| 1. |
- Sandin, Per, et al.
(författare)
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Technology Neutrality in European Regulation of GMOs
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ethics, Policy & Environment. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2155-0085 .- 2155-0093. ; 1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objections to the current EU regulatory system on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in terms of high cost and lack of consistency, speed and scientific underpinning have prompted proposals for a more technology-neutral system. We sketch the conceptual background of the notion of ‘technology neutrality’ and propose a refined definition of the term. The proposed definition implies that technology neutrality of a regulatory system is a gradual and multidimensional feature. We use the definition to analyze two regulatory reform proposals: One proposal from the Netherlands for improving the exemption mechanism for GMOs under Directive 2001/18/EC, and one from the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board, outlining a new stratified risk assessment procedure. While both proposals offer some degree of improved technology neutrality in some dimensions compared to current EU regulation, in some extents and dimensions, they do not. We conclude that proposals for more technology-neutral regulation of GMOs need, first, to make explicit to what extent and in what dimensions the proposal improves neutrality and, second, to present arguments supporting that these specific improvements constitute desirable policy change against the background of objections to current policy.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Hallberg-Sramek, Isabella, et al.
(författare)
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Applying machine learning to media analysis improves our understanding of forest conflicts
- 2024
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Ingår i: Land use policy. - : Elsevier. - 0264-8377 .- 1873-5754. ; 144
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Conflicts over the management and governance of forests seem to be increasing. Previous media studies in this area have largely focused on analysing the portrayal of specific conflicts. This study aims to review how a broad range of forest conflicts are portrayed in the Swedish media, analysing their temporal, spatial, and relational dimensions. We applied topic modelling, a machine learning approach, to analyse 53,600 articles published in the Swedish daily press between 2012 and 2022. We identified 916 topics, of which 94 were of interest for this study. Our results showed ten areas of forest conflicts: hunting and fishing (35 % of total coverage), energy (24 %), recreation and tourism (11 %), nature conservation (8 %), forest damages (6 %), international issues (5 %), forestry (5 %), reindeer husbandry (4 %), media and politics (2 %), and mining (1 %). The overall coverage of forest conflicts increased significantly over the study period, potentially reflecting an actual increase in forest conflicts. Some of the conflicts were continuously reported upon over time, while the coverage of others exhibited seasonal or event-related patterns. Four conflicts received most of their coverage in specific regions, while others were covered across the whole of Sweden. A relational analysis of the conflicts revealed three clusters of forest conflicts focused respectively on industrial, cultural, and conservation conflicts. Our results emphasise the value of using topic modelling to understand the overall patterns and trends of the media coverage of current land use conflicts, while also highlighting potential areas of emerging conflicts that may be of special interest for planners and policy-makers to monitor and manage.
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| 4. |
- Lindahl, Karin Beland, et al.
(författare)
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The Swedish forestry model : more of everything?
- 2017
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Ingår i: Forest Policy and Economics. - : Elsevier. - 1389-9341 .- 1872-7050. ; 77, s. 44-55
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- "The Swedish forestry model" refers to the forest regime that evolved following the 1993 revision of the Swedish Forestry Act. It is key to Swedish forest politics and used to capture the essence of a sustainable way of managing forests. However, the ideas, institutions and practices comprising the model have not been comprehensively analyzed previously. Addressing this knowledge gap, we use frame analysis and a Pathways approach to investigate the underlying governance model, focusing on the way policy problems are addressed, goals, implementation procedures, outcomes and the resulting pathways to sustainability. We suggest that the institutionally embedded response to pressing sustainability challenges and increasing demands is expansion, inclusion and integration: more of everything. The more-of-everything pathway is influenced by ideas of ecological modernization and the optimistic view that existing resources can be increased. Our findings suggest that in effect it prioritizes the economic dimension of sustainability. While broadening out policy formulation it closes down the range of alternative outputs, a shortcoming that hampers its capacity to respond to current sustainability challenges. Consequently, there is a need for a broad public debate regarding not only the role of forests in future society, but also the operationalization of sustainable development.
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| 5. |
- Ekström, Hanna, et al.
(författare)
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Barking up the wrong tree? : A guide to forest owner typology methods
- 2024
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Ingår i: Forest Policy and Economics. - : Elsevier. - 1389-9341 .- 1872-7050. ; 163
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Creating typologies of forest owners is a common approach for analyzing and understanding heterogeneity in responses to forest policies and management practice uptake. While many forest owner typologies have been developed, only a few quantitative methods dominate the field with little information on how methodological choice affects outcomes. In this study we compare five methods for quantitative typology formation and ask what type of information each method provides, and to which degree the methods complement each other. Empirically we use data from a survey conducted in 2014–2015 about Swedish forest owner's objectives, attitudes, and factors of decision-making. The results show that individual forest owners are assigned to different clusters by the compared methods, and how each method highlights different aspects of forest owner characteristics. The study shows the importance of method selection as it influences how we can describe and interpret forest owners in connection to policy adoption, uptake of practices, and environmental awareness. We conclude by providing basis for a methodological guidance on how to make judgments when selecting method(s) to typology formation based on research purpose and approach.
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| 6. |
- Johansson, Karl-Erik
(författare)
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Barriers and bridges for introducing agroforestry and community-based forestry among food insecure households in eastern Africa
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of introducing agroforestry and community-based forestry is to secure and improve livelihoods, maintain and restore ecosystem services, and contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, the adoption and scaling up of these systems among food insecure communities have proved to be difficult. To better understand why, I identified barriers and bridges at different adoption stages and levels of governance. These were analysed using policy narratives and the sustainable livelihood approach in the light of sustainable development, sustainability and resilience of landscapes. The first stage was the negotiation process between the Swedish NGO Vi-Skogen and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) about funding. Three explanatory approaches were used: organizational, power and context. Vi-Skogen and Sida were caught in policy incompatibility dilemmas that slowed down the NGO policy process, and delayed critical changes that could have improved project outcomes. The second was Vi-Skogen’s agroforestry project in Tanzania’s Mara Region. A random sample of 21 households was drawn from each of 89 project villages. The proportion of households with surviving agroforestry trees varied from 10-90 % among villages. Field training and visits to farmers with good practices were important for households to start planting trees. Local collaboration, perceived ownership of trees and benefits of trees for crop production were additional factors important for households’ decision to continue with agroforestry practices. The third was eleven community-based forest producer and user groups (CBFGs) in eastern and southern Africa. Development of many groups had stagnated and few had managed to develop large scale value-added production. I identified eight barriers and four bridges that influenced the scaling up process of agroforestry and community based forestry among food insecure households. All resulted from interactions among social, political, and economic structures and processes at multiple levels of governance. It is concluded that these interactions influenced the scaling up process and the development of sustainable subsistence systems among food insecure households. Collaborative knowledge production and learning is an approach through which the social capital and organisational capacity of the food insecure households can grow, enabling them to constructively address these multidimensional interactions to work in their favour. The use of this approach, i.e. a landscape approach, holds the opportunity through which subsistence systems can be transformed from causing degradation to promote sustainable development and livelihoods.
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| 7. |
- Petelin, Eugène
(författare)
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Security priorities in circular economy : A conceptual review
- 2024
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Ingår i: Sustainable Production and Consumption. - 2352-5509. ; 47, s. 655-669
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Political interest in the circular economy (CE) concept is increasing globally, creating the conditions for a transformation towards a more circular society. Meanwhile, the security implications of specific circular solutions and their impact on prioritisation between CE policies remain unclear. This paper applied an abductive approach to systematic and critical review methods to explore the connections between CE and security and map security priorities from the academic literature. In the systematic review, 249 papers on the CE were analysed using the circular principles framework and resource security concept. Then, the critical review selected 38 papers and employed a constructivist security discourse framework to distinguish security perspectives in the CE. As a result, this study presents a spectrum of circular solutions that can address the challenges of food, material, energy, and water resource security. Four security discourses in the CE that prioritise different solutions and have diverse security implications are found. These results can help CE studies to relate conceptually to resource security and broaden the spectrum of applicable solutions. The CE's security discourse framework can be used to explore the geopolitical, intragenerational, social, and environmental effects of circular solutions, inform political debates, evaluate circular policies, and support marginalised circular solutions to ensure an inclusive circular transformation.
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| 8. |
- Sandström, Annica, et al.
(författare)
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Disputed policy change: the role of external events, policy learning and negotiated agreements in coastal and marine conservation planning.
- 2018
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Ingår i: Paper presented at the 2018 conference of the European Consortium for Political Research.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- What are the driving forces behind and obstacles to policy change in disputed policy processes? The general purpose of this paper is to explore and explain policy change – a major and debated issue in contemporary policy research – in the context of Swedish coastal and marine conservation planning. The paper draws on the advocacy coalition framework that accentuates the critical role of coalitions for the outcome of policy processes and identifies three primarily drivers to policy change: triggering key events, policy learning and negotiations via brokerage. Three national park planning processes, with divergent results, are mapped and analysed over 30 years time through a document- and interview study. What combination of factors in relation to policy coalitions – triggering events, policy learning and negotiated agreements – can explain divergent outcomes in the studied national park planning processes? The empirical analysis identified all three factors as important for the turnout. Triggering events, in combination with either negotiated agreements or policy learning, were the main pathways to change and our findings suggest that the type of policy beliefs around which the competing coalitions are formed influenced the specific route taken The results of the study contribute with knowledge on disputed policy change and give rise to new intriguing questions; they provide an empirical illustration of political conflicts and their solutions in nature conservation, and generate insights critical to the implementation of international and national conservation policy in multi-level governance systems.
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| 9. |
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| 10. |
- Beland Lindahl, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Future forests: Perceptions and strategies of key actors
- 2012
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0282-7581 .- 1651-1891. ; 27, s. 154-163
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract This paper investigates how key actors perceive the future of the forest sector: how they position themselves in relation to climate, energy and demography related trends. Actors’ perceptions of future challenges and opportunities influence their choice of strategy and action. Actors’ relative capacity to realise their visions, in turn, shape future forest use. Frame analysis is used to explore selected actor’s perceptions and strategies and the existence of major divisions, i.e. frame conflicts. Empirically, the study is based on the case of Sweden as a typical boreal forest producing region. Actors’ perceptions of the challenges facing the forest sector diverge widely. Yet, most actors see the future of the forest sector as linked to broader issues of climate mitigation and energy transition. These issues trigger fundamental discussions about social change and the role of forests in future society. A major division separates actors who perceive biomass supply as unlimited, or at least not constraining, and those who stress scarcity and re-distribution of resources. This difference, or frame conflict, is reflected in actors’ forest related strategies and may fuel future forest debates and conflicts
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