Provision of Climate Advice as a Mechanism for Environmental Governance in Swedish Agriculture.

Climate mitigation is both a pressing and complex task, and one that frequently requires both participation, to involve stakeholders, and capacity building to enable them to change their practices. This paper considers whether the provision of climate advice to affected parties could be an effective policy activity in both respects. The article investigates the feasibility and potential influence of providing climate advice by examining the role that such advice has played in the discursive activities of agriculture extension consultants in Sweden. This case demonstrates that rather than promoting substantial change in practices, the climate issue is used to support conventional efficiency-increasing measures and to change the descriptions of prevailing agricultural activities. We find that the embedding of climate-related discourse within agricultural extension, and the lack of clear climate mitigation goals for the agricultural sector, reduced and adapted the climate issue, accommodating it to the narratives prevailing among farmers, which are well aligned with conventional economic rather than climate policy goals. This lock-in could be addressed by establishing clear and radical reduction targets and through the broader involvement of a wider range of stakeholders. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]