Eerika Albrecht

• Doctor of Social Sciences
• PostDoc Position at University of Eastern Finland

Recently, increased attention has been drawn to the greenhouse gas emissions of the Land use, Land use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. In the Finnish LULUCF sector, the soil-originated emissions from the after-use of cutover peatland have become a more relevant question. This is due to the rapid increase in the number of former peat-harvesting...

Hydropower, as a flexible energy source, has sparked renewed interest in the ongoing decarbonisation of the society. Simultaneously, a wider transformation of the socio-ecological system towards more sustainable practices of energy production is required. Our paper draws from the sustainable transformation theory and the concepts of transformabilit...

This paper studies adaptive water governance in the context of hydropower and flood-risk management. The Kemi River basin acts as an empirical setting to study the environmental change and the capacity of the management system to respond to it. Hydropower and reservoir development has been a source of a decade-long environmental conflict in the riv...

Browning of surface waters, also known as brownification, is a process of decreasing water transparency, particularly in boreal lakes surrounded by intensively managed forests and wetlands. In this paper, we review the ecological consequences and ecosystem‐based management (EBM) of browning through a systematic review approach and adopt an interdis...

After drainage for forestry and agriculture, peat extraction is one of the most important causes of peatland degradation. When peat extraction is ceased, multiple after-use options exist, including abandonment, restoration, and replacement (e.g., forestry and agricultural use). However, there is a lack of a global synthesis of after-use research. T...

Nature's contributions to people (NCP) support people's quality of life and are generated by an interplay of both natural and anthropogenic capitals, known as NCP co-production, which also includes ecosystem services. A governance system of formal and informal institutions on different yet interlinked spatial, administrative, and temporal scales in...

This article examines the public perceptions on the drafting process of Finnish Climate Act amendment, which is a legislation on the climate policy that aims to mitigate climate change and secure adaptive capacity. In this paper we present results of a thematic analysis, which reveals citizens' perceptions of the procedural values, with respect to...

The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement is a major climate movement on a global scale, calling for systemic change and demanding politicians act on their responsibilities. In this paper, we present and analyze original findings from a case study on the FFF movement in Finland, at a watershed moment for young climate activism. We explore the represent...

Although researchers have postulated different modes of governance, the degree of empirical support for different governance modes in ecosystem service literature remains unclear. Understanding the contexts under which governance modes have been researched and applied in practice could help decision-makers choose appropriate strategies to the provi...

ACCEPTANCE OF THE CLIMATE POLICY AND PARTICIPATION OF THE PUBLIC IN THE AMENDMENT PROCESS OF THE FINNISH CLIMATE ACT Climate legislation aims at reducing potential harm and losses caused by climate change and increasing and maintaining the benefits of climate adaptation. The Finnish Climate Act (609/2015) entered into force in 2015. As pressing en...

Tässä raportissa tarkastellaan Koitajoen valuma-alueen luonnonvarojen käytön historiaa ympäristön tilan muutoksen kuvaajana. Luonnonvarojen käytön historia Koitajoen alueella on toteutettu osana Freshabit Life IP– hankkeen (LIFE14 IPE/FI/023) Koitajoki toimenpideosioita luonnonvarojen kestävän käytön kehittäminen ja uusien toimintamallien kehittämi...

The European Union’s Water Framework Directive introduced a new approach to the system of water man­agement in Europe by nominating the river basin district as the basic unit in water management. While its transbound­ary character aims to better manage natural resources, its design and implementation carries several challenges due to its weak integ...

This article analyses the impact of stakeholder participation in the drafting process of the Environmental Protection Act, which regulates the licensing of peat extraction in Finland. The article contributes to research on the impact of stakeholder participation in regulatory processes, which is a generally underexplored field of study, and seeks t...

The European Union's Water Framework Directive introduced a new approach to the system of water management in Europe by nominating the river basin district as the basic unit in water management. While its transboundary character aims to better manage natural resources, its design and implementation carries several challenges due to its weak integra...

This paper explores the process of updating the peatland conservation network in Finland—the Supplemental Mire Conservation Programme, which was drafted from 2012 to 2015. This study employs discursive agency approach (DAA), to reveal how agents actively seek to gain legitimate speaker positions and influence policy outcomes as they rely on existin...

Peatlands cover one-third of Finnish land area. When the industrial use of peat as a domestic heating fuel evolved over the course of Finland’s modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s, reducing the environmental impacts of peat extraction and peatland conservation became pressing issues. Despite the large amount of peatlands, relatively few natural ar...

This paper presents a case study of state-driven deliberation as a form of environmental governance ex- perimentation. The paper addresses the participatory processes during the drafting of the supplementation programme for mire conservation. The process is analysed as a deliberative experiment in order to develop the governance of mires and peat l...

Political and socially constructed arguments about values and benefits originating from ecosystem services (ES) may improve the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation. In this article we show how effective biodiversity conservation is dependent on stakeholders’ rhetorical skills and their ability to introduce persuasive arguments for the target...

Close international cooperation between all countries within a river basin has become one of the key aspects of sustainable cross-border water management. This is due to the fact that water does not stop at administrative or political boundaries. Therefore, the preferred mode to protect and manage transnational water bodies is close cooperation bet...

The use and conservation of mires and peatlands is a critical environmental concern, and the various actors and institutions with divergent interests only continue to exacerbate the problem. The case study on the Julkuneva mire analyzes the conflicting interests and the arguments both for and against the extraction of peat throughout a prolonged pr...