Background
In Sweden we have given attention to human dimensions activities since the late 1980's. This has had a connection to the emphasis on sustainability issues since that time at the political level in Sweden. Very soon after the publication of the Brundtland report, several projects on such issues were launched.
Several of these were reported in a book in connection to the Rio-conference. This book, which could be seen as an expression of the state of the art in Sweden at that time, contained the result of a concerted effort in Sweden to deal with the sustainability issues, and especially its environmental and cultural aspects. The book covered the following blocks of topics:

• Perspectives om Sustainability (authors: Per Brinck, Torsten Hägerstrand, Bo L. B. Wiman, Anders Hjort af Ornäs);
• Instruments of Understanding, e.g. indicators and economic perspectives (authors: Carl Folke & AnnMari Jansson, John Holmberg & Sten Karlsson, Lena Unemo, Thomas Sterner, Erik Wallin);
• The Shaping of Minds (authors: Anne Buttimer, Per Olof Hallin & Olof Wärneryd, Detlef Jahn, Åke Bjerstedt, Aant Elzinga);
• The Challenge of the Societal Dimension to Environmental Issues: A Swedish Research Response (author: Uno Svedin).

In the preface to this book it was stated:
"[.] the [.] chapters relate to the broad academic discourse on different facets of the society-environment interface. This realm of inquiry has become more and more important during the last few years, and especially since the launching of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the so-called Brundtland Commission. This interest has taken different shapes and forms the last few years; at the national level in terms of expanded research budgets in this direction including new transdisciplinary institutes and networks; at the interntional level in terms of new coordinative efforts for topics such as The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change and new academic journals and symposia with these issues as topics. In this way this book could be seen as a contribution to such an international discussion.
It is, however, a book by Swedish scholars and thus represents more than just a scattered set of academic articles. In addition they have all been drawn from research devoted to the topic of sustainable development. As they are, with some single exceptions, the results of a specific research funding mechanism set up in 1988 by the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (FRN) to promote such research efforts, the contributions are also all connected, in one way or another, to one unifying perspective: what could be constructive contributions from the Swedish research community with regard to the international environmental agenda outlined by the Brundtland Commission.
Thus, in a way the different contributions provide an image also of how the research part of an environmentally very active nation - Sweden - tries to approach these issues in the beginning of the 1990s."

Swedish Efforts in the Early 1990's: A Challenge for Social Science and the Humanities
These projects had all a strong socio-economic and cultural flavour. They also had systemic connotations. Since the beginning of the 1990s a strong development took place along many lines on Human Dimension themes. In a report 1994 the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research extracted some of these tendencies in terms of 'Swedish examples', which were presented in Environmental Change - A Challenge for Social Science and the Humanities (FRN Report 94:3). In the preface to the report an update of the situation at that time - as it was seen - is reflected in the following text:
"Research on global environmental change (GEC) is in many countries emerging as one of the highest research priorities. And today GEC is one of the most critical policy areas on the international and national political agenda. The interlinkages between the atmosphere, the oceans and the vegetation cover at large has come into focus with regard to these truly global problems. Within the natural science research community there is since almost a decade the IGBP-program (The International Geosphere-Biosphere-Program).
During the last years more and more attention has been paid to the societal context of the environmental problems. It is obvious that the interplay between Man and Nature at the same time includes the causes of most of environmental problems but also is the domain of solutions. Thus it is urgent for the research community to address issues concerning the connections and complexities of the human-nature interactions. Research within social science and the humanities can develop a greater understanding of this critical topic including how these interactions may best be managed.
The initiation 1990 of The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme (HDP) was thus an important step. The initiative was taken by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and the aim was to parallel and complement the IGBP and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). In Sweden the FRN (The Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research) since the early 1980's has promoted interdisciplinary research on environmental issues.
During the later part of the decade the FRN made several efforts to initiate rescarch about 'human response' to GEC at both the national and the international levels. FRN accordingly in 1990 set up a national 'Human Dimensions Committee' to serve as a bridge between the Swedish environmental research community dealing with the social and cultural dimensions and bodies like IGBP and HDP."

The topics dealt with in the report were:

• Environmental Studies in Swedish Political Science (by Martin Bennulf & Lennart J. Lundqvist);
• Environmental Studies in Sweden with a Psychological Perspective (by Anders Biel & Ulf Dahlstrand);
• Environmental Issues and Developments: Swedish Sociological Perspectives (by Tom R. Burns & Kerstin Jacobsson);
• Swedish Anthropology and the Environment (by Gudrun Dahl);
• A Contribution to the Understanding of Law and Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: Regulating Environment or Regulating Human Behaviour (by Håkan Hydén);
• Swedish Environmental Economics in the Context of Global Change: A Survey (by Martin Linde-Rahr & Thomas Sterner);
• Man and the Environment: Historiographic Traditions and Trends (by Birgitta Odén);
• Human Ecology as a Field of Knowledge: The Swedish Case (by Emin Tengström);
• The Relationship Man-Environment: Classical Human Geography in a New Form (by Sture Öberg).

Since then the diversification has proceeded further in combination with a strong expansion of research effort for this research domain. Our estimate is that today annually 50 million SEK (which correspond to 6 million USD) are spent on more than 100 projects regarding the socio-economical and cultural aspects of sustainability (see figure 1a & b).

Figure 1a & b.  Swedish research projects on socio-economic and cultural dimensions of environment issues
 

Ways Ahead
An important but partial activity has been the creation of a specific network for this domain, Ways Ahead or Paths to Sustainable Development at an annual cost of around 8 million SEK (1 million USD). In a presentation document from the Network, which became operative in 1996, it was said:
"Since the Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, the concepc of 'sustainable development' has gained a firm foothold, internationally and in Sweden, with the result that environmental issues are now set in a much broader societal context than before. Sustainable development has a bearing on every area of society, and ultimately on every aspect of our everyday lives.
To find the road to a more sustainable sociery, we need knowledge from a range of different fields, in particular those concerned with our life-styles, thought patterns and value systems, with the way we orginize companies and other organisations, and with how we act in private and public life. Until a few years ago, research with this new, broader approach was on a relatively limited scale, although certain pioneering studies and projects had been undertaken. Paths to Sustainable Development, a joint programme supported by several different funding agencies [.], represents a significant strengthening and extension of earlier initiatives.
The programme became operational in 1996, when the eight researchers now making up the group were gradually incorporated into the programme and post-graduate students were recruited."

In the background text it is further stated:
"Why do we often do what we do, and not what we ought to do? What factors ultimately determine our habits and actions? How do values, attitudes, habits, patterns of action and strategies take shape, in individuals, households, groups and companies? Why are many attempts to make our everyday lives environmentally sounder thwarted by the inertia of existing social structures? What happens as we attempt to go from word to deed, from theory to practice, from intention to implementation? What keys will open the locks that bar the way to sustainable development? Are we stumbling over unnecessary obstacles which, with better insight and informacon could be removed? Or are we driven by forces so closely bound up with our overall outlook on life and society that theoretical knowledge - and anxiety - about environmental problems are not sufficient to change our habits, everyday lives, decision-making and policical processes, and the way we design our societies?
Questions such as these are at the heart of the research being undertaken within the eight subprogrammes making up Paths to Sustainable Development. The overall goal of this research is to link our knowledge of environmental and natural resource issues to existing and new knowledge about the driving forces behind everyday behaviour patterns and actions at the individual and societal levels.
Patterns of behaviour, social structures, rule systems, lifestyles, ethics and other aspects of our lives, viewed in relation to increasingly wide-ranging environmental and natural resource issues, represent a new but not entirely unexplored field of study. Behind the component parts of the programme are several years of research into attitudes and behaviour, analyses of lifestyle factors, environmental economics, democracy issues, policy instruments, corporate cultures and societal infrastructures. However, environment-oriented research focusing on these issues, and also on the driving forces behind environmental policy-making, has mainly been in the form of short term projects, involving individual or small groups of researchers in different social science or humanities disciplines.
The eight subprogrammes have the same objectives, but the researchers are seeking to analyse the many different aspects of questions of common concern from their different starting points - in psychology, sociology, political science, business studies, sociology of law, philosophy, and history of science and technology.
In somewhat simplified terms, three of the subprogrammes can be said to be concerned with patterns of action and behaviour - what people do and why - in individuals, households and groups. The researchers are studying a range of factors which, directly or indirectly, appear to influence the day- to-day decisions that lead to or obstruct an environmentally sounder way of life.

• The importance of habits and social motives for ecologically sound behaviour
• Sociological aspects of environment and behaviour
• Livelihood, everyday life and ecological orientation

Two of the programmes have to do with societal policy instruments and rules (information, economic instruments, legislation and regulations), and with the influence of opinion formers. What impact do such phenomena have on efforts to achieve an environmentally sound society? How far can policy instruments and new norms change the attitudes and actions of individuals, groups and organizations.

• Democracy and sustainable development
• Environment, society, norms and rules

One subprogramme deals with the strategic role which society's infrastructure plays in terms of hindering or promoting progress towards sustainability. Another focuses on the changes needed in the manufacturing and distributive sectors, in a market where a holistic approach to the environment is in demand and can offer competitive advantages.

• Infrastructural systems and societali development from the standpoint of sustainability
• Environmental business strategies

As a unifying link between these seven subprogrammes, there is a programme directorship. In addition to linking the other parts of the programme, and ensuring close integration and hence cross-fertilization between the various fields of research, this function also includes research of its own."

The director of the programme is Professor Bengt Hansson, Department of Philosophy, Lund University.
The groups involved are lead by the following persons:

• Martin Bennulf, Centre for Public Sector Research (CEFOS), Göteborg University;
• Anders Biel, Department of Psychology, Göteborg University;
• Håkan Hydén, Department of Sociology, Sociology of Law, Lund University;
• Arne Kaijser, Departement of History of Science and Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm;
• Anna-Lisa Lindén, Department of Sociology, Lund University;
• Mona Mårtensson, Departement of Sociology, Stockholm University;
• Rolf Wolff, School of Economics, Gotheburg Research Institute (GRI).

The first three years of this programme have been finished and found successful by an international review panel. In the Programme Plan for 1999-2001 it is stated in regard to 'Lessons Learned':
"On the general level, it is clearly noticeable that the awareness of the need to study the social aspects of sustainable development has increased during the first period of the research programme. This applies to researchers as well as funding organisations. One need only mention the initiatives of the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change and the upcoming conference in Umeå in 1999. What is still rare is, however, viable ideas about how to proceed. The pertinent questions are now often asked, but well-founded suggested answers and tangible research proposals are much scarcer. Therefore, the most urgent matter is no longer to stress that the social aspects of environmentel research need to be attended to, but to develop a strategy for how they should be attacked."

The Swedish Profile of Socio-Economic Research
The FRN investigation at the request of the government about the design of a Swedish national strategy for research in support of sustainable development, which was published November 1998 (containing 1100 pages in 10 volumes), has among other things made a substantial scrutiny of more than 300 projects in the socio-economic environmental domain over a 10 year period, which have used an accumulative research funding sum of some 200 millions SEK (equal to around 25 million USD).
The plural directions to what has been researched is exemplified in terms areas which have been emphasized by Swedish researchers during this time. These areas are:

• environmental administration and instruments;
• environmental economy;
• life style issues;
• environmental policy and ideologies.

Areas which have been less researched have been e.g.:

• environment and culture;
• macrotheoretical renewal;
• environmental ethics;
• power relation issues;
• gender issues;
• democracy topics;
• market dynamics in relation to consumption patterns;
• socio-economy and material flows connections.

There is today a wide array of funders for research on such topics, which was not the case in the beginning of the 1990's. Today more than ten state agencies support activities like these, with FRN still as the dominant single funder (around one third). However, the new non-state research foundation, MISTRA, is quickly expanding its funding activities also in these fields, including being partner in the Ways Ahead programme outlined above.

Challenges Ahead
The different future challenges are analyzed in another FRN report. The research directions are manyfold. In the introductory essay by the Chair of the Swedish National Human Dimensions Committee, Professor Uno Svedin outlines these future paths in the following way:
"It has been a long path. But the end of the road is still not visible. Rather the road is branching out into many connected tracks over a broad domain.
The path I am talking about is the one taken by those scientific initiatives which try to broaden our understanding about the societal aspects of environmental problems and challenges.
Several decades ago the dominant activities in environmental research were distinctly of a natural science kind. Many studies related to toxic metals and acidified forests were launched. Much less effort was devoted to the social mechanisms driving or filtering environmental problem generation or framing the possible solutions.
The Brundtland Commission report Our Common Future of 1987 did much to throw light on the inseparable connections between environmental problems as they appear 'in Nature' and 'development', i.e. a totally socially based concept.
It was from now on, be it due to some sort of specific promotional and legitimizing cause and effect or just only that the time was ripe, that the 'human dimensions' of environmental studies started quickly to expand. You could see it in terms of already existing scientific journals expanding its coverage in this direction like Ambio or entirely new ones devoted to the relevant topics. It is important here to stress the plurality of activities as this interest took many forms.
The economists of different shades tried to connect to the ecologists, opening several new special fields of investigation. Policy science people devoted more and more interest to the many institutional forms that provide a "governance' framework to environmental problems handling. Social scientists from geography, sociology and anthropology investigated various phenomena of social adjustment to environmental conditions at various levels of aggregation. Special sessions with an environmental slant started to appear at conferences held by historians for historians. And an array of scholars from philosophy, theology and other fields devoted themselves to environmental ethics issues and studies about norm systems. The legal profession also got more and more involved in scholarly endeavours directed to the environmental field. And these are only examples.
Full-fledged university, national and international programs with this type of direction has became more and more common the further we proceed into the 1990's.
In fact what just a few years ago was a tiny small stream is today a self-confident and broad movement in lots of disciplines of more classical origin such as history as well as mushrooming in new forms as the case of human ecology exemplifies.
We also see a quickly growing interest in these types of studies from various political levels as well as from other types of societal actors like NGO:s or the business community.
This is visible e.g. in the work done in the climate change domain where at the international level the IPCC - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - connected to the UN is a highly interesting case, both with regard to what has been done in the 'human dimensions' domain, e.g. in terms of economic studies, as well as what remains to be illuminated by other social science research activities.
Also other international negotiation agreements or discussion platforms, be it on biodiversity, forestry or desertification, show the same tendencies to increasingly demand illuminations from the 'human dimensions side'.
With this quick expansion internationally of an entire field of research follows both an increase of specific studies in various disciplines as well as an expansion of studies of a distinctly cross - and sometimes even trans-disciplinary nature.

The Nature of the Problems
So what is the problem now? Obviously it is basically not promotion of the activities per se. The dynamics are already so strong that you could consider the ghost to be out of the bottle. Of course this does not mean that funding agencies and university boards could take their hands from the activities. The flowers are still in need of water and fertilization and sometimes even some prioritizing gardening. But the situation is more like the conventional situation now in many other emerging fields.
So what is the nature of the problems we should face right now in this quickly expanding field? Obviously some deliberate effort of overview is important. Connected to this and as a follow-up of such activities we find the need for new synthesis between the different parts where results are now starting to emerge. The possibilities to compare in a more advanced fashion than just on an ad hoc basis push the need for more consolidated data frameworks.
This is all well and needs to be taken care of, but at a deeper level the success of the expansion drives the need for clear and fresh new analysis of the tensions between the different approaches which now deal with issues at different levels of aggregation, e. g. in the land use domain or with regard to governance structures. The inbuilt tensions between different disciplines emphasising different levels from the micro to the macro level, e.g. with regard to lifestyle issues as seen from a basically individual level, and the approaches dealing with social conditions closer to the traditions of e.g. sociology have now to be analysed. The tensions have to be understood in order to provide better means to integrate entire patterns of understanding.
This broadening must also encompass the borderline between social science and the humanities on the one hand and natural science and technology on the other. The 'human dimensions' issues are not to be locked in within a certain style of university faculty arrangement developed in the course of history for other reasons.
In this way the spectrum of environmental problems has turned into a vehicle of reform of many earlier practices in the knowledge production system which has up till now been taken for granted. The expansion of the experiences about the human dimensions research - its conditions, its needs for new alliances and methods - may well turn out to be as important for the way of doing science in general as it may consolidate views of environmental problems themselves.
exemplified by a recent initiative by the Japanese government in the OECD Mega Science Forum framework last year (1995)

A Broadening Challenge
In fact what is quickly emerging is a new and strongly expanding demand, not the least from the political world, to have new 'syndromes' illuminated by scientific activities. I am talking about entire 'packages' like the environment - unemployment - nexus, exemplified by the EU white paper on employment issues.
I am talking about the 'Risiko-Gesellshaft' entry to a much broader attack on societal risk management than just driven by environmental concerns. I am talking about the next step in the dialogue on the economy-ecology interface where the technology innovation mechanisms are added. I am talking about the new packages of international security, issues where environmental aspects are just one, but a growing facet of importance. I am talking about the global governance issues of the package population-resources-international trade-democracy [.].  I am in this context talking about the conditions of the 'comprehensive models' which more and more come into being to support political activities in these policy domains.
This quickly broadening challenge to the research community more and more to address still higher levels of complex issues are here already. The newly formed and not even very well organized community of human dimensions scholars has to move into these treacherous domains of new and unsafe connections of analysis. To some extent the willingness to move is there. However, there is also a neo-hegemonic tendency within the various disciplines involved in these areas of concern to regard just their speciality as the pivotal entry point to all these new challenges. Much more debate is here needed.
This also holds true for the connection to the policy world signalling strong and quick needs for instruments to handle all these important and pressing problem 'syndromes'.
Thus, just at the time when there seemed to be some sort of time for consolidation in the various parts of the knowledge generation system where human dimension issues are dealt with, new challenges are not only just around the corner, but are in fact already here crying out to be addressed.

New Ways to Formulate What Should Be Formulated
The broadened scope of themes that have to be connected, the policy implications, and the immature state of development at a methods level, all call for vigorous action. It also calls for new avenues towards a clever dealing with the 'holistic' challenge, which indeed cannot constantly be addressed by pooling more and more additive information to already outdated cores of knowledge. No, the approach to many of these complexity issues must go not through the path of an additive expansion of already existing knowledge pieces just to be added to the''old network' of explanation. The path ahead is even more involved in finding the new crosscutting ways of posing new questions in this entire domain. Of course we need work, much work in many of the established domains in the human dimensions territory. Yes! But we need in parallel that intricate search for new ways to formulate what should be formulated. If that is not done there will be no new synthesis leading to new answers."

The Future: Plan, Proposals, and Partnerships
In conclusion the Swedish research system is working in many directions during the entire 1990's.
It has been seen as very important during the 90's to develop socio-economic and cultural topics on environmental problems. The new tendence is to connect these aspects with natural science and technological discources within a sustainable development context. One example is the development of a long time perspective study, e.g. of the Baltic area (including the Baltic Sea) where both the social science and the natural science sides are highlighted. The analytical connections could be seen as important when the political system of many states in the nothern part of Europe proceed with the interstate cooperation in the sustainability domain under the name of Baltic 21. This move towards a higher degree of connnectedness between human dimensions and natural science issues will thus take place in paralell with the further development of the Human Dimension discources themselves.
The degree to which this will take place in expanded forms of collaborative work is not clear. The tendency has so far been that the Human Dimensions researchers as seen as a group have preferred to work in small closely knit groups except for the more formal network, which have been presented above under the name of Ways Ahead.
When you speak about the Swedish RTD science efforts in this realm the work by the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) and the Beijer Institute (at the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences) has to be mentioned. Broadly speaking they contribute to strong internationell links, systemic approaches, economic and institutional forms of analysis. To quite some extent Swedish researchers have also increasingly become successful members of European teams, securing EU grants in these domains. Within the European Science Foundation (ESF) and its special programme TERM Swedish researchers have also contributed to the international cooperation around these types of thematic concerns.

Nordic Partners
In many cases there are Nordic country cooperations based on disciplinary associations. Several meetings at that level have been arranged, e.g. with emphasis on policy science, environmental history and ecological economics. There has also been projectes related to the Nordic Council which have been conducted in the Human Dimensions realm. These cooperative schemes will in one way or another continue.

Concluding Remarks
Swedish research on Human Dimensions has come a long way during the 1990's. There is a wide variety of activities going on in several areas, and important developments in terms of university institutions like the 'Environmental University' attached to the Umeå University and the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) has been created. A large number of young scientists have now entered the field, many of whom already have reached post-doctoral positions. Variety, multiplicity, institutional consolidation and a new numerous generation of 'hungry' researchers in the field of Human Dimensions chracterize the Swedish scene at the brink to the period beyond the year 2000.