Collaboration for Sustainable Rural Development among public actors in Uppsala County

Sammanfattning: Collaboration is increasingly seen as an important aspect for sustainable development and sustainability, both within academia as well as among practitioners. The very nature of many sustainability issues requires collaboration and in the Swedish context collaboration on a county level is deemed necessary for the achievement of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. The divide between urban and rural is likewise an important topic for achieving sustainability, where neither exist in isolation but are rather dependent on each other. Ensuring that Sweden has a thriving countryside, where people want to live and work is therefore paramount for sustainable development. With this backdrop this thesis takes a closer look at Uppsala county, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of public actors’ ability to collaborate for sustainable rural development in Uppsala county. The thesis was designed through co-design with Upplandsbygd Lokalt ledd utveckling, a LEADER-office located in Uppsala county, and implements a qualitative inductive research approach and a flexible research design. Through semi-structured interviews with officials from different public authorities, the thesis establishes what can be considered as challenges and opportunities for sustainable rural development as well as what may hinder or enable the actors’ ability to collaborate on these issues. The research show that differences such as organization size and resources can influence the collaborative process among public actors. The interview results also underline the different challenges the participants are faced with and how this may either inhibit their ability to collaborate or enhance their need to do so. Focusing on rural development, the thesis also discusses how the relationship between city and countryside is found to impact not only what challenges or opportunities the actors identifies, but also their ability to collaborate on sustainability issues. It concludes that the countryside is an important arena for sustainable development, and that collaboration among public actors on the county level is imperative for achieving sustainable rural development in a county like Uppsala.