Co-creating sustainability transitions? A discourse analysis of local community participation within ESG discourse

Abstract

While sustainability transitions literature emphasizes the active participation of local communities in shaping sustainable futures, it remains unclear how such participation is discursively represented within ESG discourse. To address this gap, this thesis examines how ESG discourse constructs sustainability transitions as processes of co-creation through the articulation of the diagnosis of current sustainability challenges, future visions, and strategies. By doing so, the aim is to analyse how local communities are discursively positioned as participants of sustainability transitions within ESG discourse. This thesis employs discourse analysis to examine the sustainability reports of Linde Plc from 2018 to 2024, using backcasting as the temporal framework and conceptualising participation as co-creation. The findings show an uneven discursive construction of community participation across the phases of the transition, with participation excluded from the diagnosis and the future vision, but included in the strategies phase, primarily around project implementation. This contrasts with the emphasis on active participation across all transition phases expected in sustainability transitions and participation literature. Therefore, this thesis concludes that ESG discourse constructs sustainability transitions as limited co-creative processes, thereby discursively positioning communities as necessary for project implementation rather than as actors of change involved in shaping the direction of sustainability transitions.