Sweden's new government will abolish the country's environment ministry and instead place it under a newly formed Ministry for Climate and Business.
In addition, the country's new Climate and Environment Minister is 26-year-old Romina Pourmokhtari, the former head of the Liberal Party's youth organisation.
Ebba Busch, Sweden's new minister of Energy and Business, who will oversee Pourmokhtari, said after her appointment that in her opinion environmental issues "had been given too much weight" in previous governments. "If we want to solve climate issues, it's about transforming industry and the transport sector," she said.
The joint leaders of Sweden's Green Party were scathing about the decision to scrap a ministry that has helped put Sweden at the forefront of the battle against climate change, ever since it was established back in 1987.
"This is a historic decision which is going to have devastating consequences for environmental issues," said Per Bolund. "It is impossible to get a clearer description of how low this government ranks the environment and the climate."
He said that while the Tidö Agreement between the four government parties was already a "deathblow" for the environment, abolishing the department risked "completely burying the defining issue of our time".
His colleague Märta Stenevi noted that the climate crisis had had no mention in the list of four threats Ulf Kristersson said Sweden was facing in his speech on Tuesday morning laying out his government's programme.
"Instead, the Environment Department is being abolished and put under the business department, and we are getting a climate and environment minister who is going into the job without any policies, without a department, and apparently without any power."
Academics researching climate politics also questioned the decision, with Karin Bäckstrand, a professor of climate politics at Stockholm University, and former member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council saying she was "enormously surprised".
"We need to see the whole picture and the climate issue is connected to so many policy areas, the environment in particular," she told Sweden's
Dagens Nyheter newspaper.
"Environmental issues are going to be given a disadvantage at the same time when we have a huge challenge in Sweden when it comes to biodiversity and forestry. We won't meet the Agenda 2030 goals on biodiversity."
Mikael Karlsson, a researcher in climate leadership at Uppsala University, said the decision was "regrettable", but that he wasn't surprised, as the Tidö Agreement had already indicated that the four parties planned to dismantle Sweden's climate policies.
"They are subsidising high electricity use and fossil fuels, which contravenes the foundation stones of environmental policy which have existed for half a century," he said.
For this government, he told the newspaper, all environmental issues boiled down to a single solution – nuclear power – despite the fact that nuclear power cannot reduce emissions in the short to medium term.
The decision to abolish the department comes only three weeks before the UN's Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference, which is seen as a make-or-break last chance to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement.
It also comes ahead of Sweden's EU Presidency next year, when the country will be responsible for driving through the EU's ”Fit for 55” package on the green transition.
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