Publikum Nynäshamn docks directly to the west façade of the existing 9 story municipal building with seven floors of open activity space. These surround a full-height atrium across which a two-floor living plant green wall provides the monumental living presence of nature and its ecosystem services in an office environment.  Plants also grace the other side of this two story wall, providing a living backdrop for the heart of the building - the raised three floor high assembly hall. A lunchroom with balconies above the assembly hall provides city views and a roof garden for municipal staff. The two floor high lobby beneath the assembly hall provides a new internal city street between Banana Square and Floravägen – a former back alleyway.  A ground-level colonnade walkway with benches surrounds the new and old buildings, inviting citizens into the building spaces. Public space and circulation is further enhanced with a new passageway opening up the former dead-end southwest corner of Banana Square where the old municipal building met Folkets hus (People’s House). A generous stair complex in this new sunny southern square provides spontaneous seating and meeting spaces as well as additional outdoor access to the two floor café, art gallery, and the largest green roof – one of three accessible green roofs that enhance social and ecological values.  Pedestrian movement can continue through this new passageway directly down to Svandammen (swan pond), and in the opposite direction, directly up to Banana square from the commuter rail station.   The café and two-floor meeting room spaces provide evening and weekend public social spaces for the city residents, complementing existing bars and restaurants in the adjoining Folkets Hus.   Reduced use of energy is encouraged with progressively rising central spaces allowing for the possibility of natural stack ventilation, thermal mass energy storage in concrete (HD/F) slabs, and generous natural daylight through the glazed curtain wall climate shell surrounding the building.  Abstracted winged structures crown the top of the building and grace the building entrances, inspired by the sightings of sea eagles reported in this coastal area, and provides both a signum for the building (instead of a more traditional municipal building tower) and extended surface for rainwater collection that can be used for watering indoor green plant walls and the roof garden vegetation.  The deeper soil of the intensive green roofs not only provides more uptake and retention of rainwater (and thus reduced peak flow rates favorable for stormwater management) but also allows planting of larger, woody plants and bushes, and even small trees, which in turn, among other social and ecological benefits, add natural habitat to a predominantly impervious-surfaced downtown urban area.

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Urban trees provide a wide array of benefits and values for urban dwellers as a foundational part of the biodiversity, the generation of ecosystem services and mitigation of negative impacts of climate change. However, management in cities often fail to acknowledge the diversity of ecosystem services in urban landscapes needed for improving resilience. Through interviews with actors managing tree communities within the city of Stockholm, along with a review of municipal policy documents, this study explores the qualities, values and benefits, focusing on biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate change adaptation, that are considered when making decisions about tree management. The interview results and policy documents were analyzed using an analytical framework for three different phases of management: (i) goals, (ii) strategies and measures and (iii) monitoring and evaluation. Most of the actors to some extent consider biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate change adaptation through ecosystem services in management. The strategies of including a more diverse set of values and benefits are still in its early stages, which is reflected in a low degree of strategical work, lack of clearly defined goals and limited operationalization of the concepts, and few actors work with monitoring and evaluation. However, more aspects of biodiversity and ecosystem services are gaining attention within management, and there is an ambition to incorporate such values to a greater extent.

The food we consume and how it is produced constitutes a significant driver of environmental change, degrading the ecological base on which life depends. Moreover, the food system is highly globalized and geographically scattered, connected by global value chains. This creates potential vulnerabilities. The covid 19 pandemic exposed many of these vulnerabilities and disrupted daily life globally in an unprecedented manner. Some argue that a re-localization of supply chains could constitute a crucial role in crisis response and in making food systems more adaptive, resilient, and sustainable over time. The present research weaves together resilience thinking and social-ecological transformation theory to study the alternative food network REKO in Sweden during the covid 19 pandemic. Through an interpretive logic of enquiry including a practitioner’s perspective, this study explores the effects of the pandemic on REKO and what role it played in the crisis response in the Swedish food system. Results show that parts of the network could adapt to the crisis, and by constituting an alternative for consumers and producers, it played a role in the national crisis response. Further, this study indicates an accelerated interaction between REKO and actors dominating the current food regime. However, the findings also reveal weaknesses of the network exposed by the pandemic. This study goes on to question whether a shortening of supply chains is the answer to the problems imposed by a global food system and suggests a repositioning of the long-short dichotomy. Lastly, this study conclu des with reflections on the need to move away from studying crises as singular events and instead suggests that future attempts to transform food systems should consider a crisis landscape.

Whale species face numerous man-made threats, such as pollution, whaling, climate change and whale-watching, that threaten their survival. International environmental law has several regulations in place that aim, either directly or indirectly, at conserving whales. To manage the dynamic and uncertain conditions in which whales live, it is important for the law to adopt a social-ecological resilience perspective. Whales can function in different social-ecological systems as exemplified by the system of whale-watching in Iceland. This thesis examines various legal regimes related to whale conservation and the extent to which they support or provide for resilience thinking. While the selected regimes demonstrate resilience features to varying degrees, direct references to resilience in international environmental law are rare. However, supplementary materials from a convention can also acknowledge the importance of embracing a resilience perspective. Legal regimes that promote social-ecological resilience may enhance the law's ability to protect and manage whale species in a more sustainable manner.

The question of peatlands management in Ireland is characterised by tensions between environmental, social and economic concerns, making it of central relevance to the field of sustainable development. This thesis examines the complexities associated with the current peatlands landscape in Ireland through the analytical framework of social-ecological systems including the concepts of environmentalism, heritage and future agency. The landscape and its complexities are demonstrated through an analytical description, the analysis of interviews with Irish people involved in peatlands, and the development of future scenarios. The results show that the Irish peatlands landscape is a highly complex topic displaying clashes between rural communities, government and environmental authorities in numerous ways. They also indicate that the heritage associated with Irish peatlands is diverse and multi-dimensional. Within this context, there is a need for balance between environmental and social concerns. However, the question of sustainability might never be settled in the future and instead will likely require constant evaluation and re-evaluation by the various actors involved in carrying it out.

Since the 1980s, approaches to managing forest resources in the US and around the world have been shifting from the conventional sustained yield approach towards ecosystem management. Ecosystem management is a resource management paradigm that seeks to employ a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to landscape scale conservation, as well as the integration of socio-economic and biophysical considerations with the overall goal of enhancing the health and resilience of coupled social-ecological systems. While the role of natural resource conflicts as drivers of the transition towards ecosystem management has received some research attention, the potential roles of ecosystem management in emerging natural resource conflicts have not been adequately explored. The effective implementation of ecosystem management requires adaptive governance mechanisms capable of integrating diverse stakeholder values and knowledge systems across scales. The absence of such institutional mechanisms could contribute to the emergence of wicked problems – a class of problems that defy clear definitions and definitive solutions. Using the Shawnee National Forest as a case study, the purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the role of natural resource conflicts in the transition towards ecosystem management, as well as the consequences of ecosystem management on emerging resource conflicts. The study also aimed to assess the extent to which the approaches and strategies used in managing natural resource conflicts meet the institutional requirements for managing wicked problems. In this regard, semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2021 among 24 key informants representing the US Forest Service and relevant stakeholder groups, such as environmental groups, recreationists, and local businesses. The interviews were preceded by a review of documents to understand the context of changing forest policies and evolving conflicts in the Shawnee National Forest since the 1980s. The data were analyzed with the NVivo software using a deductive coding approach. The results showed that the transition towards ecosystem-based forest management in the Shawnee National Forest was primarily triggered by conflicts between environmental groups and the US Forest Service over timber harvesting. Although the institutional framework for alternative dispute resolution existed at the time, these conflicts were largely managed through the national legal system. Since the transition to ecosystem management with the adoption of the 2006 Forest Plan, new conflicts have emerged, this time, mostly among various recreational groups. The lifting of the injunction on timber harvesting and the increased focus of the US Forest Service on active forest management as part of forest restoration efforts appear to have set the stage for the potential re-emergence of conflicts over timber harvesting. Regarding conflict management, the use of alternative conflict management techniques, such as negotiation and mediation have received increased attention since the adoption of the 2006 Forest Plan, although the effectiveness of these processes has been hampered by various institutional and attitudinal constraints, including conflicting procedural requirements, limited capacity, and lack of agency commitment towards meaningful stakeholder engagement. Meanwhile, the fear of lawsuits continues to shape forest management decisions on the Shawnee National Forest. These findings highlight the inadequacy of the national legal system in managing wicked problems and they highlight the need for investments in effective institutional mechanisms for conflict management, such as adaptive governance.

This dissertation investigates environmental degradation of a wetland ecosystem in the northeast Peruvian Amazon: the palm swamps, or aguajales, mostly located in the region of Loreto, Peru. This ecosystem is dominated by the dioecious palm species Mauritia flexuosa, locally known as aguaje. Female aguaje palms produce a valuable fruit which is widely consumed in the region, and especially in the capital city Iquitos. The most common method of harvesting this fruit is to chop the female palms. Concern is growing over environmental degradation that results from this practice, such as high carbon emissions released from the peat soils upon which most aguajales grow. This dissertation investigates environmental degradation of the palm swamps from multiple scales. Using a mixed-methods analysis, this dissertation asks: 1) What is the magnitude and distribution of palm swamp degradation, and what is the contribution of this process to carbon emissions? 2) What is the relative influence of physical and social underlying drivers explaining the spatial distribution of palm swamp ecosystems with different palm swamp densities? 3) How do underlying social-ecological/political-ecological driving forces occurring at different scales influence the sustainable use and conservation of palm swamp ecosystems? Degradation is mapped at the regional scale using remote sensing techniques over two periods of time: 1990-2007 and 2007-2018. Underlying drivers of degradation are investigated at the regional and district levels using spatially explicit statistical models. Finally, qualitative data acquired in the field is used to investigate why some communities successfully manage their palm swamps while others do not. This dissertation produces the first regional map of palm swamp degradation and first temporal analysis of how degradation has changed over three decades. It is the first study to analyze both physical and socioeconomic drivers of degradation and the first study to analyze how physical drivers change over time. It contributes to the literature of land change science by demonstrating a method of testing socioeconomic data at an aggregated scale against degradation data derived from remote sensing. Finally, this study provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of the aguaje social-ecological system, demonstrating that the choice of some communities to chop palms for harvest is not one made of ignorance, but rather is a logical option in marginalized communities where the aguaje fruit cannot provide a sufficient contribution to a community’s material needs. This work contributes to the literature of critical conservation by demonstrating cases of conservation success that were achieved without coercive state power. / Accompanied by 1 PDF file: chap1.pdf

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Relationships between humans and the environment are messy and complex. This thesis makes sense of this complexity by using relational approaches to bridge social-ecological systems research with insights from the more-than-human social sciences and humanities. I focus on the case of environmental governance and conservation research in two of Ontario's National Historic Waterways: the Rideau Canal and the Trent-Severn Waterway. I analyze knowledge maps of factors that influence the environment of the waterways and the perception of relationships between humans and non-humans in the context of research. Through social-ecological network analysis, it was revealed different that groups conceptualize the Rideau Canal differently, but that all groups overemphasized social factors when identifying components that influence the environment. Knowledge maps, representing participants' mental models of the Rideau Canal, are used to generate narratives to inform policy and engagement strategies. Social-ecological network analysis was also used to make visible the different types of relationships between humans and non-humans in the context of conservation research. This unveiled a paradox of conservation. Attempts to produce evidence to conserve non-human populations and habitats are anchored in tense encounters, and sometimes procedures that are harmful for the individuals targeted by the research. I mobilize relational approaches and concepts from the social sciences to propose practical and theoretical insights and pathways for conservation research to become more-than-human. Such work necessitates the explicit recognition of the contributions of non-humans in research processes.