What is the Problem of Sustainability? : A Review of the municipality of Malmö’s Environmental Programme 2019-2020

Sammanfattning: In 2015 every member of the United Nations accepted Agenda 2030, a guideline for sustainable development with the aim of keeping the temperature from rising above two degrees Celsius. However, it’s still not clear what it seeks to sustain, and the logic behind the concept remains elusive. This thesis aims to examine the meaning behind environmental sustainability by investigating how Agenda 2030 is interpreted by urban planners in Malmö, through analysing the problematisations made in the environmental programme for environmental sustainability in Malmö. The analysis relies on the idea that a policy is created in order to solve a problem. By examining what is seen as a problem the underlying logic of the policies will be discerned. By examining the problematisations of the environmental programme of the municipality of Malmö between 2019-2020 the research will elucidate what environmental sustainability means in the context of Malmö, Sweden. The research showed that the municipality wishes to make optimal use of environmental sustainability as a tool for social, economic and environmental development through changed behaviour of businesses, staff at Malmö Stad, and its citizens. The municipality’s environmental programme implies that unsustainability stems from lack of knowledge, which causes people to make unsustainable choices. Environmental sustainability, as presented, by the municipality of Malmö’s policy document to be about optimising and increasing the environment’s beneficial effects for humans.