These are questions that the CERE guest researcher, Ana Lopez asks in her PhD work at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Growing up, Ana has been asking herself if it is possible to alter the tourism sector so it better preserves island unique environment. Even at a quick glance you get all information needed to observe that the landscape has changed due to tourism according to Ana: - If you take a closer look, especially in the south part of the islands, you find that the landscape has changed from infinite virgin beaches to an overconstructed landscape of hotels and apartments. Some of them quite near the sea and protected areas. These impacts grabbed my attention and made me wonder what the real impact of tourism and its emission was. Does the economic benefit of tourism compensate the negative effects of it? (Click on headline to learn more)
Green industry in Northern Sweden attracts a lot of investments at present. A battery factory i Skellefteå and a couple of "steel without coal" ventures in Boden and Luleå could provide as many as 10'000 new jobs in the area. Why this is happening in Northern Sweden is largerly down to the cheap electricity. Electricity that is planned to mainly stem from wind power in the future. However, what happens if the electricity price goes up? We asked CERE members Runar Brännlund, Bengt Kriström and Tommy Lundgren to answer that question. (Only available on the Swedish site)
A report recommends the government to provide landowners with financial support to increase forest fertilization and afforestation of abandoned agricultural land. The government should simultaneously create infrastructure for reverse auctions and trade in net coal storage. The report is written on behalf of the Swedish Environmental Protections Agency with the aim of analyzing various proposals on how the role of the forest can be strengthened in terms of carbon dioxide storage. (only available in Swedish)