Karlstad kommun har de senaste åren arbetat med projektet ”Klimatsmart mat” där kommunen fokuserat på hållbarhetsfrågor inom måltidsverksamheter i skolor. Konceptet One planet plate har testats för första gången i skolor och Karlstad kommun var först ut i Sverige att prova.  Det här är en kvalitativ studie som har genomförts via personliga intervjuer med fyra stycken kostansvariga på de skolor som var utvalda att delta i One planet platesamt kommunens koststrateg. Syftet med studien har varit att undersöka hur de utvalda skolorna upplever att konceptet har fungerat på deras arbetsplats samt vilka möjligheter och hinder de upplever att det klimatsmarta arbetet ger upphov till. Studien har visat att One planet platehar upplevts som ett konkret och enkelt verktyg för de kostansvariga att använda sig av. Det har dock tagit mycket tid och planering att skapa recept som håller sig inom gränsvärdet för koldioxidutsläpp. För att förbättra konceptet föreslås att måltiderna bör kombineras med pedagogisk undervisning angående matens klimatpåverkan för att skapa en bättre förståelse hos eleverna.  I det klimatsmarta arbetet har flera hinder och möjligheter beskrivits och de viktigaste handlar om ekonomiska förutsättningar och politikers makt att påverka. Även att erbjuda klimatsmart mat från tidig ålder har lyfts som betydande för att kunna förändra attityder och kunskap som skapar långsiktiga hållbara vanor. / Karlstad community has been working with the project ”Climate-smart food” where the community in the past years has been focusing on sustainability questions within school canteens. The concept ”One planet plate” has been tested for the first time in schools and Karlstad community was the first in Sweden to try it. This is a qualitative study, carried out by interviewing those four people responsible for catering at the selected schools within one planet plateand the food strategist of the community. The purpose of this study have been to examine how the chosen schools experience that the concept have worked on their working place and which opportunities and obstacles they find the climate smart work causes. The study have found that one planet platehas been perceived as a concrete and easy tool for those responsible of the cantines to use. However, it has been time consuming to create recipes whitin the limits of carbon emissions. To improve the concept they suggest to combine the meals with educational teaching concerning the climate impact of food, to create a better understanding for the students. In the climate-smart work various obstacles and opportunities were described and the most important concerns financial prerequisites and the power politicians have to affect. Also, to offer climate-smart food from an early age have been lifted as important to be able to change attitudes and knowledge that creates long-term sustainable habits.

Climate change has become a catalyst for global action on greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change orchestrated the Paris Agreement to propel the international community towards implementing definitive carbon abatement plans. These policy commitments are known as Nationally Determined Contributions. However, as of yet many signatories to the Agreement are struggling to align their mitigation pledge with domestic policies. The energy sector is one of the key industries implicit in this carbon abatement process. New energy policies will need to be radically reoriented towards a low-carbon trajectory. In the literature, this pursuit is classed as a socio-technical transition. The Philippines is severely vulnerable to the risks posed by extreme weather patterns exaggerated by increasing temperatures. The country has actively engaged with the climate change discourse but recent trends demonstrate a reversal in low-carbon energy sector planning. Its status as an emerging economy with high potential GDP growth rates increases the urgency to act now to avoid becoming locked-in to an outdated energy system. A discourse and thematic analysis was conducted on key Philippine government texts concerning future energy policy. The approach enabled an exploration of the mechanisms underlying power sector governance in the context of the Paris Agreement. The multi-level perspective provided a conceptual framework for the findings, and enabled the identification of relationships and antagonism within discourses linked to energy system. This framework breaks down the system into three tiers and facilitates analysis of the interplay between landscape pressures, regime resistance and niche experimentation. The results indicated a disparity between the two government agencies on the necessity of low-carbon sector planning. The Philippine Climate Change Commission correlated the benefits of carbon abatement much more closely with the wider goals of sustainable development. The department of energy meanwhile advocated fossil fuel capacity building to meet economic requirements. Divergence in storylines led to a poor alignment between domestic energy policy and the aims of the Paris Agreement. An appreciation of the barriers to a unified overarching mitigation discourse, will assist in the creation of long-term abatement strategies required by the Paris Agreement.

The release of harmful chemicals into the Earth system is a threat to the survival of human societies and ecosystems. There are different types of harmful chemicals, some possess characteristics that are more harmful than others. Chemicals causing local effects have a short-term impact on the Earth system, whereas others are persistent in nature. The second becomes a global pollution issue because these substances accumulate, resulting in cascades through the Earth system. The chemical pollution issue is a scale challenge, meaning that the pollution issue occurs within and across levels and scales. Chemical pollution is not treated as a scale challenge in the decision-making process today. In the literature it is stated that chemical pollution is usually studied by focusing on single institutions, which hinders the possibility to investigate the linkages between the institutions affecting the scale dynamics. In this study the scale and cross-scale perspective was used to identify institutions that are affecting the work for a toxin free environment on a national and municipality level in Sweden. Governance Architecture was used as an analytical tool to investigate the key hindering and facilitating governance mechanisms to achieve sustainable chemical management in Sweden from a cross-scale perspective. The analytical tool was based on the Earth System Governance theory and scale dynamics. Sweden was used as a case to apply this tool. Two methods were used to gather empirics: literature analysis and in-depth interviews. The findings reveal an overrepresentation of the hindering factors being a result of a scale or a policy gap issue. These gaps are created by the lack of interdisciplinarity in the decision-making process, and the current legislation and politics which influences the implementation of the strategies on the different institutional levels. To overcome these hinders the current strategies and legislation needs to be in collaboration. This study contributes to empiric development within policy studies on how the chemical pollution issue needs to be conceptually formulated to achieve a toxin free environment within and cross-scales. It also contributes to method development by addressing the gap of including several institutions in cross-scale studies.

Controversy in transboundary rivers usually arises due to a lack of inclusive agreement and cooperation between the basin countries. Originating from Ethiopia, the Blue Nile River contributes most of the Nile River water making it vital for water, energy, and food security at downstream Sudan and Egypt. In 2011, the Ethiopian government announced the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) along the Blue Nile 40 km away from the Sudanese borders. The dam will be the biggest in Africa and seventh-largest in the world producing 6,000 Megawatts of electricity with a reservoir volume of 74 billion cubic meters. Great concerns were raised on the impact of this megaproject for downstream countries due to the expected changes in water quantity and quality. Different studies were published regarding the potential impacts of this dam on the Eastern Nile countries. However, these studies have usually focused on one aspect of the impact (e.g. hydropower, agricultural projects, water use) despite the connection that exists between these sectors. This research aims to investigate the impact the GERD operation will have on Sudan in terms of WEF security and sustainability. The study uses the WEF security nexus framework that addresses the interconnectedness between these sectors instead of treating them in silos. A sustainability assessment is also carried out to analyze the impact of the dam operation on the environmental, social and economic areas in Sudan. The study first looked into the current state of Sudan’s WEF security nexus and highlighted the vulnerabilities that exist within these sectors. Then an analysis of the GERD operation was carried out and the results showed that water regulation and sediment reduction will reflect positively on Sudan as it will enable for expansion in agricultural projects, increase hydropower production, and provide flood control. Some negative impacts, however, are to be expected especially during the impounding phase from water level reduction and change in river characteristic which will greatly affect the environment and society downstream. The safety of the dam was found to be the biggest threat to Sudan’s security, as the case of dam failure will have catastrophic consequences for the country. The study concluded that an increase in cooperation between the Eastern Nile countries will decrease the downstream negative impacts of the GERD and increase its overall benefits ultimately leading to sustainability, peace, and welfare for these countries. Sudan also needs to take measures in accommodating the new flowing conditions including reoperation of the Sudanese dams and mitigation strategies for the potential negative impacts.

House Resolution 109 mandates the duty of the United States Federal Government to the people of the United States to create a Green New Deal to combat the triple crises that people are currently facing. In order to understand this mandate and whether or not it is calling for sustainable changes, a discourse analysis was used to examine the discourse as text, interaction and context. This study seeks to fill in a gap of missing literature about House Resolution 109 due to its recent creation. The results show that while author Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emphasizes her beliefs of democratic socialism throughout the text as well as economic-based solution, the document lacks strong sustainability and fails to address the intricacies of sustainable development.

Urban areas will play a decisive role in the sustainability of future societies. As such, there is a need to understand the processes through which cities can become more sustainable. Based on a qualitative case study of a community food waste initiative in Gothenburg, Sweden, this thesis explores the phenomenon of urban sustainability transitions in relation to learning. The thesis attempts to explain how learning at the level of socio-technical niches could be instrumental to broader systemic changes at the regime level. The theoretical framework for the thesis draws on the transactional perspective on learning developed from pragmatist educational philosophy, as well as practice theoretical approaches to studying sustainability transitions which have emerged in recent years. The empirical results gathered from the case are analysed using dramaturgical analysis and practical epistemology analysis. Based on these analyses, the thesis argues that the role and significance of learning in urban sustainability transitions can be understood in terms of educative practices, a concept which is elaborated in the discussion chapter. Thus, it is argued that learning through educative practices can contribute to urban sustainability transitions by challenging prevailing institutional norms and structures, and by establishing pathways through which unsustainable elements within the socio-technical regime can be reconfigured. / Wicked Problems and Urban Sustainability Transition

The premise of the thesis is that current food systems are unsustainable. In fact, as the global population continues to rise, food systems are under greater strain to deliver quality output in a sustainable way. In sustainable food systems, effective use of agricultural land and reducing food waste are central, as stipulated by Agenda 2030 target to reduce food waste by 50 % to 2030. Insects have gained attention for their ability to effectively convert feed, including feed from food waste, to edible products. Framed by a literature review and an analysis of food waste data from a Swedish supermarket, the ability to rear three insect species, House Cricket (Acheta Domesticus), Yellow Mealworm (Tenebrio Molitor) and Black Soldier fly (Hermetia Illucens) on food waste is examined. The three insect species with the addition of laying hens are also the grounding for evidence-based scenarios. The results indicate that the Black Solider Fly can be reared on unprocessed food waste while the House Cricket requires food waste treated for higher levels of protein and phosphorus and the Yellow Mealworm food waste supplemented by external products such as yeast, carrots or wheat bran. The result from the scenarios shows that substantial amounts of edible output can be produced by providing the insects and laying hens vegetable food waste from the supermarket. The conclusion of this thesis highlights the potential of using insects and laying hens as feed converters in integrated production systems to recover energy and nutrients from food waste and thereby contribute to a food system that produces more output using less land and with less negative environmental impact.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) is a useful tool for retrospective paleoenvironmental studies. Paleosols formed in Arctic environments constitute a potential archive of aDNA from terrestrial organisms living in past environments, given that the cold and dry climate prevailing at high latitudes favors DNA preservation and hamper post-depositional mobility of deposited fragments. However, to what extent aDNA is preserved in old buried soil layers (paleosol layers) are not well known. This study asses to what extent DNA older than 100 years is present in a paleosol profile from southwest Greenland. My main hypothesis was that aDNA from both plants and animals could be extracted from old buried soil layers. I found that oldest studied soil layers were more than 800 B.P. yr old. These old layers contained DNA from both plants and animals. The clean sampling protocol used showed no signs of contamination, suggesting that the DNA was from soil layers and not from modern contaminants. I conclude that my hypothesis seems valid and that a majority of the analyzed plant and animal DNA is ancient. Indeed, aDNA could be used to infer species presence in past paleoenvironments and widen our knowledge regarding how Arctic organism coped with climatic perturbations and thus, improve our understanding how they will respond to future climatic change.

Delta regions are typically characterized by their high population density, low elevation, and risk of flooding. Long term planning and preparation is needed to mitigate the adverse effects of floods. Disaster management planning and flood protection measures require information about urbanization patterns, but this information is lacking in many parts of the world. Global satellite data could potentially aid or replace local urbanization data in such data scarce areas. This master thesis assesses the suitability of two global satellite datasets to serve as proxies for urbanization in flood prone areas: the Global Human Settlement (data for 1975, 1990, 2000 and 2014) and stable Nighttime Lights data series (annual data, 1992-2013). The assessment is performed through comparison of spatial-temporal urbanization trends of the global datasets with a previous study performed in the Netherlands using detailed local data. These spatial-temporal trends involve the share or urban area that is situated in flood prone zones and the average inundation depth. Through analysis based on Geographic Information Systems it was found that the Global Human Settlement data series indicates a stable increase in the percentage of urban area in flood prone zones from 31.60% in 1975 to 36.54% in 2014. Potentially, this increase results from the flood protection measures installed between 1954 and 1997. The Nighttime Lights data series shows values of around 36% throughout its time period, with no clear increase or decrease. These values are on average 15-17% higher over the whole time series than the values found with the use of the local data. The Global Human Settlements dataset shows values for the average inundation depth from 1.47m in 1975 to 1.72m in 2014, similar to the local data. The increase could be explained by the fact that only areas with higher inundation depths are available for urbanization. The Nighttime Lights does not show a clear trend with values ranging from 1.52m to 1.70m and large annual variation. Overall, the suitability of the Global Human Settlement dataset is higher than the stable Nighttime Lights dataset for this study area as it shows values more similar to the local data and does not require prerequisite threshold analysis, which is the case for the Nighttime Lights data.

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