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- Billgren, Charlotte, 1979-
(författare)
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Making Sense of Environmental Values : Wetlands in Kenya
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- En av de viktigaste frågorna i världen idag är naturresurshantering. Med en väx-ande befolkning och hoten från klimatförändringar kommer förvaltningen av jordens naturresurser bli än viktigare, såväl för dagens generation som kommande generationer. En viktig aspekt när det gäller naturresurshantering är hur människor uppfattar och värderar naturen. För att komma närmare dessa miljövärden har ett flertal olika vetenskapliga tillvägagångssätt föreslagits. Den här avhandlingen undersöker hur det är möjligt att närma sig miljövärden under olika omständighe-ter och utifrån olika behov. Detta görs genom att undersöka hur olika teorier har använts, och kan användas, avseende olika våtmarker i Kenya. I utvecklingslän-der har naturresurser, teoretiskt sett, ett högre värde eftersom fattiga människor till en högre grad är direkt beroende av naturresurser och ekosystemtjänster. Ut-gångspunkten i denna avhandling är sex våtmarksområden i Kenya under olika förvaltning och med ett flertal, både aktuella och potentiella, användare. I av-handlingen undersöks hur lokalsamhället, myndigheter, industrier och turister uppfattar och värderar våtmarkerna. Genom att applicera ett arenaperspektiv, som betonar vikten av tvärvetenskap, diskuteras i avhandlingen det ekonomiska värdet av miljön för att sedan applicera andra metoder såsom emergy analys, stakeholder analys, kulturteori och riskanalys för att bredda och berika värderingen av miljön.
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- Bylund, Jonas R
(författare)
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Planning, Projects, Practice : A Human Geography of the Stockholm Local Investment Programme in Hammarby Sjöstad
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Programmes and policies to support ecological sustainable development and the practice of implementation is a question of innovation rather than known and taken for granted procedure. This thesis argues a priori models concerning stability in the social sciences, and human geography especially, are less able to help us understand this practice and planning in such unstable situations. Problematic in common understandings of planning and policy implementation concerning sustainability are the dualisms between physical-social spaces and between rationality-contingency. The first dualism makes it hard to grasp the interaction between humans and nonhumans. The second dualism concerns the problem of how to capture change without resorting to reductionism and explanaining the evolving projects as either technically, economically, or culturally rational. The scope of the thesis is to test resources from actor-network theory as a means of resolving these dualisms. The case is the Stockholm Local Investment Programme and the new district of Hammarby Sjöstad. The programme’s objective was to support the implemention of new technologies and systems, energy efficiency and reduced resource-use as well as eco-cycling measures. The case-study follows how the work with the programme unfolded and how administrators’ efforts to reach satisfactory results was approached. In doing this, the actors had to be far more creative than models of implementation and traditional technology diffusion seem to suggest. The recommendation is to take the instrumentalisation framing the plasticity of a project in planning seriously – as innovativeness is not a special but the general case. Hence, to broaden our tools and understanding of planning a human geography of planning projects is pertinent.
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- Janson, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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Analysis of patient selection and external validity in the Swedish contribution to the COLOR trial.
- 2009
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Ingår i: Surgical endoscopy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1432-2218 .- 0930-2794. ; 23:8, s. 1764-9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- OBJECTIVE: The colon cancer laparoscopic or open resection (COLOR) trial is an international, randomised controlled trial comparing outcomes of open and laparoscopic surgery for colon cancer. The main purpose of this study was to determine representability by comparing included and nonincluded patients in the participating Swedish centres. DESIGN: At eight centres, which included 391 of the 422 Swedish patients, a local database search was performed to identify retrospectively all patients (n = 2,384) who underwent surgery for colon cancer during the inclusion period, and data was retrieved from medical records. RESULTS: Four hundred fifty-six patients were randomised, 65 of whom were excluded post randomisation (group 2), leaving 391 patients in the study (group 1). For 1,566 patients, valid exclusion criteria were found (group 3). Thus, 362 patients were eligible but not included (group 4). Relative to group 1, patients in group 4 had a significantly higher American Society of Anaesthesiologists (ASA) score, more advanced tumour stage and difference regarding the resections performed. Results showed that 1470 patients (62%) could be calculated as feasible for laparoscopic colon resection (LCR) in a clinical, nontrial situation. CONCLUSIONS: The study population in the Swedish part of the COLOR trial was representative of the eligible population with the exception of comorbidity, where those actually included had less severe comorbidity than the nonincluded but eligible patients. In Sweden, 50-60% of colon cancer patients can be operated on by laparoscopy.
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- Krook, Joakim, 1977-
(författare)
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Concentrate or dilute contaminants? : Strategies for Swedish wood waste
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to assess the environmental consequences of management strategies for wood waste in Sweden. There is a special focus on separation strategies and in what way such measures influence environmental aspects such as the presence of heavy metals in the waste. Actors’ incentives and capacity to influence wood waste management are analysed, emphasising the importance of driving forces such as governmental regulation and market interactions.The results show that, in comparison to present dilution practice, separation of contaminants would lead to decreased heavy metal emissions during combustion of wood waste while still recovering a similar energy yield from the waste. Such measures would also increase possibilities for resource-saving reuse of the generated ash. For most metals, however, long-term pollution concerns related to accumulations in landfills and unintentional co-recycling are difficult to address, regardless of separation strategy. An exception is industrial preservative-treated wood waste that according to regulation is to be separately handled as hazardous, for which separation measures also would address such future concerns. This indicates that governments could play an important role in environmental policy by, for instance, stimulating separate handling of certain discarded products.Actors in the energy sector involved in fuel and heat production have quite restricted capacities for separation of contaminants in wood waste. Instead, achieving substantially less contaminated wood waste seems to require actors in the waste and construction sectors to develop source separation measures. The fact that such measures often involve actors lacking professional standards for waste management constitutes a fundamental obstacle to efficient separation. Perhaps even more hampering is that source separation at present leads to increased waste disposal costs for actors in the construction sector. Such economic outcomes of source separation are unfavourable, since these actors consider wood waste as a disposal problem for which the costs should be minimised. Despite these obstacles, however, the results show that some actors have proved capable of achieving relatively efficient separation.At present, only a minor share of industrial preservative–treated wood waste is separately handled as hazardous. For actors in the energy, waste and construction sectors, the incentives for such measures appear low even though introduced regulations potentially could have created such incentives. It appears as if a lack of steering mechanisms such as communication and supervision have neutralised the inherent pressure from regulation in many cases. Quality requirements, on the other hand, can be concluded to be of outmost importance for motivating separation measures. Unfortunately, market forces encourage actors in the energy sector to practice inconsistent enforcement of quality requirements. As a consequence, actors in the waste and construction sectors do not experience any strong pressure for separation of contaminants from their customers. In fact, such an inconsistent enforcement of quality requirements seems to have counteracted legal pressures for separation, due to present customer-oriented business management.
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- Månsson, Nina, 1972-
(författare)
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Substance flow analyses of metals and organic compounds in an urban environment : – the Stockholm example
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The intensified use of materials, products and goods in our time involves massive consumption of metals and organic compounds that can be released from society to the environment in the various stages of production, use and waste. Depending on the circumstances this may give rise to environmental risks, as metals in general and certain organic substances may be toxic in the short or long term. So where have those metals and organic substances been utilized? In which products or environments? Substance flow analysis (SFA) is a method to deal with these issues. The results from the analysis are quantifications of flows and stocks in a systematic way and within defined system boundaries.In this thesis four main research areas are identified, which need to be addressed. i) Application of SFA on substances that have not been studied in this respect before, which can give knowledge about flows and stocks related to consumption of goods. ii) Development of SFA to meet the needs in studies of trends for the substance cycles and studies of quantification of potential changes. iii) Assessment of which different agents and actions that induce the changes, such as chemical regulations, environmental objectives and aims. To what extent can these changes be related to substance flows? iv) Finally to assess, how can SFA be useful in environmental decisions? The specified aims focus on the metals antimony (Sb), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg) and the group of organic compounds alkylphenol/alkylphenol ethoxylates (AP/APEO), in urban environments, exemplified with case studies of Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.This thesis is a result of five studies. Three were based mainly on the methodology of SFA (Paper I-III). It has also been important to develop the chemical analysis of metals in goods where there has been a lack of information (Paper IV). Furthermore, assessment of policy questions and chemical regulations involve qualitative approaches and discussions (Paper I and V).The results show urban flows and stocks of the metals Cd, Hg, Pb and Sb and the group of organic substances AP/APEO. The results confirm that goods are important for the release of the substances studied. For Sb, emissions from brake linings (96%) dominate, but there are small emissions from textiles, potential emissions from flame retarded goods and probably small point sources. For AP/APEO the textile emissions were previously underestimated and the SFA presented here included this and pose textiles and cleaning agents as major emission source to wastewater.To repeat studies and to compare results from different years was a development of the SFA-method, which showed that Cd and Hg are being phased out as the inflow and stocks show diminished amounts, whereas the emissions remain approximately constant when comparing 1995 with 2002/2003. For Pb it is possible to talk about a phase-out of some specific goods, but not in general for inflow and stock.The changes in urban metabolism could be related to environmental decisions, e.g. effects of local initiatives and in some cases voluntary initiatives, but also as result of prevailing chemicals regulation. The utility of SFAs for decision makers may be related to methodological issues, such as the accounting approach. However, the utility was also found to depend on the structure of the monitoring, that is screening in the environment and concentration in wastewaters and sewage sludge precede the source mapping conducted with SFA. Substance Flow Analysis will likely continue to serve as the broad information tool for one substance at a time, which will offer source characterization of diffuse emissions in urban environments.
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- Ness, Barry, et al.
(författare)
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Categorising tools for sustainability assessment
- 2007
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Ingår i: Ecological Economics. - : Elsevier BV. - 0921-8009. ; 60:1, s. 498-508
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this paper is to provide a cohesive categorisation of the most common sustainability assessment tools within the broader objective of lifting the understanding of tools from the environmentally-focused realm to that of the wider concept of sustainability. The framework provided is based on four main categories: indicators/indices, regional material and energy flows, life cycle approach and tools for integrated assessment. Furthermore, there is the overarching category of monetary valuation tools that can be used as a part of many of the tools listed in the subcategories above. The paper also shows that many of the tools for sustainability assessment still fail to fulfil the demands of the complex environmental, social and economic systems as proposed by the promoters of sustainability science.
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