Research
Jul-2022
I am interested in what causes environmental problems, how these can be addressed, and how social movements seek to address them. Analytically, I am interested in how prevailing social structures and institutions interact with natural systems and landscapes to generate concrete environmental problems and sustainability challenges, and how social movements mobilise collective action to address these problematic outcomes. My research analyses multi-scalar dynamics of land use change, climate change and social movement mobilisation, and also covers methodological development in sustainability science. To develop use-inspired research outcomes, I approach these diverse and intertwined nature-society interactions through problem-driven interdisciplinary research where I draw on ecology and energy research as well as political economy, radical geography, and social movement theory.
I have a 3-year international post-doc project called Sámi social movements – indigenous mobilization around the ecological conditions of reindeer husbandry under climate emergency. The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council and I will be based at LUCSUS (Lund University), Noragric (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) and IFRO (Copenhagen University).
I am part of the Climate Change Resilience in Small Communities in the Nordic Countries (CliCNord) project, coordinated by University College Copenhagen. I am the case leader of the Lund University division, where we focus on how reindeer herding communities can build capacity to deal with basal ice formation. The project is funded by Nordforsk and more information can be found on this website.
Som forskare är jag intresserad av vad som skapar miljöproblem, hur de kan åtgärdas och hur folkrörelser försöker åtgärda dem. I akademiska termer utreder min forskning hur konkreta miljöproblem och hållbarhetsutmaningar skapas av interaktioner mellan rådande samhällsstrukturer och institutioner och naturens olika system och landskap, samt hur sociala rörelser mobiliserar kollektiva handlingar för att åtgärda dessa problem och utmaningar. Min forskning berör flera hållbarhetsvetenskapliga teman: främst drivkrafter och effekter av markanvändningsförändringar, klimatförändringar och politisk mobilisering från folkrörelser, men även metodologisk utveckling inom hållbarhetsvetenskapen. För att utveckla forskningsresultat som kommer till användning närmar jag mig dessa teman med en problemdriven och tvärvetenskaplig hållbarhetsforskning där jag använder mig av teorier om politisk ekonomi, radikal geografi, sociala rörelser, ekologi och energiforskning.
Just nu utför jag ett 3-årigt internationella post-doc projekt om “Samiska sociala rörelser – urfolksmobilisering kring renskötselns ekologiska förutsättningar under klimatnödläge”. Projektet är finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet och jag kommer vara baserad på LUCSUS (Lunds universitet), Noragric (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) och IFRO (Copenhagen University).
Selected publications
Isgren, E., Boda, C., Harnesk, D. & O’Bryne, D. (2019). Science has much to offer social movements in the face of planetary emergencies. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(11), 1498-1498. Available here.
In response to Gardner and Wordley’s article “Scientists must act on our own warnings to humanity”, we argue that the actual science of scientists has much to offer social movements in the face of planetary emergencies, especially key insights within the social sciences. To complement Gardner and Wordley’s call to action, we urge for development of better platforms that allow scientists to fruitfully interact with activists and social movement organizations to inform, stimulate and critically challenge their efforts in tackling planetary emergencies.
Ett inlägg i debatten om forskares roll i omställningen mot ett hållbart samhälle inom tidskriften Nature. För en variant av innehållet på svenska, se den här artikeln i Sydsvenskan.
Harnesk, D. & Isgren, E. (2021). Sustainability as a Real Utopia – Heuristics for transformative sustainability research. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0), 1-18. Available here.
Use-inspired sustainability research that explicitly draws on social theory? But how would that tackle issues of normativity and interdisciplinarity inherent to such research? Ellinor Isgren and I engage with those questions in our new article by adapting sociologist Erik Olin Wright’s emancipatory social science in a heuristic informed by critical realism and social theory for interdisciplinary research on viable alternatives that move society towards achieving sustainability.
Hur kan lösningsorienterad tvärvetenskaplig hållbarhetsforskning som drar på samhällsteori se ut? Och hur kan den hantera frågor om normativitet och vilka discipliner den ska dra sin kunskap från? Jag och Ellinor Isgren lägger fram ett förslag för detta genom att anpassa världskända sociologen Erik Olin Wrights emancipatoriska samhällsvetenskap till den tvärvetenskapliga hållbarhetskontexten. Vi presenterar tre steg som bygger på varandra: 1) att konceptualisera och diagnostisera miljöproblem, 2) att utveckla gångbara alternativ för att åtgärda dessa, och 3) att formulera en teori för hur en sådan transformation kan förverkligas.
Harnesk, D. (2018). Adding Fuel to the Fire: North-South dynamics in the geographies of transport energy: the case of EU biofuels. (Ph.D.), Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Available here.
In the early 2000s, the EU promoted biofuels for transport to achieve climate change mitigation and rural development in the global South. Yet, intense debate suggested the opposite: that the promotion of biofuels in fact impedes more meaningful mitigation while also worsening rural livelihood conditions by dispossessing people from land and making local labour redundant. Why has the EU promoted biofuels for transport despite these doubts? Can its regulation assure the desired outcomes of significant greenhouse gas emission reductions in transport and positive social effects in rural areas? If not, what would constitute more viable alternatives for achieving the desired outcomes?
In my PhD thesis in Sustainability Science, I found plausible answers to these questions by examining the complex interdependencies of energy and geography. Specifically, I argued that the EU’s promotion of biofuels for transport is a geopolitical process that is incapable of achieving its own internal goals. Looking forward, I suggest more viable alternatives to achieve the desired outcomes, and delineate how they can more convincingly be promoted by exploiting the gaps and contradictions in the EU’s support of biofuels that have now been identified within the geographies of transport energy.
Here you can read the English press release.
Här kan du läsa det svenska pressmeddelandet för min avhandling om EU:s biodrivmedelsreglering: om varför den inte lever upp till sina egna mål om minskade växthusgasutsläpp och ekonomisk utveckling på landsbygden (särskilt i globala Syd) samt vad som är bättre vägar framåt för uppnå dessa mål.
Harnesk, D. (2019). Biomass-based energy on the move – the geographical expansion of the European Union’s liquid biofuel regulation. Geoforum, 98, 25-35. Available here.
In this paper I examine how regulation governing the EU’s liquid biofuel market extends EU rule beyond its geographical territory through market forces. Analyzing biofuel certificates distributed 2010-2017, I observe a significant and global market growth that seems to promote not only an expansion of large-scale production and integration of several biomass-based industries, but also an exclusion of small-scale production. Based on the research, I argue that this geographical expansion re-produces historical patterns of accumulation of land-based resources, where economic clusters in the global North accumulate value by exploiting land and biomass producers in the global South.
Sammanfattning kommer snart.
PhD thesis
◼ Harnesk, D. (2018). Adding Fuel to the Fire: North-South dynamics in the geographies of transport energy: the case of EU biofuels. (Ph.D.), Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Available here.
Peer-reviewed original articles
◼ Harnesk, D. (2022). The decreasing availability of forage for reindeers in boreal forests during snow-cover periods – a Sámi pastoral landscape perspective in Sweden. Ambio. Available here.
◼ Boda, C. & Harnesk, D. (2022). Three crucial considerations when presenting alternative paradigms in sustainability research. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Available here.
◼ Olsson, L., Thorén, H., Harnesk, D., Persson, J. (2022). Ethics of Probabilistic Extreme Event Attribution in Climate Change Science: A Critique. Earth’s Future, 10(3), 1-15. Available here.
◼ Boda, C., O’Byrne, D., Harnesk, D., Faran, T., Isgren, E. (2021). A collective alternative to the Inward Turn in environmental sustainability research. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Available here.
◼ Longo, S.B., Isgren, E., Jorgenson, A.K., Jerneck, A., Olsson, L., Kelly, O.M., Harnesk, D. & York, R. (2021). Sociology for sustainability science. Discover Sustainability, 2(47), 1-14. Available here.
◼ Harnesk, D. & Isgren, E. (2021). Sustainability as a Real Utopia – Heuristics for transformative sustainability research. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0), 1-18. Available here.
◼ Isgren, E., Boda, C., Harnesk, D. & O’Bryne, D. (2019). Science has much to offer social movements in the face of planetary emergencies. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3(11), 1498-1498. Available here.
◼ Harnesk, D. (2019). Biomass-based energy on the move – the geographical expansion of the European Union’s liquid biofuel regulation. Geoforum, 98, 25-35. Available here.
◼ Knaggård, Å., Ness, B. & Harnesk, D. (2018). Finding an academic space: reflexivity among sustainability researchers. Ecology & Society, 23(4): 20. Available here.
◼ Harnesk, D. & Brogaard, S. (2018). Social Dynamics of Renewable Energy—How the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive Triggers Land Pressure in Tanzania. The Journal of Environment & Development, 26(2), 156-185. Available here.
◼ Persson, S., Harnesk, D. & Islar, M. (2017). What local people? Examining the Gàllok mining conflict and the rights of the Sámi population in terms of justice and power. Geoforum, 86, 20-29. Available here.
◼ Harnesk, D., Brogaard, S. & Peck, P. (2017). Regulating a global value chain with the European Union’s sustainability criteria – experiences from the Swedish liquid transport biofuel sector. Journal of Cleaner Production, 153, 580-591. Available here.
Book review articles
◼ Harnesk, D. (2023). Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism by Gregory Claeys. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022. Pp. xvi + 585 pp, index. £30.00 (hardback); £35.00 (e-book). ISBN 978-0-691-17004-6 and 978-0-691-23699-8. Environmental Politics. Available here.
◼ Harnesk, D. (2016). A Review of ‘Energy and Transport in Green Transition: Perspectives on Ecomodernity’. Challenges in Sustainability, 4(2), 15-16. Available here.
Peer-reviewed book chapters
◼ Harnesk, D. (2022). Sociala rörelser för hållbarhet på den svensk-samiska landsbygden – om vikten av ekologiska perspektiv för koalitionsbyggande inom civilsamhället. In Cras, P. (ed). Landsbygdernas och de mindre orternas civilsamhällen. SLU Ultuna: Urban and Rural Reports 2022:3. Available here.
◼ Thorén, H. & Harnesk, D. (forthcoming). Critical Social Science and Resilience. In Boyd, E. (ed). Routledge Handbook of Social and Ecological Resilience. Milton Park, United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
◼ Harnesk, D., Islar, M. & Stafström, S. (2018). “What local people?” En analys av gruvkonflikten i Gállok och den samiska befolkningens rättigheter ur ett rättvise- och maktperspektiv. In Anshelm, J., Haikola, S. & Wallsten, B. (eds.). Den svenska gruvpolitikens omvandling. Hedemora, Sweden: Gidlunds förlag.
◼ Mundaca, L., Dalhammar, C., & Harnesk, D. (2013). The Integrated NORDIC Power Market and the Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies: Key Lessons and Potential Implications for the Future ASEAN Integrated Power Market. In Kimura, F., Phoumin, H. & Jacobs, B. (eds.) Energy Market Integration in East Asia: Renewable Energy and its Deployment into the Power System. Jakarta, Indonesia: Economic Research institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Workshops and Conferences
◼ Harnesk, D., Brännström, M. & Östlund, L. (2022). Samiska skogslandskap under förändring. Combined workshop and conference with leading researchers and Sámi civil society actors. Arjeplog, Sweden, June, 2022. Lead organizer together with the Institute for Arctic Landscape Research (INSARC) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
◼ Landsbygdernas civilsamhällen (2021). Presenter and participant under the theme: Den mångfacetterade landsbygden och dess visioner. Closed online event, online, Sweden, 2021. Organized by Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
◼ Civil Society and Sustainability Studies (2019). Workshops on social movements for sustainability. Closed event, Lund, Sweden, 2019. A series of workshops around the core question “how can a scientific understanding of sustainability challenges contribute to social movements for sustainability?” organized by the Advanced Study Group on Civil Society and Sustainability Studies (CIVICSUS) at the Lund University Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies. The workshops featured invited guests such as right livelihood award laureates Bill McKibben and Nnimmo Bassey.
◼ Harnesk, D., Brogaard, S., Sjöberg, Ö. & Tambang, G. Y. (2017). Workshop om global handel med biomassa. Workshop, Stockholm, Sweden, September, 2017. Lead organizer of participatory workshop on biomass trade.
Peer-reviewed conference contributions – unpublished
◼ Boyd, E., Islar, M. & Harnesk, D. (2019). Exploring Racialized Environmentalism: theories and practice in climate resilience. Political Ecologies of the Far Right, Lund, Sweden, November, 2019.
◼ Boda C., Faran T., Harnesk, D., Isgren E., and O’Byrne D. (2018). Structuralist vs Agent-based Approach to Environmental Sustainability – A possible resolution to a polarized debate. 2nd International Conference in Contemporary Social Sciences, Crete, June, 2018.
Projects
◼ Sámi social movements (2020-2024).
◼ Climate Change Resilience in Small Communities (2021-2023).
◼ Civil Society and Sustainability Studies (2019).
◼ EU biofuel regulation (2014-2018)