En femtedel av Sveriges klimatpåverkan kommer från bygg- och anläggningssektorn och år 2017 röstade riksdagen igenom att Sverige, senast år 2045, ska nå nettonollutsläpp av växthusgaser. Örebro kommun har tagit fram ett eget styrdokument, Klimatstrategi för Örebro kommun, som beskriver klimatpåverkan, vad kommunen behöver göra samt vilka etappmål och delmål som finns i det geografiska området.  Avsikten med denna studie är att undersöka hur Örebro kommun arbetar aktivt för att minska klimatpåverkan genom samhällsplaneringen i samband med att staden växer. Studien har baserats på litteraturstudier och intervjuer med fyra deltagare från Örebro kommun och tre deltagare från Länsstyrelsen i Örebro län. Studien har avgränsats till ett specifikt delmål i Örebro kommuns klimatstrategi och på vilka sätt de arbetar för att uppnå delmålet - klimatsmart samhällsplanering. Resultatet tyder på att Örebro kommun har många dokument att förhålla sig till för att minska klimatpåverkan. Ett av dessa dokument är översiktsplanen. Detta dokument anses vara det främsta verktyget för samhällsplaneringen, då andra planeringsdokument arbetats in i översiktsplanen. Trafikstrategin är ett av dessa planeringsdokument som utgör underlag för att främja hållbart resande.   Länsstyrelsen har i uppgift att förse kommunerna med olika planeringsunderlag och anordna olika träffar med kommunerna. Inom samhällsplanering finns det många aspekter att ta hänsyn till och då kan Länsstyrelsen ge goda exempel, sprida kunskap samt ge vägledning till kommunerna.  Örebro kommun har framställt ett eget verktyg för att kunna effektivisera och påverka markanvisningsprocessen som kallas Örebromodellen. Kommunen har makten att bestämma vem som ska bli tilldelad mark genom utvärdering av byggaktörernas genomförandeambitioner i intresseanmälningarna. Dessutom kan kommunen ha önskemål om att byggaktörernas genomförandeambitioner ska vara klimatrelaterade. För att möjliggöra klimatarbetet i kommunen ännu mer är slutsatsen att det behövs en förändrad lagstiftning samt tydligare ställningstaganden i politiken. Om politiken ska kunna ta ställning krävs det att tjänstemännen har kompetensen och möjligheten att förmedla vilka åtgärder som behövs. / One fifth of Sweden's climate impact comes from the building and construction sector, and in 2017 the Parliament voted that Sweden, by 2045 at the latest, will achieve net zero emissions of greenhouse gases. Örebro municipality has produced its own governing document, Climate strategy for Örebro municipality, which describes the climate impact, what the municipality needs to do and what milestones and stage goals are in the geographical area. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Örebro municipality works actively to reduce climate impact through community planning in connection with the city's growth. The study has been based on literature studies and interviews with four participants from Örebro municipality and three participants from the County Administrative Board in Örebro County. The study has been limited to a specific stage goal in Örebro municipality's climate strategy and the ways in which they work to achieve the stage goal - climate-smart community planning. The results indicate that Örebro municipality has many documents to relate to in order to reduce the climate impact. One of these documents is the master plan. This document is considered to be the main tool for community planning, as other planning documents have been worked into the master plan. The traffic strategy is one of these planning documents that forms the basis for promoting sustainable travel.  The County Administrative Board has the task of providing the municipalities with different planning documents and arranging different meetings with the municipalities. In community planning, there are many aspects to take into account and then the County Administrative Board can set good examples, disseminate knowledge and provide guidance to the municipalities. The municipality of Örebro has produced its own tool to be able to streamline and influence the land allocation process known as the Örebro model. The municipality has the power to decide who will be allocated land by evaluating the construction actors' implementation ambitions in the expressions of interest. In addition, the municipality may want the construction actors’ implementation ambitions to be climate-related. To enable climate work in the municipality even more, the conclusion is that a change in laws and clearer positions in politics are needed. If policy is to be able to take a stand, it is required that civil servants have the competence and the opportunity to convey what measures are needed.

To support the transition towards a low-carbon economy, mining companies, international financial institutions and governments are preparing to drastically scale up mineral extraction of energy transition minerals such as cobalt and lithium. Mineral extraction, however, has far-reaching impacts on the biophysical environment and mining-affected communities that may become more severe under a changing climate. In May 2019, the World Bank sought to respond to these challenges with the launch of its climate-smart mining Facility, evoking critique from non-governmental organisations working in solidarity with frontline communities. Drawing on poststructuralist political ecology and discourse analysis, this study examines the conflicting narratives on mining for the energy transition and interrogates the political solutions made conceivable through these narratives. Utilizing documents by proponents and opponents of the climate-smart mining Facility, and semi-structured interviews, the analysis reveals two contrasting discourses on mining for the energy transition, problematising climate change as a problem of rising CO2 emissions, and as a social justice problem rooted in global inequality respectively. These distinct conceptualisations generate three key and overlapping tensions, relating to (i) global versus local priorities, (ii) mitigation and adaptation, and (iii) socio-technical versus socio-political transformations. By highlighting these discursive processes, the results aid our understanding in how mining is made salient in the carbon constrained future, and which actors are likely to benefit and be harmed by the promotion of climate-smart mining.

Increasingly unpredictable, extreme and erratic rainfall with higher temperatures threatens to undermine the adaptive capacity of food systems and ecological resilience of smallholder landscapes. Despite growing concern, land managers still lack quantitative techniques to collect empirical data about the potential impact of climatic variability and change. This thesis aims to assess how ecosystem services and function and how this links with biodiversity and human wellbeing in smallholder agro-ecosystems in a changing climate. To this end, rather than relying on scenarios or probabilistic modelling, space was used as a proxy for time to compare states in disparate climatic conditions. Furthermore, an integrated methodological framework to assess ecosystem services at the field and landscape level was developed and operationalised, the results of which can be modelled with measures of wellbeing. Various multidisciplinary analytical tools were utilised, including ecological and socio-economic surveys, biological assessments, participatory open enquiry, and documenting ethnobotanical knowledge. The study was located within monsoon rice farms in the Terai Plains of Nepal, and dry season vegetable farms in Northern Ghana. Sites were selected that are climatically and culturally diverse to enable comparative analysis, with application to broad areas of adaptive planning. The linkages that bring about biophysical and human changes are complex and operate through social, political, economic and demographic drivers, making attribution extremely challenging. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that within hotter and drier conditions in Ghana long-tongued pollinators and granivores, important for decomposition processes and pollination services, are more abundant in farms. Results further indicated that in cooler and drier conditions in Nepal, the taxonomic diversity of indigenous and close relative plant species growing in and around farms, important for the provisioning of ecosystem services, decreases. All other things equal, in both Nepal and Ghana findings indicate that overall human wellbeing may be adversely effected in hotter conditions, with a potentially significantly lower yields, fewer months of the year in which food is available, higher exposure to natural hazards and crop loss, unemployment, and psychological anxiety. Yet, surveys indicate smallholders continue to maintain a fair diversity of species in and around farms, which may allow them to secure basic necessities from provisioning ecosystem services. Moreover, farmers may employ adaptive strategies such as pooling labour and food sharing more frequently, and may have greater access to communication, technology, and infrastructure. Novel methodological and empirical contributions of this research offer predictive insights that could inform innovations in climate-smart agricultural practice and planning.