Suchergebnisse

Nation states often end up adopting practices that are incongruent with their formal commitments to international efforts, such as mitigation of climate change. Although the necessity of a transfer towards carbon-neutral societies is widely understood, such decoupling is a challenge to transition. This study analyses the political discourse in the Finnish media from 2017 to 2018 around the European Union's Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation. The discourse embodies a contradiction, as the Finnish government sought to justify its aim to log a record amount of forest while officially pledging to climate change mitigation. The forest industry and the government launched a major lobbying campaign to influence the regulation calculations to be adopted by the European Union. Several representatives of the scientific community rose to oppose the government's plan of action by distributing scientific knowledge on the negative climate effects caused by extensive forestry; a vigorous public debate around the correct ways to use this natural resource ensued. Our analysis identifies three prevailing narratives, each portraying and resolving the contradiction in a distinct way. We argue that narratives work as tools of epistemic governance and demonstrate how policy actors selectively weave scientific knowledge into such narratives. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed

Sustainable Development Goals aim for a better future, but gains are threatened by conflict and governance failures, exacerbated by climate change. While research on energy security is well-established, conceptual-analytical research on sustainability transitions has paid little attention to security threats as factors influencing transitions or security policy as part of policy mixes. This paper combines policy coherence and integration analysis of energy and security strategy documents with sustainability transitions' research, considering how landscape pressures and energy niches are presented in documents pertaining to Estonia, Finland and Scotland during 2006–2020. The findings show that security and energy policies present a functional overlap. Yet, policy integration and coherence are insufficiently addressed, conflicts created by coexisting low-carbon and hydrocarbon-based security considerations. An increasingly multifaceted landscape creates a complicated policy environment where pursuing policy coherence becomes harder. Despite the accelerating energy transition, the security implications of energy niches have received too little attention. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed

Highlights • Combining policy coherence and integration with sustainability transitions. • Policy document analysis explored the interplay of energy and security policies. • Security and defence at times integrated in energy policy, particularly in Estonia. • Lack of coherence between low-carbon energy transition and national security policy. • Security inferences of growing energy niches little covered in strategy documents. ; Sustainable Development Goals aim for a better future, but gains are threatened by conflict and governance failures, exacerbated by climate change. While research on energy security is well-established, conceptual-analytical research on sustainability transitions has paid little attention to security threats as factors influencing transitions or security policy as part of policy mixes. This paper combines policy coherence and integration analysis of energy and security strategy documents with sustainability transitions' research, considering how landscape pressures and energy niches are presented in documents pertaining to Estonia, Finland and Scotland during 2006–2020. The findings show that security and energy policies present a functional overlap. Yet, policy integration and coherence are insufficiently addressed, conflicts created by coexisting low-carbon and hydrocarbon-based security considerations. An increasingly multifaceted landscape creates a complicated policy environment where pursuing policy coherence becomes harder. Despite the accelerating energy transition, the security implications of energy niches have received too little attention.