This is how Sweden has lived up to its climate promises

On Thursday, a large UN meeting will begin to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first international environmental conference – held in Stockholm in 1972. Sweden is leading the meeting together with Kenya and thousands of delegates are expected at the Älvsjö Fair.

For the government The meeting, which goes by the name Stockholm + 50, is an opportunity to show Sweden’s role in international environmental and climate work. At a press conference prior to the conference, Minister of the Environment and Climate Annika Strandhäll told DN:

– We feel an incredible pride in the role that Sweden has played. There has been a line, ever since Palme’s time, that these issues have been important to the Swedish government. And Sweden is today seen as a pioneering country in this area.

But how well has Sweden performed in relation to the framework we ourselves have been involved in building?

DN has mapped goals, agreements, conventions and promises in the environmental and climate area that Sweden has committed to since 1972. These range from comprehensive agreements such as the Paris Agreement – to narrower legal acts such as the Wetlands Convention. A total of 87 commitments have been reviewed.

Some, for example the national Swedish environmental goals, have already been evaluated. In all other cases, DN has taken leading researchers in each field to help and asked them to answer the question:

“Has Sweden fulfilled its obligations?”

In 63 out of 87 cases, almost three quarters, the answer has been no.

Among those marked in green are two different objectives concerning the protection of the ozone layer, several of the principles of the 1992 Rio Declaration and the UN Convention on Air Safety.

But Sweden does not achieve any of the goals within the framework of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, nor is Sweden in line with what is required for the Paris Agreement or, for example, the commitments that exist regarding the marine environment in the Baltic Sea.

– I am ashamed that Sweden has completely lost the leadership. We are a small country that could nevertheless have a big impact by showing the way, says Alexandre Antonelli, professor of biodiversity at the University of Gothenburg and head of research at Kew Gardens in London.

Despite the gloomy figures, the compilation probably gives an overly “bright” picture.

Several researchers point out that in some cases the evaluation methods are “too kind”. When it comes to, for example, the UN’s 17 sustainability goals – where DN has been based a report which gives Sweden approval in 7 out of 17 cases – says Associate Professor Magdalena Bexell, who researched the goals in particular:

– Only small parts of the overall 17 goals are measured here. To say that the whole goal as such is fulfilled therefore risks giving a too positive picture.

Åsa Persson is head of research at Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI, and says – about the same goal:

– Sweden has come a long way in an international comparison, but there are major challenges in the environmental field, where a large part of the Swedes’ environmental impact also takes place outside Sweden’s borders.

In other cases, the requirements are also both unclear and low-key, according to several of the experts DN has spoken to. Hervé Corvellec, professor of business administration at Lund University, answered “yes” to the question of whether Sweden has fulfilled its obligations in the EU’s action plan for circular economy.

– But the action plan did not require results. It was enough with a state investigation, some changes in the law and a new delegation. It was therefore perhaps not so surprising when Circular Gap Sweden recently noted that only 3.4 percent of Sweden’s economy is circular, which means that 96.4 percent is not, he says and continues:

– The thing is that it all depends on good will.

1992 UN Climate Convention gets the green light in DN’s review. But it is also possible to see in different ways, says Eva Lövbrand, assistant professor of environmental change at Linköping University:

– On the one hand, Sweden has followed the soft agreements on, for example, regularly measuring and reporting sources and depressions of greenhouse gases.

She continues:

– On the other hand, Sweden is involved in the collective failure to stabilize greenhouse gas levels and thereby limit the dangerous human impact on the climate system. This is a colossal defeat for international climate cooperation with fatal consequences for our children, vulnerable communities and ecosystems.

In principle, the whole has global environmental policy which exists today has been built up over the last 50 years. And since the 1990s, the number of goals and conventions has increased exponentially, says Erland Mårald, professor of the history of ideas at Umeå University, who has studied the discrepancy between environmental goals and their effects.

The increase in targets has taken place in parallel with what is called “the great acceleration” – where almost all curves, such as carbon dioxide content and species death, point in the wrong direction.

– The ambitious goals have been transformed into a New Public Management idea on a huge scale. You set a goal, come to a conclusion about how it should be measured, then it should be ticked off. It has become a bureaucratic apparatus that has made the process of handling the measurement and follow-up more important than the change itself, he says.

– It is also politically convenient to deal with these enormous problems by setting a goal to be achieved in the future. Then you do not have to make the tough decisions required during the current term.

Since 1970, wild vertebrate populations have declined globally by 68 percent, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF. About 90 percent of the world’s commercial fish stocks are overfished or fished to their limit. Every year, around three million tonnes of pesticides are released and, while certain types are banned, new ones – many times more toxic – are introduced to the market.

Over nine million people dies prematurely every year from air pollution and 3.5 billion people live in areas that are particularly vulnerable to climate change – already now.

The development in Sweden is also very worrying.

– If you go out into the country, you only see clear-cutting after clear-cutting, eutrophication in our seas and watercourses. It is completely destroyed along our coasts. These are fine-grained algae, oxygen-free bottoms. Both at sea and on land, it is sign after sign of new alien species that completely take over the endangered species, which do not succeed in increasing in number. The situation is really catastrophic in many places in Sweden with very large environmental effects in a very short time, says Alexandre Antonelli.

– Everything is on the way down. People have to understand that and it is a real emergency. Society needs to be shaken up properly, major changes are needed.