Can we solve it in the workshop? : Learning in river restoration and climate policy implementation

The last three decades of environmental policymaking have generated some very ambitious and comprehensively formulated policies, ranging from the local to the global level. These policies often have the explicit aim of addressing and reversing some of the most significant trends of environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss and climate change. However, despite evidence of successful progress in the formulation of environmental policies, their implementation and goal fulfillment are generally low. The inadequate fulfillment of environmental policy goals has partially been linked to the perceived limitations of using coercive-based implementation to solve complex environmental problems. Meanwhile, participation and learning are gaining prominence, since they are expected to cope better with complex and unpredictable environmental systems and thereby contribute to the implementation of environmental policy. However, complexity is only one of several decisive contextual factors, which affect environmental policy implementation and governance. For this reason, this thesis questioned and explored the extent to which learning constitutes the most appropriate mode for environmental policy implementation, and under what circumstances. The introductory chapter frames learning as an implementation mode and conceptualizes it as one of three ideal-type implementation modes; the others being coercion and market. It introduces conflict as a crucial context for environmental policy implementation and hypothesizes that there are three facets of conflict, which are particularly relevant: conflicts of interest between stakeholders, conflicts in environmental policy goals, and legislation. Furthermore, it combines identified variables and concepts into a conceptual model that treats change in target group behavior as the outcome of policy and a dependent variable in environmental policy implementation. Policy outcomes are assessed in terms of their effectiveness and coherence. The thesis was guided by the following research questions: 1. How do stakeholder conflicts of interest and legislation influence the effectiveness of learning as an implementation mode? 2. How are conflicts in environmental policy goals manifested, and what role can a learning-based implementation mode play in increasing policy coherence? A multi-case study approach was chosen for this thesis since it allows for a detailed examination of the relevant contextual factors and an exploration of the possible causal mechanisms. As the thesis hypothesizes that conflict is a crucial context for environmental policy implementation, the case studies were selected in two environmental policy domains with different levels of conflict. Chapters 2-4 comprise several cases of environmental policy implementation that involve high conflict, concerning river restoration that affects hydropower production. These cases span different governance scales in Sweden, the United States and the European Union. Chapter 5 details another case, containing low conflict, concerning learning as an implementation mode in adaptations of urban water services related to climate change in the Stockholm Region, Sweden. The thesis uses a variety of data collection strategies; including document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. This allows for a strong contextual understanding and for triangulations of the insights gathered from the various data sources. The main paths for establishing the claims of causation, between policy initiatives, implementation modes and policy outcomes in the examined cases, are the counterfactual as well as the mechanism and capacities approaches. A number of key findings emerge from the preceding chapters, related to the two thesis research questions. As concerns the first question; the thesis finds that legislation is a key determining element that influences the effectiveness of learning in situations that exhibit high levels of stakeholder conflicts of interest. Chapter 4, a case study of a failed learning-based intervention in the Ljusnan River basin, Sweden, demonstrates how the effectiveness of learning was limited by existing legislation since it gave the target group of policy the option to reach its objectives unilaterally. In contrast to Chapter 4, Chapter 5 shows how learning can produce effective policy outcomes, despite limited legislation, in situations of low stakeholder conflicts of interest. In this case, despite the absence of rules and regulations requiring climate change adaptation, the urban water service organizations in the Stockholm Region have enacted significant behavioral changes geared towards climate change adaptation through organizational learning. As concerns the second research question; the results illustrate how environmental policy goal conflict is mainly materialized and manifested during the implementation of environmental policy. Chapter 2 concludes that, despite limited evidence of conflictual interactions at the level of policy goals and instruments, potentially strong conflicts emerge when it comes to policy implementation at both EU and member state level. The results also point towards the potential pitfalls and possibilities of the role that learning can play in policy coherence, largely depending upon legislation. Chapter 3 illustrates the differences, between Sweden and the United States, in the legislative settings of hydropower production as it concerns river restoration. Whereas hydropower production in Sweden is regulated by perpetual, property-like permits; in the United States, non-federal facilities are regulated by temporal licenses granting a time-bound privilege to use public lands and waters. Chapter 4 concludes that the perpetual hydropower permits in Sweden were an important reason behind the failed learning-based intervention in the Ljusnan River basin. The same chapter, however, also introduces the example of the Penobscot Basin, in the United States, where a learning-based intervention has produced significant river restoration outcomes while preserving hydropower generation at previous levels. Chapter 4 identifies the legal arrangements surrounding non-federal hydropower facilities in the United States, notably time-bound permits, as an important reason as to why the learning-based intervention in the Penobscot Basin produced results that increased policy coherence between different environmental policy goals. Based on these answers to the two research questions, an overarching insight from the thesis is that the shape and formulation of legislation constitutes a significant variable, in determining the appropriateness of learning in environmental policy implementation that contains high conflict. The thesis’ analysis suggests that learning, together with favorable legislation, could be a viable way of dealing with complexity, while preventing the inaction that may arise from stakeholder conflicts of interest. Through its empirical cases, this thesis provides evidence and arguments that relate observed behavioral changes to the policy of interest, in varying degrees. Moreover, the examples, in the discussion of environmental policy implementation affecting fisheries and agriculture, show that the findings are also relevant to situations of environmental policy implementation that affect the industrial use and extraction of natural resources more broadly. The thesis ends by offering a suggestion to policymakers who are faced with ineffective implementations of environmental policy: that they recognize the requirements and limits of learning, particularly in high conflict situations.</p

Relativistic diffusion processes and random walk models

The nonrelativistic standard model for a continuous, one-parameter diffusion process in position space is the Wiener process. As well-known, the Gaussian transition probability density function (PDF) of this process is in conflict with special relativity, as it permits particles to propagate faster than the speed of light. A frequently considered alternative is provided by the telegraph equation, whose solutions avoid superluminal propagation speeds but suffer from singular (non-continuous) diffusion fronts on the light cone, which are unlikely to exist for massive particles. It is therefore advisable to explore other alternatives as well. In this paper, a generalized Wiener process is proposed that is continuous, avoids superluminal propagation, and reduces to the standard Wiener process in the non-relativistic limit. The corresponding relativistic diffusion propagator is obtained directly from the nonrelativistic Wiener propagator, by rewriting the latter in terms of an integral over actions. The resulting relativistic process is non-Markovian, in accordance with the known fact that nontrivial continuous, relativistic Markov processes in position space cannot exist. Hence, the proposed process defines a consistent relativistic diffusion model for massive particles and provides a viable alternative to the solutions of the telegraph equation.Comment: v3: final, shortened version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Electrostatic considerations affecting the calculated HOMO-LUMO gap in protein molecules.

A detailed study of energy differences between the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (HOMO-LUMO gaps) in protein systems and water clusters is presented. Recent work questioning the applicability of Kohn-Sham density-functional theory to proteins and large water clusters (E. Rudberg, J. Phys.: Condens. Mat. 2012, 24, 072202) has demonstrated vanishing HOMO-LUMO gaps for these systems, which is generally attributed to the treatment of exchange in the functional used. The present work shows that the vanishing gap is, in fact, an electrostatic artefact of the method used to prepare the system. Practical solutions for ensuring the gap is maintained when the system size is increased are demonstrated. This work has important implications for the use of large-scale density-functional theory in biomolecular systems, particularly in the simulation of photoemission, optical absorption and electronic transport, all of which depend critically on differences between energies of molecular orbitals.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers

Damming and water regulation creates highly modified rivers with limited ecosystem integrity and resilience. This, coupled with an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, makes river restoration a priority, which requires water reallocation. Coupled human–natural systems research provides a suitable lens for integrated systems’ analysis but offers limited insight into the governance processes of water reallocation. Therefore, we propose an analytical framework, which combines insight from social–hydrological resilience and water reallocation research, and identifies the adaptive capacity in highly modified rivers as the capacity for water reallocation. We test the framework by conducting an analysis of Sweden, pre- and post-2019, a critical juncture in the governance of the country’s hydropower producing rivers. We identify a relative increase in adaptive capacity post- 2019 since water reallocation is set to occur in smaller rivers and tributaries, while leaving large-scaled rivers to enjoy limited water reallocation, or even increased allocation to hydropower. We contend that the proposed framework is broad enough to be of general interest, yet sufficiently specific to contribute to the construction of middle-range theories, which could further our understanding of why and how governance processes function, change, and lead to outcomes in terms of modified natural resource management and resilience shifts

Effects of alteplase on survival after ischaemic stroke (IST-3):3 year follow-up of a randomised, controlled, open-label trial

The effect of alteplase on patient survival after ischaemic stroke is the subject of debate. We report the effect of intravenous alteplase on long-term survival after ischaemic stroke of participants in the Third International Stroke Trial (IST-3).In IST-3, done at 156 hospitals in 12 countries (Australia, Europe, and the UK), participants (aged >18 years) were randomly assigned with a telephone voice-activated or web-based system in a 1:1 ratio to treatment with intravenous 0·9 mg/kg alteplase plus standard care or standard care alone within 6 h of ischaemic stroke. We followed up participants in the UK and Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway) for survival up to 3 years after randomisation using data from national registries and compared survival in the two groups with proportional hazards survival analysis, adjusting for key prognostic variables. IST-3 is registered with the ISRCTN registry, number ISRCTN25765518.Between May 5, 2000, and July 27, 2011, 3035 participants were enrolled in IST-3. Of these, 1948 (64%) of 3035 participants were scheduled for analysis of 3 year survival, and 1946 (>99%) of these were included in the analysis (967 [50%] in the alteplase plus standard care group and 979 [50%] in the standard care alone group). By 3 years after randomisation, 453 (47%) of 967 participants in the alteplase plus standard care group and 494 (50%) of 979 in the standard care alone group had died (risk difference 3·6% [95% CI -0·8 to 8·1]). Participants allocated to alteplase had a significantly higher hazard of death during the first 7 days (99 [10%] of 967 died in the alteplase plus standard care group vs 65 [7%] of 979 in the standard care alone group; hazard ratio 1·52 [95% CI 1·11-2·08]; p=0·004) and a significantly lower hazard of death between 8 days and 3 years (354 [41%] of 868 vs 429 [47%] of 914; 0·78 [0·68-0·90]; p=0·007).Alteplase treatment within 6 h after ischaemic stroke was associated with a small, non-significant reduction in risk of death at 3 years, but among individuals who survived the acute phase, treatment was associated with a significant increase in long-term survival. These results are reassuring for clinicians who have expressed concerns about the effect of alteplase on survival.Heart and Stroke Scotland, UK Medical Research Council, Health Foundation UK, Stroke Association UK, Research Council of Norway, AFA Insurance, Swedish Heart Lung Fund, Foundation of Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg, Polish Ministry of Science and Education, Australian Heart Foundation, Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Swiss National Research Foundation, Swiss Heart Foundation, Assessorato alla Sanita (Regione dell'Umbria), and Danube University