Sustainable private consumption patterns - The obstacles for Lund to promote organic provisions

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to investigate why the municipality of Lund has not done more, in relation to LundaMaTs, to inform and promote the purchasing of organic provisions to the public. This is of interest since it is determined in the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 that the current unsustainable production and consumption patterns need to change. The local authorities play an important role in order to achieve a sustainable development. One way to achieve sustainable consumption patterns is to increase the private purchasing of organic provisions. It is assumed that the same obstacles that have been found in earlier studies concerning implementation of Agenda 21 objectives at a local level also constitute obstacles for the efforts to promote organic provisions in Lund. In order to answer the aim, interviews with politicians and civil servants within the municipal administration were conducted. The results showed that the main obstacles experienced by the interviewees were political disagreement, a fear of backlash from the public and that promotion is being viewed as an ineffective tool.