Photo: Ola Ericson/imagebank.sweden.se..

“It’s time we have a go at this ourselves.”
The person writing this is Lennart Henriz, environment director at at the housing development company JM, which is one of the Nordic region’s largest of its kind. According to him, this was the feeling he and many of his colleagues had after the UN conference on climate change in South Africa a few months ago.

If the world’s political leaders fail to take the right action against global warming, maybe other parts of society, like business, have to take a lead? he argues.

Last year JM and corporations like Swedish Coca-Cola, Statoil in Sweden and Procter&Gamble Sweden formed a network called The Haga Initiative working with climate issues, arguing that ambitious climate strategies can not only help to reduce global warming, but also improve profitability.

One of the challenges these companies have to deal with is accusations of greenwashing. According to a survey that the Haga Initiative has made, 45 percent of the persons asked stated that they don’t trust companies’ climate information.
– This means that the information has to be more transparent and clear, says Nina Ekelund, who is project manager at the Haga Initiative.

During the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, an annual sustainability raking of corporations in the world was released.
The criteria are things like energy use, water use and greenhouse gas emissions per every dollar of revenue. I note that a Swedish corporation takes the fourth place on the list, with three more further down (I must say it is a bit surprising how an oil and gas company can reach the third place, though…).
But toplisted or not: It obviously seems like the big corporations still have some way to go before consumers are convinced.

“Don’t let 2012 be a year of waiting!” [for the politicians to take the big decisions at the next UN climate meeting] is Lennart Henriz’ appeal to the business world. Sounds like a good idea for everyone!

Other sustainability related articles in Swedish media (in Swedish, but can be autotranslated here):
Helsingborgs Dagblad: Real horsepowers – the most environmentally friendly way to do forestry (beautiful photos!)
Sundsvalls tidning: Premiere for the new fast train in Sweden

Opening of the historic part of the Jokkmokk winter market, taking place at the same time as the Jokkmokk winter conference. Photo: Torbjörn Sandling.

This week university students, young decision makers and opinion builders from North America, Northern Europe and Russia meet in the snowy and icy (-34 degrees Celcius during the weekend, according to weather reports!!) Jokkmokk [map] in the  North of Sweden, for the annual Jokkmokk Winter Conference, which has climate change as its main focus.

Places like Jokkmokk, in the (sub)Arctic regions, expect to feel many effects of climate change. For example fishing, forestry, energy production, tourism and reindeer herding will be affected.

The aim of this conference is, as quoted from the conference’s own website:

“… to offer young people an opportunity of working with the future, meeting friends and developing new strategies and initiatives for the North. Their recommendations and demands will be handed over and discussed with governmental representatives from Sweden, Norway, Finnland, Canada and the US.”

During the week there have been seminars about how to adapt to the impacts of a warmer climate, about how indigenous rights can be strengthened in Laponia (like for example solving co-existence issues in the World Heritage area) and meetings between ambassadors, politicians and youth representatives.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to go there myself. But according to a friend who has been there several times, it’s one of those rare places where people from very different backgrounds and sectors actually do meet and become friends. She told me about a Canadian mayor eagerly discussing city planning with a group of hardcore environmental activists. That very same mayor later became an excellent contact for my friend, when helping a small Swedish city with their climate and city planning.

The conference is part of the annual Jokkmokk Winter Market , which has a history going back to 1605. The purpose at that time was actually to strengthen the state’s control of the population in the north as well as to collect taxes, hold legal court and spread the Word of God.
Nowadays it is rather an opportunity to show a northern way of life and celebrate Sámi culture and handicraft, gathering about 40.000 visitors every year.

More interesting articles in Swedish media (In Swedish, but can be autotranslated here):
Radio Sweden: Sami mining protest in Arctic Sweden
Miljöaktuellt: No big success for electric cars in Sweden
DN: Swedes eat more fat
Svenska Dagbladet: Swedes eat more meat
Göteborgs-Posten: Endangered maned wolves born in Swedish zoo

The Borgström family moves to a milk farm for five weeks in a new Swedish reality show. Photo: Andreas Hillergren.

Recently one of Sweden’s main newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, went through the statistics and could show that Sweden is going through a major urbanization. Even if the country has grown with one million persons the last 30 years, many smaller rural districts are shrinking (article in Swedish, autotranslated into English here)

Just a few days later, I read an article in the same newspaper, pointing in an entirely different direction: When Swedes look at television, all we seem to do is longing to the countryside!
Among programs showing people that are looking for the perfect rural house to settle down in, or happy people cooking rustic food in old-fashioned countryside kitchens, we will soon find ”Drömmen om landet” (The dream about the countryside). In this Swedish reality show the city architect Nina Borgström and her family takes over a farm for five weeks, with milk deliverances and everything else that comes with it. Other families will try running a bed & breakfast or a gas station for boats in the archipelago.

But according to Nina Borgström, it’s not like all Swedish city-dwellers are secretly dreaming about being farmers.
– The dream about the countryside is really about the yearning for more time. I know that you won’t have that in the countryside if you have to make a living, she says.

Yes, maybe the romantic view of an – imagined – countryside lifestyle says more about what stressed out city people are missing in their (well, our, maybe I should say…) lives. But I’m wondering if the stress of working hard at the farm where you live might actually be a different kind of stress than the one you experience in a city..? It will be interesting to see how things turn out for these families.

From a sustainability point of view, I would say that there’s a low-intensity battle between those pointing out city life as greener, with better public transport infrastructure etc, and those arguing that even though countryside dwellers might be more dependent on cars, a rural lifestyle normally includes less flying and other types of consumption. We’ll see if that aspect will come up in this show.

The programs will be available on SVT Play after 6th February.

Typical country life? We’ll see about that... Photo: Andreas Hillergren.

More sustainability related articles in Swedish media (In Swedish, but can be autotranslated here):
- An Englishman who opens Swedish eyes to nature
- Stubborn wolf refuses to move
- Less heavy metals in Swedish ground water

Traces after the storm Berit outside Halmstad in the south-west of Sweden. Photo: Jesper Andersson/Södra.

Back to the forest: In one of my blog posts last week I briefly mentioned a discussion which has come up in Sweden after the storms that swept over the country around Christmas and in early January. Berit, Dagmar and Emil, as the storms were named, caused cancelled trains and power failures for hundreds of thousands of Swedes. But the storms also left traces that will stay for a long time.

The biggest scars are found in the forests. In some places, where the wind-force went up to 40 km/second, trees fell like toy sticks. The Swedish Forest Agency says this will cost forest owners about 1 billion Swedish kronor (around 114 million Euro). According to the forest owners’ association Södra, one of the biggest problems is that the fallen trees have to be taken care of fast, so that insects don’t start affecting the timber.

But this many trees wouldn’t have to fall every time Sweden faces a rough storm, critics like the organization Rädda skogen (Protect the Forest) argue. They mean that the reason why forest owners have had a hard time lately isn’t more storms – it’s the trend towards more monoculture tree plantations rather than naturally growing forests.

“Sweden’s forest landscapes have transformed into a landscape of biologically monotone production forests. These forest never become very old and are less rich on variations” researchers write in a recent report from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The reasons are complex, but a bit simplified you could say that in a forests composed by trees that are all of the same type and age, with the roots going equally deep into the soil and the crowns reaching equally high, it’s more difficult for the trees to resist a strong wind.
The way to harvest timber through clear-cutting large areas is also a way to increase the strain on the remaining forest, alternative forestry managing companies like Silvaskog point out.

The newspaper Aftonbladet has a striking photo of what the storm Dagmar left behind.

So far, I haven’t heard if the recent storms made any damages to the virgin forests that Andrea Barghi and Veronica Bernaccioni portray in their book The wild forests of Norbotten. But on the other hand: In a virgin forest, trees falling down is a part of the normal cycle and becomes a welcome source of food and homes for many of its inhabitants.

A planted commercial spruce forest is composed quite differently from a naturally growing one. Photo: Sigfrid Lundberg (CC BY, SA)

My rescue this winter: Studded tyres. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

As a child, I used to cycle to school in all kinds of weather. Going by bus or being driven there by someone’s parents only happened on rare occasions, like after heavy snowfalls when the city of Alingsås [map] hadn’t managed to clear the tracks in the morning.
Living in Gothenburg [map] was the same, cycling up and down on snowy bike lanes (anyone who has cycled through this city knows that there are very few flat sections…). I remember cycling with my shoulders stuck at my ears at times, half panicking when the streets were covered by a shiny layer of ice. But somehow I managed.

Lately, though, things have changed.

Photo: Sara Jeswani.

Maybe age has got something to do with it, maybe I’ve just gotten comfortable… but ice and cycling seems more and more like something fairly dangerous. Last year I found myself taking the metro when the temperature dropped below zero degrees Celcius, looking with awe at the cyclist defying the white streets.

But now I’m back on track – thanks to the studded tyres! I’m not a big fan of gadgets, but this is one that definitely has saved my winter. No layer of snow or icy patch can scare me now.
And I’m far from alone. Here in Stockholm, the use of studded cycle tyres has exploded in recent years, increasing the number of winter cyclists considerably. Now studs aren’t known as the most environmentally friendly thing in the world, damaging roads and tearing up nasty particles. In Stockholm, cars with studded tyres have been banned on one of the most polluted streets. But there is a difference between a several ton heavy car and a bicycle, so I think people cycling through the winter on studded tyres are not doing too much harm.

Last winter I had innumerable colds and felt like I could never wake up in the mornings. Do I need to say that things are quite different this winter? For others  who want to stay on track during all winter, here’s a few tips:

1. Studded tyres. Not a must, apparently (when I talk to friends from the North of Sweden, used to winters above the Polar Circle, and they can’t really see why people use studded tyres in such a mild climate as Stockholm’s…) but they do a lot to combat the fear that the risk of falling every time you brake causes.

 2. Let some air out. Slightly less inflated inner tubes give a firmer grip on the road, whether you have studs or or not.

 3. Dress right. The cold can be biting at first, but after pedalling for a while you often get warmer than you first expected. “Dressing like an onion” is a good principle, letting you adjust easily along the road.

Reflective bands and a handy small LED bike light. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

 4. Stay visible. Dynamo lighting can be problematic in snowy or wet weather. A hand-crank bike light, where you charge the batteries by muscle power before mounting the bike, works better. Bring inside when not in use. Another thing, which is getting more and more common in Stockholm is the reflex vest. It would have been about the most embarrassing thing in the world to wear when I was a child, but here you suddenly feel like one in the crowd. Reflecting bands on arms and legs is also a good idea.

5. Remember your behind. A wolly bicycle seat warmer is an indispensable friend during winter, when you find your saddle covered in frost.

To add a bit of feeling, here’s a short video clip made by a winter cyclist in Växjö in South of Sweden:

Mount Tjeburisvárásj in Stora Sjöfallet. Photo: Andrea Barghi.

Being from a country, no matter which, there are of course a number of things you’d like to point out as special or even fantastic. But there’s always the feeling that you are biased and not really credible, a bit like when a parent points out his or her child as the most brilliant kid of all and everyone thinks “yeah, right”.
So when two Italians decide to leave Tuscany for a life in Swedish Laponia and make a beautiful book about the wild forests of Norbotten, there’s a part of me that wants to shout “Look! I was right! They say it’s a very special place!!”

Elk in Pallemsvaratj. Photo: Andrea Barghi.

To start from the beginning: The Italian photographer Andrea Barghi has visited this part of the world every year for almost 30 years, admiring the “endless expanse of a green sea” as he calls it.
Then Andrea Barghi and Veronica Bernaccioni decided to take the full step and move permanently to a small village in Norrbotten [map] .

“These places represented for us, voluntary exiles from a country where talking about nature and environment had become even inconvenient to the political party who ruled it, a horizon of hope and of great incitement to our projects”

Veronica Bernacchioni who is the editor of the book writes. In this book, The wild forests of Norbotten, photos from these forests tell the tale of an intense life, far from the “tree fields” we also have our fair share of in Sweden (which is the subject of current discussion, and that I will come back to soon on this blog). Raging rapids, majestic trees, curious elks, rosy sunsets, ancient mountains…

Iced birch at dawn. Photo: Andrea Barghi.

The book, made in honour of the International Year of Forests 2011, lets the Swedish virgin forests serve as an example of the important virgin forests of Europe, that we often take for granted, but whose biodiversity we need in million different ways in order to survive.Veronica Bernacchioni writes:

“This book has come out of our inner need to share the wonder of what we have experienced in these northern Swedish virgin forests, letting their primordial beauty be known, in order to arise a feeling of belongng and to improve their safeguarding and conservation.”

Maybe we need others to tell us what we got in order to fully appreciate it.

Below a video from the book launch, where you can see many of the photos from the book:

As I wrote here last summer there has been quite a heated discussion around the growing of genetically modified (GMO) potatoes in Vajakkala in the North of the country.

The potato variety Amflora has been test-grown there, and environmental activist have made various actions against the plantation, arguing that there haven’t been sufficient studies done on what kinds of health and environment risks genetic modification could have.

Now the corporation BASF, which owns the company running the tests in Vajakkala, has decided that they will stop all commercial cultivation of GMO crops in Europe (article in Swedish). Sweden being one of the first European countries to allow large-scale planting of this potato, this means the end for Amflora.

The reason behind the decision is the lack of acceptance for GMO in Europe, according to a BASF representative that the environmental news letter Miljörapporten Direkt has talked to.
– The protests haven’t influenced the decision, but we have had court decisions saying that we might have to pay damages if pollen from GMO crops are found in honey, says Julia Meder.

The potatoes already harvested in Vajakkala will be destroyed.

Activist networks as Greenpeace’s Hej Då GMO! (bye bye GMO) celebrate, while others mean that Sweden will lose  important research.
But Amflora disappearing from this part of the world doesn’t necessarily mean the end for GMO in Europe, says Staffan Eklöf, handläggare på Jordbruksverkets växt- och miljöavdelning to Miljörapporten Direkt.
– There are other companies and also parts of the university world running projects. And ultimately this is a political question.

Other sustainability related news in Swedish media (in Swedish, but can be autotranslated here):
- Sveriges Television: Sweden’s environment minister: “We have to drive less”
- Göteborgs-Posten: They want to clear the Swedish west coast from trash
- Dagens Nyheter: Accelerated urbanisation in Sweden

We are often encouraged to “consume green” in order to reduce our climate and environmental impact. It sounds good: “Buy this thing instead of that, and things will be ok.” But what does it really mean? And can a trip to a distant rain forest ever be environmentally friendly?

 Christan Fuentes, who recently defended his thesis and now has a PhD in Service Studies at Lund University, has taken a closer look on this. In his thesis Green Retailing – a socio-material analysis he writes about how complex this issue is.
– You could say that the retailers have gotten a new role in recent years. Earlier they just had to think about selling as many articles as possible, but now they are also expected to play a political role for sustainable consumption, Christian Fuentes says in an article at the university’s website.

He has studies an outdoors retail chain to see how they use green arguments in their marketing. This chain frames their products as tools that can make it possible to enjoy nature without damaging it. “However, in offering consumers products that resolve the contradiction between wanting to enjoy and wanting to protect the outdoors, the Shop also makes a number of resource intensive outdoors consumption practices possible. “, Christian Fuentes writes.

So there’s definitely a hook or two to be found: For a rainforest trecking you are adviced to buy about 20–30 “indispensable” products. And there’s also the problem of getting to the rain forest here, which in many cases means a long-distance flight…
– Costumers are encouraged to be environmentally friendly. But at the same time the whole idea with having a business is that people should consume. No company with an instinct of self-preservation would ever ask their consumers to stop shopping, Christian Fuentes says.

In spite of all this, Christian Fuentes argues that companies are on the right track and that the awareness is growing. We just have to keep studying it critically, he says, and points out that those companies who can’t stand up to the test could take a tough fall.

Other interesting articles in Swedish media (in Swedish, but can be autotranslated here):

- Svenska Dagbladet: Solid support for Stockholm’s congestion charges.
- Miljöaktuellt: Antibacterials make your kitchen sink toxic.
- Göteborgs-Posten: Enormous increase of ticks in West Sweden.

The high-end square Stureplan in year 2100? Photo: Sara Jeswani.

Being built on a number of islands between the Baltic sea and lake Mälaren, and with the water present almost everywhere you go, Stockholm is often called the “Venice of the North”.After spending a day in the real Venice (of Italy) this summer, I realized we are not quite at their water level, though. In Stockholm bikes, cars, buses and other types of land vehicles are still much more common than boats. Luckily, I should say.
But things could be different in the future. That’s the point of the exhibiton “Venice of the North – warmer, wetter”, currently showed at the Ecoteque at Kulturhuset in Stockholm.

What will Stockholm be like in year 2100? is the big question here, and the estimates aren’t too merry. A few examples:

• Stockholm will probably have between 30 and 60 percent more precipitation during the winter.
  

  At least ten times more heatwaves in year 2100. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

• More water from the sky means more water in the ground, increasing the risk of both flooding and landslides. I watch an amateur film from a road collapsing in the West of Sweden some years ago. A small brook has undermined the road, which suddenly fall down into a giant stream, bringing asphalt, trees and thing else with it… Almost every year there are incidents like this, and according to the Swedish Transport Administration, there will probably be more of them in the future.
• The quality of our drinking water can be at risk, since bacterias grow faster in a warmer climate. A rising sea level can also cause salt water to flow into lake Mälaren, which supplies about 2 million persons with drinking water.
• More mosquitos and ticks, and spreading of tick-born diseases like TBE and borrelia.

But there will also be effects that could be more positive. For example:

Less snow – in year 2100 we might only have two weeks of it. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

• The growing season could be 100–140 days longer than today, meaning that vegetables and other crops could grow almost all the year round.
• The need for heating our houses could go down with about 35 percent due to a warmer climate, which would save quite a lot of energy (that is, if the heatwaves don’t require too much air-conditioning…)

So, what do we do about all this? In the last few years the discussion about climate change has moved more and more from how to reduce emissions into how to adapt to the effects that we can no longer stop. One part of this exhibition shows ideas of how to climate adapt Stockholm, coming from the Master students at the Sustainable Urban Planning and Design at the Royal Institute of Technology.

Their ideas seem to circle around how to take advantage of the abundant water rather than seeing it just as a problem. Below you can see a proposal of how to let the city extend into the water (Read more about it here) Or what about an urban beaver dam in the city centre?

All projects can be seen at this webpage.

Could Stockholm embrace the extra water? One of the proposals from the Master students. Photo: Sara Jeswani.

If you have a car, why not share it? Here Jennie Karlsson from the village of Tolg gets a lift from Mattias Söderberg. Photo: Torbjörn Karlsson.

Fixing good public transport in the countryside can be tricky. No one wants to leave their car for insufficient bus services. On the other hand it’s hard to invest in new bus services if you can’t be sure that they will be used.

Instead of getting stuck in this dilemma, the inhabitants of Tolg [map], a small village close to Växjö in the South of Sweden, decided to do something about it. After all there are a lot of vehicles moving on the roads, and they are far from full, they thought – and designed a web based car-pooling system.

Through a web site people can offer or ask for rides, and bookings and confirmations can also be made by mobile phone text messages. The passengers pay the driver 6,70 Swedish kronor (about 0,7 Euro) per 10 km, and the money is transferred through the booking system.

Now the village of about 550 persons has almost 130 registered users who together have car-pooled approximately 12000 km since they started in March this year.
– Most of our users are people who want to get to and from their work in Växjö. But this system has also opened possibilities for those who want to stay in town for a drink after work, or youngsters who can go into town on the weekends without their parents having to drive them there, says Kajsa Holst who is living in the village and working with the further development of the system so that it can be spread to other places.
Several Swedish villages and regions have already shown their interest. There are also companies that want to make it easier for their employees to get to work, that are curious.

But the car-pooling isn’t just good for the villagers’ economy and the environment. It has also had social effects, Kajsa Holst tells me. For example new groups spend time together, like the elderly man who takes his car into town every Tuesday, and get to share his car with youngsters from the other side of the village going for their training.
– You notice that there are things happening in the village when people get to meet like this. We can thank the car-pooling for a new barbeque spot, the development of a beach and several parties.