The concept of ecological compensation (EC) assumes that ecological values are substitutable across spatial units. EC is increasingly recognised in Sweden as a novel policy instrument for land-use planning, however, it suffers from inconsistency in application and outcome. For example, there are no legal provisions to require EC for urban development or new roads and railways. This study shows that there are many context dependent variables affecting the performance of EC in Sweden, which can partly be explained by authorities’ lacking experience in administrating these questions, and by the absence of a standardised structure for handling the full EC process. These shortcomings together with an inadequate legislation may cause EC to result in “license-to-trash” and fails to guarantee no net loss of ecological values. The performance of EC in Sweden was assessed through two case studies: the Sigtuna trading estate and the Aitik mine expansions. Implementation procedures and compensation designs were investigated by analysis of written documents and semi-structured interviews. The data was structured in an analytical framework, displaying similarities and context dependent disparities. The results suggest that, for the Aitik-case, licence-to-trash is a risk if compensation schemes are reviewed by the regulatory authorities during the processing of the application. The Sigtuna case suggests, opposed to earlier findings, that the Plan and Building Act can be utilised for EC if the compensation measures are regulated in a development agreement between the municipality and the landowner/developer. Both cases suggest that additionality can be met by appropriate institutional design, whereas no net loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services hardly can be achieved within the existing Swedish legal framework. To improve the performance of EC, structures for handling the process from quantification of social and ecological values, to monitoring of compensation outcomes must be implemented in all development projects affecting nature.

A partir da perspectiva do fortalecimento da autonomia social dos diversos povos da Humanidade em relação ao Estado e às grandes corporações financeiras, a pesquisa aborda a atualidade dos conceitos e das práticas da educação integral e da ecologia social. Por um lado, procuro analisar criticamente a incorporação das ciências da educação e da ecologia no processo de transnacionalização do capital. Pelo outro lado, enfatizo as possibilidades de práticas de educação e ecologia na construção de relações sociais voltadas para as habilidades de auto-governo de comunidades e populações tradicionais. Assim, apresento alguns dos antecedentes históricos da educação integral e da ecologia social, e em seguida ressalto experiências inovadoras atuais nessas áreas do conhecimento. Durante este trabalho, destaco a experiência da Escola da Ponte, em Portugal. Finalmente, procuro estabelecer relações entre as novas formas de preconceito social e a visão urbanocêntrica de desenvolvimento humano, e alguns dos impactos sócioambientais e genocídios culturais contemporâneos sofridos pelas pessoas que não concordam com este caminho de existência humana. / Under the perspective of strengthening of the social autonomy of the various peoples of humanity in relation to the State and to the financial corporations, the research is about the actuality of the concepts and the practices of the integral education and the social ecology. On one hand, I intend to analyse in a critical way the incorporation of the sciences of education and ecology in the movements of transnationalization of the capital. On the other hand, I enphasize the possibilities of the practices of education and ecology in the building up of social relation towards the self-government habilities of the communities and traditional peoples. So, I introduce some of the historical antecedents of the integral education and the social ecology, and therefore resilience some of the actual innovate experiences in these fields. During this work, I highlight the school experience at the Escola da Ponte, Portugal. Finally, I intend to establish relations between the newest forms of social prejudice and the vision of the human development urbancentric, and some of the social ambiental impacts and contemporaneous cultural genocides suffered by the people that do not agree with that way of human existence.

Variability is inherent to any living system, and adaptation, or changing one's behavior in response to variability, is an important way to reduce or eliminate possible adverse consequences of change. Adaptation is particularly important to consider in the face of contemporary climate change, as individuals and communities may be able to adapt their behavior in response to weather variability and reduce or possibly eliminate predicted adverse impacts. To gain a more mechanistic understanding of which factors may lead to enhanced adaptive capacity of individuals and communities to future change, this dissertation uses a multi-disciplinary and multi-scale approach to broadly examine which social, economic, biophysical, and perceptional factors are associated with agricultural adaptation to current weather variability. The results from this dissertation generally show how adapting agricultural practices, like changing cropping patterns or increasing irrigation, can reduce the vulnerability of farmers to weather variability. Importantly, however, we show that adaptation is not simply about adopting appropriate technical solutions like sowing weather-appropriate crops or irrigating optimally, it is also about the complex set of economic, social, and perceptional factors that influence farmer decision-making and adaptive capacity. A global literature review highlights important biases and gaps in our current knowledge about climate change adaptation research in the agricultural sector. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for future research that may result in a more process-based understanding of adaptation, including conducting multi-disciplinary studies that simultaneously consider the social, economic, biophysical, and perceptional factors that are associated with adaptation, and understanding how weather variability and change influence well-being to more accurately identify which individuals, households, or communities are best able to adapt. Using these recommendations, we design a case study that examines how farmers alter their cropping strategies in response to monsoon variability in Gujarat, India. Much of our research is focused on India given that over 50% of the nation practices smallholder agriculture and is particularly sensitive to climate variability and change. Through this work, we find that farmers altered their cropping decisions in response to a delayed monsoon onset, by increasing irrigation, switching crop type, and/or delaying crop sowing, and these strategies, particularly increasing irrigation, were adaptive considering yield and profit in the year of our study. These results highlight the importance of considering farmer behavior and decision-making in models that estimate future weather and climate impacts on agricultural production. While household-level surveys allow one to assess individual-level decision-making, they are difficult to implement over large spatial and temporal scales. Thus we develop a remote sensing algorithm that quantifies cropped area of smallholder farms over large spatial and temporal scales using readily-available MODIS imagery. Given the importance of irrigation as an adaptation strategy, we link these cropped area maps with rainfall and irrigation data at the village scale across all of India to assess the relative impact of different types of irrigation (e.g. groundwater versus canal) on winter cropped area and its sensitivity to rainfall variability. Overall, we find that deep well irrigation is both associated with the greatest amount of winter cropped area, and is also the least sensitive to monsoon and winter rainfall variability. However, the relative benefit of deep well irrigation varies across India, with the largest benefits seen in the regions that are facing the greatest levels of groundwater depletion. This work highlights the critical importance of groundwater for agriculture in India, and suggests that future work should identify ways to use groundwater more efficiently, increase the recharge rate of groundwater, or improve the performance of canal irrigation in order to maintain similar levels of production in the face of climate variability and change over the upcoming decades. While this dissertation focuses on agricultural adaptation to weather variability, the methods and implications derived from this dissertation are applicable more broadly to the study of resilience and adaptive capacity of social-ecological systems to global environmental change. In a rapidly changing global system, using a multi-disciplinary, multi-scale, and coupled systems approach similar to the one employed in this dissertation will help better understand and identify possible ways to enhance the ability of societies to adapt to global environmental change.

Energy is part of everyday life and renewable energy technologies are increasingly becoming part of our lived environments. Social scientists are responding to renewable energy technologies by investigating what people think about wind turbines (Aitken, 2010; Pasqualetti, 2011a, 2011b) and the distribution of community benefits (Cowell et al, 2011; Bristow et al 2012). This thesis adds to this body of research by describing Udny's renewable energy project and its capacity to effect change. More specifically, I examine what this community-owned wind turbine does with other situational elements to transform life within the community. Using the cartographic methods developed by Adele E. Clarke (2005), I map out the situation by drawing out the elements – this includes objects, people, organisations and discursive practices – and tracing their relations. Thinking sociologically about situational elements and their relational effects provokes a move towards ecological sociology and re-imagines social life as the effect of interconnected entities, such as materials and meanings, thoughts and actions, people and objects (Morton, 2007, 2010). Mapping the interconnectedness of societal ecologies depicts social life as neither distinct from the natural world (Catton and Dunlap, 1978, 1980) nor symmetrical with natures (Callon, 1986; Akrich and Latour, 1992; Asdal, 2008) but, rather, as part of relationally emergent ecologies. Udny's community renewable energy project illustrates the relational emergence of a social ecology, as the turbine and trust work with existing and emergent entities to enact change (Barad, 2007; Harman, 2009; Bennett, 2010; Morton, 2010, 2016). It is by doing things together that situational elements transform life within Udny (Clarke, 2005; Yusoff, 2013).

A partir da perspectiva do fortalecimento da autonomia social dos diversos povos da Humanidade em relação ao Estado e às grandes corporações financeiras, a pesquisa aborda a atualidade dos conceitos e das práticas da educação integral e da ecologia social. Por um lado, procuro analisar criticamente a incorporação das ciências da educação e da ecologia no processo de transnacionalização do capital. Pelo outro lado, enfatizo as possibilidades de práticas de educação e ecologia na construção de relações sociais voltadas para as habilidades de auto-governo de comunidades e populações tradicionais. Assim, apresento alguns dos antecedentes históricos da educação integral e da ecologia social, e em seguida ressalto experiências inovadoras atuais nessas áreas do conhecimento. Durante este trabalho, destaco a experiência da Escola da Ponte, em Portugal. Finalmente, procuro estabelecer relações entre as novas formas de preconceito social e a visão urbanocêntrica de desenvolvimento humano, e alguns dos impactos sócioambientais e genocídios culturais contemporâneos sofridos pelas pessoas que não concordam com este caminho de existência humana. / Under the perspective of strengthening of the social autonomy of the various peoples of humanity in relation to the State and to the financial corporations, the research is about the actuality of the concepts and the practices of the integral education and the social ecology. On one hand, I intend to analyse in a critical way the incorporation of the sciences of education and ecology in the movements of transnationalization of the capital. On the other hand, I enphasize the possibilities of the practices of education and ecology in the building up of social relation towards the self-government habilities of the communities and traditional peoples. So, I introduce some of the historical antecedents of the integral education and the social ecology, and therefore resilience some of the actual innovate experiences in these fields. During this work, I highlight the school experience at the Escola da Ponte, Portugal. Finally, I intend to establish relations between the newest forms of social prejudice and the vision of the human development urbancentric, and some of the social ambiental impacts and contemporaneous cultural genocides suffered by the people that do not agree with that way of human existence.

abstract: Through three investigations, this dissertation examined properties of the family and early care and education center (ECEC) environments related to preschool-aged children’s cardiovascular fitness (CVF) and gross locomotor skills (GLS). Investigation one used a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize the effectiveness of school-based interventions at improving CVF, in preschool-aged children. For investigations two and three product- and process-based measures of GLS were collected from children in ECECs (n=16), using the progressive aerobic cardiovascular endurance run (PACER; n=144) and the CHAMPS motor skill protocol (CMSP; n=91), respectively. Investigation two and three examined family factors and ECEC factors for associations with measures of GLS, respectively. Investigation one revealed a moderate-to-large effect size for school-based interventions (n=10) increasing CVF (g=0.75; 95%CI [0.40-1.11]). Multi-level interventions (g=.79 [0.34-1.25]) were more effective than interventions focused on the individual (g=0.67 [0.12-1.22]). In investigations two and three children (78.3% Hispanic; mean ± SD age 53.2±4.5 months) completed a mean ± SD 3.7±2.3 PACER laps and 19.0±5.5 CSMP criteria. Individual and family factors associated with PACER laps included child sex (B=-0.96, p=0.03) and age (B=0.17, p<0.01), parents’ promotion of inactivity (B=0.66, p=0.08) and screen time (B=0.65, p=0.05), and parents’ concern for child’s safety during physical activity (B=-0.36, p=0.09). Child age (B=0.47, p<0.01) and parent employment (B=2.29, p=0.07) were associated with CMSP criteria. At the ECEC level, policy environment quality (B=-0.17; p=0.01) was significantly associated with number of PACER laps completed. Outdoor play environment quality (B=0.18; p=0.03), outdoor play equipment total (B=0.32; p<0.01) and screen time environment quality (B=0.60; p=0.02) were significantly associated with CMSP criteria. Researchers, ECEC teachers and policy makers should promote positive environmental changes to preschool-aged children’s family and ECEC environments, as these environments have the potential to improve CVF and GLS more than programs focused on the child alone. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Exercise and Nutritional Sciences 2019

The aim of this thesis is to analyse sustainable development as a political challenge at the local level of governance. It explores how local organisation for sustainable development (LA21, a short form of local Agenda 21) is influenced by economic conditions in contemporary society, as well as the specific conditions in the local context. The empirical focus is activity relating to LA21 in four Swedish municipalities (Kungsör, Sala, Trollhättan and Örebro). In analysing the challenge of sustainable development, the economic development model of contemporary society is used as a theoretical starting-point. It is argued that the promotion of economic growth is crucial in determining the parameters of environmental policy; indeed, environmental policy can be described as a result of a dialectic contradiction between economic and ecological concerns. As theoretical tools, I define three perspectives on how to deal with ecological problems. Economism represents the ideological foundation of the present growth economy, and sees environmental problems as something secondary to the goal of creating economic growth. Ecomodemism represents an effort to implement sustainable development through reforming the growth economy. Social ecology promotes the substitution of the growth economy with another economic model in realising sustainable development. The analysis shows that LA21 has in a number of ways raised the profile of environmental concerns in the four municipalities examined. Their LA21 action programmes express a radical (social ecological) political agenda for sustainable development. The municipal strategies have also gradually widened their scope to, for example, include more complex and controversial issues. However, most of the participating actors consider LA21 as a reform strategy for sustainable development, rather than an ideological challenge to the present economic growth model. The political leaderships tend to be influenced by ecomodernist ideas, and usually also consider LA21 as an economic development project. When in conflict with environmental concerns, economic growth policies tend to be prioritised. Conflicts over growth-related projects also tend to reduce the legitimacy of LA21 among citizens. In the four studied municipalities, LA21 gradually reaches a critical point at which further deepening (corresponding to the goals of action programmes) is unlikely unless local actors change their perceptions of ecological problem-solving. / <p>ISBN 91-7305-041-5 (ogiltigt nummer) finns angiven i tryckt bok.</p> / digitalisering@umu

The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) is high in Latinos (Latino/Latina) Americans due to social and ecological factors. Increased migration of Latino migrant/seasonal farmworkers (MSFW) to the U.S. augments the social, economic, environmental, and psychosocial factors associated with health and illness. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory was used to guide this study. The purposes of this cross-sectional, correlational study were to explore Latino MSFWs’ adherence to HTN treatment (medication adherence, blood pressure [BP] self-care, and BP control) and to examine the influence of BP knowledge, perceived stress, acculturation, health literacy, and health care access (HCA) on adherence to HTN treatment. A total of 45 Latino (mean age 45 + 9) MSFWs receiving HTN treatment participated in this study. Spanish and English questionnaires were available for participants to measure adherence to HTN treatment and the five independent variables. Analysis included correlations, t-tests, hierarchical multiple regression, and hierarchical logistic regression. The majority of MSFWs were from Mexico, female (55.6%), had less than a 6th grade education. Most (82%) of the MSFWs had uncontrolled BP, and were not adherent to medications (42%), even with high BP knowledge scores (M = 6.5 ±1.3). MSFWs perceived a high level of stress (M = 16 + 6.9), low acculturation level (Anglo orientation: M = 2.9 + 0.9), and no employer-provided health insurance for personal illnesses or injuries (93%). Blood pressure knowledge, perceived stress, acculturation, health literacy, and HCA accounted for 49% of the variance in the BP self-care; however, only higher BP knowledge was a significant predictor of better BP self-care (p < .001). Furthermore, acculturation was a significant predictor of BP control (p < .01). This study explored select determinants of adherence to HTN treatment in Latino MSFWs in a culturally informed way. Although BP self-care behaviors appeared to be a consequence of BP knowledge, this study found low medication adherence in Latino MSFWs and uncontrolled BP explained by the two predictors, acculturation and health literacy. Perceived stress and health care access did not influence the adherence to HTN treatment. MSFWs had poor BP control and HTN treatment adherence. A culturally appropriate educational program is needed to help the MSFWs adherence to HTN treatment.

This thesis analyzes the analogy between woman and nature and ecofeminist theory that emphasizes the parallelism between man&#039 / s exploitation of woman and nature. It aims to make an ecofeminist analysis of three novels: Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, The Cleft by Doris Lessing and The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson. First, this thesis introduces the history and main principles of ecofeminist theory. These novels by different women writers investigate the embodiment of these main principles in three novels despite the fact that the same aspects of the theory can sometimes be interpreted differently in these novels. In analyzing these three novels as applications and/or the criticisms of ecofeminist theory, it was found that two theories, social ecology and Cyborg Theory, are also necessary. The later novels use ideas from these related theories alongside ecofeminist ideas. In order to undertake this analysis in each novel, this thesis also studies the assignment of determined social roles to man and woman and the duality resulting from this inequality. Next, it investigates the colonization of both nature and woman&#039 / s body by man&amp / #8217 / s intervention, that leads to the alienation of woman from herself and society. Furthermore, this thesis shows the exploitation process of females and nature by males who consider both as objects.

The main research question of this thesis is &ldquo / How can HES (small scale hydroelectricity plant) opposition be analyzed in terms of social ecology?&rdquo / A second research question is raised to answer first one as &ldquo / How can any environmental action be analyzed in terms of social ecology?&rdquo / About ecological crisis, Murray Bookchin&rsquo / s social ecology develops strong criticism against liberal environmentalism, deep ecology and Marxism and provides an alternative radical social change as Libertarian Municipalism (LM). Social ecology criticizes environmentalism as legitimizing current status quo destroying nature and offers ecological approach for real solution. LM movement is a political program of social ecology to reach rational, ecological and democratic society that is domination free and so does not dominate nature. I developed a LM movement model from Janet Biehl&rsquo / s study and integrated this model into George Pepper&rsquo / s classification of environmentalism to reach a Classification Table (CT) that is based on social ecological principles. CT is an attempt to develop a tool to analyze all sorts of environmental activities according to social ecology. Implementation of CT at field study shows HES opposition has the desire of strict state controls and planning as significant aspects of welfare-liberal environmentalism. On the other hand, the common critique of central, urban, professional and fund dependent environmentalism of national ENGOs fits market-liberal environmentalism critique of LM model. The increasing demand to join decision-making mechanism, the bottom-to-top regional organization of local platforms and &ldquo / living space&rdquo / discourse show LM tendency. In fact, HES threat ignites participation demands of local people in Turkey.