Stefan Nyström: Follow Sweden's example on climate change

Climate change is becoming an increasingly pressing challenge. The effects are literally knocking on our doors on a daily basis. The past summer's extreme weather here in Europe seems to have increased public awareness and created a new openness for discussions on both individual and political mitigation action.

In my country, Sweden, a combination of a cold winter with abundant precipitation followed by droughts and an unprecedented number of forest fires made many of us think twice. We now also know that agricultural harvests in many cases were halved, and the question to be asked is what our response would be if harvests were halved across the whole of Europe – or the world – at the same time?

Two years ago, the leaders of 187 nations stood up as one in Paris, declaring that climate change is the most severe challenge mankind has ever faced. Promises were made and the Paris Agreement was signed.

However, greenhouse gases have continued to rise to an all-time high. If a de-carbonisation of our economies does not happen quickly, scientists warn us that we are looking at a global warming of 3-5 degrees Celsius during this century.

There is some positive work being done around the world with countries like mine, New Zealand and others setting ambitious goals for eliminating our contribution to climate change and developing pathways for others to follow.

In Sweden, political discussions were intense ahead of the Paris Agreement. An inter-governmental investigation was set up with representation from all political parties. After two years of thorough analytical work, a new climate policy framework came into effect on 1 January. This rests on three pillars:

1. An overarching goal of becoming a climate-neutral country by 2045.

2. A Climate Act, which requires every government to present an action-plan, including an evaluation of Sweden’s performance in relation to the long-term goal and, if needed, launching complementary mitigation measures.

3. The appointment of an independent Climate Change Committee with the task of evaluating the government’s performance and suggesting alternative measures to meet the long term goal.

It’s too early to know how this is working, but it’s obvious that already the “zero-signal” has become a driver both for business and local governments. We now see a very large number of local governments setting up at least as ambitious goals as the national government, and already during 2018 more than 15 industrial sectors will have presented action plans to become fossil-free. Among them are economic giants such as iron and steel, cement and the forestry industry.

The reasons behind this massive and rapid response to the