| 1. |
- Alakukku, Laura, et al.
(author)
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Maatalouden ympäristötuen vaikuttavuuden seurantatutkimus (MYTVAS 3) : loppuraportti
- 2014
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through the underlying EU legislation requires monitoring of the impacts of the measures implemented. The study monitoring the impact of the 2nd Finnish agri-environmental scheme (MYTVAS 3), which ran from 2008 to 2013, forms part of this monitoring. The MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was also financed by the Ministry of the Environment. The monitoring study was carried out by a consortium coordinated by MTT Agrifood Research Finland and including the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the University of Turku.The purpose of the MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was to find out how agri-environmental support and its various measures have affected the state of the environment in agricultural areas, how agri-environmental support has affected the potential for farming and how agri-environmental support should be developed to increase its impact. The monitoring focused on the impacts of agri-environmental support on the nutrient load from agriculture on the waterways and on biodiversity. When evaluating the findings presented, we should remember that while monitoring data shows that something happened, it does not necessarily explain what caused it. It is not always possible to show that particular developments were a specific outcome of the current agri-environmental support system and the implementation of its measures. The delay between a measure and its observed impact is often long, and the cause-and-effect relationships are complicated and partly unknown. Also, other agricultural policy and fluctuations on the market may affect the state of the agricultural environment directly or indirectly.The monitoring data show that agri-environmental support has not had a detrimental impact on the potential for farming. Despite a slight increase in the incidence of weeds, they do not cause problems of the kind that would require amendments to the content of agri-environmental measures. Carbon levels in the surface stratum of arable land seems to be continuing their slow decline, and there is still need for measures to preserve organic material in the soil.Compliance with the fertilisation limits in the agri-environmental support system would seem to have had very little impact on crop quality. Variations in the weight and protein content per hectolitre and per 1,000 seeds were of the same order between 2006 and 2012 as they were between 1995 and 2005. Crop quantities have also not been noticeably affected by compliance with the fertilisation limits. Average crop yields remained stable between 1986 and 2013, and no clearly different crop years were observed in the 2000s. It is possible, however, that the lower fertilisation levels could have lowered crop potential in the years with advantageous weather conditions in the 2000s and that protein contents have been lower in advantageous years.The monitoring data also show that the nutrient load potential of agriculture, measured by nutrient balances, has decreased continuously for nitrogen and particularly for phosphorus. The decrease in the nutrient load potential is due above all to a decrease in the use of synthetic fertilisers. The decline in nitrogen fertilisation has bottomed out in recent years, and low protein levels measured in high crop yield years show that there is no point in further reducing nitrogen fertilisation. Optimising nitrogen fertilisation according to how advantageous the growing season is and effectively using the soluble nitrogen in cattle manure are key measures in achieving reasonable nitrogen balances and good crop quality despite fluctuations in growing season conditions. New crop variants have been found to make more efficient use of nitrogen than old ones, and thus the introduction of new variants should be promoted. Despite the decrease in the nutrient balances, there are indications that nutrient loads in runoff water from domestic animal production sites are becoming an increasing problem. Indeed, the fundamental problem with the nutrient load from agriculture is the diversification of livestock farming and crop farming, which has made it more difficult to use nutrients appropriately. Therefore attention must be paid to measures that both boost the use of nutrients in manure and reduce the levels of nutrients that end up in manure. Based on nutrient load monitoring in the catchment areas of rivers, the phosphorus load per hectare of cropland has decreased in each programme period, being about 80% of the level of the first period (1995–1999) in the third period (2007–2013). Because of the increase in the area of cropland, the nitrogen load on waterways from agriculture continued to grow during the second programme period (2000–2006) but peaked in the third (2007–2013). A similar trend was found in the nitrogen load per hectare of cropland.The most important threat to biodiversity is caused by the development of landscape structure, typically involving a decrease in the number of open or half-open areas excluded from actual cultivation. The consequence of the clearing of margins and ecological islands located in crop fields, drainage measures aimed at increasing arable land and all rationalisation of cultivated areas is the diminishing of exactly those areas that are the most important from the perspective of the biodiversity of the agricultural environment. However, the measure-specific findings in the monitoring study show that biodiversity benefits have been locally achieved where measures have been implemented on a broad enough scale (biodynamic farming, traditional biotopes, wetlands, buffer zones, green fallow / nature management areas). Particular care should therefore be taken that all cultivated land continues to have a sufficient percentage of non-cultivated areas, whether they be natural meadows, nature management areas, biodiversity strips, buffer zones, filter strips, headlands, ecological islands, etc. Including the rather popular nature management areas as a new voluntary measure under basic measures was a significant contribution to biodiversity.Regarding the rural landscape, it may be noted that by visual inspection the area of cropland has remained largely unchanged, at the level of the landscape as a whole it is far more common for the landscape to become more closed than to become more open. This trend was also observed in the visual inspection of traditional biotopes, even if the openness of the meadows monitored largely remained unchanged.The only measures that directly address the reduction of gaseous emissions in the agri-environmental support system are the longterm grass cultivation on peat fields and special aid agreements for slurry injection in cropland. While other measures have indirectly affected gaseous emissions, the impact of agri-environmental support as a whole on reducing gaseous emissions from agriculture has been negligible. In general, we may conclude that the goals, content and support levels of agri-environmental support measures must be increasingly adapted and customised by region, by type of farming and by farm, because both the state of the agricultural environment and the needs of society differ greatly between different types of rural area.
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| 2. |
- Fast Lappalainen, Katarina, 1975-
(author)
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Om skyddet mot retroaktiv beskattning : En studie i konstitutionell rätt
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- What kind of protection exists concerning retroactive taxation? The purpose of this study is to examine the overall protection against retroactive taxation in Swedish law, including the European Convention on Human Rights and European Union law. Furthermore the study aims to clarify the interpretive aspects of the problem of retroactivity. The methods used are a combination of critical legal positivism and interpretivism. The protection against retroactive taxation in Swedish law is regulated at the constitutional level in the Instrument of Government, Chapter 2 § 10 sec. 2, which has been in force since 1980. The protection is not absolute as there are two exceptions. The first exception is used regularly and allows for a special legislative procedure where the government, through a written communication to the parliament, issues an authoritative forewarning that a retroactive change in the tax law is to be expected. This has created a system of “prospective retroactivity”, where taxpayers are able to foresee, to a certain degree, the situations to which the written communication procedure will apply. The second exception regards the use of retroactive tax legislation in times of war or severe economic crisis, but has never been used. This constitutional provision provides for a rigorous protection against retroactive taxation, but is limited in scope. It only concerns legislative acts by the parliament and the government and the protection mainly concerns retroactivity, not retrospectivity. The Swedish model as a whole appears to be compatible with the human rights protection laid down in the European Convention of Human Rights as well as European Union law. Nevertheless, an active principle-based protection in other areas outside the scope of the constitutional provision seems desirable in order to achieve a more effective protection against retroactive taxation throughout the whole legal system. The study suggests that the concept of retroactivity is an interpretive concept and that the foremost solution to problems of retroactivity is through the balancing of supporting and competing principles or policies. The dichotomy of retroactive and retrospective, that is commonly referred to in legal practice is thus rejected, since it cannot provide for an assessment of what is at stake for the individual. A model for the interpretation of the protection against retroactive taxation based on the principle of proportionality is presented in the study. The principle of proportionality is at the forefront in this respect with its different aspects; legitimacy, necessity, suitability and proportionality stricto sensu. The principle of human dignity is proposed as being decisive regarding the legitimacy of a retroactive interference. Delimiting principles such as the principle of necessity and the principle of the abuse of law are also discussed as a means of justifying retroactive interference. The model has been developed according to the results of a study of the overall protection against retroactive taxation, especially the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union as well as interpretivist theories. The study also discusses the need for clear strategies for the legislator as well as the courts and the tax authorities on how to avoid retroactivity and achieve reasonable transitions, and includes various proposals in this regard.
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| 3. |
- Graham, Emily B., et al.
(author)
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Microbes as Engines of Ecosystem Function : When Does Community Structure Enhance Predictions of Ecosystem Processes?
- 2016
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In: Frontiers in Microbiology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-302X. ; 7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Microorganisms are vital in mediating the earth's biogeochemical cycles; yet, despite our rapidly increasing ability to explore complex environmental microbial communities, the relationship between microbial community structure and ecosystem processes remains poorly understood. Here, we address a fundamental and unanswered question in microbial ecology: 'When do we need to understand microbial community structure to accurately predict function?' We present a statistical analysis investigating the value of environmental data and microbial community structure independently and in combination for explaining rates of carbon and nitrogen cycling processes within 82 global datasets. Environmental variables were the strongest predictors of process rates but left 44% of variation unexplained on average, suggesting the potential for microbial data to increase model accuracy. Although only 29% of our datasets were significantly improved by adding information on microbial community structure, we observed improvement in models of processes mediated by narrow phylogenetic guilds via functional gene data, and conversely, improvement in models of facultative microbial processes via community diversity metrics. Our results also suggest that microbial diversity can strengthen predictions of respiration rates beyond microbial biomass parameters, as 53% of models were improved by incorporating both sets of predictors compared to 35% by microbial biomass alone. Our analysis represents the first comprehensive analysis of research examining links between microbial community structure and ecosystem function. Taken together, our results indicate that a greater understanding of microbial communities informed by ecological principles may enhance our ability to predict ecosystem process rates relative to assessments based on environmental variables and microbial physiology.
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| 4. |
- Janhunen, Pekka, et al.
(author)
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Electric Solar Wind Sail in tailwind
- 2011
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In: EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Electric Solar Wind Sail (E-sail) is a novelpropulsion concept that enables faster space travel tomany solar system targets. E-sail uses charged solarwind particles as the source of its propulsion. This isachieved by deploying long, conducting and chargedtethers, which get pushed by the solar wind byCoulomb drag [1].E-sail technology is being developed to technicalreadiness level (TRL) 4-5 by the European Union’sSeventh Framework Programme for Research andTechnological Development, EU FP7, in a projectnamed ESAIL (http://www.electric-sailing.fi/fp7).Prototypes of the key parts are to be produced. Thedesign will be scalable so that a real solar winddemonstration mission could be scaled up from them.We review here the latest results of the constantlyevolving E-sail project.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Jonsson Cornell, Anna, 1973-, et al.
(author)
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Emergency Laws in Comparative Constitutional Law : The Case of Sweden and Finland
- 2018
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In: German Law Journal. - 2071-8322. ; 19:2, s. 219-249
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Within Scandinavia, Sweden stands out for not having gone to war in over 200 years. Its neighboring states—Finland, Denmark, and Norway—have not been as fortunate. Their respective constitutions each provide insight into their different experiences. The Swedish Constitution remains silent on emergency situations that do not rise to the predefined level of “war.” The Finnish constitution differs from the Swedish in that it allows for time-limited restrictions to protect fundamental rights and freedoms during a state of emergency, aggression, or any other situation that poses a severe threat to the nation, if stipulated by law and in congruence with international obligations of Finland. Importantly, when and how a government can declare a state of emergency is a question of ordinary law, rather than a constitutional one. This Article offers a comparative constitutional law analysis of the relative constitutional silence in Sweden and Finland as concerns emergency powers. The analysis takes as its starting point Böckenförde’s The Repressed State of Emergency: The Exercise of State Authority in Extraordinary Circumstances.
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