Changing Environments or Shifting Paradigms? Strategic Decision Making toward Water Protection in Helsinki, 1850–2000

Abstract

The study examines the history of strategic decision-making concerning water protection in Helsinki, 1850-2000. We identified five major strategic decisions that occurred during the study period. The results indicate that strategic decision-making evolves in long-term policy cycles that last on average 20-30 years. New policy cycles are caused by paradigm shifts. Paradigms are shared and predominant ways of understanding reality that help when groups must act to solve common and complex environmental problems. However the internal structure and external dynamics of paradigms are contradictory. Although paradigms serve initially as means to redefine problems and find creative solutions, as time goes by each paradigm seems to become also a barrier that restricts the introduction of new ways of thinking and acting. The power of paradigms lies in the fact that they can be defined as scientific but also social, political, or cultural agreements depending on the context.

Green Out of the Blue, or How (Not) to Deal with Overfed Oceans

“…Indeed, in most documented cases, management of nutrient pollution was fi rst dominated by health concerns and focused on specifi c areas and sensitive points (e.g., water supply sources and watersheds) and only rarely on strategic relocation or extension of wastewater discharge to lakes or seashores. Management strategies were concerned mainly with protecting human health and fi sheries (Laakkonen and Laurila 2007). In addition, since water pollution management was governed by social perception of the feasibility and practicability of solutions, abatement strategies focused on biotechnical control of the water cycle.…”

“…Nonetheless, comprehensive analysis of the articles revealed that many of them had nutrient pollution and eutrophication symptoms as their background, but rarely as a main topic, and it found that coastal eutrophication appeared to be addressed through three main prisms (Levain et al 2017). Th e fi rst considers the trajectory of nutrient-based pollution as a public problem in industrialized countries; it is adopted mainly by historians, sociologists, and political scientists who study local cases in Europe and North America within the past one hundred years, although few studies adopt such a long-term perspective (e.g., for riverine countries of the Baltic Sea; Laakkonen and Laurila 2007;Löwgren et al 1989). In this prism, the specifi city of coastal social-ecological systems and the materiality and diversity of eutrophication symptoms remain peripheral dimensions, while emphasis is placed on governance systems and the trajectory of water pollution management upstream.…”

From little things, big things grow; trends and fads in 110 years of Australian ornithology

“…Drivers of change to a discipline can come from within. Change in a discipline can occur because of new and emerging paradigms (Laakkonen and Laurila 2007), advances in methodology or technology (Harris et al 1990;Schreiber et al 2004), the personal and professional views of those working within a discipline especially influential personalities (Saxena et al 2006;Andersen 2008;Nabout et al 2010), and development of scope and/or diversity of subject matter within the discipline (Wu 2007). The growth of a particular discipline, or an aspect of it, may affect what information is published and when (Debus 2009).…”

Nitrogen processes in coastal and marine ecosystems

“…Th e early signs of eutrophication were already present in early 1900 close to the larger municipalities that discharged their waste waters directly with minimal treatment to the coastal waters (Laakkonen and Laurila, 2007 ). Since then the nutrient loading from rivers has increased approximately seven times for nitrogen and four times for phosphorus (HELCOM, 2004 ) and the pools of nutrients have also increased considerably in the whole Baltic Sea (Larsson et al ., 1985 ;Nehring and Matthäus, 1991 ).…”