Local Carbon Budgets as a Governance Tool for Sustainability Transitions : A Case Study from Västra Götaland

Abstract: A growing awareness of the severity of the climate crisis caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has led to an increased effort to find governance strategies to transition society towards sustainable development. One recently adopted strategy is the adoption of local carbon budgets, derived from the so-called global carbon budget, within local governments across Sweden. In this thesis, I explore this happening through a case study of the county of Västra Götaland, Sweden using the concept of governmentality to provide critical analysis of the use of local carbon budgets in an attempt to encourage reflexive governance. By conducting semi-structured interviews with persons involved in the adoption of local carbon budgets in Västra Götaland, I seek to gain a greater understanding of how local carbon budgets impact the way actors seek to govern climate through the adoption of new programs of conduct that seek the reform of the current regime of practices that exist within the county. I explore how such carbon budgets construct the problem of climate change and the need for rapid decarbonization to discover what practices are limited or made possible through such a construction. I find that local carbon budgets are problematizing several areas of municipal and regional governance, conceptually and practically, particularly in the way actors understand climate change and the decarbonization challenge. I argue that a reterritorialization of the climate into local ‘emission spaces’ allows for the quantification and distribution of limited ‘emissions resources’ amongst actors in the county. This territorialization and quantification of a constructed resource contribute to a perception of urgency critical to motivating action to decarbonize. These conditions create a mandate for political action to resolve the constructed problem of scarce ‘emissions resources’ within a municipality or county’s ‘emissions space’ to ensure a ‘fair’ distribution in society. I further suggest that actors adopting local carbon budgets should consider the application of common-pool resource management strategies to move governance beyond an internal carbon budgeting approach.