Local approaches to sustainable development with case studies from Sweden

Introduction

Geographical approaches to sustainable development consider how sustainable development plays out on different scales and how space makes a difference. The scales for research may refer to political-administrative territories – EU, national states, and different subnational territories – as well as regions and places defined through social processes and structures. This thematic issue contains articles focusing on how sustainable development plays out on the local scale, and how such processes are intertwined into complex multi-scalar interactions and relations. The articles describe studies that investigate how local structures and processes condition the development of social, economic and ecological sustainability. They provide insights into the importance of place for how sustainable development can be realised in practice. With this approach as the point of departure, it is important not to be led into the false conclusion that local scale is about minor changes. We suggest that the opposite is the case - that local actions are required in order to effect genuine transformations towards sustainable development. The accumulation of local changes over time leads to thresholds being passed and transformations being achieved (Feola, 2015).

The widespread and generally agreed understanding of sustainable development contains three dimensions – ecological, social and economic – which, it is maintained, are unevenly prioritised through policy and unevenly analysed through research. Social sustainability receives less attention (Vallance, Perkins, & Dixon, 2011). Energy transition has been one important theme within the dimension of ecological sustainability (Bridge, Bouzarovski, Bradshaw, & Eyre, 2013). Although the approach of eco-modernisation and the aligning concept of the green economy dominate debates on economic sustainability (Jones et al., 2016), it is important to remember that scholars in geography have also discussed the alternative concept of ‘degrowth’ (Krueger, Schulz, & Gibbs, 2018). The three dimensions of sustainable development are interrelated, and involve transforming organisational structures, technological systems and patterns of behaviour with profound impacts on societies.

Studies on sustainable development at the local scale need to acknowledge the role of Local Agenda 21 (LA 21): ‘“Local Agenda 21”, launched at the first Rio summit, envisaged a community-led response to sustainable development challenges locally’ (Ely, Smith, Stirling, Leach, & Scoones, 2013, p. 1063). LA 21 marks an important initial point for the focus on the local scale for sustainable development work, which has continued to be an important and focused scale for policy and for scholarly work (Gibbs & Kreuger, 2005). A review article covering research publications on LA 21 classified such strategising ‘in five types based on their key initial drivers: Local Government Strategy, Civil Society Initiative, Networking Strategy, Higher Tiers of Government Policy, and International Cooperation’ (Echebarria, Barrutia, Eletxigerra, Hartmann, & Apaolaza, 2018, pp. 1307–1308). The articles of this themed issue relate in different ways to these five drivers.

A place-based approach conceives how local agency is locally conditioned and embedded with respect to political, economic and social institutions, and with respect to trajectories of path dependency. Such an approach facilitates research that envisions how identity and motivations are important drivers behind individual and collective action for sustainable development (Fischer, Holstead, Hendrickson, Virkkula, & Prampolini, 2017; Franklin & Dunkley, 2017). A place-based approach considers the effects of geographical proximity in interplay with different forms of relational proximity (cf. Healy & Morgan, 2012). It is important to realise that a place-based approach should not be misconceived to be about territorially bounded processes. This means that explanations of how processes play out locally need to conceive how these are imbued by transboundary relationships – across organisations and places. The roles of collaborations in relation to learning and innovation are often evident, examples of which are network governance (Khan, 2013), the constructive dialogue process (Smedby & Neij, 2013), and urban transition labs (Nevens et al., 2013).

The discussion above suggests a framework and point of departure for geography research on sustainable development from a local approach through emphasising and explaining: (i) the relational approach of place; (ii) the three interrelated dimensions of ecological, social and economic sustainability; and (iii) the contents of transformation of technical systems, social practices and subjective conceptions. This frames the discussions of the six articles in this themed issue.

All six articles share the same national context for the empirical cases, namely Sweden, and so some notes on what this particular national framing involves are in order. Sweden is a sparsely populated country in which the populations of most cities and towns are rather small. This means that social arrangements through networks and governance need to handle distance, and that activities and organisations may benefit comparatively little from resources derived through external economies of scale. Secondly, the political system in Sweden means that local authorities have substantial resources and mandates to act. The aggregate of individual budgets for all 290 local authorities in Sweden corresponds to around 25 percent of GNP. The strong mandate of the local authorities is an important background that explains the earlier wave in the 1990s of comprehensive implementation of LA 21 throughout Sweden. Although LA 21 in its organisational forms has been phased out, local learning and experiences from these initiatives remain.

All the articles in this special issue concern initiatives, collaborations and actions on the local scale. The articles may be sorted into two groups on the basis of whether they are primarily concerned with top-down-driven local adoption or with bottom-up and community-engendered processes. The latter type of community-driven processes focuses on civil society initiatives and are the main concern of two of the articles. This includes the article on the development of eco-villages (EVIs) (Magnusson, 2018), and the article on older people’s participation in the social community (Abramsson & Hagberg, 2018). The four articles in the second group share a primary focus on the top-down impacts of national policy and regulations for local sustainable development initiatives. These four articles discuss waste management (Glad, 2018), the introduction of individual metering and debiting (IMD) of hot tap water in rented flats (Köhler, 2018), an initiative to renovate a building complex with housing for the elderly (Trygg, 2018), and the adoption of green growth policy among middle-sized cities (Hermelin & Andersson, 2018). The particular themes and research aims of the articles mean that the focus of sustainable dimensions – ecological, economic or social – differs.

The papers

The first two articles in this themed issue describe and discuss structures and initiatives that have to a large extent been locally initiated and conditioned, i.e. bottom-up processes. Social sustainability, which is described to be a ‘good quality of life, where people’s needs are met and their participation in the social community is secured’, is a focused theme for Abramsson and Hagström (2018). Social sustainability is investigated from the viewpoint of older people. Responses from a questionnaire survey sent to individuals aged 80 years and older living in semi-rural municipalities constitute the empirical material for this study. The older people were involved to a large extent in local associations on a voluntary basis and contributed to and benefited from the local social community. Nevertheless, the processes of de-population, ageing and a decrease in the supply of service facilities in the countryside affect this population group. The article discusses the conditions of thinning out of local social networks for older people living in countryside areas and the way in which it challenges the social situation.

The article on EVIs is local in its approach but wide in its perspective, addressing all three aspects of sustainable development (Magnusson, 2018). It conceives how multi-scalar relationships contextualise the development of local EVIs. Global networks for such initiatives affect how ideals are spread across different places in Sweden. The multi-scalar relationships do not, however, concern enforcing regulations, and the impact of the international network is primarily triggered by grassroots initiatives and innovations through local learning. The concluding discussion describes knowledge sharing between projects across places, which illustrates the relational approach that this article takes to place. It focuses interest on the time dimension, and defines four generations of EVIs, characterised by different ideals and ways of acting.

The first article in the group of four articles that discuss aspects of sustainable development that are driven in important ways through top-down programmes and regulations analyses material recycling and waste management (Glad, 2018). This article takes its point of departure from the feature of institutionalisation of behaviour, which is driven in an important way by regulations and policy implementation. The discussion ‘ … explores how the social and the material are intertwined and arranged around the spaces for household waste’ (Glad, 2018, p. 2). The geographical scale of the empirical discussion is a residential neighbourhood representing the site for strategies and the practice of power. This neighbourhood is described as deprived. In contrast with the discussion by Magnusson (2018) about EVIs developed through community groups and bottom-up initiatives, the discussion by Glad (2018) shows how sustainable development through material recycling is developed and implemented through top-down regulations, authority strategies and control technologies.

Two of the articles in this themed issue focus on how initiatives for sustainable development may fail, and the lessons which can be learned from such failures. One of these concerns the introduction of IMD of hot tap water in rented flats (Köhler, 2018). This article illustrates how institutional structures and the organisational landscape challenge the implementation of technical systems for sustainable development in important ways. Although international and national regulations require the installation of IMD, the actors in this case – the project leader, housing company and tenant organisation – were not able to agree. The key conflict concerned the standard consumption level of hot tap water, which would control the distribution of costs between households and the partners in the negotiations. Although the partners agreed that IMD is a desirable technique in principle, negotiations about the distribution of costs prevented this project from being completed. This example from a failed project illustrates ‘how difficult it can be to do something that breaks with the “normal order of things”, which sustainability is all about’ (Köhler, 2018 ).

The second article that describes a failed project for sustainable development concerns a building company project to renovate a building complex that included housing for the elderly (Trygg, 2018). From the approach of collaborative governance, this article illustrates how the concept of drivers is an important explanatory factor for how projects may be carried through. In this case, the local authority was responsible for elderly care, which meant that this building company needed to collaborate with the local authority. However, the building company failed to mobilise the local political body and failed to create a shared motivation to drive the project forward. An important background to this situation is the unstable state of national regulations for housing for the elderly. This leads the local authority to be cautious, and reluctant to enter into commitments with the private company that owns the building complex. This article is a parallel case with the example of IMD (Köhler, 2018), and explains the tensions that arise from national regulations and how they affect the possibility of mobilising shared interests and motivations across partners in local collaboration.

The final article in this thematic issue differs from the others in that it is primarily concerned with policy, and less concerned with practice and agency (Hermelin & Andersson, 2018). The article describes how international and national models for sustainable development in general, and ‘green growth’ in particular, are adopted for local policy. Although a strong endorsement of green growth through international and national policy, the results indicate that this concept is a relatively marginal aspect of local policy. The ideal of green growth has been primarily adopted for local policy relating to infrastructure, local technical systems and the built environment. This result describes how the local institutional environments of Swedish municipalities determine in important ways how international and national concepts, models and regulations affect local interventions for sustainable development.

These six articles show various ways in which sustainable development may play out at the local scale, and how such processes are challenged. Organisational structure, motivation and knowledge are important for the implementation of initiatives. The initiatives may in some cases be small and incremental, but the transformative nature of such initiatives should not be underestimated, and it must be remembered that a total may be greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, it is hoped that the articles will contribute to our understanding of local initiatives for sustainable development. This also motivates us to encourage future research that attempts to understand the aggregate effects of local steps for the transformation towards the sustainable development of societies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Brita Hermelin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2404-0624

Kristina Trygg http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0121-2729