Sustainable Economies? The Swedish Riksbank and Climate Change

Background

The possibility of shaping ecologically sustainable markets remains a persistent challenge within the sciences. At the same time, Swedish policymakers have mandated the Riksbank, with its overarching responsibility for economic stability, to also incorporate a sustainability perspective into its operations.

Both representatives of the Riksbank and researchers emphasise that these measures presuppose extensive communicative efforts on the part of the central bank. The effective execution of its activities, including its new sustainability practices, requires a clear communicative focus. That makes the Riksbank’s rhetoric a question of both effectiveness and democratic accountability.

Aims

1. Identify the images of sustainability used in the Riksbank’s communication.
2. Trace how these images have evolved over time.
3. Relate them to the sustainability mandate in the 2023 Riksbank Act.
4. Develop a theoretical and methodological framework for central bank sustainability rhetoric.

Material and method

[Describe the corpus: monetary policy reports, speeches, press releases, sustainability reports; the time span; the analytical approach.]

Outputs

[Publications, conference papers and media contributions as they appear.]