Vole populations in northern Scandinavia vary in cycles with peaks every third or fourth year as described by the National Environmental Monitoring Programme of small mammals (NEMP). Some vole species have declined in population numbers since the NEMP started in 1971, especially the grey-sided vole (Myodes rufocanus) which is nearly extinct in the forested region. Since small mammals are an important food source for several avian and mammalian predators, the decline in vole numbers is expected to have consequences for the whole food chain, especially if other vole species start to decline in numbers. This study tried to test the hypothesis that presence and abundance of M. rufocanus (a specialist species) and Myodes glareolus (a generalist species) can be predicted by patch size and connectivity of forest patches >60 years old with a minimum of 15% pine >100years old.

The intention of this study is to find out how the female celebrity is portrayed in women?s magazines directed at women of different age groups. The magazines that I have chosen to analyse are Frida, Veckorevyn and Damernas Värld. My aim is to find out what kind of celebrity appears in the magazines in terms of occupation and topics in the articles. Furthermore, the aim is also to determine whether the celebrity is portrayed in a different or similar way depending on the target group.

The main environmental problem for aviation is the great amount of exhaust gases, mainly nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons - mostly "greenhouse gases" leading to climate changes. I decided to sort out what is being done to decrease these problems and what regulations there are concerning air pollution by the means of searching the internet and using publications from aviation authorities for current figures. I chose to scrutinize authorities on political, authority and company level, resulting in summarizing the work of UN and EU respectively, ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), JAA (Joint Aviation Authorities) and LFV (Swedish Civil Aviation Authority), and finally SAS, representing the airline companies. Conclusion that I have drawn are thatthere are regulations for air pollution, written down in ICAO's Annex 16, that are to be followed. Secondly, LFV are environmentally controlling their nineteen airports and since economy is an important reason for not giving priority to environmental issues in aviation emission charge and noise charge are added to the landing fees.

AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

AbstractThis master thesis is a hermeneutic inspired case study of how the value base regarding the environmental and social responsibility in the Swedish coffee company Löfbergs Lila AB is affecting the company's business. A thesis inspired by hermeneutics means that it is based on two ideas, the one of interaction between entirety and partitions and the one of interpretation (Alvesson & Sköldberg 1994). This cause that the emphasis is on how the reality is interpreted and that it never can be seen as completely objective.The case study was conducted during the spring semester of 2010 at Karlstad's University and consists of both empirical and theoretical material collected during this time. The empirical material in this thesis includes, among other things, interviews with four representatives of Löfbergs Lila AB, written material from the company regarding its work related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), some information about the coffee industry as a whole and different certifications for "ethical? coffee that exists on the Swedish market.The basic idea with CSR as a business strategy is that it can be financially beneficial for companies to take a social and environmental responsibility outside of the company (Vogel 2005).

The purpose with our study is to investigate in which way a public field of action has succeeded to make the economic management more effective and also find out which factors/activities that have contributed to get the result of the budget in balance. We also want to find out in which degree the balanced scorecard (BSC) has contributed to the positive result of the budget. Method: We had started out from the qualitative method theory which is based on the hermeneutic theory, because we will interpret and understand. With this starting point we have chosen to use a case study with semi-standardised interviews supplemented with information from different documents, and to get the theoretic connection we have studied literature in the subject field. The analyse and even the theoretic connection have then started from, for this study, a special analyse model. Results: Througt systematic and target-concentrated management and through cooperated factors, with stress on a leadership that is both professional, visionary and un-combined, and there the staff´s is seen as a important resource, and there it is a clear strategy and objective to keep the cost of the activity within assigned budgetframe, has a public field of action, as the clinic of hab./rehab.

Environmental issues and ecology is something that is discussed by the Climate board of the UN and by our Swedish politicians. The first part of the thesis deals with the effects of emissions of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. There is a discussion about what counts as greenhouse gas. Interviews have been made with two growers of annual plants and one interview with a person who has worked hard to increase the use of perennials in his work place, Mjösund?s cemetery.

My purpose in this essay is to show how the staff in an institution for young women with a drug addiction, are looking at themselves as "normal" and the young women as "abnormal", and to analyse how sex and gender are made, in interaction with sexuality and class.The essay is based on interviews and a participating observation. The study is made on a compulsory institutional care institution for young women with a drug addict. To analyse the material I use theories by Beverly Skeggs and Judith Butler.In the study I show that the staff in the institution define themselves as "normal" and intend to act as models for the clients, which are described as "abnormal" in terms of being destructive, boundless and sexual. In making class and gender the staffs efforts to make clients learn domestic values and to make their bodies feminine are shown to be central processes. Sexuality is by the staff seen as something happening only between men and women, and defining relations between men and women as always sexual creates gender.A central tension that I show in the essay is that between normal and abnormal, both in relation to differences between the staff and the clients and in relation to the staffs roles as both models of normal life and of violent and violating keeps of order.

Hållbar utveckling handlar om att ha en balans mellan ekonomisk, ekologisk och social hållbarhet. Kommuner ses som nyckelaktörer i arbetet för en mer hållbar utveckling och har på senaste tiden fått en allt större roll. Karlstad kommun har tre hållbarhetsstrategier, däribland miljö- och klimatstrategin som skall se till att kommunen skall kunna växa på ett socialt, ekonomiskt och miljömässigt hållbart sätt. I miljö- och klimatstrategin finns interna miljömål som är till för kommunens medarbetare. Studien söker att ta reda på medarbetarnas kunskap och förståelse för de interna miljömålen och hur de skall kunna bidra till att uppfylla dessa.

In recent years there have been many corporate scandals from environmental and social aspects. Corporate irresponsible behavior has led to major public discussions on responsibility and these pressures made that many companies wanting to show that they are working for a sustainable development by voluntarily reporting economic, environmental and social and social issues in the financial statement. They hope this will create credibility for the companies. In the current situation, there are a number of guidelines that companies can use to report sustainability. One of these is the GRI guidelines which is an international framework that covers many accounting areas and allows companies to compare their sustainability reports with other companies.The purpose of this study is to determine if all state-owned companies follows the government?s requirement that these companies must form a sustainability report under the GRI guidelines, and the sustainability report must be audited and certified by an outside party.

AbstractSahlin, Marcus (2011) Kommunens omvärld ? En kontextualisering av omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys i en kommun[Surroundings of a municipality? A context of environmental awareness and environmental analysis in a Swedish municipality]Avancerad nivå, masteruppsats, examensarbete i Samhällsplanering 30 hp.Handledare: Urban NordinSpråk: SvenskaOmvärlden har blivit större i takt med att globaliseringen har gjort vår värld mindre. Kommuner kan ta hjälp av omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys för att lättare skapa underlag för framtida planer och visioner. Syftet med uppsatsen är att, med hjälp av en fallstudie, beskriva hur en kommun i Stockholmsregionen arbetar med omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys. Avsikten är även att förklara vad omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys kan betyda för en kommun, samt undersöka om kommunen upplever att det finns en konkurrenssituation på kommunens ?marknad?.

This thesis investigates the socio- and environmental economic effects of a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark in the municipality of Östhammar. I seek to show the general picture but focus on the effects on employment, environment and income. Cost-benefit analysis is used to investigate the differences in utility between a scenario with and a scenario without a deep repository in Forsmark. Most of the possible effects can not be valued and many can not even be quantified with the data available today. Therefore this thesis has a bit of a ?preliminary study character? and seeks to show what we know today and what needs to be further investigated when available data allow it. The costs that could be valued are noise from the traffic during the period of building and emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the transportation of rock masses during the building period.

AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

Sustainability work is something that is emphasized more and more. Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, is discussed and the question of how much responsibility companies should really take is frequently in the news. Companies tend to ask themselves how much responsibility they should take. CSR is a common concept of companies environmental and social work and a concept we tend to see here and there in our modern society. CSR includes companies? social responsibilities, both in terms of carbon footprint, working conditions, social responsibility and more.

Miljö och hållbarhet är något som kommit att uppmärksammas allt mer sedan startskottet på 70-talet i samband med ökat fokus från regeringshåll och grundande av miljöorganisationer. I takt med konsumenters ökade medvetenhet har kraven höjts på svenska klädföretag och deras arbete med hållbar utveckling och hållbara produkter. Problematiken ligger i att svenska klädföretag utför sitt arbete på olika sätt och därav finns olika tolkningar av hur en hållbar produkt är framställd och vad denna ska innehålla. Det är även svårt för kunder att få ett grepp av en hållbar produkt, då de inte finns någon konkret definition.Den övergripande problemformuleringen i arbetet har berört hur olika svenska klädföretag och miljöorganisationer definierar en hållbar produkt. I uppsatsen presenteras olika definitioner av hållbar utveckling och den lagstiftning som ligger till grund för de produkter som produceras och säljs på den svenska marknaden.