Suchergebnisse

Biodrivmedel blev efter millennieskiftet en alltmer prioriterad energikälla för EU och ansågs kunna stävja både klimathot och energissäkerhetsproblem samtidigt som drivmedelsproduktionen skulle gynna sysselsättningen i jordbruket. EUkommissionen formulerade 2007 ett mål om att ersätta 10 % av transportenergin till biodrivmedel. Snabbt uppkom dock en strid mellan en grupp av aktörer (miljörörelse och livsmedelsindustri) som såg biodrivmedelssatsningen som ett hot mot både miljön och livsmedelssäkerheten medan en annan grupp bestående av företrädesvis biodrivmedelsintressenter såg det som viktigt att behålla och utveckla EU:s mål för att rädda både klimat och miljö. Motsättningarna som uppkommit väcker frågor kring vilka logiker som legat bakom detta. Avhandlingens syfte är att analysera EU:s biodrivmedelspolicy, vilka aktörer och nätverk som har format denna process, vilka problem och lösningar som dessa aktörer och nätverk argumenterat för i processen, samt hur de har agerat för att mobilisera stöd för sina ståndpunkter. Detta har kopplats till teorier om nätverksstyrning, förekomsten av utlösande händelser i policyprocessen, resursberoende i nätverksmodellen samt på vilket sätt managementteori utövat inflytande. Metoden har varit att utifrån dokumentstudier rekonstruera det historiska förloppet och de aktörer som medverkat i processen. Avhandlingens visar att en förhållandevis liten grupp aktörer har haft ett stort inflytande över policyprocessen från det att problemen som biodrivmedel var satta att lösa definierades i slutet av 80-talet till det att hållbarhetsstandarder utvecklades och implementerades. Dessa aktörer har funnits i policynätverkens kärna och har som ett av sina centrala mål velat utarbeta globala regelverk för råvaruhandeln. De miljöorganisationer som medverkat i processen har genom resursberoenden till stor del varit underordnade denna grupp. Processerna har innehållit ett stort inslag av strategisk planläggning men även utlösande händelser som klimat- och livsmedelskriser har varit viktiga för att motivera politiska beslut. ; Biofuels became a prioritized energy source for the EU in the new millennium. It was believed that biofuels would suppress both climate change and problems with energy security, and would simultaneously benefit agricultural employment. The EU Commission decided in 2007 that 10 % of the energy used in transportation would be replaced by biofuels. This was, however, soon criticized by a group of actors (environmental associations and the food industry) that saw the biofuels initiative as a threat to both the environment and food security. The biofuels proponents, on the other hand, argued that it was important to maintain and develop the EU's biofuels objectives to save both the climate and the environment. These contradictions raised my interest to understand and analyze the logics that lie behind these different perspectives on the same issue. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the EU's biofuels policy, which actors and networks shaped this process, which problems and solutions these actors and networks put forward in the process, and how they have acted to mobilize support for their positions. Theoretically, I have applied theories on policy networks, the occurrence of triggering events in the policy process, resource dependence between actors and networks, and how management theory can be used to understand how policy develops. The main results are that a relatively small group of actors has had a strong influence on the policy process. These actors have been at the core of the policy community. The environmental organizations involved in the process have been subordinate to this policy community through resource dependencies. One actor network was formed that wanted to increase the amount of biofuels, while another was formed to protect the forest and soil from heavy exploitation. It took over 20 years before these contradicting efforts collided. This thesis concludes that the process contained large elements of strategic planning and that triggering events such as climate and food crises have been important to justify political decisions.

The Stockholm Conference 1972 drew the world's attention to the global environmental crisis. To the inhabitants of Sweden, however, this threat to the planet and to humanity was nothing new. Anyone who regularly read newspapers, listened to the radio, or watched the television news would have encountered the issues. Five years earlier, in the summer of 1967, things were very different. At that time, it was not at all self-evident that humans were in the process of destroying their own living environment. Hence, in a short period of time, a radical change took place: an 'environmental turn'. It had major and far-reaching consequences. But what was it that opened people's eyes to the environmental crisis? When did it happen? Who set the ball rolling? And what does this historical process mean for us today? David Larsson Heidenblad's book sheds new light on the emergence of modern environmentalism in Sweden and provides fresh insight to challenges that concerns us all.

[From clash of interests to symbiosis? Environmental policy and welfare in times of economic boom and recession]Global challenges such as climate change, the free flow of international capital, and growing political transnational cooperation, together with two major financial crises, have put pressure on the national welfare state during recent decades. During the same period, the concepts of sustainable development and ecological modernization have contributed with an understanding of economic growth and environmental awareness as complementary. In that context, Karin Edberg's article discusses whether environmental policy can be said to be part of the modern Swedish welfare state. Edberg makes use of the annual inaugural speeches given by the prime minister in connection with the opening of the Swedish parliament. This implies that the article's results rather than reflecting political practice points at issues of political interest and their articulation. Edberg shows how environmental questions have fluctuated between being a de-ideologized and normalized part of the political landscape, and a political watershed. Today, the idea of sustainable development is the glue that connects environmental policies with the welfare state – at least on a rhetorical level – and which makes the environment a consensus issue.Publication history: Published original.(Published 7 October 2016)Citation: Edberg, Karin (2016) "Från motsatsförhållande till symbios? Miljöpolitik och välfärd i ekonomiska upp- och nedgångar", in Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, issue 6, pp. 7–37. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.6.1 ; Globala utmaningar som klimatförändringar, transnationella kapitalrörelser och politiskt gränsöverskridande samarbete har satt den nationella välfärdsstaten på prov under de senaste decennierna. Två större finansiella kriser har också de påverkat politikens utformning. Under samma tid har begreppen hållbar utveckling och ekologisk modernisering bidragit med ståndpunkten att tillväxt och miljömedvetenhet kan gå hand i hand. Utifrån den kontexten diskuterar Karin Edberg i sin artikel huruvida miljöpolitiken kan sägas vara en del av den nutida svenska välfärdsstaten. Till grund för sitt resonemang använder sig Edberg av de årliga regeringsförklaringar som ges av statsministern i samband med riksdagens öppnande. Detta innebär att artikelns resultat inte speglar politisk praktik utan snarare vilka frågor som anses vara i den politiska hetluften och hur de artikuleras. Edberg visar hur miljöfrågan pendlat mellan att utgöra en avideologiserad och normaliserad del av det politiska landskapet, och en politisk vattendelare. I dag är idén om hållbar utveckling kittet som binder samman miljöpolitiken med välfärdsstaten – åtminstone på en retorisk nivå – och som gör miljö till en konsensusfråga.Publiceringshistorik: Originalpublicering.(Publicerad 7 oktober 2016)Förslag på källangivelse: Edberg, Karin (2016) "Från motsatsförhållande till symbios? Miljöpolitik och välfärd i ekonomiska upp- och nedgångar", i Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, nr 6, s. 7–37. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.6.1

Illegal hunting has constituted an expression of contested legitimacy of wildlife regulation across the world for centuries. In the following report, we critically engage with the state of the art on the illegal hunting phenomenon. We do so to reveal emerging scholarly perspectives on the crime. Specifically, we aim to capture the complexity of illegal hunting as a socio-political phenomenon rather than an economically motivated crime. To do so, we adopt a critical perspective that pays particular attention to the societal processes that contribute to the criminalization of historically accepted hunting practices. To capture perspectives on illegal hunting, fifteen researchers from various countries participated in an illegal hunting workshop in Copenhagen 16-17th June 2014. A primary contribution of the research workshop was to bring together criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists and geographers, each equipped with their own research perspective, to engage in a critical and interdisciplinary discussion on how to apprehend and constructively address the challenges of illegal hunting in contemporary society. A majority of those that attended were primarily based in the Nordic and the UK context, which motivated a strong focus on the illegal hunting that currently takes places in these countries. Similar trends of illegal hunting were identified across Europe, many of which traced from EU legislation on the reintroduction of large carnivores or other controversial wildlife conservation projects. In the workshop, proceedings took the form of individual presentations, plenary discussions and group work. Common themes that emerged from these presentations were: illegal hunting as communicating socio-political resistance; the targeting of specific species based on its symbolism or environmental history; illegal hunting as symptom of class struggles; the role of rewilding and domestication of nature on wildlife regulation; corruption, complicity and conflicts of loyalty in enforcement, and discrepancies and discontinuities in legality. These themes were framed in an understanding of illegal hunting as a complex, multifaceted expression that transgresses livelihood based motivation. Critical discussions conceptualised illegal hunting as a crime of dissent. This meant situating crimes as everyday forms of resistance against the regulatory regime. In so doing, the relationship between hunters and public authorities was highlighted as a potential source of disenfranchisement. In this interactionist perspective, illegal hunting tells us not just about the rationales of the offenders. It also elucidates the broader context in which non-compliance with regulation serves as symptoms of democratic and legitimacy deficits on the state level. Erratic transitions in legislation and a subsequent discord between legal, cultural and moral norms in society were identified as factors that contribute to the conflict. Crucially, the research workshop and the report contribute with three perspectives. First, it emphasizes the need to uncover the grey areas of complicity in wildlife crime. Previously corruption, bribery and selective law enforcement have been associated with wildlife trafficking in the global south, but this understanding is too blunt for the complicity that exists in many other contexts. Here conflicts of loyalty exist across several strata of society and differ in degrees. In highlighting this fact, we show a more opaque and contingent climate of complicity around illegal hunting in Northern Europe and elsewhere. Second, as crimes of dissent seeking to publicise injustices, illegal hunting and its associated resistance tactics are counterproductive by constituting a 'dialogue of the dead'. With this is mean that such communication is prone to distortion, misunderstanding and exaggeration and does no favors to hunters. There is consequently a need to move to a clarity of messages, as in institutionalised diogue processes. Third, hunting regulation cannot be seen in isolation to the broader differences in society in terms of values, economic factors and development. Research questions for future scholarship concluded the workshop and are summarized in the report. In terms of illuminating the junctures at which additional research is needed, these questions may provide important guidance. Above all, the report is intended as help for policy-makers, wildlife managers and law enforcement in better understanding and responding to the complexities of illegal hunting. We hope this will lead to more long-term preventative measures that address the core of the issue rather than proximate causes. The workshop was organized by the Environmental Communication Division of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The event constituted a part of the FORMAS funded research project Confronting challenges to political legitimacy of the natural resource management regulatory regime in Sweden - the case of illegal hunting in Sweden whose members include Erica von Essen, Dr. Hans Peter Hansen and Dr. Helena Nordström Källström from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Professor Tarla R. Peterson from Texas A&M University and Dr. Nils Peterson from North Carolina State University.

Background: Agriculture is among the relevant factors for the formation of cities and it has been an integral part of city life throughout history. Despite the increase in population growth, urban agriculture can offer a unique opportunity for improving the livelihood of individuals through the practice of growing food in urban green spaces. Nevertheless, maintaining urban green spaces as part of the urban fabric presents a unique challenge in an environment where there is a shortage of housing and urban space is limited for development. Allotment gardens might be seen as compensation for the lack of green space and private gardens in cities, especially in dense urban areas. However, due to the long waiting list for renting out, not everyone can get access to growing locally cultivated food and other benefits, especially people who are less privileged and cannot afford private gardens. Objective: The aim of this thesis, therefore, was to design a proposal for urban green space, Ekebydalen, to show how to integrate allotment gardening with other social activities. Also, as an input to the proposal, the history of allotment gardens and the theory of sustainable wellbeing was reviewed, and local public participation was investigated. Method: Literature was extensively reviewed in an attempt to identify relevant studies and better understand the context and characteristics of allotment gardens from a social and environmental context, the change in its land use, and accessibility; all in the perspective of the general development of urban agriculture and specifically in allotment movement through history in Sweden. Moreover, Site observation was conducted in a purposely selected allotment garden, Ekebydalen, Uppsala city. Also, an online and paper-based self-administered cross-sectional survey was done among 40 participants. Result: 6 different allotment gardens were observed and characterized. Based on the case study (observation), the Ekebydalen allotment garden was chosen as the main site for further pro-posal development. (60%) of the respondents in the survey were middle-aged (30 -50 years old) women (77.5%), most of them with university education (88%) and Swedish background (90%). Despite the participants has reported living in close proximity to the gardens, around a fourth of them reported having waited for more than six months. Gardening and nature interest (100%), socializing (15%), food complement (62%), and maintaining wellbeing (65%) are the motivation for renting allotment gardens. Conclusion: This thesis argues that the economic and wellbeing values of allotment gardens are perceived as highly significant compared to the social benefit that is allegedly seen less. Nevertheless, the social value can be seen as equally important if integrated as an activity with other social activities in a city, especially in urban communities that don't have enough space for gardening and are caught in their busy lives. Moreover, a design strategy was proposed to show how the allotment garden can be integrated as an activity for cultivation and recreation use (Cultivation park). This thesis has also implied that policy support, institutional recognition, and strong political will from policymakers and planners are required to bring urban agriculture into city planning for improving the quality of life for the people living and working in cities.

The current agricultural policy in the European Union aims at stimulating and facilitating a wide range of agricultural functions besides the production of food and fiber. It goes hand in hand with an increased demand for new services in the agricultural landscape such as nature and history conservation. This new role for the farmer needs to be defined and measured to clarify its significance both to the individual farmer and to the public whose tax money pay for the services. The aim of this thesis is to discuss the new role of agriculture based on material gathered through a special accounting method. All the resources spent on managing agricultural landscapes have been registered continuously on two Swedish farms. On a third farm the same information has been gathered in a farmer's diary and then secondarily transcribed into the same accounting method manual as on the other two farms. Also semi-structured interviews have been performed on these three farms focusing on how and why the farmers manage the agricultural landscape. This thesis shows that the special accounting method is applicable if only a few basic assumptions are made. One such assumption has to do with the division of resources for producing biological and historical value and the resources for producing food and fiber in the agricultural landscape. The evaluation of the method is the main theoretical contribution of this thesis. Another result is that the management practices are relatively time consuming. Moreover the compensation for managing pastures and meadows on the farms within the agri-environmental scheme seems to compensate the extra input of resources in many cases, and factors affecting the degree of compensation are identified in the thesis.

[The late-Soviet social mobilization: the neformaly movement during the perestroika]The late-Soviet social mobilization was characterized by a mass grassroots organization of groups with numerous ideological orientations and political preferences. One of the significant influences came in the form of the informal or neformaly movement. Since 1987 the term is usually associated with socially oriented and political groups (from democrats to anarchists, from monarchists to social-democrats) that cooperated with each other in a broad spectrum of (often apolitical) initiatives in education, culture, environmental protection, sports, etc. They distanced themselves from the state and state-affiliated structures as well as from the new "democratic leaders" emerging from the old party elites. They relied upon horizontal organizational processes and aimed to saturate existing political structures with a new democratic content. Aleksandr Šubin's article describes the process of how the neformaly movement became a driving force for the establishment of political pluralism and the foundation of civil society in Russia.Publication history: Published original.(Published 8 February 2017)Citation: Šubin, Aleksandr V. (2017) "Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen: neformaly-rörelsen under perestrojkan", in Från perestrojka till Bolotnaja. Utvecklingen av ett ryskt civilsamhälle, special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, issue 7, pp. 27–55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.7.1 ; Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen karakteriserades av omfattande gräsrotsorganisering av grupper med olika ideologiska inriktningar och politiska preferenser. En av de mest inflytelserika miljöerna var den informella rörelsen, eller neformaly-rörelsen, som bestod av sociala och politiska grupper (med allt från demokrater till anarkister, monarkister till socialdemokrater) som samarbetade med varandra inom ett brett spektrum av initiativ inom utbildning, kultur, miljöskydd, idrott etc. De distanserade sig både från staten och andra officiella sammanhang, och från de nya "demokratiska ledarna" som kom från de gamla partieliterna. De skapade horisontella organisationsprocesser och syftade till att mätta de existerande politiska strukturerna med ett nytt demokratiskt innehåll. Aleksandr Šubins artikel beskriver hur den informella rörelsen etablerades som en drivande kraft för utvecklingen av politisk pluralism och lade grunden för det civila samhället i Ryssland.Publiceringshistorik: Originalpublicering.(Publicerad 8 februari 2017)Förslag på källangivelse: Šubin, Aleksandr V. (2017) "Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen: neformaly-rörelsen under perestrojkan", i Från perestrojka till Bolotnaja. Utvecklingen av ett ryskt civilsamhälle, specialnummer av Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, nr 7, s. 27–55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.7.1

Emergent farmers have rapidly increased in numbers on the sub-Saharan African continent during the last couple of decades. The main interest in this study lies in how emergent farmers have materialised as a class in a political economic context and historical process and what societal impact they have had. Emergent farmers as a class are understood as capable of reproducing their means of subsistence and creating surplus value without having to own their means of production. Mkanda Extension Planning Area (EPA) in Malawi has served as the empirical area for this matter. During the fieldwork, 31 persons were interviewed. The interviews gave insights into farmers' living conditions. An explorative survey was also conducted with 31 informants, of which 13 persons also participated in the interviews. The explorative survey provided an overview of farm characteristics in the area. In addition, two focus group discussions were held to gain perspective on shared experiences among farmer groups regarding the positioning of emergent farmers, how they and other types of farmers can be classified and how the relationship between farmers appear. The field work was combined with a desk study to investigate political, socioeconomic and environmental conditions through which emergent farmers have materialised. Emergent farmers in Mkanda EPA have materialised through inheritance and acquisition of property such as land; other natural resources; material assets and technology. They have grown through extension service and credit regimes; sales of cash crops and livestock; agribusinesses; incomes from employment and off-farm activities. They have advanced through family and class support; labour power control; strategic utilisation of volatile agricultural markets and income diversification. They have progressed through agricultural institutions, political favouritism and resource exchange with state representatives; traditional authorities; traders; investors; large-scale buyers and other farmer groups. Emergent farmers have contributed to and been shaped by the development of the capitalist mode of production during Malawi's postcolonial history. The farmer class has enabled increased capital investments and accumulation and contributed to new businesses; production methods; market directions and means of livelihood in rural areas. They have provided links between local production conditions; extraction of raw material; capital exchange; means of profit and growth opportunities. At the same time, emergent farmers have constituted a minority that has served certain class interests. While emergent farmers have influenced the socioeconomic and ecological dynamics in rural places such as Mkanda EPA, the class has maintained structures that have reproduced inequality among the population.