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Tag archives for Sweden

A climate call for the “big ones”

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sergels-torg

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.

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Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

February 6, 2012

Jokkmokk Winter Conference: Global climate change in a local perspective

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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.

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Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

February 2, 2012

Swedes long for the countryside, but move to the city

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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!
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Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

January 30, 2012

Berit, Dagmar and Emil made the forest fall

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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.

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Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

January 26, 2012

Snow and ice? No problem for a winter cyclist!

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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.

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Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

January 23, 2012