Transitioning towards sustainable consumption at the Swedish local governance level

Meeting today’s sustainability challenges requires major changes to current consumption practices, and governments from the local to the national level have key roles in driving this transition. Efforts to achieve sustainable consumption have mainly focused on national policies and programs, but more fundamental changes and innovative solutions require the engagement of a broad set of stakeholders at different levels, including the municipal level.

This study focuses on the understudied role of local governments in the transition to sustainable consumption, examining municipalities’ abilities to plan, develop and implement measures to govern the transition toward sustainable consumption with a focus on the municipalities’ own consumption. Using a quantitative survey of Swedish municipalities, the authors investigate the characteristics of local governments’ current work on sustainable consumption, and identify enabling and constraining factors experienced by the local governments in their work to advance sustainable consumption at the local level.