Attitudes towards Sustainable Development. Priorities, Responsibility, Empowerment

Abstract: The UN conference in Rio on Environment and Development in 1992 was the starting point for the local Agenda 21 work and several Swedish municipalities began their local Agenda 21 processes in 1993. This thesis aims at investigating how people perceive sustainable development in four Swedish municipalities. What is important and who is responsible? Individual influence and strategies for implementation, feelings of empowerment as well as the connection between personality and environmental concern, were analysed. Based on the Agenda 21 document, 20 statements including social, environmental and participation-/implementation issues, were developed. 160 persons (politicians, officials, environmental representatives and the public) were interviewed in four municipalities in the south east of Sweden. The respondents were asked to sort the statements according to the importance to family, municipality and world, and to the responsibility of the individual, local politicians and governments, EU and UN. The results showed that sustainable development issues were experienced as more important to the world than to the municipality or to the family, and that people felt worried and anxious when they were facing global problems. Most important were clean air, protecting fresh water, and health. What was important to the family was also perceived as important to the world however the connection to issues important in the municipalities was much less pronounced. The responsibility for sustainable development was mostly allocated to governments and global organizations, whereas the individual responsibility was perceived as low. Although the municipalities used information, education and local projects in order to increase the awareness, the public felt less individual responsibility and less influence than the other groups. Environmental concern was investigated among childcare personnel, who perceived their influence on environmental issues to be small. Still they felt that their actions would be meaningful if only they were provided with a scope of action and the possibility to influence. To increase the feelings of empowerment and improve the understanding of the global situation, more international co-operation projects on the local level are suggested. It is important to make local problems visible and explain the connection to global issues. If people were to perceive more control the prerequisites for treating problems in a constructively way might increase considerably.