The environment in the headlines. Newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication in Finland

Media representations are an important part of the dynamics of contemporary socio-ecological systems. The media agenda influences and interacts with the public and the policy agenda and all of these are connected to the changes of the state of the environment. Partly as a result of media debate, some issues are considered serious environmental problems, some risks are amplified while others are attenuated, and some proposals for remedies are highlighted and others downplayed. Research on environmental media coverage has focused predominantly on the English-speaking industrialised countries. This thesis presents an analysis of Finnish environmental coverage, focusing on representations of climate change and eutrophication from 1990–2010. The main source of material is Helsingin Sanomat (HS), the most widely-read newspaper in Finland. The analysis adopts the perspective of contextual constructivism and the agenda-setting function of the mass media. Selected models describing the evolution of environmental coverage are applied within an interdisciplinary emphasis. The results show that the amount of newspaper content on eutrophication and climate change has generally increased, although both debates have been characterised by intense fluctuations. The volume of the coverage on climate change has been higher than that of eutrophication, especially since 2006. Eutrophication was highlighted most during the late 1990s while the peaks of climate coverage occurred between 2007 and 2009. Two key factors have shaped the coverage of eutrophication. First, the coverage is shaped by ecological factors, especially by the algal occurrences that are largely dependent on weather conditions. Second, the national algal monitoring and communication system run by environmental authorities has provided the media with easy-to-use data on the algal situation during the summertime. The peaks of climate coverage have been caused by an accumulation of several contributing factors. The two most important factors contributing to the increase in coverage since 2006 include international policy negotiations and mild and snowless winters. Between 2006 and 2008, other factors included the releases of major scientific reviews, expressions of concern by key actors, and the related debate on energy policy. Changes in the anthropogenic driving forces of the environmental changes, namely nutrient discharges and greenhouse gas emissions, had only a marginal impact on the level of coverage. Based on the results, it is suggested that wide-ranging climate reporting has caused what has been called a piercing effect. This means that after the phase of intense and widespread media coverage, climate issues will not disappear but will shift from highly visible environmental headlines to less visible but more pervasive background information presented in various contexts. Such a piercing effect was not identified for eutrophication. This thesis highlights the importance of taking media coverage into account as a key factor in the formulation and implementation of environmental policies aimed at broad-based actions

Disservices of urban trees

Ecosystem services provided by urban green areas have been recognised to an increasing degree following the turn of the millennium (MEA, 2003; Gómez-Baggethun and Barton, 2013). Urban trees in particular provide urban dwellers with a variety of ecosystem services (see Chapter 4 of this volume). However, urban trees are also the source of various types of harm, nuisance and costs. These ‘bad’ aspects may be labelled as ecosystem disservices. The concept of ecosystem disservice is a recent one and there is no widely agreed definition for it. On a general level, ecosystem disservices can be defined as the functions, processes and attributes generated by the ecosystem that result in perceived or actual negative impacts on human wellbeing (Shackleton et al., 2016). Both ecosystem services and disservices are inherently anthropogenic concepts, putting emphasis on the human valuation of ecosystem properties and functions. What is perceived as beautiful and beneficial by one person may be considered ugly, useless, unpleasant or unsafe by another. For example, biodiversity-rich, semi-natural areas inside city limits are often experienced as suffering from a lack of maintenance, as opposed to intensively maintained but biodiversity-poor urban parks

Kestävään kehitykseen liittyvien vaikutusten ennakkoarviointi politiikansuunnittelussa ja päätöksenteossa: Suositus arvioinnin työkaluksi

Kaikilla yhteiskunnan sektoreilla on toteutettu kestävään kehitykseen eri tavoin liittyviä ohjelmia, suunnitelmia ja päätöksiä. Yhteiskunnallisen epävarmuuden lisääntyessä tarve päätösten vaikutusten etukäteisarviointiin kasvaa. Kestävään kehitykseen liittyvät laaja-alaiset ja kauaskantoiset näkökohdat jäävät kuitenkin usein vähälle huomiolle, koska käytännön päätöksenteossa päädytään herkästi ratkaisuihin, jotka näyttävät parhaiten tukevan oman hallinnonalan välittömiä tavoitteita, mutta jotka eivät välttämättä ole optimaalisia yhteiskunnan kokonaisedun kannalta. Tämän takia tarvitaan sektorirajat ylittävää vaikutusten arviointia, jossa pyritään ennakoimaan mahdollisia ristiriitoja ja tekemään näkyväksi pitkän aikavälin vaikutuksia. Tässä raportissa pohditaan kestävään kehitykseen liittyvän arvioinnin haasteita ja esitetään ehdotus kansalliseksi arvioinnin työvälineeksi. Parhaimmillaan tällainen työkalu auttaa päätöksentekijöitä tekemään valistuneempia päätöksiä, joissa tavoitteiden tai toimenpiteiden vaikutukset ympäristöön, yhteiskuntaan ja talouteen voidaan huomioida kattavasti ja ennakoivasti

Empimistä ilmastopäätösten tienhaarassa

Mari Pantsar ja Jouni Keronen: Tienhaarassa. Johtajuus ilmastonmuutoksen aikakaudella. Docendo 2019

Evaluation of sustainable development strategies and policies : The need for more timely indicators

Indicators are commonly used as tools to identify and highlight socio-economic and ecological trends and to assess progress towards sustainability. Different quality criteria can be considered for indicators. This paper focuses on the timeliness of indicators used in the evaluation of sustainable development strategies. The analysis is based on indicators included in four assessment reports of the sustainable development strategy of the European Union and three assessment reports of the national strategy of Finland. Furthermore, a web-based national level indicator portal is analysed. The results show that the timeliness of indicators has generally not improved during the past decade and that indicators used in strategy evaluations have a time lag of approximately two years. It is suggested that more attention should be given to efforts to improve the timeliness of indicators in order to increase the effectiveness of the evaluations. More generally, it is suggested that greater emphasis should be put on the empirical research on actual use of indicators

Prospects for environmental communication based on 25 years of newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication in Finland

Research on long-term media coverage of environmental issues has focused predominantly on English-speaking industrialized countries and on single isolated topics. This article presents a comparative analysis of the Finnish newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication from 1990–2014. The coverage of eutrophication showed an annual cycle with summertime peaks strongly influenced by local conditions and domestic news sources. The coverage of climate change had three distinctive peaks, influenced by several factors including international climate policy negotiations, domestic energy debates, and mild and snowless winter weather. The prospects for building public awareness of environmental issues through media representations are discussed