This work presents the results from an evaluation of stereoscopic versus monoscopic 3D parallel coordinates. The objective of the evaluation was to investigate if stereopsis increases user performance. The results show that stereoscopy has no effect at all on user performance compared to monoscopy. This result is important when it comes to the potential use of stereopsis within the information visualization community.

Achieving food security will require closing yield gaps in many regions, including Pakistan. Although fertilizer subsidies have facilitated increased nitrogen (N) application rates, many staple crop yields have yet to reach their maximum potential. Considering that current animal manure and human excreta (bio-supply) recycling rates are low, there is substantial potential to increase the reuse of nutrients in bio-supply. We quantified 2010 crop N, phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) needs along with bio-supply nutrient availability for Pakistani districts, and compared these values to synthetic fertilizer use and costs. We found that synthetic fertilizer use combined with low bio-supply recycling resulted in a substantial gap between nutrient supply and P and K crop needs, which would cost 3 billion USD to fill with synthetic fertilizers. If all bio-supply was recycled, it could eliminate K synthetic fertilizer needs and decrease N synthetic fertilizer needs to 43% of what was purchased in 2010. Under a full recycling scenario, farmers would still require an additional 0.28 million tons of synthetic P fertilizers, costing 2.77 billion USD. However, it may not be prohibitively expensive to correct P deficiencies. Pakistan already spends this amount of money on fertilizers. If funds used for synthetic N were reallocated to synthetic P purchases in a full bio-supply recycling scenario, crop needs could be met. Most recycling could happen within districts, with only 6% of bio-supply requiring between-district transport when optimized to meet national N crop needs. Increased recycling in Pakistan could be a viable way to decrease yield gaps.

While energy-sector emissions remain the biggest source of climate change, many least-developed countries still invest in fossil-fuel development paths. These countries generally have high levels of fossil fuel technology lock-in and low capacities to change, making the shift to sustainable energy difficult. Tanzania, a telling example, is projected to triple fossil-fuel power production in the next decade. This article assesses the potential to use internationally supported Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) to develop solar energy in Tanzania and contribute to transformational change of the electricity supply system. By assessing the cultural legitimacy of NAMAs among key stakeholders in the solar energy sector, we analyse the conditions for successful uptake of the concept in (1) national political thought and institutional frameworks and (2) the solar energy niche. Interview data are analysed from a multi-level perspective on transition, focusing on its cultural dimension. Several framings undermining legitimacy are articulated, such as attaching low-actor credibility to responsible agencies and the concept’s poor fit with political priorities. Actors that discern opportunities for NAMAs could, however, draw on a framing of high commensurability between experienced social needs and opportunities to use NAMAs to address them through climate compatible development. This legitimises NAMAs and could challenge opposing framings.

Review essay of Infinite Mobilization, by Peter Sloterdijk, translated by Sandra Berjan, Cambridge, Polity, 2020, 240 pp., $24.95, ISBN: 978-1-509-51847-0.

Due to the long timescales and deep uncertainties involved, comprehensive model-building has played a pivotal role in creating shared expectations about future trajectories for addressing climate change processes, mobilizing a network of knowledge-based experts who assist in defining common problems, identifying policy solutions, and assessing the policy outcomes. At the intersection between climate change science and climate governance, where wholly empirical methods are infeasible, numerical simulations have become the central practice for evaluating truth claims, and the key medium for the transport and translation of data, methods, and guiding principles among the actors involved. What makes integrated assessment unique as a comprehensive modeling-effort is that it is explicitly policy-oriented, justified by its policy-relevance. Although recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as invaluable to their review assessments, the role of integrated modeling in implementations of the Paris Agreement, such as in impact assessments of climate legislation on the national level, is far less known. Taking as its starting-point the boundary-work carried out in public administration, this paper examines how foresight knowledge produced with the help of model-based scenario analysis has been made relevant in Swedish climate policymaking, focusing on the processes by which key indicators for political action become institutionalized through the choice and use of model parameters. It concludes by arguing for an expanded understanding of policy-relevance, beyond institutional approaches and toward a process-based point of view, treating relevance as something in-the-making.

In light of the radical change to the reach and range of technical alteration, the co-evolution of mankind and the biosphere has become one of the principal questions of our age. As we find that man has altered the planet at just about every scale we are capable of measuring, the question concerning the essence of technology, in its power to not only imitate but in many ways even surpass the forces of nature, has become critical for the discussion about global environmental change. Often, the empirical findings of the geosciences have been interpreted as a motive to question the long-standing dualism between nature and artifice that itself has served, during almost the entirety of the history of Western philosophy, as the productive tension through which concepts such as technology and history have hitherto been conceptualized. But if much of our contemporary discourse on global environmental change is premised upon the functional and formal similarities between natural and artificial organs, I argue that returning to the intellectual current of 1920s and 30s Weimar Culture, where the relationship between globalization and industrialization first became of central hermeneutic concern, may shed new light on the Anthropocene as the conceptual site for a resurged geoaesthetics that denotes the ontological ubiquity of the designed environment, making the technological the foundation for a modern typological cosmology. Examining Ernst Jünger’s early work on the meaning of the planetary impact of modern technology, I caution that by reifying the cybernetic disclosure of the earth as a natural-artificial hybrid into a naturalistic ontology of work, we are liable to render our planet perfectly functional to its sustained instrumental appropriation as standing-reserve.

Artificial Earth: A Genealogy of Planetary Technicity offers an intellectual history of humanity as a geological force, focusing on a prevalent contradiction in the Anthropocene discourse on global environmental change: on the one hand, it has been argued that there are hardly any pristine environments anymore, to the degree that the concept of nature has lost its meaning; while on the other, that anthropogenic environmental change has become so prevailing that it ought to be conceived of as a force of nature, in the literal sense of the expression. Artificial Earth argues that to fully grasp the stakes of this discourse, we need not only understand the contemporary scientific and technological transformations behind the Anthropocene, but also explore the history of an ontological concern tied up with it.

In order to do so, Artificial Earth examines reflections on the ontological dualism between nature and artifice within the history of earth science from the late eighteenth century onwards. Paying particular attention to its consequences for how human subjectivity has been conceptualized in the Anthropocene, it then enrolls these resources in an effort to problematize attempts since the 1980s to formalize earth science in systems theoretical terminology. In sum, the aim is to investigate the historical conditions for the possibility of conceiving human artifice as an integral part of the earth’s terrestrial environment, with the conviction that such an investigation may assist in resolving the aforementioned contradiction or at least to understand it better by tracing its historical lineage.

Since the turn of the millennium, the humanities have been progressively forced to come to terms with the materiality of a warming world, in particular the entanglement of natural environments with technical infrastructures that lies at the heart of anthropgenic environmental change, and its implications for the hithertofore seemingly impentetrable ontological wall of separation between natural and human history. In an effort to address the concomitant insufficiency of remaning solely at the discursive level, some scholars have sought to reorient the interpretative concerns of the humanities by submerging the modern subject into geological registers of deep time. This paper cautions that along with such a reorientation, however, any sense of a limit – such as a horizon of understanding belonging to human history – recedes into the modal void of deep time, with the unfortunate side-effect that questions of human agency and responsibility have a tendency to get lost in the more-than-human networks of the earth’s geophysical forces. This is ironic, given that the purported novelty of the so-called ‘Anthropocene’ condition is to highlight the anthropogenic dimension of global environmental change, and thus the deep time consequences of human action.

As part of the governmental mission to act as knowledge brokers in the field of adaptation to climate change, the Swedish National Knowledge Centre for Climate Change Adaptation, together with Linköping University, is developing a serious game concept with the aim to provide an experience of how different functions in society are influenced by choices or lack of choice of climate adaptation measures. The game is primarily targeted towards high-school students, but could also be used by, e.g., practitioners and politicians in municipalities that recently have initiated work on climate change adaptation. Sharing experiences from game sessions could contribute to the development of a common understanding of the needs and benefits of adaptation actions. In its present version the game is developed in Minecraft as a single-player game. Moderated dialogues between players are a vital part of the game, with the aim to address: What are the consequences (cost-benefits) related to actions taken (or not taken)? How to take decisions with consideration to uncertainty and natural variability (provided from a climate generator)? The concept has been evaluated from testing with high-school students and teachers. The potential of to engage students seems to be promising, especially when the game has been integrated in a role-play setting, where the players reflect upon different societal roles and perspectives. However, for some teachers the integration of gaming in education has been perceived as a technical challenge. The next step of the work will therefore include provision of a simpler web-based in order to increase the audience that feels comfortable with the use the game concept. However, while technical and methodological challenges remain, the use of serious gaming has been shown to support dialogues and engagement and will now be tested together with politicians in three Swedish municipalities under guidance of high-school students from the participating municipalities.

Limited application and use of forecast information restrict smallholder farmers ability to deal with drought in proactive ways. This paper explores the barriers that impede use and uptake of seasonal climate forecasts (SCF) in two pilot communities in Limpopo Province. Current interpretation, translation and mediation of national SCF to the local context is weak. A local early warning system (EWS) was developed that incorporated hydrological modelled information based on national SCF, locally monitored rainfall and soil moisture by a wireless sensor network, and signs from indigenous climate indicators. We assessed to what degree this local EWS could improve interpretation of SCF and increase understanding and uptake by farmers. Local extension staff and champion farmers were found to play important knowledge brokering roles that could be strengthened to increase trust of SCF. The local EWS provided added value to national SCF by involving community members in local monitoring, enacting knowledge interplay with indigenous knowledge and simplifying and tailoring SCF and hydrological information to the local context. It also helped farmers mentally prepare for upcoming conditions even if many do not currently have the adaptive mindsets, economic resources or pre-conditions to positively respond to SCF information.

This article explores how discourses may influence the potential for success in mitigating climate change in Swedish municipalities. We identify dominant discourses in climate change mitigation policy in three Swedish municipalities using argumentative discourse analysis, based on policy documents and interviews as empirical material. Political leadership and adequate organizational preconditions are necessary for working with climate change mitigation in municipalities, but the role of discourse is also significant. Policy discourse constructs preconditions for certain scenarios while rendering others less likely. Previous studies have shown that the ecological modernization (EM) discourse tends to be dominant, something which this study confirms and investigates further. We find that the dominant discourse is strong EM, which largely considers it possible to decouple economic growth and environmental problems through renewable energy and technology. A focus on collaboration between stakeholders is central and a global climate justice perspective is present to some extent. Potential solutions that are not related to the market or technological innovation risk being rendered invisible when this discourse is dominant, but the inclusion of a diversity of actors and an increased focus on climate justice could potentially minimize this risk. Finally, emerging discourses around transformation and circular economy have potential to enable the forging of new paths. This depends, however, on how these concepts are framed and how they are used.

Putting climate change policy-integration into practice is challenged by problems of institutional misfit, due to, inter alia, deficient vertical administrative interplay. While most focus within the field of climate change research has targeted the national-local interplay, less is known about the interface of regional and local perspectives. Here, the aim is to study that interface with a specific focus on the relation between regional and local spatial planning actors, through a case-study of transport and coastal zone management in a Swedish municipality. The article is based on interviews (focus group and single in-depth) and official planning documents. The material reveals a tricky planning situation, replete with conflict. In practice, various institutional frameworks, claims and ambitions collide. The attempts to steer the local spatial planning initiatives from the regional level led to conflicts, which in turn seems to have hampered the overall work for climate change management through spatial planning. Furthermore, there are few traces of prospects of a smooth vertical institutional interplay able to support the overall aims related to integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation in spatial planning. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Acknowledging the climate scenarios’ future deployment of BECCS in Europe and modelers’ questions as to the feasibility of implementing the level of BECCS proposed in the scenarios, this chapter provides a crude estimate of?the existing European potential for BECCS.?This potential is estimated through mapping point sources of biogenic CO2 from three types of processes with particularly promising prospects for BECCS: production of paper and pulp, combined heat and power (CHP), and bioethanol. The production of pulp, paper, and paperboard (“pulp and paper” for short)?is very energy intensive and generates considerable CO2 emissions. Due to?improved energy efficiency and a switch from fossil fuels to in-house biomass-based fuels, a large proportion of these CO2 emissions are biogenic (Sun et al., 2018). This, in combination with the fact that the emissions are often concentrated in just a few large production plants, makes these industries promising for BECCS deployment.

In the climate change communication literature, the concept of framing is increasingly used to discuss various understandings of climate change. This paper addresses the under-researched question of how specific audiences perceive the adequacy of various climate change frames, by exploring how Swedish farmers make sense of climate change information. Based on focus group discussions with farmers, the paper explores what communicators, or frame articulators, Swedish farmers perceive as central and how farmers judge the credibility of potential frame articulators in climate change communication. The paper discusses 1) the credibility of frame articulators as a matter of perceived independence and impartiality, 2) empirical credibility—whether farmers were able to verify the claims underlying climate change frames—as a matter of practical experience versus analytical reasoning, and 3) frame consistency, i.e. whether climate change frames correspond to audience beliefs and claims.

While previous studies have found games and gaming to be a new andinnovative communication strategy to inform the public and citizens aboutscientific research and engage them with it, this article addresses theunder-researched question of credibility aspects in research-basedgaming. The study analyses agricultural stakeholders’ discussions on thecredibility of scientific descriptions in The Maladaptation Game — a gamebased on research on climate change maladaptation in Nordic agriculture.The analysis of focus group transcripts and frame credibility finds thatplayers attribute credibility to 1) the perceived correspondence betweengame-articulated information on climate change, suggested adaptationactions and their potential maladaptive outcome, 2) the perceived “fit”between these elements and players’ experiences, and 3) the informationsources underpinning the game. Lastly, the article discusses the role ofresearch-based games in science communication and advocates the needfor careful balance between models of conceptual and scientific thinking ingame design and everyday experiences among players.

While previous research into understandings of climate change has usually examined general public perceptions, this study offers an audience-specific departure point. This article analyses how Swedish farmers perceive climate change and how they jointly shape their understandings. The agricultural sector is of special interest because it both contributes to and is directly affected by climate change. Through focus group discussions with Swedish farmers, this study finds that (1) farmers relate to and understand climate change through their own experiences, (2) climate change is understood either as a natural process subject to little or no human influence or as anthropogenic and (3) various communication tools contribute to the formation of natural and anthropogenic climate change frames. The article ends by discussing frame resonance and frame clash in public understanding of climate change and by comparing potential similarities and differences in how various segments of the public make sense of climate change.

As local climate adaptation activity increases, so does the number of questions about costs, benefits, financing and the role that economic considerations play in adaptation-related decision-making and policy. Through five cases, covering a range of climate risks and types of adaptation measures, this paper critically examines Swedish project coordinators perceptions of costs and benefits in already-implemented climate adaptation measures. Our study finds that project coordinators make use of different system boundaries - on temporal, geographical and administrative scales - in their cost/benefit evaluations, making the practice of determining adaptation costs arbitrary and hard to compare. We further demonstrate that the project coordinators interpret costs and benefits in a manner that downplays the intangible environmental and social costs and benefits arising from the adaptation measures, despite their own experience of how such measures negatively impact upon social value. The exclusion of social and environmental costs and benefits has severe implications for justice, as it can bias decisions against people and ecosystems that are affected negatively. Based on the findings, we propose three tentative social justice dilemmas in local climate adaptation planning and implementation: 1. Cost and benefit distribution across scales; 2. The identification and valuation of non-market effects; and 3. The equitable allocation of costs and benefits.

This article responds to recent calls for more creative expressions of climate and sustainabilitytransformations. In particular, research literature argues that the formulation of new narratives ofsustainable societies may function as a prominent intervention for system changes. Yet, few empiricalstudies exist on how creative climate and sustainability storytelling elicit varying levels of awareness andengagement. With the intention to advance scholarship in the role of narratives to create engagement withsustainability transformations, this study investigates children’s theater for the UN Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) as one research site. By analyzing the interactive children’s theater play “Esmeralda and theDragon—The Global Sustainability Goals,”we show that creative storytelling can offer a meaningful space forengagement with Agenda 2030 and the UN SDGs. In particular, we find that (1) children’s cognitive andemotional associations and experiences shape the meaning of and responses to the SDGs and (2) the play’sfictional elements resonate with children’s emotional frameworks. Based on the results, we argue that newstories are needed for sustainability transformations and that there is transformative power in the creativeand performance arts in this respect, and we call for further exploration of various publics engagements withsustainability storytelling.

The use of digital tools and interactive technologies for farming systems has increased rapidly in recent years and is likely to continue to play a significant role in meeting future challenges. Particularly games and gaming are promising new and innovative communication strategies to inform and engage public and stakeholders with scientific research. This study offers an analysis of how a research based game on climate change maladaptation can support, but also hinder players’ sense-making processes. Through the analysis of eight gaming workshops, this study identifies challenges and support for the players’ sense-making. While it concludes that conceptual thinking of game content sometimes clashes with players’ everyday experiences and practice, possibly resulting in loss of credibility, this study also concludes that gaming may function as an eye-opener to new ways of thinking. Overall, this paper suggests that the communication of (social) science and agricultural practices through serious gaming has great potential but at the same time poses challenges due to different knowledge systems and interpretive frameworks among researchers and practitioners.

Nordic agriculture has to adapt to the effects of climate change, both in terms of reducing the risk of negative effects, but also to draw on the opportunities that climate change might imply for agricultural production. As the implementation of adaptation measures might lead to potential negative outcomes or have trade-offs with different environmental or socio-economic goals, this project addresses the concept of maladaptation in Nordic agriculture. In order to identify and assess examples of maladaptation for the agricultural sector, we developed a novel methodology, integrating visualization, participatory methods and serious gaming. While games and gaming may be considered as a new, and innovative communication strategy to inform and engage public and citizens with scientific research, this study offers an analysis of how a research based game on climate change maladaptation can support but also hinder players' sense-making processes. Through the analysis of eight gaming workshops, this study identifies challenges and support for the player's sense-making. While it concludes that conceptual thinking of game content sometimes clashes with players' everyday experiences and practice, possibly resulting in loss of credibility, this study also concludes that gaming may function as an eye-opener to new ways of thinking. Overall, this paper suggests that the integration of (social) science and agricultural practices through serious gaming has great potential but at the same time poses challenges due to different knowledge systems and interpretive frameworks among researchers and practitioners.

Medan forskning kring utbildning i relation till FN:s globala mål för hållbar utveckling ökat sedan målenantogs 2015, finns det fortfarande få studier om förskoleutbildningens roll i en stundande samhällstransformationi enlighet med Agenda 2030. Den här studien syftar till att utforska utmaningar och möjlighetermed utbildning för FN:s globala mål för barn mellan 1-5 år. Genom en analys av fokusgruppssamtal medförskolepersonal visar studien att: 1) trots intention om en ämnesövergripande undervisning, tenderarfrågor om hållbar utveckling, och Agenda 2030, att bli fragmenterade, 2) förskolepersonal upplever attförskolan har goda förutsättningar att bedriva undervisning för hållbar utveckling, samt 3) förskolepersonaluttrycker att det finns ett dilemma mellan å ena sidan vikten av att se till och ta hänsyn till barnensintresse, och å andra sidan att bibehålla mål och fokus.

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Climate change communication is a topical and relevant issue, and it is widely acknowledged that public communication about causes, impacts and action alternatives is integral to addressing the challenges of the changing climate. Climate visualization concerns the communication of climate information and data through the use of different information technologies and different modes of visual representation. In the context of climate change communication, climate visualization is highlighted as a potential way of increasing public engagement with climate change. In particular, developments within information technology have provided significant advancements that are claimed to be transformative in engaging lay audiences with issues relating to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research exploring climate visualization from an audience perspective. This thesis addresses this gap. The overarching aim is thus to explore the role of climate visualization in climate change communication from an audience perspective, focusing specifically on how lay audiences make meaning of climate change as represented in two examples of climate visualization. In addition, the thesis discusses the potential contributions and/or limitations of climate visualization from a communication perspective.

Based on a social semiotic theoretical framework, this thesis employs focus group interviews to study participants’ meaning-making related to two cases of climate visualization: a dome theatre movie developed for Swedish high school students with the aim of encouraging reflection on climate change causes, impacts and mitigation alternatives, and a web-based tool for climate change adaptation developed to assist Nordic homeowners in adapting to the local impacts of climate change.

The results of this thesis show that climate visualization can help audiences concretize otherwise abstract aspects of climate change, and that the localized focus can make climate change appear more personally relevant and interesting for targeted audiences. Nevertheless, despite these communicative qualities, the analyses also show that participants’ interpretations are shaped by their preconceptions of climate change as a global and distant issue to be solved by other actors, such as national governments, or through international policy negotiations. Although climate visualization can enhance a sense of proximity with climate change, the localization of climate risk can also lead to participants downplaying the significance of climate impacts. In addition, despite the intentions of inducing a sense of agency in both cases of climate visualization, participants critically negotiated messages concerning their roles as individuals in mitigating or adapting to climate change, and assigned this responsibility onto other actors. These findings show that although climate visualization presents certain communicative qualities, it is not a panacea for engaging lay audiences with climate change. This also underlines the importance of considering cultural and social aspects of the communicative event when studying and developing climate visualization tools as a means of communication.

In recent years, effort has been put into developing various forms of climate visualization to create opportunities for people to explore and learn about local climate change risks and adaptation options. However, how target audiences make sense of such climate visualization has rarely been studied from a communication perspective. This paper analyses how Nordic homeowners made sense of a specific climate visualization tool, the VisAdapt™ tool. Involving 35 homeowners from three cities in 15 group test sessions, this study analyses the interpretive strategies participants applied to make sense of and assess the relevance of the visualized data. The study demonstrates that participants employed a set of interpretive strategies relating to personal experience and well-known places to make sense of the information presented, and that critical negotiation of content played an important role in how participants interpreted the content.

Methane (CH4), one of the key long-lived atmospheric greenhouse gases, is primarily produced from organic matter. Accordingly, net primary production of organic matter sets the boundaries for CH4 emissions. Plants, being dominant primary producers, are thereby indirectly sustaining most global CH4 emissions, albeit with delays in time and with spatial offsets between plant primary production and subsequent CH4 emission. In addition, plant communities can enhance or hamper ecosystem production, oxidation, and transport of CH4 in multiple ways, e.g., by shaping carbon, nutrient, and redox gradients, and by representing a physical link be-tween zones with extensive CH4 production in anoxic sediments or soils and the atmosphere. This review focuses on how plants and other primary producers influence CH4 emissions with the consequences at ecosystem scales. We outline mechanisms of interactions and discuss flux regulation, quantification, and knowledge gaps across multiple ecosystem examples. Some recently proposed plant-related ecosystem CH4 fluxes are difficult to reconcile with the global atmospheric CH4 budget and the enigmas related to these fluxes are highlighted. Overall, ecosystem CH4 emissions are strongly linked to primary producer communities, directly or indirectly, and properly quantifying magnitudes and regulation of these links are key to predicting future CH4 emissions in a rapidly changing world.

Appropriate methods to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes are critical for our ability to detect fluxes, understand regulation, make adequate priorities for climate change mitigation efforts, and verify that these efforts are effective. Ideally, we need reliable, accessible, and affordable measurements at relevant scales. We surveyed present GHG flux measurement methods, identified from an analysis of >11000 scientific publications and a questionnaire to sector professionals and analysed method pros and cons versus needs for novel methodology. While existing methods are well-suited for addressing certain questions, this presentation presents fundamental limitations relative to GHG flux measurement needs for verifiable and transparent action to mitigate many types of emissions. Cost and non-academic accessibility are key aspects, along with fundamental measurement performance. These method limitations contribute to the difficulties in verifying GHG mitigation efforts for transparency and accountability under the Paris agreement. Resolving this mismatch between method capacity and societal needs is urgently needed for effective climate mitigation. This type of methodological mismatch is common but seems to get high priority in other knowledge domains. The obvious need to prioritize development of accurate diagnosis methods for effective treatments in healthcare is one example. This presentation provides guidance regarding the need to prioritize the development of novel GHG flux measurement methods.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) plays a central role in scenario pathways that limit global warming in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Yet deliberate policy efforts to incentivise BECCS—whether through amending existing climate policies or introducing entirely new ones—remain rare. In this paper, we contend that BECCS must be incentivised responsibly, through policy-making processes which account for diverse and geographically varying societal values and interests. More specifically, we make the case for responsible incentivisation by undertaking a comparative analysis of stakeholder attitudes to four idealised policy scenarios for BECCS, including representatives of government, business, nongovernmental and academic communities, in the UK and Sweden. The scenarios were: business as usual; international policy reform; national BECCS policy; and national policy for negative emissions technologies. Based on our findings, we recommend that policymakers 1) recognise the need to develop new incentives and make enabling reforms to existing policy instruments; 2) consider the risk of mitigation deterrence in their real world (and not abstracted) contexts; 3) employ multi-instrument approaches to incentivisation that do not overly rely on carbon pricing or 4) force a choice between technology specific or technology neutral policies; and 5) attend to the diversity of stakeholder and wider public perspectives that will ultimately determine the success—or failure—of their policy designs.

Almost three decades have passed since the publishing of the last, and only, special issue on the sociology-environmental nexus in this journal. Since then, few of the articles published in Sociologisk Forskning have addressed climate change at all or in any substantial way. This silence could be interpreted as a quiet statement that sociology does not need to concern itself with climate change. However, no such line of argument is suggested in this special issue “Climate crisis”, which (re)presents current Swedish sociological research on climate change. Many of the authors take a similar stance that (environmental) sociology should not shy away from the climate crisis and the societal project of transformative change. Rather, sociologic research should study empirical cases of climate transitions or transformations, and contribute suggestions, as well as explanations, to how such changes can be accelerated.

A polycentric governance regime that includes non-state actors has potential to increase the pace in mitigating climate change if there is concerted action among the actors involved. However, previous research has shown that climate policy directed at business firms does not always have the intended effects. Taking a polycentric perspective to climate governance, this paper contributes insight into why some firms expect that to be the case. The paper builds on qualitative interviews with firms in the Swedish construction and civil engineering industry. We apply positioning theory to analyse firms' views on their own and other actors' roles and responsibilities in climate transformation. The results suggest that governance authorities could take on a more traditional, coercive leadership role, setting clear rules and regulations, if these extend in time and space to create a market where the shared goals are ambitious, and the playing field is level for firms.

Previous research points to leadership as a key ingredient in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. We adopt a polycentric perspective and use focus group interviews with Swedish actors within the business sector, politics, and government agencies, to analyse participants views on what it means to lead, preconditions of leadership, and division of responsibilities, in a context of transformative change. Our results suggest that participants focus on collective dimensions of leadership rather than front-running but see multiple ways of demonstrating climate leadership as being available to actors across governance levels and issue areas. Challenges to these views on leadership include the request for shared rules and regulations, and courage among leaders to enact coercive top-down leadership to handle conflicts and trade-offs. We conclude that polycentric transformative leadership is by default polysemic and will require multiple leadership roles at different scales changing over time.

We consider complex multistage multiagent negotiation processes such as those occurring at climate conferences and ask ourselves how can an agent maximize its social power, intended as influence over the outcome of the negotiation. This question can be framed as a strategic game played over an opinion dynamics model, in which the action of an agent consists in stubbornly defending its own opinion. We show that for consensus-seeking opinion dynamics models in which the interaction weights are uniform, the optimal action obeys to an early mover advantage principle, i.e. the agents behaving stubbornly in the early phases of the negotiations achieve the highest social power. When looking at data collected from the climate change negotiations going on at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we find evidence of the use of the early mover strategy. Furthermore, we show that the social powers computed through our model correlate very well with the perceived leadership roles assessed through independent survey data, especially when non-uniform weights incorporating economical and demographic factors are considered.

Coined barely two decades ago, the Anthropocene has become one of the most influential and controversial terms in environmental policy. Yet it remains an ambivalent and contested formulation, giving rise to a multitude of unexpected, and often uncomfortable, conversations. This book traces in detail a broad variety of such 'Anthropocene encounters': in science, philosophy and literary fiction. It asks what it means to 'think green' in a time when nature no longer offers a stable backdrop to political analysis. Do familiar political categories and concepts, such as democracy, justice, power and time, hold when confronted with a world radically transformed by humans? The book responds by inviting more radical political thought, plural forms of engagement, and extended ethical commitments, making it a fascinating and timely volume for graduate students and researchers working in earth system governance, environmental politics and studies of the Anthropocene.

Climate change impacts, ageing infrastructure and the increasing imperviousness of cities all raise enormous challenges to and call for new ways of planning for sustainable urban stormwater management. Especially, closer collaboration among a diverse set of actors involved has been pointed to as critical to enable the development of holistic and flexible approaches. However, the shift towards inclusive forms of planning has been slow, and characterized by technical and institutional lock-ins. Against this background, this study scrutinizes the challenges and developments perceived as central for improving stormwater planning, and analyzes how formal and informal institutional change could contribute to enhancing sustainability in this sector. Building on an analysis of data from workshops, interviews and a survey with Swedish planners and water managers, we suggest new strategies for integrating stormwater concerns into planning processes, overcoming silo structures, fostering cocreation cultures, and securing the continuation and implementation of stormwater management through various planning stages.

Visual Water (http//visualwater.se) is an interactive web-based platform for geographic and information visualization aiming to support Swedish municipalities working towards sustainable stormwater management. The content and functionalities of the platform are designed to respond to central challenges as they are defined by actors in the Swedish stormwater sector who find themselves in the shift away from underground pipe-bound solutions towards blue-green measures in the urban environment.

This essay discusses the concept of usefulness of research for climate change adaptation. Based on prior research and stakeholder interactions with policymakers and practitioners in the Nordic countries, we contend that critical issues related to the usefulness of adaptation research seem less associated with content (i.e. research outputs), but rather centre around the efforts made to design and communicate research, that is, to put research at the service of society and make the case for adaptation on the political agenda. This, we argue, to some extent mirrors the situation and political context in the Nordic countries, where adaptation in many locations still is an issue in its infancy, not firmly established on the political agendas, and where working procedures are not yet institutionally settled. In this context, science is considered and sometimes used as a discursive tool to make the case for adaptation. Based on the calls for research that inspires, raises hope and helps to raise the issue of adaptation on the political agendas, we elaborate the role of honest issue advocates for researchers in the field of adaptation science.

Even though construction tasks have a long history as an activity in the Swedish preschool, technology as a content matter (e.g., construction) is relatively new. Hence, preschool teachers are generally unsure of the content of technology and how to handle it from a teaching perspective. Thus, there is need for deeper understanding of how construction tasks in preschool can be enacted and what kind of premises are offered to the children. To investigate this, we took our stance in activity theory and the concepts of mediating artifacts, rules and division of labour. This helped us discern what type of instructional practices that were enacted by preschool teachers when working with construction tasks. Activity theory in combination with thematic analysis helped us distinguish four general didactic actions that the teachers used to bring about the construction task-to engage, to guide, to coordinate, to show. These four strategies were then formulated into specific technology didactic actions through the perspectives of technology as product, process and concepts.

The purpose of research aid is to contribute to development in different ways through the use of research. Sarec (the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries) was one of the pioneers within state research aid, and existed between 1975 and 2008. One of the central questions asked in my dissertation on Sarec’s policy history is how the view of the relationship between research and development has changed over time. One of the conclusions is that there are two main policy discourses that can be traced throughout the entire period studied. They share the starting point that modern science can contribute to development and that national research capacity is an important component in this. The localist discourse represents a more multifaceted view of how research can contribute to development, and what that development consist of. It is more explicitly anti-colonialist and to a greater degree prioritizes the local context as basis for decisions regarding support. The universalist discourse places less emphasis on where knowledge is produced since it can be used anywhere, as long as the right structures and priorities are in place. This historical perspective will be complemented with reflections on current developments in Swedish science aid policy, focusing on the issue of how science aid can contribute to the sustainable development goals and transitions to sustainability (work in progress).

In this paper, we study the powerful imaginative space of the fossil-free society in Swedish climate policy discourse taking shape in collaboration between the Swedish government and industry actors. In 2017, the Swedish parliament decided that Sweden should arrive at net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by the year 2045, and an ambitious climate policy framework was adopted. We trace the promise attached to the sociotechnical imaginary of the fossil-free society as it is mobilized by the government initiative fossil-free Sweden (FFS) to gain support for industrial decarbonization. We build on analyses of roadmaps produced by FFS together with the Swedish steel, cement and petroleum industries, as well as semi-structured interviews with selected industry actors. We find that the roadmaps work as powerful ‘techniques of futuring’ which enable industry actors to anticipate the risks and opportunities attached to the fossil-free society while also contributing to shaping that society. The roadmaps effectively involve the industrial actors in the political project of decarbonization, but they also consolidate around an imagined future that is a techno-optimistic extension of the fossil-intensive present. 

The promotion of science and technology for development has been a part of public aid actors’ agendas and interventions since the 1960´s, with the purpose of counteracting the unequal distribution of resources for research in the world in different ways. Some actors have explicit ambitions of escaping a colonialist heritage by underlining the importance of local ownership and local priorities, but there is debate concerning whether the goals and methods of aid actors have the intended effects or whether research aid risks contributing to a scientific neocolonialism of sorts. The theories of change underlying these interventions vary depending on donor actor and country context, but traces of different development theories and theories of science can be identified in the trails of these science for development discourses. In this paper, I build on my previous study of the Swedish pioneer research aid actor Sida-Sarec and present some preliminary findings on recent discursive development, exploring how the links between science and technology and development have been portrayed during this past decade. The work is based on text analysis and interviews and uses the concepts of sociotechnical imaginaries and boundary organization in order to explore why and how states support science (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009; Guston, 2001). This issue is placed at the intersection between science and development politics, areas that sometimes have conflicting goals. The case of research aid illustrates this tension well, and I can therefore hopefully contribute the development-related, postcolonial and decolonial discussions within STS. 

Although there is ongoing debate about the causal mechanisms linking climate change to violent conflict, researchers and policymakers widely agree that climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities that undermine human security and societies´ well-being. Resource scarcity and natural disasters can lead to increased cooperation, but the double burden of climate change and political fragility constitutes a serious challenge and the most detrimental effects are seen in already fragile contexts. Due to the importance of preventive measures, development organizations are key in addressing and mitigating the combined challenges of climate and conflict. Such organizations are conceptualizing and integrating security risks posed by climate change, but previous research shows that this work is hampered by organizational silos. This paper contributes to the burgeoning research on integrated approaches to addressing combined challenges of climate and conflict by organizations through examining how the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) works with these issues. In 2015, Sida received an updated directive increasing ambitions for the integration of the thematic issue areas of environment and climate, conflict and gender. The paper uses a comprehensive understanding of security and applies insights on mainstreaming in official development assistance (ODA) from environmental policy integration literature to examine how the connections between climate and security are framed in central policies, in strategies and by Sida staff. It also analyzes how Sida’s organization and procedures support the integration of the two perspectives ‘environment and climate’ and ‘conflict’ and highlights challenges and opportunities that arise when translating policy and strategy into practice. The study is based on an analysis of overarching instructions, policy documents and interviews with 24 Sida staff at Sida’s headquarters in Stockholm and at Swedish Embassies in Eastern Africa. The experience of Sida is an illustrative example of an emerging challenge for ODA actors, and can therefore be valuable for a broad set of organizations also aiming to develop integrated approaches. The study shows that although Sida prioritizes the integration between environment and climate, and conflict on a general policy level, there are some challenges when translating the policy into practice. Ambiguities are identified with regard to concepts used and there are tensions between expert and general knowledge. There are many initiatives aiming to integrate climate and conflict with one another, but increased collaboration on operationalization could enable even deeper levels of integrated work.

Science and technology have long been considered key for development, problem solving and education in low-income countries, and Sweden has been at the forefront of efforts in this area, as one of the first countries to formalise research aid. This book analyses how The Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries (SAREC) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) have worked to promote science in low-income countries. In doing so, the book tackles challenging questions around whose knowledges and capacities count, who sets the research agenda, how knowledge resources are distributed, and how complex donor-recipient relationships serve both to address and inflate these issues.

Through a discursive analysis of policy material and interviews with former directors at Sarec and Sida as well as other key persons, the book traces how perceptions of the relationship between research and development have shifted over the last five decades. Pointing to why long-term collaboration is necessary in order to contribute significantly to capacity building, as well as highlighting more general tensions relating to the production of knowledge, Sweden’s Research Aid Policy: The Role of Science in Development will be a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers of foreign aid, development cooperation, and the history of science and technology.

Veronica Brodén Gyberg at Linköping University and the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research (CSPR) discusses environmental politics and the preconditions for just transitions towards sustainability locally and globally in an interview with the SweDev Secretariat.

The knowledge society discourse remains strong and scientific research is considered key to achieving the sustainable development goals. Universities contribute significantly to development through higher education and research which in turn can contribute to local and global problem solving. We have a lot of knowledge in the world, but it is not distributed equally. The so called North-South divide in research capacity is narrowing – but there are still significant inequalities and plenty to work on. Many different actors are working on strengthening universities globally, and here the focus is on the example of how national aid agencies contribute reducing global inequalities through support to research

Regeringens reformagenda för svenskt utvecklingsbistånd innehåller aviseringar om stora förändringar i det svenska klimatbiståndet. Genom att en större andel av utvecklingsbiståndet ska riktas till klimatinsatser skapar reformagendan möjligheter för svenskt inflytande på klimatomställningen internationellt. Samtidigt riskerar den nya inriktningen att undergräva upparbetade relationer och sänka Sveriges höga anseende i internationell klimatdiplomati. En väg framåt är att bygga på etablerade styrkor och ta på sig ledartröjan i strävan efter ett transformativt, katalytiskt och forskningsbaserat klimatbistånd. I denna policy brief diskuterar vi Sveriges klimatbiståndsprofil i relation till globala trender, utvärderingar och forskning i urval. 

In 2017, the Swedish parliament adopted a new climate policy framework that lays the foundations for an ambitious decarbonization of all sectors in Swedish society. To live up to the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets, the parliament decided that Sweden should arrive at net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by year 2045 and thereafter aim for net negative emissions. This progressive climate policy agenda is embedded in a strong collaborative discourse. To begin the transition to a fossil-free society, the Swedish government has invited a wide array of actors to join forces in the formulation and implementation of low carbon initiatives. In this paper we examine the fossil-free society as a powerful socio-technical imaginary that underpins this collaborative effort. We trace the promise attached to this future dreamscape and how it is mobilized by the government initiative Fossil-Free Sweden (FFS) to gain support for industrial decarbonization in the present. Our study draws upon roadmaps produced by FFS together with the Swedish steel, cement, and petroleum industry, as well as semi-structured interviews with selected industry actors. We find that the FFS roadmaps work as powerful “techniques of futuring” that invite industry actors to anticipate the risks and opportunities attached to the fossil-free society and at the same time contribute to shaping that society. While effectively involving incumbent actors in the political project of decarbonization, our study suggests that the roadmaps consolidate around an imagined future that is a techno-optimistic extension of the fossil-intensive present