Denna rapport har författats som en delleverans inom ramen för Vinnova-projektet ”Dialog för Slites framtid” (Dnr 2024–03723). Projektet är en genomförandestudie och syftar till att utforska förutsätt-ningarna för en medborgardialog och/eller samverkansmodell i Slite i samband med att Heidelberg Materials planerar för en omställning till klimatneutral cementproduktion. Omställningen av industri-verksamheten i Slite skulle bland annat innefatta en etablering av en anläggning för koldioxidinfång-ning och lagring (Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS) liksom en omfattande utbyggnad av hamnen i an-slutning till den befintliga fabriken. Tillsammans med ett förnyat 30-årigt tillstånd för kalkbrytning skulle dessa investeringar komma att medföra betydande påverkan på den fysiska miljön i och kring Slite. I samband med utbyggnaden förväntas även inkommande arbetskraft leda till stora demografiska förändringar i samhället. Mot denna bakgrund fick Region Gotland under hösten 2024 i uppdrag att involvera lokalsamhället i ett tidigt samråd. Projektet ”Dialog för Slites framtid” lägger grunden för detta dialogarbete. Som en del av projektet syftar rapporten till att presentera och jämföra några olika former för medborgardialog och modeller för gemensam platsutveckling.

SEDAN DET KLIMATPOLITISKA ramverket antogs av riksdagen i juni 2017 har Sverige strävat efter att bli ett fossilfritt välfärdsland. Målet är att Sverige inte ska ha några netto-utsläpp av växthusgaser år 2045 och därefter uppnå negativa utsläpp. För att nå detta mål har staten krokat arm med näringslivet och riktat fokus mot utsläppstunga sektorer så som energi, transport och basindustri. Samarbetet har präglats av en stor teknikoptimism. Genom gröna teknikskiften ska den svenska industrins konkurrenskraft stärkas, nya jobb skapas och klimatnytta exporteras till världen. I denna omställnings berättelse saknas medborgarnasröster, drömmar och visioner. Behöver svensk klimatpolitik bli mer inkluderande för att vinna folkligt stöd och vad innebär det i så fall i praktiken?

In this paper, we discuss the unsettled politics of child and youth representation in international institutions. By introducing the collection of papers that constitute this Special Issue, we examine how international institutions empower children and youth through participation and recognition, but also how institutionalized rules, routines, and policy discourses constrain the realms of possibility available to them. While the contributions illustrate how the politics of age and generation underpin IR as subject matter, they also prompt us to think of child and youth representation as unsettled and multifarious. We identify three ‘troubles of representation’ that complicate the involvement of children and youth in global policymaking: (i) the problem of speaking for others; (ii) representative hierarchies and barriers; and (iii) young people’s liminal position in-between worlds. Finally, we discuss how young people’s in-betweenness offers a productive prism that invites us to revisit the politics of representation and identify avenues for future research.

This paper focuses on the role of spatial imaginaries in Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society. Through focus groups and individual interviews in two Swedish communities, closely entangled with carbon intensive industries, we analyze the spatial imaginaries embedded in people’s stories about place and what they are doing to the local dynamics of the fossil free transition. Our findings show how othering, recognized as a forceful mechanism of spatial imaginaries, contributes to a starkly pronounced us-and-them dynamics in our case study locations where geographical divisions such as urban-rural, north-south and center-periphery shapes how the fossil free transition is understood and received. Our findings suggest that from a national policy perspective the greatest challenge ahead lies in “creating an us” in the face of transformation by designing policies that approach the transition to a fossil free society as a common concern met by collective effort. Moreover, our results confirm the vital importance of also treating industrial decarbonization as a process of place-making where communities and local citizens are at the very center of envisioning place-based desired futures.

In December 2019, the European Commission launched the European Green Deal (EGD) and hereby ramped up the climate ambitions of the European Union. Responding to a mounting sense of climate urgency, the European Commission proposed a comprehensive reform program to make the EU's economy climate neutral by 2050. In this paper, we trace the practical work undertaken to ensure that Europe's green transition is just and leaves no one behind. To that end, we turn to the Just Transition Platform, an online portal coordinated by the European Commission. By analysing the many guidelines, checklists, and event reports produced by this platform, we trace the problem objects towards which the EU's just transition efforts are directed, what practical techniques are deployed to act upon them in order to transform them, and ultimately, how they define what it means to be a modern and green European.

The Paris Agreement ushered in an era of climate governance underpinned by a polycentric theory of change, emphasizing experimentation, collaboration, and innovation while downplaying political contestation, power asymmetries, and the need for regulatory action by the state. This article explores the roles the state plays in polycentric climate governance, focusing on the tension between the regulatory state, where authorities set, monitor, and enforce rules, and the orchestrating state, which facilitates collaboration with nonstate actors to induce behavioral change. Using decarbonization in Sweden as an illustrative case study, the article synthesizes the results of two research projects evaluating the promises and limits of polycentric climate governance. The results problematize the view that Sweden is a forerunner in climate governance, suggesting that while the Swedish government has mobilized support from important industries and cities in favor of decarbonization, that support may be insufficient to achieve necessary societal transformation for deep decarbonization. Finally, the study reflects on the conditions necessary for polycentric governance to effectively decarbonize society, highlighting the pivotal role of the regulatory state.

This chapter employs narrative analysis to examine how people who live in the shadow of carbon-intensive industries imagine a just transition to net-zero emissions. The analysis rests upon an interview study with local politicians, civil servants, union representatives, and citizen groups in the Swedish west-coast city of Lysekil, home to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery. By mapping stories of climate (in)justice told in view of Sweden’s efforts to decarbonize, this chapter illustrates the cultural dimensions of carbon lock-ins and why some people resist transformative change. In the city of Lysekil, the refinery is not only an important source of local employment but also deeply entangled with community identity and sense of place. However, the chapter also points to the multiple interpretations of just transitions to climate neutrality and the power of narrative to open-up possibilities for decarbonized futures.

In this article, we study how Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society is interpreted and experienced by communities whose livelihoods and cultural identities are entangled with carbon-intensive industries. The study draws upon interviews with citizen groups in the coastal city of Lysekil, located next to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery. Our analysis speaks to a growing scholarly literature on just transitions where we argue that a better understanding of place attachment as an active and operating force in local transition processes, can provide important information for just transition policy design. Based on our research on place attachment in Lysekil, we suggest that inclusivity in just transitions, implies acknowledging and addressing more than material aspects of loss, involving loss of direction, loss of identities and loss of imagined futures. Moreover, we argue that the vision of an inclusive transition requires a more nuanced approach to the concept of “community” which recognises different stories, voices, and perspectives and challenges taken for granted assumptions about local people's priorities in debates on just transitions. Finally, based on our experiences from Lysekil we contend that inclusivity requires communicative spaces where citizens can meet to listen, speak, and discuss future pathways towards a fossil free society. The visions of just and inclusive transitions, we argue, can only be realised if driven by a place-based dialogue on future pathways and if agendas for a fossil free transformation are locally anchored.

In this article, we examine how young climate activists make use of the United Nations(UN) constituency system to give voice to children and youth in global climate governance.Our study is based on a mapping of accredited youth nongovernmental organizations( YOUNGO) as well as fieldwork at two UN Climate Change Conferences, where weconducted interviews, observed events, and analyzed plenary interventions. Informedby constructivist accounts of political representation, the article pays attention to theperformative relationship between institutionalized means of youth representation and“the represented.” When analyzing our material, we asked who speaks for youth, howyouth are spoken of, and how institutions shape representative speech. Our study iden-tifies three subject positions that offer competing interpretations of who youth are as apolitical community and what they want. Rather than taking youth’s demands andinterests as a starting point for representative politics, the article illustrates how theUN constituency system actively constructs youth and effectively molds young climateactivists into professional insiders.