Abstract for: Understanding the policy implementation deficit of the Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives system

The Swedish Environmental Quality Objectives (EQO) are sixteen in total and describe the desired state of the environment within one generation in each of the areas the EQO addresses. In the brief history of the EQO, there has been need of understanding what and how to measure success towards fulfilling the EQO. There is a need to create a better transparency between the implementation of policy to carrying out measures to, observing changes in the status of the environment into the desired direction. In this regards, identifying and understanding feedback loops and key driving forces that render implementation of environmental measures non-successful. This study analyses in what way environmental policy implementation can be better connected to success indicators and observation of changes in environmental state over time. And gives a proposal for a new gap-analysis process that is coupled with simple system dynamic modelling. The result of the case study show that the implementation of environmental policy has to be put into the context of understanding different time delays of the different factors within the system, i.e. time until environmental state has reach its target value. The study is ongoing and shows how novel qualitative analysis can be used to compare different types of policy option that address different types of strategies within the EQO.