Humanity is facing massive sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the associated loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and food insecurity. Capitalist urbanisation drives furthermore profound transformations in rural and urban areas and thus in the agriculture and food systems, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Urban agriculture as a part of a local food system, where food is produced in an urban area and sold to consumers in that area, presents a new food production model, generating innovative tools to lower agricultural land use, improving resource use efficiency and biodiversity. Consequently, great potential can be attributed to a sustainable transformation of the agri-food system through urban agriculture.  Like many cities around the world, Malmö has recognised the need for sustainable development. Therefore, the city of Malmö has been addressing environmental, social and economic challenges for several years and is committed to a holistic and sustainable urban development. Although the city is aware of the benefits of small-scale urban agriculture, there are no policies that enable the upscaling of urban agriculture in the city. Botildenborg, a sustainable urban farm and meeting place in Malmö, on the other hand, has recognised the potential for sustainable business and development through urban agriculture for several years, by setting itself the goal to increase the local and ecologically produced food within the city through this form of agriculture. Botildenborg serves therefore as a case study of this research.  In order to be able to provide indications for policies to shape the transformation steps towards sustainability within the agri-food system in Malmö, structures and patterns, as well as possible drivers and potential obstacles of a sustainable transition, are examined in the course of this research. The empirical results from qualitative and quantitative data are systematically processed using the multi-level perspective in combination with the urban political ecology.  The results indicate that the identified barriers tend to be structural and are predominantly located in the economic and especially the political sphere. It seems that the non-monetary added value from urban agriculture is not perceived to its full potential by the city of Malmö. Botildenborg is stabilising itself mainly through knowledge sharing and network building, and thus will sooner or later be able, through the movement behind the network, to change the dominant agri-food regime. The rapidity of the transformation depends on the political ii willingness of the city of Malmö to explicitly integrate urban agriculture into its policies and regulations.

The aim of this dissertation is to assess the political ecology of conservation governance and management of Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park (SNP), SNP Buffer Zone (BZ) and the Buffer Zone Community Forest User Groups (BZCFUG) in Pharak in northeastern Nepal. It evaluates their performance in two adjacent regions (Khumbu and Pharak) from multiple perspectives, including the views of the residents (indigenous Sherpa people and minority immigrant community members), and the standards of current international conservation and human rights policies. This research is important because it relates to global, regional, national and local level conservation policies and practices, which have direct impacts on biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation, the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities, and rights. The discussion of buffer zone community forest in the Pharak region follows my M.Sc. thesis completed at the University of Wales, UK in 2000. This dissertation draws on my 2011 fieldwork and my long-time experience growing up in this region and working there for conservation and development organizations. I conducted qualitative research adopting field observation, semi-structured and focus group interviews and participating in BZ and BZCFUGs' meetings. I observe that implementation of CFUG, BZCFUG and buffer zone management programs (BZMP) in Pharak and BZMP in Khumbu have made significant progress towards achieving conservation of forests, habitats, wildlife species and sustainable production of forest products while reinstituting forest and natural resource use and improving management and governance rights. This suggests that community participation in forest commons and natural resource management and governance through devolution and decentralization of decision-making rights can achieve biodiversity conservation goals. By integrating indigenous peoples' and local communities' cultural and religious perspectives with scientific knowledge, a synergy can be achieved that benefits conservation. For this the free, prior and informed consent of the concerned indigenous peoples and local communities is prerequisite. Conservation goals need to consider the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and meet their aspirations and international conservation standards of self-determination and autonomy.

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Loss of biodiversity and interest in the promises of the bioeconomy creates pressure on forests and implications for their governance. In Sweden, forest policy for the protection of biodiversity is known as “freedom with responsibility”, which puts an onus on the many private forest owners in the country to reverse the critical loss of biodiversity. In this thesis, I explore Swedish forest governance through the narratives of private forest owners and highlight possible tensions between the design and implementation of policy for biodiversity. I use concepts from feminist political ecology and environmental justice to form a lens to highlight the experience of forest owners. I combine semi-structured interviews with transect walks to explore the views of private forest owners from Central and Southern Sweden. In doing so, I seek to highlight the partial knowledges and the personal narrative of persons involved in Swedish forestry. I find that current forest governance does not attend to the multilayered and complex emotions and attachments that forest owners have for their forests, which leads to a discrepancy between the design and implementation of policy for biodiversity protection. In accordance with previous research, this thesis highlights how the deregulated Swedish forest policy instead strengthens the narrative of forestry for production. With increasing pressure from both inside and outside Swedish forestry for more close-to-nature forestry management and alignment of multiple values, a remaining question is whether Swedish forest policy will attend to the pressure or continue following the narrative of the bioeconomy.

Prior to the advent of biomedicine, rural communities in Nepal relied on phytochemically active compounds in medicinal plants as their primary source of medicine; however, ethnobotanical practices have shifted over time due to economic, environmental, and sociocultural stimuli. Findings from 2016 fieldwork conducted in Dumrikharka, Nepal and Tutung, Nepal are compared to existing literature to describe the political ecology of medicinal plants in rural Nepal. Anthropogenic climate change threatens individual plant species and ecosystem biodiversity. Globalized markets unabated by weak conservation programs place increasing demands on medicinal plants. As indigenous plants become overharvested and more difficult to access, Nepalis incorporate non-indigenous plants into the local pharmacopeia. Novel use of non-indigenous plants illustrates both the dynamic, resilient nature of traditional medicine systems and a loss of biodiversity. Social changes, including outmigration to other countries, notions of modernity, and preference for pharmaceutical drugs, reduce potential candidates to learn and preserve ethnobotanical knowledge. Waterborne pathogens caused by inadequate sanitation infrastructure continue to endanger Nepali populations. The dearth of clinical facilities throughout rural areas, when coupled with the decline ethnobotanical knowledge and traditional healers, poses a gap in healthcare jeopardizing vulnerable, marginalized populations. These factors reinforce the unequal distribution of resources in one of the world’s poorest countries, buttressing power inequalities and economic inequities.

As the 1960s Environmental movement has grown, sustainability and justice discourses have come to the fore of the movement. While environmental justice discourse considers the unequal effects of environmental burdens, the language that frames "sustainability" is often socially and politically neutral. This thesis critically examines sustainability initiatives and practices of an urban farming organization in Florida. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2017, I explore the extent to which these initiatives incorporate race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class when working to provide sustainably grown food in diverse communities. I argue that the organization's focus on justice for the environment, rather than for communities, and education as a barrier in low-income, food desert neighborhoods neglects to integrate experiences of those living on the margins into their initiatives. This research raises awareness of the need for a critical examination of sustainability in practice and a politically aware incorporation of environmental justice themes into sustainability agendas.

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Agricultural sustainability is critical global agenda, integrating environmental stewardship and social equity, with scale production and gender dynamics significantly influencing the social-ecological-spatial relations on farms. Nevertheless, the relationships between scale production and gender dynamics of farms are missing in existing literature. Through the lens of Feminist Political Ecology and care ethics, and with an emphasis on scale, this thesis focuses on forces across scales that can influence the socio-ecological transformations of different farms and women farmers’ embodied experiences within and beyond farms. Through life-course interviews with women farmers and document analysis of agricultural policies at local, regional, and national levels, this thesis investigates small-scale and large- scale farm cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China. This thesis indicates that social relations are deeply intertwined with environmental processes, where the scale of farms is produced and manipulated by governance power, metabolism between places, and individuals’ trajectories. While facing challenges of labor exploitation, women farmers embrace care ethics to contribute to human-nature and interpersonal connections, shaping the sustainable development of farms. Women farmers’ care practices reflect how they navigate the constructed patriarchal hierarchy in agricultural activities, involving the tensions between empowerment and subordination. The research suggests that integrating care ethics with the politics of scale can provide a comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics in agricultural socio-ecological transitions.