The global extraction of minerals is commonly located in areas populated by indigenous people; and while conflicts between multinational corporations and local activists and indigenous people are widespread today, the understanding of their dynamics are lacking. The Swedish government’s encouragement to an expanding mining industry has caused resistance due to environmental and social implications, particularly its effect on Sámi reindeer husbandry. The resistance to a mine in Gállok is based on the belief that the right to decide about land use historically falls on the Sámi people, and the right to affect land use is detrimental for the survival of Sámi culture and reindeer husbandry. Although the conflict may be perceived as concerning access to natural resources, we argue that the perceived environmental conflict can be viewed as part of a larger struggle over social status and recognition. Data have been collected using qualitative methods such as observations, interviews and documents. The subsequent analysis relies on a meta-theoretical framework of justice as recognition using a typology of relations of power. Our findings suggest that relations of power constitute different categories of social actors. Stakeholders like the Sámi population are subordinated to more dominant stakeholders such as the government, the company and media, who have ‘more’ power or ‘different’ kinds of power ‘over’ others. Through these asymmetric power relations, historical state-Sámi relations are continuously reproduced within prevailing institutions, and also in this mining conflict. Interviewees from business and the municipality testified to the discourses driven by a neoliberal and profit-focused worldview. Challenging the neoliberal discourse, other stakeholders, namely civil society and Sámi, expressed an alternative discourse based on a local, traditional, cultural, environmental and anti-neoliberal worldview

Knaggård, Å., B. Ness, and D. Harnesk. 2018. Finding an academic space: reflexivity among sustainability researchers. Ecology and Society 23(4):20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10505-230420

The question whether a single extreme climate event, such as a hurricane or heatwave, can be attributed to human induced climate change has become a vibrant field of research and discussion in recent years. Proponents of the most common approach (probabilistic event attribution) argue for using single event attribution for advancing climate policy, not least in the context of loss and damages, while critics are raising concerns about inductive risks which may result in misguided policies. Here, we present six ethical predicaments, rooted in epistemic choices of single event attribution for policy making, with a focus on problems related to loss and damage. Our results show that probabilistic event attribution is particularly sensitive to these predicaments, rendering the choice of method value laden and hence political. Our review shows how the putatively apolitical approach becomes political and deeply problematic from a climate justice perspective. We also suggest that extreme event attribution (EEA) is becoming more and more irrelevant for projecting loss and damages as socio‐ecological systems are increasingly destabilized by climate change. We conclude by suggesting a more causality driven approach for understanding loss and damage, that is, less prone to the ethical predicaments of EEA.

Despite promises that they can contribute toward more environmentally beneficial transportation there are many sustainability concerns about liquid transport biofuels. In response to pressure from civil society, the European Union (EU) has introduced sustainability criteria for biofuels. A hybrid regulatory system involving state and non-state actors stipulates that retailers and producers must comply to be eligible for fiscal support such as tax exemptions. Flexibility in the system allows choice between different means of compliance, including a range of voluntary schemes. We present an analysis of views within the Swedish liquid transport biofuel sector in 2012 – a year after the introduction of EU sustainability criteria. Using document analysis, official statistics, and a survey, we use four key structures of global value chains — input–output structure, territorial configuration, institutional framework, and firm-level chain governance structure — to structure an analysis of biofuel value chain coordination. This yields three main findings regarding how the Swedish liquid transport biofuel system operates within, and views, the new regulatory framework. Firstly that it uses a broad portfolio of feedstock mainly from within Europe, seemingly avoiding countries where any supply conditions may be in doubt; second, larger retailers and producers achieve compliance without the need to provide additional social sustainability information; third, that actors exhibit predominantly Eurocentric perspectives on sustainability, express confidence that their supply chains have strong ‘sustainability performance’ and desire long-term policy stability. We conclude that despite a deep critique of the sustainability of biofuels amongst civil society and academia, EU regulation allows for production systems that reflect a European- and climate change mitigation-centred view on biofuel ‘sustainability’

The idea of ‘Sustainability as a Real Utopia’ elaborated on here adapts sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s emancipatory social science and is a heuristic informed by critical realism and social theory for interdisciplinary research on viable alternatives that move society towards achieving sustainability. Starting from the proposition that many environmental problems are rooted in how social structures and institutions interact with nature by shaping human agency, we argue for concretely situated analysis aimed at guiding human agency towards changing those root causes. Then, drawing on concrete examples from sustainability research, we elaborate on three central tasks: diagnosing and critiquing environmental problems, elaborating viable alternatives and proposing a theory of transformation. Finally, we discuss, and welcome dialogue around two central and interlinked challenges of our approach to transformative sustainability research: that of scales, and that of the distinction and relationship between reforms and transformation.

This paper argues that Sámi reindeer pastoralism in Sweden is highly stressed during the critical snow cover periods due to large-scale human interventions, especially forestry, and that these have over time significantly worsened the ecological conditions for natural grazing-based responses to changing snow conditions caused by climate change. Informed by a literature review, the paper conceptualises two, overlapping ecological dynamics that shape the availability of lichen as key forage resources within a Sámi pastoral landscape perspective: the grazing dynamics of reindeer during snow cover periods as determined by climatic stochasticity, and the more predictable vegetation dynamics of lichen habitat formation, growth and sustenance based on structured forestry practices. This could help articulate an intervention ecology that pursues sustainable ecological conditions for natural grazing-based Sámi reindeer pastoralism, along with other goals. As such alternatives are likely to face political resistance, the article discusses the implications of its findings within a science–politics interface.