricity generation series with regional meteorological data, and carbon emission reduction is estimated for three scenarios: the best, the general, and the worst. Experiments were conducted with GF-2 satellite images collected in Daxing District, Beijing, China in 2021. Final results showed that: (1) The building rooftop recognition method achieved overall accuracy of 95.56%; (2) The best, the general and the worst amount of annual carbon emission reductions in the study area were 7,705,100 tons, 6,031,400 tons, and 632,300 tons, respectively; (3) Multi-source data, such as POIs and climate factors play an indispensable role for long-term estimation of carbon emission reduction. The method and conclusions provide a feasible approach for quantitative assessment of carbon reduction and policy evaluation.