A Role for Authority Supervision in Impact Assessment? Examples from Finnish EIA Reviews

With the boom in mining in Fennoscandia, reconciliation of competing land use interests in governance procedures such as impact assessment has come to the fore. One of the functions that has been applied to varying degrees in national frameworks is supervision of the procedure by a responsible authority. This paper examines review statements issued in the context of mining project assessments in northern Finland – one of the countries implementing authority supervision. The study shows that third-party review may play a role in highlighting the importance of competing land use interest such as reindeer herding. Attention to such interests, however, remains limited by the application of spatial planning in the case and by consent processing, up until the end of the period examined. Among the lessons for impact assessment is the need for methodologies for accommodating anticipatory types of (practice-based and non-scientific) information. Unless these types of sources are considered valid, the possibility of substantializing anticipation and finding solutions along those lines will be missed, with the risk of making things on the ground worse before the need for mitigation measures is comprehended in the face of materializing impacts

Control of potato late blight by caraway oil in organic farming

Caraway (Carum carvi) seeds contain biologically active essential oils, which have shown potential in controlling Phytophthora infestans (P.i.). An attempt is being made to develop a P.i. control strategy for organic farming based on caraway oil

Viljelymaiden tiivistymien simulointi ja sen hyödyntäminen koneensuunnittelussa

Tiivistelmä. Työn tarkoitus on antaa lukijalle sekä tekijälle pohjatietoja siitä, miten tiivistymiä mallinnetaan, mitä seikkoja siinä on otettava huomioon ja minkälaista mallinnusta on tähän mennessä tehty, sekä myös tietoa siitä, mihin suuntaan alaa ollaan kehittämässä. Työ on toteutettu kirjallisuuskatsaus tyyppisesti, eikä se sisällä itsessään tutkimusta. Työssä havaittiin, että numeerinen menetelmä DEM, eli diskreettielementtimenetelmä on ottamassa jalansijaa tällä osa-alueella, ja suuri osa tutkimuksesta kohdistuu sen kehittämiseen sekä sen hyödyntämiseen erityyppisissä simulointitapauksissa. Hyödyntämistä koneensuunnittelussa tarkastellaan erilaisia julkaisuja esittelemällä, mitkä koskevat maa-aines simuloinnin yhdistämistä maatalouskoneiden suunnitteluun. Työ voisi soveltua vastaavan tutkimuksen kirjallisuuskatsaukseksi, ja sen luettuaan lukijalla on käsitys alan trendeistä

Isocurvature fluctuations in Affleck-Dine mechanism and constraints on inflation models

We reconsider the Affleck-Dine mechanism for baryogenesis and show that the baryonic isocurvature fluctuations are generated in many inflation models in supergravity. The inflationary scale and the reheating temperature must satisfy certain constraints to avoid too large baryonic isocurvature fluctuations.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Preparing for and Responding to Disturbance: Examples from the Forest Sector in Sweden and Canada

Coping or adaptation following large-scale disturbance may depend on the political system and its preparedness and policy development in relation to risks. Adaptive or foresight planning is necessary in order to account and plan for potential risks that may increase or take place concurrently with climate change. Forests constitute relevant examples of large-scale renewable resource systems that have been directly affected by recent environmental and social changes, and where different levels of management may influence each other. This article views disturbances in the forest sectors of Sweden and Canada, two large forest nations with comparable forestry experiences, in order to elucidate the preparedness and existing responses to multiple potential stresses. The article concludes that the two countries are exposed to stresses that indicate the importance of the governing and institutional system particularly with regard to multi-level systems including federal and EU levels. While economic change largely results in privatization of risk onto individual companies and their economic resources (in Canada coupled with a contestation of institutional systems and equity in these), storm and pest outbreaks in particular challenge institutional capacities at administrative levels, within the context provided by governance and tenure systems.In Sweden, funding from the research agency FORMAS, the MISTRA Arctic Futures programme, and the Future Forests programme (funded by research agency MISTRA, the forest industries, Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) as well as from the EU for data collection is acknowledged. Ryan Bullock acknowledges funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by the Mistra Arctic Futures programme for preparing this paper.https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/2/2/50

A Role for Authority Supervision in Impact Assessment? Examples from Finnish EIA Reviews

With the boom in mining in Fennoscandia, reconciliation of competing land use interests in governance procedures such as impact assessment has come to the fore. One of the functions that has been applied to varying degrees in national frameworks is supervision of the procedure by a responsible authority. This paper examines review statements issued in the context of mining project assessments in northern Finland – one of the countries implementing authority supervision. The study shows that third-party review may play a role in highlighting the importance of competing land use interest such as reindeer herding. Attention to such interests, however, remains limited by the application of spatial planning in the case and by consent processing, up until the end of the period examined. Among the lessons for impact assessment is the need for methodologies for accommodating anticipatory types of (practice-based and non-scientific) information. Unless these types of sources are considered valid, the possibility of substantializing anticipation and finding solutions along those lines will be missed, with the risk of making things on the ground worse before the need for mitigation measures is comprehended in the face of materializing impacts.(Published: May 2017)Citation: L. Solbär & E. Carina H. Keskitalo. “A Role for Authority Supervision in Impact Assessment? Examples from Finnish EIA Reviews.” Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 8, 2017, pp. 52–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v8.66

Beyond Open Access - Tools and methods for open research

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Isocurvature modes and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

The measurement of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations from galaxy surveys is well known to be a robust and powerful tool to constrain dark energy. This method relies on the knowledge of the size of the acoustic horizon at radiation drag derived from Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy measurements. In this paper we quantify the effect of non-standard initial conditions in the form of an isocurvature component on the determination of dark energy parameters from future BAO surveys. In particular, if there is an isocurvature component (at a level still allowed by present data) but it is ignored in the CMB analysis, the sound horizon and cosmological parameters determination is biased, and, as a consequence, future surveys may incorrectly suggest deviations from a cosmological constant. In order to recover an unbiased determination of the sound horizon and dark energy parameters, a component of isocurvature perturbations must be included in the model when analyzing CMB data. Fortunately, doing so does not increase parameter errors significantly.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure

Rural-Urban Policies : Changing Conceptions of the Human-Environment Relationship

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Planck 2013 results. VI. High Frequency Instrument data processing

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