Workshops - NESS 2026

This session addresses the escalating dilemmas and tensions inherent in the accelerating energy transition. In Nordic contexts, where democratic traditions and environmental values are strong, these tensions are particularly pronounced. Ambitious policies and technological solutions are being pursued to meet urgent climate goals, ensure energy security, and enable industrial electrification. These “urgency-driven” transitions risk undermining long-term democratic resilience and generate new multifaceted conflicts. Conflicts are often related to negative impacts on nature and landscapes, aspects of procedural and democratic unfairness, and profound issues of distributional injustice. Lack of legitimacy and social acceptance is increasingly creating barriers for energy development, and questions of energy justice in the energy transition are arising in both research, policy and practice.

This session will explore the multifaceted nature of these conflicts to discuss alternative pathways for energy transition. Some potential key questions:

• How can we reconcile the need for a rapid, efficient energy transition with the imperative for democratic fairness and social justice?
• What new governance and planning approaches are needed to address emerging conflicts over land use, community engagement, and resource distribution?
• How can institutional capacities be built to better manage the complex dilemmas of energy transitions, particularly at the local and regional levels?
• What role can experimental approaches to community energy and local ownership play in fostering a more just and legitimate transition?
• How can knowledge production and expert authority be democratized to support more inclusive energy transitions?

The session aims to foster a critical dialogue to develop a new research agenda for energy policies and practices that are socially and spatially equitable. The session will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the energy transition, moving beyond simple socio-technical solutions to address its fundamental societal and geographical dimensions.

We welcome fully drafted manuscripts with different theoretical, methodological, and empirical approaches that explore the friction between the imperative for a swift transition and the need for inclusive, fair, and democratically legitimate processes, and propose alternative pathways. We encourage papers that further new theoretical perspectives and methods to address the green transition in a Nordic perspective.

Convenors
Mikaela Vasstrøm, Department of Global Development and Planning, University of Agder, Norway
Therese Bjärstig, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden
Lasse Peltonen, Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland

The term “green gap” refers to discrepancy between environment-friendly values and actual choices. For example, individuals may express support for public transportation, yet continue to use private cars in their daily commute. Green gaps have been found also in the contexts of food and cosmetics, for example.

Various public policies have been used for narrowing the green gap. They include, but are not limited, to (dis)incentives, (mis)informing, and educating, as well as different forms of behavioral public policy such as nudge, think, boost and nudge+.

The proponents of these policies often describe them as a form of helping. Fathers of nudging Thaler and Sunstein (2009) use the term “help” throughout their book. In similar lines Banarjee et al. (2022) describe how “Nudge+ adds consciousness to the nudge and helps motivated decision–makers make better choices”. At the same time, nudges – even the most iconic ones such as Carolyn’s cafeteria – have been understood as instances of manipulation:

"...if Carolyn’s cafeteria is in a school, or hospital, or health club, we might argue that we should expect encouragement to make healthy choices in those settings, even if some of that encouragement is manipulative. […] The fact that her nudge employs trickery constitutes a strong case for thinking that it is manipulative."

The aim of this workshop is to discuss how different policies aiming to bridge the green gap should be understood and described. What are the criteria for calling a policy "helping"? Should neutral language be preferred in this context, and is that possible? Moreover, what are the ethical and practical implications of different ways of describing the policies? Are the choices made “merely rhetoric” or rather something we should be concerned about?

We welcome and are hoping to receive fully drafted manuscripts from various different disciplines and to include viewpoints both from empirical and theoretical research.

References
Banerjee, S. et al. (2022). What works best in promoting climate citizenship? A randomised, systematic evaluation of nudge, think, boost and nudge+. London School of Economics and Political Science.
Noggle, R. (2018). Manipulation, salience, and nudges. Bioethics 32(3), 164-170.
Thaler, R. H. and Sunstein, C. S. (2009). Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin Books.

Convenors
Helena Siipi, Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of Turku, Finland
Jani Sinokki, Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Finland
Olivia Mörck, Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Finland

Scholars highlight the need for substantial government intervention to address ongoing crises such as biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, and climate change. A central challenge lies in bridging the gap between ambitious political environmental goals and their practical implementation. A core assumption of this workshop is that public opposition to such policies remains a critical obstacle. Advancing our understanding of citizens’ attitudes towards policy measures is therefore essential for improving the feasibility of effective interventions.

Research on public opinion toward environmental policy instruments has developed into a rich interdisciplinary field, with contributions from political science, sociology, economics, and psychology. Important insights have been gained, but the field is evolving rapidly, driven by new methodological approaches and theoretical debates.

This workshop seeks to bring together scholars pushing the boundaries of research on large scale environmental policy issues. We especially welcome contributions that:

• Advance methodological approaches, including natural or quasi-experimental designs, register data, and innovations in survey methods.
• Develop theoretical and conceptual understandings of public opposition, support and legitimacy of environmental policy.
• Systematically review and synthesize findings across the field.

To help bridge the gap between environmental goals and implementation, we are particularly interested in fully drafted manucripts that explore the tensions between demands for efficiency and effectiveness on the one hand, and the need for democratic legitimacy and public support on the other. While we encourage studies situated in Nordic contexts, we equally welcome comparative and international perspectives.

This workshop aims to provide a platform for exchange among scholars working on climate and environmental policy support and resistance, fostering dialogue that can move the field forward both theoretically and methodologically.

Convenors
Niklas Harring, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Steffen Kallbekken, Cicero – Center for International Climate Research, Norway
Lauren Yehle, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

On many accounts, environmental law has been a legal and governance success story of the 20th century, especially in the Global North. Despite post-war pressures, the ozone layer is recovering, and local gains have been made in species, habitats, and air and water quality. Yet, systemic and global environmental challenges (i.e., biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution) are pressing on, entwined with economic and social drivers across the globe. Although many legal measures have been taken to address these problems, they continue to escalate, leading many to question environmental law’s ability to address systemic issues.

The session explores, from a legal perspective, why environmental law falls short of its goals and how the gap between ambition and implementation can be bridged. The failures of environmental law and governance have often been explained with factors external to law, such as power imbalances, vested interests, consumer culture, marginalised groups’ lack of agency, and institutional patterns like election cycles that sustain these dynamics. On other occasions, explanations have been sought from the flaws in the design of environmental law. Environmental law often relies on rigid, human-defined categories that clash with the interconnected nature of ecological systems, producing siloed approaches overlooking root causes. It also reflects an anthropocentric worldview, protecting nature mainly for human benefit and thereby leaving loopholes that allow harm. Critical scholarship highlights underlying extractivist and post-colonial dynamics. However, legal systemic structures arguably also play a key role. By exposing systemic legal barriers to environmental goals, we aim to identify specific legal changes to strengthen environmental law’s effectiveness. We ask:

1. How do legal systems (conceptual, constitutional, procedural etc.) – by themselves or with links to other systems (e.g., the economy) – interact with environmental legal instrumentation dampening its impact?
2. How can such legal systemic counter forces be navigated and their legal systemic impact evaluated?

Fully drafted manuscripts on institutional and legal dynamics across governance levels and sectors (e.g., EU–member states, constitutional–environmental law) are especially welcomed.

Convenors
Niko Soininen, Law School, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Seita Vesa, Law School, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Suvi-Tuuli Puharinen, Law School, University of Eastern Finland, Finland

Across Arctic Fennoscandia, large-scale industrial and energy mega-projects - including mining of critical minerals, oil and gas development, hydropower, wind power, aquaculture, and industrial fisheries - are reshaping landscapes, seascapes, governance regimes, and livelihoods. These projects do not occur in isolation; rather, they produce cumulative and systemic transformations that many local communities experience as profound encroachments on land, waters, and cultural continuity.

This workshop asks: Whose knowledge counts in shaping these transitions, and whose voices hold authority in governance and decision-making?

Research and policy often focus on single projects or sectors, neglecting the cumulative and interconnected impacts on ecosystems, livelihoods, and culture. Western expert systems continue to dominate decision-making, while Indigenous knowledge, local perspectives, and long-term embedded research are frequently sidelined.

Large universities, despite their resources, often engage in short-term “helicopter” research, extracting data without sustained collaboration or cultural understanding. In contrast, smaller northern institutions and long-term fieldworkers emphasize co-creation, trust-building, and attentiveness to local realities, yet their contributions remain consistently undervalued. Although decolonial approaches and knowledge co-creation are widely endorsed in theory, in practice they too often remain tokenistic, invoked as slogans rather than enacted through the time, sensitivity, and reciprocity they require. Building trust and deep understanding cannot be achieved in one- or two-week research visits. In rapidly transforming land- and seascapes and livelihoods, continuous re-engagement, rather than one-off research trips, is essential.

We invite fully drafted manuscripts that address these challenges of epistemic dominance and fragmented research in the context of large-scale industrial and energy mega-projects in Arctic Fennoscandia. How can co-creation and inclusive governance become conditions sine qua non of research and policy? What forms of time, trust, and collaboration are required to make space for diverse voices and complex impact assessments in decision-making? A collective paper is anticipated as an outcome of the session.

Convenors
Thora Herrmann, University of Oulu, Finland
Karolina Sikora, Lund University, Sweden / Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi, Finland
Stephan Dudeck, University of Tartu, Estonia

European countries are deeply embedded in the global economy, which often results in the outsourcing of environmental impacts to other regions. In response, a wide range of governance interventions has emerged to promote the sustainability of European supply chains. These include voluntary certification schemes, corporate commitments, binding human rights and environmental due diligence laws, and environmental provisions in trade agreements.

Despite these initiatives, multiple challenges persist. Policies often face limited legitimacy or support in producer countries, political pushback and dilution within Europe due to geopolitical tensions and competitiveness concerns, insufficient transparency and traceability along supply chains, as well as delays and gaps in implementation. Another challenge is to meaningfully incorporate the lived experiences of actors in producer countries into policy design and implementation, ensuring that these policies are responsive to on-the-ground realities. Beyond the shortcomings of individual instruments, the central challenge lies in designing a coherent policy landscape that fosters synergies and complementarities across different interventions, while avoiding conflicts and governance gaps.

Key questions include:

• What are the limitations of individual governance instruments, and how can these be addressed through well-designed policy packages?
• To what extent can experiences from different sectors such as mining, agriculture, and textiles, as well as from different countries and governance levels, provide transferable lessons?
• What implementation gaps persist in Nordic countries, and how might they be closed?
• How can scientific evidence inform policy debates in a European political climate that has become increasingly resistant to mandatory supply chain regulations?

This workshop invites fully drafted manuscripts that offer both theoretical and empirical contributions on the environmental governance of global supply chains, drawing on diverse cases, sectors, and national contexts. We seek comparative insights across these experiences while also aiming to identify policy mixes that can most effectively tackle sustainability challenges associated with global supply chains. Submissions using a wide range of methodological approaches are welcome, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research.

Convenors
Johanna Coenen, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden
Martin Persson, Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Malaika Yanou, Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Experts play a significant role in shaping norms on how societies should respond to sustainability crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and plastic pollution. However, social science has not fully addressed recent shifts in the nature of expertise. There are indications of a rise of more policy-oriented and implementation-focused forms of ‘transition expertise’, which combines lay and scientific knowledge and operates through state and corporate networks (Frandsen & Hasselbalch, 2024). Likewise, sustainability consulting has become a significant business sector for advisory firms (Christensen & Collington, 2024). At the global level, concepts such as ‘mega expertise’ highlight new epistemic practices in global environmental assessments that aim to influence policy action (Lidskog, 2025). These developments reflect an increasing emphasis on making science policy-relevant and actionable to large scale societal transformations (Lidskog & Sundqvist, 2022) while retaining democratic sensitivity (Blok, 2019).

To advance research on expertise in the green transition, we invite environmental and critical social science scholars to explore how experts shape action across sectors and scales. Our ambition is to outline a research agenda that transcends disciplinary boundaries by reexamining traditional assumptions about experts and advancing novel conceptual frameworks and analytical tools. We invite scholars to develop an agenda that incorporates a three-pronged approach to examining emerging configurations of climate and environmental expertise: (1) Expert actors: Who is recognized as a legitimate green transition expert over time and across different contexts; (2) Expert content: What constitutes environmental expertise today, and what form of knowledge are marginalized; and (3) Expert context: What institutional conditions shape the role and authority of expertise in sustainability transformation?

Fully drafted manuscripts may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Emerging forms of climate and environmental expertise and their role in shaping how states and organizations prioritize mitigation, adaptation and transformation efforts.
• Shifts in the authority and legitimacy of expertise, including whether environmental expertise is in decline, or is taking new forms.
• The significance of spatial, political, and cultural contexts in conditioning the role and influence of environmental experts.
  

Convenors
Rolf Lidskog, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden
Søren Lund Frandsen, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Jacob Hasselbalch, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

As imaginaries of imminent military threats and total nuclear annihilation receded with the dissolution of the Cold War, the political agenda had space for more diverse crisis scenarios. The targets of preparedness and crisis governance became broader, ranging from climate change to ‘hybrid’ military threats. The term 'crisis' has since proliferated as a signifier for pandemics and military invasions alike, while disaster governance has cultivated an all-hazards approach, stressing preparedness for natural, technological, and societal emergencies. In Nordic policy the broadened riskscape is evident in the comprehensive and societal security models, as well as in how climate change is approached as one security threat among others.

Whether the Nordic security approaches have been successful at addressing and analysing diverse risks in an effective and balanced way is worth debating, but the war in Ukraine has tilted the balance altogether. Not only has military preparedness been strengthened in the Nordics through a substantial influx of resources and political and media attention, but the whole conceptual and political umbrellas dealing with crises seem to have reverted to a national defense framing. This shift creates a widening gap in relation to other risks, such as the urgent need for action for climate change, environmental degradation and other connected hazards.

We invite fully drafted manuscripts that explore the following questions and related points:

• Which crisis phenomena become overlooked or invisible when the societal focus shifts towards military and defence themes?
• What risks are there for societal crisis preparedness when the focus becomes fixated on defense?
• How do these manifest on different temporal and spatial scales?
• Do research and researchers have (or should they have) a role in widening the focus towards more diverse threats/crises?

We look forward to bringing together contributions that build a conversation on these broad topics. Beyond researchers, we invite policy-makers and practitioners to our session. We ask researchers to present a full paper draft.

Convenors

Eija Meriläinen, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences,
Örebro University, Sweden
Maija Nikkanen, Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Finland
Erik Persson Pavlovic, Center for Societal Risk Research, Karlstad University, Sweden
Sofia Hallerbäck, Center for Societal Risk Research, Karlstad University, Sweden

This workshop evaluates the prospects for the European Union (EU) to achieve climate neutrality while strengthening democratic resilience, all in a world permeated by turbulence. When the European Commission launched the European Green Deal (EGD) in 2019 and with it the ambition to become climate neutral by 2050, it did so at a time of widespread climate support evidenced by youth protests and success of green parties. However, the tide has shifted for the implementation of the EGD. Member states are struggling to decarbonize in the wake of poly-crises such as climate change, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the cost-of-living and energy crises. Meanwhile, we are witnessing continued democratic backsliding and authoritarian populism. Furthermore, there are indications that Von der Leyen II prioritizes competitiveness and simplification at the expense of climate, and the European Parliament has become more right-wing and less climate ambitious after the 2024 elections.

This workshop invites fully drafted manuscripts that address the following questions, among others:

• How can the EU accelerate decarbonization while exercising global leadership in multilateral climate diplomacy amid a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape marked by crises, turbulence, and shifting power constellations?
• How does the interaction between EU institutions (European Parliament, European Commission and the Council) impact the EGD
• How will the EGD be reshaped by the shift in focus to competitiveness as reflected in the EU’s Industrial Clean Deal?
• How have institutions of democratic governance at multiple governance levels across the EU evolved to respond to the challenges of the climate crisis and implementation of the EGD?
• To what extent can democratic innovations within the climate sphere serve to strengthen and reinvigorate democratic governance more broadly?
• To what extent will the Fit for 55 legislation and updated 2040 climate and energy framework deliver a just transition while ensuring the EU’s climate goals are met?

We invite full papers from different theoretical and methodological approaches across disciplines of political science, law, sociology, EU and sustainability studies and economics, and particularly contributions from early career researchers. The workshop aims to foster dialogue across disciplines and methods for an interdisciplinary and integrated understanding of how the EGD can achieve decarbonization and societal transformation in turbulent times.

Convenors

Jana Gheuens, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden
Diarmuid Torney, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland
Matilda Miljand, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

China and the US have, in different ways, transformed their economies and geopolitical relations through strong industrial policy in recent years. With Russia also raising the stakes, Europe has scrambled to regain its agency in changing the trajectories of competitiveness and decarbonization of the continent. Through coordinated industrial policy, the EU (along with member states) wishes to rapidly strengthen its security and phase out fossil fuels while improving its competitiveness and the social conditions of its citizens. A green transition is now effectively inseparable from industrial policy, which changes the rules of the game also for environmental social scientists seeking to influence issues such as energy and climate policy. In the meantime, it remains unclear to what extent geopolitical and competitiveness ends may crowd out member states’ social and environmental agendas.

We invite researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to contribute to a workshop exploring the role of industrial policy in driving a just and effective green transition. We particularly welcome contributions addressing:

1. Lessons from the Nordic Region and Beyond – successes and failures of industrial policy across different contexts. What lessons can be drawn, what pitfalls avoided, and what elements must be reinforced?
2. Conditionalities in Government Support – How should public funding and risk-taking be structured? What role should conditionalities play; for example, the principle of “public risk, public gain”? Alignment with the Nordic tripartite model, prevention of rent-seeking, and/or limitations on shareholder remuneration?
3. Informational and Coordinative Capacities – What public capacities are needed to implement effective industrial policy in the Nordic institutional context? What role should science and researchers play in informing and coordinating such efforts?
4. Towards a new Nordic Perspective on EU Industrial Policy – How can the Nordic countries and actors contribute to the formulation of a transformative and just EU-wide industrial policy?

We will prioritize fully or nearly fully drafted papers over research ideas or half-written texts. Papers need not, however, be close to submission, since our discussions aim to provide feedback for the development of the ideas, theories and methodologies.

Convenors

Paavo Järvensivu, BIOS Research Unit, Helsinki, Finland
Johan Rootzén, IVL, Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Sweden
Viktor Skyrman, Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted as essential responses to biodiversity loss and increasing human wellbeing while addressing societal challenges such as climate adaptation, and sustainable urban development. Yet, their successful implementation hinges not only on knowledge, but also on inclusive processes that bring stakeholders together. This workshop addresses the challenges and opportunities of co-creation in NbS: how to design and govern participatory processes that deliver both legitimacy and effective outcomes.

The workshop links directly to the conference theme, focusing on two gaps: between research and policymaking, and between rapid decision-making and inclusive participation. We will critically examine cases of co-creation to identify when and how participatory processes strengthen NbS implementation – and when they risk becoming ineffective and/or causing dissatisfaction, and which barriers and enablers they meet.

Core questions include:

• How can we balance time consuming participatory processes with urgent climate and biodiversity action?
• What constitutes successful participation, and when might top-down governance be a better option?
• How can we ensure meaningful involvement of politicians and decision-makers in co-creation processes?
• Which barriers to NbS implementation can be mitigated through collaborative approaches?

We invite fully drafted manuscripts that draw on empirical cases of implementing environmental/nature policies, theoretical reflections on participation and governance, and methodological contributions. These may come from different disciplines and geographical contexts.

Our aim is to advance a comparative understanding of what makes NbS co-creation successful, under which conditions it fails, and how these insights can bridge the gap between research, policy, and practice. The workshop will be highly interactive, giving space for discussion of papers, reflections across cases, and joint identification of pathways for future research and policy design.

Convenors
Jóna Ólavsdóttir, Centre for Nature-based Solutions, Aarhus University, Denmark
Anders Branth Pedersen, Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Denmark
Jens Christian Svabo Justinussen, Faculty of History and Social Science, University of the Faroe Islands, Faroe Islands

Under what conditions do environmental policies cause societal discord and polarization between groups? How can conflicts over environmental protection initiatives be resolved? Is there a trade-off between policies’ effectiveness and the level of discord and resistance generated? And how do social identity and mobilization on environmental issues correlate?

We ask these questions realizing that several deep transitions need to happen to mitigate climate change and stop biodiversity loss. As new policies are implemented and will affect peopleʼs lives more directly, the potential for public protest, political mobilization, and polarization between groups will increase.

This is a problem both from an instrumental and a substantive perspective. If a majority of the public opposes a measure to reduce emissions or nature loss, it lacks democratic legitimacy, and the political cost of implementation will be high. In substantive terms, introducing new policies could cause societal polarization and conflict, particularly if the support or opposition towards a policy relates to group affiliations and social identity.

Existing literature already possesses a fairly good theoretical understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms influencing how people react to climate policy measures. However, we still need more knowledge of how these mechanisms play out in response to more restrictive policies, including individualsʼ choices as consumers. There is also a need to bring together insights on policy effectiveness and feasibility. For example, is it true that policies with strong effects must produce societal discord? Do potentials for mitigation and polarization necessarily correlate?

This panel invites fully drafted manuscripts on topics such as:

• Identifying the polarizing potential of different environmental policy measures
• Analyzing reasons for opposition and polarization between groups as an effect of environmental policies
• Comparisons of policy effectiveness and counter-mobilization
• Environmental policies and social identity.

Convenors
Endre Tvinnereim, Department of Government, University of Bergen, Norway
Patrik Michaelsen, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Ingvild Fjellså, Climate, Environment, Sustainability group, NORCE Norwegian Research Centre, Norway

A key concern for environmental governance is how action is framed temporally, and timed. Ill-timed actions – from issuing a flood warning to maintaining infrastructures – can have disastrous consequences. Timing practices can be characterised as a particular form of knowledge or competence for governance, which is contextual and plural across social worlds; contrast the time-work of project managers to phenologists, or politicians for example. Temporal competences are broad and variously embody an ability to sychronise activities to multiple temporal processes and rhythms (human and environmental), coordinate with timings of other social groups, control sequencing and tempo, structure the temporal narrative (from rhetorics of emergency to slow violence), and read the politically expedient moment to act for instance. This workshop is concerned with processes that mobilise temporal competences and bridge them to environmental action and policy, with specific attention to justice and including timings of overlooked and marginalised groups.

Arguably, most timing decisions for environmental governance are made by groups of experts, coordinated to the clock and calendar according to scientific and budgetary time-frames. Yet, decisions on timing are paradigmatic examples for transdisciplinarity. Ensuring timeliness is complex, uncertain and highly political. It demands consideration for a multitude of temporalities, woven into complex patterns across scales, which are in flux. And it means weighing the values and norms of different groups, and negotiating whose time matters as part of democratic processes; perspectives on temporalities are always partial, determined by individuals’ standpoints. This workshop is therefore equally concerned with describing how temporal practices influence environmental governance, and examples of normative efforts to make multiple temporal competences salient for action. It asks which temporal competences are best fitted to which decisions? And, are there temporal competences that should be nurtured, or others that should be limited?

The workshop welcomes fully drafted manuscripts that take up topics of temporal competence, justice and cross-scalar dynamics (spatial and temporal) in the context of environmental decision-making.

Convenors
Scott Bremer, Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway
Miriam Holst Jensen, Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark
Keri Facer, School of Education, University of Bristol, UK

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the hopes for coordinated climate action on the international agenda have crumbled. Previous ambitious-sounding statements from business and politicians has receded. Coupled with the successes of far right and authoritarian parties, climate change denial in its most extreme form has reappeared, not just at the fringes of the debate but at the highest political level. Linear understandings of rhetorical strategies, exemplified in the description of climate obstruction as moving “from denial to delay”, have failed to explain such developments. All in all, the efforts to understand the lack of climate action as a “cultural” problem, i.e. in terms of knowledge and information deficits or distortion, have been criticised within the social sciences for not offering convincing explanations of the state of the world today or pathways forward. Alternative approaches focusing on the material conditions of climate obstruction, such as economic structures, social and political power, have been argued to provide better tools to navigate our current situation.

Building on the provocation that societies and researchers need to stop obsessing over climate dis- and misinformation, this workshop will explore the gaps, the intersections and the interplay between what could be described as cultural and materialist explanations and understandings of climate obstruction. We welcome both empirical and theoretical fully drafted manuscripts that engage with and problematise these different approaches and explanations. We are interested in a broad variety of research contexts (in the Nordics or elsewhere), subjects and case studies, as well as range of actors (from the far right to businesses, experts and scientists, and more), through which the problem of different perspectives, and the state of climate obstruction (and its mainstreaming), can be fruitfully explored. Contributions may come from the fields such as social movement research, political theory and political economy, communication studies, environmental sociology, political ecology, gender studies and more.

Convenors
Tero Toivanen, BIOS Research Unit, Helsinki / Economic and Social History, University of Helsinki, Finland
Kristoffer Ekberg, Human Ecology, Lund University, Sweden

Historically, conservationist and environmental movements were often embedded in conservative or nationalist worldviews, emphasizing the value of nature as integral to cultural heritage, national identity, and the well-being of communities. These traditions were often infused with nostalgic imaginaries of landscapes, rurality, and stewardship. However, in contemporary debate on environmental dilemmas, conservative and nationalistic parties are often opposing transformative policies. There are different explanations for a shift toward an anti-environmental stance within conservatism, such as free-market and growth priorities, identity-polarisation, anti-establishment sentiments, social dominance orientation, and geography of discontent. In a shifting political landscape, however, the understanding of environmental orientations within conservatism requires further exploration.

Moreover, recent literature suggests that environmental engagement may not always map neatly onto conventional political cleavages, and that constituencies concerned with nature and sustainability are found across the political spectrum. Arguments for environmental protection are occasionally motivated on conservative or nationalistic narratives, and some scholars suggest that there is an emerging expression of green conservatism and eco-nationalism. Concurrently, some are concerned over more extreme forms of eco-nationalism, which may oppose climate action while using protection of the environment to justify exclusion and violence.

This workshop seeks to revisit and critically interrogate the historical trajectories, contemporary manifestations, and political futures of both an anti-environmental and green conservatism. We ask how these orientations are shaped, and how they may influence policy, public opinion, and political mobilization in an era of climate polarization.
We invite scholars from across the social sciences to submit fully drafted manuscripts that address these questions from diverse disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. Comparative analyses, historical studies, discourse analyses, ethnographies, survey-based work, and political economy approaches are all welcome. We particularly encourage contributions that explore cross-national differences, trace continuities and ruptures in anti-environmental, green conservative or eco-nationalist traditions or investigate how such orientations intersect with broader struggles over democracy, identity, and climate politics.

Convenors
Frederik Pfeiffer, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Daniel Lindvall, Climate Change Leadership, Department of Earth Sciences, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Uppsala University, Sweden
Kirsti M. Jylhä, Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden

Datafication—as the conversion of any aspects of existence into digital data—is typical of our digital age (van Dijck, 2014). In the context of the intertwined global climate and biodiversity crises, datafication, often coupled with advances in machine learning/AI, has emerged as a way of closing the gap between climate and biodiversity governance (Bakker & Ritts, 2018). At the core of these practices lie new means of collecting and analyzing digital data, enabling innovative ways to capture, measure, track, and act upon climate and biodiversity. These include promises of improved digital monitoring, reporting, and verification of carbon and biodiversity credits (UNDP, 2023), and new mechanisms for benefit-sharing that will purportedly enable traceable and accountable links between actors at different governance levels (Scholz et al. 2022).

Crucially, digital data—often powering algorithms—are deployed in the making of new objects of governance and are increasingly relied upon as a resource for governing the present and predicting the future (Egbert, 2024). However, despite drawing its authority from core principles such as openness, transparency, traceability, neutrality, universality, and resource optimization, its legitimacy is rooted in dynamics that often obscure the human and social dimensions shaping data-related decisions (Gabrys et al., 2022). In this regard, critical studies have been instrumental in deconstructing dominant imaginaries and discourses surrounding datafication, shedding light on their genealogies, rationales, and materializations (Crawford, 2021; Zuboff, 2019).

In this workshop, we invite contributions that advance the conceptualization of datafication and associated technologies in relation to climate and biodiversity governance and/or studies that engage with empirical material on the topic. We envision a broad array of analytical entry points, e.g., inspired by STS, governmentality, political ecology, and related critical lenses. Possible research questions include, but not are not limited to:

• How can the digital be conceptualized in environmental governance?
• How are innovative digital technologies deployed to jointly address climate and biodiversity issues, and with what tangible and intangible effects?
• Where and how can resistance to datafication be observed?

Convenors
Maria Jernnäs, Department of Thematic Studies, Environmental Change, Linköping University, Sweden
Juliana Porsani, Department of Thematic Studies, Environmental Change, Linköping University, Sweden

Promises that digitisation will help solve environmental crises are currently increasing and abundant, particularly with recent hype surrounding AI. These promises of digitisation and datafication include seeing and knowing environmental problems better, creating more accountability, or improving environmental governance decisions (Kloppenburg et al., 2022). What is more, AI is suggested to advance knowledge production and environmental governance, for example through climate impact prediction, environmental monitoring enhancement, improved participation and engagement, and the optimisation of resource use and extraction.

Digitisation processes thus promise to close some “gaps” concerning the implementation, monitoring, or knowledge on environmental issues, which also includes making environmental governance more accessible to non-expert actors. But they are also said to open up many new issues, “gaps”, or concerns, such as about knowledge politics and democratic decision-making (Machen & Nost, 2021), validity and credibility of widespread datafication (Ekström, 2022), understandings and imaginaries of the environment (Wickberg, 2023), or the social visibility and negotiability of environmental concerns (Haider & Rödl, 2023).

With both promises and pitfalls of digitisation and AI in mind, this workshop invites complete manuscripts dedicated to the role of digitisation and AI in environmental governance and policy-making processes. We welcome participants to deliberate questions including:

• How does digitisation and datafication impact knowledge practices and this knowledge’s potential to contribute to environmental change?
• How do they shape imaginaries of, or practices in, environmental governance or policy?
• How do they bridge some “gaps” to reach or support implementation of environmental goals, but also open up others?
• How do digital infrastructures shape how environmental concerns are negotiated or negotiable?
• How does AI interact with environmental misinformation?

This workshop invites fully drafted manuscripts from fields such as science and technology studies, environmental communication, information studies, geography, law, environmental science, and others that investigates, problematises, discusses, and reflects on digitisation and the environment. To this end, the conveners and the conference will provide a platform for fruitful, critical, and change-oriented discussions on environmental governance and policy in times of AI hype.

References

Ekström, B. (2022). Thousands of examining eyes: Credibility, authority and validity in biodiversity citizen science data production. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 75(1), 149–170.
Haider, J., & Rödl, M. (2023). Google Search and the creation of ignorance: The case of the climate crisis. Big Data & Society, 10(1), 20539517231158997.
Kloppenburg, S. et al. (2022). Scrutinizing environmental governance in a digital age: New ways of seeing, participating, and intervening. One Earth, 5(3), 232–241.
Machen, R., & Nost, E. (2021). Thinking algorithmically: The making of hegemonic knowledge in climate governance. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(3), 555–569.
Wickberg, A. (2023). Environing media and cultural techniques: From the history of agriculture to AI-driven smart farming. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 26(4), 392–409.

Convenors
Malte Rödl, Division of Environmental Communication, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Björn Ekström, Swedish School of Library and Information Sciences, University of Borås, Sweden
Malin Joy Nemeth, School of Social and Political Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Amelia Mutter, Division of Environmental Communication, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

Within the environmental social sciences, there have been few gaps wider than that between scholars claiming environmental harms can be decoupled from economic growth, and scholars who say growth cannot be sustainable. The former are more optimistic about the potential for new policies and green technologies to address contemporary environmental problems. The latter argue, in contrast, that true sustainability will require more profound social transformations, such as the kinds of economic downscaling captured under the framework of “degrowth”.

Can the gap between decoupling and degrowth be bridged? Our influence as scholars on policy and public debates is likely to be greater, if we can build more consensus. In this workshop, we therefore invite papers interrogating decoupling and degrowth, providing constructive new arguments or evidence in support of either view, and/or proposing some form of reconciliation. One promising direction for reconciliation could be the identification of specific conditions under which decoupling is—and is not—possible. Insofar as decoupling is achievable through effective policymaking, making it a political outcome, public attitudes and beliefs about the feasibility and desirability of decoupling versus degrowth become central. Given the substantial power they possess, the positions and preferences of polluting firms and industries may also be critical, and worth careful consideration from scholars of both decoupling and degrowth.

Fully drafted manuscripts that grapple with any of these issues and questions are welcome, including but not limited to:

• Quantitative or qualitative analyses of conditions under which decoupling of environmental harms (including but not only greenhouse gas emissions) has or has not been achieved, at spatial scales from the local to the global.
• Policies, institutions, or strategies that may be effective for decoupling, or that are not as effective or promising as scholars or advocates have suggested.
• Attitudinal research about public views of decoupling and degrowth, including people’s beliefs about economy-environment relationships and the costs of environmental protection versus the costs of inaction.
• Analyses of the limits of what green technologies can do, given their own resource demands or other environmental impacts (e.g., material throughput).
• New syntheses of key literatures in decoupling and degrowth, and new theoretical or conceptual arguments about promising directions for future research.
  

Climate policies perceived as unfair might trigger resistance, leading to polarization, conflict, or democratic backlash (Patterson 2023, Lindgren et al. 2023). Lindvall (2023) found that inclusive decision-making and local compensation can help shape acceptance of wind power establishments. Nilsson et al. (2024) identified four pillars constituting social sustainability: equity, wellbeing, participation and influence, and social capital. Hence, both distributional and procedural justice are important for achieving a socially sustainable climate transition perceived to be legitimate. Citizen-led climate initiatives and civil society engagement aiming for a fair transition can create spaces for active participation and deliberation, considering both procedural and distributional justice.

Within the research programme FAIRTRANS (fairtrans.nu), the conceptualization of Community Climate Commons (CCCs) - community-based commons that form the basis for mobilization and collective action against ongoing climate change - illustrates how local mobilization and collective resources can promote fair climate transition (Colding et al. 2022, Nässén et al. 2025). These bottom-up based initiatives complement today’s more top-down strategies (macro policies and technology) for climate mitigation and adaptation. Such citizen-led initiatives are based on a social-ecological perspective, emphasizing both social and ecological sustainability.

Energy communities (ECs) are examples of this, owned and managed collectively. In the EU ca. 9,000 energy ECs involve 2 million residents. Since 2024 ECs are part of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EU 2023, points 117, 118). Motives include advancing energy efficiency, fighting energy poverty, and offering consumers a stake in producing, consuming or sharing energy (EU 2019/944).

The aim of this workshop is to focus on what role citizen-led climate initiatives and collective civil society action can play in promoting a fair climate transition.

Overarching questions are:

• What role does local collective civic action play in an effective and fair climate transition?
• How do initiatives such as ECs shape discourse in the transition to renewable energy?

We welcome fully drafted papers that explore bottom-up and locally grounded initiatives and collective action for fair climate transition.

Convenors
Stefan Sjöberg, Social Work, University of Gävle, Sweden
Stephan Barthel, Environmental Science, University of Gävle, Sweden
Nessica Nässén, Social Work, University of Gävle, Sweden

Extinction of species and degradation of ecosystems, caused by human activity, continue at an alarming rate. To address these challenges, several major processes are underway at global, European and national levels, including the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and Nature Restoration Regulation.

How can social sciences play a more crucial role here? By providing critique and analysis of the causes behind biodiversity loss; identifying, presenting and developing new alternatives and pathways?

This session will explore how different social science perspectives on biodiversity contribute and relate to transformative change of societies and their practices. And how these perspectives will be useful for policymakers and practitioners and, bridge the gap between research, policymaking and action.

We focus on what social sciences reveal about biodiversity related problems and which societal conditions ultimately drive loss of biodiversity. Examples of questions to discuss are: What is urgent to tackle and, how in terms of power, structures and practices? Which are the key actors in policy- and decision making? How do we as social scientists look upon our own researcher position in the transformation, and how do different theoretical approaches handle questions of normativity, reflexivity, legitimacy and intervention? We will also explore how research on biodiversity can spur change in research, policy and practice.

We therefore welcome fully drafted manuscripts concerning societal causes and mechanisms behind threats to biodiversity, as well as contributions concerning solutions and alternatives – on both local, regional, national and global levels. Different empirical cases as well as theoretical orientations are most welcome. You can choose whether you want to include one or several of the themes and research questions suggested above.

Since the input of social sciences has repeatedly been pronounced as underrepresented but important for strengthening biodiversity and transformation, here we present an opportunity to engage social scientists from various empirical fields and theoretical standpoints to engage via written papers, joint discussions and a concluding research panel.

Convenors
Mari Kågström, Political Science and Natural Resource Governance, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Johanna Tangnäs, SLU Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Tuija Hilding-Rydevik, SLU Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

Policy reversal is now a major scholarly, political, and public concern in contemporary climate and environmental politics. From accumulating experiences of backlash to climate policies across a variety of countries (Patterson 2023; Patterson et al., 2025), to public and parliamentary pushback against European Green Deal policies, and dismantling of policies and institutions in the United States and elsewhere, climate and environmental policy is being challenged in new and profound ways. Yet, the rapidly growing research on these topics remains highly fragmented (e.g., in terms of concepts, causal explanations, methods, and interpretations).

Bridging gaps in scientific knowledge on these proliferating phenomena is urgently needed. This requires: (i) bringing diverse emerging (and longstanding) cases and lines of enquiry into productive dialogue to explain the dynamics and implications of policy reversals, and (ii) identifying similarities and distinguishing differences across and within cases (including among different actor perspectives), to (iii) make sense of the rapidly evolving contexts of climate and environmental policymaking. Doing so is crucial to not only bridging gaps between the urgency of transformation and real-world policy implementation, but also gaps between differing social science disciplines and approaches to such research.

Questions also arise about the implications of policy reversal for environmental politics and future ecological and social outcomes. How does the apparently widespread occurrence of policy reversal challenge our understanding of environmental politics? Might it suggest potential blindspots in theorizing policy and broader political change? Are there circumstances under which policy reversals may be generative (e.g., revealing overlooked interests and values, stimulating new debates, or provoking new strategies for policy action)? If so, under which conditions does this occur, and how does this vary for different actors within heterogeneous and unequal societies? Can we develop systemic comparative and transnational frameworks to understand these phenomena?

We welcome empirical and conceptual fully drafted manuscripts across geographies, political spaces, and disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. The workshop will engage deeply with all authors, and discuss comparative learning across differing cases, insights, and arguments.

Convenors
James Patterson, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Stacy VanDeveer, John C. McCormack School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston, United States
Ksenia Anisimova, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Climate obstruction is in part driven by elite actors, such as the fossil fuel industry, neo-liberal think-tanks, and nationalist parties, who try to delay action on climate change, either by literally denying scientific knowledge about the climate, alternatively, by spreading discourses of delay to fend off governmental action regulating carbon emissions. Both climate denialism and discourses of delay constitute and are constituted by broader cultures of ignorance or socially organised denial. Efforts to communicate more knowledge about the climate sciences to the public have mostly proven ineffective, arguably because cultures of ignorance are embedded in the high-carbon lifestyle of most inhabitants in industrialised countries. The latter kind of climate obstruction is sometimes spoken of as response or implicatory denial, where the scientific facts are acknowledged, but the will to act accordingly is missing.

This workshop aims to investigate the connection between climate obstruction by elite actors, and cultures of ignorance and everyday complacency among the lay population. We invite both empirical and theoretical fully drafted manuscripts which address questions such as:

• Is it possible to combat elite climate obstruction without breaking free from a culture of ignorance?
• How are discourses of delay that are pushed by elite actors perceived by the population at large?
• How do cultures of ignorance support fossil fuel extractivism, and how does elite climate obstruction help sustain cultures of ignorance?
• What strategies have elite actors adopted to cater to preexisting concerns and values among the public and specific demographies?
• What are the historical precedents of present-day climate obstruction, and what can these cases tell us about the interplay between elite actors and lay populations in maintaining cultures of ignorance?

Bibliography
Brulle, R. J. et al., eds. 2024. Climate Obstruction across Europe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lamb, W.F. et al. 2020. Discourses of Climate Delay. Global Sustainability 3: e17, 1–5.
Norgaard, K.M. 2011. Living in Denial. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. 2011. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Convenors
Kjell Vowles, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Johan Söderberg, Linguistics and Theory of Science Unit, Gothenburg University, Sweden
Victoria Vallström, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Amidst the 2021-23 energy crisis, many European governments took decisions to support their citizens with rapidly increasing energy costs. However, in countries like Sweden and Finland, some of the subsidies were based solely on households’ energy expenditure. These subsidies benefited anyone with high energy costs – including high-income households with high electricity bills (Ahlvik et al. 2023). At the same time, households that decreased their consumption in response to price hikes and societal pressure were left with a smaller subsidy. The case exemplifies how policies that could alleviate energy vulnerability may benefit wealthier households and normalise high levels of consumption.

This workshop addresses the contradictions of energy vulnerability and justice within contexts of ‘overconsumption’. We understand overconsumption as a concept-in-making (e.g. Kjellberg 2008) and direct attention to how the concept is enacted in debates on energy justice. In addition to questions of access and distribution, the workshop invites broader perspectives on the ethics of energy production, consumption, and policies. This includes perspectives on how people and governments make ethical judgements related to energy (Smith & High 2017, 2019), how environmentally and economically ‘efficient’ policies may fail to account for questions of social justice (Jalas & Numminen 2022), as well as how wider patterns of power imbalances are linked to energy poverty and inequality (Vahnberg & von Platten 2025).

We invite fully drafted manuscripts focused on various contexts across the globe. The workshop may include perspectives on household energy questions, energy production, energy infrastructures, as well as transport. We also welcome papers that connect energy justice and ethics to climate change and/or natural resource use.

Papers in this workshop may be related, but not limited to:

• How is ‘overconsumption’ understood in relation to energy use?
• How and why do certain patterns of energy consumption become necessary?
• How are energy justice and vulnerability addressed in contexts of, and in connection with, overconsumption?
• How do infrastructural, technical, or political energy solutions and initiatives frame and address overconsumption?
• How can academic knowledge on overconsumption inform policy-making? What other knowledge-users are there?
• What kinds of broader social, material, temporal, and economic relations drive energy poverty and inequality in particular settings?
  

Convenors
Sini Numminen, Department of Design, Aalto University, Finland
Jack Vahnberg, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Malmö University, Sweden
Jenni Viitala, Department of Design, Aalto University, Finland
Mikko Jalas, Department of Design, Aalto University, Finland

In this session we explore the so-called “labour-recognition-transformation hypothesis” (Eisen 2020) which states that work that people do with animals can generate moral intuitions and social practices that help to reconnect people with nature. For this purpose we invite studies of human-animal work that scrutinize this hypothesis. Examples of human-animal work that we have in mind here include (but are not limited to) animal traction, (silvo)pastoralism, beekeeping, and even mutualistic human-wildlife cooperation.

Consideration of human-animal work is often missing from recent proposals for transformative change. Human-animal work, and the knowledge and skills that this work requires, is recognised for its cultural-historical value, but is largely considered as irrelevant for transformative change due to its reliance on labour-intensive technology, low economic profitability, hard physical labour, but also assumptions about animal abuse and overexploitation of ecosystems. However, evidence from rural sociology, agroecology and conservation biology, as well as the repeasantisation of rural areas suggests that these modes of land use can offer a radical and promising alternative to modern agriculture which is responsible for 86% of all species currently threatened with extinction.

We are inviting fully drafted manuscripts that integrate sociological, philosophical, and biological theories, together with case studies representing different landscapes and practices of human-animal work, to examine how human-animal interdependency is shaped through work, and how the work influences human morals and values related to sustainability concerns. We are also interested in analytical studies that theorise and conceptualise human-animal work as forms of resistance, and meaningful alternatives, to a trajectory of agrarian and rural mechanization and intensification that is responsible for the alienation that comes from the widening divide between natures and modern societies.

We aim to use this session as a springboard for a special issue of scientific publications that introduce the under-appreciated potential and limitations of human-animal work to (re)generate sustainability transformations for a broad scientific audience interested in sustainability matters.

References
Eisen, J. 2020. Down on the Farm: Status, Exploitation, and Agricultural Exceptionalism. In: C.E. Blattner et al. (eds.), Animal labour: A new frontier of interspecies justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 139-159.

Convenors
Wynand Boonstra, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden
Anna Skarin, Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Andrea Pettit, Anthropology Lab, University of Liège, Belgium

While energy transition is urgent and promises broad societal benefits, it also risks aggravating existing injustices and land use conflicts. In this workshop we direct specific focus on the disproportionate burdens increasingly placed on Indigenous peoples by energy transition policy and projects, globally and in the Nordics. Such industrial (re)expansion on Indigenous territory is often framed as green transition but is increasingly contested and questioned as expressions of green colonialism or green sacrifice.

The importance of critical social science scholarship is increasingly recognized to examine and address such tensions, including power disparities and the inherently political dimension of transition policies and project implementation. Concepts such as “just transitions” or “just transformations” are quickly coming in-demand in both academic and policy circles. This simultaneously raises important questions on how benefits and burdens are divided across social groups and scales, what justice means for those impacted, how rights and rights-holders are respected and fairly treated, and who has a say in determining what futures – and what human-environmental relations – we seek transitions towards? How can research contribute to the implementation of corporate responsibilities and state duties to protect and uphold Indigenous rights under increasing pressures and colliding societal goals and values?

This workshop invites fully drafted manuscripts that engage in this complex nexus of transition, justice, coloniality, Indigenous rights and land use politics. We welcome both empirical, theoretical and transdisciplinary elaborations from Sápmi and beyond. In the workshop, we devote time to discuss comparative learnings across the different cases, sectors and geographies.

Convenors
Annette Löf, Rights and Equity, Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden
Rasmus Kløcker Larsen, Stockholm Environment Institute / Uppsala University, Sweden
Katarina Inga, Stockholm Environment Institute / Mittuniversitetet/ Gaskeuniversiteete, Sweden

This workshop explores how knowledge can be mobilized to support democratic engagement and empower social movements as drivers of sustainability transitions. The implementation of environmental goals is often hindered by political resistance, institutional inertia, and limited public participation. The potential of democracy as a wheel of change is held back by depoliticization of the public sphere, while social movements and civil society actors, which could play a vital role in pushing for transformative change, face challenges in sustaining momentum, influencing policy, and navigating power dynamics.

The aim of this workshop is to critically examine how democratic institutions and processes can be strengthened in the context of contested transitions, and how social movements can become more effective in achieving their goals. We encourage transdisciplinary approaches that engage with policy, governance, activism, and knowledge co-production. Fully drafted but not published manuscripts are invited.

Empirical and theoretical papers may explore cases topics such as:

• Grassroots initiatives advancing local sustainability and justice
• Climate protests movements and youth-led mobilizations
• Conflicts around resource extraction and land use
• Re-politicization and environmental politics
• Participatory governance, and citizen engagement in environmental decision-making
• Relations between researchers and activists in co-producing transformative knowledge
• Policies for inclusive and just transitions for communities in polluting or extractive industries

Key questions include:

• How can democratic participation and legitimacy be enhanced in sustainability policymaking and implementation?
• How can social movements build strategic alliances, sustain mobilization, and influence policy over time?
• What role does knowledge—scientific, experiential, and activist—play in shaping transformative policies and movement strategies?
• How can researchers interact with movements and communities to co-produce knowledge that supports transformative action?

This workshop addresses how gaps between environmental goals and implementation can be bridged through democratic engagement and movement-led action; how diverse forms of knowledge can be integrated into policymaking; and how co-production and collaboration across science, society, and activism can advance sustainability.

Convenors
Kristina Boreus, Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Sweden
Rikard Hjorth Warlenius, School of Natural Science, Technology and Environmental Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden
Karin Bradley, Urban and Regional Studies, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Kim von der Heide, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Low-carbon transitions are not only spatial but also deeply temporal. Despite its centrality, temporal dimensions of transitions have received less explicit conceptual and empirical attention than spatial ones. While inroads are being made, certain topics and approaches have gained more visibility than others. In recent years, for example, a burgeoning body of work has focused on anticipating and imagining futures, seeking to pluralize these beyond those included in scientific scenarios or roadmaps. In contrast, the role of the past has remained comparatively underexplored, aside from a few key concepts, such as path dependency. Elsewhere, anthropological and humanities research has advanced the “politics of time”, highlighting how infrastructures’ are entangled with promissory, future-oriented temporalities. Yet, the uptake of these ideas in social science scholarship on low-carbon transitions is still fairly limited.

This workshop engages the conference theme by addressing overlooked gaps between different ways of knowing and organizing time. We ask: How can different conceptual and disciplinary approaches to temporality be connected? How can policy timeframes (e.g. “net zero by 2050”) be reconciled with lived temporalities of communities and practitioners? How can the urgency of rapid decarbonization be bridged with slower institutional change, or with legacies that shape possible futures?

The aim is to make the temporal dimensions of low-carbon transitions more explicit across social sciences, humanities, and policy-relevant research. We invite both conceptual and empirical fully drafted manuscripts that address temporal gaps in transitions, including but not limited to:

• Conceptualizing time: how time can be known, theorized, and observed in transitions.
• Interacting temporalities: past-present-future entanglements, nostalgia, anticipation, uncertainty.
• Experiencing and governing time: speed, urgency, deadlines, tipping points, and their political effects.
• The politics of possibility: speculation, open futures, and the sustaining of uncertainty.
• Scales of time: from everyday rhythms to geological epochs and planetary thresholds.
  

Convenors
Bregje van Veelen, Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University, Sweden
Magdalena Kuchler, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden

In this workshop we will address the social dimension and how to engage various citizens in activities around green transition of the transport system and built environment in the Nordic countries.

Citizen participation (travellers and potential travellers) is often limited in transport planning. When people are invited to the planning process, this is often to a public consultation meeting for receiving information about a project or plan which has already been developed by experts. Citizens can make complaints about barriers and raise questions about things that aren't working in the transport system and their neighbourhoods; however, they are seldom involved early in the planning process in a systematic way.

Current travel survey data, though quantitatively rich, lack insight into why people travel as they do, how they perceive transport systems, and what shapes their mobility decisions. Qualitative methods, e.g. interviews, focus groups, observations, can uncover motivations, experiences, social norms, and the implications of not travelling, which are crucial for understanding mobility-related injustices and social sustainability. However, such studies are often context-specific, focused on isolated cases, and rarely conducted to gather more general knowledge of the population in a city or region. This workshop will discuss fully drafted manuscripts on projects that address this lack of understanding on everyday mobility and discuss how to bridge the gap between expert knowledge and citizens’ everyday routines.

The topic of this workshop session feeds into the efforts of connecting the overall global aims of green transition with equality and social sustainable communities. It will address various activities to inform and include local people in the green transition, e.g. children, young, and older people, gender and diversity, This has been expressed in strategies such as “Towards a green and gender equal Europe” by the EU, as well as in the UN 2030 goals. In the context of global challenges of climate change, insecurity and uneven power relations, the work for increasing social sustainability is the most urgent (following e.g. UN SDGs 5 - Gender Equality, 10 - Reduced Inequalities, and 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities).

Convenors
Lena Levin, VTI - The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Intitute, Sweden
Robin Nuruzzaman, VTI - The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Intitute, Sweden

One of the most pressing questions regarding the emerging global climate change regime concerns how and under what conditions non-state diplomacy matters. Some of the accredited observers at Conferences of the Parties (COP) related to the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) are actors such as think tanks, private research institutes, business associations and industry organizations, but also social movements organizations and other forms of civil society organizations. Together they form a large part of attending observers.

Their transnational form – founded in one country but also active in other countries – opens them for functioning as bridgeheads, closing gaps between states, while at the same time suggesting and promoting ideas, interpretations and solutions of their own (Garsten and Sörbom 2021). “Observer”, then, does not fully encapsulate their role within global climate governance. Instead, these actors are private diplomats; acting on the behalf of some agent’s interest, building long-term relationships through strategic communications that create an enabling environment for the policies they advocate.

In this workshop we analyse how such private actors construct and shape non-state climate diplomacy. We invite fully drafted manuscripts that explore e.g. the following questions within the described theme:

• How and by what measures are non-state diplomats partaking in and contributing to the emerging climate change regime?
• How can we understand the social and symbolic forms of capital that non-state diplomat organizations draw upon in their struggles over meaning of key assumptions within global climate change governance?
• What is the role of secrecy, discretion and status for gaining leverage in these governance circles?
• How can we conceptualize the contradictions between transparency and accountability on the one hand, and efficiency of secluded diplomacy on the other?

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that shed light on these topics.

Convenors
Adrienne Sörbom, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, Stockholm University, Sweden
Joanna Mellquist, Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research, Stockholm University, Sweden

Global, regional, and national policy frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), and national marine spatial planning initiatives, have set ambitious targets for sustainable marine management. However, implementation of strategic measures often falls short. Marine protected areas are frequently “paper parks,” fisheries quotas are regularly exceeded, and efforts to reconcile biodiversity conservation with expanding activities such as offshore wind and shipping struggle to deliver the promised outcomes.

This implementation gap creates frustration and erodes both social-ecological integrity and public trust in marine governance. Fisheries management provides a particularly instructive lens on these issues: despite the CFP and the Baltic Multiannual Management Plan (Baltic MAP), many commercial fish stocks remain below Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) levels, and the viability of small-scale fishing communities is increasingly threatened. Addressing these gaps requires understanding how governance structures, institutional arrangements, power relations, and socio-ecological dynamics shape policy outcomes.

This workshop engages directly with the conference theme by exploring how to better align marine governance ambitions with practical outcomes, with a particular focus on fisheries, but open to all implementation gaps in marine governance. We aim to foster an interdisciplinary conversation drawing on governance studies, ecology, political economy, and law to identify the barriers and enablers of effective policy implementation and to highlight innovative governance approaches.

We welcome fully drafted manuscripts that address:

• Institutional and governance challenges in implementing marine sustainability policies
• Interactions between the CFP and other frameworks such as the MSFD
• Power relations, enforcement mechanisms, and stakeholder engagement
• Ecosystem-based fisheries management practices and their effectiveness
• Conflicts and synergies between conservation and economic activities (e.g. fisheries, offshore wind, shipping)
• The role of small-scale fisheries and community livelihoods in sustainable governance
• Case studies of both success and failure in fisheries and marine management.

Key questions for discussion:

• What factors enable or challenge the implementation of marine and fisheries sustainability policies in practice?
• How do institutional and governance arrangements, quota systems, and enforcement mechanisms shape outcomes and implementation of sustainability practices?
• How does the current management system support or undermine ecosystem-based management and sustainable fisheries in the Baltic Sea and beyond?
• What are the effects of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fisheries and discards on achieving CFP sustainability objectives?
• Are there local examples of successful sustainability policy implementation that could serve as models for the Baltic Sea?
• What lessons can be drawn from successful cases of translating policy ambition into tangible ecological or social benefits?
• How do power dynamics and the decline of small-scale fisheries affect governance legitimacy and equity?
• How can science, policy, and practice be better bridged to foster effective, just, and resilient marine governance?

Convenors
Jamie Jenkins, Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki, Finland
Sara Söderström, Baltic Sea Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
Milena Arias Schreiber, Maritime and Ocean Socioecology, World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden

Contemporary conditions of crisis, uncertainty, and disruption demand new ways of knowing, imagining, and enacting change. Established political imaginaries of control, linear progress, and technocratic problem-solving have proven inadequate to address the complexities and affective dimensions of environmental and social transformations. In the gaps left by institutional and policy failures, diverse practices of imagination, storytelling, and micro-political engagement emerge, generating alternative ways of relating, knowing, and making futures.

This workshop explores how imaginative and narrative practices such as storytelling, speculative methods, and participatory approaches can serve as both conceptual and methodological tools for rethinking transformation. Storytelling, in particular, is not merely a medium of communication but a mode of inquiry and world-making: it creates knowledge, challenges dominant narratives, and allows communities and researchers alike to negotiate meanings, values, and futures. Future-making, similarly, is approached here as a distributed, affective, and more-than-human process that unfolds across scales, from the everyday to the institutional.

We invite contributions that critically and creatively engage with the intersections of imagination, affect, and method in sustainability transformations. We are especially interested in fully drafted manuscripts that examine how stories, imaginaries, and speculative practices can:

• Reframe the relationship between knowledge and action beyond linear models of science–policy–practice;
• Expose and unsettle dominant logics of governance, expertise, and development;
• Articulate alternative epistemologies and methodologies for understanding transformation “from within the ruins”;
• Bridge experiential, embodied, and institutional forms of knowing;
• Engage with more-than-human and relational approaches to narrative and imagination.

Our guiding concerns are conceptual and methodological: How can future-making be studied as a micro-political and affective process? What are the epistemic and ethical implications of using storytelling as method and theory? How might these approaches enrich sustainability and transformation research by foregrounding relational, situated, and imaginative ways of knowing?

By bringing together scholars and practitioners working across disciplines, this workshop seeks to advance a deeper methodological conversation about how we think with stories and imagine futures in the context of ongoing crisis and transformation.

Convenors

Sara Holmgren, Division of Environmental Communication, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Tatiana Sokolova, Department of Environment, Development and Sustainability Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden
Ayşem Mert, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

Contemporary food systems face complex and coinciding emergencies, and the need for their substantive transformation is widely recognized. Ecological crises, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation, amplify social and economic adversities related to food insecurity, malnutrition, and rural livelihoods. These environmental, social, and economic problems are closely entangled with imbalances of economic and political power in the current functioning of food systems. Recently, calls for disruptive and transformative research have been put forward to address the persistent food system challenges. Importantly, transformative research is needed to address the systemic lock-ins in the functioning of food systems.

With a focus on agriculture and food — from mega-scale industrial farms to small-scale, self-sufficient holdings and urban container farms and local, national and global food systems — we invite fully drafted manuscripts that, through the lens of food systems, examine scientific divides between economic imperatives and environmental sustainability that widen, rather than close the gap between a prosperous and disastrous future.

Themes include:

• Theories: What social scientific theories can assist in the understanding of transformation and breaking the lock-ins in food systems?
• Global over and underproduction in the Anthropocene: How to interpret why overproduction persists while starvation increases? Are there geographical explanations, or is this primarily a result of dysfunctional economics, lack of proper institutions or political resistance? What are the characteristics for Nordic food systems in this regard?
• Agrifood trade and self-reliance strategies: In what ways does the current geopolitical context of heightened trade tensions drive states’ policies regarding food security and how can the current shift to greater self-reliance support ecological resilience?
• Territorial markets: What are the social and environmental benefits, challenges, and opportunities of organising food systems along territorial lines?
• Institutions and stewardship: Does the growing divide between economics and sustainable futures hinder public and state agencies from caring for human–soil relationships and long-term welfare?
• Governance: How can food system organisations be held accountable for achieving sustainability goals and justice in the production and consumption of food?
• Pathways to long-term food security for all: Can food security be achieved through increased competition, or by prioritising the creation of institutions which serve the public interest and care for the future?

Convenors
Minna Kaljonen, Societal Change, Justice and Agency, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland
Anders Wästfelt, Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Sweden
Hilde Björkhuag, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Jennifer Clapp, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo, Canada
Annika Lonkila, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä; Finnish Environment Institute, Finland
Rachel Mazac, Stockholm Resilience Center, Sweden

In this workshop we address the urgent challenge of reducing material use as a core element in bridging the gap between environmental goals and implementation. While climate policy has gained considerable attention, the material dimension of sustainability and its link to climate remains underexplored in policy and practice. Resource extraction and material throughput drive not only greenhouse gas emissions but also biodiversity loss, pollution, and socio-economic risks.

Neoclassical environmental economics tends to prioritise efficiency improvements and pricing mechanisms. However, in order to achieve a less material-intensive economy, policies must also tackle structural lock-ins, address inequalities, and foster societal acceptance. Sufficiency-oriented measures, redistribution, and investments in care- and knowledge-intensive services may offer ways forward, but require new policy thinking and institutional arrangements.

We invite fully drafted manuscripts that engage with concepts such as sufficiency, doughnut economics, consumption corridors, and care economy, and with a focus on systemic structural perspectives on transitioning to a sustainable level of resource use. Examples of structural challenges may be the Baumol effect, rebound effects and work time reduction.

This workshop calls for empirical, conceptual, and methodological contributions that explore:

• Economy-wide strategies to reduce material use.
• Socio-economic implications of sufficiency strategies.
• Governance innovations for bridging the gap between ambitious environmental targets and real-world implementation.

We especially welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and fully drafted manuscripts that explore tensions and trade-offs, as well as proposals for transformative pathways towards a sustainable and less material-intensive economy.

Convenors
Eva Alfredsson, Climate Change Leadership, Uppsala University, Sweden
Mikael Malmaeus, IVL, Svenska MIljöinstitutet, Sweden