14. Land use challenges: Sustainability, governance, and social and political responses The EU-support for the Swedish steel industry. How just is the just transition fund? Identifying Sustainable Development Goal interlinkages: the case of solar photovoltaics
Sessions
Beyond crisis/Beyond normal
A social science and humanities conference on sustainability
Organized by NTNU Energy Team Society
27 and 28 September 2023 | DIGS (pdf), Trondheim |
Registration deadline: 15 August
Thematic sessions
The conference has the following thematic sessions:
Date: 27 September
Time: 10.15 - 12.00
Session programme
10:15: Marja Helena Sivonen - Finland and Norway in the Arctic: the interrelations between security and energy
10:30: Klaus Mittenzwei - Increasing conflicts in Norwegian agricultural policy: Status, trends, and possible solutions
10:45: Frida Öhman - Promoting multifunctional use of landscapes – a governance analysis
11:00: James Kutu Obeng - Assessing young people’s nature preferences and sustainable well-being
11:15: Erlend Gylver - Vertical tensions in agricultural soil policy
11:30: Sreeja Jaiswal - Projecting a food insecure world: Equity implications of land-based mitigation in IPCC IAM scenarios
11:45: Martin C. Lukas - Tenure insecurity and tenure contestation: an intricate sustainability challenge
The current pressures on land are huge and they are expected to continue growing. Globally there is an escalating competition between the demand for land functions that provide food, water and energy and other uses, and those services that support and regulate all life cycles. A significant proportion of managed and natural ecosystems are degrading. According to UNCCD are approximately 20 per cent of the Earth’s vegetated surface in decline, mainly as a result of land and water use and management practices only for the past two decades. Further, and according to the same - loss of biodiversity and climate change jeopardize the health and productivity of land on several parameters: higher carbon emissions and temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, soil erosion, species loss and increased water scarcity. The UN recognizes its detrimental effects on food production and human habitation. Land degradation decreases resilience to environmental stresses: increases vulnerability, especially of the poor, women and children, and intensifies competition for scarce natural resources and results in migration, instability, and also conflict.
The session welcomes both theoretical and empirical papers that address land use challenges along with issues of social sustainability, governance, and social and political responses to land use and land use change.
Organizers
Hilde Bjørkhaug, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU
Erlend Engzelius Gylver, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU
Contact: Hilde Bjørkhaug
Poster session
The conference will also have an open poster session where participants are invited to present any sustainability related social science and humanities research. Guidelines for poster and poster presentation (pdf).
Sofie Joosse, Kornelia Johansson, Nora Förell and Anke Fischer
The EU’s Just transition Fund (JTF) financially supports regions that are negatively affected by the green transition, so that they “are not left behind”. In Sweden JTF money will go to the steel, metal and mineral industries. At first sight it is somewhat surprising that just transition money goes to large companies, and it raises the following questions: what is a just transition assumed to entail and for whom, how are these companies understood to accomplish justice in transition, and what do people in the region perceive as justice in transition?
Playing, doing, thinking, arguing, working, walking: call for alternative format sessions
The conference will also allocate one timeslot for parallel sessions using alternative formats. We welcome workshops, activities, co-creation exercises, innovative discussions, brainstorming formats, and whatever other creative initiatives you can come up with.
Beyond crises/Beyond Normal acknowledges that grappling with the key challenges of our era requires creative engagement beyond standard knowledge production and sharing through academic presentations. We will therefore allocate one timeslot for parallel sessions using alternative formats.
We welcome workshops, activities, co-creation exercises, innovative discussions, brainstorming formats, and whatever other creative initiatives you can come up with. The only condition is that activities should be clearly engaging with or be relevant for researchers working on themes of sustainability, climate change, transitions, and energy from a social science or humanities perspective.
While we are open to any good idea that offers an alternative to the conventional panel of paper presentations, we suggest keeping to the following guidelines:
- The session should require little or no preparation from the audience/participants. People should be able to decide to join on the spot.
- The session's success should not depend on the number of participants. Design your session such that it can be successful with 5 persons as well as with 30.
- Allow for both active and passive participation. Allowing mere spectators is likely to be more inclusive as not everyone may want to be ‘on stage’. At the same time, of course make active participation as attractive as you can.
- The activity should be concluded in 90 minutes. Also, mind that the venue will not allow for extensive preparation of the rooms.
- Make clear whether you want this to be an academic exercise, or something that welcomes audience of any kind
- Have an idea for a side-event, an outdoors event, a field trip, an evening event, or any other activity? Do not hesitate to reach out, and we will happily discuss and help!
Describe your plan for the session in 200-300 words. Also describe specific needs for the session (but bear in mind that anything beyond a conference room with AV equipment might be difficult for us to arrange).
Alternative format sessions
Date: 28 September
Time: 12.30 - 14.00
This session addresses the indivisible nature of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework and the related knowledge gap on how SDG targets interlink with each other. It examines how SDG targets interact in the context of a specific technology, solar photovoltaics (pv). This will be researched with interdisciplinary focus groups where a workshop (online "board game") on interlinkages in the case of solar pv will be held to identify trade-offs and synergies.
The selected SDG targets for this study (the selection of targets is performed prior to this session) are plotted against each other to discuss the interlinkages between the targets within the focus groups. Here the scale of Nilsson et al. (2016) will be used, where the interlinkages were scored as follows: -3 cancelling, -2 reinforcing, -1 enabling, 0 consistent, +1 enabling, +2 reinforcing and +3 indivisible.
During the session, the participants will be guided through an online board game where they can score the interlinkages and learn more about the SDG targets in the context of the technology. This will give them in depth information on how solar pv directly and indirectly relates to the SDGs (based on a literature review), but will also help them to identify how these direct and indirect linkages in turn relate (i.e. interlink) to other SDGs.
Organizer
Nikki Luttikhuis, SINTEF Norway
Organizing committee
-
Kim-Andre Myhre Arntsen PhD Candidate
+4790867311 kim.a.m.arntsen@ntnu.no Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture -
Shaua Fui Chen PhD Candidate
+47-73559959 shaua.f.chen@ntnu.no Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture -
Zane Datava PhD student
+4794277524 zane.datava@ntnu.no -
Franziska Gehlmann PhD student
franziska.gehlmann@ntnu.no -
Sara Heidenreich Senior researcher
+47-73591779 sara.heidenreich@ntnu.no Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture -
Sigurd Hilmo Lundheim
sigurd.h.lundheim@ntnu.no Department of Sociology and Political Science -
Tomas Moe Skjølsvold Professor of STS and Director of FME NTRANS
+47-73550189 +4793634270 tomas.skjolsvold@ntnu.no Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture