Discourse Analysis Of Swedish Governments Climate Change Politics

As a global environmental challenge,climate change has become an important issue across the whole world.However,due to differences in political systems,economic and technical development,the level of climate governance varies from country to country.Sweden is one of the countries with the best environmental protection in the world.It has exceeded the Kyoto target and its domestic target.The average domestic greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2012 were 15%lower than the base year.Sweden's climate strategies have gone through many years of development to reach the point where it's at today.The understanding of climate change has changed from vague to clear,and now the Swedish government wants to set a great example of climate policy for other countries to follow.This article uses the discourse analysis method to investigate the dynamic changes of the Swedish government's climate discourse over the past few decades.Firstly,this article establishes a theoretical analysis framework for the Swedish government's discourse on climate governance based on discourse analysis.After clarifying the definition of discourse,the relationship between discourse and power,and the importance of government environmental discourse analysis,according to the elements of environmental discourse analysis constructed by John S.Dryzek,this article establishes three analysis elements of the Swedish government's climate governance discourse analysis,namely problem definition,political system and climate governance actors,Swedish climate responsibility and policy.Secondly,this article divides the development of the Swedish government's climate governance into three stages for specific research,1970 to 1988,1989 to 2002,and 2003 to the present.The Swedish government's definition of climate issues has changed from"climate change is not clear" to "climate change is happening now globally" to "climate change becomes a problem of our common destiny".Uncertainties in the definition of climate issues are decreasing,and political actors are paying more and more attention to and supporting climate issues.Finally,this article argues that the Swedish government has finally established a dominant climate discourse,that is,making Sweden an example of climate policy internationally,which has reached a broad consensus in the Swedish political system.But the opportunity or sacrifice brought by climate change mitigation has become the most significant disagreement and conflict in the Swedish government's climate discourse.The example discourse has also been institutionalized in Swedish climate policy,which continuously leads to more and more ambitious emission reduction goals.