Magister Legum - LLM / This mini-thesis analyses the international legal framework governing the protection of the natural environment during armed conflicts. It critically examines the normative rules in international humanitarian law and international environmental law in respect of environmental damage during armed conflicts and it highlights the strengths and shortcomings of international law in this regard. Furthermore, this thesis investigates how the regulatory structures of the African Union (AU) address the problem of environmental damage during armed conflict. It draws on the aforementioned analyses to determine how regional law in Africa differs from the international regime and in what ways the regional framework may serve to complement the international legal regime in order to strengthen the protection of the environment during armed conflict on the continent.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate tourism capacity, the effectiveness of the management plan and the visitors’ willingness to pay (WTP) for increased conservation effort in the Buccoo Reef Marine Park (BRMP) in Tobago. Non-market contingent valuation was applied to estimate tourists’ WTP, using the data from a survey of 164 tourists. Local residents and government agencies were consulted to evaluate the management plan and the tourism capacity. Eighty-eight percent of local residents stated that the park was not well managed and that they lacked trust in the park agency. The density of tourists was 67-97% more than socially acceptable crowding norm. The tourists were willing to pay an additional entry fee of US$11.72 per person, which would generate additional revenue for the park management. In conclusion, the BRMP management needs modification in order to increase stakeholders’ trust, reduce tourists crowding intensity, and generate additional user-based revenue.

Marine Areas for Responsible Artisanal Fishing (AMPR) have emerged as a new model for co-managing small-scale fisheries in Costa Rica, one that involves collaboration between fishers, government agencies and NGOs. This thesis aims to examine the context for collective action and co-management by small-scale fishers; evaluate the design, implementation, and enforcement of AMPRs; and conduct a linguistic analysis of fisheries legislation. The present work relies on the analysis of several types of qualitative data, including interviews with 23 key informants, rapid rural assessments, and legal documents. Findings demonstrate the strong influence of economic factors for sustaining collective action, as well as the importance of certain types of external organizations for community development and co-management. Additionally, significant enforcement gaps and institutional deficiencies were identified in the work of regulating agencies. Legal analysis suggests that mechanisms for government accountability are unavailable and that legal discourse reflects some of the most salient problems in management.

Title: The Role of Organizational Culture on Green Marketing Level: Final Thesis for Master’s Degree Program Authors: Lucia Gido Chuwa  and Ukpemeobong Usen Ibokette Supervisor: Dr. Daniella Fjellström Examiner: Dr. Maria Fregidou-Malama Date: June 2020   Aim: The aim of this study is to explore the influence of organizational culture on green marketing. Method: This study applies a qualitative research approach on seven selected companies in Sweden and Nigeria.  We interviewed seven people using seven semi-structured interview questions and we carried out thematic data analysis by grouping the findings into common themes to guide our discussion. Result & Conclusions: This study concludes that organizational culture influence implementation of green marketing as it dictates what happens within the organization and how it happens. The organization that embraces environmental values in its culture needs to disseminate it to all employees to create common understanding and commitment towards its implementation. We also discovered a lower level of customer awareness on green marketing which requires more efforts by organizations and stakeholders to create this awareness or advocacy which will help firms investing on green marketing to sell their products. Suggestions for future research: We suggest a future study which could complement this study using a bigger sample size. We also propose a comparative future study which may help to highlight how implementation of green marketing in developed countries like Sweden differs from the developing countries like Nigeria. Furthermore, we suggest an explorative study on how best the customer awareness on green marketing can be enhanced so that to support green marketing. Contribution of the thesis: This study contributes to the body of knowledge about organizational culture, environmental sustainability and green marketing through highlighting how organizational culture influence implementation of different components of green marketing mix, which was an underexplored area. We also contribute that customer awareness is an important aspect to encourage green marketing Key words: Green marketing, green marketing mix, organizational culture, Sweden, Nigeria, environmental sustainability and Natural Resource Based View Theory.

abstract: Invasive plants harm the ecological properties of natural systems, human health, and local economies. However, the negative impacts of invasive species are not always immediately visible and may be disregarded by local communities if social benefits of control efforts are not clear. In this dissertation, I use a mixed-methods approach to investigate the drivers of invasive plant distribution, potential financially feasible management techniques to control invasion, and community forest user perceptions of those techniques. In this work, I aim to incorporate the diverse perspectives of local people and increase the long-term success of invasive species control activities in socio economically vulnerable populations. Integrating a spatially and temporally diverse data set, I explore the social and ecological drivers of invasive plant abundance across 21 buffer zone community forests in the Western Chitwan Valley of Nepal. I evaluate to what extent forest user and collective manager activities, the legacies of historic activities, and ecological properties influence present-day invasive plant abundance. I built upon this study to identify areas with critically high levels of invasion then initiated a three-year, community-based management intervention to evaluate traditional and adaptive land management approaches to control invasive plants. I found that both approaches reduced invasive plant abundance relative to the surrounding, untreated forest. I then interviewed focus groups to investigate their perceived efficacy of the various treatment types and found that almost all forest users and managers preferred the adaptive approach over the traditional management approach. Notably, forest users cited the importance of the availability of forest resources and lack of harmful plants in the plots that had undergone this method. Understanding how forest users relate to and experience invasive plants has been relatively understudied but can influence forest user engagement in different management approaches. For this reason, I performed in-depth ethnoecological interviews to explore how forest users perceive, how they utilize, and to what extent they value invasive plants. This mixed-methods approach contributes to a more holistic understanding of the role that local people play in invasive plant management and restoration activities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Environmental and Resource Management 2020

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abstract: The science community has made efforts for over a half century to address sustainable development, which gave birth to sustainability science at the turn of the twenty-first century. Along with the development of sustainability science during the past two decades, a landscape sustainability science (LSS) perspective has been emerging. As interests in LSS continue to grow rapidly, scholars are wondering what LSS is about and how LSS fits into sustainability science, while practitioners are asking how LSS actually contributes to sustainability in the real world. To help address these questions, this dissertation research aims to explore the currently underused problem-driven, diagnostic approach to enhancing landscape sustainability through an empirical example of urbanization-associated farmland loss (UAFL). Based mainly on multimethod analysis of bibliographic information, the dissertation explores conceptual issues such as how sustainability science differs from conventional sustainable development research, and how the past, present, and future research needs of LSS evolve. It also includes two empirical studies diagnosing the issue of urban expansion and the related food security concern in the context of China, and proposes a different problem framing for farmland preservation such that stakeholders can be more effectively mobilized. The most important findings are: (1) Sustainability science is not “old wine in a new bottle,” and in particular, is featured by its complex human-environment systems perspective and value-laden transdisciplinary perspective. (2) LSS has become a vibrant emerging field since 2004-2006 with over three-decade’s intellectual accumulation deeply rooted in landscape ecology, yet LSS has to further embrace the two featured perspectives of sustainability science and to conduct more problem-driven, diagnostic studies of concrete landscape-relevant sustainability concerns. (3) Farmland preservationists’ existing problem framing of UAFL is inappropriate for its invalid causal attribution (i.e., urban expansion is responsible for farmland loss; farmland loss is responsible for decreasing grain production; and decreasing grain production instead of increasing grain demand is responsible for grain self-insufficiency); the real problem with UAFL is social injustice due to collective action dilemma in preserving farmland for regional and global food sufficiency. The present research provides broad implications for landscape scientists, the sustainability research community, and UAFL stakeholders. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2020

As the demand for freshwater resources increases due to increasing human populations, degradation of available resources, and climatic changes it will become increasingly important to understand the factors that impact the physicochemical characteristics of surface water resources over space and time. This study assessed a headwater stream over the course of a year in the San Bernardino National Forest that serves as both surface and groundwater resources for the Santa Ana River Watershed region, the largest and most populated watershed in Southern California. Streams were monitored bi-weekly during dry periods and weekly during wet periods from April 2018 through April 2019 for dissolved oxygen (DO), flow rate, temperature, conductivity, turbidity, pH, nitrate (NO3-), and ammonium (NH4+) with additional lab assessments for total dissolved solids (TDS), E. Coli (EC), and total coliform (TC). Findings illustrated that across the study sites NO3-, NH4+, and TDS exceeded federal and regional water quality standards for a majority of the sampling events (>60 percent). Additionally, NO3-, DO, and flow rates were elevated in the wet season, while conductivity, NH4+, TDS, pH, TC, and EC were elevated during the dry season.