Janne Hukkinen

From groundless universalism to grounded generalism: improving ecological economic indicators of human-environmental interaction

Abstract Ecological economics occasionally makes universal claims about how to understand and measure change in systems of human–environmental interaction. In terms of environmental policy, one of the most influential universal concepts that has come out of the ecological economics literature recently is ecological efficiency (or eco-efficiency). This article uses eco-efficiency as a vehicle to illustrate that universal indicators of human–environmental interaction are theoretically unfounded and practically problematic. Population ecology and neo-classical economics are identified as two theoretical approaches that have contributed to the emergence of universal concepts such as eco-efficiency. The limited applicability of the approaches is highlighted by putting them in comparative context with approaches that make less universal claims, namely, systems ecology and institutional economics. Investigating indicators of human–environmental interaction from disciplinary perspectives that are rarely found in indicator literature offers novel insights on what indicators are for and how they should be applied. The article concludes with a call for scale sensitive generalization in the development of future indicators.

Eco-efficiency as abandonment of nature

Abstract The paper argues that eco-efficiency is fundamentally disruptive when promoted as a universal prescription for environmental policy. Eco-efficiency runs against the cognitive and institutional bases of sustainable human–environmental interaction. At the cognitive level, eco-efficiency assumes that an individuals concern for the environment can be decoupled from his or her material dependency on ecosystem services. At the collective level, eco-efficiency builds upon decoupling environmental governance from the local socio-economic and cultural context. The assumptions are not well-supported by empirical work on systems of human–environmental interaction, which stresses the importance of material connections to maintaining environmental concerns. The criterion for adopting eco-efficiency should be the extent to which it promotes the recoupling of human perception of environmental issues with human action on the environment, and the concomitant recoupling of collective local organization with locally crafted ecosystem management.

Reindeer Management in Northernmost Europe

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Governing the Interplay between Industrial Ecosystems and Environmental Regulation

price are net prices, subject to local VAT. Prices indicated with * include VAT for books; the €(D) includes 7% for Germany, the €(A) includes 10% for Austria. Prices indicated with ** include VAT for electronic products; 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria. All prices exclusive of carriage charges. Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. B.C. Forbes, M. Bölter, L. Müller-Wille, J. Hukkinen, F. Müller, N. Gunslay, Y. Konstantinov (Eds.) Reindeer Management in Northernmost Europe

Scenarios for Coping with Contingency: the Case of Aquaculture in the Finnish Archipelago Sea

Many scholars of industrial ecology have focused on the institutional and organizational challenges of building and maintaining regional industrial symbiosis through the synergistic integration of material and energy flows. Despite the promise that these intellectual developments hold for the future dematerialization of industrial production, they rarely address the actual regulatory obstacles of turning wastes into raw materials. In this article we introduce a potential future industrial symbiosis around the Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden, and assess the regulatory bottlenecks related to waste by‐product consideration. We find that although the Gulf of Bothnia region has technological and economic potential for industrial symbiosis, the regulatory support for this is insufficient. We suggest a common pool resource‐based governance system that could utilize market and regulatory mechanisms in a regional‐level cross‐border system of governance. Importantly, the suggested governance system would protect the users of potential raw materials from unpredictable waste regulation, market risks related to large‐scale material flows, and societal risks of hazardous waste treatment.

A salt on the land: A narrative analysis of the controversy over irrigation-related salinity and toxicity in California's San Joaquin Valley

Abstract Scenario-making is a common method for anticipating technological and other kinds of futures. This article discusses scenario-making from a methodological point of view. How do we cope with contingency, that is, the problem of not knowing what developmental trajectories in the present will turn out to determine future events? Two distinctions are suggested as tools for analyzing scenario-making strategies. The first concerns the analytical lenses, or epistemic approaches in our terminology, with which the future is understood. The second deals with the degree of variance in the future development. We divide the epistemic approaches to the future into conventional and unconventional scenarios, and the degree of variance in the future development into trend- and event-based scenarios. We argue that both unconventional and event-based scenarios have been neglected as tools for coping with contingency. A case study — the technological system of fish farming in southwestern Finland — is used to demonstrate the difference that unconventional and event-based scenarios can make for representations of the future.

Human environmental interactions in Upper Lapland, Finland: development of participatory research strategies

A narrative ‘network’ analysis of the seeming paralysis of efforts to deal with the problem of toxic elements in agricultural drainage in Californias San Joaquin Valley shows irrigation agencies to be caught in a dilemma. Despite pressures to reduce uncertainty about treatment methods, reducing this uncertainty risks increased political polarization over agricultural subsidies. As a result, policy-makers are reluctant to move in any action-forcing direction, and continue to order further studies. We sketch out those areas of contention that must be addressed if real progress is to be made, demonstrating that the issues are primarily organizational and political rather than technical. We also discuss our experience in presenting these findings, along with our recommendations for structural separation of drainage functions from present irrigation agencies, to the relevant policy audience.

Fit in the Body: Matching Embodied Cognition with Social-Ecological Systems

The paper outlines strategies for participatory research by comparing the results of a participatory workshop on research needs in human‐environmental interaction in Finnish Lapland with an analysis of official Finnish policy documents on the same subject. The workshop was organized in Anar/Inari, Finland in October 1997 as part of the Human Environmental Interactions theme (HEI) of the European Commissions Arctic‐Alpine Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Initiative (ARTERI). The mandate of ARTERI was to develop research themes and encourage their implementation to allow for discussions among local residents, natural and social scientists, and policy‐makers concerned with environmental protection and management in arctic and alpine regions of Europe. The objective of the Anar/Inari workshop was to discuss central issues of human‐environmental interaction in the region in a participatory mode with local interest groups, generate alternative scenarios for the region, and develop research and development proje...

Development of Participatory Institutions for Reindeer Management in Finland: A Diagnosis of Deliberation, Knowledge Integration and Sustainability

Analysis of fit has focused on the macrolevel fit between social institutions and ecosystems, and bypassed the microlevel fit between individual cognition and its socio-material environment. I argue that the conceptualizations we develop about social-ecological systems and our position in them should be understood as ways for a fundamentally cognitive organism to adapt to particular social and ecological situations. Since at issue is our survival as a species, we need to better understand the structure and dynamics of fit between human cognition and its social-ecological environment. I suggest that the embodied cognition perspective opens up possibilities for “nudging” evolution through the conceptual integration of the cognitively attractive but ecologically unrealistic neoclassical economics, and the cognitively less attractive but ecologically more realistic adaptive cycle theory (panarchy). The result is a conceptually integrated model, the Roller Coaster Blend, which expresses in metaphorical terms why competitive individuals are better off cooperating than competing with each other in the face of absolute resource limits. The blend enables the reframing of messages about the limits of the social-ecological system in terms of growth rather than degrowth. This is cognitively appealing, as upward growth fires in our minds the neural connections of “more,” “control”, and “happy.” The blend’s potential for nudging behavior arises from its autopoietic characteristic: it can be both an account of the social-ecological system as an emergent structure that is capable of renewing itself, and a cognitive attractor of individuals whose recruitment reinforces the integrity of the social-ecological system.

New way to quantify multiple steroidal compounds in wastewater by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry

The objective of this chapter is to diagnose the mechanisms by which a focused effort to integrate knowledge based on various professional and disciplinary backgrounds can result in emergent participatory institutions for resource management – in this case reindeer herding management in northern Finland. Considering knowledge integration as a process of institutionbuilding makes sense, since in environmental governance literature institutions are widely understood as working rules that are common knowledge to resource users (Ostrom 1990). In this context, the crucial point is the process of knowledge transfer through networking and communication. Three stages of knowledge integration characterize the entire research effort, which the authors conducted as Workpackage 1 (WP1) under the RENMAN project: (1) pioneer networking, (2) translational networking, and (3) modular networking (Bruun et al. 2002; Hukkinen et al. 2003b; Forbes et al. 2004). Our typology of knowledge integration draws from recent literature on organizational learning in innovation (Bruun et al. 2002; Langlais et al. 2004). The project became a prime example of a focused effort of knowledge integration, because every stage of it was based on participatory processes. We go on to show that the processes of knowledge integration hold the characteristics of emerging institutions for resource management: formal and informal rules were developed for the participatory process of the RENMAN project and proposed for future reindeer management; the rules were geographically specified; legitimate participants in the process were clearly defined; and conflict resolution and sanctioning mechanisms were proposed during the project (Hukkinen et al. 2002, 2003a; Heikkinen et al. 2003a).