Regime shifts are large, abrupt, persistent changes in the structure and function of ecosystems that may have substantial consequences for human well-being. In agricultural ecosystems, examples of regime shifts include soil salinization, lake eutrophication and bush encroachment. Here, a novel, adaptable scoring system was developed using ecosystem services and human well-being as framed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to: 1) quantify the impact of twelve agriculturally-driven regime shifts on ecosystem services and human well-being; and 2) estimate the effect that agriculturally-driven regime shifts have on different user groups. Key results include: 1) Ecosystem services and human well-being indices are impacted negatively by nearly all shifts from less to more anthropogenically impacted regimes; 2) The relative difference in ecosystem service amount between alternate regimes is much larger for regime shifts with more negative impacts than those with positive impacts; and 3) All user groups were impacted negatively by nearly all regime shifts, with industrial farmers being impacted least negatively and subsistence farmers being impacted most negatively. These findings can facilitate a better-informed assessment of the potential risks, benefits and costs associated with taking action to avert or precipitate agriculturally-driven regime shifts.

The capacity of urban areas for generating quality of life is largely dependent on theecological processes and the green spaces of the cityscape. The ecosystem services supportedand generated by urban green spaces are fundamental to human well being in cities.Hence, this master thesis explores the possibilities of local stewardship as a possiblemanagement mode for enhancing ecosystem services in the urban landscape. It does so by ananalysis of management rights to state-owned lands in the municipality of Stockholm andthrough evaluating to what extent the institutional structure of the management enables localstewardship. Further, by choosing three case studies comprised of Igelbäcken AllotmentGarden, Akalla Allotment garden and the Vinterviken garden, all three located on state-ownedland in Stockholm Municipality, this thesis explores how the rules in use are fashioned andfollowed and what role leadership plays in this process. Finally, the motivational drivers forgetting involved in local stewardship in all three case studies were explored.The study is of a qualitative nature primarily utilising semi-structured interviews withgardeners at the case studies, employees at the municipality and direct observation as a meansto gather data. The key findings of this study suggest that the possibilities of local stewardshipof green areas owned by Stockholm municipality are limited. The resources for the municipaldistricts’ administering of local stewardship initiatives are insufficient and the institutionalstructure is complicated and unclear.The rules in use in the respective case studies are dependent on the leadership in the gardensand this thesis suggests that a mix of planning-led and visionary-led leadership could beemployed in order to maintain a resilient institutional structure. The motivational drivers forthe engagement in the case study areas differ but are dominated by practices within cultural,recreational and provisioning ecosystem services. Hence, the local stewardship examined inthe three case studies indicates that the green-area management is not based on biodiversityconservation but is primarily oriented towards nurturing cultural and provisional ecosystemservices. However, these practices contribute to enhancing additional ecosystem services.The results of this study have indicated the importance of exploring the interplay betweeninstitutions, leadership and motivational drivers in order to design more efficient urbanmanagement designs that involve local stewardship groups.

Evangelical churches are growing rapidly in Sub-Sahara Africa, in sheer numbers as well asin societal importance. At the same time urbanization and its associated negativeenvironmental and social consequences are putting pressure on many urban social-ecologicalsystems in the global south. The question that this paper raises is how the growing religioussocial movements frame these change processes and their role in them? With its rapidurbanization and high church involvement in civil society Kigali, Rwanda serves as the casestudyThe study, conducted through semi-structured interviews with church leaders from fivechurches in Kigali conveyed that the evangelical religious movements offer a world viewsalient with many of its' supporters belief systems and experiences of everyday life. There isno doubt of the potential for mobilizing collective action, inherent in the evangelical churchesin Kigali. While currently lacking a clear and coherent agenda on its role in the adaptivecapacity of the social-ecological system of Kigali, an awareness is awakening. Yet manyactions, such as tree planting, infra-structure improvements and education, are taken toimprove the biophysical environment. These are based in the movement supporters' holisticworldview, where physical and spiritual health goes hand in hand. With increasedunderstanding within the movements, of complex social-ecological relations possibly throughthe ambitious projects set up by some of the churches involved, this study shows themovements potential of becoming important actors on environmental issues. This study addsto the growing body of work challenging the assumption that a focus on key individuals issufficient to explain the human processes within a social-ecological system. The empiricalfindings serve as good examples of how the intangible processes occurring inside individualsin a system have the potential of inducing far reaching consequences for that system, whenamplified through a social movement. Further research, emphasizing on participatoryobservations could increase this papers contribution to theory development on adaptivecapacity.

The threats to ecosystems and the future delivery of ecosystem services are to a large extentassociated with risks and uncertainty. Integrating these concepts into the analysis on ecosystemservices is thus an important aspect when building sound theoretical frameworks as well aspractical guidelines.We use a standard framework from financial economics that incorporates risk to analyse howfarmers may opt for different strategies for how pollination may affect their harvest. Undercertain assumptions, this framework highlights the inherit trade-offs in the output and risk ofpollination, as well as showing that farmers may opt for different strategies depending on theirrisk preference.Our conclusion from this study is that, although proper data on pollination is lacking, theframework used in combining risk management and ecosystem services does highlight crucialaspects of ecosystem management and may be used as an argument for using precautionary-typemanagement.

Functional chemicals are used in paper production to enhance specific characteristics in the final paper product. One functional chemicals category is internal sizing chemicals which are used to create liquid resistance hydrophobicity in the paper, at the wet end of the production process. This thesis report calculated the environmental burdens of three internal sizing chemicals produced by Eka Chemicals, a business unit of AkzoNobel. The three chemicals under study are a specific product of each of the following categories: Alkyl Ketene Dimer (AKD), Alkenyl Succinic Anhydride (ASA) and Cationic Dispersion Rosin. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was performed from cradle to end customer gate. The Carbon, Energy and Water Footprint of the three products were calculated using Gabi 4 software. The functional unit used in LCA was the kilograms of dry sizing chemical required for the production of 1kg of paper. Two paper grades were used; copy paper, where AKD and ASA are mostly applied and solid board, where ASA and Rosin are applied. The Carbon Footprint for copy paper and a distribution distance 1500 km was found to be 2,5 kg CO2 eqv/ton paper for AKD, 5,1 kg CO2 eqv/ton paper for ASA and 4,9 kg CO2 eqv/ton paper for Rosin. The Energy Footprint results for the same case were 62 MJ/ton paper consumed by AKD, 136 MJ/ton paper by ASA and 228 MJ/ton paper by Rosin. The Water Footprint results for copy paper and 1500 km distribution distance were 0,1 m3 water/ton paper consumed by AKD, 0,3 m3 water/ton paper by ASA and 0,5 m3/ton paper by Rosin. Dominance analysis diagrams illustrated that for all three sizing chemicals raw material production is a hotspot both for the Carbon Footprint and the Energy Footprint. Data was evaluated and a sensitivity analysis was performed on assumptions, allocation percentages and scenarios (including and not including the emulsification of ASA). The results conclude that AKD is the best alternative according to the Carbon, Energy and Water Footprint calculated for all applications. For solid board the best choice for large distribution distances appears to be ASA. / www.ima.kth.se

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Adults’ (parents’) sensitivity and awareness of their children’s issues and thoughts are important in order to answer their children. There is a need to investigate how parents try to find an appropriate strategy to answer their children’s life questions. The research question of the current study is how parents answer their children’s ‘difficult’ questions. The data set has been collected using semi-structured interviews and audio taping of ten participants with different backgrounds. The data set has been thematized as ‘responsive’, ‘avoiding’ and ‘dominant’ answers using thematic analysis in order to analyze the interviewees’ stories and investigate how they use different strategies of answering their children’s questions. The results show that almost all of the parents try to be responsive about their children’s life questions. Furthermore, it is shown that some of the parenting’s styles of answering could be included in more than one category of answering style, for example parents try to be responsive and meanwhile intended to avoid answering.

The aim of present study was to create greater understanding and knowledge of how an organization, in practice, can achieve robust but at the same time change friendly processes, while maintaining or increasing customer value. The following research questions were answered: How can an organization, in practice, create a common understanding of their actual present situation in terms of robustness and change kindness in their processes? How can an organization, in practice, identify and prioritize areas for improvement that leads to robust but at the same time change friendly processes? The study design was a qualitative case study where a model was tested to examine the research questions. The model is built up on identified customer value, flow mapping extended with narrative networks, and a workshop with problem solving in groups. Results and conclusions showed how an organization in practice could work with the model RobustChange.

Sustainable development most prominently entered the global political arena in 1987 in a report from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland report. In response to the concept of sustainable development, a vast array of ideas, concepts, methods and tools to aid organizations and governments in addressing the socio-ecological problems has been developed. Though helpful in many contexts, the multitude of such support also risks creating confusion, not the least since there is no generally endorsed overriding and operational definition of sustainability. Thus, there is a growing need for such a definition and for an understanding of how these ideas, concepts, methods and tools relate to sustainability and to each other. A framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) has been developed over the last 20 years to create such a unifying structure. The aim of this research is to contribute specifically to the social sustainability definition of this framework. The research follows the Design Research Methodology. First, the social dimension of the FSSD as it stands currently was examined and described as was the general field of social sustainability. Then, a new approach to the social side of the FSSD was created. The studies revealed that the field of social sustainability, in general, is vastly under-theorized and under-developed, and that a clear framework is important and desired. They also laid out in which ways specifically the structure of the FSSD could be used to further develop the social dimension of strategic planning and innovation, and that currently this aspect of the FSSD is relatively under-developed. This assessment was followed by a first attempt at a clearer definition of social sustainability. Based on these explorations, this research suggests five principles as a hypothesis to be used as a definition of social sustainability, the key-terms of which being ’integrity’, ‘influence’, ‘competence’, ‘impartiality’ and ‘meaning’. For validity purposes the results were cross-checked with other approaches and theories. The validity check shows that similar key-terms have been found by other researchers. In conclusion, this research contributes with a hypothesis for a clearer definition of social sustainability, which is general enough to be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to guide decision-making. This is a contribution to systems science in the sustainability field and it is a step to creating an enhanced support for strategic planning and innovation for sustainability. Further testing and refinement of this theoretical foundation, and bringing it into practical use, will be the subject of the continued studies.