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Tag archives for culture

How to share precious land in Laponia

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Sarek

The Sarek national park is part of the Laponia World Heritage, a place that is important both for its nature and cultural values. Photo: Peter Cairns/imagebank.sweden.se

In 1996 the area of Laponia in the very North of Sweden was put on the UNESCO list of World Heritages. Laponia is a 9400 square kilometre area of practically untouched nature, the largest in Europe.
But at the same time, this land is far from uninhabited: it is very important for the people who live here, among them the native Sami population, who needs the land for reindeer breeding and other activities.

The dilemma between protecting nature and at the same time making sure local native peoples can continue their way of life can be recognized from many nature reserves all over the world.
To sort out how these different needs can co-exist, something called the Laponia Process was set up. Read more » >>

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

November 7, 2011

Music festivals that go green

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Way-Out-West

The people behind Way Out West do their best to think green when they fill the park Slottsskogen in Gothenburg with music. This year with artists like Prince, Kanye West and Robyn. Photo: Sima Korenivski / GFC

The Swedish holiday season is soon about to take over this country. After having celebrated Midsummer on Friday, most of the country tunes into summer mood.

One sector that tunes up its level though, are the music festivals. Summer is the time to enjoy live music in the open, whether it’s classical music or rock, whether it’s at a big city festival or a small obscure independent thing in the middle of a forest.
Lately more and more of these festivals have started putting a bigger focus on the sustainability aspects, considering that gathering thousands of persons at one place, providing food, drinks and sanitation for everyone, can mean quite a big environmental impact.

Here are some of the ones that have put an extra effort in an environmentally conscious profile:

* Mossagårdsfestivalen (web site only in Swedish) June 17-19. This summer’s first green music festival took place already last weekend. Mossagården is an organic farm in the South of Sweden selling vegetable food-boxes, but once a year they arrange a music festival at the farm with free horsecarriage-taxi from the local bus station and organic food.

* Urkult August 4-6. One of the first green music festivals in Sweden. This year will be the 17:th time that the festival will be held above the ancient carvings at Nämforsen rapids in the North of Sweden. Urkult has urine separating toilet, all food served there is organic and all tdisposable products used are compostable. The festival has its own compost at a nearby field.

* Way out West August 11-13. This festival, held in the largest park of Gothenburg, is active in the development of an environmental certification system for eventmakers. The food is organic, the energy renewable and as a city festival Way Out West doesn’t even have a camping, partly with the argument that a city provides a lot of good existing green infrastructure, so why not use it instead of transporting people and material to a distant place to construct something temporary?

* Saltoluokta folkmusikfestival August 10-14 . One of Sweden’s few festivals in “roadless land” at the Saloloukta Mountain Station on the border of Laponia, with focus on Sweden’s Northern cultures. Get there by a small boat, sleep on a reindeer skin in a sami tent and learn how to joik , (the traditional Sami way to sing).

* Kosterfestivalen July 23-29. Chamber music in the Koster Gardens, that normally serve organic slowfood produced in the gardens. The idea is to combine art, music and nature at a beautiful spot by the sea on the Swedish West coast.

Saltoloukta-folkmusic-festival

Saltoloukta Folk Music Festival couldn’t get much closer to nature, literally speaking. Photo: STF.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

June 23, 2011

Like a table ready laid

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Katrinetorp-estate

The estate of Katrinetorp is one of the places that Natur- och kulturbussen points out.

As many other weather-obsessed Swedes I’m eagerly following the progress of spring. Light mornings and days of sunlight don’t only make me wake up insanely early in the morning, it also awakes my longing for making excursions. I’m longing for wild forests, peaceful canals, old parks surrounding castles, small secret cafés… well, I simply want to get out of the city.

In most places it’s perfectly possible to do this without a car, it just requires some research. Where exactly is that field filled with dancing cranes? And what bus stop would be the right one to get off at?
In the province of Skåne in the South of Sweden, there’s no need for that research. A few years ago they started a project called Natur- och kulturbussen (”the nature and culture bus”). The project’s web page (some information in English) lists interesting nature areas, places to visit and nature and/or culture related things to do, all within the reach of public transport, and with a link to the public transport planner, showing how to get there.

Dalby-field

Dalby hage. Photo: Lotten Pålsson.

When I speak to Sofie Norrby, who is project leader for Natur- och kulturbussen, she tells me that the idea behind this project is to encourage people to get out more, and quotes various studies showing how well-being and performance increase when we spend time outside. She also tells me that the arranged activities, where people can visit a new place together with others, works as an easy way to discover places where many wouldn’t otherwise dare to go to. Having been showed once how to get there, where to find the toilets/food/best spots, its easy to come back, bring your friends and become their guide.

 

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

April 4, 2011

Facts didn’t work, maybe cultural stories will?

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rainforest-cutting-cameroon

Photo: Brent Stirton/Getty Images/WWF-UK.

Reports are often very interesting and important, but I must admit that nine out of ten reports are pretty depressing reading. Yesterday I listened to a presentation of the Living Planet Report, published by WWF. Very interesting, but nevertheless with a sad content.

The report shows that humanity’s demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966. Our collective ecological footprint has grown drastically, and would now require 1,5 planets to be sustainable in the long run. Sweden has moved up from having the 18:th largest ecological footprint per capita to being number 13.

Biodiversity is going down in the world, but the report shows there are huge differences between different parts of the planet. In the tropical South biodiversity has decreased with as much as 60 percent since the end of the 1960:s, while in the temperate North biodiversity slowly seems to recover. This is part because of investments in environmental and nature-conserving programmes, but also a proof of how rich countries have exported activities that put pressure on the environment to poorer countries, concluded Peter Westman who is head of nature conservation at the Swedish WWF.

During this presentation there were several people pointing out that there is no lack of information about the state of the planet. So why isn’t much happening?

Personally I think one of the answers lie in us as human beings. Facts and figures are good and important, but they themselves don’t really make us act differently. One important thing that forms our way of being is culture, the stories we tell ourselves and eachother about what is important, a good standard or the meaning of life.

So when I was invited to participate in a discussion organised by the artist network No More Lullabies after the showing of the film Home last Sunday, I took my chance and asked for these new stories. Where are the song lyrics, novels, film scripts or art pieces telling us the stories about how to change lifestyle, find other measurements of sucess than the gross domestic product or handle the loss of thousands of species going extinct?

Judging from the enthusiastic response from the audience, the idea wasn’t too far fetched. So now I’m waiting to see my first peak oil sculpture, listen to my first pop song about love in the vegetable garden or why not a “chic lit” novel where the heroine travels by train and goes to clothes-swopping parties?

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

October 14, 2010

Bringing women’s perspective on climate change

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climate-talk

Rebecka Hagman (in the middle) talking about gender and climate change at Stockholm's Culture Festival. Photo: Helene Mårtenson.

This past week I have fully enjoyed Stockhom’s Culture Festival. Somehow I think that the mere fact of so many people getting together, enjoying free concerts and theatre, dancing and discussing, is an important ingredient in a truly sustainable society. But this year’s festival also had a lot of items specifically about sustainability and climate change on the programme.

For example I heard the feminist climate debator Rebecka Hagman talk about her experiences in the work to bring women’s perspective into the global negotiations about climate change in Copenhagen last year.
As an intern with the Swedish Mission to the UN in New York, she was asked to formulate a proposal for a gender paragraph to be included in the resolution.

So in what sense is climate change an issue that touches gender roles? Well, explained Rebecka Hagman, until now climate change has often been discussed in a technocratic and scientific sense. But it’s also important to see that men and women – as groups – actually have different climate impacts (according to studies men drive more, eat more meat and consume more energy intensive things, while women for example are more likely to use public transport).

Furthermore men and women are affected by a warmer climate in different ways. For example women in many parts of the world bear the main responsibility to provide the family with water and food. In times of more serious droughts this can mean that women all of a sudden have to spend much more hours fetching water and firewood than before. This in turn means less time for studying, participating in democratic and political processes or getting a paid job.

Because of all this, Rebecka Hagman concluded, it’s enormously important to bring all aspects into the climate change work.
– It’s not a gender neutral issue. We need different solutions, and we need voices from south and north, east and west, women and men – all groups in society, she said.

And what happened to the paragraph she wrote? Making more than 190 countries agree is a tough job, Rebecka Hagman admitted. After political horse-trading and struggles about commas and full stops, a watered down version finally made its way into the document. But a document that did not take strong action on emission reductions, which is after all its main purpose, said Rebecka Hagman. So: there is still a lot of work to be done.

Read Rebecka Hagman’s full master thesis “On a gendered road to Copenhagen”.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

August 16, 2010