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The metaphor of ocean “health” is problematic

Susanna Lidström (researcher at KTH), Tirza Meyer (postdoc at KTH) and former division’s PhD-colleague Jesse Peterson (now postdoc at Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet) have published an exciting opinion piece about our approach towards the ocean in the context of climate change and increased pollution. The authors argue that the health metaphor would be problematic in regard to describing the state of oceans.

In the following you can read their introduction. If you are interested in working through the original article, visit Frontiers in Marine Science – Global Change and the Future Ocean from 15 February 2022 by clicking on the link!

Fische, Meer, Graffiti, Streetart, Mauer, Wandkunst

Introduction of the article:

The state of the ocean is increasingly described in terms of ocean “health.” The Implementation Plan for the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development describes the aim of the decade as achieving “a sustainable and healthy ocean” and refers to the ocean’s “health” throughout, including references to an overall “decline in ocean health” [Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), 2020], p. i, 6. Likewise, Sustainable Development Goal no. 14 aims “to achieve healthy and productive oceans” and “to improve ocean health” [United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), 2015, p. 23, 24]. In addition, scientific studies from all disciplines routinely use the same metaphor, including statements such as “the many benefits that society receives from a healthy ocean” (Duarte et al., 2020, p. 39), “the health of marine ecosystems” (Hagood, 2013, p. 75), and the “importance of ocean health” (Borja et al., 2020, p. 1).

However, we argue that the health metaphor (Suter, 1993; Jamieson, 1995) continues to be imprecise, ambiguous, and problematic. We suggest that the idea of ocean “health” misrepresents the Earth’s history of ever-changing and adapting ecosystems through time, wrongly suggests that ocean health is an apolitical and objective state and obscures how conditions in the ocean are irreversibly intertwined with human activities.

Sonne, Strand, Müll, Plastik, Natur, Meer, Ozean

 

 

 

Erik Isberg on “Jorden. Vår planets historia och framtid”

Division PhD-colleague Erik Isberg (SPHERE Project) has published an exciting review of “Jorden. Vår planets historia och framtid” (by Johan Rockström and Owen Gaffney) in Expressen Kultur on 24 January 2021. In the following we present a translated summary:

Profile picture of Erik Isberg

Erik Isberg: Will the climate lead Jeff Bezos to vote left?

Climate scientist Johan Rockström and sustainability analytic Owen Gaffney have presented in their new book not only their take on the planet’s geological and biological history, but also on human development and future solutions for the climate crisis. It is a mixture of popular science, civilisation history, and climate journalism, while at the same time presenting like an eco-political manifest. The book came out last year in English in combination with a Netflix-documentary. David Attenborough contributed to the film as speaker. Greta Thunberg wrote the foreword to the successful book.

As such it is a typical example of its time, as it combines the relationship between climate science, history and politics. Dipesh Chakrabarty said that scientists of earth systems, like Johan Rockström, would be the historians of our time, who write within a new narrative, combining the planet, life, and human history in one story. This would be an adequate description of the book at hand. It is divided into three parts: first it focuses on planetary and human history, second it elaborates on climate science and the situation of science today, and third it offers solutions to deflect the climate catastrophe.

Its main argument is that humanity would have developed in different distinct episodes, just like earth. Suddenly, the growth of unicellular organisms and today’s digitisation process look alike: both have swept over the world, without anything someone could have done about it. This would be a reductionist and well-known narrative. Yuval Noah Hararis “Sapiens” and David Christians “Berättelsen im allt” also use it. Humanity becomes a passenger in a journey, which  someone else has determined.  Industrialisation, colonialism and capitalism were processes working out of themselves, while humanity would watch from the stands and wonders. For example, the steam machine would have involuntarily started the industrialisation, as ostensibly all other options would have disappeared as James Watt started his machine for the first time.

A similar worldview can be seen in the second part of the book, which presents a possible option to avert an climate catastrophe. Although many of the proposed measures, such as higher capital tax, state investments in green technology, and closing the gap between rich and poor, were not presented as a part of a political discussion apart from the goal of society’s change towards a green future, these proposals can nevertheless be called leftwing.

The hope is portrayed that everyone, from Jeff Bezos till Extinction Rebellion could unite for the common goal of what Rockström and Gaffney call “Jordresan” (Earth’s Journey) towards sustainable “Jorden 5.0” (Earth 5.0.).

The will to see future climate policy already as a step in earth’s development, rather than a part of an ideological conflict, leads to oblivion towards power relations and material interests within the corresponding political discussion. Maybe in reality, planetary and social change work according to another set of rules, rather than in the simplistic way the two authors present it. Rockström and Gaffney provide an acute reminder of the crisis we are in, but are probably wrong within their deterministic argumentation.

~*~

You can read the original in Swedish here.

Melina Antonia Buns joins the Division!

Nuclear-historical research at KTH is expanding! We are happy to announce that Melina Antonia Buns has joined us as a visiting post-doc researcher, based on a collaboration between NUCLEARWATERS, KTH’s Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment and The Greenhouse at the University of Stavanger. Melina was recently awarded a major research grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which will enable her to spend two years at KTH. The grant is linked to her project “Nuclear Nordics: Radioactive Waste Spatialities, Materialities and Societies in the Nordic Region, 1960s-1980s”. Read more about this exciting research endeavor at the website of the Norwegian Research Council.

Melina Antonia Buns at her new KTH office

Melina holds a BA in history, art history and Scandinavian studies from the University of Vienna, an MA in International and Global History and a PhD in history from the University of Oslo. In June 2021 she successfully defended her thesis “Green Internationalists: Nordic Environmental Cooperation, 1967-1988”. At KTH she will make use of her expertise in Nordic environmental history while moving into the nuclear-historical field.

Melina will present her research project “Nuclear Nordics” in the NUCLEARWATERS seminar series very soon. The seminar was originally scheduled for 26 January, but has been postponed. We will soon be back with a new date and time.

This text was originally published by Per Högselius on nuclearwaters.eu on 21 January 2022.

Coming up: Higher Seminar Series in Spring 2022

Gott nytt år! – Happy New Year! After snow-induced Christmas and winter holidays, the division is slowly but surely bustling back into busy work mode.

Our Higher Seminar Series, the colloquium of our division, starts again in two weeks. We are very glad to announce that Aliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc at the division, will be presenting his ongoing research. His talk The Great Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21″ will be given on 24 January at 13.15-14.45 Stockholm time. If you want to join us from outside KTH, please send an email to higher-seminar@kth.se before 10 am (CET) the day you wish to attend.

Abstract

Even a short breakdown in fuel supplies can have profound and dramatic consequences for modern economies. This paper explores a major coal shortage in Central Europe after WW1 which shook local societies for two years. The dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 provides a narrower context to this study, while its immediate focus lies upon the development of diplomatic and economic relationships between Czechoslovakia – a WW1 winner state and an important coal exporter, and Hungary – a war losing state, which was a net coal importer. Underlining the scale of the Hungarian reliance on fuels from Czechoslovakia, this paper suggests that this dependence was one of the chief arguments that motivated Budapest to cede Slovakia to Prague’s control and, in general, to accept the peace terms proposed at the Paris conference. The paper demonstrates that cross-border energy interdependence substantially affected diplomatic relations in Central Europe immediately after WW1, privileging coal-exporting states over coal-importing states.

Karte, Kartographie, Reliefkarte, Berge, Mitteleuropa

Apart from this exciting talk focussed on the subject of Eastern Central European History, many more presentations are coming up. Here is the current schedule:

24 January 13.15-14.45 CET: The Great Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21. Aliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

7 February 13.15-14.45 CET: PM for PhD project. Erik Ljungberg, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

21 February 13.15-14.45 CET: Air Epistemologies: Practices of Ecopoetry in Ibero-American Atmospheres. Nuno Marques, postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

7 March 13.15-14.45 CET: From modern to modest imaginary? Learning about urban water infrastructure by comparing Northern and Southern cities. Timos Karpouzoglou, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Collaborators in this work: Mary Lawhon, Sumit Vij, Pär Blomqvist, David Nilsson, Katarina Larsen.

21 March 13.15-14.45  CET: Warriors, wizards, and seers: representations of Saami in 17th and 18th century Sweden. Vincent Roy-Di Piazza, Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, UK

4 April 13.15-14.45  CET: Historian’s toolbox: Technical solutions for doing research. Kati Lindström and Anja Moun Rieser, Division of History of Science, technology and Environment

2 May 13.15-14.45 CET: Mid-seminar in doctoral education. Gloria Samosir, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

16 May 13.15-14.45 CET: Nuclear Nordics: Histories of Radioactive Waste in the Nordic Region. Melina Antonia Buns, visiting postdoc KTH

30 May 13.15-14.45 CET: A theoretical seminar on Heritage and Decay. Lize-Marie Van Der Watt, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

13 June 13.15-14.45 CET: Science, the arts and engineering – dialogues and co-creative methods between KTH and Färgfabriken. Katarina Larsen and David Nilsson, researchers, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment

You can find the full and always updated Higher Seminar schedule here.

Wrapping 2021

The year 2021 is coming to an end and this blog will have some well deserved vacation over the holidays. But before we go all  in Christmas, let us look back on some of the great things that happened at the Division this year!

While a few colleagues left us for other adventures, we welcomed new members to the Division. Klara Müller joined us as a new PhD student in the Making Universities Matter-project, and Linus Salö re-joined us as her main supervisor at the very start of 2021. About half a year later Erik Ljungberg started his PhD trainging with us aiming on the History of Media and Environment with a focus on AI and autonomous systems.

Nuno Marques started his international postdoc with us and the EHL in July with the project Air Epistemologies: Practices of Ecopoetry in Ibero American Atmospheres. Soon after him, Tirza Meyer join us as a postdoc in the project The Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental SDGs led by Sabine Höhler. We were also happy to recieve the news that Lina Rahm, who has been with us as a Ragnar Holm fellow since last fall, will start her position Assistant Professor in the History of Media and Environment with specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems at the Division from January 1 2022.

Three doctoral students successfully defended their thesis this year:

New projects got funding! Harnessing the Heat Below our Feet, with Marco Armiero and Ethemcan Turhan (from University of Groningen). Lize-Marie van der Watt and Kati Lindström received funding from RJ for the project Decay Without Mourning: Future-thinking Heritage Practices. And as reported recently, both Eric Paglia and Fredrik Bertilsson was granted funding from Fromas this fall. To mention just a few projects.

What else happened? Well, Kati Lindström became a member of the Estonian Polar Research Committee. Johan Gärdebo recieved the DHST Dissertation Prize for best dissertation 2019. David Nilsson was elected a member of WaterAid Sweden’s board. Daniele Valisena, received the ESEH Dissertation Prize from the European Society for Environmental History for best doctoral dissertation 2019-2020, Coal Lives: Italians and the Metabolism of Coal in Wallonia, Belgium, 1945-1980 (supervisor Marco Armiero ).

Above all this, Sverker Sörlin was awarded twice during the fall. First with the Grand Gold Medal by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), “for outstanding work as an innovative researcher, research leader and active public debater and for his significant contributions and deep commitment to research and higher education.” A few weeks later he was awarded the The Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala awards Sverker Sörlin the Thuréus Prize, for “outstanding contributions as a pioneer in environmental history, or” environmental humanities “, in Sweden and internationally, and for his extensive activities as a research policy author and debater”

Nina Wormbs received the Nature & Culture popular science work scholarship of SEK 100,000 to write a book on Climate Grief (Klimatsorg).

And finally, on December 9 Kati Lindström was accepted as a Docent in History of Science, Technology and Environment with a specialization in Environmental Humanities and Uses of History.

Not to forget all the events and  publications, opinion pieces and worskhops. Some of them you will find if you scroll down the history of this blog. Again, just to mention a few things. Thank you to everyone who subscribed, shared and followed us during the year. We hope to see you in 2022 again!

 

Beyond Unprepared and Sustainability’s Formative Moment – Formas’ Grants Two New Projects

Division researchers Fredrik Bertilsson and Eric Paglia recieved funding for four years each in the Formas Annual Open Call 2021 – Research projects for early-career researchers. In 2022 the Division looks forward to two new projects: one on humanistic expertice and knowledge and one that question the earlier periodization of the sustainability narrative.

Summary Beyond “unprepared”: Towards an integrative expertise of drought

Profilbild av Fredrik Bertilsson

The overarching hypothesis of this project is that the understanding of preparedness is fundamentally transformed in the era of Anthropocene. In Sweden, recent events such as the corona pandemic and the extreme weather in 2018 have pointed out insufficiencies in public readiness. This project explores drought in Sweden, which until recently was a marginal problem on the national agenda but is now a priority of the Swedish government. Both public agents and researchers call for collaboration an “integrative expertise” that combine the expert knowledge of natural sciences, social science and the humanities to advance public preparedness. However, the potential of humanistic expertise and knowledge is under-researched. The potential of humanistic knowledge becomes relevant in new contexts where problems and potential solutions fall outside the domain of previously dominating expertise. The aim of this project is to contribute to the expertise for increasing public preparedness. The purpose of the project is to study: the identification of Swedish “unpreparedness” in relation to the drought in Sweden in 2018, the historical processes behind this present unpreparedness, and the formation of future experts focusing on the significance of humanistic expertise. The project provides a novel and timely assessment of integrative expertise of drought. It engages with actors in the public sector, NGOs, academic research, and arts and culture

Summary Sustainability’s Formative Moment: The Birth of the Boundaries Narrative and the Rise of the ‘Human Environment’

Profile picture of Eric Paglia

This project examines the emergence of the “Boundaries narrative” between 1968-1974 in connection with the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment. “The environment” as a problem was well known, but in 1968 there were no international political institutions for managing it. Neither developing countries nor the business community had an interest in imposing restrictions for the environment’s sake. In this struggle between scientifically and ideologically motivated demands for restraint, and economically and politically motivated demands for continued expansion, the idea emerged that growth and environment could be reconciled—what would later be called sustainable development. We will study in detail the interplay of different expert cultures, from governments via constellations of scientists, to smaller groups that could include executives, researchers, diplomats, activists, economists and others. We are particularly interested in three key individuals and their networks: Canadian businessman Maurice Strong, economist Barbara Ward and MIT management professor Carroll Wilson. We will both question the earlier periodization of the sustainability narrative, and develop a new understanding of its scientific and political basis. The project is of potentially great importance for the narrative’s legitimacy in a time of mounting conspiracy theories, when the world could at the same time be on a path towards decisive transformation through the implementation of Agenda 2030.

Exploring nuclear Germany

This text was first published by Per Högselius on the Nuclearwaters-Blog on 3 December 2021.

Exploring nuclear Germany

As the most recent wave of the corona pandemic rolls in over Europe, it seems that much of the past summer and autumn was a narrow window of opportunity for international travel. I now feel happy that I managed to make use of that window.

Profile picture of Per Högselius

In late September I went to Regensburg to participate in a conference on infrastructures in East and Southeast Europe (see my separate blogpost on that). After the conference, I stayed on in Bavaria for a couple of days. I rented a car and a bike and went to take a close look at the water supply arrangements for three German nuclear power plants and the nuclearized landscapes that have emerged as a result of nuclear construction there from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Gundremmingen is the only German nuclear power plant situated directly on the Danube. It started to be built already in 1962 and was one of Germany’s first nuclear power plants. There was a fierce debate during construction about possible contamination of the region’s drinking water. Less known is that plant construction demanded a complex reengineering of the Danube, which was dammed upstreams and also a few kilometres downstream to create a reliable and regular water flow for cooling the reactors. This generated an artificial water reservoir, the shores of which, as I was able to experience directly, are nowadays still very popular places for various leisure activities. Nuclear hydraulic engineers also built a canal to divert Danube water to the nuclear plant. The early pioneering reactor at Gundremmingen was shut down long ago. However, the plant was expanded through the addition of two much more powerful reactors: one boiling water reactor (seen to the left in one of the pictures below) and one pressurized water reactor (seen to the right), which today makes the plant area look very diverse. The pressurized water reactor was closed in 2017. The boiling water reactor, supported by one cooling tower, is still in operation, but like all remaining German NPPs, its days are numbered.

The Isar nuclear power plant is named after the Danube tributary on which it was built. Here, too, nuclear construction was intimately linked to other hydraulic projects aimed at “taming” the river. The Isar was dammed and equipped with hydroelectric turbines (see the image to the upper left), which now still contribute to the safety of the nuclear station, because they ensure that electricity will always be available locally even in the case of a regional power failure. This made it unnecessary for the nuclear operators to invest in emergency diesel generators. The Isar plant was originally designed for one boiling water reactor only, for which a less powerful and very compact type of cooling towers were built (lower left, to the right of the reactor building); these were used only when the Isar’s water flow was insufficient. The high-rise cooling tower that can be seen across much of Bavaria was constructed only when a further reactor, of the pressurized water type, was added later on (right). The boiling water reactor was shut down immediately after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. The pressurized water reactor is supposedly still in operation, but apparently not on the day of my visit, judging by the lack of “smoke” (water vapour) from the cooling tower.

The Grafenrheinfeld NPP is also in Bavaria, but further north, in Lower Franconia, where the inhabitants usually don’t think of themselves as “Bavarians”. This cultural divide largely coincides with the physical drainage divide between the Rhine and the Danube river basins. Hence this nuclear station, which is no longer in operation (having been shut down in 2015), is situated not in the Danube basin, but on the Main, the Rhine’s most important tributary. When construction started in 1974 the Main was already a suitable river for cooling water supplies. This was because Germany had invested enormously in the 1950s and 1960s in making the Main navigable all the way up to Bamberg, taming the river and regularizing its water flow with the help of no fewer than 34 weirs and locks. The river is now part of a system that interconnects the Rhine and Danube river basins, the centrepiece of which is the Rhein-Main-Danube Canal.

A month later I returned to Germany. I first spent a few days at the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, which turned out to be a treasure trove for nuclear-historical research. I then went up (or rather down) to northern Germany and the Lower Elbe region. There I went to see how the Stade, Brokdorf and Brunsbüttel nuclear power plants (of which only Brokdorf is still in operation, but only until the end of this year) were integrated into this North Sea estuary. In contrast to the plants erected along the Danube, Isar and Main further south, the main challenge here seemed to be flood (rather than water scarcity) management. The Lower Elbe region is historically very much a marshland and all nuclear – indeed, all industrial – projects are dependent on a reliable drainage infrastructure. Like in the Netherlands, that infrastructure is critically dependent on large pumps for lifting water, in this case into the Elbe (see the image below, far left). The nuclear stations along the Lower Elbe also made use of a pre-nuclear infrastructure of earthen dikes, which are typically 5 meters tall (upper and lower right). These have always formed the centerpiece of nuclear flood protection and hence they can be regarded as components in the nuclear safety system. However, after the 1999 flooding of the Blayais NPP in France, a plant that is located in an estuary very similar to that of the Elbe, German regulatory authorities started looking into the deeper history of flooding events in the North Sea and how new such events might potentially cause havoc to the Lower Elbe NPPs: would they be able to cope with an event on a par with the famous Storegga slide, which is believed to have caused a huge tsunami throughout the North Sea region back in 6200 BC?

Isar Nuclear Power Plant 2021, by Per Högselius

In early 2022 I will publish an article in Technology & Culture which discusses, in further depth, some of the above-mentioned issues relating to nuclearized landscapes, water scarcity management, flood protection, the complex interplay between nuclear and non-nuclear hydraulic construction. Have a look in our list of publications.

 

Workshop “Climate challenges and the arts: urban time scales, inclusion and future flexibility” @Färgfabriken

​How can European cities prepare for climate challenges ahead? In what ways can co-creative processes between art, science and engineering contribute to novel solutions? These are some questions discussed at the workshop organized in the context of the H2020 initiative “SOS Climate waterfront” aiming at exchange between European cities on urban climate challenges and crafting strategies for future actions. 

Text and Photo: Katarina Larsen, researcher


The workshop included presentations with experiences from Portugal and Sweden on nature-based solutions and green buffer zones in response to climate changes and risks of flooding.

The workshop participants were invited to join a digital trip along the Portuguese coast with Maria Rita Pais (Universidade Lusófona, Portugal) visiting historical sites of bunker defense, now providing a green area stretching along the coast. Lina Suleiman (KTH) presented experiences from nature-based solutions in Årsta as a strategy for moderating the impacts of climate change in Stockholm. The workshop participants also discussed climate change and the arts, urban climate challenges , “seeking solutions for whom”, flexibility and diversity in urban climate solutions. See workshop introduction below.

Workshop introduction

Climate challenges and the arts: urban time scales, inclusion and future flexibility

Urban strategies for managing storm water and crafting robust solutions to cope with future climate challenges are receiving renewed attention with events of heavy rainfall and costly effects from flooding we have seen in Sweden and internationally in the past years.

With this workshop, we look into some of these challenges and also discuss dilemmas with some proposed solutions. These solutions are themselves raising new questions about how to communicate alternative solutions and “solutions for whom” (how can solutions be communicated to citizens, experts, and policymakers?), time scales (what are the time perspective we apply for climate robust solutions in renewal of cities?), inclusion/diversity (how can a diverse set of voices be heard when crafting new solutions?) and flexibility (how can we build solutions that are flexible enough to create room for maneuver needed in the future?) for urban areas when facing new – and sometimes – unexpected climate challenges.

In this hybrid-workshop, the local Stockholm partners (KTH, Intercult) participated on site from Färgfabriken while colleagues from Portugal, Greece, Italy, Turkey, The Netherlands and Poland attended via link. Presentations by colleagues at KTH included Katarina Larsen, Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment (organizer) and Lina Suleiman, Div. Urban and Regional Studies. The event was co-organized with the art institution Färgfabriken in Stockholm and also included an introduction to the work carried out in collaboration between researchers and artists in the exhibition Symbiosis at Färgfabriken, carried out by the project NATURE.

Plans for 2022 in H2020-initiative SOS Climate Waterfront:

During next year there are some planned exchange activities with Greece (Thessaloniki, January), Italy (Rome, March) and a workshop in end of May/June hosted by KTH in Stockholm.

If you are interested to know more about these activities, contact the organizers Katarina Larsen or Lina Suleiman.

For more info on the H2020 initiative, SOS Climate Waterfront, see sosclimatewaterfront.eu

www.kth.se/philhist/historia/forskning/environmental-histor/sos-climate-waterfront-1.1037673

Katarina Larsen

Katarina Larsen
researcher

___

”Två fel gör inte ett rätt” – How China is taken as an argument to not act for the climate

Nina Wormbs, Professor of History of Technology at the division, has published an article relevant in the context of the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter on 17 November 2021. In the following we will present a short summary of its main points in English, while you can read the original in full length and in Swedish here.

Profilbild av Nina Cyrén Wormbs

Summary:

When climate issues are discussed in Sweden, China is often taken as a comparison. In fact, people use China as an argument to not act in regard to climate change.

During the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, the focus was also on China, since the country is highly invested in coal both at home and abroad. It is obvious that we need to work with China together, since its emissions are enormous. Despite this, China has recently undertaken steps towards a sustainable society.

In particular, it has become normal to point to China in a debate, if one does not want to engage with those questions the current climate crisis is bringing up. This can include coal power plants but also a justification for flying to Mallorca or Thailand for fun, because Chinese tourists could be seen in Gamla Stan. In order for this practice not to spread further, we have to understand why those arguments are not valid and what they result in.

First, it makes no sense to motivate one’s own harm-doing by arguing that someone else would produce even more harm.

Secondly, the comparison with China’s emissions are an eternal but nevertheless problematic way of relativising one’s own influence. Because you are always able to find someone who produces more emissions than yourself. More than Sweden. More than Europe. Of course it is important how much we emit as humanity, but the China-argument suggests that there would be some form of give- and take, like as if life would be a zero-sum-game. Instead, it is the opposite: every ton of CO2 counts.

Additionally, the China-argument points to an understanding, in which one does not have to do a tiny bit of right, while someone else does so much wrong. Maybe this argument is spreading, because more and more people repeat it. People in Sweden have limited knowledge of China. China is bigger, has more people, and all of them are striving towards a better life. That’s why it might be easy to point to China, in order to relativise one’s own responsibility.

Thirdly, China is often portrayed as an enemy in Swedish media. It can therefore be seen as a nation different from Sweden, being imagined like the negative “other”.

Why are the USA never mentioned in this context, despite their higher historical and per-capita-emissions (IPCC and carbonbrief.org)? Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are also hardly ever named, even though they are leading the per-capita-emissions statistics.

If one looks into the emissions of production chains of consumer goods, of which a lot are produced in China but used somewhere else like in Sweden, the territorial basis for emission-calculations seems off.

Furthermore, within most individual nations the gap between rich and poor gets bigger, which means that the individual emissions are not what the average suggests, but rather high if you are rich, or low if you are poor. Therefore, it would be a great idea to change the focus from nations to individuals, like Chancel and Piketty suggested in 2015.  This makes even more sense, since the richest 10% of the world’s population accounted for 50% of emissions since 1990. Those 10% can be found in every country, but they are not evenly distributed. More so, since 40% of those live in the USA, while only 10% live in China. It might be a cold shower for a Swedish discussant that every Swede with a monthly income of over 27,500 SEK belongs to this group.

This is not being written to support China’s climate policies. Instead, it is to show that China is not relevant if one wants to discuss a domestic climate action plan, as the relationship between being rich and producing lots of emissions is evident – and Sweden is one of the richest countries on earth.

Where do we publish?

As a division, we publish a lot in many different outlets. Klara Müller, Linus Salö and Sverker Sörlin have compiled the following discussion of our publication pattern in our last Biennial report, which you can find here.

Trends in Publishing

The following section is dedicated to an analysis of the Division’s publication patterns and is based on information collected from Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet, DiVA. The information in DiVA is uploaded by the researchers themselves. “Scientific publications”, as defined here, are publications registered in DiVA as “refereed” or “other academic”. The category does not include the content-type “other (popular science, discussion, etc.)”. For this year’s report, we have also excluded the subcategories “oral presentation only”, “oral presentation with published abstract”, and posters.

Thus defined, the output of scientific publications in 2019 and 2020 combined is 212. The two dominant publication types are article in journal (102) and chapter in book (61). Together, these two publication types amount to 77 % of all scientific publications. The remaining publication types consist of book reviews (14) and books (9) along with doctoral theses (4), reports (7) and edited collections (8).

Why should we analyze publication data?
Scholars from a wide range of subjects have criticized the usage of metrics to evaluate research, and this critique has been particularly forceful from scholars active in humanities disciplines. We hope that by compiling publication data from DiVA, we can identify patterns that would not be possible to determine otherwise. This analysis acknowledges certain aspects of the Division’s publication output mediated through visualizations, numbers and charts. We can use the data to identify trends, strengths and weaknesses in publication patterns. But it is, of course, only possible to reflect certain aspects of what the members of the Division have been working on the last couple of years. It also brings up important questions about what we should measure, what this type of analysis of this type of data can tell us, and what research output we should focus on. How much can the Division publish, while maintaining high-quality publications? What is high-quality research, and what can we do to produce that? This analysis will not answer these broad questions, but might instead provoke new insights on what we can use metrics for.

Overall trends 2010 – 2020
Overall, the Division’s publications have seen a stable increase during the last decade. The most prominent category is refereed journal articles, while the output of the other categories (refereed book chapters, books, dissertations, other academic publication types) have been fairly stable. To put this in context, the Division’s research output has grown in a period when such output has in a general decreased in Sweden. According to the latest UKÄ report (February 2021), total publications dropped by 17 %, and in Humanities and Art the decrease has been no less than 23 %. The total number of peer-reviewed articles in the latter category was 1164 in Sweden during 2020.

The 2017 – 2018 Division report identified a salient rise in peer-reviewed publications and publications published in English. These trends are persisting. In 2010, the largest content type was “other”, followed by “other academic” and “refereed”. A decade later, in 2020, the proportions were reversed, with refereed publications being the most numerous and the proportionally largest content type.

Publishing languages
Because Swedish is by far the most common language used in output categorized as “other”, the relative share of Swedish-language publications in the Division has dropped from 55 % in 2010 to 39 % in 2020 when all content types are considered. It follows that this tendency is even stronger when only scientific publications are examined. In 2010, a third of the scientific publications were published in Swedish; in 2020, we are down to a fifth. That said, the trend does not point to a continuous decrease in Swedish-language scientific publications.

Refereed journals 2019 – 2020
The larger the word, the more frequent it is in the titles of the refereed journals that members of the Division have been publishing in over the last two years. This gives a hint of the areas of interest of members of the Division.

During the past two years, members of the Division have been publishing in the following outlets:

Peer-reviewed journals
• Ab Imperio: Theory and History of Nationalities and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Realm
• Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society
• Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Body & Society
• Cahiers du Monde Russe
• Cogent Arts and Humanities
• Current Anthropology
• Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
• Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities
• Ecology & Society
• Ecology and Evolution
• Energy Policy
• Energy Research & Social Science
• Environment and History
• Environmental History
• Environmental humanities
• Environmental Justice
• Environmental Science and Policy
• Ėtnograficheskoe Obozrenie
• Fennia: International Journal of Geography
• Fish and Fisheries
• Frontiers in Energy Research
• Geographical Journal
• Global Environment
• Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism
• H-Environment Roundtable Reviews
• Historiallinen Aikakauskirja [Historical Journal]
• History and Anthropology
• Humanities
• Industry & Higher Education
• International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
• Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
• J ournal of Environmental Policy & Planning
• Journal of Historical Geography
• Journal of Northern Studies
• Journal of Transport History
• Land Use Policy
• Landscape and Urban Planning
• Landscape Research
• Language in Society
• Leonardo Music Journal
• Media Theory
• Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy
• Mobilities Journal
• Multilingua: Journal of Cross-cultural and Interlanguage Communication
• Nature
• Nature Climate Change
• Niin & Näin: filosofinen aikakauslehti
• NTM: International Journal of History and Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine
• Polar Geography
• Polar Record
• Popular Communication
• Progress in Planning
• Public History Weekly
• Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities
• Scandinavian Economic History Review
• Scandinavian Journal of History
• Scientia Canadiensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
• Sibirskie Istoricheskie Issledovaniia
• Sport in Society: Cultures, Media, Politics, Commerce
• Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
• Sustainability
• Sustainability Science
• Technology and Culture
• Technology in Society
• Tertiary Education and Management
• The Extractive Industries and Society
• Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis
• Trace: Journal of Writing, Media, Ecology
• Turkish Studies
• Urban Geography
• WIREs [Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews] Water
Books with the following publishing houses:
• KK-stiftelsen (Stockholm)
• Routledge (3)
• Natur & Kultur (Stockholm)
• Baggrund.com (Copenhagen)
• Ellerströms förlag (Lund, SE)
• Campus Verlag (Frankfurt)
• Bokförlaget Atlas (Stockholm)
• MIT Press (Cambridge, MA)
Chapters in books with the following publishing houses:
• Aalto ARTS Books (Helsinki) (2)
• Arche Press (Gothenburg)
• Arkiv förlag & tidskrift (Lund) (3)
• Art and Theory Publishing (Stockholm)
• Bentham eBooks
• De Gruyter (Berlin)
• Deutsches Museum Verlag (Munich)
• Dialogos Förlag (Stockholm) (2)
• Föreningen för folkbildningsforskning (Stockholm)
• Gnasso Editore (Aversa, IT)
• John Wiley & Sons
• Jovis Verlag GmbH (Berlin)
• Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskap-sakademien (Stockholm) (3)
• MIT Press (3)
• Natur & Kultur (Stockholm)
• Nordiska museets förlag (Stockholm) (3)
• Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) (5)
• Open Humanities Press (London)
• Palgrave Macmillan (4)
• PM edizioni (Varazze, IT)
• Polaris (Stockholm)
• Regeringskansliet (Stockholm)
• Routledge (22)
• Sage Publications (Los Angeles & London)
• SISU Idrottsböcker (Stockholm)
• Springer Nature (2)
• Tartu University Press (Tartu, FI)
• Taylor & Francis (7)
• The University of Alabama Press

Topics
Keywords corroborate the impression from journal titles that environment is a cross cutting theme in much of the Division’s research. The strong social concern is also visible (words such as political, justice, human, labour), along with an interest in urban issues, infrastructures, and energy in various forms. Science and technology also loom large as do gender/feminist, heritage, climate, and the Anthropocene. A significant category is “earth objects” such as sea, earth, air, water. As for geographical spread many regions appear, from the Philippines to the Baltic, but Sweden and Polar/Arctic are the most frequent ones, reflecting major research efforts in these areas. Our two special hubs are reflected in a strong presence of “Environmental Humanities”, and “Posthumanities”.

Collaboration
Collaboration in academic publishing is a strong trend. On page 35 we have listed the Division’s unique collaboration partners during 2019 and 2020, through co-authorships registered in DiVA. It is possible to identify certain clusters – outside of Sweden, universities in the US and the UK are frequent collaboration partners in our publishing. There are also many collaboration partners in the north – Norway, Iceland, Russia, Canada and Finland.

The rise of our co-authorships reflects, above all, continued internationalization, both of research collaboration and research content. This is in line with a general trend in humanities research in Sweden for more than a decade. According to a report from the research council VR (The Research Barometer 2019, p. 62), the share of Arts and Humanities publications co-authored internationally grew from 18 to 30 % from 2007 to 2017. As the figure illustrates the Division has moved in the same direction, only somewhat earlier and in a more pronounced way. In 2020 such publications made up around 50 % of our total publications (taking into account that a small handfulof the co-authorships are within Sweden). Part of the explanation is probably the relatively high proportion of non-Swedes among our researchers, but our collaboration networks are also important.

Publishing for other audiences
The following category of publications is not included in the analysis of scientific publications, since it is based on what is defined as “other (popular science, discussion, etc.)” in DiVA. This review was made to get a better understanding of how the Division’s publishing engages with audiences outside academia. In 2019 and 2020, members of the Division’s most frequent “non-scientific” publications, were in the newspapers Dagens Nyheter (16) and Svenska Dagbladet (9). The web-based magazine Curie, issued by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), has also been a dominant outlet for non-scientific publications.
As the word cloud indicates, with newspapers as the dominant outlet, “article in journal” is the most common outlet in the category “other”, with 54 posts. But it is not the only one. There are also “chapter in book” (6) and, again, “other” (16). In this category, we find a mixture of blog posts and other online discussion outlets.
The category “other” has been fairly stable the last decade, except for a dip in 2013 and a rise in 2020. The stability indicates that members of the Division have not published less in non-peer-reviewed outlets, for example, newspapers, due to the rise in refereed articles and book chapters. We can also identify a notable rise in publications in the category “other” during 2020. A possible explanation of this rise in publications during 2020 might be the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for researchers to engage in public debates, which members of the Division have done with at least 10 texts reflecting on the crisis.

In the category “other”, Swedish is the dominant language with 61 publications, followed by English with 10 publications. This can be compared to the Division’s scientific publications, where English has been the dominant language of use since 2006.