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

Achim Klüppelberg , 2021-12-13

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.

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Achim Klüppelberg

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Research, The Division

The Politics of Nuclear Waste: An Interview with Andrei Stsiapanau*

, 2020-05-19

by Alicia Gutting, PhD student

Nuclear energy is a highly debated field and depending on the societal context usually either embraced or fully rejected. From an outsider position it sometimes seems as if there was no in between: you are either pro- or anti-nuclear. This does not solely apply to times of active nuclear energy generation, but it also affects the future and finding solutions for safe storage of nuclear waste. In today’s interview with Andrei Stsiapanau we will hear more about the nuclear debate in the former Soviet Union. Andrei is a guest in our Nuclearwaters project since January 2020 and he is a scholarship holder of the Swedish Institute Visby Scholarship Program for Senior Researchers. He researches how nuclear energy is being socially and politically debated in Russia, Belarus and Lithuania and he is especially interested in the politics of nuclear waste in Russia, Lithuania and Sweden.

Alicia Gutting: Andrei, could you please let us know what you have been working on in the past months?

Andrei Stsiapanau: During the last months I have been working on the nuclear waste management issues in Russia as well as in Lithuania and Sweden. When more and more nuclear facilities throughout the world enter the stage of decommissioning, it is becoming particularly urgent to find sustainable solutions to the issue of nuclear waste. The list of possible technical solutions for spent nuclear fuel and other types of waste include deep geological disposal after reprocessing (favoured in France, Japan, and UK); direct deep geological disposal (favoured in Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Germany, USA and Czech Republic); surface long-term storage (favoured in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain). Each of these solutions translates into different ways on how to communicate, classify and govern nuclear waste in a particular country.

My research is focusing on how nuclear waste issues are communicated in various techno-political contexts. While studying how nuclear waste issues are being negotiated with communities in Russia, I discovered that natural resources like clay are used within nuclear waste discourses to mitigate the risk of potential radioactive contamination. It was my starting point to investigate how natural resources are used in various discourses about nuclear waste to make it less dangerous and harmful for people and environments. In the cases of Lithuania and Sweden, I am investigating how, through awareness and information campaigns, risks associated with nuclear waste are mediated and mitigated to transform the hazardous nuclear objects into manageable waste.

AG: What role does clay play?

AS: According to numerous researches on the role of the natural barrier in the nuclear waste disposal system, clay as well as crystalline rock are considered as a retardation medium for radionuclides migration. The multi barrier protection within nuclear waste technology illustrates how natural barriers or the geology of the disposal site will retard or mediate for both fluid flow and radionuclides migration in case of the engineering layer decay. This kind of technical vision of the disposal process promotes the natural protection layer as a reliable tool for absorption and immobilization of radioactivity. Geological and chemical studies of clay rock in various sites in the United States, France, Belgium, Canada and Russia show that clay has a number of absorption properties valuable for immobilization of the radioactive elements in the geomedia in case of the technical barrier decay. Thus, clay has become employed as a part of the nuclear waste management process. It represents a tool for absorption, immobilization and confinement of radioactivity. Including clay in the whole process of the nuclear decommission and decontamination makes it possible to reconsider the role of natural resources and materials in nuclear waste technologies and multi-barrier protection discourses.

AG: Are there differences in the Swedish and the Lithuanian (political) approach?

AS: Nuclear waste management systems in Sweden and Lithuania are developing in the context of decommissioning and nuclear phase out but following different trajectories and guidelines. The final repository for short-lived radioactive waste located at Forsmark in the municipality of Östhammar started operating in 1988. Lithuania is only now entering the phase of the construction of the landfill repositories for low and medium radioactive waste, and the construction of the geological disposal is programmed for after 2045. The Swedish approach represents an advanced example of nuclear waste management, based on the long-term experience of scientific research, transparent decision-making and continued reliance on public opinion and participation. Some connections in sharing nuclear waste management technology and experience exist between these two Baltic Sea countries. The Swedish nuclear waste authority, SKB, has been involved in the assessment of the existing nuclear waste facilities at the Ignalina NPP site in Lithuania since the 1990s. Swedish nuclear research and governance institutions continue to contribute to the transfer of knowledge and expertise in nuclear waste management taking part in numerous joint international research projects (BEACON; EURAD).

AG: What role does environmentalism play in the debate?

AS: As the two countries are at different stages of implementation of nuclear waste programs, it illustrates different levels of public engagement in the site selection process and environmental impact assessment of the radioactive waste disposals. In Sweden environmental issues are at the core of the public debate and concerns about the nuclear waste management program and are involving various actors, from local communities to International NGOs and leading national media outlets. In Lithuania environmental issues are less questioned, site selection is not contested and public participation is limited to local communities of the nuclear site with scarce media coverage. I suppose this situation will change with the start of a public discussion about the site selection for geological disposal of high radioactive waste and SNF and its environmental impact assessment. This debate will expand nuclear waste issues to the national scale. Considering environmentalism not only as participatory but also as scholarly concern, at the moment there are relatively few studies in environmental humanities and history about the uses of the natural resources in nuclear waste confinement and its impact on social and natural landscapes.

AG: Do people in the two countries differ in their risk perception?

AS: Different levels of public engagement in the nuclear decision-making illustrates different public opinion dynamics as well as public perception of nuclear risks. In Sweden due to the nuclear phase-out decision in 1980 and to the high impact of environmental movements, critical voices are prevailing the publicity concerning nuclear waste. In Lithuania the nuclear energy use became public only in the 1990s after the reestablishment of the independence and were associated mostly with Chernobyl disaster risks and anti-communist, sovereignty claims. During the transition period, the use of nuclear energy was considered as necessary for the economic and social developments of the country; political personnel, nuclear engineers and Lithuanian citizens embraced the energy produced by the Ignalina NPP as a national resource. The referendums about nuclear energy uses in Lithuania in 2008 and 2012 after the start of the decommissioning of the Ignalina NPP showed a rather radical change from pro- to anti-nuclear attitudes challenging the plan to construct a new NPP in the country.

*This interview originally appeared on the Nuclear Waters project website.

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Interview, Opinion, Visitors

Examining nature and society through urban infrastructure (NATURE)

, 2020-03-09

by Timos Karpouzoglou

With funding recently received from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, a new 3-year project has been launched at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment.

In the project NATURE, we are an international team of researchers that will be looking at an all too familiar term these days but with a slightly different angle. As researchers, we are increasingly exposed and concerned about the challenges of nature, for instance its role in society and the way ecological concerns are creating a new form of discourse—some would even say an anxiety—about the future of societies. In other words, we see the connection of nature and society as becoming re-thought, and, perhaps more than before, intertwined with the everyday practice of living and imagining our world.

This new rewiring of nature and society poses a set of interesting questions and dilemmas for the critical scholar of infrastructure. For over a century, infrastructure planning has been heavily influenced by modernity; and, in particular, an engineering ideal of universal, uniform, networked infrastructure materialized in those such as grid electricity networks, water and sanitation networks and other similar large socio-technical systems (Furlong 2014). However, we believe that we are witnessing a set of processes that vary globally but, at their core, are about embracing infrastructure heterogeneity. Discourses focusing on resilience in infrastructure planning are also increasingly influential in directing attention to a different way of thinking about the role of nature and society as part of infrastructure (Karpouzoglou et al 2019). In cities like Guwahati, India, the importance of natural ecosystems such as wetlands can be viewed as heterogeneous infrastructure for flood mitigation of the Brahmaputra river (See Figure 1). Hence, in our study, we place special emphasis on exploring the role of ‘heterogeneous infrastructure configurations,’ a phrase that aims to capture the diversity of infrastructure which we are witnessing today (Lawhon et al. 2018).

Figure 1: Wetlands along the Brahmaputra River, Guwahati, India, photo credit, Sumit Vij.

During the project’s three years, we seek to widen the perspective of nature and society by considering different components of modernity, specifically, modern ideas of infrastructure and of nature. We are inspired by work that describes the notion that technology (and sociotechnical systems) carries values and ideas which are built into the artifacts by their designers and system builders and co-created by users (Akrich 1992). In other words, even if infrastructure is often conceived as a technological endeavor—it is never purely technological.

Central to our methodology will be narrative enquiry (Sinclair 2002). In other words, by focusing on the storytelling practices of socio-technical regime actors such as engineers and planners in the cities of Stockholm (Sweden), Guwahati (India) and Kampala (Uganda) we will attempt to bring to the surface potentially unaddressed narratives of nature and society. We will also experiment with creative techniques, including the use of boundary objects (e.g. photographs, toy models of different kinds of infrastructure) that will help structure and prompt respondents to explore unspoken ideas. By means of organizing a public exhibition in the Stockholm area, we will explore the role of the arts as a medium for communicating new ideas about infrastructure.

NATURE Research Team

Timos Karpouzoglou, Division of History of Science, Technology & Environment, KTH, Sweden
Pär Blomqvist, University of Mälardalen, Sweden
Mary Lawhon, Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. University of Oklahoma, USA
Katarina Larsen, Division of History of Science, Technology & Environment, KTH, Sweden
David Nilsson, Division of History of Science, Technology & Environment, KTH, Sweden
Sumit Vij, Public Policy and Administration group, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands

References

  1. Akrich, M., 1992. “The De-scription of Technical Objects.” In Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, pp. 205-224.MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
  2. Furlong, K., 2014. “STS beyond the ‘modern infrastructure ideal’: extending theory by engaging with infrastructure challenges in the South.” Technology in Society, 38, 139-147.
  3. Karpouzoglou. et al. 2019. “Unearthing the ripple effects of power and resilience in large river deltas.” Environmental Science & Policy.
  4. Lawhon, Mary, David Nilsson, Jonathan Silver, Henrik Ernstson, and Shuaib Lwasa. 2018. “Thinking through Heterogeneous Infrastructure Configurations.” Urban Studies 55 (February).
  5. Sinclair BJ., 2002. “Narrative inquiry: more than just telling stories.” TESOL Quart, 36, 207– 213.
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Research

Launch of The InsSciDE Project

Sofia Jonsson , 2018-01-23

KTH will play an important role in the consortium, created under the coordination of professor Pascal Griset of Sorbonne Université and Director of the Institute of Communication Sciences (CNRS).

Nina Wormbs and Miyase Christensen will be a part of this Horizon 2020 project that kicks off now in January. The project consists of 14 research institutes from 11 European member states and will run for 4 years. A project page will soon show up at our homepage, but already now the press release is out:

CNRS hosts the launch meeting of the project InsSciDE -Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe.

The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) will host the launch meeting of the project InsSciDE -Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe- at the National Academy of Medicine (Académie nationale de médecine), on 26th January 2018. InsSciDE is funded through the European Horizon 2020 framework under the coordination of Professor Pascal Griset, Sorbonne Université. KTH is one of the major partners of the consortium created to build the project.

The European Commission has called for the development of effective science diplomacy for Europe. InsSciDE– Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe – is a project funded under Europe’s Horizon 2020 framework. KTH will play an important role in the consortium, created under the coordination of professor Pascal Griset of Sorbonne Université and Director of the Institute of Communication Sciences (CNRS). The consortium includes 14 institutes of research or training from across 11 European Member states as well as UNESCO. The 4-year project will engage historians of science and technology, networks of diplomats and scientists, experts of strategy and policy makers to bring science diplomacy into the foreground and better use it. InsSciDE starts with the hypothesis that Europe and Member states possess a great capital of science diplomacy experience – but today this is fragmented, heterogeneous and under-utilized. There is a need to reveal, formalize and communicate this intangible capital, develop its conceptual bases and elaborate tools to help European science diplomacy emerge and blossom. In the next four years, the project will investigate past and present experience, co-construct insights with practitioners, and provide theoretical and strategic frameworks and guidance to support stakeholder awareness and informed policies within the European Union. It will produce knowledge-based discussion material to help prepare practitioners, train some 50 young professionals, and disseminate results over a broad global audience. InsSciDE focuses on several Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 3: Good health, SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy, SDG 13: Climate action SDG 15: Life on Land, SDG 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG 17: Partnerships for the goals.

The launch meeting will bring together InsSciDE’s relevant stakeholders with its scientific Advisory board members: Catherine Bréchignac, Ambassador of France for Science and lifetime Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, Thierry Courvoisier, President of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), Edgar Morin, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the ISCC, and other experts of international renown. Flavia Schlegel, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO, will take the floor. A discussion panel will allow several scientific attachés stationed in Paris to illustrate their current perceptions, experience and expectations.

These individuals will lay the foundation for InsSciDE in front of an audience composed of prominent players in the science diplomacy field (scientists, diplomats and academic specialists).

 For registration please contact :

christophe.potier-thomas@cnrs.fr

 

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Research

ERC Consolidator Grant to the Division

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-12-19

NUCLEARWATERS develops a groundbreaking new approach to studying the history of nuclear energy

A few weeks ago Per Högselius got the good news that he was one of two researcher from KTH to receive an ERC Consolidator grant. His project NUCLEARWATERS will get funding for five years and at least six researcher will get an employment thanks to this. Per and his co-workers will explore nuclear history in a global perspective. If you know Swedish, you can read more about this here: ERC Consolidator Grants till två KTH-forskare | KTH

For those of you that don’t know Swedish, here comes the abstract from the application:

NUCLEARWATERS develops a groundbreaking new approach to studying the history of nuclear energy. Rather than interpreting nuclear energy history as a history of nuclear physics and radiochemistry, it analyses it as a history of water.

The project develops the argument that nuclear energy is in essence a hydraulic form of technology, and that it as such builds on centuries and even millennia of earlier hydraulic engineering efforts worldwide – and, culturally speaking, on earlier “hydraulic civilizations”, from ancient Egypt to the modern Netherlands. I investigate how historical watermanipulating technologies and wet and dry risk conceptions from a deeper past were carried on into the nuclear age. These risk conceptions brought with them a complex set of social and professional practices that displayed considerable inertia and were difficult to change – sometimes paving the way for disaster. Against this background I hypothesize that a water-centred nuclear energy history enables us to resolve a number of the key riddles in nuclear energy history and to grasp the deeper historical logic behind various nuclear disasters and accidents worldwide.

The project is structured along six work packages that problematize the centrality – and dilemma – of water in nuclear energy history from different thematic and geographical angles. These include in-depth studies of the transnational nuclear-hydraulic engineering community, of the Soviet Union’s nuclear waters, of the Rhine Valley as a transnational and heavily nuclearized river basin, of Japan’s atomic coastscapes and of the ecologically and politically fragile Baltic Sea region. The ultimate ambition is to significantly revise nuclear energy history as we know it – with implications not only for the history of technology as an academic field (and its relationship with environmental history), but also for the public debate about nuclear energy’s future in Europe and beyond.

 

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Research

Be sure to check out the ENTITLE blog – a collaborative writing project on Political Ecology

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-12-18

Entitle blog is a collaborative writing effort that looks at the world through the lens of political ecology. For us, Political Ecology is a perspective that seeks to understand who is involved in, and who benefits or loses from, how our environment is produced and reproduced.

It was founded in 2014 by fellows of the European Network of Political Ecology (ENTITLE) as an outlet to share, reflect on and discuss research and activist experiences, observations, methodologies, news, events, publications, art, music and other themes and objects related to political ecology.

Toxic Bios is a project at the EHL, lead by Marco Armiero and funded by Seed Box. The project page can be visited here!

Maria di Buono, wife of Michele Liguori, the policeman working in the Land of Fires that died of cancer. Photo by Giovanni Mussolini during the story recording session hosted by Women of August 29 social movement in Acerra (Italy). From the blog post: Toxic Bios: A guerrilla narrative project mapping contamination, illness and resistance 

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The EHL

Occupy Climate Change (OCC!)! 

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-11-22

instead of studying the resilient subjects, we should “identify the actors and processes that produce the need to build resilience in the first place” (ibid.)

Northwest Washington, Washington, United States
Shot on Pennsylvania Ave near the Capitol. Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/cpAKc-G6lPg

We are happy to announce that the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory recently received a positive message from Formas. The project Occupy Climate Change!, proposed by Marco Armiero, is awarded almost 900.000 euros over three years. 

“OCC! explores how urban communities can respond to Loss and Damages by investigating new and insurgent citizenship practices and new types of knowledge. Focusing on the practices and experiments of grassroots organizations across different cases (New York, Rio, Istanbul, Naples, Stockholm), it aims to identify how these diverse, dynamic, self-organised responses to loss undo or embrace damage. This endeavor requires a critical appraisal of the highly contested narratives of societal resilience (Kaika, 2017). As Kaika argues, instead of studying the resilient subjects, we should “identify the actors and processes that produce the need to build resilience in the first place” (ibid.), engaging critically with the material basis reproducing injustice.” Summary taken from the project application, written by Marco Armiero.

To kick off this project a coffee talk together with Doreen Stabinsky is planned for late November this fall. Please visit the lab’s  Facebook page for more news, event updates and interesting articles. 

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Research, The EHL

Sustainable communities and heritage politics beyond nature-culture divide – funding from Formas

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-11-17

Formas granted the divisions Kati Lindström funding for the project Sustainable communities and heritage politics beyond nature-culture divide: Heritage development as a strategy against depopulation in Japan. The project will start next year and run until the end of year 2020.

The aim is to analyse the use of heritage development as a possible strategy against depopulation, by comparing how different types of heritage relate to the local communities. Governments often see heritage development as a means for the depopulating communities to acquire a more stable economic footing. While there is sufficient proof that especially world heritage nomination has brought an economic boost to many locations, there is also evidence that this is not necessarily a guaranteed long-term strategy. However, there is no clear understanding which heritage types function best in case of depopulation and how does depopulation influence the maintenance of heritage in the long run.

The project carries out qualitative analyses of 7 heritage nominations from four different categories (cultural landscape, natural, industrial and archaeological heritage) in Japan and asks which of the four types benefits the related communities best (economically, socially,culturally), how they are impacted by depopulation and changing community structures and how do local governments envision heritage maintenance with reduced population. It is expected that the results of the study serve as reference to heritage developers in depopulating communities worldwide. The study will be carried out from the perspective of environmental humanities, using various methods and sources from macroeconomic data to stakeholder interviews, participant observation, focus groups, media and site analyses.

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Research

Is there life on Mars?

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-10-30
“Rising Green”. Painting in acrylic on canvas by German sci-fi artist Frank Lewecke

Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) recently granted the Divisions Sabine Höhler’s application Life on Mars: The Science and Fiction of Terraforming and the Future of Planet Earth. The project will start in the beginnig of 2018 and run for three years.

A procjet page is coming up, but in the meantime please read the applicatoin abstract for more information on this project:

The Anthropocene, the geological age of humanity, is associated with a key feature: the power of technoscientific intervention into the Earth’s environment. This transformative potential became apparent in the second half of the twentieth century when the science and the fiction of “terraforming”, of turning extreme or extraterrestrial into Earth-like environments, gained traction. Hopes of venturing into Space became as pervasive as perceptions of humans overexploiting and polluting the Earth. The popular vision of settling sustainable communities on Mars saw an upswing in the recent decade of anthropogenic global environmental
change.

This project explores the science and fiction of Mars settlement with the help of terraforming as a creation of new environments in Space as well as blueprints for the technological reconstruction of the Earth’s environment. The aim is to describe the Anthropocene not simply as an epoch that endangers the Earth but primarily as an epoch that essentially transformed the understanding of life to a minimalist principle of survival through infinite metabolic conversion and technological substitution. This understanding conjoined images of recreation and creation, of paradisiacal pasts and eco-technological futures. The question whether ‘postplanetary’ life, life that is not tied to a specific planet but transcends planetary boundaries, will be possible and desirable may become one of the most challenging questions of our future.

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Research

Toxic Bios homepage is launched!

Sofia Jonsson , 2017-10-28

Source: Toxic Bios

Testing a new plug in for the blog that helps me to publish information directly from homepages. Be sure to check the new Toxic Bios homepage out!

TOXICBIOS  abbreviation for Toxic Autobiographies, is a Public Environmental Humanities project based at KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm and funded the by Seed Box, a Mistra-Formas Environmental Humanities Collaboratory.

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The EHL