Combating climate change has become the key objective of the 21st century. Energy transition, with the intensive introduction of the renewable energy sources to the world’s energy systems, is one of the biggest driving forces in stimulating global sustainable development. Growing shares of renewables, including wind power as a major player (35% of the world’s electricity needs by 2050 raised the issues of grid stability and supply/demand balancing (IRENA, 2019). A popular view on solutions for these issues lies with global energy interconnections, which could support grid stability and let the countries trade green electricity between themselves, creating big regional or even global electricity markets. These interconnections would call for close cooperation between the states, not only in the sphere of transmission, but in generation as well. The cross-border character of such projects would bring new aspects and nuances to the wind power developer’s work, making it more complex and politically sensitive. The potential planning process of such wind power projects has not been investigated before. Therefore, in order to fill this research gap, a cross-border wind power environment analysis framework was developed on the basis of the reviewed literature to assist a wind power developer in a potential planning process of a complex cross-border wind energy project in a sensitive setting. The developed framework was then used to evaluate an empirical case of an assumed offshore wind park on the Southern Kuril Islands, a disputed territory between Japan and Russia. The results showed that introduction of the cross-border factor makes permitting and coordination of projects more challenging and confusing. In addition to that, the wind power developer might have to contribute to the development of improved wind power regulations and norms. Moreover, coordination of such projects would not involve only the developer, but most likely representatives of the involved countries and regions, and possibly mediating organisations; the developers’ work would take place in a multicultural environment with people of various traditions, values, economic backgrounds and interests, which would complicate balancing the stakeholders’ interests during the planning phase.

The COVID-19 crisis represents a major disruption to societies across the planet, magnifying existing threats to social-ecological resilience. Illustrating these threats are links between inadequate water and sanitation services, climate stressors, and the challenge of coping with a global pandemic. In an urban context, water services are an intermediary between the built and natural environments, making sustainable water management a crucial aspect of cities’ resilience and efforts towards sustainable development. Yet, there is a growing need to understand how urban resilience functions across scales in order to develop sustainable transformations that align a city’s resilience goals with the wellbeing of its communities. Global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing water crisis threaten wellbeing beyond disease risk, highlighting the need for a broader understanding of risks that make communities vulnerable to such crises. Examining these connections within Cape Town, this case study investigates issues of water service delivery in low-income communities both before and during the pandemic. The city encounters increasing impacts of the climate crisis such as drought and flooding, while disadvantaged communities also experience basic service inequities. Existing problems involve leaking pipes, blocked drains, water contamination, and limited access to water taps and toilets. To understand how water issues could impact people’s wellbeing directly and indirectly, this thesis analyses perspectives of community members who describe their experiences with water-related risks. They speak of obstacles to daily tasks like cleaning and practicing basic hygiene, which are essential for disease prevention during a pandemic. However, the results indicate that water issues can also threaten wellbeing in less visible ways than immediate disease risk and can lead to psychological stress, social conflicts, and food insecurity. Identifying water-related risks through people’s own experiences is important for developing shared meanings of resilience for communities and the city as a whole. Risk management focusing on community-centred approaches to these challenges could help clarify how cities can collectively influence their own transformation. This thesis hopes to identify a broader scope of threats to community water justice and wellbeing, contributing to our understanding of urban resilience in a time of rising crises.

One route to fight climate change that is both a strategy in itself and a mediator to other interventions is climatechange communication. Currently, most climate change communication follows the assumption that conveyingthreat and urgency leads to attitude and behaviour change. A number of studies has shown that this type ofcommunication fails to evoke individual change, and instead leads to a phenomenon called ApocalypseFatigue: a numbness resulting from being confronted too many times with too much frightening information.As a result, the message is not implemented in one’s action, but instead rejected, denied and avoided. Thisstudy has investigated the effectiveness of message phrasing, specifically of messages that are phrasing climatechange as inevitable doom and the consequences as happening at a distance. Distance furthermore has fourspheres: geographical, temporal, social and hypothetical. Based on the literature of this study, it is suggestedthat the effect of threatening messages on the message receiver is mediated by the communication of distance:threatening messages are only perceived as threatening, when they are not phrased distant. The effect on thereceiver of the message was measured by assessing two types of responses. First, it was investigated whetherthey changed their climate change attitude after exposure to the message. Second, it was assessed how manymessage details they remembered. The results indicate different mechanisms of message phrasing on attitudechange and recall ability. In this study, doom and distance phrasing did not have an effect on attitude change,but the means and standard deviations indicate that there could be an effect in the proposed direction, namelythat it is beneficial for attitude change to phrase climate change as not threatening and not distant. Whether thiseffect is statistically significant has to be investigated in future studies. In contrast, there were statisticallysignificant effects on recall ability, but in the opposite direction: it is beneficial for recall ability to phraseclimate change as threatening and distant. Therefore, this thesis concludes that AF does not affect recall ability,and that further research is needed to investigate the effect of message phrasing on attitude change. Itconcludes on limitations and recommendations for climate practice and future research.

This report was made as a part of ongoing work to improve the water management of the research area since the Water framework directive (2000/60/EG) states that all water bodies within the EU has to reach good-quality or better by 2027 at the latest. This report investigated the overall changes in classification of coastal waters in the Skagerrak and Kattegat water district in Sweden over management cycles. The aim was to identify quality elements of interest for further investigation and their trends of development. The study also assessed the impact of changes in the assessment criteria and if this has influenced the comparability between management cycles. The changes in overall Ecological status from cycle 1 to cycle 2 were small with only 6% of the water bodies improving their status with one class while 84% remained unchanged. However, from cycle 2 to cycle 3 the changes showed a more positive trend with 31% of the water bodies having an improvement by one class or more and 63% remaining unchanged. The changes in individual quality elements were not as clear and multiple suggestions for further studies to identify more reliable trends are made. This study indicates that the changes in assessment criteria has influenced the classifications investigated and further studies are needed. Development of a method to overcome these changes in assessment criteria are of great importance to be able to successfully compare the status of waterbodies between management cycles.

I nuläget existerar det 85 000 områden i Sverige som är eller misstänks vara kontaminerade. Dessa områden behöver minskas för att miljökvalitetsmålet om en Giftfri miljö ska uppnås. Saneringen kan ske på olika sätt varav schaktsanering är den vanligaste. Det är en ex-situ metod som innebär att föroreningen grävs upp och förflyttas till annan plats där själva reningen sker. En annan metod är termisk in-situ sanering, vilket är när man behandlar föroreningen direkt i marken med hjälp av värme. Inom termisk behandlings brukar metoderna Elektrisk konduktiv uppvärmning (ECH) och Elektrisk resistivitetsuppvärmning (ERH) användas. ECH är en metod som beror på markens elektriska konduktivitet dvs markens förmåga att transportera elektrisk laddning. I behandlingsområdet installeras värmeelement som blir varma och sprider värmen till jorden. På så vis uppnås önskvärd temperatur och föroreningen förångas. Gasen samlas sedan upp vid markytan och renas. ERH är en metod som använder sig av elektrisk resistivitet dvs markens elektriska motståndsförmåga för att alstra värme. Elektroder installeras i behandlingsområdet som skickar ut elektrisk ström till jorden. Marken gör motstånd och värme alstras. Syftet med denna studie är att dels fördjupa sig i hur dessa metoder fungerar och att jämföra dem utifrån tekniska- och ekonomiska aspekter. Kan en av metoderna klassificeras som billigare och effektivare än den andra. En fallstudie genomfördes där sex förorenade områden med klorerande lösningsmedel studerades. Dessutom studerades tidigare undersökningar om metoderna. En statistisk bearbetning genomfördes för att se korrelationen mellan parametrarna. Utvärdering från fallstudien indikerade att det finns en stor skillnad mellan metoderna. Parametrarna: kostnad, energikonsumtion, reningseffektivitet och behandlingstid jämfördes mellan metoderna. Jämförelsen visade på att ERH har en högre kostnad, energikonsumtion och längre behandlingstid än ECH. Reningseffektiviteten är några procent högre för ECH, men båda åstadkommer över 95% rening. Däremot existerar det förutsatta meningar angående vilken metod som har högst energikonsumtion. Enligt tidigare studier påvisas det att ECH kräver mer energi än ERH vilket motsäger denna studie. Det krävs därför ytterligare undersökning för att fastställa det. Slutsatsen är därför att ECH är billigare, effektivare och snabbare än ERH.

The United Nations (UN) has implemented a policy of gender mainstreaming in their agendas forboth sustainable development and urban development with the aim of improving gender equity in member statesthrough all of the organization’s work. However, many scholars have criticized the UN’s incorporation ofgender in these agendas for lacking systemic and coordinated policy schemes that are capable of ensuringgender equity. The majority of these analyses were performed shortly after the agendas’ introductions. In thisthesis, I return to these agendas a few years after their implementation to examine the discourses of gender inurban sustainability that they contain and consider whether these discourses are or are not reflected in thenational and local sustainable urban development agendas of one member state, Sweden, and its largest city,Stockholm. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to identify such gendered discourses and determinewhether the ideologies they reflect are or are not contributing to the agendas’ stated aim to achieve genderequity. Findings show that there are both significant similarities and differences between discourses at all levels,with different degrees of both reinforcement of and opposition to status quo gender hierarchy at each level.Agendas at the national and local levels showed more evidence of anti-hierarchical ideology than theinternational level, suggesting that the gender equity work of member states need not be constrained by theshortcomings of the UN approach.

Waste generation increases, and its management is one of the global challenges. Improper waste management creates many problems, but on the other hand, effective waste management can save natural resources, minimize GHG emissions, and provide additional workplaces. Sweden has already achieved some successful results in managing household waste, while modern Russia only began to reform the municipal solid waste management system in December 2014. This study makes a legal comparison of the Russian and the Swedish (EU) framework waste legislations, using the functional method of comparative law. The results show that Russia has already introduced many institutions, which are similar to those in the Swedish (EU) waste legislation. Nevertheless, there is still a huge potential to make the municipal solid waste management system in Russia more effective by improving framework waste legislation. Based on the findings from the comparison, there are following recommendations to Russia: to establish a separate waste collection system on the Federal level; make producers responsible for the whole life cycle of waste, including its waste management (from collection till disposal); correct the waste hierarchy; introduce the concepts of “preparing for re-use”, “re-use”, and a waste prevention program; change the norm of waste recovery to the recycling target.

This research intends to illuminate the concept and application of the public policy named fare -free public transport (FFPT), using the cases of Avesta and Tallinn and analysing future applicability of it in the cases of Luxembourg and Uppsala city. The analysis explores the fare-free public transport policy and the theory of sustainable transport. The study presents the different benefits of the policy and its limitations, and how the FFPT is connected to sustainable transport and sustainable development theories and application. Through a case study analysis based in literature review, the analysis of both cities wants to elucidate the application of the FFPT as one important policy tool within cities both for the environment and for the people, and how the policy can develop in the future. Considering this, the presented research also opens the possibility of expansion of the policy to other cities and countries.

Aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have risen faster than any other transport sector to double between 1990 and 2005. Such emissions from aviation could increase another 700 percent globally, and at least 150 percent in the European Union (EU), by 2050 due to continuously increasing consumer demand. To reverse the trend of rising emissions writ large, the EU has set 2030 climate goals of reducing its GHG emissions by 40 percent (relative to 2005) and having 32 percent of gross final energy consumption from renewables. The EU’s recast Renewable Energy Directive (RED-II) calls for 14 percent of transport energy from renewables, gives multipliers to advanced biofuels, and restricts biomass that is from ecologically valuable lands or that causes land use change. Energy security and energy independence are also long-term EU goals. Many of these goals and targets have also been adopted by the European Free Trade Area (EFTA). Despite these efforts, options are limited to reduce aviation emissions compared to other transport sectors, leaving aviation biofuels, also known as renewable jet fuels (RJFs), as currently the only commercialized option. Against this backdrop, in this thesis scenario analyses were conducted to produce biomass from EU+EFTA lands, project RJF yields from this biomass, and estimate emissions savings of these RJFs compared to petroleum jet fuel. Particular effort was devoted to identifying biomass, biofuels, and EU+EFTA lands that comply with RED-II criteria. The two RJF pathways selected were hydroprocessed esters and fatty acid (HEFA) conversion of Camelina sativa vegetable oil and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis of forestry residue lignocellulosic biomass. Over 117 million hectares in the EU+EFTA was identified as available for Camelina sativa cultivation, which could yield over 64 Mt of RJF each year, or 113 percent of the total jet fuel consumed in the EU+EFTA in 2017. Conversely, if 50 percent of the forestry residues generated as by-products from EU+EFTA roundwood harvesting operations in 2017 were extracted from harvest sites, 40 Mt of forestry residues would be available as biomass, which would yield almost 7.6 Mt of RJF annually (13% of 2017 jet fuel consumption). If all 144 million hectares of EU+EFTA forest lands deemed available for wood supply were logged, 1,772 Mt of forestry residues would be produced in total (at 50 percent extraction), which could result in almost 337 Mt of RJF, or 590% of the jet fuel consumed in the region in 2017. Hence, RJF can be feasibly produced from biomass from EU+EFTA lands, in amounts that meet or exceed the annual jet fuel consumption of the EU+EFTA, and in ways that meet or exceed RED-II sustainability criteria. However, the proportion of these RJF yields to total annual EU+EFTA jet fuel consumption will decrease over time as the number of flights and their resulting emissions increase. The two RJFs also emit 67 percent and 91 percent fewer GHG emissions, respectively, than petroleum-based jet fuel, showing them to be important tools for the EU to meet its 2030 renewables and emissions reductions targets. Producing the biomass feedstocks and RJFs in these quantities will require the EU to make serious decisions on land use trade-offs, such as whether livestock production is more important than biofuel production.

Denna kunskapsöversikt syftar till att undersöka begreppet environmental literacy, en slags förståelse för och handlingskompetens inför olika miljörelaterade frågor och problem, samt dess betydelse inom undervisning. Vi använder det engelska begreppet för att det inte finns någon vedertagen svensk översättning. I dagens samhälle har frågor om miljö och hållbar utveckling blivit centralt vilket gör att elever som framtida samhällsmedborgare, behöver utveckla kunskaper och ökad handlingskompetens för att hantera dessa frågor. Syftet har således varit att undersöka hur lärares miljöundervisning kan bidra till att utveckla lågstadieelevers environmental literacy. För att kunna undersöka detta har tre delfrågor formulerats i syfte att ta reda på vad environmental literacy är, varför det är viktigt och hur undervisning kan se ut i relation till environmental literacy.  För att besvara dessa frågor har vi systematiskt sökt utifrån databaserna ERIC, ERC, Swepub, Libsearch och Google scholar genom att kombinera olika relevanta sökord. Främst har vi sökt utifrån begreppen sustainable development, environmental education och environmental literacy. Vi har även använt oss av sekundärsökningar för att finna ytterligare relevant forskning som kan belysa frågeställningen. Denna sökprocess gav oss 14 artiklar som underlag till kunskapsöversikten. Dock bör det lyftas att environmental literacy är ett begränsat begrepp, vilket kan bidra med brister i metoden.  Resultatet visar att environmental literacy består av flera förmågor som innefattar att ha kunskaper, ansvarskänsla och handlingskompetens inför att hantera miljöproblem och leva hållbart. Dessutom har det blivit tydligt att environmental literacy är viktigt att utveckla för att skolan ska kunna fostra framtida samhällsmedborgare till att verka för en hållbar miljö både för nutida och kommande generationer. Slutsatsen är således att environmental literacy är viktigt att utveckla redan i lågstadiet och att läraren får en avgörande roll i att anpassa undervisningen så att eleverna kan utveckla kritiskt tänkande och en självständighet inför att lösa miljöproblem. Däremot är environmental literacy ett begränsat begrepp inom den svenska skolan vilket gör att det kan vara intressant att forska vidare om dess betydelse och påverkan på undervisningen i Sverige.