This thesis studies symbolic power within Uruguay’s agricultural regime shiftbetween 2000 and 2010. This socio-ecological system (SES) has been changing froman agricultural-livestock farming system to one dominated by intensive cropagriculture. The aim is to understand the role of a natural resource managementprogram (NRMP) within the processes that are leading to a different state. The mainresearch method is a discursive analysis of actors’ position-taking regarding thechange in agriculture.The main results indicate that: 1) an interacting regime shift took place in Uruguaywhere a new type of agricultural producer was the main driver that generated multipledomain and scale effects; 2) soil erosion as technological and neutral problememerges as a consequence of the struggle between actors’ interpretations of theagricultural changes; 3) a reorganization cycle takes place in natural resourcemanagement program (NRMP); 4) NRMP promotes a further reorganization ofresources: development of new scientific research problems and 5) a regime shift isobservable in natural resource management: ecological knowledge is based on powerrelations rather than on historical experience.The study concludes that symbolic relations of power during a regime shift are ofgreat importance to understand how a society institutionalizes a management programand develops ecological knowledge. In turn, NRMP plays a fundamental role duringthat system reorganization phase, as it sustains certain exploitation of the naturalresources through the promotion of new ecological knowledge. The recommendation for RS theory is to situate natural resource management and ecological knowledge asparts of the dynamics of a social-ecological system.

The Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a forage fish species that is increasing inimportance for Southern Ocean fisheries and world aquaculture production. However, thisspecies also has a fundamental role in the Scotia Sea food-web and is the main conservationtarget for the region’s natural resource management organization - the Commission for theConservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The aim of this thesis istherefore to examine the inter-relationship between CCAMLR, krill fishery and the Scotia Seaecosystem in the Southern Ocean, as well as broader socio-economical and ecological settingssince 1970s and measure system resilience. The premise here is that the current krill-regime inthe Scotia Sea must be understood as a complex adaptive system (CAS) of social, ecologicaland economical attributes that operates over different temporal and spatial scales. Thus, byapplying the framework of a social-ecological system (SES), together with the adaptive cycleheuristic model, both quantitative and qualitative data is revised and integrated. Two alternatemanagement states are identified within the krill-regime; an early krill fishery state (1972 –1991), and an ecosystem based governance state (1991 - 2010). Resilience is however fadingin the Scotia Sea due to a combination of cross-scale attributes, in a range from low krilldensity (n/m¯²), increased competition for marine resources between predators and krillfishery, to elevated demand and global market prices of non-food commodities by theaquaculture sector in Asia, thus, moving the Scotia Sea towards an unknown fish-regime.Although such future regime is still retained by the region’s slow changing physical variablessuch as sea ice and seasonality, as well as the adaptive management capacity of CCAMLR,the sudden appearance of an undesirable regime in the Scotia Sea would probably havecomprehensive socio-ecological consequences if reached.

Två olika bullertypers effekt på visuell talavläsning undersöktes på 23 normalhörande (de bästa av 147 i ett förtest). Uppgiften var att visuellt avläsa vanliga svenska ord i tre ljudförhållanden: tystnad, brus och talbuller. Talbuller gav signifikant lägre avläseprestation än tystnad och brus. Resultatet tolkas som fonologisk informationsstörning, att talavläsningen kräver fonologisk bearbetning, vilket också talbullret tvingar till. Det fanns ett medelstarkt samband mellan uppskattad ansträngning och avläseprestation för tystnad, ju bättre deltagarna avläste desto mindre ansträngande tyckte de att det var. Samband mellan självskattningar och avläseprestation för brus och talbuller saknades.

Abstract. The prediction of growing global populations flocking to cities, increasingdemands for more food production, the call to maintain biodiversity and the interactionsof many different stakeholders elicits quite a mind-boggling medley of complexity. Theact of 'urban farming' may be a promising starting point in which to begin understandingthis complexity. This thesis strives to untangle the variables within this predictionthrough a narrative approach, weaving in relationships of power in order to understandthe complexity of this 'mess,' by tracing the actions of the last urban farmers inStockholm, Sweden. Employing Complexity Thinking, the narrative is temporallyorganized in order to highlight context, purpose and motive, aiming to promoteverisimilitude through systematically assembling interpretations while supporting themwith thick details as to what 'urban farming' interpretively is. Discrepancies, connectionsand contradictions from the case study are juxtaposed against one another to displayplurality of views across different scales of space and time. The case study highlightsurban farming's marginalization by illustrating historically distinct institutional shifts ingovernance; drawing attention to policies and regulations, past actions and artifacts,which, when self-organized to the present, are 'currently' reducing the farmers'possibilities for food production, promoting instead, an arguably beautiful, yet'unsustainable' biodiversity-and-urban-park emphasis, ignoring the appetites of the city'srapidly growing population and the accompanying external food dependencies that growwith it. Conclusions point to a deeper seeded issue in the founding assumption of thescientific prediction, calling attention to contextuality, unpredictability, the problemsassociated with a governing logic and/or a compressed-way-of-thinking and the generalneed or willingness to appreciate the complexity of things, actions and people –particularly people who grow or raise our food.

Pressure from an ever increasing population demands development and use of agriculturalpractices which increases productivity without undermining the biological foundation onwhich all humans depend. To support resilience, agriculture needs to manage the land forgeneration of multiple ecosystem services. Analyses show that practices that practices whichhave been introduced in Potshini, a smallholder community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africahave potential to increase crop yields, generate multiple ecosystem services and resilience ofthe area. However, these practices are adopted to a very low degree. Through informationgained with semi-structured interviews with farmers reasons for low adoption is found onseveral scales. Reasons directly causing abandonments are both physical constraints as lack ofresources and reasons on a mental /behavioral form resistance to change behavior and lack ofknowledge, factors appearing on the local scale. These factors are partly connected to arigidity to change caused by the South African social system in combination with poorconditions for smallholder commercialization. A low dependency on farming as livelihoodand few opportunities to use farming for income generation results in a low potential of usingproductivity increase as driver. Soft factors related to traditions and farmer values becomesincreasingly important as drivers why practices with implications on the traditional way offarming (like the introduced conservation agriculture) becomes harder than introduction ofpractices which does not interfere with farmer values and traditions. Additionally, landdegradation acting as a driver for implementation on a societal level is not perceived as anurgent issue among farmers and thus not acted upon. To achieve long term sustainability inthe system, a better understanding of the system drivers is needed to achieve a change fromwithin the smallholder system, to facilitate other ways of income generation than fromproductivity increase. To increase the awareness of environmental issues, mainstreaming mayprovide a way forward, and to compensate farmers for costs related to benefits which aregenerated for the larger system payment for ecosystem services may be used.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the bottom-up perspective in the study of civil society participation in local government decisions regarding urban green space. The study investigates what role civic actors set out to take and traces their engagement in the municipal decision-making processes. A descriptive theoretical framework is created to categorize environmental Non-Governmental Organizations' (NGO) strategies to intervene in the municipally governed green space planning within Stockholm County. With a theoretical basis in sociological and political science studies of social movements and public participation, I assess: 1) the timing of an intervention in the municipal planning process 2) degree of NGO collaboration with municipal authorities, and 3) the consensus or conflict driven nature of their approach towards the municipal authorities. Data on the interventions was collected from newsletters, meeting protocols and comments on development plans from the website of two prominent NGO as well as interviews with six activists in the Stockholm region. The distribution of the interventions found in Stockholm shows that reactive, non-participatory and conflict-driven strategies are the most common combination, although one third of the interventions have a participatory approach towards the municipality and a few interventions work to make a change by initiating consensus among stakeholders. Interviews with civic actors suggest that a lack of resources and low expected impact on official planning decisions hinders proactive and consensus-driven engagement, but also broken promises and a lack of responsiveness by municipal authorities can catalyze civic actors towards more conflictual methods of engagement. Further research topics of an explanatory nature on distribution and dynamics of interventions in the new theoretical framework are suggested based on reflections from the interviews.

Cultural landscapes are places that have developed distinct characteristics from the interaction of people and nature. Actors with different roles in a cultural landscape will interpret the value of the landscape features differently. By combining these perspectives, or knowledge systems, a more complete interpretation can be included in development of an adaptive and collaborative environmental management systems. The principles of such adaptive co-management have guided a management initiative in the province of Bali, Indonesia. It aims to safe-guard a selected region of a unique landscape shaped by peaceful water-sharing among Bali’s rice farmer associations, known as subaks. The current challenge is to effectively engage the communities in its implementation. The site is nominated as a Cultural Landscape World Heritage (CLWH) to UNESCO, which is an opportunity to involve the national and provincial administrations in a management strategy.A key assumption is that knowing each other’s interpretations will contribute to building an effective management plan and implementation. In this study perspectives from two stakeholder groups, the management committee and local farmers, have been assessed to understand how they interpret the landscape values. The perspective of a practical knowledge system is contrasted to the scientific knowledge system, although both groups share an understanding of the values of the subak landscape. These knowledge systems were made explicit with visualisation methods in qualitative interviews.Furthermore, the local farmers interpreted the CLWH nomination as an opportunity for tourism and development, although stressing that tourism may have negative effects. The management committee, on the other hand, perceived the CLWH nomination as a tool to attract attention not only from tourists, but also support from the national and provincial government. It can be concluded that the CLWH nomination has achieved involvement and attention from government actors and supported development of an adaptive co-management plan. The Balinese CLWH nomination has potential for evolving environmental management and combine local and scientific knowledge systems, based on the shared place-based lived experience of the subak landscape.

How do children develop an emotional relationship with Nature? This study provides a transdisciplinary exploration of how the connection with the Biosphere develops and how it is influenced by different socio-ecological environments. It assesses environmental sensitivity, awareness and attitude of 28 children in Stockholm together with the biophysical environments in which these children have been, and the environmental ethic of the social context with whom they have been in contact (parents and teachers). The results are summarized into two major findings. First, the biophysical environment in which a child is immersed influences the formation of an emotional relationship with the Biosphere. Children with higher exposure to wild and rural environments have also higher empathy and concern for natural elements, while the opposite is true for children with higher exposure to indoors. Second, the social perception of an environment influences children’s feelings for the same environment. Children who fear forests because of predators have parents and teachers who also perceive forests as unsafe for children’s playing. The complex network of socio-ecological influences and the little empirical evidence does not allow the study to provide insights about the mechanisms underpinning the development of each emotion. However, the study significantly affirms that children’s emotional connection with Nature is adaptive to children’s socio-ecological surroundings. These findings highlight the potential of different disciplines to pursue the mental reconnection of human and Nature, e.g. experiential learning and transmission of social memories. Further, urban planning grants remarkable tools to implement such scientific understanding in the realm of an ever growing urban population.

This thesis is based on a minor field study conducted in Kagera, Tanzania, during approximately two months in 2009. In the Kagera region, agriculture is seen as the main dependent factor for the small-scale farmers' livelihoods, which is an activity challenged by environmental constraints including soil degradation and deforestation. The non-governmental organisation Vi Agroforestry has been active in Kagera since 2005, focusing on the re-establishment of a healthy and sustainable environment, while simultaneously trying to reduce the levels of poverty and food insecurity through rural-based agroforestry techniques and enterprise development. Its work is implemented with a demand-driven group approach and the small-scale farmers' self-reliance as a key element. The purpose of the field study was to investigate the socio-economic situation for small-scale farmers in Kagera and how it possibly had changed over time as well as in what ways Vi Agroforestry so far might had affected the farmers' situation. The possible diverse development between farmers that were members in groups collaborating with the organisation and non-members was also investigated. During the field study semi-structured interviews signified the main source of information and the material gathered was analysed according to the capital assets of the pentagon of the sustainable rural livelihood framework. Overall, even though the small-scale farmers still seemed to face challenges in their daily lives when this study was conducted, the general impression was that their socio-economic situation had improved over time and that Vi Agroforestry had constituted a contributing engine for this development. The main contributions by the organisation in this regard seemed to have been the education and training in agriculture and agroforestry techniques, enterprise development and micro savings and loans. Due to an apparent small-scale development with a diverse focus among the farmers on improving different capitals, as well as insufficient data on how the farmers' situation was before the organisation's arrival, no prominent differences seemed evident between the farmers who were members of groups collaborating with Vi Agroforetry and non-members.

To engage in environmental and social issues is getting more important for companies, and many companies have integrated environmental considerations into their business. Consumers have a strong influence on companies and their environmental awareness and willingness to pay affects the companies work within the environmental field. The consumption of clothes has grown rapidly and the average Swede spends 3.9 percent of their income on clothes. The production process of clothes can harm the environment, society and the consumers themselves. So the purpose of this thesis is to see if consumers have a willingness to pay extra for an environmentally friendly garment. The aim is also to identify what factors that may influence consumers’ decisions. A survey containing a contingent valuation has been conducted. The results show that a prominent majority, 89 percent, of the respondents stated that they would pay extra to make sure the garment they buy is eco-friendly, and the median for the amount they are willing to spend is 65 SEK extra. This indicates that there is an interest from the consumers to pay extra to make sure environmental consideration is taken in production of clothes. The awareness of the indirect harm that purchasing clothes can cause themselves, others and the environment and how intensely consumers feel that it is their own responsibility not to cause that harm, probably have an influence on peoples’ willingness to pay extra.