This thesis concerns how local governments use the concept sustainable development, and what the concept means. The concept of Agenda 21 and local Agenda 21 will also be discussed in this essay, because it's an instrument for local governments to specify their work towards sustainable development. I have interviewed civil servants in leading positions in the municipalities’ work with environmental questions and sustainable development. In the choice of method for this thesis, I use the qualitative method and for the interviews I chose the “semi structure way of interviewing”.

This thesis shows that local governments’ implementation of sustainable development and Agenda 21 differ between the municipalities. In one local government was the focus on an adapted local Agenda 21-document. Another local government worked with a complement to the local Agenda 21-document in shape of commitment to the Ålborg-declaration instead. An explanation to that was that the government wanted to integrate additional dimensions to the local government work with sustainable development. A third local government does not longer follow the Agenda 21-document, even though such a manual had been designed earlier. The government works with the own profession of the government employee instead, and a climate and energy strategy is now under development. The idea is that the strategy is going to be a new complement to the local Agenda 21.

The concept of sustainable development is, in a theoretical way, quite broad. This has resulted in the fact that all of the three local governments have different views to what sustainable development involves. However, this might have been the intention behind the concept of sustainable development, because you have to adapt the investment to the local level to match the own local government in the best way. All the informants agreed that the Bruntland reports’ definition of sustainable development is the starting-point for their own versions of sustainability strategies.