The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze what is required for the environmental quality objective Good built environment to be fulfilled by 2020 in the Swedish county Jämtland. The focus of the study was to gain an understanding of the work that the local government does and further investigate the problems that the officials face with implement these questions in themunicipal planning. The study is based on semi structured interviews with officials in the municipalities of Jämtland county. General plan and programs for the municipality have been reviewed, based on how the plans highlights these issues linked to sustainability and Good built environment. The results of the study show that there are major problems with the formulations of the environmental quality goal in itself and its specifications. The environmental quality goal is formulated to suit the entire Sweden. But as it turns out in the analysis it does not work on the basis of the conditions inJämtland with sparsely populated areas and scattered dwellings. The environmental quality goal needs to be formulated after the conditions that the county has to be measured and fulfilled by 2020. The officials agreed that a regional vision is needed, adapted to Jämtland conditions.

This dissertation concerns everyday life and sustainability in sparsely populated parts of Northern Sweden. The aim is to study how sustainability is constructed, experienced, practised and perceived in a field of tension between local everyday life and political discourses. Apart from written material, the study is based on interviews and observations performed in the municipalities Strömsund and Örnsköldsvik. Empirical themes include everyday life movements and means of transport, work and spare time practices, and experiences of time. The central theoretical concepts used are everyday life, provinces of meanings, typifications, community, place and policy. These concepts shape the analysis of processes pertaining to space and movement, work and leisure, time and tempo. The study shows gaps between sustainability policies and local experiences of sustainability. In order to highlight complications like the ones between the center and the periphery, polices and lived experiences, I have stressed the importance of the social dimension of sustainability. It is nevertheless important to nuance the concept of social sustainability since it carries an ambiguity, for example in terms of collisions with other dimensions of sustainability. Socially good life styles have a tendency to collide with the ecological definitions of sustainability. The emphasis on the social dimensions has been done in order to draw attention to unfair effects from a time-space perspective, and to point at the problem with urban norms in policies on sustainability.

This thesis interrogates sense of place and place attachment in the Big Empty on the north central Texas plains. The region stretches from the Red River on the north to the Colorado River basin on the south and from the Cross Timbers on the east to the Caprock escarpment on the west. Since 1930, the Big Empty has seen sustained and severe population decline such that some counties there now register less than a quarter the population they did at their peaks during the interwar years. Through in-depth field interviews, I examine sense of place and place attachment amidst apparently irreversible decline. I also describe conditions of postindustrial rurality arising from rolling reconfigurations of economic and social relations, particularly changes in scale in farming and the diminished centrality of productivist agriculture in local economies and culture, and how these conditions become legible through the study of place.

This research is based on analyzing policys of the sparsely populated area (glesbygd) in Sweden formulated during cabinet of Reinfeldt and cabinet of Löfven. The purpose is to contribute knowledge about the sparsely populated areas construction thought the cabinets policys. The investigation has focused on what problems that has been constructed through policys, the causes behind the problems investigating through assumptions and presumptions, keywords and the dichotomy city/ sparsely populated area and the effects produced by the constructed problems. The method that has been used is a critical policy study (WPR) that is a kind of discursive analysis that is based on social constructive theory. The interest is furthermore to compare the two different governemnts to see similarities and differences. The result shows that the sparsely populated area has a negative development, the presumption and assumption is rooted in the sparsely populated area deviate from the city and that both the residents and the government are accountable to the represented problems. The results has been interpreted trough the theory center and periphery relation and urban preference that describe the results by thinking that there is a urban norm that permeate the thinking and agenda setting of the sparsely populated area.

This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies, which purpose is to find out what ideas there are about school libraries and to get an idea of how informants interpret the new Education Act, which requires all students to have access to school libraries. Another intention of this paper is to highlight the potential rural-related attitudes of the responents. The study includes the sparsely populated municipality of Krokom and is based on interviews with librarians, the school director, principals and politicians who work there. The theoretical basis for this paper is Loertscher’s model för school libraries and a centerperiphery perspective. Study results show that there are different conceptions of what a school library is and that there are some tendences related to the informant’s professions. All in all the school library is the hub of the school, a knowledge base or a room with a wide range of books, many different kinds of texts and access to online resources. The school librarian is important for the school library, as well as collaboration and integration with other school activities. Access to the school library is about longer opening hours, opportunity to visit a physical room with literature and access to use qualified librarians. The new Education Act is interpreted as indistinct and needs to be clarified. It is considered to be directed to schools in larger cities. There is an awareness of the specific rural conditions prevailing and the informants take their arguments into account and some of them give suggestions on rural alternatives such as a mobile library, a digital library or school libraries in each school district instead of at each school.

För att främja landsbygdens utveckling och till följd av förändringar i markpolitiken tilläts genom lag bildandet av stora bostadsfastigheter på landsbygden 1990. Detta skulle ske genom att öka den enskildes möjlighet att utforma sin fastighet efter egna önskemål. Glesbygd, som är landsbygd karaktäriserad av gles befolkning, är mer utsatt för de problem som landsbygden står inför. Syftet med studien är att undersöka om det finns eller borde finnas en skillnad mellan lands- och glesbygden vid fastighetsbildning av stora bostadsfastigheter. Studien utförs genom en genomgång av rättskällor, tolkning av rättsfall och analys av Lantmäteriets praxis. Resultaten visar att flera rättsliga faktorer, nämligen skyddszon, extensivt nyttjande, skogsmark, jordbruksmark och fastighetens belägenhet i glesbygd påverkar tillåtligheten av att bilda stora bostadsfastigheter. Vidare visas att inga avsevärda skillnader mellan lands- och glesbygd i Lantmäteriets praxis finns. Därutöver så tyder tolkningen av rättsfall på att domstolarna inte alltid beaktar markpolitikens främjande av glesbygden. Det starkaste motstående intresset för bildandet av stora bostadsfastigheter ligger i skyddet av skogsnäringen, som även till stor del sammanfaller geografiskt med glesbygden. Resultaten tyder på att nuvarande rättsläge och markpolitik inte tillräckligt beaktar glesbygdens regionalpolitiska intressen, i form av främjande av boende och sysselsättning. / In order to promote rural development and due to land use policy changes, the formation of large residential properties in rural areas was permitted by law in 1990. This was to be made possible by increasing the opportunities for the individual to shape their real property according to their own requests. Sparsely populated areas, which are rural areas characterized by sparse population, are more prone to problems considered in rural development policies. The purpose of the study is to research if there is or should be a difference between rural and sparsely populated areas in formation of large residential properties. The study is performed through a review of legal sources, interpretation of judicial proceedings, and analysis of the property formation practice of Lantmäteriet. Presented results show that there are several judicial factors that affect the allowance to form large properties for residential purpose. The factors are protective zone, extensive use, forest land, agricultural land and real property location in sparsely populated areas. Further on, no substantial differences exist between rural and sparsely populated areas in the practices of Lantmäteriet. Moreover, the interpretation of judicial proceedings suggests that the courts do not always take into account the land use policies promotion of sparsely populated areas. The most inflexible opposing interest towards the creation of large residential properties resides in the protection of forestry land use, which also largely geographically coincides with sparsely populated areas. The findings suggest that current legal position and land policies do not sufficiently address the regional policy interests of sparsely populated areas.

Contaminated sites in low prioritized regions demand remediation technologies that are cost- and energy-effective and locally adapted. Parameters such as the time frame during which bioremediation degradation needs to occur may not be as restraining as in urban environments. This licentiate project aims to explore opportunities and constraints for appropriate soil remediation based on organic by-products in tropical developing countries and sparsely populated areas in industrial countries. Ecological Engineering and the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development were explored as planning tools to steer bioremediation methods towards sustainability. The use of the five concepts of Ecological Engineering within the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development can steer bioremediation in low prioritized regions towards sustainability. Pilot-scale and laboratory experiments were undertaken to evaluate the feasibility of such bioremediation methods. Experiments carried out at the experiment station in Chontales, Nicaragua showed some promising results, but also revealed problems associated with the clay rich soils, which are typical for tropical regions. Treatment of diesel contaminated ultisol with 6 mL whey kg-1 dw in a pilot-scale experiment considerably increased the degradation rate of diesel constituents, but no effects on the degradation rates were observed after treatment with compost tea or pyroligneous acid.The soil columns study suggests that despite a favorable particle size distribution for microbial transport, the sandy loam retained a greater fraction of the microorganisms present in the ACT in the top 10 cm than the clay loam, presumably because the lower bulk density and higher SOM in the clay loam aided transport and growth of microorganisms.

<p>Följande studie syftar till att undersöka hur industriföretag på den värmländska glesbygden uppfattar pedagogikämnet vid Karlstads universitet. Studien har en tydlig inriktning mot arbetslivspedagogik, och det är framförallt arbetspedagogiska teorier som utgör studiens teoretiska grund.</p><p>Studien bygger på intervjuer med representanter från fem värmländska industriföretag.</p><p>Dessa intervjuer har sedan analyserats med avseende på respondenternas berättelser och de uttalande som kan kopplas till ämnet pedagogik, vilket är brukligt vid användandet av narrativ metod och analys.</p><p>Resultatet visar att de värmländska industriföretagen har behov av pedagogisk kunskap, men att de föredrar att anlita konsulter framför att ha någon anställd som arbetar med dessa frågor.</p> / <p>This study aims to investigate how industrial companies, situated in the sparsely populated areas of Värmland, understand the subject pedagogy at Karlstad University. The study focuses on educational science in working life.</p><p>The study is based on interviews with representatives from five industrial companies in Värmland. The interviews were analysed according to the respondents’ stories and statements which were referable to the subject pedagogy. This approach is customary when using narrative method and analysis.</p><p>The result shows that the industrial companies in Värmland have a need of educational knowledge, but that they prefer to engage consultants prior to employing someone to work continuously with these issues.</p>

Följande studie syftar till att undersöka hur industriföretag på den värmländska glesbygden uppfattar pedagogikämnet vid Karlstads universitet. Studien har en tydlig inriktning mot arbetslivspedagogik, och det är framförallt arbetspedagogiska teorier som utgör studiens teoretiska grund. Studien bygger på intervjuer med representanter från fem värmländska industriföretag. Dessa intervjuer har sedan analyserats med avseende på respondenternas berättelser och de uttalande som kan kopplas till ämnet pedagogik, vilket är brukligt vid användandet av narrativ metod och analys. Resultatet visar att de värmländska industriföretagen har behov av pedagogisk kunskap, men att de föredrar att anlita konsulter framför att ha någon anställd som arbetar med dessa frågor. / This study aims to investigate how industrial companies, situated in the sparsely populated areas of Värmland, understand the subject pedagogy at Karlstad University. The study focuses on educational science in working life. The study is based on interviews with representatives from five industrial companies in Värmland. The interviews were analysed according to the respondents’ stories and statements which were referable to the subject pedagogy. This approach is customary when using narrative method and analysis. The result shows that the industrial companies in Värmland have a need of educational knowledge, but that they prefer to engage consultants prior to employing someone to work continuously with these issues.

Over the last couple of decades, a significant amount of research has been carried out on rural water supplies in developing countries, and have identified the fact that the communal water supply model is not sustainable everywhere, especially in sparsely populated rural areas; factors obstructing sustainability include lack of spare parts, management systems and private/public capacity. Despite their enormous contribution to the water sector, the extant studies stay within the subsidized communal water supply and capacity building, post construction support or management system. In other words, very few studies have been done into household (private) level water supply. The Self Supply model is an approach which provides support to households/communities to complement their efforts and accelerate sustainable access to safe water incrementally through improvement to traditional water sources (hand dug wells) by putting in their own investment. The Self Supply model may give significant benefits for sustainable safe water supplies, especially in sparsely populated rural areas, in comparison with the communal water supply though to date there has been little monitoring and systematic analysis of what impact these changes have made at the grassroots level. The standpoint of this study is pragmatic, and herein, mixing quantitative and qualitative methods was justified in order to design the research methodologies. The research was conducted in the Luapula Province of Zambia using a concurrent triangulation strategy to offset the weakness inherent within one method with the strengths of the other. The data was collected through inventory and sanitary surveys, water quality testing, household surveys, document analyses, focus group discussions and key informant interviews to determine the most appropriate water supply model for safe, accessible, sustainable, cost-effective and acceptable water supplies for households in sparsely populated rural areas of Zambia. The principal argument of this study is that reliance only on a communal water supply model limits the achievement of increased sustainable access to a safe water supply; hence a Self Supply model is needed which does not compete with the communal models but works alongside them in sparsely populated rural areas of developing countries for the purpose of increasing access and achieving sustainability. It was strongly defended by the overall findings that a Self Supply model could significantly reduce the faecal contamination risk in water quality and deliver a higher per capita water use and better convenience of access than the communal model; however its reliability with respect to the water source drying up needs to be monitored. Further, this does not mean that the communal model is not sustainable anywhere, rather that it is important to build blocks for a sustainable environment to access safe water in a symbiotic way between the communal and Self Supply models under the condition that the government and NGOs/external support agencies overcome the temptation to provide a water supply to rural dwellers as a giveaway social service.