Legal tools of public participation in the Environmental Impact Assessment process and their application in the countries of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region

The article focuses on research of existing legal tools of public participation in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process and on practical issues of their application in the countries of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region (BEAR). The EIA is mandatory for projects which can have negative impacts on the environment and/or human health. Public participation in the EIA is one of the instruments used both on the international and national level that helps prevent or minimise the negative consequences of the project for the environment and human health. This article is based on research of national EIA legislation and on the analysis of the findings from interviews conducted with private and public organisations during benchmarking visits and fact-finding trips to the northern regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Northwest Russia. In addition, feedback was collected from participants during four seminars. Participatory methods, focused on public‒private communication and participation during the environmental impact assessment process, provides the theoretical basis for the article. This research results from work in a two-year strategic project funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Tekes.publishedVersio

Assessments in Policy-Making: Case Studies from the Arctic Council

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Mapping the predicted and potential impacts of metal mining and its mitigation measures in Arctic and boreal regions using environmental and social impact assessments: a systematic map protocol

Abstract : Background: Since the 1960s, environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and recently, social impact assessments (SIAs), have been conducted during the planning stages of large development projects to identify potential adverse effects and propose mitigation measures to ameliorate these impacts. EIAs and SIAs should outline all possible posi- tive and negative effects of a proposed action or development on ecological and social systems, respectively, includ- ing biodiversity, flora and fauna, abiotic components (such as air quality), human health, security and wellbeing. The work outlined herein aims to generate a list of all possible direct and indirect effects of metal mining (including gold, iron, copper, nickel, zinc, silver, molybdenum and lead) along with the impacts of mitigation measures proposed, that are mentioned in EIAs and SIAs in Arctic and boreal regions of the following countries/regions: Canada, Alaska (USA), Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Methods: We will conduct searches for environmental and social impact assessments in Swedish and English, and until theoretical saturation is reached (i.e. no new action-impact pathways are identified). We will perform searches of specialist websites (e.g. public repositories of environmental and social impact assessments) and Google Scholar. We will also contact relevant stakeholders (that have been identified in the wider 3MK project https://osf.io/cvh3u/) and make a call for additional information. Eligibility screening will be conducted at two levels: title and full text. Meta-data will be extracted from eligible studies including type of mining activity, location of mine, type of impacts, and planned mitigation measures. Findings will be presented narratively, in a searchable relational database and in an evidence altas (a cartographic map). We will produce a framework of different mining impacts and related mitiga- tion measures from practitioners’ knowledge reflected in EIAs and SIAs. This framework will further form the basis of a multiple knowledge base on mining impacts and mitigation measures generated from different knowledges includ- ing scientific, Indigenous, and practitioners’ knowledge

SOCIAL LICENCE TO OPERATE IN LAPLAND : tools from the University of Lapland’s SLO research Final Report for the AMIC Project

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Reshaping Health Care Delivery for Adolescent Parents: Healthy Steps and Telemedicine

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/153056203772744725.Healthy Steps over Telemedicine uses telemedicine technology to bring child development services to adolescent parents in an urban school district. Videoconferencing units link teen parents at a Kansas City high school to developmental specialists and physicians at the Kansas University Medical Center (KUMC). Program participants receive developmental services and valuable health care information without leaving the school. The Healthy Steps goals are to educate parents about health care issues and to help them access medical care for their children and themselves. The telehealth goals are to implement the established Health Steps program effectively over the new medium. This article describes the process of delivering Healthy Steps services via telemedicine, specifically, selection and description of the site, selection of the technology, services provided, research evaluation, and lessons learned

Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands

Global economic drivers in the development of different industrial hubs in the European Arctic

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Paper Session II-B - The Advanced Camera for the Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) will have a high throughput, wide field, optical and I-band camera (WFC), a critically sampled high resolution camera (HRC), and a high throughput, moderate field of view far ultraviolet, solar-blind camera (SBC). The key characteristics of the ACS are listed in Table 1. The throughputs include the geometrical, scattering, and reflectivity losses from the HST optical telescope assembly (Burrows, HST OTA Handbook). Two figures are listed for the ACS efficiencies. The first is the efficiency using the quantum efficiency (QE) of the Scientific Imaging Technologies (SITe) 2K x 4K WFC CCDs and the SITe HRC 1K ´ 1K CCDs selected for the first build of the flight cameras. The second and higher efficiencies are those achieved with SITe CCDs processed and anti-reflection coated at Steward Observatory by Dr. Michael Lesser. We plan to use these better CCDs for the second build of the flight cameras