“It’s not sustainable to keep living the way we do. So we wanted to find out what environmental challenges people around the world face in their lives, and what they dream about for the future”, says Victoria Wibeck, professor at Linköping University. Photo credit David Einar
To do this, Victoria joined colleagues including Therese Asplund and Anna Bohman, and interviewed people all over the world. They spoke to ordinary people in Boulder in the United States, in Guangzhou China, in Östergötland Sweden and on the islands of Fiji and Cape Verde. They asked questions such as what environmental problems do you face in your day-to-day life, how do you want these problems to be dealt with and how do you see the future.
“When people in Guangzhou dream about the future, it’s about clean air and clean water”, says Anna Bohman, who conducted the interviews in Guangzhou, a heavily polluted Chinese city of five million.
“When Swedes think about the future and a sustainable society, it’s about lifestyle changes and more eco-friendly technology”, says Therese Asplund, the interviewer for Sweden.