Four Sustainability Goals in a Swedish Low-Growth/Degrowth Context

Eléonore Fauré, Åsa Svenfelt, Göran Finnveden and Alf Hornborg
Additional contact information
Eléonore Fauré: Division of Environmental Strategies Research, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Åsa Svenfelt: Division of Environmental Strategies Research, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Göran Finnveden: Division of Environmental Strategies Research, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Alf Hornborg: The Department of Human Geography and the Human Ecology Division, Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 11, 1-18

Abstract: Continual environmental degradation and an unfair distribution of environmental burdens and benefits are two great challenges for humanity. Economic growth is often taken for granted when planning for the future. However, it is often argued that maintaining economic growth conflicts with keeping human activities adjusted to ecological boundaries and finite resources, at least for the more-developed countries. With this paper, we present sustainability goals for building and planning in Sweden to be achieved by 2050 in a context of limited or even negative economic growth. These goals should ensure that all groups in society have sufficient resources and a good life within planetary boundaries. We select four goals in a participatory process: two environmental goals related to climate change and land use and two social goals related to welfare and participation. Our results show that achieving the environmental goals will require significant reductions of Sweden’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use compared to today’s levels. Regarding the social goals, these are, in many aspects, reasonably well fulfilled in Sweden today, although disparities remain between groups of citizens. The main challenge, however, is to ensure that these goals are fulfilled even within environmental limits and if economic growth should halt.

Keywords: sustainability goals; degrowth; environmental justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/11/1080/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/11/1080/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:11:p:1080-:d:81344

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().