Björn-Ola Linnér

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Linköping University

Thesis (doctoral)--Linköping Universitet, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-250).

This article argues that utopian thought is a necessary condition for the politics of sustainable development. Since utopian thought has so far been constrained by some typically Western features from the era of modernity, this requires a shift that transcends the following three fundamental aspects: the notions of fixed truth, fixed territoriality...

Climate change policies are increasingly seen as integral to sustainable development policies. This article examines how visions of future society have been employed in climate science and multilateral negotiations. Using elements of utopian and dystopian thought, we have categorized UNFCCC documents, IPCC assessments, and special reports and peer-...

This article examines key issues in operationalizing a registry of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) undertaken by developing countries party to the United Nations framework convention on climate change. It analyzes goals, outcomes, and institutional prerequisites underlying various proposals to determine how a NAMA mechanism could...

Mistra's Climate Policy Research Program, Clipore, is one of the largest research programs directed to support international climate policy development, involving research groups in Sweden, Norway, United States and India. It has been running from 2004 to 2011 with a budget of more than 100 MSEK (15 M USD). The paper briefly describes the program a...

Operationalizing the indivisibility and integrated nature of the UN 2030 Agenda poses a complex governance challenge. Although research has advanced our understanding of SDG localization and interlinkages, important gaps remain. In this paper, we depart from these two strands of literature by asking how synergies and trade-offs manifest in localize...

Studies of transformative change have been making headway in understanding the complexity of societal transformation processes. Yet, we lack understanding of how people’s lived experiences of transformations both shape and are shaped by meaning-making processes. In addressing this gap, we make two assumptions: Firstly, change processes comprise int...

This paper presents an idea analysis of AI in the policy documents and reports of the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Economic Forum. The three organisations expect AI to contribute to sustainability and a prosperous future with better data analysis, greater amounts of quantitative knowledge, and by making economic and social acti...

Policy coherence is crucial in the 2030 Agenda's transformative ambitions and heralded as of paramount importance to ensure the successful implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and climate policy targets. Despite political efforts to achieve policy coherence, apparent trade‐offs and goal conflicts have emerged – even in a proclaime...

The need to develop sustainable stormwater management is intensifying due to climate impacts and urban densification. Such complex planning processes require insights into disparate issues, connecting heterogeneous actors. While many decision-support tools are developed to facilitate such planning, research assessing their usefulness is requested....

This study explores features of food system transformations towards sustainability in the Farm to Fork Strategy in relation to perspectives of Swedish food system practitioners. Transformations towards sustainable food systems are essential to achieve the United Nations' 2030 Agenda and the need for more sustainable food systems has been recognised...

Inclusion of indigenous knowledge and voices is paramount if societal transformations relative to climate change are to be fully and appropriately considered. However, much of the research in this area still uses Western-based research methodologies rather than methodologies driven by the local Indigenous communities. Therefore, it is highly likely...

Transformation studies have been leaning towards the more practical aspects of change processes and have not yet dealt sufficiently with their personal and political dimensions. They are arguably constrained in doing so if they are either overly focussed on systems and how to control them or on individualistic values and behaviours. In this study w...

Previous research points to leadership as a key ingredient in mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. We adopt a polycentric perspective and use focus group interviews with Swedish actors within the business sector, politics, and government agencies, to analyse participants’ views on what it means to lead, preconditions of leadership, and d...

While increasing hopes are being attached to deliberate societal transformative change to achieve the targets of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, questions remain about whether and whereby such profound systemic change can be governed. This paper analyses how transformative changes are intended to be encouraged and achieved, where and when....

While sense-making is a frequently used concept in everyday discourse and in several social science research areas, discussions about how the concept translates into methodology are currently scarce. This paper introduces a framework for analyzing how actors in different cultural contexts make sense of global concepts. By this we refer to expressio...

Calls for societal transformations in response to climate change and unsustainable trajectories are surging in scientific journals, political proposals and news media. The multifaceted usages of the concept of transformation creates challenges for scientific assessments, such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergo...

This new analysis — from SEI, DIE, Linköping University and Utrecht University — looks at six countries and identifies the synergies and conflicts between nationally determined contributions and Sustainable Development Goals. For full-text, see: https://www.sei.org/publications/increasing-policy-coherence-between-ndcs-and-sdgs/

Background. Serious games are gaining increasing prominence in environmental communication research, but their potential to form an integrated part of participatory research approaches is still strikingly understudied. This is particularly the case for applications of interactive digital formats in research on environmental challenges of high compl...

“Our Future on Earth” aims to tell the story of where we are on our collective journey by connecting the dots between what society is currently experiencing – from fires to food shortages to a rise in populism – with recent developments in the research community. Physical and social scientists have much to say about what is driving current events,...

Cambridge Core - Environmental Policy, Economics and Law - Sustainability Transformations - by Björn-Ola Linnér

The continuous submission and scaling-up of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) constitutes a key feature of the Paris Agreement. In their NDCs, states propose governance mechanisms for implementation of climate action, in turn distinguishing appropriate roles for the state in climate governance. Clarity on Parties’ suggested roles for the s...

This paper critiques the so-called “Green Revolution” as a political myth of averted famine. A “political myth,” among other functions, reflects a narrative structure that characterizes understandings of causality between policy action and outcome. As such, the details of a particular political myth elevate certain policy options (and families of p...

Societal transformation is one of the most topical concepts in sustainability research and policy-making. Used in many ways, it indicates that nonlinear systematic changes are needed in order to fully address global environmental and human development challenges. This paper explores what sustainability transformations mean for lay focus group parti...

The 2015 Paris Agreement was adopted in a geopolitical context that is very different from the post-Cold War era when the Climate Convention was negotiated. This new global climate deal responds to a more fragmented and multipolar world signified by the rise of major economies in the South. This paper examines the geopolitical landscape in which th...

This article takes stock of the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through the prism of three recent shifts: the move away from targeting industrial country emissions in a legally binding manner under the Kyoto Protocol to mandating voluntary contributions from all countries under the Paris Agreement; th...

This essay discusses the concept of usefulness of research for climate change adaptation. Based on prior research and stakeholder interactions with policymakers and practitioners in the Nordic countries, we contend that critical issues related to the usefulness of adaptation research seem less associated with content (i.e. research outputs), but ra...

Agriculture is often described as one of the sectors most vulnerable to future climate change, and its vulnerability is commonly assessed through quantitative indices. However, such indices differ significantly depending on their selected indicators, weighting mechanisms, and summarizing methods, often leading to divergent assessments of vulnerabil...

Using policy cycle model as a heuristic, this article studies Indian, Brazilian, and South African engagement with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by (a) comparing NAMA policy process and (b) identifying factors driving or limiting the framework’s domestic application. India largely remained uninterested in NAMAs, Brazil aligned i...

In this article, we outline the multifaceted roles played by non‐state actors within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and place this within the wider landscape of global climate governance. In doing so, we look at both the formation and aftermath of the 2015 Paris Agreement. We argue that the Paris Agreement cements an arch...

This article examines the role the UNFCCC plays in a polycentric climate regime complex. Through an extended questionnaire survey at the UN Climate Conferences in Warsaw (2013), Lima (2014) and Paris (2015), we study what government delegates and non-state observers see as the main purpose of UN climate summitry and their roles therein. Only a mino...

Homeowners are important actors in implementing climate change adaptation. However, individual socio-cognitive constraints related to risk perceptions and perceived capacity may hamper their action. Climate change visualization could help planning and management overcome such constraints by offering accessible information to increase individual ada...

Least developed countries often lack the requisite capacity to implement climate change adaptation projects. The Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) is a scheme where industrialized countries have (as of early 2016) disbursed $934.5 million in voluntary contributions, raised more than four times that amount in co-financing, and supported 213 adap...

The complexity of climate information, particularly as related to climate scenarios, impacts, and action alternatives, poses significant challenges for science communication. This study presents a geographic visualization approach involving lay audiences to address these challenges. VisAdapt™ is a web-based visualization tool designed to improve No...

In this article we present the design and implementation of the web-based visualization tool VisAdapt, developed to support homeowners in the Nordic countries to assess anticipated climate change and climate related risks which are expected to negatively impact their living conditions. The tool guides the user through a three-step visual exploratio...

Full text available at (for the first 50 users): http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ADNEiY7I4Vc2RqaqpCEw/full While energy-sector emissions remain the biggest source of climate change, many least-developed countries still invest in fossil-fuel development paths. These countries generally have high levels of fossil fuel technology lock-in and low ca...

To some, the topic of storm surge — rising water commonly associated with low-pressure weather systems such as tropical cyclones — might sound mundane, but it could pose a colossal threat to humanity by the end of this century. For instance, one team of researchers found that, due to climate change, average storm surge damages were likely rise from...

Bangladesh contributes little to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Because it sits at the intersection of three major river basins, illustrated in Figure 2.1, and features flat deltaic topography with low elevation, it is prone to a multitude of climate-related events such as floods,...

Environmental studies professor David W. Orr once wrote about a remarkable experiment involving two different groups of kittens, raised in rooms that differed only in the color of their walls.1 One group was raised in a room painted with horizontal lines, the other with vertical lines. After several weeks, the kittens were moved from one room to th...

One of the central dilemmas in politics, public policy, and economics is that markets “work” only at distributing certain types of goods. They tend to be efficient at distributing private goods such as bicycles or hamburgers — where property rights can be completely defined and protected, where owners can exclude others from access, and where prope...

On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the United States, hitting the coast of Louisiana with wind speeds of 125 miles per hour near Buras-Triumph.1 It was not the strongest of storms in terms of wind speeds, central pressures, or intensity — it was only a Category 3 hurricane — but its particular location along the G...

In 2007, Percy Schmeiser, an elderly farmer from Saskatchewan, Canada, unknowingly harvested a crop of canola that contained a herbicide-resistant gene patented by one of the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology companies, Monsanto.1 Schmeiser claimed that the canola had sprouted from seeds that had blown off passing trucks or spread from adj...

For all intents and purposes, climate change has resulted in a massive, accidental experiment involving the entire planet and requiring concerted action around the world. In February 2015, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory recorded an atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at 399 parts pe...

An international agreement to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions need not be fixated on targets for regulating greenhouse gas emissions-an end-of-pipe approach-but could shift focus to an agreement that incentivizes a shift to low-carbon development pathways. Investment targets for innovation and diffusion of low-carbon energy technologies can form...

Adaptation policies and measures are essential components of any global attempt to cope with the pending impacts of climate change. Drawing on concepts in political economy, political ecology, justice theory, and critical development studies, this book offers the first comprehensive, systematic exploration of the ways in which adaptation projects c...

This paper analyses the auto-historiography of global environmental change research. It traces how participating researchers make sense of and rationalise research strategies through narratives of the history of global change and Earth System science. Our study draws on personal and programme accounts of Earth System science’s background related to...

Climate change communication on anticipated impacts and adaptive responses is frequently presented as an effective means to facilitate implementation of adaptation to mitigate risks to residential buildings. However, it requires that communication is developed in a way that resonates with the context of the target audience, provides intelligible in...

Initiatives to adapt to the effects of climate change are growing in number but may fail to achieve the desired outcomes unless critical competing interests are taken into account during the planning process.

Initiatives to adapt to the effects of climate change are growing in number but may fail to achieve the desired outcomes unless critical competing interests are taken into account during the planning process.

Finance is at the heart of UN climate diplomacy. Through the long-term finance pledge, developed countries have committed to mobilize USD 100 billion annually from 2020 onwards to support climate action in developing countries. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is also expected to become a key player in the climate finance landscape. This viewpoint pres...

The literature on climate engineering, or geoengineering, covers a wide range of potential methods for solar radiation management or carbon dioxide removal that vary in technical aspects, temporal and spatial scales, potential environmental impacts, and legal, ethical, and governance challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive review of social...

This poster presents the design and implementation of the web-based visual analytics tool VisAdapt which allows houseowners in the Nordic countries to assess potential climate related risk factors that may have an impact on their living conditions, and to get an overview of existing guidelines of how to adapt to climate change and extreme weather e...

This paper analyses the auto-historiography of global environmental change research. It traces how participating researchers make sense of and rationalise research strategies through narratives of the history of global change and Earth System science.

In a global context, the outlook for the Nordic region is relatively favourable, given its relatively stronger resiliency to climate change impacts in comparison to many other geo-political regions of the world. Overall, the projected climatic changes include increases in mean temperatures and in precipitation, although regional variations can be s...

Globalization processes have rendered non-state actors an integral part of global governance. The body of literature that has examined non-state actor involvement in global governance has focused mainly on whether and how non-state actors can influence states. Less attention has been paid to the comparative advantages of non-state actors to answer...

When do states allow nonstate actors (NSAs) to observe negotiations at intergovernmental meetings? Previous studies have identified the need for states to close negotiations when the issues under discussion are sensitive. This paper argues that sensitivity alone cannot adequately explain the dynamic of closing down negotiations to observers. Questi...

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is emerging as an innovative multilateral climate finance in- stitution to support adaptation and mitigation, including Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs), in developing countries. Using perspectives from the international envi- ronmental law and governance literature, this article identifies a crucial go...

The difficulties in communicating climate change science to the general public are often highlighted as one of the hurdles for support of enhanced climate action. The advances of interactive visualization using information and communication technology (ICT) are claimed to be a game-changer in our ability to communicate complex issues. However, new...

The Living Earth Simulator (LES) is one of the core components of the FuturICT architecture. It will work as a federation of methods, tools, techniques and facilities supporting all of the FuturICT simulation-related activities to allow and encourage interactive exploration and understanding of societal issues. Society-relevant problems will be tar...

This paper looks critically at how food and agriculture-, energy security-, and climate change-oriented international organizations have consolidated and modified the biofuel discourse in relation to the agricultural system. Using Foucault-based genealogical analysis of discursive formations, the paper traces the last 20 years of institutions’ biof...

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This article summarizes the findings of an international research effort, presented in this Special Issue, intended to identify the opportunities and challenges in creating institutional arrangements that could lock in, and exploit, a dynamic in which development policies alter socio-technical systems and indirectly promote various climate activiti...

Creating incentives to promote sustainable development with climate benefits as side effects is the aim of several policy proposals in international politics. Recently, such proposals surface in the negotiations of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions by developing countries (NAMAs). We label such policy instruments Sustainable Development – P...

This article utilises a leadership perspective to analyse the ambiguous outcome of the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen (COP-15). Considering follower perspectives and using survey data gives a fuller picture of the importance of leadership in international negotiations and of the role played by leadership the COP-15. In addition to the insight...

Leadeship is an essential ingredient in reaching international agreements and overcoming the collective action problems associated with responding to climate change. In this study, we aim at answering two questions that are crucial for understanding the legitimacy of leadership in international climate change negotiations. Based on the responses of...

There is widespread consensus that effective leadership will be required in order to successfully address the climate change challenge. Presently there are a number of self-proclaimed climate change leaders, but leadership is a relationship between leaders and followers. An actor aspiring to be a leader needs to be recognized as such. Despite its f...

To meet the growing demand of communicating climate science and policy research, the interdisciplinary field of climate visualization has increasingly extended its traditional use of 2D representations and techniques from the field of scientific visualization to include information visualization for the creation of highly interactive tools for both...

Side-events are the most visible venue for civil society involvement in international climate negotiations The many varied functions that side-events fulfil for participants and organizers are identified and analysed for their contributions generally as well as for their contribution to the negotiation process The analysis is based on two surveys o...

According to the concept of historical responsibility, the commitments of individual countries to take action on climate change are distributed based on the relative effects of their past emissions as manifested in present climate change. Brazil presented a comprehensive version of the concept to pre-Kyoto negotiations in 1997. The 'Brazilian propo...

This article examines the conceptual basis of synergies between the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other international organizations and agreements. It discusses why synergies are made, what kinds there are and their potential consequences. Considering actors' divergent goals, synergies do not necessarily imply w...

This article explores how research funding agencies have responded to the challenge of operationalising the policy agenda of sustainable development. Drawing on the results of a research project studying Swedish funding agencies’ policy declarations, mandates and priorities as well as abstracts from funded projects, we analyse how the research doma...

This paper provides a historical overview of the role of North–South differences in expectation and priorities in determining how international negotiations about global warming have been framed and implemented. Our analysis looks at two themes: the problem of technology transfer and knowledge inequity and the persistence of the G-77 as the point o...

The whole United Nations process of linking environment and development calls for one common agenda, an action plan that can join the global North and South in concerted action. Achieving sustainable development involves the integration of diverse issues, such as formation and implementation of international environmental treaties; trade relations;...

This paper fills a gap in the current academic and policy literature concerning how parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change find common ground when distributing commitments and responsibilities to curb climate change. Preferred principles for sharing the effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are compared among 170...