From 'grey to green'- investigating the capabilities of the ... - lumes

Sweden in 1963. The environmental problems became international during this period instead of the localenvironmental problems that had been addressed earlier (Bennulf 1994:12). The Swedish environmentalact was established in 1969 and was later revised and improved in 1999. The introduction of theenvironmental act in 1969 was followed by the construction of organisations on local, regional and centrallevel to control and monitor the environmental conditions. These institutions within the bureaucracy haveshown to change very little in its structure in the last 30 years (Duit 2002: 123,127). The fact that there hasbeen no change in these institutions is a problem as the environmental problems and knowledge aboutthem has also changed during this period. Primarily because during this process the debate went frombeing localised to internationalised, ecological balance became a measurement for the environmentalsituation instead of localised clean ups of emission. In 1964 the Nature Conservation Act wasimplemented and in 1972 the Socialist government led by Olof Palme hosted the first UN environmentalconference in Stockholm where the start of UNEP was introduced (Clapp & Dauvergne 2005:54). In 1987EIA placed a fifth chapter to the Natural resource act where the case of sustainability was identified thatwas set in 1990 (Melin 2000:139). During the 1980’s and 90’s the environmental policy debate developedfrom jurisdiction and local control of emission to an ideological policy construction (Duit 2002:156). TheBrundtland Report (1987) of course served as one of the influences of this process. The notion of socialengineering that one saw in the 1930’s had a revival after Brundtland (1987), and the notion of the greenpeople home. However this notion has been established in the bureaucratic organisation in the Swedishmodel since the 1930’s, where the society change is based on rational and scientific methods, and thenotion of the green peoples home were to be constructed through the same manner (Kronsell 1997:55).The environmental agencies have through history in Sweden been rather central and have been operatingwithout grass root foundation; the decisions regarding the environment have been delegated to the largebureaucratic apparatus (Kronsell 1997:57).After Rio conference in 1992 the Swedish government delegated the Agenda 21 policies to beimplemented during 1995 (Bro 1998:7). This process was evaluated and a report sent to UNGASS in 1998and showed that 90% of the local municipalities had implemented the Agenda 21 policies. This waspreceded with a law passed in 1991 that gave the more decentralised municipalities more power (Kronsell1997:59). During this time the ideological development of Sustainability policies were the foundation ofthe environmental policies. This was one of the highest figures of implementations by any of the countriesthat had started to adopt the Agenda 21 plans (Carter 2001:276). The government also declared in 1995that SD defined at that stage was to be implemented in all sectors of the Swedish society (SOU 1996:112).In 1995 the Swedish state joined the European union and from the outset established them selves as one ofthe ‘leader’ states in enforcing and pushing for more environmental policies in the union (AndersenLiefferink 2002:64). In 1996 a major shift in the idea of environmental policy making took place, theSocial democratic led government announced“The governments ambition is that Sweden shall become an instigating force and a leading country instriving to create a sustainable society. The ecological needs can lead to the next leap towardseconomic growth”. Prime Minster Göran Persson Inaugural speech 22 March 1996.In 1999 the Swedish government set 16 environmental goals (Kriström el al 2003:29). They include areassuch as climate change reduction, biodiversity, acidification, and toxic waste reduction emission, goalsand limitation. These are the foundation for the locally defined policy goals and decentralised to bereached and implemented by Regions and municipalities (http://miljomal.nu/om_miljomalen/alla_mal.php03-04-07). The environmental act was also established in 1999, it includes 33 chapters and 500paragraphs, and has been applicable and used in 50 other laws in other acts (Persson et al 2005:231).In 2001 the social democratic government again declared that they were developing a new type ofSwedish welfare model based on creating a ‘green’ welfare state, though still with economic growth as themain feature of the concept (Hermele 2002:35). One can here see a close link with the concept of‘ecological modernisation’ as the government stated that growth and environmental issues were not inconflict with each other (Hermele 2002:36). The idea behind this concept is to create an environment thatpushes for technological shift and innovation to create an industrial and academic as well as technicaldevelopment towards sustainable development, the win-win concept was based on the idea that Sweden24