How stakeholders can influence EU in global environmental politics and what consequences and risks this brings are heavily debated. Some scholars argue that civil society are being disenfranchised from the global political arena while others seem to find them having influence in areas where they normally shouldn´t have any influence. In this this paper I will compare the Europan Union policy on GMOs with the process in producing the Water Framework Directive using an analytical framework to study the level of stakeholder influence. Following the framework I will use two types of data namely NGO participation and Goal attainment. The data once summarized will be analyzed by using the methods of process-tracing and counterfactual analysis.My conclusions regarding both cases are that stakeholders, most notably, were able to influence policymaking in EU by using the internal revisions and by networking in smaller partnerships.

Climate changes today are mainly caused by anthropogenic activities and the increased emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and this has raised questions on how to reduce the usage of fossil fuels. Ethanol is a good alternative to conventional gas and has been used in Brazil since the 1970 ?s. In Sweden several newspapers has written about the poor working conditions on many farms thus making the Swedish company SEKAB design a certification for their ethanol to ensure that it can be considered to be a sustainable alternative.Furthermore WWF has developed a certification tool called Bonsucro in cooperation with Coca Cola, Ferrero group, BP and Shell. This is due to the fact that no global certification tool has been available up until now.

As a Swedish landscape architecture student living in Australia for five years, I have often wondered if my memories and my associations with the landscape and the nature in Sweden, are the same as other Swedish people living in Melbourne. Most of the Swedish people who live here in Melbourne remember and associate Sweden?s nature and landscape with where they grew up or where they used to live. The plants that most of the Swedish people I asked missed from Sweden were associated to special feelings or activities. The general type of landscape people remember from Sweden is that of a landscape covered in forests, which you can walk freely through. With these memories as a foundation and with inspiration from the Swedish landscape architect Thorbjörn Anderson?s way of creating places, by letting a few strong changes play against the existing elements,2 but also with consideration of the climate and the severe shortage of water that is current in Melbourne, will I create a design concept for the garden surrounding the Swedish Church in Melbourne. A design concept that will generate memories and associations to Swedish landscapes..

An energy calculation model for Swedish houses   that is fast, flexible and user-friendly has been developed within the   framework of this thesis.  The model   also provides a set of actions which may be investigated in the model based   on savings and payback period. Energy use in a house depends on the technical   conditions, such as building envelope and heating systems, which outdoor   climate the house is exposed to and who lives in the house. Energy use for a   house can be divided into heating, hot water and household electricity. There   are several methods to calculate the energy use of a house. This report   summarizes the methods that may be suitable for a fast and user-friendly   calculation model.

Since the 9/11-attacks several nations have been confronted with a new international threat, its nature traces back to the political- and religious- radical movements of the 20th century Cold War. Ever since, various states have been under threat by terrorist organizations around the world due to mainly participating in worldwide counter-terrorist interventions created by western alliances. In Sweden, amongst other countries, the state took security-precautions that would imply total control of information throughout the territorial borders. The assigned proposition was accepted by the Swedish parliament in June 18th 2008, after this date wild spread criticism was still in effect ever since the Swedish government first publicly announced the proposition in May 8th 2007. This study emphasizes on understanding why the Swedish government chose to present this proposition to parliament, in order to complete this task the study will present the motives and the alleged threats that were the core of the proposition and its value-maximizing goal of creating a new surface for Swedish homeland security.

The project was performed in collaboration with Husqvarna, one of the world?s leading manufacturer in the market of electric outdoor products. The report is a thesis work of a bachelor mechanical engineer program, in the field product development and design.The project is a study of the development opportunities within drive belt for a gear driven gearbox to one of Husqvarnas petrol powered hedge trimmers. A big part of the project was also to find combinations of materials for all components in the gearbox, to reduce weight and maintain or improve the performance of the system. Belt drive was of interest to investigate as an alternative solution to the current design that can reduce wear on the system at a performance test performed in the company before the product is released to market.

Bark-stripping by red deer (Cervus elaphus) cause extensive damage to economically valuable spruce trees (Picea abies) in Swedish forests. The underlying causes for bark-stripping are not fully understood, and the frequency and severity of damage unpredictably differ between regions. In this study, I investigated if landscape structure (e.g. agricultural dominated landscape opposed to forest dominated landscape), forage availability, population density and disturbance (e.g. roads and settlements) affect bark-stripping frequency.

Convective snowbands is a weather phenomenon that is associated with heavy snowfall in a limited area. They are formed over ice-free parts of e.g. the Baltic Sea when there is a cold easterly airflow over relatively warm water. These convective snowbands can cause large amounts of snow along the Swedish east coast, often causing traffic hazards. Sometimes they can even paralyze an entire community.  In this study, convective snowbands that have formed over the Baltic Sea during the period 1980-2009 are examined, in order to find out how often they occur, what place they are most common and in what month they usually appear.

Löslighet och transport av sällsynta jordartsmetaller i Källfallsfältets gruvsandsmagasinHugo de Campos PereiraSyftet med detta arbete har varit att kartlägga vilka mekanismer som styr lösligheten av sällsynta jordartsmetaller (eng. rare earth elements, REE) i sulfidhaltig anrikningssand vid den föredetta gruvan Källfallsfältet i Västmanland. För syftet har markvatten- och grundvattenprovtagning utförts, tillsammans med laktester och geokemisk modellering med Visual MINTEQ ver. 3.0.Resultaten visade att sulfidvittring är den främsta processen som styr pH i anrikningssanden, och därmed också indirekt REEs löslighet. Däremot är sulfidvittring ingen källa till REE i sig då ämnena inte föreligger sulfidbundna, något som oxiderat tillgänglighetstest NT ENVIR 006 visade.

This study focuses on the encounter between the academic librarian and the academic library user with a specific need for information. The aim of the study is to examine the process of mediation of information and to uncover any inherent problems or systemic inertia that may occur within that process.Special attention has been given to information-seeking behaviour in the digital age and the possibility of viewing information literacy as a meta-literacy. The difference between the surface web and the academic invis- ible web is also investigated. Empirical data was collected by the use of ethnographic fieldwork at the Karolin- ska Institutet University Library over a period of five weeks. The data is analysed using actor-network theory as a point of departure.

Bachelor thesis, Trolley Innovation Project, has been unique in the sense that it has been carried out over the borders of Sweden. Iacobucci S.p.A, located outside of Rome in Italy is one of the largest manufacturers of interior equipment for aircraft in the world. With approximately 30% of the market Iacobucci S.p.A is one of the world's largest manufacturers of catering trolleys.The aim has been to produce a new competitive catering trolley for the airline industry. With customers and users in focus, the project team found that weight, ease of use, ergonomics and design were important aspects. Having a low weight of all the interior is particularly important when there is lots of money for the airlines to save in reduced fuel costs.

The objective of this thesis is to explore opportunities to enhance the phosphorus use efficiencyof inorganic fertilizers in crop production, with techniques available today and in thefuture. Phosphorus is a finite resource of declining quality; therefore a phosphorus use efficiencyin crop production of only 15-30 % is unacceptable. The main reason for low efficiencyis the retention by Ca and Mg in calcareous soils and Fe and Al in non-calcareoussoils. Due to the low mobility of phosphorus, plant uptake is mainly dependent on root growthrather than diffusion. Therefore, measurements need to be taken that benefit contact betweenroot and fertilizer, before fertilizer phosphorus becomes unavailable to the plant.

The aim of this study is to find a method to incorporate the energydemand of a building in the investment cost estimate.The study is based on an actual apartment block. The significant energyaspects are identified, and changed to more energy efficient options.These are then simulated using the energy calculation program VIP+.The calculated energy need is used in the investment cost estimate, andthe simulated alternatives are compared in regards to their economicalprofitability.Depending on the focus, different alternatives are the most advantageous.Since this study aims to show which alternative is the mosteconomically profitable, the annual profit is the parameter of mostimportance. This means that individual measuring of heating and hotwater use is the recommended change of the original house. A changeof the windows to new ones with a U-value of 1,0 as well as 0,8W/m2K also results in a positive change of the annual profit comparedto the original house..

The aim of my thesis is to obtain knowledge of textile wastewater and textile sludge from an environmental perspective, which can be used as a basis for the  ?Sweden Textile Water Initiative? guidelines for a sustainable sludge management. In my study I have mainly focused on textile dyes, salts and metals and their routes during wastewater treatment.This paper is partly a literature review, which I began by identifying the pollutants discharged from each textile process. Then I studied wastewater and sludge quality, environmental aspects, possible treatment and recycling methods. I have also tried to find existing type of guidelines in order to make comparisons.

Discussions of structural racism has now moved to the forefront of the Swedish society, and many researchers have sought to understand what form it takes, how it is manifested, how it is exploited and challenged. At the core of this debate we find the media, and its logic embedded with mechanisms of simplification and polarization.Media is our key source of knowledge and information, why it also affects our norms, beliefs and preconceptions. Media thus has the power to mediate, amplify or challenge how we conceptualize the world, and subsequently our (unconscious) racist beliefs.To investigate how media content is influenced by underlying colonial or racist assumptions and stereotypes thus becomes a way to investigate our understanding of reality.In accordance with postcolonial thought, structural and symbolic racism is embedded in language and hidden in images, and surface in the form of domination and feminization, and the portrayal of the subaltern ?Other? as passive and irrational.This paper thus departs from postcolonial theory and media logic to undercover hidden patterns of structural, symbolic and historically contingent racism in one of Sweden?s most prominent in-depth foreign TV-magazines, namely Korrespondenterna.Adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores to what extent racist and colonial stereotypes are reproduced and/or challenged in Korrespondenterna?s representation of Sub-Saharan Africa.In line with postcolonial theory it is found that historically contingent racialized stereotypes are prevalent in Korrespondenterna, and that tendencies of portraying Africa and Africans as passive, feminine and irrational are prevailing.It is thus argued that media logic, imbedded with mechanisms of simplification, polarization and intensification, contributes to the use of colonial stereotypes in media, and thus to the mediation of structural and symbolic racism..