The construction industry is large and accounts for a major part of the total CO2 emissions each year. The structural engineer has a significant role to decrease the environmental impact of a construction project. This thesis aims to find ways to reach increased environmental sustainability among structural engineers in the construction industry. Barriers to working more environmentally sustainable are investigated to understand what influences the sustainability. To gain data a case study with a qualitative approach was performed at a technical construction consultancy firm in Sweden. Interviews were done mainly with structural engineers but employees working together with the engineers was also interviewed. Through the interviews, insights, thoughts and opinions was gathered which were used to find barriers that could influence the structural engineers. The results show that it is foremost through conscious material selection and optimal structural design that the environmental footprint can be decreased by the structural engineer. Barriers were found to be lack of knowledge, unclear responsibilities, unclear requirements of sustainability in the projects and conflicts between social, financial and environmental sustainability. To improve sustainability endeavours within the company the barriers detected during the study must be dealt with. The results of the study may help direct efforts for implementing sustainability in construction consultancy firms.

Little is known about how sustainable entrepreneurs balance sustainability aspects with growth. The aim of this study is to investigate how growth and sustainability are balanced, and what role customers play in this balance. To answer this question we used a case study design and interviewed 8 executives representing 5 sustainable new ventures based in Sweden. The theory of the three pillars of sustainability was used to categorise and probe the data. Our research draws on two types of sustainability companies (sustainability-at-its-core and product-at-its-core) that balance sustainability and growth in a different way. Customers play an essential role in the balance, as they both impact growth and the sustainability level. Our research shows that within balancing growth and sustainability, sustainability can be seen as a company trait rather than a choice as sustainability is a part of the core of the new ventures’ business and will therefore always have an important position, even if growth is limited. It is recommended to explore the distinction in sustainable company type more in depth or other stakeholders’ influence towards new ventures in balancing growth and sustainability in the future.

This paper examines how social- and environmental sustainability is advertised on Instagram and how it in turn affects consumer-based brand equity. Firstly, a latent content analysis was conducted on Adidas Instagram account, @adidas, to gain insights on how they use sustainability in their advertising through their Instagram posts. The findings revealed how Adidas explicitly advertise sustainability, both social- and environmental sustainability on their Instagram account. However, the analysis displayed a higher focus on social issues compared to initiatives to facilitate environmental sustainability. Secondly, Adidas Instagram was analyzed with the use of insights from interviews, to capture how its sustainability efforts affect consumers and thereby brand equity. The findings demonstrate the importance of taking the consumer perspective into account to positively affect the dimensions included within brand equity through social media, and to not miss out on the favorable outcomes of sustainability advertising. Accordingly, the research offers concrete knowledge on how sustainability can be advertised on social media by fashion brands, and its effect on brand equity. An area that has highly been neglected among previous researchers. The study contributes to valuable knowledge on how brands, in a generally unsustainable industry, could demonstrate their sustainability efforts in advertising to foster sustainable consumption among consumers into a more sustainable future.

Microplastics is a growing problem for the environment and the risk that microplastics reaches our food and water is constantly increasing. Microplastics also affects animal life and it is more and more common that fishes, birds and even whales dies because of malnutrition since their stomachs are full of microplastics. The purpose of this project is to eliminate the generation and spreading of microplastics from the plastic industry. This is done by developing a method to locate where microplastics is generated and finding solutions on how they can be contained. The project has been conducted in collaboration with Tarkett Ronneby where a mapping of their facilities has been made, showing where they generate and spreads microplastics. The project has also included generating ideas and solution on how to solve the issues with microplastics at Tarkett Ronneby and other plastic industries. The method on how to eliminate the spread of microplastics from the plastic industry consists of ten different steps. The method including different protocols and a step by step template including everything from finding where microplastics are generated to implement solutions to eliminate the spread of microplastics. This method can be used not only by Tarkett Ronneby but also on other companies and factories with similar production and problems. / Mikroplaster är ett allt växande problem för miljön och riskerar att i allt större utsträckning hamna i maten vi äter och vattnet vi dricker. Det påverkar även djurliv och det är allt vanligare att fiskar, fåglar och till och med valar dör på grund av undernäring, på grund av att deras magar är fulla av plast. Syftet med detta projekt är att minska utsläppet av mikroplaster från plastindustrin genom att ta fram en metod för att lokalisera och åtgärda utsläpp av mikroplaster. Projektet har gjorts i samarbete med Tarkett Ronneby där en kartläggning av deras fabrik och vart de genererar mikroplaster har genomförts. Även lösningsförslag och åtgärder för att minska utsläpp av mikroplaster har tagits fram, dels på Tarkett Ronneby men som även andra aktörer inom samma bransch kan implementera. Metoden för att eliminera utsläpp av mikroplaster från plastindustrin består av tio steg som innefattar bland annat olika protokoll och inkluderar allt från att lokalisera utsläpp till att åtgärda dessa. Denna metod är applicerbar på alla plastindustrier, både som producerar plastgranulat men också som använder plast för att tillverka andra produkter.

The aim of this dissertation is to understand the contributions of indigenous autonomous institutions to environmental sustainability in indigenous territories in Colombia. Past research has neglected to account for the role of indigenous territorial autonomy in spatial environmental planning and the overall goal of environmental sustainability. This gap is approached through the institutional design principles theory, informed by indigenous planning literature and the social-ecological systems framework. This research uses a case study, the resguardo El Duya, and a qualitative approach, where data collection was made through interviews, observation and document analysis. The results for this resguardo are presented in the context of Orinoquia region, which is analysed using the concept of frontier. This research asks about the way in which indigenous institutions mediate the relation of humans and the territory, finding that they have been going through a process of institutional change with several milestones characterised by external disturbances produced by non-indigenous actors. Currently, two institutional arrangements coexist in El Duya, customary and novel institutions, for which the analysis shows that the majority of design principles are present and some of them exhibit implementation problems. Thus, indigenous institutions have kept the integrity of ecosystems; despite changes in the social-ecological system and environmental impacts caused by oil extraction-related activities. This research further asks about spatial environmental planning, finding that it has been implemented by indigenous and non-indigenous actors, where the latter includes external governmental authorities and oil companies. This has resulted in an asymmetrical planning setting, in which the Salia people are deprived from significant planning powers in their territory. Furthermore, non-indigenous environmental authorities have contributed poorly in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystems of El Duya, under a frame in which the notion of environmental sustainability is not used by the people of this resguardo and is understood variably by governmental actors. Finally, this research asks about territorial autonomy concerning nature, which has been found to be partially exercised, since authority, decision-making and their enforcement are hindered by the intervention of environmental authorities. This corresponds to a jurisdictional encroachment over indigenous authorities, enabled by the Colombian State arrangement. Consequently, indigenous institutions do contribute to environmental sustainability in El Duya; however, this should be understood in terms of novel aspects enabled by the distinctiveness of Salia institutions and current territorial autonomy limitations.:Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Rationale of the research 1.2 Outline of the dissertation 2 Indigenous territories: essentials for their study 2.1 The colonial inheritance 2.1.1 The early years and the disruption of territoriality 2.1.2 Republics and the enthronement of private property 2.2 Current state of indigenous territories in Colombia 2.2.1 Indigenous territorial rights in Colombia 2.2.2 The spatial relevance of indigenous territories 3 Literature review 3.1 Indigenous territories 3.1.1 The rights approach 3.1.2 Boundary-making and indigenous territories 3.2 Environmental sustainability and indigenous territorial autonomy 3.2.1 Subnational arrangements, self-government and autonomy 3.2.2 Indigenous territorial autonomy 3.2.3 The concept of environmental sustainability 3.2.4 Types of sustainability 3.2.5 Indigenous management of natural resources 3.2.6 Environmental planning in indigenous territories 3.3 Research questions 4 Theoretical framework 4.1 Institutional design principles 4.2 The social-ecological systems framework 4.3 Indigenous planning principles 4.4 Dissertation’s approach 5 Methodology 5.1 Research design 5.1.1 Case study research 5.1.2 Unit of analysis and type of case study 5.1.3 Research design limitations 5.2 Methods 5.2.1 Document analysis 5.2.2 Interviews 5.2.3 Qualitative observations 6 Study area: variables in the social-ecological system framework 6.1 Social, economic and political settings; related ecosystems 6.1.1 Economic development; demographic trends; political stability; climate patterns; pollution patterns; flows into and out of focal SES 6.1.2 External governance systems 6.2 Resource systems 6.2.1 Sector; clarity of systems’ boundaries; size of resource system; location. 6.2.2 Human constructed facilities 6.2.3 Equilibrium properties (stable state). 6.2.4 Predictability of system dynamics 6.3 Actors 6.3.1 History or past experiences 6.3.2 Number of relevant actors; socioeconomic attributes; social capital 6.3.3 Location; knowledge of SES (mental models) 6.3.4 Technologies available 6.4 Governance systems 6.4.1 Indigenous organisation; network structure 6.4.2 Property rights systems 6.5 Action situations 6.5.1 Harvesting; importance of resource 6.5.2 Information sharing 6.5.3 Conflicts 6.5.4 Investment activities 6.5.5 Lobbying activities 6.5.6 Networking activities 7 The relation between humans and territory 7.1 The period before the titling of the resguardo 7.1.1 Salia customary rules 7.1.2 Design principles in the customary arrangement 7.2 The period after the titling of the resguardo 7.2.1 Organisational structures 7.2.2 Authorities in El Duya 7.2.3 Rules for natural resources appropriation 7.3 Drivers of institutional transformation 7.3.1 Design principles in El Duya 7.3.2 Robustness of the SES 8 Environmental planning in indigenous territories 8.1 Spatial environmental planning in Colombia 8.2 Planning in El Duya 8.3 Oil exploration and extraction concerning El Duya 8.3.1 Projects of interest for El Duya 8.3.2 Authority over activities related to hydrocarbons 8.4 Environmental sustainability: multiple understandings 8.4.1 State view: a blurry concept 8.4.2 Indicators for environmental sustainability 8.4.3 The ecological function of property 8.4.4 Indigenous view: ‘pervivencia’ 9 Autonomy over ecosystems in El Duya 9.1 Distribution of powers with regard to ecosystems in El Duya 9.2 Authority exercise over ecosystems in El Duya 9.3 Decision-making and agency over ecosystems in El Duya 9.4 Indigenous territorial autonomy in El Duya 10 Discussion of results 10.1 Human-nature relations in El Duya and institutional change 10.1.1 Law of origin, Mother Earth and indigenous ontologies 10.1.2 Salia institutions and change 10.1.3 Interpreting institutional design principles 10.2 Environmental planning: a question of institutional jurisdiction 10.2.1 Indigenous planning, order and territory 10.2.2 Salia way of planning 10.2.3 Looking after the territory 10.2.4 Indigenous jurisdiction and extractive industries 10.2.5 The concept of environmental sustainability in indigenous territories 10.3 Territorial autonomy: the need for further conceptualisation 10.3.1 Authority and decision-making as a component of autonomy 10.3.2 Indigenous territorial autonomy in Colombia 10.3.3 Planning and autonomy 11 Conclusions 11.1 Human relationship with the territory 11.2 Indigenous environmental planning 11.3 Indigenous territorial autonomy and nature 11.4 Contributions to environmental sustainability 11.5 Further research 12 References 13 Appendices 13.1 Appendix A 13.2 Appendix B 13.3 Appendix C 13.4 Appendix D 13.5 Appendix E 13.6 Appendix F 13.7 Appendix G 13.8 Appendix H

The emergence of the effects of global warming, as well as the ongoing depletion of fossil fuels and fertile soil pose a serious threat for the future of the agricultural industry. Alternatively, the continuous population growth mainly in the less developed regions highlights the future need of approximately 70-110 percent increase in the overall output of contemporary food production. While the current conventional agriculture deploys a multitude of technologies including the precision agriculture framework, the future needs of the population exceed the projected capabilities of the industry. Machine learning as the current fastest growing technology represents the potential remedy for the emerging issues, yet the extent of successful implementation remains uncertain. The thesis aims to uncover the potential future implications of implementation of machine learning based technology in agriculture through the use of the new scenario building methodology. The analysis builds on a varying set of empirical data, current state of art projects in machine learning and multiple future trend projections. Albeit the scenario building technique allows for a potentially endless number of constructed scenarios, the thesis concentrates on three main plot lines. First scenario tackles the more probable...

A comprehensive study is presented of the Capacitated Multi DepotGreen Vehicle Routing Problem (CMDGVRP) applied to a heterogeneous fleet of electronic waste collecting vehicles with two objectives: to reduce the total fuel consumption of the vehicles (environmental sustainability) and to limit the continuous drive-time of the drivers (social sustainability). Research has been limited from this aspect, and in this study, the focus is on the practical application of pickup and delivery of electronic waste. The study also presents results for the online dynamic routing variant of this problem, where traffic congestion appears mid-route. A detailed analysis and parameter optimization has been done for Simulated Annealing, Genetic algorithm(GA), along with more advanced variants like Non-dominated Sorting GA (NSGA II), NSGA III, UNSGA III, and Indicator-Based Selection Evolutionary Algorithm (IBEA). Additionally, the Gini index is used to create a multi-objective model, which is novel in the context of CMDGVRP to the best of our knowledge. The use of the Gini index in the field of CMDGVRP shows excellent potential in balancing environmental, economic, and social sustainability. An extension of the CMDGVRP is introduced where vehicles can visit dropoff locations mid-route and then continue with a new route. This implementation is novel to our knowledge and is named Drop-and-continue. It is shown to increase the performance on large datasets. Results are presented from realistic simulation studies on a public dataset, with varying route lengths and vehicle fleet sizes, along with a real-world dataset from a waste collection company in Sweden. The results show that the optimal choice of algorithm depends on the dataset size and if there is a maximum budget of evaluations or computation time. Realistic problems are solved in a matter of a few seconds, given that they are initiated well. Simulated Annealing and Genetic algorithm prove to be very competitive in the case of large problems and limited computation time budget.

The Covid19-pandemic may have impacted the environmental strategies of firms as it has had a major impact on the world economy and businesses. In particular Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) as during prolonged economic downturns they suffer disproportionately which could be due to lack of key resources which bigger firms naturally have more of, such as access to bank loans, technological, managerial, and human resources. Nevertheless, the Covid19-pandemic does not make the current environmental crises any less important therefore it is imperative to explore how firms’ environmental strategies have adapted during this time. The purpose of this study was to examine what happens to environmental strategies when firms experience harsher financial conditions. This have led us to construct the following research question:“How do SMEs adjust their environmental strategies during crises?”In this paper we answer the research question by analyzing the effect Covid19 has had on the environmental strategies of Swedish SMEs’ environmental strategies during Covid19. In order to achieve the purpose of this study we performed a qualitative study with an exploratory approach by interviewing seven different Swedish SMEs within the construction industry. The key findings this our study produced was that the firms’ environmental strategies remained resilient as no firm decreased their focus on environmental strategy nor did they view this aspect less important. Rather some firms intensified their environmental strategies suggesting that this might be a viable strategy to survive a crisis.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate how organizations successfully can implement sustainability strategies. To fulfill the purpose, three research questions were established: What factors are important to consider when implementing environmental sustainability strategies? How do these factors affect the implementation of an environmental sustainability strategy? How can these factors enable a successful implementation of sustainability strategies? Method – To achieve the purpose of this study, a case study has been conducted at an organization where empirical data has been collected through interviews, observations, and document analyses. Further, a literature review was carried out to establish a theoretical framework. The empirical data and theoretical framework have been compared and analyzed in order to answer the research questions and fulfill the purpose. Findings – The findings provided six important factors in the implementation of environmental sustainability strategies: organizational structure, organizational culture, internal communication, management control, leadership, and employee motivation. The factors affect the implementation by hindering and facilitating alignment, common understanding, efficient communication, employee involvement and motivation. Further, the factors can enable a successful implementation by creating a mutual understanding of the strategy's vision and goals and establishing an organizational alignment in relation to the strategy. Last, the research indicates that a holistic consideration of these factors is needed. Implications – The research did not contribute to new theories, however, it provided increased knowledge on various factors that affect and enable environmental sustainability strategy implementation. Further, the research suggests that the factors should be considered holistically and simultaneously to achieve organizational alignment and mutual understanding. Limitations – The study is a single case study where one organization has been explored and a limited number of interviews have been conducted. The credibility of the study is believed to have increased further if multiple organizations had been studied with more interviews.

This thesis is based on the premise that reproductive rights and environmental sustainability have synergistic interests: human population growth increases environmental impact and access to family planning triggers reduced fertility levels. Despite increasing scientific evidence indicating that the size of the global population matters for environmental sustainability, and by extension, that fulfilling reproductive rights may be beneficial for the latter, the linkages between reproductive rights and environmental sustainability have been largely understudied, ignored, and left out of environmental policy and reproductive rights agendas. Because of the complexity of this interdisciplinary field and its associated ethical questions, many researchers and policy makers have chosen to avoid this sensitive and polarizing issue altogether. However, capitalizing on these linkages could represent significant opportunity to advance the reproductive rights and environmental movements, and increase the prominence, legitimacy, and funding of global family planning services, in particular. This thesis uses an action research approach to explore the current framing of the reproductive rights and environmental sustainability linkage, study the perceptions of stakeholders of both the reproductive health and rights and environmental sustainability movements on this issue, and elaborate a strategic communication roadmap to promote its operationalisation.