Kåre Hendriksen

Environmental management in Danish transnational textile product chains

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse environmental responsibility of companies from industrialized countries when they source materials and products in countries with less environmental protection.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a study of corporate environmental management in the Danish textile and clothing sector, with 13 cases based on interviews and material from reports and websites. The criteria for choosing the cases were variety of size and market segment, and a mixture of companies that take environmental initiatives and companies for which it was not known whether they take environmental initiatives.Findings – Several different environmental practices were identified: some companies were early which got sustained initiatives, and some early and not sustained initiatives; some companies were late with sustained initiatives, and some late and not sustained initiatives; and finally, some have a practice without environmental initiatives. Dominating types of initiatives are c...

Hunting and fishing settlements in Upernavik district of Northern Greenland – challenged by climate, centralization, and globalization

Inuit from the Upernavik district of Northern Greenland have, for generations, used winter sea ice as the basis for essential hunting of seals, white whales, and narwhales. For the continued subsistence survival of 400 families since the late 1980s, hunting has been combined with increasing fishing of Greenland halibut during the summer from dinghies and in the winter from the sea ice. However, subsistence living conditions are now under intense pressure from a set of rapid, interacting changes in the natural environment and socioeconomic institutions resulting from climate changes, modernization, and globalization. Specifically, Greenlands Government intends to allocate a greater portion of the halibut quota to larger vessels outside the Upernavik district and simultaneously reduce the quota for dinghy and dog-sledge fishing due to limited or even misleading data regarding local subsistence and the cash economy.

Greenlandic water and sanitation—a context oriented analysis of system challenges towards local sustainable development

Today, as Greenland focuses on more economic and cultural autonomy, the continued development of societal infrastructure systems is vital. At the same time, pressure is put on the systems by a lack of financial resources and locally based professional competences as well as new market-based forms of organization. Against this background, the article discusses the challenges facing Greenland’s self-rule in relation to further develop the existing water and wastewater systems so that they can contribute to the sustainable development of Greenland. The article reviews the historical development of the water supply and wastewater system. This leads to an analysis of the sectorisation, which in recent decades has reorganized the Greenlandic infrastructures, and of how this process is influencing local sustainable development. The article discusses the socio-economic and human impacts and points to the need for developing the water and sanitation system to support not only hygiene and health, but also local sustainable development.

Greenlandic water and sanitation systems—identifying system constellation and challenges

A good water supply and wastewater management is essential for a local sustainable community development. This is emphasized in the new global goals of the UN Sustainable Development, where the sixth objective is to: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” (United Nations 2015). This obviously raises the question of how this can be achieved considering the very different conditions and cultures around the globe. This article presents the Greenlandic context and elucidates the current Greenland water supply system and wastewater management system from a socio-technical approach, focusing on the geographic, climatic and cultural challenges. The article identifies a diverse set of system constellations in different parts of Greenland and concludes with a discussion of health and quality of life implications.