My research forms around an interest to understand the role of different actors in climate transformation. Some of the questions that I am curious about and try to understand in my research are: In what ways do companies work to reduce their negative climate impact? What are the main drivers of companies’ climate work? How do different actors, such as companies, authorities, and politicians, view their own and other actors’ roles in climate transformation? In what way are their various initiatives in dealing with the climate transformation interrelated?
The role of companies in climate work
Many actors, from single individuals to supranational organisations, need to cooperate if the world is to achieve the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius – something that most nations of the world agreed to do as part of the Paris Agreement. In Sweden, like at many other places of the world, companies are responsible for a large share of greenhouse gas emissions, and they therefore also have an important role in climate work. Hence, it is common that policies to increase the pace in the climate transformation are targeted to companies. But companies are not passive recipients of the policy instruments targeting them but active agents who take on their own initiatives as part of the climate transformation. So, how to the companies actually relate to the policies and investments targeting them? In what ways, if any, are the policy instruments aimed at increasing the speed of climate transformation, aligned to the ongoing climate work among companies? In what way do they impact on their climate work? Do they? Which other actors do the companies consider important as drivers of their climate work? Questions such as these are important to research in order to understand the opportunities and challenges of climate governance. They are also important to understand how climate transformation emerges from a myriad of initiatives that might be interconnected in different ways and that are launched by different actors.
