Romina Rodela

Södertörn University | sh · Department for Environment, Development and Sustainability Studies

Intergenerational justice (IGJ) has long been utilized in academic contexts such as philosophy and political theory. However, IGJ has increasingly become politicized. That is, it has been translated into more tangible ideas and discourses for public scrutiny, contestation, and action. This politicization is strongly represented by youth activism, w...

Over recent years youth has emerged as an influential voice on the topic of climate change, raising the alarm about climate change-related risks and calling for policy action. Youth have been active and mobilising across squares and streets from where they called upon those in power to act on their duties to protect citizens from environmental harm...

This paper describes the development of an interactive tool which allows playing different soundscapes by mixing diverse environmental sounds on demand. This tool is titled Our Sound Space (OSS) and has been developed as part of an ongoing project where we test methods and tools for the participation of young people in spatial planning. As such OSS...

The work reported here sought to map out groups, movements and organizations made up in a large extent of mothers who in that role engage in activism and related activities in the public sphere. All of the research done has used secondary data and information available online and was done via desk research only. This is a descriptive report introdu...

Environmental governance is recognized as a key issue in many natural and social sciences. It is highly relevant for ecosystem services and common-pool resources as well. Both fields overlap yet have typically been studied separately. Therefore, this study aimed a) to examine the emerging body of literature that incorporates concepts from both fiel...

In this report, we give a summative overview of the activities our project team has offered to the participants of the 2022 Södertörn University Summer School. The Summer School, coordinated by our colleagues at Södertörn University and held in June 2022 on campus at Flemingsberg, hosted a group of 26 pupils who are enrolled at four public primary...

p>This article reports on a study examining the pathway to and practices for inclusive participatory planning in Sweden. Recently, the Swedish government has transposed the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child into national law, making it a requirement for Swedish planners to involve children and youth in participatory spatial planning proces...

Begreppet mosaikförvaltning bygger på relationer grundade i lokal kontext och lyfter idéer om hur dessa relationer kan katalyseras för transformativ förändring. Som en del av forskningsprojektet VIVA- PLAN utformade vi ett arbetspaket där vi experimenterade med och testade några av dessa antaganden. Som en del av detta samarbetade vårt projekttea...

The concept of Mosaic Governance rests on relationships grounded in local context and puts forward ideas about how these relationships can be catalysed for transformative change. As part of the research project VIVA-PLAN we designed a Working Package where some of these assumptions have been put forward for further experimentation and testing. A...

The research project Planning with Youth is a study of participatory spatial planning with special interest in methods for the engagement of youth in participatory spatial planning. As part to Work Package 3 we explore with novel tools and methods, and in that context are interested in the potential of multimodal interaction for opening up new oppo...

The aim of this synthesis fact sheet is to present a sustainable spatial planning framework for revitalising green spaces and meeting spots for social inclusion, biodiversity and well-being, including safety and security. We provide important insights for city planners about how new partnerships can be established between social entrepreneurs, NGOs...

Inclusive Business (IB) is increasingly popular as a way to address the sustainable development goals (SDG) by including the poor in business. While the IB model is commonly believed capable of making a real impact on poverty reduction, it is not without critique. With the empirical evidence still largely lacking, and with continued power imbalance...

Purpose: Mekong Delta's shrimp farming contributes to socio-economic development but tends to reduce the mangrove area. On the one hand, NGOs advocate balancing ecology and economy, while on the other hand, the Vietnamese government supports intensifying shrimp production. The latter strategy increases shrimp diseases and marginalises smallholders....

Sustainable development foresees that socio-economic development co-exists with environmental protection. This presents a learning challenge for biosphere reserves (BRs) designated under the Man and Biosphere Programme. BR organizations must consider how to meet conservation objectives as well as local development objectives when drafting the nomin...

Nature-based solutions directed at improving biodiversity, on both public and private land, can provide multiple benefits, but many of these benefits are not being fully realised. One reason is the normative and cognitive disconnect between people and nature, highlighting the need for new learning programs to foster better nature connections. More...

Qualitative research related to the human dimensions of conservation and environment is growing in quantity. Rigorous syntheses of such studies can help develop understanding and inform decision-making. They can combine findings from studies in varied or similar contexts to address questions relating to, for example, the lived experience of those a...

Despite a long-term focus on learning in natural resource management (NRM), it is still debated how learning supports sustainable real-world NRM practices. We offer a qualitative in-depth synthesis of selected scientific empirical literature (N=53), which explores factors affecting action-oriented learning. We inductively identify eight key process...

Current discourses on pressing environmental issues emphasize their complexity and uncertainty (Gunderson et al. 1995; McGowan et al., 2014), and the difficulty of predicting their outcomes (Chandler, 2014). The recent extreme weather events in Europe are a case in point, while experts had forecast that a heatwave would hit the region, few could pr...

The use of serious games in the governance of natural resources and the environment is progressively increasing and includes games used for research and data collection, teaching and training, and fostering a change of practices. However, this diversity remains underexplored and underreported. In view of a growing interest in the use of serious gam...

Interdisciplinary research is understood to be the preferred way for scientific research to deepen understanding about environmental issues and challenges for sustainability. Two well-defined interdisciplinairy research fields, Ecosystems services (ES) and Common-pool resources (CPR), have taken different approaches that integrate the natural and s...

Note: a pdf of the final and accepted version of this paper is available for download until 1 November 2018 at this link https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1XizX_4XYggJAo from ScienceDirect This study explores the implications of engaging students, versus professionals/experts, in pilot-testing of SDSS, and discusses likely differences in terms of exp...

This paper presents a research where a Role Playing Game (RPG) and Agent Based Model (ABM) were combined to study and foster a social learning across shrimp farmers in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The objective was to seek an improvement in awareness about the effects farming decisions have on environment sustainability in the region. The ABM is us...

Learning is considered as a promising mechanism to cope with rapid environmental change. The implications of learning for natural resource management (NRM) have not been explored in-depth and the evidence on the topic is scattered across multiple sources. We provide a qualitative review of types of learning outcomes and consider their manifestation...

In the coastal area of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, much of the mangrove forest has been cut to make space for expansion of industry and aquaculture. Export‐oriented shrimp farming is a particularly fast‐growing business. Nonetheless, the importance of tropical mangrove forest ecosystems for coastal protection and marine biodiversity is widely reco...

This article presents the results of a research done in rural settlements located within the area of the prospective Dragonja Landscape Park. We analysed documents of local communities, undertook observation of a workshop, and interviewed ten local inhabitants in order to obtain information about local inhabitants’ awareness and their interest in b...

Spatial decision support systems (SDSS) represent a step forward in efforts to account for the spatial dimension in environmental decision-making. The aim of SDSS is to help policymakers and practitioners access, interpret and understand information from data, analyses and models, and guide them in identifying possible actions during a decision-mak...

This is the synthesis report of a webinar that we ran in June 2017. The webinar addressed two questions: 1.How can social learning concepts and theories inform the design and implementation of interventions? 2.What influence doesintervention design, coupled with contextual factors, have on social learning processes? For presentations and an audio-v...

‘Knowledge synthesis’ refers to a set of methods used to review, collate and communicate the best available knowledge on a specific topic or question, including explicit scientific knowledge, but also indigenous and local knowledge, or tacit technical or opinion-based knowledge held by stakeholders. The process of knowledge synthesis is a crucial e...

The concept of ecosystem services has been extensively studied in recent decades. Most studies have focused on describing the specific aspects such as production, spatial extent, valuation of services and the trade-off between services. Few studies however assess the practitioners’ views on the frameworks, models or tools developed. In this paper,...

Spatial decision support systems (SDSS) represent a step forward in efforts to account for the spatial dimension in environmental decision-making. The aim of SDSS is to help policymakers and practitioners access, interpret and understand information from data, analyses and models, and guide them in identifying possible actions during a decision-mak...

a review of existinf methodologies for evidence synthesis in support of decision-making, especially (but not only) for environmentally-targetted decisions

Many have discussed the crucial role that environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) have played in the implementation of nature protection policies across European member states. However, there are important differences in the opportunity structures among new and old member states that influence how ENGOs can act and undertake activities....

Contemporary approaches to environmental research are calling for a type of scientific inquiry that is able to bring together the natural and social sciences. This with the aim to advance our understanding of environmental issues and produce synthetic and actionable knowledge meant to address these. Yet, interdisciplinarity research of this type is...

The accuracy of interdisciplinarity measurements depends on how well the data is used for this purpose and whether it can meaningfully inform about work that crosses disciplinary domains. At present, there are no ad hoc databases compiling information only and exclusively about interdisciplinary research, and those interested in assessing it have t...

Glavni namen publikacije je predstavitev aktivnosti projekta »Soustvarjamo trajnostni razvoj območja Dragonje«, pogledov lokalnega prebivalstva na razvojne priložnosti ter dobrih praks v povezavi z ekološkim kmetijstvom, turizmom in revitalizacijo vasi na območju predvidenega Krajinskega parka Dragonje in podeželja Slovenske Istre. S tem želimo pri...

This is a technical report of a symposium held in Stockholm, Sweden, on the 27 and 28 May, 2015. The purpose of this event was to bring together scholars and practitioners in order to create opportunities for an exchange of ideas, methodologies and experience. Participants with expertise in different areas i. e., adaptation research, resource manag...

The QUICKScan software tool can be located within the recently emerging discourse where attention is given to the communicative interaction during spatial decision support system (SDSS) development and application. In this regard it was of a research interest to explore the ways in which the QUICKScan software tool allows for knowledge integration...

Previous studies of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGO) have primarily taken place within a nation-state perspective without considering multiple levels of politics and governance. Because environmental problems are usually cross-border phenomena, environmental movements must develop transnational features to play constructive roles...

This report summarises the outcomes of an expert workshop held in Freiburg (Germany) 3rd and 4th March 2014 on the topic of science-policy interfaces in the context of biodiversity and ecosystems governance. The workshop brought together participants from a diversity of backgrounds who presented current research and addressed selected questions dur...

Most environmental problems are extremely long term and have cross-border implications. For environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) to achieve significant impact on environmental governance cross-border and sustained activities are required. The purpose of the paper is to identify key barriers and possible pathways to develop sustained...

The marine natural environment is under high pressure. Not only are marine resources as flora and fauna intensively used (with consequent decrease of stocks) but in recent times, the seas have become the next frontier of a specific type of anthropization (i.e. the conversion of open space by human action) that of energy infrastructure. While this i...

This analysis reflects on the use of multidimensional constructs for the study of social learning in natural resource management. Insight from deliberative democracy and adult learning literature are used to ground the identified four dimensions (the moral dimension the cognitive dimension, the relational dimension and trust). Then, a selection of...

A common thread throughout this special issue is that sustainability is not a destiny one can eventually reach, but rather a continuous learning path towards transformation that should be profound (e.g. affecting moral standards and value systems), transversal (e.g. requiring the involvement of individuals, groups and collectives) and counter-hegem...

This monograph provides four different reviews on social learning literature. Rather than seeking to be comprehensive, the reviews provide views on the social learning literature, from different perspectives. The papers scope aspects of the social learning literature, providing access to a wide body of literature(s) on social learning. This monogra...

The aim of this presentation is to consider the ways in which political culture promotes or hinders participatory environmental governance. Of a special interest to this research are post-communist countries and we have chosen to focus on three countries of Eastern Europe; Poland, Slovenia and Croatia where we have conducted empirical research and...

The literature on social learning advances a critique to the command-and-control approach to resource management, and often, this critique is made by borrowing insights and ideas from disciplines other than resource management, which led to certain conceptual and methodological turns that now characterise the social learning discourse. This paper i...

With the adoption of the Rural Development Programme 2007-2013 'Local action groups' were set up with the purpose of implementing the LEADER approach and to encourage the development of local involve -ment. This applies also to the area of environmental protection and the protection of natural resources, which features within the second axis of the...

Social learning has become a central theme in natural resource management. This growing interest is underpinned by a number of assertions about the outcomes of social learning, and about the processes that support these outcomes. Yet researchers and practitioners who seek to engage with social learning through the natural resource management litera...

This monograph provides four different reviews on social learning literature. Rather than seeking to be comprehensive, the reviews provide views on the social learning literature, from different perspectives. The papers scope aspects of the social learning literature, providing access to a wide body of literature(s) on social learning. This monogra...

This analysis is focused on research that uses a social learning approach to study natural resource issues. We map out the prevailing epistemological orientation of social learning research through the de-construction of the methodological choices reported in current social learning literature. Based on an analysis of 54 empirical investigations of...

This is the scientific report of a post-doctoral project financed under the FP7-Marie Curie Actions-IEF of the European Commission. This research would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many people. Herewith, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Andrej Udovč, Prof. Polonca Trebše and Prof. Urška Lavrenčic Štanga...

The natural resource management literature stresses the need for public participation and community involvement in resource management and planning. Recently, some of this literature turned to the theory on deliberative democracy and demonstrated that a deliberative perspective on participation can help to challenge established practices and contri...

Monografija obravnava skupno vaško lastnino in skupno upravljanje naravnih virov na Krasu. Podan je opis stanja in predstavljeni so primeri s slovenskega in tudi italijanskega Krasa. Monografija je nastala v okviru čezmejnega srečanja »Skupna lastnina in njeno skupno upravljanje na Krasu: spoznavanje izkušenj čez mejo«, ki so se ga udeležili predst...

A review is presented of research contributions that use social learning in research on natural resource management. The review is based on an extensive survey of peer-reviewed journal articles appraised against the following selected analytical items: (1) characterizing features, (2) level of analysis, and (3) operational measures. Together, these...

V tem prispevku obravnavamo participativno naravovarstvo in v prvem delu najprej predstavimo teoretično izhodišče, umestimo participativni pristope v sodobno naravovarstveno prakso in pogledamo v slovenski naravovarstveni pravni okvir. V drugem delu prispevka se posvetimo študiji primera ustanovitve krajinskega parka Goričko. V študiji primera se o...

This article summarizes a research focused on the attitudes local inhabitant have towards the Goričko Nature Park. The aim was to understand whether the park is perceived as a constraint or as an opportunity for local development. Research methods include semistructured interviews, in 2005 we undertook 30 and in 2010 further 35 interviews. This all...

This article summarizes the outcomes of a research which aim was to understand the potential Local Action Groups (LAG) have for contributing to nature protection objectives. We focus on the LAS Upper Vipava Valley and the Komen’s Karst where a group of locals prepared a project which objective is to prepare the management plan for the Branica Valle...

This article gives an analysis of the Slovene approach to nature protection with a special focus on the role of the local community. To this end we have chosen the Triglav National Park as a case study, which is of an interest also for recent events that suggests the presence of tensions. Hence, the main objective of this analysis is to look at the...

The notion of ecological networks is gaining increasing attention against the backdrop of climate change: When average temperatures are rising globally, many species and communities will have to shift their distribution ranges towards the poles or higher altitudes. It is assumed that this requires a certain permeability of landscapes. Therefore har...

Zavarovana območja so prostorski elementi, ki z opredeljenim režimom upravljanja praviloma močno zaznamujejo neki podeželski prostor in krajino. Na primeru Triglavskega narodnega parka, Krajinskega parka Goričko in Kozjanskega parka smo preučili vlogo zavarovanega območja v razvoju podeželskih skupnosti znotraj in zunaj zavarovanega območja. Od dej...

I territori montani sono visti spesso come aree remote e considerati come ambienti fragili, e secondo alcune correnti di pensiero necessita-no di una forma di tutela istituzionalizzata per garantirne la conserva-zione naturalistica. Partendo da tali presupposti nel 1924 la valle dei la-ghi del Triglav fu designata area protetta, ed in seguito il re...