Aktiv miljöverksamhet? : en komparativ studie av kommuners miljöverksamhet

Active environmental activity?– a comparative study of the municipalities environmental activity Thesis in Political Science D-Level at Karlstad University by Jenny Ljung Spring 2008 Tutor: Michelle Michelleti The threat against our climate is one of our biggest challenges today. The awareness of the problem has grown rapidly for the last years in governments on international, national and regional level. The Swedish government is recognized as one of the leading countries in the climate and environmental work internationally. The Swedish municipalities play a big role in this successful work. The Swedish non-governmental organisation Naturskyddsföreningen has done a project called Klimatindex 2007, where they examine the work for the environment in all of Sweden’s municipalities. In their survey the municipalities has been asked to answer questions about transports, purchases, climate goals, information to the citizens etc. This has than been compiled and given scores on how well they been doing. Out of all Sweden’s municipalities I have chosen six that is of the size categorised as “bigger cities” that I will examine in this thesis. These are Trollhättan, Karlstad, Södertälje, Norrköping, Luleå and Halmstad. Trollhättan was classified as the best one and Halmstad was the worst one in Naturskyddsföreningens klimatindex 2007. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the importance of factors as political composition, administration, public media, non governmental organisations and geographic situation in regard to the the municipalities activity in the policy area. The activity is based on the results from Naturskyddsföreningens klimatindex 2007. The main research question that I intend to answer is: • Have the factors been important for how active the municipalities have been in the environmental policy? To be able to answer the main question I also have six precise research questions that I intend to answer. The material that I have chosen to study is documents about the political composition, interviews with civil servants about the administration regarding the climate and environment, local newspapers, NGO:s local work and membership statistics and SOU:s report about the affects of the climate change in Sweden. After analyzing the material I present an answer to my main research question: I have found that all the factors except the factor geographic situation are important for the activity