The Swedish system of environmental quality objectives is a so-called MBO, Management By Objective and has the purpose to guide the Swedish society towards sustainable ecological development. The system involves the whole society from the parliament and the government down to individual citizens. At the regional level, it is the county administrative boards that are responsible for the work with the system of environmental objectives. At the County Administrative Board of Västmanland County, it is the environmental unit who is in charge of work with the environmental objectives and they want input for how to improve their work with the environmental objectives, both internally at the Administrative Board and externally with external parties.The main purpose and goal of the study is to present the work of four other county administrative boards regarding their work with the environmental quality objectives and to identify external parties? opinions of how they want the County Board of Västmanland county to work with them in this matter.The work is designed as a case study of four county councils, where the environmental objectives coordinators at the four county administrative boards were interviewed about their work with environmental quality objectives.

Bakom uppsatsen finns ett genuint intresse för kartmedier samt funderingen om kartan genomgår en evolution till att bli ett digitalt och interaktivt medium. I aktuella styrdokument för gymnasiegeografin framgår att såväl kartor som GIS skall finnas med i undervisningen, motiveringen är dock bristfällig. I syftet väcktes därför frågor om vilka belägg som fanns för digitala undervisningsmetoder inom geografi? Syftet kondenserades till frågeställningarna: Vad skrivs i litteraturen om digitalt lärande i geografi i allmänhet? Vad skrivs i litteraturen om att använda digitala kartor och programmet Google Earth i undervisningen i synnerhet? Hur svenska geografilärare ser på samt i vilken omfattning de använder digitala kartmedier? För att besvara frågorna genomfördes en litteraturstudie samt en enkätundersökning. Litteraturstudieresultatet visade främst två saker.

A trend since the early 90?s has been that some public libraries offer a special shelf containing environmental information to the community, but it seems as though the subject has been overlooked by the literature and the science community. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to study how three independent public libraries work with environmental information that is made available to the community. The following questions were addressed: 1) Which arguments can be found as to why the libraries offer this activity? 2) How does the environmental work at the public libraries look and what does it contain of? 3) Are there any similarities or differences in this work between the three libraries?To answer these questions interviews with librarians were carried out; observations were made to complement the interviews.

This thesis calculates and compares the values of improved environmental quality due to future possible investment alternatives in biogas production facilities at Käppalaförbundets Reningsverk (Käppala Sewage Treatment Works) in an attempt to determine which alternative yields the highest such value. Käppala faces three investment alternatives for the usage of biogas. The alternatives are production of vehicle fuel, district heating and thirdly, heat and power production. Estimates of the value of environmental change are calculated for each of the three investment alternatives, and these estimates are then compared. The environmental change in question is the change in discharge levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and particle matter.

In Sweden, detailed development plans (DDPs) go through a screening process to decide whether their implementation could cause significant environmental impact or not. The criteria in the legislation were studied to see if an environmental impact assessment was needed. This study also investigated 26 DDPs from 12 out of 13 of the municipalities in Östergötland and how they meet up to the demands in relevant legislation, for example the rules for Environmental Impact Assessments. Plans that concerned suburban communities and new housing were selected. The environmental issues highlighted in the plan documents were compared to selected topics from the GIS data base 'Östgötakartan' to see if the assessments made by the municipalities were reasonable judged.

During the 90s most companies organized and adopted routines for their environmental work. This work included for example eco-efficiency improvements and the introduction of environmental managing systems. At the UN conference in Rio in 1992 the concept Sustainable development was defined, but it was not until about the year of 2000 that companies in Sweden shifted their work from environmental management to sustainable management. A consequence of this is that they now have to focus on environmental aspect in conjunction with social and economic aspects.The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of what a change of focus to sustainable development means for companies. Has the environmental work suffered in the competition with social/economical aspects under the new sustainable focus? How will the new way of working affect the balance between environmental and social aspects? Changes were studied in five companies by analysing their annual-, environmental- and sustainability reports and through interviews of sustainable managers.

BACKGROUND & During the last century, the Swedish chemical industry has developedPROBLEM: considerably in regard to respecting the environment. Following various discharges and pollutions during the first half of the 20th century, environmental concepts such as CSR, Responsible Care and REACH have developed in order to improve the situation. Today, environmental issues play a central role in the society, but what are the reasons behind this increased environmental commitment? PURPOSE & The purpose of this thesis paper is to study the driving forces behindDELIMITATIONS: the increased environmental awareness in companies. Is this mainly due to stricter legislations, or do factors like pressure from the general public, the industry or customers play a more vital role? Furthermore, do economic incentives exist, that make it interesting for companies to invest in environmental awareness? Since the chemical industry spans over a wide spectrum in regard to environmental issues, this paper will focus on a specific area of the industry.

The Multispectral Canopy Reflectance Model (MCRM) by Kuusk (1995) has beenused to simulate the reflectance of a sugarbeet canopy. The simulated reflectancevalues show high absorptance in the VIS area, compared to field measurements, andhigh reflectance values in the NIR area. The errors may be due to overestimation ofclorophyll content in the sugarbeet leaves and scattered light during fieldmeasurements. The estimation of the clorophyll content where carried out using thePROSPECT-model by Jacquemoud & Baret (1990).During the vegetation period, the state of the canopy moves towards a closed canopy,with sparse vegetation in spring. The MCRM-model was used to perform a ?spring?simulation, which was compared to the original simulation.

Syftet med detta arbete är att, med hjälp av GIS och lagerföljdsdata, utforma en metodik för modellering och förståelse av våtmarker och deras utbredning. Metodiken ska, med hjälp av GIS, underlätta och förbereda för en mera automatiserad analys av lagerföljdsdata. Detta involverar flera steg: (1) Strukturering och urval av relevanta data utifrån en stor mängd geografisk och geologisk information; (2) framtagning av åldersmodeller utifrån daterade borrkärnor för beräkning av tillväxthastighet hos olika jordarter; (3) Utveckling och implementering av ett datorprogram för beräkning av våtmarksnivå vid olika tidssteg. Beräkningen skall baseras på de, utifrån åldersmodellerna, beräknade tillväxthastigheterna för jordarter i olika borrkärnor; (4) Interpolation av framräknade höjdvärden till kontinuerliga ytor där förändring av våtmarkernas area och volym vid olika tidpunkter kan bestämmas. I denna studie beräknades utbredningen för två våtmarker vid tiderna 0, 1000, 2000 och 6000 år sedan.

The purpose of this study was to implement an energy analysis and environmental evaluation of the property Hemsta 12:16 in Gävle. Based on two different methods, Energy Balance calculation and Environmental Building, the result of the property's energy use, energy performance and environmental impacts are presented. Except that, measures to reduce final energy consumption are presented.      The proposed measures can reduce energy usage by 100 400 kWh / year, which represents a decrease of 18% of the present energy usage. This would represent a total savings of 63 000 SEK per year. In addition, the environmental performance is improved by adopting the suggested measures..

The first of May 2005 changes were made in the Annual Accounts Act. The 2006 Annual Report of companies with more than ten employees or assets over 24 million SEK must include environmental information in the directors' report if it affects the company's development, result or position. A survey made by KPMG 2007 investigating the environmental information of companies listed on Large Cap Segment of the OMX Stockholm exchange showed that only a third of the companies, included in the survey, complied with the new law requirements. I have examined how the environmental information in the directors' report is formulated and why the information is formulated in that fashion. I have examined seven companies listed on the Large Cap Segment of the OMX Stockholm exchange. Four companies from the materials sector and three banks from the financials sector were included in the survey.

A possible explanation for the inability of the governments of the world to implement necessary environmental policies is that they are worried of being punished by voters for implementing too forceful policies. But do voters actually punish governments that implement more stringent environmental policies? Few studies have explored this question directly. Parts of the literature on environmental policy and public opinion indicate that voters would predominantly reward governments that implement more stringent environmental policies, while other parts indicate that voters would predominantly punish them. It is also possible that voters punish governments that implement more stringent environmental policies in some contexts, but reward them in others.

Abstract.

The aim of this report is to give a picture of how attitudes and behaviours of owners of environment cars look like and how they can be influenced. The alignment lies on environmental cars which run on biogas and ethanol which both are renewable fuels. The starting point is to sort out if it is environmental thinking that controls the choice and use of an environmental car. The feeling is that there are many other factors that can be more controlling, for example the price and the quality of the car. The result of the questionnaire survey which is the foundation of the report shows however that those who buy an environmental car do it mostly because of environmental reasons.

By conducting qualitative interviews five pedagogues and eight children in the ages three to five have answered questions regarding environmental work in preschool.The purpose of this report was to examine how environmental work is pursued at two preschools and what children at these preschools think about environmental work. Recycling of garbage and small cultivation projects together with the children is what the pedagogues consider being the most common environmental work at their particular preschools. In the professional role of the pedagogue if can be clearly seen what special interests he or she has.Most of the children associate the forest with some kind of snack and animals. Half of the interviewed children also think about animals when they visit the forest. Half of the interviewed children also have an understanding of where peels from fruits should be tossed, but no one knows the meaning of the word environment.