In an increasingly urban society, cities pose both challenges and opportunities to move towards a more sustainable society. This study examines the role of large-scale international sport events in sustainable development within host cities, with a focus on the physical legacies that they leave behind. The research seeks to offer guidance to enhance sustainable physical legacy development, informed by Games’ strategy documents, impacts on host cities and professional opinions. The research was conducted using three key methods: an examination of key strategy documents, a literature review of academic and grey literature to record infrastructure projects and interviews with professionals who had worked with four specific Games (Vancouver 2010, London 2012, Gold Coast 2018 and Birmingham 2022).

The findings implied that social infrastructure and transport projects were most commonly recorded and that the sport event industry operates with a Triple Bottom Line understanding of sustainability. Based on the findings, a design thinking framework was used to design and propose guidelines. The guidelines recommend a shift to the 3-nested dependencies model and propose the development of key skills (leadership for sustainability and flexibility) and key actions (sustainability education/communication and audit).

Cross-sector collaborations (CSCs) are crucial for addressing complex environmental, social, and economic challenges. Sustainability issues are multifaceted and require holistic solutions that leverage multiple stakeholders’ expertise, perspectives, resources, and networks. This research explores the effectiveness of CSCs for strategic sustainable development (SSD). It identifies conditions for effective sustainability-oriented CSCs, assesses the applicability of these findings to various contexts, and provides key considerations for newly forming CSCs and SSD practitioners. The research study was undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 examined cross-sector initiatives within the sustainable development field in Sweden and other parts of Europe. It explored how these CSCs operate effectively by examining their formation conditions, processes and structures, endemic tensions and conflicts, and accountabilities and outcomes using a conceptual framework. Data collection involved nine semi-structured interviews, which were analysed deductively to identify patterns based on these conditions. In phase 2, the findings from phase 1 were summarised and presented to SSD practitioners working with CSCs. This phase refined the nuances CSCs need to effectively apply a strategic sustainable development approach. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, and the findings were analysed inductively to pinpoint common themes. The research identified eight key considerations for SSD practitioners when working with CSCs toward sustainable development.

In our study we provide a case study of implementing sustainability aspects into the product development process of a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME). The objective of the study is to, together with the company, co-create a product development process that represents a step towards sustainability. For this a tool called the Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD) is used. The methodology of the study includes mapping the current product development process in the organization, adapting the MSPD based on criteria set by the organization, implementing the MSPD into the product development process of the organization in a co-creative way and finally applying the new product development process to a test case within the organization. Various participatory action techniques including workshops and interviews are used to ensure co-creation of the results. It was found that raising questions on sustainability aspects in product development can be seen as a first step of an organizational move towards sustainability. With this the MSPD worked as intended. The practical application showed that further steps were necessary. Particularly additional education in sustainability and theinvolvement of entities in the organization external to the product development process were found as crucial next steps.

Sustainable development (SD) in conflict analysis is rarely considered, given that older theories mainly inform conflict analysis. This research set out to establish the potential influence of combining Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) and conflict analysis. The current situation and possible influence were assessed through the primary data source, which constituted practitioners and researchers in international political conflict analysis. That was then compared to existing data on both conflict analysis and SSD. It was evident that some aspects of sustainability are already present in current conflict analysis tools but highlighted either social or ecological components. The complexity of conflict was clearly identified due to its cyclical nature and the different stakeholders involved. A need for an analysis tool combining complexity and a sustainability perspective was seen. It was argued that power dynamics in conflict analysis and the applicability of conflict analysis frameworks must be considered. Our findings indicate a place for SSD in conflict analysis, which translates into multiple application modes (e.g., root cause identification). There is a need for further research on how these two fields can complement each other and how to represent the interconnection into a practical conflict analysis tool. 

Purpose - The current unsustainable environment demands a sustainability transition. Municipalities are critical players in this transition. By fostering the development of sustainability competencies through improving the learning culture in Swedish eco-municipalities, this research aims to foster the sustainability transition.

Design/methodology/approach - This research aims to understand the current learning culture of Swedish eco-municipalities using semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Both methods also provided insights for recommendations to improve the learning culture in eco-municipalities. For validation of these recommendations, quantitative data analysis is used. The sample includes practitioners and experts in the field.

Findings - The research provides insights into the high relevance of interpersonal competency for the sustainability transition. Moreover, practitioners in municipalities focus on strategic thinking competency and topical knowledge, whereas experts in the field focus more on systems thinking and intrapreneurial competence. Further, continuous learning opportunities, collaboration, and inquiry play a big role in the learning environment. Finally, the research provides seven validated recommendations to foster the learning culture to support learning for sustainability.

Quality/value - This research supports (Swedish) municipalities in their sustainability by providing insights into challenges in the current learning culture and developing practical recommendations. Further, the study emphasizes the importance of integrating learning into the vision, values, and strategy of municipalities, involving leaders and practitioners. Ultimately, the research highlights that building sustainability competencies requires a comprehensive understanding of learning as an ongoing process integrated into the organizational culture. 

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a well-known and comprehensive framework for sustainable development. However due to the overlapping and interrelated nature of the goals, action towards one goal can positively or negatively contribute to another.Social innovation hubs including Impact Hub and Centre for Social Innovation use the SDGs to support social entrepreneurs to have a positive impact. Document analysis and interviews with 15 practitioners from these hubs informed the research on how the organizations perceive and contribute to sustainability, how they integrate the SDGs, and the challenges and benefits with using the SDGs. Based on that, this research has developed five recommendations for social innovation hubs to: 1) Define Sustainability; 2) Enhance Visioning; 3) Design co-creative programs; 4) Define Impact;and 5) Communicate Impact. While other elements of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) could be used to complement the SDGs, the Sustainability Principles (SPs) of the FSSD are recommended as a definition for sustainability.

Adaptive capacity is essential for organisations to be able to adapt to the sustainability challenge, and change its course. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an interpersonal communication tool that enables a user to move from a language of judgements to a language of needs by using 4 steps: observation, feelings, needs, and request. As communication is essential to the adaptive capacity of a social system, this thesis explores the question: How does Nonviolent Communication support the adaptive capacity of organisations? Through a mixed methods approach (semi-structured interviews and surveys with NVC trainers, organisational representatives and employees), the effects of NVC on communication in 3 sample organisations in the Netherlands (a school, NGO and research institute), is explored. Quantitative survey results show that NVC has a positive to very positive effect on common organisational communication dynamics. Qualitative data supports this finding and shows that NVC brings positive effects of increased understanding, listening, and progress in work related issues through an increased awareness of one’s own and other’s needs and feelings. When linking these results to adaptive capacity of organisations, it is concluded that NVC directly supports the adaptive capacity elements of trust, diversity and learning, and indirectly supports common meaning and self-organisation.

Business organisations, given their size, influence, and global impact on finite planetary resources, are the key economic drivers contributing to unsustainable growth. Sustainability Maturity Models (SMMs) were developed as a tool to assist organisations to recognise and incorporate practices identified as pivotal to achieving business transformation. The Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) approach was used to develop an analytical tool to assess the robustness of two of the aspects of SMMs, specifically structure and process. Interviews with model designers were also conducted. The research team identified key strengths limitations of SMMs.  

The analysis revealed that SMMs have strength in starting the conversation with leadership and charting the way ahead for organizations by clearly defining the maturity level success criteria.

These findings confirm the significant potential of SMMs infused by supporting process tools, to be a strong foundation for organisations on their sustainability journeys, aiding overall transformation of businesses. This in turn has the potential to shift the role of businesses in the larger socio-ecological system from being contributors to the sustainability challenge, to becoming active providers of solutions.

The current global economic paradigm, centred on growth, is a significant barrier in the transition towards a sustainable society. Business-as-Usual companies operating within this paradigm are perceived to prosper at the expense of society and environment which is not viable on a finite planet. The need to rethink the purpose of business is inevitable as maximising shareholder value, has been deemed insufficient to create asustainable society.

This study aimed to explore: how business models can be used to create value that supports Strategic Sustainable Development. Previous research proposed that the concept of Business Models for Sustainability helps business place sustainability at the core of all consideration. A qualitative research was chosen for which we employed the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development and combined a literature review with an investigation of three expert groups to answer our research question.

Our findings showed that, compared to other value forms, system value is the most appropriate concept for businesses striving towards sustainable development. Based on our findings, six themes emerged that businesses need to address to accelerate the speed of change towards sustainability. To make a relevant contribution to the intended audience,a prototype has been developed based on our findings.

Deciding between sustainability or prosperity may be a false choice when the phenomena are appropriately defined and considered together (Stiglitz et al. 2009). With reference to existing indicator systems and frameworks, including the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) and the Community Capitals Framework (CCF), this research developed three novel indices (SMSI, SMSI+, and CCFI) using a Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) approach to measure and analyze the correlation between sustainability (SMSI, SMSI+) and prosperity (CCFI) in Swedish municipalities. The spearman rank-order coefficient values were 0.259 and 0.588 for SMSI and CFFI and SMSI+ and CCFI, respectively. Both were significantly correlated with a p-value of 0.05, where SMSI+ and CCFI were 0.329 more correlated than SMSI and CCFI. This showed that an index that more comprehensively considers an SSD approach correlates more with CCFI. Furthermore, only six out of 234 Swedish municipalities ranked in the top 10 percent of both SMSI+ and CCFI, showing that it is difficult to successfully pursue sustainability and prosperity together in practice. Importantly, this research also demonstrates that it is possible to create indices using an SSD approach while outlining the methods for how to do so. 

What other means of influence exist in business other than economic? That is the question we set out to answer in regards to the fashion industry and the specific supply chain of cashmere. The cashmere industry has been described as complex, therefore the research has taken a complex adaptive systems approach to investigate how relationships between parts give rise to the collective behaviours of a system and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment.

This paper describes a qualitative case study research conducted to identify the potential influence that a small to medium enterprises can have on their supply chain actors to steer them towards sustainability. Looking specifically at the supply chain of one Scottish cashmere manufacturer within the luxury fashion industry we have assessed this company’s current reality to the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development.

This paper aims to present enablers and barriers towards influence, their correlations and complexity when looking at sustainability. In addition it will provide prescriptive thoughts for SMEs to support internal and external transition through sustainable development towards a sustainable cashmere supply chain. 

With the focus on addressing the sustainability challenge increases in the global agenda, the role of Indigenous communities and the knowledge they hold has been receiving increasing attention as a vital aspect in working towards sustainability. This research sought to bring forth the importance of Indigenous communities and their knowledge in addressing ecological and social sustainability. The research focused on practitioners` engagement with Indigenous communities with the objective of exploring their stories and experiences to offer learning and guidance to other sustainability practitioners. A pragmatic qualitative research approach was adopted in conjunction with literature review, collaborative autoethnography diaries by the authors and nineteen semi-structured interviews with practitioners with experience across sixteen different countries. The results revealed four themed lessons Indigenous communities offer in ecological sustainability, enhancing social sustainability, adaptive capacity in complex human systems, structural obstacles and definitions. Results also presented best practices and guidelines across four main themes for successful engagement with Indigenous communities. The discussion offers insights on what all sustainability practitioners can learn when working in the Indigenous context. Ultimately, becoming the bridge to foster mutual learning between Indigenous and Industrialized world toward global sustainability.

SAMMANFATTNING

Detta kandidatarbete behandlar grönska i staden och dess komplexitet. Arbetet ser till vad svensk forskning säger om grönska i staden samt hur Boverket, Plan- och bygglagen och Miljöbalken förhåller sig till detta. Vidare redogör arbetet för hur Malmö inom planering behandlar grönska i staden och hur detta förhåller sig till forskning i ämnet.

Studien utgår från ett analytiskt ramverk som bygger på forskning kring grönskans betydelse för en stad utifrån en svensk kontext. Därför har enbart svensk forskning använts i arbetet. Vid genomgång av forskningen var begreppen tillgång, tillgänglighet, kvalitet samt hälsa, förtätning, klimat och barn återkommande och utgör en viktig del av grönskan i en stad. Forskningen resulterade på så sätt i begrepp som sedan låg till grund för en innehållsanalys på plandokument från Malmö.

Både Malmö, forskning samt svensk lagstiftning och rekommendationer lyfter hur stadens gröna områden besitter många olika funktioner för livet i en stad. Grönområden i en stad beskrivs bland annat besitta en social funktion som mötesplats och används för rekreation, lek och upplevelser samt är av betydelse för människors hälsa och välmående. Vidare är stadens grönområden av betydelse för ekologiska funktioner, för ett rikt djur- och växtliv samt av betydelse för närklimatet och för en god luftkvalitet. Exploatering och förtätning utgör ett hot mot grönskan i en stad då grönområden kan komma att ses som markreserv. Genom riktlinjer och detaljplaneläggning kan den fysiska planeringen bidra till att bevara och utveckla stadens grönska, vilket sker med lagstöd i Plan- och bygglagen. Det är vid fysisk planering viktigt att se till ett grönområdens kortsiktiga och långsiktiga värde för en stad, då ett grönområdes värde kan öka över tid om det förvaltats väl.

Nyckelord: Grönstruktur & Fysisk planering. 

For society to move towards sustainability, competent engineers able to tackle systemic socioecological challenges are needed. To ensure this, integrating sustainability in engineering education is instrumental. This research aims to examine the current state of sustainability integration within Swedish engineering programs, as well as identifying challenges, needs, and drivers for integrating sustainability from the perspective of educators. Using a survey (P=55)and interviews (E=7) with educators of engineering master’s programmes in Sweden, the findings showed that:

- Sustainability is not being strategically integrated. Tools as the framework of Sustainability Competencies have potential to help with the integration.

- The main challenges inhibiting integration include a lack of resources, time, relevant sustainability teaching materials, and perceived relevance of sustainability to engineering courses.

- The main drivers of integration are management directives, funding, educator’s personal convictions, and the increase of sustainability as a topic in common discourse.

- Some main needs include building competence in educators, increased collaboration with sustainability experts, and learning from other universities regarding the process of integration.

Whilst all educators show sustainability awareness, most educators lack knowledge and right conditions for integrating sustainability into engineering education. Considering the interconnectedness of all factors, adopting a systemic approach is necessary in order tostrategically integrate sustainability in engineering education. 

Human activities pressure the socio-ecological system that maintains our quality of life by causing global repercussions such as climate change. The energy system, a major contributor to climate change due to its reliance on fossil fuels makes the transition to sustainable energy an imperative. The purpose of this thesis is to identify focus areas that support businesses in changing their energy habits. This leads to the research question: How can local businesses on small islands become drivers in the transition towards sustainable energy? The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) enabled us to employ a systems perspective, place sustainable energy into a comprehensive and scientific definition of sustainability, and align our findings’ relevance to a strategic approach. The Motivation-capability-implementation- results (MCIR) framework was a suitable tool for our needs. For data collection purposes, literature analysis and a case study on the French island Île d’Oléron were conducted. The main findings of the thesis are that in order for businesses to become drivers in the transition to sustainability energy, Awareness, Consistent and Proactive Political System, Engaged Community, Supporting Infrastructure, Financial Capability and Agile Approach need to be addressed. The six focus areas cover the many barriers and enablers for achieving sustainable energy. 

Drained wetlands can constitute a large source of greenhouse gas emissions, but the drainage networks in these wetlands are largely unmapped, and better maps are needed to aid in forest production and to better understand the climate consequences. We develop a method for detecting ditches in high resolution digital elevation models derived from LiDAR scans. Thresholding methods using digital terrain indices can be used to detect ditches. However, a single threshold generally does not capture the variability in the landscape, and generates many false positives and negatives. We hypothesise that, by combining the digital terrain indices using supervised learning, we can improve ditch detection at a landscape-scale. In addition to digital terrain indices, additional features are generated by transforming the data to include neighbouring cells for better ditch predictions. A Random Forests classifier is used to locate the ditches, and its probability output is processed to remove noise, and binarised to produce the final ditch prediction. The confidence interval for the Cohen's Kappa index ranges [0.655, 0.781] between the evaluation plots with a confidence level of 95%. The study demonstrates that combining information from a suite of digital terrain indices using machine learning provides an effective technique for automatic ditch detection at a landscape-scale, aiding in both practical forest management and in combatting climate change. © 2022 The Authors

Considering the rise in global sustainability challenges and most especially in a continent like Africa, these challenges could pose a grave danger to the population owing to the limited commitment towards sustainability. This requires a proactive and systematic approach in order to propagate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) on the continent. The purpose of this thesis was to support the implementation of Transformational Learning in an African perspective and to see how the TL components can be used to support this learning experience. This was conducted within some selected programs of LEAP Africa. As a case study, the Youth Leadership Development Program (YLDP) and the Transformative Leadership Program (TLP) were examined to explore the transformative learning experiences that these programs provide. The research examines how the program participants perceive and rate the transformational nature of the programs using a mixed-methods approach that includes survey questions and interviews. Through the Transformational Learning theory and the components of Transformational Learning,the findings from the research showed that above 50 % of the participants of the programs, YLDP and TLP considered them as transformative experiences that shaped their perspectives in terms of their knowledge, behavior, abilities, leadership, and personal development. The findings further attest to the importance of an African perspective in promoting Transformational Learning for sustainability. Thus, the study uncovered that some of the components of Transformational Learning; Community, Place, Pedagogy, Concepts and Content, Disorientation, and Hope and Agency are transformational and present within the selected programs though perceived differently across regions and cultures.

This report aims to answer the question “What is the relationship between adopting a landscape conservation approach and human well-being?” through a case study of the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network. The Network is a collective that involves a variety of stakeholders that belong to a multidimensional scale and focuses on achieving a wide spectrum of goals. This research looks at the landscape conservation approach, which the Network uses, through the lens of strategic sustainable development by taking a systems perspective. The eight sustainability principles, which are used for the analysis, function as system boundaries for sustainability to aim towards human well-being. The environmental sphere is connected with the social sphere and make up the socio-ecological system and should not be considered separately. This research aims to make this connection clearer to compliment the lack of knowledge on this topic. The main conclusion is that by operating within the 8SPs and using a landscape conservation approach, organizations can contribute directly or indirectly to human well-being and the health of ecosystems. Some of the benefits for humans are an increase in physical and mental health and having the opportunity to find meaning by being out in nature.

There is an urgent need to have leaders who are able to strategically transition society towards

sustainability. Evidence shows that challenges are mounting up and become increasingly

complex. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to educate leaders to become

competent to lead within the sustainability challenge we are facing. This thesis explores how

leadership education can prepare teachers to become leaders to enable Strategic Sustainable

Development (SSD). Based on interviews with ESD experts, the research team identified eight

key competencies for leaders to enable Strategic Sustainable Development and eight

pedagogical approaches to train such competencies. In addition to that, the research team

analyzed how the case study organization Teach for Austria (TFA) integrates the identified key

competencies and pedagogical approaches. Recommendations are provided indicating TFA’s

opportunities regarding a more thorough integration of the key competencies and pedagogical

approaches into their leadership education. These recommendations were then made relevant

to the broader leadership education context to prepare teachers to lead. The main outcomes of

this thesis intend to serve as a guidance to enable leadership the world needs.

The imminent consequences of the deteriorating state of the socio-ecological systems pose significant challenges to the well-being of society and societal functioning. The financial sector, specifically banks, plays a crucial role in the transition toward sustainable development because they hold the financial resources and the power to allocate these resources. For banks to contribute to this transition, credit risk assessment (CRA) can serve as an impactful process for sustainability integration. However, as CRA is a well-incorporated process within banks, it is unclear if it is strategic enough to support a transition toward sustainability. This research, therefore, aims to analyse the key gaps, opportunities, and limitations for integrating sustainability considerations into the credit risk assessment process using a strategic sustainable development (SSD) lens. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) was used as a conceptual framework to give a better understanding of the sustainability challenge and to analyse how credit risk assessment can contribute to sustainable development. Data were collected through document review and semi-structured interviews with practitioners from Nordic banks who have relevant experience to explain how banks incorporate sustainability into their credit risk assessment practices within corporate lending and credit. A semi-systematic literature review was also done to determine the views and methods of integrating sustainability considerations into the credit risk assessment process according to academic literature. The findings were structured using the FSSD’s 5-Level Model (5LM) to identify the key gaps, limitations, and opportunities in literature and practice. The results suggest that the key gaps in integrating sustainability into the credit risk assessment process are sustainability data inadequacy, inaccessibility, incomparability, trustworthiness, and storage, and the qualitative manner of sustainability data. Further to these limitations is a competence gap where crucial skillsets needed include systems and sector-specific sustainability knowledge.

Global urbanization trends and climate changes result in a significant pressure for a future development of urban areas. The construction industry can play a primary role in addressing some of the challenges, but in order to make it happen, the phases of design, construction, use and deconstructio of a building should meet the criteria of sustainability. The closed loop approach can help the construction industry to move in the right direction. 

This thesis analysis the closed loop approach to identify its potential contribution in solving the sustainability challenges in urban areas, as well as explores the key aspects helping or hindering the implementation of the approach. The methods used for the research include the framework for strategic sustainable development, case study analysis and interviews with experts in the field.

The research exposed several gaps in the use of the approach moving towards sustainability, mainly due to the fact that the unique and shared definition of it is missing and neither actions nor tools are suggested for a successful implementation of the approach. Main barriers are related to the material choice, flexibility of the design, communication and legislation aspects, work with supply chain and interaction with stakeholders. Nonetheless most of them are also seen as potential enablers. Recommendations are provided to help overcoming the existing barriers and valorizing the key enablers, but the clear definition of the approach is necessary to exploit potentialitie of the closed loop approach.  

In this paper, we present a physics-driven procedural method for the interactive animation of realistic, single-layered cumulus clouds for the landscape-scale size. Our method employs the coarse units called parcels for the physics simulation and achieves procedural micro-level volumetric amplification based on the macro physics parameters. However, contrary to the previous methods which achieve amplification directly inside the parcels, we make use of the two-dimensional texture called cloud mapsto this end. This not only improves the shape and distribution of the cloud cover over the landscape but also boosts the animation efficiency significantly, allowing the overall approach to run at high frame rates, which is verified by the experiments presented in the paper.

The aim of this research was to integrate sustainable development and design-thinking-based product design in order that the product design then contributes to society’s transition to a sustainable future. This is an important pursuit since product lifecycles are a major cause of society’s current sustainability challenges. To address this, many authors argue for integrating sustainable development into existing design processes rather than developing stand-alone tools and methods.Through action research with a design consultancy who wanted to start working with sustainable product design, we iterated between three stages: understanding needs, designing action, and trying out the action. The first stage comprised document analysis, focus-group style workshops, a survey and interviews. When designing the actions (enhancements to their design-thinking-based process), we drew on literature on sustainable product design, decision-making for sustainability, and organisational learning and change for sustainability. We also drew on our research partners’ practical experience. The enhanced process was tried out and further developed through feedback, student testing and co-development meetings.The result is an enhanced process where project teams (i) use the outcomes from the inspiration phase of the existing process to choose sustainable design strategies that are relevant for their particular project. Once the teams have chosen which strategies to work with, for example, design for remanufacture, we suggest that they (ii) use the strategies to develop ideation foci/questions that help them explore the design space. The third enhancement is for teams to (iii) compare concepts with respect to sustainability as part of their concept comparison and evaluation.

A company cannot be more sustainable than its supply chain. Given their complexity and the need for collaborative, strategic action for sustainability across supplier networks this research takes a systems perspective to answer, “How can a Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) lens support supplier network collaboration towards sustainability?”.The application of the SSD lens includes mapping barriers and enablers to collaboration for sustainability found in literature and a case company along with the Five-Level Model (5LM) to which we add complex adaptive system elements. Based on this a thematic analysis of the barriers and enablers is performed paper presents results of the 5LM and thematic analysis, finding that taking an SSD perspective shows interconnections across the multiple enablers and barriers to collaboration. The challenges encountered during 5LM along with the results implications for the Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) academic field and practitioners are discussed. We conclude that the variety and complexity of barriers and enablers for collaboration make it important to approach sustainability strategically across the supplier network. The SSD perspective supports collaboration for sustainability by providing an opportunity to examine it from a systems perspective and to formulate prescriptive considerations for the case company and guiding questions for SSCM practitioners.

This thesis aims to understand the role of facilitated nature experiences for leadersas a step towards sustainability. Qualitative interviews were conducted with facilitators andparticipants of nature-based leadership programs (NBLP) and analyzed regarding 1) Transformative Learning Conditions, 2) Transformative Learning Outcomes, and 3) Professional Changes inspired by NBLP participation. Results show that facilitators foster Transformative Learning through six main conditions and that Transformative Learning ishappening as participants experience an increased understanding of interrelatedness within our socio-ecological system, change in worldviews, as well as realignment with purpose and gained confidence. Our findings indicate some evidence of professional changes after programcompletion that show potential to move society towards sustainability. The reconstruction of worldviews and increased human-nature connectedness depicts the potential for NBLP to address a deep leverage point that is highly effective for systemic change towards sustainability. Our research provides valuable insights for practitioners in the fields of education for sustainable development and sustainability leadership to increase both conscious and subconscious ecological systems understanding. The authors suggest NBLP should be further explored by decision-makers and researchers.

One of the current dominant strategies proposed for sustainable urban development is densification. While some advocate the very reasonable benefits of density, others emphasize the potential drawbacks. The main goal of this paper is to provide a systematic overview of the claimed benefits of densification in Swedish practice and relate this to the scientific evidence. For the systematic overview, comprehensive plans from 59 Swedish municipalities, covering plans from both highly urbanized areas as well as more rural regions, are included. The results show that in three out of four cases where density or densification is mentioned, no motive is given. For the other quarter, the most often used motivation is related to transport (19%), services (17%) and urban environmental qualities (14%). The least frequent motives used are related to health (8%) and ecology (2%). The motives in comprehensive plans are for the most part pointing to a positive impact of density on sustainable urban development (77%), which is not always supported by the empirical evidence that more often describe a negative correlation. Furthermore, many of the most frequently used motives in comprehensive plans have little scientific support, which puts new questions on the research agenda. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Following the necessity for spatial planning to focus on ‘what works’ in terms of implementation and policy delivery, during the last decade, the notion ‘soft’ spaces of cooperation have been in the spotlight of many academics working on territorial cooperation units. ‘Soft’ spaces of cooperation have been introduced mainly to explain what was happening for real through the continuous attempts to promote new policy scales, initially through the device of fuzzy boundaries. However, despite the necessity to address interests beyond existing rigid administrative boundaries, still issues related to financial power, infrastructure coordination and investment, ecological and environmental concerns, etc., all are situated within hierarchical structures of government and governance. Challenges arise and affect the interaction of actors in these areas, given the different institutional and cultural settings. This research investigates ways in which governmental institutions influence the coordination between non-governmental actors, points of interests that can foster the cooperation between governmental institutions and, more specifically the main challenges that non-governmental actors face while trying to cooperate due to cultural differences and institutional set-up in a ‘soft’ territorial cooperation. The research has been carried out in the Dutch-German border area, focusing on a common natural linkage and asset such as the Rhine river. While coordination between different sectoral policies exists in both sides of the border, different social context, planning mode and different legal and political conditions make the implementation of common projects a challenge.

Enligt miljöbalkens bestämmelser om miljöbedömning och miljökonsekvensbedömning ska man vid planeringen ta fram olika alternativ som är förenliga med syftet med planen, programmet eller projektet. Genom att utarbeta och analysera olika alternativ ska beslutsfattarna kunna finna det alternativ som sammantaget är det bästa ur olika aspekter inklusive miljö. I denna rapport beskrivs resultaten av en pilotstudie om hantering av alternativ i miljöbedömning av planer och program och miljökonsekvensbedömning av projekt. Utgångspunkten är erfarenheter att detta på flera sätt inte tycks fungera så som det är tänkt utifrån EU-direktiv och svensk lagstiftning. Pilotstudien har genomförts i fem olika moment: • Internationell litteraturstudie • Granskning av miljökonsekvensbeskrivningar mot en fast granskningsmall • Intervjuer, utifrån en frågelista för semistrukturerade intervjuer, av svenska utförare som arbetar med MKB och MB • Diskussioner med svenska praktiker och med forskare i andra länder. • En workshop anordnad av Naturvårdsverket i samarbete med projektet. Ansvariga för studien är professor Tuija Hilding-Rydevik, SLU (projektledare) och professor Lars Emmelin, BTH Forskningsprogrammet MiSt Programmet "Miljöstrategiska verktyg", MiSt, är ett tvärvetenskapligt forskningsprogram finansierat av Naturvårdsverket. Programmet leds från Blekinge Tekniska Högskola. I programmet studeras verktyg som kan underlätta miljöbedömning i strategiskt beslutsfattande på olika nivåer, från nationell till lokal. Förståelsen och basen för utveckling av verktyg och rekommendationer om verktyg i olika planerings- och beslutsprocesser baseras på empirisk forskning på fall inom flera sektorer. Målen för MiSt-programmet: • Kritisk undersökning av verktygens funktion • Teoribaserad förståelse av deras verkan • Utveckling av råd om effektiv användning av verktyg och kombinationer av verktyg Programchef: professor Lars Emmelin, Fysisk planering, BTH. Biträdande programchef: professor Tuija Hilding-Rydevik, MKB-Centrum SLU.

Global ecosystem degradation challenging ecological and social thresholds demands urgent responses that address systemically the complex interrelationships between humans and nature. To improve the adaptive capacity of the social systems and strengthen its resilience to respond to external challenges affecting landscapes, multi-stakeholder approaches for landscape restoration involving diverse actors expressing different perspectives are important. While historically absent groups are recognised as the actors that, when meaningfully engaged, achieve transformational change, the literature is unclear on how this is achieved.This research aims to better understand the particular elements that enhance and limit the ability to establish a diverse range of participants within multi-stakeholder processes for landscape restoration. Using semi-structured interviews with practitioners with relevant experience in engaging historically absent groups, we found that including diversity is an iterative process of forming a microcosm as a complex, adaptive system representing the wider landscape through building on synergies and filling the gaps. A wide range of specific strategies exist to address concrete and structural obstacles hindering participation. Moreover, the specific role of the facilitator, their intangible skills that allow them to be capable of self- awareness, deep reflection and listening, are a key leverage point to navigate the complexity around many systemic obstacles preventing actors on the edge of systems from participating.

The sustainability challenge is a complex interplay of interconnected challenges that requires an integrated and systemic approach. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are seen as a key tool for addressing such challenges but are currently not mainstreaming and scaling to the landscape level. The emerging leadership practice of Weaving is believed to help cohere fragmented change-making efforts and increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of socio-ecological systems. However, scientific research on NbS and Weaving is scarce and studies on their intersection are non-existent. 

To investigate how Weaving practices could foster the conditions for scaling NbS to the landscape level, rapid literature reviews and semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic experts, Weaving practitioners, and grass-root entrepreneurs. On this basis, two conceptual frameworks were iteratively developed that serve as a basis for two practical toolkits. They comprise (1) seven barriers and nine enablers for scaling NbS to the landscape level and (2) a Weaving working definition and five core Weaving practices. 

There are indications that Weaving practices have the potential to address several of the barriers and enablers for scaling NbS if approached with a systematic lens. Ultimately, interconnected challenges, such as barriers and enablers to scaling NbS, require interwoven approaches as provided by Weaving. 

Skattesystemet påverkar skogsbruket. Då olika skogägare har olika skattesituationer blir också påverkan olika. Tidigare lockade skattesystemet till att spara skog. Reglerna för räntefördelning ger en motsatt effekt. Reglerna ger också stora fördelar för rika skogsägare med hög marginalskatt i andra verksamheter. Att använda skogen som kolsänka är en ny tanke. Medlet skulle vara bidrag till de skogsägare, som sparar skog. Under en övergångsperiod måste då avverkningarna sänkas kraftigt.

Fire and explosion accidents of oil-filled electrical transformers are leading to negativeimpacts, not only on the delivery of energy, but also on workplace health and safety as well asthe surrounding environment. Such accidents are still being reported, regardless of applying theregular maintenance strategy in the power plants. The purpose of this paper is to integrate asustainability perspective into the maintenance strategy. The problem addressed is: how can weapproach the relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance for oil-filled electrical transformers?For this purpose, an empirical study in a power plant in Kuwait was introduced. The first stagewas to carry out a sustainability assessment using the ABCD procedure. In this procedure, gaps toapproach sustainability were identified and actions prioritized to close these gaps were demonstrated.Applying this procedure yielded an early fault diagnosis (EFD) model for achieving cost-effectivesustainable maintenance using a fault trend chart based on a novel numerical method. Implementingthis model resulted in an extension of the lifetime of transformers with suspected failure propagation,leading to a deferral of the replacement investment costs. The principal conclusion of this paper isthe importance of viewing the maintenance strategy of transformers from a strategic sustainabilityperspective, in order to approach relevant cost-effective sustainable maintenance.

As sustainability challenges increase in both frequency and magnitude, there is a growing need for leaders who can deal with such complexity. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) develops knowledge,skills, and attitudes to enable the development of such leaders. This thesis focuses on the elusive “attitude” piece, more widely referred to as the affective domain. The research team interviewed experts on affective learning in either higher education or ESD contexts. Additionally, staff members from the case study organisation, Teach for Austria (TFA) were interviewed to determine how affective learning can be further developed within their fellow program. The five-level model (5LM) was employed to frame the findings of each interview set to provide recommendations for TFA. A feature of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, the 5LM provides a strategic planning approach that allows for easier adaptation and implementation of the findings for other programs that wish to learn from this research. Therefore, this thesis serves to provide recommendations for developing affective learning in sustainability leadership programs. Making affective learning explicit and empowering one to reflect their own affective domain and their perspective on the world can have a positive impact on their life, as well as on their environment.

Since 1970s neoclassical economics has been identified as a major obstacle for reaching sustainability. Despite the world's growing attention to sustainability education, there has been just few attempts to assess the content and the competency building of sustainable development (SD) postgraduate programs. None has been evaluating if and how economics is integrated in such curricula. This study fills this gap in the empirical research by conducting a novel assessment of six leading SD transdisciplinary master programs in Sweden. Our study uses a qualitative approach to inquire how these programs teach students to understand, challenge and reorient dominant neoclassical economics and the reasoning behind it. Results revealed that the absence of an agreed-upon definition of both the economy and sustainability lead to the wide range of approaches on how to introduce the place and the role of the economy. Every program relies on their own understanding, perspectives and resourcefulness, while agreeing that their teaching should challenge neoclassical economics and engage their students in the various scales of system change. Yet, the time allocated to economics teaching does not exceed 8% of the programs ECTS. We argue that economics should take a much bigger place in postgraduate SD education. A proposed “transdisciplinary economics” calls for more collaboration with students, academia and outside of academia in a joint search for economic alternatives.

Companies are increasingly pressed to consider sustainability aspects when making decisions during product development. However, the methodological support for doing so is immature. The immaturity is particularly pronounced regarding the social dimension (or pillar) of sustainability and regarding strategic sustainability considerations. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore how the social dimension of sustainability and a strategic sustainability perspective could be better included in methodological support for product development. This was pursued in two ways.

Firstly, a two-staged review of the literature was conducted. Stage one focused on summarizing the state of the art of integration of social sustainability aspects in product development and stage two focused on critically analyzing and evaluating these efforts. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development was used to guide the analysis of the current integration efforts and the evaluation of their potential for supporting sustainable product development and strategic sustainable development in general. Secondly, a recently published principled definition of social sustainability was used to enhance two approaches for including sustainability considerations in product development. One of these approaches is focused on decision-making support at concept selection, based on assessment and comparison of sustainability implications of the considered product concepts. The other approach is focused on developing sustainability criteria and a related sustainability compliance index in support of concept development.

In the literature review, social life cycle assessment methods (Social LCA) were found to represent a large part of the current efforts, and several challenges with those methods were identified. From a decision support perspective, they were found to have weaknesses regarding applicability and robustness: results from the assessment, usually performed by scientists to evaluate a scientific question, may be too complex to interpret from a business standpoint; the impact perspective may be too narrow, missing important aspects of social sustainability; and generally they lack a strategic perspective. The use of a strategic sustainable development perspective in the approaches prototyped in this thesis is a way of tackling these challenges. The use of backcasting from visions framed by sustainability principles can: help organize and make sense of the general field of sustainability, highlighting where overlaps between objectives exist; provide the long term perspective needed for sustainability; allow for product developers to gain awareness of potential impacts of a product’s life cycle phases within existing knowledge, time and resource constraints; help build a roadmap in order to reduce a product’s contribution to unsustainability (including social unsustainability).

Future research will focus on further testing and development of the suggested approaches and specifically on further development of tactical design guidelines that provide support for the fulfilment of long-term sustainability criteria and clarify the connection between decisions taken during product development and a product’s sustainability profile.

In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding a unifying framework that can support Social LCA to deliver on its promise: to aid decision making regarding social issues related to product life cycles. This paper offers an analysis and evaluation of the potential contribution of the body of work on Social LCA to sustainable development using the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. A number of strengths and weaknesses from a strategic sustainability perspective are identified and recommendations to improve the support for how to deal with social issues in the product innovation process are provided.

Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainability aspects in the product innovation process, the methodological support for doing so is still immature compared to the methodological support for considering other aspects in the decision-making, such as product performance and manufacturability. The immaturity is particularly pronounced regarding the social dimension of sustainability. In this paper we use a novel process for identifying sustainability criteria and estimating a sustainability compliance index, with the purpose of supporting inclusion of social sustainability aspects in the decision-making in product development. By including social sustainability aspects into a compliance metric, the foundations for strategic and operative decisions can be integrated. The process has been developed and tested collaboratively with industry representatives in a selected case company. Preliminary results show that social sustainability criteria can be integrated in a meaningful way into a more complete metric, and that the learning resulting from gathering knowledge and experience is a first deployable benefit of the process. Challenges and possible ways forward for further implementing social sustainability aspects in product development are also identified and discussed. The next step will be to further test the applicability of the results, by involving more representatives in the case company and from companies in its value chain.

Our unsustainable way of living has created a precondition for the emergence of more and new illnesses, jeopardizing the overall health of society. The Swedish healthcare system faces complex challenges that threaten its ability to live up to its obligations as stated in the law. It is proven that leaders in public organisations can have a substantial function in leading towards sustainability. Leadership competencies have a big role to play in that journey.This thesis explores the complex challenges administration leaders in the healthcare sector of two Swedish public organisations – Region Blekinge and Västra Götalandsregionen face when it comes to sustainability. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development is used to analyse the complexity and the sustainability within the study’s context. The Framework of Sustainability Research and Problem-solving Competence is utilized to understand the application, the relevance of the key competencies in sustainability in leadership, as well as the barriers in applying them, to deal with challenges. The conclusions are based on documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews. The results show the need for all key competencies, with biggest emphasis being put on systems thinking, interpersonal, intrapersonal and implementation. The findings reveal potential enablers and barriers for the organisations in moving society towards sustainability.

This thesis analyses how public decision-makers can rapidly and sustainably decarbonise their regions, considering the challenge that promoting timely decarbonisation represents. The research was divided into three phases and developed using desk studies and interviews with Project Drawdown (PD) experts, Swedish public officials and researchers. In phase one, PD solutions showed a shortcoming in sustainable operationalisation of global decarbonisation solutions. It was found that they alone could not account for sustainability, and that there is dependency on the context of application and on decision-making processes. In phase two, it was found that sustainability could be embedded in decision-making for decarbonisation through decision support. In the Blekinge example case, several challenges were found, for which sustainable decision support was needed. To respond to this challenge, a Decision Support tool (DST) was created, based on multi-criteria decision analysis. This three-step generic tool provides a relevance assessment to prove the suitability of decarbonisation solutions in the given context, a sustainability assessment to address sustainability challenges, and a prioritisation step for strategic decision-making. The tool was validated to be useful by Swedish policymakers and by international experts. This DST has the potential to support policy-making around the world to decarbonise regions rapidly and sustainably.

The back propagation (BP) method consists of diffractive integrals computed over a trajectory path, projecting a signal to different planes. It unwinds the diffraction and multipath, resulting in minimum disturbance on the BP amplitude when the auxiliary plane coincides with the region causing the diffraction. The method has been previously applied in GNSS Radio Occultation (RO) measurements showing promising results in the location estimate of ionospheric irregularities but without complementary data to validate the estimation. In this study, we investigate with wave optics propagator (WOP) simulations of an equatorial C/NOFS occultation with scintillation signatures caused by an equatorial plasma bubble (EPB), which was parametrized with aid of collocated data. In addition, a few more test cases were designed to assess the BP method regarding size, intensity and placement of single and multiple irregularity regions. The results show a location estimate accuracy of 10 km (single bubble, reference case), where in multiple bubble scenarios only the strongest disturbance would be resolved properly. The minimum detectable disturbance level and the estimation accuracy depend on the receiver noise level, and in the case of several bubbles on the distance between them. The remarks of the evaluation supported the interpretation of results for two COSMIC occultations.

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) has provided high- quality atmospheric data assimilated in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and climatol- ogy studies for more than 20 years. In the satellite–satellite GNSS-RO geometry, the measurements are susceptible to ionospheric scintillation depending on the solar and geomagnetic activity, seasons, geographical location and local time. This study investigates the application of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm in developing an automatic detection model of F-layer scintillation in GNSS-RO measurements using power spectral density (PSD). The model is intended for future analyses on the influence of space weather and solar activity on RO data products over long time periods. A novel data set of occultations is used to train the SVM algorithm. The data set is composed of events at low latitudes on 15–20 March 2015 (St. Patrick’s Day geomagnetic storm, high solar flux) and 14–19 May 2018 (quiet period, low solar flux). A few conditional criteria were first applied to a total of 5340 occultations to define a set of 858 scintillation candidates. Models were trained with scintillation indices and PSDs as training features and were either linear or Gaussian kernel. The investigations also show that besides the intensity PSD, the (excess) phase PSD has a positive contribution in increasing the detection of true positives. 

This master thesis explores the shifting paradigm in conservation, moving away from the myth behind the preservationist approach that separates humans from nature towards a more inclusive conservationist approach. The study focuses on the role of Indigenous Peoples in this evolving paradigm and examines factors that influence their ability to participate in and influence conservation debates and policies. The research draws on qualitative exploratory methods, including interviews with Indigenous Peoples and experts in the conservation field. Thirteen factors emerged from the thematic analysis, namely: legal recognition, law enforcement, political representation, awareness, external support, community building, capacity-building, connection across Indigenous communities, economic inclusion, public attention, protests, advocacy, and intimidation. The findings emphasize the need for a systemic and inclusive approach to conservation policymaking that incorporates cultural diversity and respects the rights, perspectives and agency of Indigenous Peoples. Ultimately, the conservationist approach, and particularly the effective inclusion of cultural diversity in conservation debates and policies, can enhance society's capacity to protect and sustain natural resources and biodiversity for current and future generations, aiding our sustainability journey in its ecological and social sides.

The importance of entrepreneurship for economic growth has long been recognized. It is also widely agreed that we are facing a sustainability challenge, which, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is largely created by the economic activities of the industrialized society. Corporate social responsibility and other global initiatives have not been sufficient in changing industry processes to more sustainable activities. Governments regulate activities in society through laws and guidelines, thus there is a clear role of governments in regulating the quality and outcomes of entrepreneurial initiatives in order to advance a sustainable development of society. The researchers´purpose was to understand how the governmental entrepreneurship promotion agency, Almi is fostering sustainable entrepreneurship and to recommend improvements. With a qualitative research method, the case of Almi Blekinge was studied. The research shows that Almi has the possibility to shape the entrepreneurial outcomes by adjusting the current mechanism with planetary socio-eco boundaries of sustainability. The recommendation is that Almi should steer their advising services towards a coaching dynamic where contributions to the socio-ecological system are assessed with the ultimate goal for companies to contribute to sustainable growth.

A common criticism of the sustainability field is that definitions are vague and that the vast amount of different tools, methods and concepts leads to confusion. In response to this challenge, for the past 25 years a group of scientists has explored the possibility to develop an overarching and unifying framework that would allow for a structured overview of other concepts, methods and tools and therefore allow for concrete, strategic planning for sustainability. Over this 25-year period the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) has been tested in learning loops between scientists and practitioners and has continuously been developed. The aim of this research is to contribute specifically to the social sustainability definition of this framework, which has been found lacking both in theory and practice.

The research first establishes exactly in which ways the social dimension is underdeveloped, both from a theoretical and from a practitioner’s perspective. In addition, the research explores the general field of social sustainability in order to understand the larger field, but also to gather inspiration and understand similar approaches. This exploration leads to the conclusion that also the larger field of social sustainability is also under-developed and underscores the importance of this research.

Based on this conclusion, a new approach to social sustainability within the FSSD is created based on a systems approach to the social system. Various aspects of the social system are identified to be essential for sustainability, namely trust, common meaning, diversity, capacity for learning and capacity for self-organization. Then, overriding mechanisms by which these aspects of the social system can be degraded are identified. Based on the understanding of the essential aspects of the social system and the identified overriding mechanisms of degradation of these, a hypothesis for a definition of social sustainability by basic principles is presented. The proposed principles are, that in a socially sustainable society, people are not subject to structural obstacles to: (1) health, (2) influence, (3) competence, (4) impartiality and (5) meaning-making. These aim to function as exclusion criteria for re-design for social sustainability. The research then presents two evaluations of this new approach, one based on workshops and interviews with FSSD practitioners and one via an FSSD-analysis of ISO 26000. Both evaluations support this new approach as useful and workable, and also contribute to suggestions for further improvement. 

Overall, the research contributes with a hypothesis for a definition of social sustainability, which is general enough to be applied irrespective of spatial and temporal constraints, but concrete enough to guide decision-making and monitoring. This is a contribution to systems science in the sustainability field, and it is a step towards creating an enhanced support for strategic planning and innovation for sustainability.

Phosphorus (P) availability is essential for global food security. A system dynamics model running from 1961 to 2050 was built for this study, linking global P supply to social, economic and environmental dynamics at regional level. Simulation results show that phosphate rock (PR) production needs to double by 2050 compared to present levels, in order to match regional P requirements. South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa are regions highly dependent on phosphate imports, yet it is here that most of the population growth and future P requirement will occur. Climate impact, eutrophication and phosphogypsum production are some of the main negative environmental dynamics that are becoming increasingly challenging in the coming decades. © 2020 The Authors

The Paris Agreement, the recent Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Sustainable Development Goals are examples of United Nation’s facilitated calls for urgent climate action and more generally for a rapid transition of society towards sustainability. Since urban personal mobility is a significant contributor to society’s current sustainability challenges, and considering current trends of population growth and urbanisation, there is a strong need to develop enhanced support for urban planning for rapid transitioning to sustainable personal mobility.

This thesis is part of a wider effort to develop methodological support for such planning and action. The aim of the thesis is to provide a partial foundation for that wider effort by: (i) identifying and organising prominent research themes related to the above topic; and since previous research points to benefits of a transdisciplinary, multisectoral and multicultural approach, (ii) exploring and addressing the complexity of co-production processes in such contexts; and (iii) analysing the appropriateness of some prominent planning approaches for the desired planning support.

The aim is pursued through a systematic literature review, including bibliometric analyses, and two empirical case studies, including workshops, interviews, field studies and feasibility studies. One of the case studies included participants from several countries in the Southern Baltic region and the other case study tested the usefulness of different planning approaches in the local context of Kisumu, Kenya and Gothenburg, Sweden, respectively.

The thesis provides a map of some prominent research themes and discusses their relevance to the field of urban planning for rapid transitioning to sustainable personal mobility. The analysis of the identified themes and their development over the past ten years shows that there has been a shift in mobility planning from ’predict and provide’ towards participatory visionary approaches. This, in turn, has led to new challenges, related to, for example, epistemic communities, language and culture. Furthermore, it is seen that sustainability considerations have become increasingly pronounced in the urban mobility planning literature. However, different dimensions of sustainability are often considered individually (e.g. the ecological and social dimensions) and coordinated approaches to sustainable mobility planning are virtually lacking.

At the methodological level, the thesis provides a preliminary conceptual framework for analysing complexity in co-production processes with regard to epistemic communities, language and culture, as well as a discussion of the usefulness of four specific planning approaches for the desired planning support, namely the backcasting, transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge, foresighting and SymbioCity approaches.

The overall conclusion is that there is a need for research that would show how mobility actors can contribute to resolve pressing issues related to climate change fast enough without compromising other aspects of sustainability, including how temporary trade-offs can be addressed in a strategic way.