Swedish bureaucratic biodiversity: Analysing municipal worker discourse with the theory of sociocultural viability

Abstract

Cities are important sites for societal transitions towards sustainability, which is increasingly recognised around the issue of biodiversity conservation and protection. However, cities are often characterised by the need to develop and grow. Furthermore, efforts to promote sustainable development have been criticised as failing to address the fundamental causes of environmental destruction. In this article, based on interviews with bureaucrats and documentary analysis, I explore urban planning and biodiversity protection at four Swedish municipalities. Biodiversity protection has been an official goal in Sweden for 30 years. As such, my research aim is to explore how Swedish bureaucrats represent efforts to balance imperatives to develop cities and protect biodiversity. Taking an institutional approach, I identify what information is included and excluded. In assessing municipal discourse, I utilise the theory of sociocultural viability, which provides an analytical typology of four worldviews. I identify that within respondents' discourse, biodiversity primarily emerges as a product of a hierarchical view of reality, as a measurable object; an indicator; a characteristic; and as a provider that is both engineerable and replaceable. This was despite numerous respondents articulating an egalitarian desire for more holistic interpretations of biodiversity in urban planning, appreciative of its inherent worth. This suggests that biodiversity has largely been integrated into extant hierarchical conceptualisations of public administration. According to cultural theory, addressing wicked policy problems effectively requires insight from several of the typology's worldviews. As such, current practice may reiterate dominant contemporary views on nature rather than innovation towards a radically different society.