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- Brisvall, Maja, et al.
(författare)
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The Biosphere Code Manifesto
- 2015
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Ingår i: Online publication (thebiospherecode.com).
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Biosphere Code is a Transformation Lab (TLab) connected to the Transformations Conference (Stockholm, 2015) and took place on the 4th of October 2015.
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| 4. |
- Dauriach, Alice, 1991-
(författare)
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Financial institutions, companies, and the biosphere
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- International organisations, governments and civil society have become increasingly vocal in their demands that financial institutions take social and environmental responsibility for the companies they invest in. Some financial institutions have started to assume this responsibility in practice by building international alliances and standards, by reallocating their capital, and by trying to influence corporate policies towards environmental and social goals. Through their ability to allocate and price capital, financial institutions are sometimes believed to be a leverage point to enact rapid and large-scale change towards sustainability. The influence these financial institutions have is still under-researched, however, especially on companies in sectors associated with changes in the biosphere which pose severe risks to human development. In this thesis, I ask: to what extent can financial institutions advance biosphere-based sustainability through their investments in companies? I have three main aims. The first one is to identify key companies and financial institutions which can be linked to changes in the biosphere that pose severe risks to human wellbeing. I select the most critical commodity production sectors driving large-scale biosphere change using insights from social-ecological systems science. I focus on economic activities that result in anthropogenic land use changes that either affect known tipping points in the climate system (the Amazon rainforest), or that increase the risk of emergence and re-emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. The second aim is to develop methods to assess the degree of influence that financial institutions have on corporate activities, drawing from finance research and management theory. I investigate the relationship between financial institutions and large companies, and especially to what extent companies are reliant on different financial flows for their operations, in order to determine through which mechanisms financial institutions could exert influence on them, if at all. Assessing the potential influence of financial institutions on companies requires combining existing methods and bringing together disconnected sources of data about environmental impact, business activity, investments, and financing sources. The third aim is to analyse what factors pose limits to financial influence.Paper 1 analyses the role played by financial institutions as owners in industries associated with anthropogenic land use changes and, as a result, increased zoonotic disease risks. We identify publicly listed companies present in nine regional case studies, as well as the financial institutions that invest in them. We analyse those financial institutions’ potential influence based on both their ownership size and their position in the network of owners.Paper 2 examines the origin of loans obtained by all companies operating in the high deforestation-risk sectors of mineral production, soy trade or cattle trade in the Brazilian Amazon. We assess to what extent companies rely on relatively unaccountable sources of credit, notably credit from secrecy jurisdictions and transnational intra-company credit, which may limit the potential for influence from financial institutions.In conclusion, I find that financial institutions have an important role to play in many sectors and regions analysed, but that this role is limited by a number of factors. These factors include the prevalence of non-financial shareholders in some companies, especially in case studies in the Global South, and the reliance of companies on internal finance and financial flows from secrecy jurisdictions. Companies themselves, and the inner workings of their corporate groups – their private owners, their subsidiaries in various countries, their ethical stance – seem to also be of great importance.
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| 7. |
- Falk, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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Exponential Roadmap: Scaling 36 Solutions to Halve Emissions by 2030
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The 2019 Exponential Roadmap focuses on moving from incremental to exponential climate action in the next decade. It presents 36 economically- viable solutions to cut global greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 and the strategies to scale this transformation. The roadmap is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep global average temperature “well below 2°C” and aiming for 1.5°C above pre- industrial levels. The 2019 roadmap is the second in the series. Each new roadmap updates solutions that have proven potential to scale and charts progress towards exponential scaling. The roadmap, based on the carbon law (see box) is a collaboration between academia, business and civil society. The roadmap is complemented with a high-ambition narrative, Meeting the 1.5°C Ambition, that presents the case why holding global average temperature increase to just 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is important. Since the first roadmap, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its special report on 1.5°C. The report concluded that the economic and humanitarian risks of a 2°C world are significantly higher than 1.5°C. The remaining emissions budget for 1.5°C is small, and will be exceeded within ten to fifteen years at current emission rates. The window of feasibility is closing rapidly. The global economic benefit of a low-carbon future is estimated at US$26 trillion by 2030 compared with staying on the current high-carbon pathway. The scale of transformation – halving emissions by 2030 – is unprecedented but the speed is not. Some cities and companies can transform significantly faster. Developed nations with significant historic emissions have a responsibility to reduce emissions faster. Greenhouse gas emissions, and the solutions to reduce them, are grouped by six sectors: energy, industry, transport, buildings, food consumption, nature-based solutions (sources and sinks). Meeting the 1.5°C goal means implementing solutions in parallel across all sectors. The solutions must scale exponentially. The roadmap identifies four levers required to scale the transformation as well as necessary actions for each: policy, climate leadership and movements, finance and exponential technology. Implementation must be fair and just or risk deep resistance.
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- Galafassi, Diego, 1984-
(författare)
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The Transformative Imagination : Re-imagining the world towards sustainability
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A central task for sustainability science in the Anthropocene is to offer guidance on alternative pathways of change. Even though this search and implementation of pathways towards sustainability is likely to require profound social-ecological transformations, little is yet known about the individual and collective capacities needed to support such transformations. This thesis explores the connection between human imagination and sustainability transformations, and introduces the notion of the transformative imagination to support methodological innovation in sustainability sciences, and practices aiming to support transformations towards sustainability. The transformative imagination is suggested to support fundamentally new ways of seeing, feeling, encountering and envisioning the world. The thesis takes a transdisciplinary action-research approach and studies how specific participatory practices, including the arts, may foster the transformative imagination as a means to more skilfully respond to, anticipate and shape social-ecological trajectories in the Anthropocene. The four included papers, each explores how practices may support particular features of the imagination as a transformative capacity. Paper I analyses a case in coastal Kenya where participatory modelling and future scenarios are applied to foster imagination of dynamics of interdependences and trade-offs within the context of poverty alleviation and ecosystems change. Paper II explores system diagrams and scenarios as practices for the development of social-ecological narratives that may support robust interventions in coastal Kenya and Mozambique. Paper III implements, and studies how an art-based approach based on performances, visual methods and an art installation, could support transformative visions of the Iberian Peninsula in the context of extreme climate change. Paper IV is a literature review of the potential contributions of the arts to transformations, in the context of climate change. These papers focus on different features of imagination, which under certain circumstances may progressively develop into societal transformative capacities with the potential to re-structure current social-ecological realities. Overall, this thesis is a step towards forging new kinds of reflexive, imaginative and deliberative practices that can support the emergence of local arrangements of a sustainable world where life can carry on.
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- Galafassi, Diego
(författare)
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Transformational knowledge practices in social-ecological systems
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Climate change and poverty alleviation are examples of interconnected challenges propelling changes across environmental, social, cultural and political spheres. Interconnected challenges are characterized by multiple causality, feedback loops, non-linear dynamics. Transformations, as fundamental reconfigurations of social-ecological relations, are increasingly proposed as a strategy for tackling interconnected challenges. Transformations seem to require a move towards diverse, integrated, imaginative, anticipatory, dynamic forms of knowledge making. Although new forms of knowledge creation are indeed emerging in sustainability science and practice, this area of studies is yet to yield a coherent research framework for analyzing the contribution of these practices to transformations in social-ecological systems. The central aim of this thesis is to a) provide a theoretical framework and b) to explore and assess feasibility and effectiveness of concrete knowledge practices that could help governance actors to move towards forms of deliberate transformations in the face of interconnected challenges. Two empirical research papers based on a case-study in Coastal Kenya are presented. In these papers we approached the interconnected challenges of social-ecological trade-offs by engaging multiple knowledge practices (ranging from dialogue, to narrative scenarios, participatory modelling and ecological modelling) to create a space for imagination and deliberation amongst governance actors and scientists. Assessment of this process was performed with a mixed methods research design, including interviews, surveys, and participant observation. Results suggest that overall, these knowledge practices supported: a) development of systemic and collaborative mindsets (Paper 1); b) revision of core assumptions (Paper 1); c) the identification of key cross-scale tradeoffs that were previously not considered by governance actors (Paper 2). These results highlight the potential of these knowledge practices in fostering knowledge relevant for re-imagination and reconfiguration of social-ecological systems. I conclude by proposing that transformational knowledge practices present at least four key elements in that they are: plural and coproduced, affect change across scales, involve multiple ways of knowing and foster imagination.
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- Galaz, Victor, et al.
(författare)
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AI i klimatets tjänst : en kartläggning av svensk kompetens i ett internationellt perspektiv
- 2021
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Klimatutmaningen ställer mycket stora krav på samhället. I takt med att klimatförändringarnas effekter blir allt tydligare genom bland annat omfattande skogsbränder, smältande havsisar, och extremoväder, så får klimatfrågan också allt större uppmärksamhet i det offentliga samtalet, hos beslutsfattare, och inom näringsliv och civilsamhälle. Teknikutvecklingen har alltid varit viktig i diskussionen om klimatfrågans orsaker och lösningar, liksom för forskning om hållbar utveckling i stort. I takt med att artificiell intelligens (AI) sett en språngvis utveckling och dess tillämpningar tycks öka på flera samhällsområden, så ökar också intresset för hur AI kan bidra till att tackla klimatutmaningen i alla dess dimensioner - från grundläggande klimatforskning, till klimatanpassning och klimatinnovation. Följande rapport, AI i klimatets tjänst, ger en överblick av potentialen hos AI för klimatutmaningen. Rapporten presenterar också en kartläggning av potentialen för Sverige att bli internationellt ledande inom detta område. Analysen bygger på en litteraturöversikt, intervjuer, en enkätundersökning och en systematisk genomgång av klimatrelaterad AI-forskning i Sverige och utomlands. Resultaten är på intet sätt slutgiltiga, utan ger en överblicksbild av ett snabbt växande område. Vi hoppas att rapporten ska kunna fungera som ett första diskussionsunderlag för de myndigheter, företag, forskare och andra som är intresserade av att vidareutveckla potentialen hos AI-tekniker och deras användning för klimatutmaningen.
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