The development of environmental visions and strategies at the municipal level: Case studies from the county of Östergötland in Sweden

•The concepts of environmental visions and strategies were viewed differently in different municipalities.•Political decision-making played a key role in the development of environmental visions and strategies.•Use of holistic and participative approaches are crucial to developing and implementing environmental visions and strategies.

Sweden faces a number of environmental challenges. Municipalities can play an important role in managing these challenges. Using interviews with 13 municipalities in the county of Östergötland, the manner via which environmental visions and strategies were developed and implemented, and the challenges were explored.Differences were found in the effective development and implementation of both environmental visions and strategies due to a range of factors including the range and level of involvement of different stakeholders, variation in what constituted an environmental strategy, and the time horizons employed for the visions. Suggestions for how best to overcome the barriers are outlined.