The aim of this thesis is to study discursive change in the Swedish environmental political discourse between 1987-2005. The text of three Swedish budget propositions are analysed for this purpose.The results from the analysis are related to a few relevant theoretical perspectives that hold partly different views on what constitutes ?sustainable development? and ?ecological modernization?. Through these theories the thesis continues the discussion around the two central but somewhat blurry terms sustainable development and ecological modernization. The aim of this discussion is to conclude whether the discursive change in Swedish environmental politics can be said to go more in the direction of sustainable development or ecological modernization, or if elements of both perspectives can be found.The analysis shows that the Swedish environmental discourse has come to include more and more political fields such as general welfare politics, during the period.

The purpose of this study is to propose and formulate quantitative indicators to help measure an aspect of the Environmental Objectives in Swedish legislation: ?A Good Built Environment, Interim Target 2.? The governmental bill 2004/05:150 suggests changes to Interim Target 2: By 2010 built environments of cultural heritage value will be identified and placed under long-term sustainable management. Following the revised formulation regarding sustainable management, indicators should be formulated to measure the fulfilment of sustainable management of built environments of cultural heritage value. An important part of management takes place at the municipal level of planning, where detailed development plans include regulations to protect built environments of substantial cultural heritage value. As a result, this study is focusing upon the regulatory function of the Swedish Planning and Building Act in respect to the built environments of cultural heritage value.

The law firm industry has during the last years met new demanding conditions and one tool to handle these new conditions has been to implement a Knowledge Management system. Large investments have been made in these Knowledge Management systems but the implementations have met many challenges from within the organizations.With a multiple study, based on interviews with Knowledge Management Managers included in a Knowledge Management network, this thesis aims to study the challenges with Knowledge Management and the underlying causes. The result, based on McDermott's theories shows challenges within technical, personal, social and management areas where the law firm need to shift a focus from Information to Knowledge Management, create a culture of trust and integration and use the informal powerbase.The causes for these challenges are found in the base of Mintzbergs theories of Professional bureaucracy where the Knowledge Management is affected by strong self-regulated individualist, a divided organizational structure and industry conditions..

Organic material used for biogas production can also undergo other treatments. The emissions and impact from the different treatments are evaluated in this environmental assessment, with a focus on energy and climate. The materials included in the study are organic household waste, slaughterhouse waste and liquid manure. Other than biogas production, the possible treatments for organic household waste and slaughterhouse waste are incineration and composting, and for liquid manure storing and spreading. The analysis is based on data and information from current and relevant literature, and relates to the conditions in the Swedish energy system.

The purpose of this study was to identify the positive and negative aspects of the work and dynamics of a management team and from that recommend how the team can improve. The aim was also to investigate whether there was a gap between how the members of the management team comprehend themselves and how the project, section and team managers comprehend the management team. The management team contains of seven core team members and is the head function of a research and development site in central Sweden. The results are based on interviews with the present members of the management team and three former members, a survey among the project, section and team managers and by participating observation on meetings with the team. The results show that the management team is an overall well-functioning team that with some changes and improvements, especially concerning communication and information, can reach even further.

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient leaching.

The purpose of this study is to make a close and critical scrutiny of the EU Lisbon Strategy and the assumption of `sustainable growth´. A basic question is to clarify what is meant by `sustainability´ in the economic and the environmental dimension respectively, and also, to analyse the meaning of `sustainable growth´. Secondly, I try to investigate the relationship between the economical and environmental dimensions of the strategy. Are the goals of the dimensions compatible and mutually supporting or are they conflicting? By illuminating these issues the study moves towards a final set of questions: What are the arguments that encourage or counteract the Lisbon assumption of `sustainable growth´? Is the European Union approaching `sustainable growth´ looking at different economical and ecological indicators? What are the prospects for the Lisbon Strategy as a way towards global `sustainable development´?.

Certification systems, that assess companies? work with social and environmental issues, have emerged in an increasing number of industries. Today, there are environmental certifications for the food industry, the forestry, the fisheries sector and several more. In apparel industry, certification for sustainable working conditions has been of major impact. The property sector is no exception from other industries.

The reason why this essay is written can be parted in two, whereas one would be the global trend of urbanization that occurs to this moment and forward, whereas the other would be the debate of how motorism has come to be an issue of sustainable management of our cities and our environment. In purpose to deliver a thorough understanding of how the car and its capacity has come to shape the society of today, and to emphasize the problems it´s brought, a historical survey has been made, followed by the report of problems to the society formed by the needs of the car, discussed in several environmental issues, such as jamming, noise and air pollution. This is followed by the discussion of potential solutions for how city planning could return to the focus of the human scale and perspective, in purpose to correspond with the issue of ways to decrease the car use in towns. In conclusion, the given solutions are discussed, where examples like shared space, investment in public transport, mobility management and the theory of the assembled city are included, with aid from literature, to finally conclude the essay with personal thoughts of how the planning of today, or the given solutions, really are the result of sustainability for city planning from a human perspective.

The purpose of the study is to reach knowledge about how public librarians understands and describes environmental scanning as a working process in a Swedish public library. The study consists of 5 interviews with public librarians working within the same organization. The empirical material is presented in two ways. The first one is what aspects of the external world the librarians find important. The second is through a theoretical framework based on Magnus Hoppes model of environmental scanning, including communication and cognitive processes aswell as ways of analyzing information from the external world.

The purpose has been to, by the means of literature studies and conversation, give landscape architects, teachers or other interested people an increased understanding of school gardens as a phenomenon. One episode in the essay describes school garden?s historical background and how its ideology has changed as the society has developed. A conversation with a spokesperson for Södermalmsskolan in Stockholm, depict how a communal public school handles the management of a school garden today. I have also wanted to present the conditions that society and the schools organisation has put on the management of the garden on this particular school. In the year of 2007 Södermalmsskolan got the opportunity to found its school garden thanks to the environmental campaigns that were realized by the city of Stockholm.

The population growth and urbanisation in low-income countries bring issues of poor living standards and miserable sanitation conditions onto the agenda. If well-functioning waste management systems were developed, this could master some of the problems. The already existing local informal waste handling system that is common in many low-income countries, needs to be developed with proper sorting and composting solutions to decrease the environmental burden and improve the overall situation in the dense cities. This master?s thesis project is performed with the intention of developing functional decentralised waste management units in the city of Pune, India.

Social media seem to offer a great possibility for environmental non-profit organizations to communicate with their members and audience, if the organization aims to build and maintain a relationship to the users of social media. This essay has examined how three environmental non-profil organizations are communicating in social media. To create an understanding of the organization?s communication strategies a netnographic approach was implemented..

SUMMARYEnvironmental issues are currently a hot topic of debate. Studies within the optics branch have not specifically been conducted previously, so the aim of this study was to determine the extent of environmental-awareness specifically within this branch.A survey, consisting of questions relating to environmental issues, was distributed to 100 randomly-selected opticians in Sweden. Of these 100 surveys, 64 were returned and showed a varied branch-engagement for environmental issues.Results of this survey showed that opticians were best in sorting newspapers, magazines, other paper and hazardous waste. Metal and rigid plastic were not sorted to any larger extent.Choosing environmentally-safe products was not so popular and only six stores always do this. 25 shops turn off electrical machines and equipment over night; while the majority of the remaining stores leave the machines on during the night.27 stores did not know if their electrical company provided ?green electricity?.Results showed that there is a lot of work to be done in making the stores more environmentally friendly.

The research of this Masters thesis examines if during a specific period of time, Environmental scanning connected to Swedish public libraries is discussed in journals that are directly connected to the field of Swedish libraries. The method employed was content analysis of articles, news items and ads with the intention of finding out the extent of Environmental scanning and who carries it out and how and what is scanned. The research covers the period from 2004-01-01 to 2004-08-31. During the research period 1387 articles, news items and ads were analyzed. The study focuses on 81 selected published units that directly include references or discussion about Environmental scanning.