To answer the research question, the researcher held ten face-to-face interviews with ten key financial decision makers of pension funds in Belgium and Finland, and conducted a survey of more than 250 pension funds in 15 European countries. Five articles and an introductory article, which provides a theoretical framework, constitute the thesis.

The theoretical framework and the results of the five articles indicate that pension fund-level drivers also are important when explaining responsible investment in the context of pension funds. This level, impacted by macro-level drivers (culture, institutions, organisations, economics and finance), comprises the characteristics of pension funds and their key financial decision makers. Although micro-level drivers such as heuristics, beliefs, values, attitudes and motives are essential to explaining responsible investment in the context of pension funds, key financial decision makers may be unaware of their influence.

More specifically, Article 1 showed on a macro level that, in particular economic openness, the size of the pension industry, as well as cultural values of masculinity (femininity) and uncertainty avoidance, can be associated with differences in responsible investment. Article 2 pointed out that during the financial crisis (Economics and Finance), the attitudes of key financial decision makers of pension funds were not a negative driver of responsible investment. Article 3 found that practical struggle is a negative driver for responsible investment by pension funds and that heuristics, such as the use of readily available information, may impact the way the key financial decision makers of pension funds think about responsible investment. Article 4 confirmed the findings of Article 3 with regard to practical struggle and demonstrated that the pension fund level (i.e. responsible investment practices) can impact the macro level. Article 5 found that several pension fund characteristics drive responsible investment: legal origin (in particular Scandinavian and English origins), pension fund ownership type (in particular public pension funds) and size-related variables (e.g. portfolio size; in particular the smallest and the largest pension funds). The article also showed that the pension fund level matters when examining the drivers of responsible investment by pension funds.

To conclude, responsible investment by pension funds responds to drivers that are embedded in the environment in which the pension funds function, the characteristics of the pension funds as well as the ways in which their key financial decision makers think. In general, the contribution to sustainable development is that pension funds - including those with no responsible investment strategy - seem to be positive towards responsible investment.

The results may be helpful when considering the practice of responsible investment in different economies, which, consequently, may prove interesting to researchers, decision makers at national and international levels, responsible investment organisations such as UN PRI and Eurosif, institutional investors and responsible investment service providers. Future research is encouraged to investigate in greater detail what motivates or discourages pension funds towards or from responsible investment.

Key words: responsible investment, pension funds, drivers of responsible investment

This thesis was undertaken to investigate the potential of tailings from apatite ore beneficiation at the Siilinjärvi phosphate mine, Finland, in the dephosphorization of sewage and in the remediation of metal-contaminated areas. The material is a mixture of minerals, mainly phlogopite [KMg3(Si3Al)O10(OH)2] and calcite (CaCO3), accompanied by apatite [Ca5(PO4)3F] residues. Based on the versatile chemical properties, this geomaterial was hypothesized to act as a sorbent for P and Pb, rendering the tailings a potential agent for environmental remediation. A part of the original tailings material was artificially weathered by treating with a strong acid to create reaction-active aluminium (Al) and iron (Fe) (hydr)oxide sites. Some of the acidified material was further subjected to partial neutralization by treating with a strong base to precipitate any metals dissolved from the mineral structure during the acidification. Furthermore, all of the tailings materials were sieved into two particle-size fractions somewhat differing in their mineralogical composition and investigated as separate amendments.

The ability of the tailings to retain P and Pb from aqueous solutions as well as the tailings-induced changes in the Pb retention capacity of a mineral soil were studied by means of an isotherm technique. A sequential fractionation procedure was undertaken to investigate (a) the distribution of inherent and added P between various chemical pools in the tailings and (b) the tailings-induced changes in the distribution of Pb between various chemical pools in a mineral soil artificially contaminated with Pb as well as in an organic shooting range soil contaminated with pellet-derived Pb. Because the toxicity of dissolved Pb depends on its chemical speciation, the tailings-induces changes in the chemical speciation of water-extractable Pb in contaminated shooting range soil was tested separately by means of a cation exchange resin. The tailings retained both P and Pb efficiently. The removal of soluble P was primarily due to specific sorption by Al and Fe (hydr)oxides and possibly to retention to calcite. Lead sorption by the untreated tailings was a combination of various sorption mechanisms taking place simultaneously, primarily through precipitation and surface complexation. All tailings materials increased the Pb sorption capacity of a mineral soil and transferred Pb from the NH4NO3-extractable pool to the more strongly bound forms. In a contaminated shooting range soil, the pellets were found to undergo continuous weathering processes that released Pb into the soil. Amending the soil with the untreated tailings (a) reduced the solubility of the pellet-derived Pb through the formation of sparingly soluble fluorpyromorphite and cerussite, (b) reduced the bioavailability of Pb by transferring it from the water-soluble and NH4NO3-extractable pools into the NaOH-extractable one and (c) transferred the most toxic cationic Pb species to the less toxic non-cationic form.

The results suggest that the tailings may serve as an agent for dephosphorization of sewage and for Pb immobilization in polluted soil. The sorption properties of the material may be further optimized by chemical and physical pre-treatments. At present, the tailings material represents an uneconomic fraction of the ore deposit, but its components may render it a natural, environmentally sound and cost-effective remediation agent.

The fear of soil preparation accelerating GHG emissions, particularly CO2, from peat into the atmosphere appears unwarranted at least on nutrient-poor, boreal forestry-drained peatland sites. The overall climatic impact of soil preparation, in the forms of mounding and scalping, three years after application expressed in terms of CO2 equivalents (100-year GWP), was neutral compared to leaving soil unprepared.

The core findings of this research support mounding as the best alternative on nutrient-poor, drained peatland sites when the goal is to maximize the regeneration success of Scots pine after clearcutting with minimal impact on soil GHG emissions. In the future, development of soil preparation methodology is particularly deserving of further attention. While it may not be the sexiest research topic in the worldwide rat race of the modern day, it is nonetheless of substantial importance in a country highly specialized not only in the utilization but also the rejuvenation of wood resources on drained peatlands.

Keywords: forestry-drained peat soil, clearcutting, mounding, scalping, CO2, CH4, and N2O fluxes, drought and waterlogging stress

In addition to chemical testing, environmental monitoring of endocrine disrupting compounds is important to assess the level of exposure and possible adverse effects of chemicals on humans and wildlife. Chemical analysis methods used in environmental monitoring are sensitive, but they are also laborious, expensive, and require specialized instruments. Consequently, robust biological methods have become valuable tools to measure endocrine disrupting potency of chemicals and environmental samples. For this purpose, several Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cell-based bioreporters utilizing different nuclear receptors have been developed. Yeast-cell-based bioreporter assays have several advantages in environmental analytics. In addition to being inexpensive, they are particularly useful in determining the bioavailability of contaminants. Yeast is also very tolerant towards toxicity of different sample matrices. Yeast nuclear receptor bioreporter assays have been used to determine the total hormonal activity of samples containing unknown mixture of chemicals. However, these assays cannot identify the chemicals in the sample, and thus, monitoring of a single chemical has not been possible.

Many cell-based assays have already been adapted to high throughput screening plate formats of 384 and 1536 wells and even higher. However, nearly all yeast nuclear receptor bioreporter assays are still performed in 96-well plates. Consequently, yeast bioreporter assays should be adapted to automated liquid handling and high density well plates to enable screening of large chemical libraries and high number of samples.

In this thesis study, a yeast nuclear receptor bioreporter assay for specific detection of a single chemical, bisphenol A (BPA) was developed. The creation of the BPA-targeted receptor included application of a oligonucleotide-based mutation method and a positive-negative genetic selection method for human estrogen receptor α (publication I). Chemical specificity of the BPA-targeted receptor (BPA-R) bioreporter assay was characterized, and its use demonstrated with chemical mixture and waste water samples (publication II). In addition, the existing battery of yeast bioreporters was adapted to automated liquid handling and high density 384 and 1536 well plates to meet the requirements of high throughput screening (publication III). Finally, a new yeast-based bioreporter utilizing a chimeric human retinoid X receptor was constructed and characterized (publication IV). This bioreporter can be used to measure organotin compounds such as tributyl tin in environmental samples.