Local Government
Implementation of Agenda 21

 

April 1997

Local Gov­ern­ment Imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 was pre­pared by ICLEI for the Earth Coun­cil’s Rio+5 Forum (April 13–19, 1997 — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), for the 5th Ses­sion of the UN Com­mis­sion on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, and for the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly’s “Earth Summit+5” Spe­cial Session.

ICLEI is the inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal agency of local gov­ern­ments. Found­ed in 1990, the Coun­cil’s mis­sion is to build and serve a world­wide move­ment of local gov­ern­ments to achieve and mon­i­tor tan­gi­ble improve­ments in glob­al envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions through cumu­la­tive local actions. It is a mem­ber­ship asso­ci­a­tion whose mem­bers cur­rent­ly include more than 250 cities, towns, coun­ties, and their asso­ci­a­tions around the world. ICLEI is for­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Local Author­i­ties (IULA) and serves as its envi­ron­men­tal arm.

For more infor­ma­tion on this report, please contact:

The Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Local
Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives (ICLEI)
World Secretariat
City Hall, East Tow­er, 8th Floor
Toron­to, Ontario M5H 2N2, Canada
Phone: +1–416/392‑1462
Fax: +1–416/392‑1478
Email: [email protected]
Inter­net Web­site: http://iclei.org

 

© ICLEI-Cana­da, 1997.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this pub­li­ca­tion may be repro­duced, stored in a
retrieval sys­tem, or trans­mit­ted, in any form or by any means,
elec­tron­ic, mechan­i­cal, pho­to­copy­ing, record­ing or oth­er­wise without
pri­or per­mis­sion of ICLEI-Canada

 

Table of Contents

• Exec­u­tive Summary
• A. Intro­duc­tion
• B. Progress on the Imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 and Relat­ed Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ences and Inter­na­tion­al Accords

1. The Local Agen­da 21 Movement
2. Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ters 2–22 of Agen­da 21 via the Statu­to­ry Func­tions of Local Government
3. Pro­grammes and Poli­cies Relat­ed to Inter­na­tion­al Accords
4. Munic­i­pal Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion (Chap­ter 2)
5. Par­tic­i­pa­tion and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Process — Local Agen­da 21 in Caja­mar­ca, Peru
6. The Use of Flex­i­ble Pub­lic Reg­u­la­tion to Pro­mote Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion — The Green Builder Pro­gram of Austin, U.S.A.
7. Build­ing Local Gov­ern­ment Capac­i­ty for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co and Quito, Ecuador
8. Local Imple­men­ta­tion of Inter­na­tion­al Envi­ron­men­tal Accords — The Case of Local Cli­mate Action Plan­ning in Han­nover & Saar­brück­en, Germany
9. Pro­tec­tion of Bio­di­ver­si­ty as a Local Man­age­ment Chal­lenge — Mul­ti-Func­tion­al Park Design and Man­age­ment in Dur­ban, South Africa

• C. Local Imple­men­ta­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment — Lessons from the Field

• D. Obsta­cles to the Local Imple­men­ta­tion of Sus­tain­able Development
• E. Rec­om­men­da­tions for Improved Local Per­for­mance for Sus­tain­able Development
• Notes

 

 

Because so many of the prob­lems and solu­tions being addressed by Agen­da 21 have their roots in local activ­i­ties, the par­tic­i­pa­tion and coop­er­a­tion of local author­i­ties will be a deter­min­ing fac­tor in ful­fill­ing its objec­tives. Local author­i­ties con­struct, oper­ate and main­tain eco­nom­ic, social and envi­ron­men­tal infra­struc­ture, over­see plan­ning process­es, estab­lish local envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions, and assist in imple­ment­ing nation­al and sub­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies. As the lev­el of gov­er­nance clos­est to the peo­ple, they play a vital role in edu­cat­ing, mobi­liz­ing and respond­ing to the pub­lic to pro­mote sus­tain­able development.

Agen­da 21, para­graph 28.1

 

We adopt the enabling strat­e­gy and the prin­ci­ples of part­ner­ship and par­tic­i­pa­tion as the most demo­c­ra­t­ic and effec­tive approach for the real­iza­tion of our com­mit­ments. Recog­nis­ing local author­i­ties as our clos­est and essen­tial part­ners in the imple­men­ta­tion of the Habi­tat Agen­da, we must, with­in the legal frame­work of each coun­try, pro­mote decen­tral­i­sa­tion through demo­c­ra­t­ic local author­i­ties and work to strength­en their finan­cial and insti­tu­tion­al capac­i­ties in accor­dance with the con­di­tions of coun­tries, while ensur­ing their trans­paren­cy, account­abil­i­ty and respon­sive­ness to the needs of peo­ple, which are key require­ments for Gov­ern­ments at all levels.

The Istan­bul Dec­la­ra­tion, Arti­cle 12

Executive Summary

Local gov­ern­ments have demon­strat­ed a deep com­mit­ment to the imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21.

Since 1991, more than 1,800 local gov­ern­ments in 64 coun­tries have estab­lished Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning process­es to engage with their com­mu­ni­ties to imple­ment Agen­da 21 at the local lev­el. Local gov­ern­ments and their com­mu­ni­ties also have vol­un­tar­i­ly assumed new respon­si­bil­i­ties for glob­al envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems, such as cli­mate change, for­est destruc­tion, and pol­lu­tion of the seas. They have estab­lished their own inter­na­tion­al pro­grammes, in the con­text of inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal con­ven­tions, to address these chal­lenges. For exam­ple, 164 cities in 34 coun­tries — and rep­re­sent­ing 4% of glob­al car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) emis­sions — have joined a Cities for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Cam­paign to reduce their green­house gas emis­sions by as much as 20%.

The grow­ing role of local gov­ern­ments in the imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 has been rec­og­nized by nation­al gov­ern­ments and the Unit­ed Nations sys­tem. How­ev­er, this recog­ni­tion has not been accom­pa­nied by real­is­tic dis­cus­sion of the abil­i­ty of local gov­ern­ments and com­mu­ni­ties to imple­ment their Local Agen­da 21 action plans or oth­er sus­tain­able devel­op­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties. Over the past ten years local gov­ern­ments in more than 60 coun­tries have received increased respon­si­bil­i­ties for envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and social pro­grammes as a result of nation­al-lev­el dereg­u­la­tion, decen­tral­iza­tion, and “down load­ing” of tra­di­tion­al nation­al- or state-lev­el respon­si­bil­i­ties. The insti­tu­tion­al and finan­cial capac­i­ty of local gov­ern­ments to ful­fill these man­dates, and the impacts of rapid decen­tral­iza­tion upon the world­wide capac­i­ties of the pub­lic sec­tor to imple­ment sus­tain­able devel­op­ment have not been suf­fi­cient­ly reviewed.

ICLEI’s analy­sis of local gov­ern­ment imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 dur­ing the 1992–1996 peri­od con­cludes that the great­est impacts of local gov­ern­ment actions have been in the areas of insti­tu­tion­al devel­op­ment, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, and improved man­age­ment sys­tems. In thou­sands of cities and towns indi­vid­ual “best prac­tice” projects also have pro­duced con­crete, pos­i­tive impacts in spe­cif­ic areas of man­age­ment. How­ev­er, few local gov­ern­ments have yet demon­strat­ed their capac­i­ty to achieve dra­mat­ic improve­ments in social and envi­ron­men­tal trends except in cer­tain key areas of local respon­si­bil­i­ty, such as sol­id waste man­age­ment or water pol­lu­tion con­trol. This con­clu­sion high­lights the impor­tance of the fol­low­ing crit­i­cal issues to the suc­cess­ful, world­wide imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21.

1. Dur­ing the past five years, the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment strate­gies and projects of local gov­ern­ments have gen­er­al­ly been iso­lat­ed from over­all munic­i­pal bud­get­ing, local devel­op­ment plan­ning, land-use con­trol, and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment activ­i­ties. As a result, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment strate­gies, such as Local Agen­da 21, have only result­ed in sig­nif­i­cant changes in urban devel­op­ment trends in a lim­it­ed num­ber of cases.
2. Dur­ing the same peri­od, many nation­al gov­ern­ments have “down loaded” envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and social devel­op­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties to local gov­ern­ments in order to address nation­al fis­cal prob­lems. This trend rarely has been accom­pa­nied by new rev­enue gen­er­at­ing pow­ers or by trans­fers of the rev­enues that were tra­di­tion­al­ly avail­able for their exe­cu­tion. The result­ing increase in finan­cial bur­dens upon local gov­ern­ments is under­min­ing their abil­i­ty to imple­ment Local Agen­da 21 strategies.
3. At the same time, reduced or poor nation­al-lev­el reg­u­la­tion of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties is weak­en­ing the abil­i­ty of local gov­ern­ments to hold local busi­ness­es and oth­er insti­tu­tions (includ­ing them­selves) account­able for the neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts of their activities.
4. Nation­al, sub­na­tion­al, and local gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to main­tain poli­cies, sub­si­dies, and fis­cal frame­works that inhib­it effi­cient resource use and devel­op­ment con­trol at the local level.
5. Min­i­mal incen­tives exist for transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and mul­ti-lat­er­al devel­op­ment insti­tu­tions to be account­able and com­mit­ted to local devel­op­ment strate­gies. Local gov­ern­ments have lim­it­ed con­trol over the tox­i­c­i­ties, resource effi­cien­cies, and pack­ag­ing of the con­sumer prod­ucts that are sold, used, and dis­posed with­in their jurisdictions.

On this basis, the Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives (ICLEI) makes the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to the Unit­ed Nations sys­tem, nation­al gov­ern­ments, the non-gov­ern­men­tal com­mu­ni­ty, and local gov­ern­ment organizations.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 1 –
Strength­en and sup­port the Local Agen­da 21 movement.

The Local Agen­da 21 move­ment is one of the most exten­sive fol­low-up activ­i­ties to the Earth Sum­mit. To expand this move­ment, nation­al gov­ern­ments, NGOs, and donor insti­tu­tions are encour­aged to sup­port the estab­lish­ment of nation­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns. To inten­si­fy the imple­men­ta­tion of Local Agen­da 21 action plans, local gov­ern­ments are strong­ly urged to for­mal­ly link Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning activ­i­ties with the annu­al bud­get­ing and statu­to­ry plan­ning activ­i­ties of the munic­i­pal­i­ty. It is fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that nation­al and inter­na­tion­al invest­ment pro­grammes active­ly fac­tor the strate­gies and tar­gets of Local Agen­da 21 action plans in the selec­tion and design of projects for their support.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 2 –
Har­mo­nize pub­lic sec­tor poli­cies and approaches.

With­in each coun­try, estab­lish a part­ner­ship between nation­al, state, and local lev­els of gov­ern­ment — per­haps with­in the frame­work of Nation­al Coun­cils for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment — to iden­ti­fy and review poli­cies, legal frame­works, and fis­cal frame­works that inhib­it sus­tain­able resource man­age­ment and social devel­op­ment. It is fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that the UNCSD request a pre­lim­i­nary review report on this top­ic to be pre­pared by the UNDPCSD and ICLEI for its sixth session.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 3 –
Increase local gov­ern­ment finan­cial capacities.

Estab­lish a glob­al part­ner­ship of nation­al gov­ern­ments, local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions, and mul­ti­lat­er­al and pri­vate lend­ing insti­tu­tions to devise and rec­om­mend local gov­ern­ment rev­enue enhance­ment strate­gies to accom­pa­ny nation­al decen­tral­iza­tion pro­grammes or “down load­ing” ini­tia­tives. Focus munic­i­pal devel­op­ment pro­gramme assis­tance on capac­i­ty-build­ing in munic­i­pal finance.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 4 –
Estab­lish flex­i­ble reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works for all areas of Agen­da 21.

The role of reg­u­la­tion in achiev­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment needs to be refined. How­ev­er reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works should be designed to con­sist of two inte­grat­ed ele­ments: min­i­mum enforce­able stan­dards and a frame­work for flex­i­ble com­pli­ance using inno­v­a­tive vol­un­tary agree­ments and programmes.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 5 –
Increase pri­vate sec­tor account­abil­i­ty to Local Agen­das 21.

Estab­lish coop­er­a­tion agree­ments between LGOs and inter­na­tion­al busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions on a sec­tor-by-sec­tor basis to encour­age all busi­ness­es and, in spe­cif­ic, transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to respect and sup­port the Local Agen­da 21 strate­gies of the com­mu­ni­ties in which they invest and main­tain their operations.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 6 –
Orga­nize local gov­ern­ment pur­chas­ing pow­ers for sus­tain­able development.

Estab­lish inter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols among local gov­ern­ments on an inter­na­tion­al basis to use their pur­chas­ing and legal pow­ers to per­suade con­sumer prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers to achieve min­i­mum effi­cien­cy and waste reduc­tion stan­dards in prod­uct design and packaging.

 

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Fig­ure 1.
Local Gov­ern­ment Imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 — High­lights from the 1991–1996 Period.

Local Agen­da 21

• Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning activ­i­ty is widespread.

• 1,812 local gov­ern­ments from 64 coun­tries are now involved.
• 933 munic­i­pal­i­ties from 43 coun­tries have Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning underway.
• 879 munic­i­pal­i­ties are just start­ing to estab­lish the process.

• Most Local Agen­da 21 activ­i­ty is tak­ing place in coun­tries with nation­al campaigns.

• 1,487 (82%) are from 11 coun­tries where nation­al cam­paigns are underway.
• 117 (6%) are in 9 coun­tries where nation­al cam­paigns are just starting.
• 208 are in 44 coun­tries where there is no nation­al campaign.

Oth­er Key Activities

• Health and the envi­ron­ment. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion’s Healthy Cities Pro­gramme now involves more than 1,000 munic­i­pal­i­ties and 17 nation­al campaigns.
• Cli­mate and rain for­est pro­tec­tion. The ICLEI Cities for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Cam­paign — focus­ing on green­house gas emis­sions — includes 164 cities from 34 coun­tries. The Euro­pean Cli­mate Alliance — addi­tion­al­ly focus­ing on rain for­est pro­tec­tion — includes 650 cities from 10 countries.
• Land-based pol­lu­tion of the seas. City net­works have been estab­lished to sup­port munic­i­pal anti-pol­lu­tion efforts relat­ed to spe­cif­ic seas, such as the Union of Baltic Cities, Envi­ron­ment North Sea, and the UTDA Med­c­i­ties Project.
• Munic­i­pal inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion. Numer­ous North-South and East-West inter-munic­i­pal devel­op­ment assis­tance pro­grammes have been imple­ment­ed under the aus­pices of nation­al and inter­na­tion­al asso­ci­a­tions of local gov­ern­ment. These pro­grammes have involved many hun­dreds of cities and towns.

 

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A. Introduction

Since the begin­nings of the mod­ern envi­ron­men­tal and pub­lic health move­ments, cities have been viewed as cen­ters of the social and envi­ron­men­tal ills of the indus­tri­al­ized world. This anti-urban bias was still observ­able on the eve of the 1992 Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­ment and Devel­op­ment (Earth Sum­mit). At that time, most inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment assis­tance was allo­cat­ed to rur­al devel­op­ment projects. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists still focused pri­mar­i­ly upon nature pro­tec­tion, and the “brown agen­da” was a new idea. The desire to stop migra­tion to cities was a reg­u­lar top­ic of debate in the UNCED prepara­to­ry process.

Since 1992, a rev­o­lu­tion of opin­ion has occurred with regards to the role and impor­tance of cities in the achieve­ment of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. While few still appre­ci­ate the tremen­dous eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of urban­iza­tion¹, cities now are viewed as cen­ters of social and eco­nom­ic cre­ativ­i­ty. By the time of the Sec­ond Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Human Set­tle­ments, the city had come to be rec­og­nized as the locus of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment at the nation­al and glob­al lev­els. This recog­ni­tion has been accom­pa­nied by a dra­mat­ic shift in inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment assis­tance and nation­al gov­ern­ment and pri­vate foun­da­tion resources to urban pro­grammes. In turn, UN agen­cies, nation­al gov­ern­ments, and the NGO com­mu­ni­ty have been rapid­ly estab­lish­ing new urban-ori­ent­ed projects.

Par­al­lel to this trans­for­ma­tion of opin­ion about urban devel­op­ment, the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, nation­al gov­ern­ments, and NGOs have also been review­ing their long-held bias­es against local gov­ern­ments. For decades, local gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly have been viewed as the poor cousin in the pub­lic sec­tor. They were more like­ly to be referred to in pol­i­cy debates as incom­pe­tent, cor­rupt, and unac­count­able than as crit­i­cal part­ners for sus­tain­able development.

Pri­or to the Earth Sum­mit, inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions rarely involved local gov­ern­ments in their dis­cus­sions and pro­grammes. With­in the Unit­ed Nations sys­tem they were not even rec­og­nized as gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions. Inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment pro­grammes com­mon­ly ignored local gov­ern­ments and some­times encour­aged their replace­ment by paras­tatal bod­ies. As the most acces­si­ble lev­el of gov­ern­ment, NGOs often sin­gled out local gov­ern­ment for their harsh­est crit­i­cisms, or ignored them altogether.

Five years after the Earth Sum­mit, the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has rec­og­nized that major respon­si­bil­i­ties for sus­tain­able urban devel­op­ment are in local gov­ern­ment hands. Indeed, dur­ing this peri­od, nation­al gov­ern­ments in more than 60 coun­tries have been decen­tral­iz­ing and “down load­ing” pub­lic sec­tor respon­si­bil­i­ties for envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and social devel­op­ment to local gov­ern­ments.²

Local gov­ern­ments con­struct, oper­ate, and main­tain eco­nom­ic, social, and envi­ron­men­tal infra­struc­ture, over­see land use and devel­op­ment plan­ning process­es, estab­lish local envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions, and assist in imple­ment­ing nation­al and sub­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies. They annu­al­ly pro­cure tens of bil­lions of dol­lars worth of goods and can use their eco­nom­ic clout to influ­ence mar­kets. They play a vital role in edu­cat­ing and mobi­liz­ing the pub­lic to pro­mote sus­tain­able development.

Local gov­ern­ments have been work­ing steadi­ly since the late 19th cen­tu­ry to address the issues raised in Agen­da 21, over­see­ing three suc­ces­sive cycles in pub­lic invest­ment, involv­ing tril­lions of dollars.

In the first instance, local gov­ern­ments financed, con­struct­ed and main­tained much of the world’s basic infra­struc­ture for pub­lic health and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment — sew­er­age sys­tems, sol­id waste man­age­ment sys­tems, roads and pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems, and pub­lic health sys­tems. As these sys­tems removed wastes and pol­lu­tants from urban liv­ing spaces and dis­posed them into rivers, seas, soils and air, local gov­ern­ments — often under pres­sure from envi­ron­men­tal­ists — under­took a sec­ond cycle of invest­ments, adding sew­er­age treat­ment facil­i­ties, pol­lu­tion mon­i­tor­ing and con­trol pro­grammes, and engi­neered land­fills to their sus­tain­able devel­op­ment infra­struc­ture. In the 1970s and 1980s, as eco­nom­ic growth and con­sump­tion over­whelmed these con­trols and facil­i­ties, local gov­ern­ments start­ed to imple­ment a third cycle of invest­ments. This time their invest­ments focused on pol­lu­tion pre­ven­tion, source reduc­tion, and demand-side man­age­ment pro­grammes, includ­ing sol­id waste recy­cling pro­grammes, water and ener­gy effi­cien­cy pro­grammes, and trans­porta­tion demand man­age­ment strategies.

Since the Earth Sum­mit, local gov­ern­ments have accel­er­at­ed their invest­ments in these three gen­er­a­tions of infra­struc­ture. At the same time, they have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly led a glob­al Local Agen­da 21 move­ment that present­ly involves more than 1,800 local gov­ern­ments in 64 coun­tries. Local gov­ern­ments have also estab­lished new inter­na­tion­al cam­paigns to con­tribute to the imple­men­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment assis­tance objec­tives and inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal accords. A sum­ma­ry of some of these activ­i­ties is pre­sent­ed in this report.

The efforts of local gov­ern­ments to imple­ment Agen­da 21 have received increas­ing recog­ni­tion and praise from the UN sys­tem, nation­al gov­ern­ments and the NGO com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions (LGOs) are con­cerned that sup­port for local gov­ern­ment efforts does not stop at pub­lic recognition.

LGOs know that the recent invest­ments and efforts of local gov­ern­ments are not suf­fi­cient to reverse glob­al trends in resource deple­tion, impov­er­ish­ment, and eco­nom­ic dis­lo­ca­tion caused by rapid eco­nom­ic growth and change. At the same time, they are keen­ly aware that grow­ing nation­al man­dates and pub­lic expec­ta­tions upon local gov­ern­ments are not being accom­pa­nied by the resources and pow­ers required to ful­fill them. Fur­ther­more, in impor­tant ways, local gov­ern­ments still do not have for­mal sta­tus in key sus­tain­able devel­op­ment insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the UN Com­mis­sion on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment and the Nation­al Coun­cils for Sus­tain­able Development.

For this rea­son, this report reviews some of the key lessons of local gov­ern­ment suc­cess since the Earth Sum­mit, and high­lights the major obsta­cles that must be over­come to imple­ment Agen­da 21 and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment at the local lev­el. It con­cludes with a set of six action rec­om­men­da­tions that aim to focus the new respect for local gov­ern­ments by the UN sys­tem, nation­al gov­ern­ments, and NGOs on prac­ti­cal mea­sures to lend them support.

 

B. Progress on the Implementation of Agenda 21 and Related United Nations Conferences and International Accords

Local gov­ern­ment imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21 and relat­ed UN con­fer­ences and inter­na­tion­al accords is tak­ing place in four cat­e­gories of activ­i­ty. These are:

1. Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ter 28 of Agen­da 21, “Local Author­i­ties’ Ini­tia­tive in Sup­port of Agen­da 21,” or Local Agen­da 21, as well as relat­ed part­ner­ship activ­i­ties with major groups (Chap­ters 24–27 and 29–32);
2. Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ters 3–22 of Agen­da 21 via the day-to-day func­tions of local gov­ern­ment in the areas of nat­ur­al resource man­age­ment (e.g., water sup­ply, land-use con­trol), urban devel­op­ment (e.g., hous­ing, trans­porta­tion), waste man­age­ment, pub­lic health pro­mo­tion, and social ser­vices as well as pro­mo­tion­al activ­i­ties to edu­cate local res­i­dents and stake­hold­ers about Agen­da 21 and sus­tain­able development;
3. Local pro­grammes and poli­cies relat­ed to spe­cif­ic inter­na­tion­al accords and UN strate­gies; and
4. Munic­i­pal inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion (Chap­ter 2).

High­lights of activ­i­ties in each of these areas are pre­sent­ed below.

 

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A Note on Methodology

The infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in this report — and used to draw its con­clu­sions — has been gath­ered by ICLEI and part­ner local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions using sur­veys, region­al con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings, tele­phone inter­views, and exten­sive case study analy­sis. The fol­low­ing is a sum­ma­ry of the key data col­lec­tion and analy­sis meth­ods employed.

Local Agen­da 21 and Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ters 23–32 of Agen­da 21

The pri­ma­ry sources of infor­ma­tion used for this review were two inter­na­tion­al sur­veys on Local Agen­da 21, the results of which were val­i­dat­ed through region­al con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings, tele­phone inter­views, and the coun­try-spe­cif­ic sur­veys of nation­al asso­ci­a­tions of local gov­ern­ment. A full descrip­tion of these sur­veys and their find­ings is pre­sent­ed in Local Agen­da 21 Sur­vey — A Study of Respons­es by Local Author­i­ties and Their Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tions to Agen­da 21 (ICLEI/UNDPCSD, 1997).

Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ters 2–22 of Agen­da 21

The pri­ma­ry method used for this pur­pose was com­par­a­tive case study analy­sis. ICLEI com­pared the con­tents of 150 local gov­ern­ment “best prac­tice” sub­mis­sions from 23 coun­tries in 1991 with the con­tents of 129 local gov­ern­ment “best prac­tice” sub­mis­sions from 24 coun­tries dur­ing the 1993–1996 peri­od in order to dis­cern pri­or­i­ty areas of action and changes in prac­tices. These find­ings were sup­ple­ment­ed by a con­tent analy­sis of the envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment strate­gies of six nation­al asso­ci­a­tions of local government.

Analy­sis of Key Obsta­cles to Local Sus­tain­able Development

The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of obsta­cles was derived from the above men­tioned case study analy­sis as well as from a com­par­i­son of the con­clu­sions of three Local Agen­da 21 con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings held by ICLEI in prepa­ra­tion for the Earth Sum­mit (1991–1992) with the con­clu­sions of inter­na­tion­al and region­al con­sul­ta­tions of local gov­ern­ments in 1995–1996.

 

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1. The Local Agen­da 21 Movement

Per­haps the great­est response by local gov­ern­ments to Agen­da 21 is in the area of Chap­ters 22–32, strength­en­ing the role of major groups, and in par­tic­u­lar Chap­ter 28 of Agen­da 21. This chap­ter states that “by 1996 most local author­i­ties in each coun­try should have under­tak­en a con­sul­ta­tive process with their pop­u­la­tions and achieved a con­sen­sus on a ‘local Agen­da 21’ for the community.”

Fol­low­ing UNCED, local gov­ern­ments, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions (LGOs), and inter­na­tion­al bod­ies and UN agen­cies entered a peri­od of exper­i­men­ta­tion with the imple­men­ta­tion of the Local Agen­da 21 con­cept. The lead actors in these efforts were the local gov­ern­ments them­selves which worked, often with the sup­port of their nation­al munic­i­pal asso­ci­a­tions, to devel­op the Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning approach­es appro­pri­ate to their cir­cum­stances. How­ev­er, inter­na­tion­al pro­grammes played a crit­i­cal role in doc­u­ment­ing and ana­lyz­ing these grow­ing local expe­ri­ences, and in facil­i­tat­ing the exchange of Local Agen­da 21 approach­es and tools.

The accu­mu­la­tion and exchange of prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ences helped to iden­ti­fy a set of uni­ver­sal ele­ments and fac­tors for the suc­cess of Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning. While these are being con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ed and revised by local prac­ti­tion­ers, five key ele­ments have been defined for Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning in the 1992–1996 peri­od. These are:

• Mul­ti-sec­toral engage­ment in the plan­ning process through a local stake­hold­ers group which serves as the coor­di­na­tion and pol­i­cy body for prepar­ing a long-term sus­tain­able devel­op­ment action plan.
• Con­sul­ta­tion with com­mu­ni­ty groups, NGOs, busi­ness, church­es, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, pro­fes­sion­al groups and unions in order to cre­ate a shared vision and to iden­ti­fy pro­pos­als and pri­or­i­ties for action.
• Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry assess­ment of local social, eco­nom­ic, and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions and needs.
• Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry tar­get-set­ting through nego­ti­a­tions among key stake­hold­ers in order to achieve the vision and goals set forth in the action plan.
• Mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing pro­ce­dures, includ­ing local indi­ca­tors, to track progress and to allow par­tic­i­pants to hold each oth­er account­able to the action plan.

Dur­ing 1996, ICLEI and the UN Depart­ment for Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment (DPCSD) con­duct­ed an inter­na­tion­al sur­vey on Local Agen­da 21 progress world­wide. The fol­low­ing is a sum­ma­ry of the ICLEI/DPCSD Sur­vey results, which have been pub­lished in a spe­cial report of the UNCSD enti­tled Local Agen­da 21 Sur­vey — A Study of Respons­es by Local Author­i­ties and Their Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tions to Agen­da 21 (1997).³

The sur­vey revealed that as of Novem­ber 30, 1996, more than 1,800 local gov­ern­ments in 64 coun­tries were involved in Local Agen­da 21 activ­i­ties. Of this num­ber, ICLEI con­firmed that Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning was under­way in 933 munic­i­pal­i­ties from 43 coun­tries and was just get­ting start­ed in an addi­tion­al 879 munic­i­pal­i­ties. Most of these plan­ning process­es are being under­tak­en under the name of “Local Agen­da 21.” How­ev­er, the Local Agen­da 21 man­date is being imple­ment­ed in a num­ber of cities and towns under a dif­fer­ent local name or through var­i­ous estab­lished inter­na­tion­al assis­tance pro­gramme, such as the UNCHS Sus­tain­able Cities Pro­gramme, the UNDP Capac­i­ty 21 Pro­gramme or the GTZ Urban Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Pro­gramme. Local Agen­da 21 activ­i­ties are most con­cen­trat­ed in the eleven coun­tries where nation­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns are underway–in Aus­tralia, Bolivia, Chi­na, Den­mark, Fin­land, Japan, Nether­lands, Nor­way, Repub­lic of Korea, Swe­den, and the Unit­ed King­dom. These nation­al cam­paigns are usu­al­ly oper­at­ed by the nation­al asso­ci­a­tion of local gov­ern­ment in part­ner­ship with nation­al gov­ern­ment and NGOs. In these coun­tries, 1,487 local gov­ern­ments — rep­re­sent­ing 82% of the report­ed total — have estab­lished Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning efforts.

An addi­tion­al 6% of the report­ed total, or 117 Local Agen­da 21 process­es, have been estab­lished in the nine coun­tries where nation­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns are just now get­ting under­way — in Brazil, Colom­bia, Ger­many, Greece, Ire­land, Malawi, Peru, South Africa, and the Unit­ed States. The remain­ing 208 report­ed Local Agen­da 21 process­es are tak­ing place in 44 coun­tries that do not have nation­al cam­paigns. These find­ings high­light the crit­i­cal impor­tance of nation­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns to the imple­men­ta­tion of Agen­da 21, Chap­ter 28.

Munic­i­pal­i­ties in devel­oped coun­tries account for 1,631 or 90% of the iden­ti­fied Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning process­es. Nev­er­the­less, Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning is rapid­ly increas­ing in 42 devel­op­ing coun­tries and economies-in-tran­si­tion, where 181 Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning process­es were identified.

The sur­vey also doc­u­ment­ed the types of activ­i­ties being under­tak­en as part of Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning. Of the 933 Local Agen­da 21 process­es that were iden­ti­fied to be under­way, all have estab­lished a con­sul­ta­tive process with local res­i­dents, 516 have estab­lished a local “stake­hold­ers group” to over­see this process, and 666 have begun the prepa­ra­tion of a local action plan. Among the most advanced process­es, 237 have estab­lished a frame­work to mon­i­tor and report on the achieve­ment of action plan objec­tives, and 210 have estab­lished local indi­ca­tors for mon­i­tor­ing purposes.

The ICLEI/DPCSD sur­vey was unable to eval­u­ate the local-lev­el impacts of Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning activ­i­ties. For this pur­pose, ICLEI under­took a detailed, com­par­a­tive review of local prac­tice through the doc­u­men­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion of 29 case stud­ies. The pri­ma­ry con­clu­sion of this case study review is that the great­est impact of Local Agen­da 21 dur­ing its first years has been to reform the process of gov­er­nance at the local lev­el so that the key require­ments of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment can be fac­tored into local plan­ning and budgeting.

As is illus­trat­ed by the case of Caja­mar­ca, Peru, described in Sec­tion C, the imple­men­ta­tion of the Local Agen­da 21 process requires local gov­ern­ments to decen­tral­ize gov­er­nance, reform their cur­rent depart­men­tal struc­tures, and change tra­di­tion­al oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures. Most Local Agen­da 21 efforts start­ed by cre­at­ing new orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures to imple­ment plan­ning. On the one hand, new stake­hold­er plan­ning bod­ies are cre­at­ed to coor­di­nate com­mu­ni­ty-wide involve­ment and part­ner­ship for­ma­tion for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. On the oth­er hand, local gov­ern­ments insti­tute inter­nal reforms, such as the cre­ation of inter­de­part­men­tal plan­ning units or the estab­lish­ment of neigh­bor­hood or vil­lage-lev­el gov­ern­ment units.

These activ­i­ties gen­er­al­ly con­sume the first years of the Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning. Such insti­tu­tion­al reforms may not imme­di­ate­ly pro­duce phys­i­cal improve­ments in devel­op­ment or envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions. Nev­er­the­less, they are chang­ing the fun­da­men­tal approach­es and pol­i­cy focus of hun­dreds of local gov­ern­ments. These changes include extend­ing the time hori­zon of local plan­ning, estab­lish­ing par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, account­able deci­sion-mak­ing frame­works, and oper­at­ing through mul­ti-sec­toral part­ner­ships. As a result, these local gov­ern­ments are becom­ing more effec­tive and ded­i­cat­ed agents of the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment agenda.

In some cas­es — pri­mar­i­ly in those com­mu­ni­ties that start­ed work pri­or to 1992 — local gov­ern­ments have reached the stage in the process where they are imple­ment­ing their Local Agen­da 21 action plans. For instance, in Kana­gawa Pre­fec­ture, Japan, the imple­men­ta­tion of the Kana­gawa Agen­da 21 involves 52 projects with a bud­get of U.S.$149 mil­lion.⁴

In devel­op­ing coun­tries, imple­men­ta­tion tends to begin by address­ing a few pri­or­i­ty prob­lems. For instance, the Local Agen­da 21 effort in Quito, Ecuador, is focus­ing on the sta­bi­liza­tion and restora­tion of the many ravines in that city’s low income South Zone. Local Agen­da 21 efforts in Pim­pri Chinch­wad, India, are focus­ing on slum upgrad­ing. In Jin­ja, Ugan­da, efforts focus on sol­id waste management.

The chal­lenges fac­ing the Local Agen­da 21 move­ment over the next five years fall into two cat­e­gories. First, the growth of the move­ment itself must be sup­port­ed. To date, the most suc­cess­ful mech­a­nism of sup­port has been the estab­lish­ment by LGOs of nation­al and, in some cas­es, region­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns. Par­tic­u­lar­ly atten­tion needs to be giv­en to the estab­lish­ment of nation­al cam­paigns in devel­op­ing countries.

Sec­ond, local gov­ern­ments them­selves must move from the plan­ning stage to imple­men­ta­tion. The suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of Local Agen­da 21 action plans will require fur­ther inte­gra­tion of the Local Agen­da 21 strate­gies and tar­gets with the tra­di­tion­al bud­get­ing and statu­to­ry plan­ning activ­i­ties of munic­i­pal­i­ties. To the extent that statu­to­ry plans and annu­al bud­gets are not revised to reflect Local Agen­da 21 objec­tives, these plans will lim­it the impact of the Local Agen­da 21 move­ment on sus­tain­able human set­tle­ments development.

 

2. Imple­men­ta­tion of Chap­ters 2–22 of Agen­da 21
via the Statu­to­ry Func­tions of Local Government

Local gov­ern­ments in most coun­tries have direct respon­si­bil­i­ties for some aspect of each chap­ter of Agen­da 21. The ful­fill­ment of these local respon­si­bil­i­ties has a direct impact on the suc­cess of inter­na­tion­al accords, such as the Con­ven­tion for the Pre­ven­tion of Marine Pol­lu­tion from Land-based Sources (1974) or the UN Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (1992), as well as the achieve­ment of oth­er UN human set­tle­ments and social devel­op­ment strategies.

Local gov­ern­ments annu­al­ly spend bil­lions of dol­lars to ful­fill their statu­to­ry respon­si­bil­i­ties. The total annu­al expen­di­tures of the world’s local gov­ern­ments relat­ed to the the­mat­ic areas of Agen­da 21 is dif­fi­cult to cal­cu­late. How­ev­er, an extrap­o­la­tion based on the annu­al bud­gets of typ­i­cal medi­um-sized cities for sol­id waste man­age­ment (Chap­ter 21), water sup­ply and waste water man­age­ment (Chap­ters 17 and 18), and pub­lic trans­porta­tion (Chap­ter 7) would indi­cate that, in aggre­gate, local gov­ern­ments prob­a­bly spend hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars annu­al­ly in these areas alone.

In many coun­tries, local gov­ern­ments spend more on envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion than oth­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment. The Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD) has esti­mat­ed that local gov­ern­ments in the Unit­ed States will account for 65% of total U.S. pub­lic expen­di­ture for the envi­ron­ment by 2000.⁵ A more detailed account­ing of expen­di­tures for Den­mark has doc­u­ment­ed that Dan­ish local gov­ern­ments are respon­si­ble for more than 80% of that coun­tries envi­ron­men­tal expen­di­tures.⁶

In con­sid­er­a­tion of these real­i­ties, progress with the imple­men­ta­tion of many chap­ters of Agen­da 21 would appear to be depen­dent upon the actions of local gov­ern­ments. In addi­tion to their annu­al expen­di­tures, local gov­ern­ments also have a vari­ety of oth­er instru­ments to pro­mote sus­tain­able devel­op­ment includ­ing com­pre­hen­sive devel­op­ment plans, land-use and con­struc­tion con­trols, eco­nom­ic instru­ments (fines, fees, sub­si­dies and tax­es), and local regulations.

In prepa­ra­tion for this report, ICLEI com­pared the con­tents of 150 local gov­ern­ment “best prac­tice” sub­mis­sions from 23 coun­tries in 1991 with the con­tents of 129 local gov­ern­ment “best prac­tice” sub­mis­sions from 24 coun­tries dur­ing the 1993–1996 peri­od in order to dis­cern pri­or­i­ty areas of action and changes in prac­tices (see “A Note on Method­ol­o­gy”). A com­par­i­son of the man­age­ment areas of these best prac­tices and the lev­els of their report­ed impacts was used to eval­u­ate local gov­ern­ment per­for­mance in the areas of Chap­ter 2 through Chap­ter 22 of Agen­da 21.

ICLEI’s pri­ma­ry con­clu­sion from this review is that improve­ments in per­for­mance have been most observable–in keep­ing with trends pri­or to 1992–in the areas of fresh­wa­ter man­age­ment (Chap­ter 18) and sol­id waste man­age­ment (Chap­ter 21). These are areas over which local gov­ern­ments have both con­sid­er­able con­trol and have received increased local gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment and invest­ment since 1992. In addi­tion, local gov­ern­ments have made con­sid­er­able new com­mit­ments and invest­ments in the areas of pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able human set­tle­ments devel­op­ment (Chap­ter 7) and inte­grat­ing envi­ron­ment and devel­op­ment deci­sion mak­ing (Chap­ter 8). The case stud­ies reviewed indi­cate that in these two areas local gov­ern­ments have respond­ed direct­ly to inspi­ra­tion derived from the UNCED and relat­ed pro­mo­tion of sus­tain­able development.

Local gov­ern­ments also appear to have main­tained or increased their com­mit­ments and invest­ments in a num­ber of areas where local con­trol is more lim­it­ed and, there­fore, where the impacts of local actions are not well estab­lished. These areas include, in order of expressed inter­est and com­mit­ment in the local gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ty: inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion to accel­er­ate sus­tain­able devel­op­ment (Chap­ter 2), pro­tec­tion of the atmos­phere (Chap­ter 9), pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing human health (Chap­ter 6), sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and rur­al devel­op­ment (Chap­ter 14), pro­tec­tion of oceans, seas, and coastal areas (Chap­ter 17), com­bat­ing pover­ty (Chap­ter 3), chang­ing con­sump­tion pat­terns (Chap­ter 4), con­ser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty (Chap­ter 15), and com­bat­ing deser­ti­fi­ca­tion and drought (Chap­ter 12).

Local gov­ern­ments have con­sid­er­able con­trol over one area–integrated plan­ning and man­age­ment of land resources (Chap­ter 10)–where ICLEI has wit­nessed con­sid­er­able com­mit­ment-in-prin­ci­ple to chang­ing local prac­tices, but where few local gov­ern­ments have demon­strat­ed real progress in con­trol­ling low-den­si­ty urban sprawl, soil ero­sion, and encroach­ment on agri­cul­tur­al and bio­log­i­cal­ly-sen­si­tive lands.

Final­ly, six chap­ters of Agen­da 21 rep­re­sent areas where local gov­ern­ments have both lim­it­ed local con­trol and lim­it­ed com­mit­ment as well. Com­bat­ing defor­esta­tion (Chap­ter 11) is con­sid­ered by ICLEI to be a bor­der­line case in terms of com­mit­ment — local gov­ern­ments in Europe have made par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mend­able com­mit­ments in this area — but local gov­ern­ment con­trol over major for­est areas is lim­it­ed. The man­age­ment of haz­ardous wastes (Chap­ter 20) is an area where local gov­ern­ments may have more con­trol, but in prac­tice their com­mit­ment and/or invest­ments are still low. Oth­er areas in these cat­e­gories include: man­age­ment of tox­ic chem­i­cals (Chap­ter 19), sus­tain­able moun­tain devel­op­ment (Chap­ter 13), demo­graph­ic dynam­ics and sus­tain­abil­i­ty (Chap­ter 5), and man­age­ment of biotech­nol­o­gy (Chap­ter 16) and radioac­tive wastes (Chap­ter 22).

A graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of these con­clu­sions is pro­vid­ed in Fig­ure 2.

 

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Fig­ure 2.
Local Gov­ern­ment Respons­es to Chap­ters 2 — 22 of Agen­da 21.

 

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The above con­clu­sions, based upon case study analy­sis, are sup­port­ed by a con­tent analy­sis of the envi­ron­men­tal or sus­tain­able devel­op­ment pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy doc­u­ments of eight nation­al asso­ci­a­tions of local gov­ern­ment in Aus­tralia, Aus­tria, Cana­da, Den­mark, Fin­land, Ghana, the Unit­ed King­dom, and the Unit­ed States.⁷ This analy­sis iden­ti­fied the com­mit­ments and activ­i­ties of these nation­al asso­ci­a­tions rel­a­tive to each chap­ter of Agen­da 21 in the fol­low­ing areas: domes­tic projects and train­ing; domes­tic pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy, munic­i­pal inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion, and inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy advo­ca­cy. The over­all com­mit­ments and activ­i­ties of the albeit lim­it­ed sam­ple of nation­al munic­i­pal asso­ci­a­tions was then scored for each chap­ter of Agen­da 21. The results of this analy­sis are pre­sent­ed in Fig­ure 3.

 

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Fig­ure 3.
Pri­or­i­ty Areas of Agen­da 21 Fol­low-up for Eight Nation­al Munic­i­pal Associations.

 

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Clos­er con­sid­er­a­tion of local gov­ern­ment com­mit­ments and pri­or­i­ties in each area of Agen­da 21 reveals that com­mit­ment is often high­er than local con­trol or resources for action. Even in areas where local gov­ern­ments have sub­stan­tial con­trol — such as sol­id waste or fresh­wa­ter resources man­age­ment — the actions of nation­al and state-lev­el gov­ern­ments or the pri­vate sec­tor can reduce the effec­tive appli­ca­tion of this control.

For instance, dur­ing the 1992–1995 peri­od hun­dreds of local gov­ern­ments have increased the por­tion of their munic­i­pal sol­id waste that is recy­cled. Nev­er­the­less, over­all vol­umes of sol­id waste have increased in many cities due to increased con­sump­tion and waste­ful prod­uct design and pack­ag­ing. In many African cities, local gov­ern­ments have made efforts to improve drainage and sew­er­age sys­tems, but the pro­lif­er­a­tion of one sim­ple prod­uct — the plas­tic bag — has result­ed in con­tin­ued clog­ging of drains and sew­ers and asso­ci­at­ed floods in res­i­den­tial areas. In North Amer­i­ca local gov­ern­ments have worked to reduce pri­vate auto­mo­bile use and air emis­sions; the impacts of these efforts are being erod­ed by the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of vehi­cles with low fuel efficiencies.

In areas where local gov­ern­ments have high com­mit­ment but low con­trol — such as pro­tec­tion of the atmos­phere, pro­mot­ing human health, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, pro­tec­tion of seas and coastal areas, or com­bat­ing pover­ty — suc­cess will depend upon part­ner­ships among all lev­els of gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sec­tor, and house­holds. Local gov­ern­ments can make impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions, but only if the poli­cies, eco­nom­ic instru­ments, and activ­i­ties of oth­er sec­tors are har­mo­nized with local objectives.

 

3. Pro­grammes and Poli­cies Relat­ed to Inter­na­tion­al Accords

The imple­men­ta­tion of a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al accords and Unit­ed Nations strate­gies can be great­ly assist­ed by local gov­ern­ment action. These include:

• the Con­ven­tion on Wet­lands of Inter­na­tion­al Importance,
• the Con­ven­tion on the Pre­ven­tion of Marine Pol­lu­tion from Land-based Sources,
• the Con­ven­tion on Long-range Trans­bound­ary Air Pollution,
• the Con­ven­tion Con­cern­ing Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health and the Work­ing Environment,
• the Mon­tre­al Pro­to­col on Sub­stances that Deplete the Ozone Layer,
• the Basel Con­ven­tion on the Con­trol of Trans­bound­ary Move­ments of Haz­ardous Wastes,
• the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, and
• the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diversity.

Many local gov­ern­ment cam­paigns, net­works, projects, and plan­ning bod­ies have been orga­nized to address these issues. Local gov­ern­ment efforts in the areas of wet­lands pro­tec­tion, marine pol­lu­tion, and bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty are typ­i­cal­ly orga­nized on a sub-region­al basis to address spe­cif­ic prob­lems relat­ed to a bio­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant area. Since 1992, sig­nif­i­cant local gov­ern­ment net­works have been orga­nized in par­tic­u­lar to address pol­lu­tion and coastal man­age­ment on the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Mediter­ranean, the Mar­mara Sea, and the Indi­an Ocean. The net­works facil­i­tate the exchange of exper­tise with­in their regions and sup­port their munic­i­pal mem­bers to under­take envi­ron­men­tal audits and design con­crete projects for pol­lu­tion control.

Local gov­ern­ment cam­paigns to address the issue of glob­al cli­mate change pro­vide a dif­fer­ent mod­el for engag­ing local gov­ern­ments in the imple­men­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al accords.

In 1993, ICLEI joined with UNEP to host the first Munic­i­pal Lead­ers’ Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change and the Urban Envi­ron­ment at the Unit­ed Nations in New York, which estab­lished ICLEI’s Cities for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Cam­paign (CCP). Par­tic­i­pat­ing munic­i­pal­i­ties adopt a for­mal res­o­lu­tion com­mit­ting them to pre­pare an inven­to­ry of their local green­house gas emis­sions and an action plan — with con­crete tar­gets — for reduc­ing these emis­sions. Cities in high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries are urged to adopt an emis­sions reduc­tion tar­get of 20%. The Cam­paign present­ly has 164 mem­bers from 34 coun­tries. Togeth­er they rep­re­sent more than 4% of the world’s anthro­pogenic emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide. The Cam­paign has set as its tar­get the recruit­ment of cities which rep­re­sent a total of 10% of the world’s emissions.

Par­tic­i­pants are pro­vid­ed with assis­tance in prepar­ing their cli­mate action plans through train­ing work­shops, a “tool kit” with emis­sions quan­tifi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures and green­house gas reduc­tion mea­sures, and a relat­ed soft­ware pro­gramme. In addi­tion, in some coun­tries, local gov­ern­ments are pro­vid­ed with small grants to imple­ment their action plans.

The Cam­paign also pro­vides a vehi­cle through which local gov­ern­ment lead­ers can give input into the Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP) to the UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (FCCC), through meet­ings of the Inter-gov­ern­men­tal Nego­ti­at­ing Com­mit­tee. In 1996, ICLEI also was giv­en an offi­cial observ­er seat in the Sub­sidiary Body for Sci­en­tif­ic and Tech­no­log­i­cal Advice for the COP.

ICLEI has facil­i­tat­ed local gov­ern­ment input into the FCCC process through a series of inter­na­tion­al “sum­mits.” In March 1995, 320 may­ors and city rep­re­sen­ta­tives from more than 50 coun­tries met in Berlin on the occa­sion of the first meet­ing of the COP to dis­cuss and com­pare strate­gies to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. They then adopt­ed and direct­ed a Com­mu­niquŽ to the COP, urg­ing nation­al lead­ers to rec­og­nize and sup­port part­ner­ships with local author­i­ties to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. In Octo­ber 1995, a third CCP sum­mit was host­ed by Saita­ma Pre­fec­ture in Japan to launch the Cities for Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion Cam­paign in Asia. A fourth sum­mit will be held in Nagoya, Japan short­ly before the third meet­ing of the COP in Decem­ber 1997. The Nagoya Sum­mit will focus on con­crete reports by munic­i­pal lead­ers on the spe­cif­ic reduc­tions in green­house emis­sions that their cities have achieved since par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Campaign.

At a region­al lev­el, near­ly 650 Euro­pean cities and towns in 10 coun­tries have joined the Cli­mate Alliance cam­paign to both reduce their green­house gas emis­sions and work to pro­tect the world’s rain forests and bio­di­ver­si­ty. A unique aspect of the Cli­mate Alliance is its alliance with indige­nous peo­ple in the Ama­zon region and its effort to dis­cour­age local gov­ern­ments from using trop­i­cal wood.

 

4. Munic­i­pal Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion (Chap­ter 2)

Munic­i­pal inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion (MIC) is a modal­i­ty of inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment assis­tance that present­ly involves con­crete exchanges of per­son­nel, tech­nol­o­gy, equip­ment, train­ing, and expe­ri­ence between hun­dreds of cities and towns in every region of the world. MIC offers a very direct and cost-effec­tive medi­um for devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion, bring­ing togeth­er peers in part­ner­ships based on appro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise, inno­va­tion, joint-own­er­ship and mutu­al benefit.

Long before the Earth Sum­mit, local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions like the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Local Author­i­ties (IULA), the Unit­ed Towns Orga­ni­za­tion (UTO), Sis­ter Cities Inter­na­tion­al and the Arab Towns Orga­ni­za­tion (ATO) orga­nized a vari­ety of inter­na­tion­al pro­grammes to share tech­ni­cal exper­tise on a North-South and East-West basis. The num­ber of LGOs specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to MIC increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the 1980s, when groups such as the Unit­ed Towns Devel­op­ment Agency (UTDA), the Orga­ni­za­tion of Islam­ic Cap­i­tals and Cities, ICLEI, the MegaC­i­ties Project, CITYNET, Euroc­i­ties and oth­ers were formed.

Expan­sion of MIC activ­i­ties was fur­ther increased by the grow­ing invest­ments of nation­al munic­i­pal asso­ci­a­tions in devel­op­ment assis­tance projects. Dur­ing the 1990s alone, asso­ci­a­tions such as the Fed­er­a­tion of Cana­di­an Munic­i­pal­i­ties, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nether­lands Munic­i­pal­i­ties, and the UK Local Gov­ern­ment Inter­na­tion­al Bureau have spon­sored major tech­ni­cal assis­tance and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer pro­grammes involv­ing hun­dreds of municipalities.

Since the Earth Sum­mit, these nation­al and inter­na­tion­al LGOs have increas­ing­ly focused their inter­na­tion­al assis­tance activ­i­ties on sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Dozens of spe­cial­ized mul­ti-city and twin city projects have been imple­ment­ed on urban envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, potable water sup­ply, trans­port, ener­gy man­age­ment, sol­id waste man­age­ment, waste water man­age­ment, coastal pro­tec­tion, fresh water sup­ply, haz­ardous waste man­age­ment, refor­esta­tion, parks man­age­ment and dozens of sim­i­lar top­ics.⁸

MIC net­works and projects serve as a par­al­lel and com­ple­men­tary tech­ni­cal assis­tance sys­tem to the inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment assis­tance sys­tem. Increas­ing­ly, bilat­er­al and mul­ti­lat­er­al donor insti­tu­tions have financed these net­works direct­ly to deliv­er appro­pri­ate and low-cost assis­tance. Since the Earth Sum­mit, sup­port­ers of these net­works have includ­ed UNDP, the World Bank, UNCHS, the Euro­pean Union and the bilat­er­al assis­tance agen­cies of Nor­way, Swe­den, Den­mark, Nether­lands, Ger­many, France, Cana­da, Unit­ed States and many oth­er countries.

 

C. Local Implementation of Sustainable Development
— Lessons from the Field

 

1. Par­tic­i­pa­tion and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Process
— Local Agen­da 21 in Caja­mar­ca, Peru

Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples for Success

Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry local action plan­ning — or “Local Agen­da 21” plan­ning — has proven to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able way to advance sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in devel­op­ing coun­try cities and towns. By engag­ing all sec­tors to joint­ly address pri­or­i­ty local prob­lems, it mobi­lizes local resources and increas­es pub­lic will to affect change. This helps to over­come the weak finan­cial con­di­tion of many devel­op­ing coun­try munic­i­pal­i­ties and increas­es polit­i­cal pres­sure upon key insti­tu­tions — such as the munic­i­pal­i­ty or pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions — to sup­port change. Fur­ther­more, Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning has proven to be a use­ful means to sup­port suc­cess­ful local respons­es to decen­tral­iza­tion policies.

Case Sum­ma­ry

The Provin­cial Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Caja­mar­ca, Peru ranks among the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties in the world. In 1993, the infant mor­tal­i­ty rate was 82% high­er than the Peru­vian nation­al aver­age, and was 30% high­er than the aver­age for the world’s low income coun­tries. The Province’s main riv­er has been pol­lut­ed by min­ing oper­a­tions and untreat­ed sewage. Farm­ing on the steep Andean hill­sides, over­graz­ing, and cut­ting of trees for fuel has result­ed in severe soil erosion.

In 1993, the May­or of Caja­mar­ca ini­ti­at­ed an exten­sive Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning effort for the Province. This effort had two main com­po­nents. The first was a dra­mat­ic decen­tral­iza­tion of the provin­cial gov­ern­ment so that local gov­ern­ment deci­sions would reflect the needs of the Province’s many small and remote com­mu­ni­ties. Caja­mar­ca City was divid­ed into 12 neigh­bor­hood Coun­cils and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side into 64 “minor pop­u­lat­ed cen­ters” (MPCs), each with their own elect­ed May­ors and Coun­cils. The Provin­cial Coun­cil was recon­sti­tut­ed into a body with 48 May­ors from the MPCs, 12 Caja­mar­ca City May­ors, 12 Dis­trict May­ors, and the Provin­cial Mayor.

The sec­ond ele­ment of the ini­tia­tive is the cre­ation of a Provin­cial Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Plan. An Inter-Insti­tu­tion­al Con­sen­sus Build­ing Com­mit­tee was estab­lished with rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Province’s dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions, NGOs, pri­vate sec­tor, and key con­stituen­cy groups. Six “Theme Boards” were estab­lished under this Com­mit­tee to devel­op action pro­pos­als in the fol­low­ing areas: Edu­ca­tion; Nat­ur­al Resources and Agri­cul­tur­al Pro­duc­tion; Pro­duc­tion and Employ­ment; Cul­tur­al Her­itage and Tourism; Urban Envi­ron­ment; and Wom­en’s Issues, Fam­i­ly, and Pop­u­la­tion. These Theme Boards were charged with cre­at­ing a strate­gic plan for their respec­tive areas. Train­ing work­shops were held in the new local author­i­ties to gath­er local input, and edu­ca­tion­al note­books were pre­pared for the local May­ors to use in dis­cussing pro­pos­als and ideas with their constituents.

The plans pre­pared by the Theme Boards were inte­grat­ed into a Provin­cial Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Plan, which was sub­mit­ted to the Provin­cial Coun­cil in August, 1994. Hav­ing received approval, after a series of pub­lic edu­ca­tion work­shops about the Plan, the Plan was sub­mit­ted for pub­lic approval through a cit­i­zens’ referendum.

Since that time, the Theme Boards have con­tin­ued their work, rais­ing funds and cre­at­ing part­ner­ships to imple­ment the Plan. Projects have includ­ed pro­vi­sion of potable water, san­i­ta­tion, envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion, and rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. In total, the Local Agen­da 21 process has mobi­lized more than U.S.$21 mil­lion for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment activ­i­ties since 1993.

Source: The Provin­cial Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Caja­mar­ca and UNDPCSD/ICLEI, The Role of Local Author­i­ties in Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, New York, April 1995.

 

2. The Use of Flex­i­ble Pub­lic Reg­u­la­tion to Promote
Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion — The Green Builder Pro­gram of Austin, U.S.A.

Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples for Success

Pub­lic reg­u­la­tion of pri­vate and munic­i­pal activ­i­ties has proven to be a fun­da­men­tal ingre­di­ent to improve­ments in envi­ron­men­tal and social con­di­tions at the local lev­el. How­ev­er, reg­u­la­tions have been just­ly crit­i­cized for their inflex­i­bil­i­ty, bureau­crat­ic costs, and insen­si­tiv­i­ty to the unique con­di­tions of reg­u­lat­ed par­ties. Nev­er­the­less, these crit­i­cisms jus­ti­fy reg­u­la­to­ry reforms, not reg­u­la­to­ry aban­don­ment. Sys­tems of reg­u­la­tion can be estab­lished that main­tain a min­i­mum stan­dard of per­for­mance for all actors while offer­ing reg­u­la­to­ry relief to those actors who con­sis­tent­ly exceed reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards of per­for­mance through alter­na­tive, vol­un­tary means.

Case Sum­ma­ry

Like most local gov­ern­ments, the City of Austin, Texas, reg­u­lates the prac­tices of pri­vate builders through its munic­i­pal Build­ing Code. The Build­ing Code impos­es hun­dreds of spec­i­fi­ca­tions on con­struc­tion site prepa­ra­tion and build­ing design, rang­ing from lot size to win­dow require­ments to the types of mate­ri­als used in con­struc­tion. In 1986, Austin amend­ed its Build­ing Code to include an Ener­gy Code, which estab­lished min­i­mum ener­gy-relat­ed stan­dards for floors, walls, win­dows and doors, roofs, air infil­tra­tion, insu­la­tion, light­ing, heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tem effi­cien­cies, solar expo­sure and shad­ing, and the use of waste heat. Par­al­lel to this upgrad­ing of build­ing reg­u­la­tion, the City pro­vid­ed a vol­un­tary com­pli­ance mech­a­nism which builders could use to achieve the Ener­gy Code’s ener­gy effi­cien­cy stan­dards through alter­na­tive mea­sures than those spec­i­fied in the Code. That mech­a­nism was the Ener­gy Star Rat­ing System.

Estab­lished in 1985, the Ener­gy Star Rat­ing Sys­tem is a vol­un­tary pro­gramme in which munic­i­pal staff audit and rate the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of new res­i­den­tial build­ings accord­ing to a com­pre­hen­sive set of cri­te­ria. Build­ing designs that achieve the per­for­mance stan­dards of the Ener­gy Code are relieved of rel­e­vant design spec­i­fi­ca­tions in the Code. In addi­tion, these high per­for­mance build­ings are mar­ket­ed to home buy­ers by the munic­i­pal­i­ty and the local real estate bro­ker­age indus­try as supe­ri­or homes.

Due to the dual incen­tive of poten­tial reg­u­la­to­ry relief and mar­ket­ing sup­port, more than 50 sep­a­rate builders and con­struc­tion com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Ener­gy Star pro­gramme between 1986 and 1992, result­ing in the rat­ing of more than 90% of the new res­i­den­tial build­ings con­struct­ed dur­ing that time — a num­ber exceed­ing 4,000 new homes.

Build­ing upon the suc­cess of the Ener­gy Star sys­tem, in 1991 the City of Austin decid­ed to expand its vol­un­tary rat­ing frame­work to include a vari­ety of oth­er sus­tain­abil­i­ty cri­te­ria in home con­struc­tion. That year, the Ener­gy Star sys­tem was expand­ed into the Green Builder Pro­gram whose four-star rat­ing sys­tem focus­es on ener­gy sav­ings, sus­tain­able build­ing mate­ri­als and mate­ri­als recy­cling, water con­ser­va­tion, and waste. The rat­ing sys­tem applies a life­cy­cle approach, address­ing upstream and down­stream impacts of mate­ri­als and home resource con­sump­tion pat­terns. In addi­tion to res­i­den­tial con­struc­tion, the Green Builder Pro­gram also cov­ers all munic­i­pal build­ing projects, includ­ing the munic­i­pal air­port and pub­lic hous­ing. A Com­mer­cial Green Builder Pro­gram also has been established.

The rapid expan­sion of the Green Builder Pro­gram — present­ly involv­ing more than 150 builders — requires that the City oper­ates the rat­ing sys­tem on a self-rat­ing basis. In order to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gram­mme, builders must par­tic­i­pate in a half-day rat­ing train­ing ses­sion and pledge accu­rate and hon­est rat­ing of their build­ings. The accu­ra­cy of the vol­un­tary rat­ings is ran­dom­ly con­firmed by munic­i­pal employees.

A recent study of the actu­al ener­gy con­sump­tion of a supe­ri­or Green Builder home with a home that mere­ly com­plies with the Ener­gy Code showed that the Green Builder home used 48% less elec­tric­i­ty and 34% less nat­ur­al gas than the stan­dard Code home. In addi­tion, the aver­age Green Builder home is esti­mat­ed to use 114,000 less gal­lons of fresh water per year than the stan­dard Build­ing Code home, and dis­charges 22,000 less gal­lons of grey­wa­ter per year into the munic­i­pal sew­er­age system.

The Austin Green Builder Pro­gram could not have gen­er­at­ed such wide­spread vol­un­tary par­tic­i­pa­tion with­out the under­ly­ing reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments of the Ener­gy Code. It serves as an excel­lent exam­ple of the flex­i­ble and effec­tive use of pub­lic reg­u­la­tion for sus­tain­able development.

Source: ICLEI, Case Study #5: Hous­ing Con­struc­tion (Toron­to, ICLEI: 1992).

 

3. Build­ing Local Gov­ern­ment Capac­i­ty for Sustainable
Devel­op­ment in Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co and Quito, Ecuador

Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples for Success

Decen­tral­iza­tion and the reor­ga­ni­za­tion of munic­i­pal juris­dic­tions is often a pre­req­ui­site to address­ing the pol­lu­tion prob­lems of many fast-grow­ing cities.

Case Sum­ma­ry

For decades, Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co and Quito, Ecuador were known for their pol­lu­tion prob­lems. How­ev­er, short­ly after spe­cial leg­is­la­tion was passed in each city, pro­vid­ing their local gov­ern­ments with increased admin­is­tra­tive, polit­i­cal, and fis­cal pow­ers, the respec­tive cities achieved dra­mat­ic improve­ments in envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

In the 1970s, Mex­i­co City estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as both the largest and most pol­lut­ed city in the world. By the mid-80s the city’s 2.5 mil­lion vehi­cles con­sumed 20 mil­lion liters of gaso­line and diesel fuel each day. The city’s 35,000 indus­tries and ser­vice facil­i­ties dai­ly used 1.8 mil­lion liters of fuel oil and 340 mil­lion cubic feet of nat­ur­al gas. These fuels were burned main­ly in old vehi­cles and in obso­lete indus­tri­al facil­i­ties. Nine­ty-sev­en per­cent of all gaso­line con­sumed con­tained lead, while diesel and fuel oil had high sul­fur con­tent. The com­bined dai­ly com­bus­tion of these fuels pro­duced 11,700 tons of pol­lu­tants. The nation­al gov­ern­ment seemed pow­er­less to stop the down­wards spi­ral of one its great cities into an envi­ron­men­tal oblivion.

Then, in 1989, the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment of Mex­i­co estab­lished the “Gen­er­al Law of Eco­log­i­cal Bal­ance and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion,” which, among oth­er things, decen­tral­ized author­i­ty to con­trol sources of pol­lu­tion to states and munic­i­pal­i­ties. Arti­cle 9 of the law grant­ed Mex­i­co City the author­i­ty to reg­u­late emis­sions from busi­ness­es, ser­vice indus­tries and all mobile sources, to reg­u­late urban devel­op­ment, land use, vehi­cle traf­fic, and to oper­ate envi­ron­men­tal laboratories.

That same year the may­or of Mex­i­co City launched a munic­i­pal clean air ini­tia­tive with­out prece­dent in the world. The ini­tia­tive imple­ment­ed a clean fuel pro­gramme which reduced lead con­tent in gaso­line by 50% and enriched its oxy­gen con­tent. The pro­gramme pro­vid­ed a new gas-oil fuel for indus­try to reduce sul­fur con­tent by 33%. It replaced fuel oil in the city’s pow­er plants with nat­ur­al gas. In addi­tion to these mea­sures, the city admin­is­tra­tion imple­ment­ed 1,865 par­tial or tem­po­rary clo­sures of local indus­try and 62 high pol­lu­tion indus­tries were per­ma­nent­ly closed.

The city also invest­ed in a major expan­sion of the pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem, adding 10 miles to the sub­way sys­tem, retro­fitting 3,500 bus­es with low emis­sion engines, adding 250 elec­tric bus­es, and replac­ing 55,000 taxis with 1991 or new­er mod­els. A tri­al pro­gramme called “A Day With­out Car” lim­it­ed the use of pri­vate cars to six days per week and reduced gaso­line con­sump­tion in the city by 12% in the first year.

With­in the first year of these and oth­er mea­sures, Mex­i­co City saw a 23% reduc­tion in total pol­lu­tant emis­sions — over two thou­sand tons per day. Air qual­i­ty index­es for car­bon monox­ide, sul­fur oxides, hydro­car­bons, and lead ranged from 10–15%. Win­ter ozone lev­els decreased by more than 40%.

Like the Mex­i­co City mod­el, Quito’s abil­i­ty to address the sys­temic roots of its key envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems was dra­mat­i­cal­ly strength­ened with the pas­sage of the 1993 Met­ro­pol­i­tan Dis­trict Law in Ecuador. This law was ini­ti­at­ed by the Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Quito in 1990 and adopt­ed by the Nation­al Con­gress in 1993.

The law per­mits the Munic­i­pal­i­ty to estab­lish its own local envi­ron­men­tal ordi­nances for activ­i­ties with­in its juris­dic­tion. For­mer­ly, envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions had to be approved by the Nation­al Con­gress. As a result, the Munic­i­pal­i­ty now inde­pen­dent­ly con­trols land-use, build­ing and con­struc­tion, pub­lic and pri­vate trans­porta­tion, and envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, the law was used to increase the juris­dic­tion of the new Met­ro­pol­i­tan Dis­trict to include the entire urban area, so that land-use and trans­porta­tion could take place for the first time on a met­ro­pol­i­tan basis.

Since pas­sage of the law, the Munic­i­pal­i­ty has estab­lished a light rail tran­sit sys­tem, a pol­lu­tion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem, and a flood, ero­sion and risk con­trol pro­gramme. It is extend­ing the water and san­i­ta­tion sys­tem in the met­ro­pol­i­tan area, with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in reduc­ing dis­charges into local rivers. The Munic­i­pal­i­ty also has pre­pared a local ordi­nance for the con­trol of all haz­ardous indus­tri­al wastes and pri­vate vehi­cle emissions.

The cas­es of Mex­i­co City and Quito illus­trate that the simul­ta­ne­ous decen­tral­iza­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ties, legal pow­ers, and finan­cial means to munic­i­pal­i­ties can result in dra­mat­ic improve­ments in envi­ron­men­tal conditions.

Source: ICLEI, Instruc­tions for a Sus­tain­able Future (1992) and var­i­ous reports pre­pared for ICLEI by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Dis­trict of Quito (1996).

 

4. Local Imple­men­ta­tion of Inter­na­tion­al Envi­ron­men­tal Accords
— The Case of Local Cli­mate Action Plan­ning in
Han­nover & Saar­brück­en, Germany

Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples for Success

The imple­men­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal accords gen­er­al­ly requires action at the local lev­el. Time­ly and effec­tive local respons­es to these accords can be facil­i­tat­ed by includ­ing local gov­ern­ments in the nego­ti­a­tion process as well as in the prepa­ra­tion of nation­al lev­el action plans.

In the case of glob­al cli­mate change, the largest source of green­house gas emis­sions is ener­gy con­sump­tion in urban-based indus­try, trans­porta­tion, and build­ing heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tems. Local gov­ern­ments have a vari­ety of instru­ments at their con­trol to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion, but their ulti­mate suc­cess in achiev­ing glob­al green­house gas reduc­tion tar­gets will depend upon sup­port and coop­er­a­tion from indus­try and util­i­ty com­pa­nies, nation­al and sub­na­tion­al gov­ern­ment, and households.

Case Sum­ma­ry

In 1991, four­teen local gov­ern­ments from North Amer­i­ca, Europe, and the Mid­dle East joined with ICLEI to devel­op a method­ol­o­gy for local cli­mate action plan­ning. Sup­port­ed by the US Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and pri­vate foun­da­tions, this method­ol­o­gy estab­lished a base­line inven­to­ry of green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions for each city, a sce­nario of emis­sions growth until 2005, and a plan for mea­sures to reduce emis­sions. Through this expe­ri­ence, ICLEI demon­strat­ed a clear role for local gov­ern­ments in the imple­men­ta­tion of the pend­ing UN Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change.

The cities of Han­nover (pop­u­la­tion 514,000) and Saar­brück­en (pop­u­la­tion 189,000), Ger­many com­plet­ed their local cli­mate action plans in 1994. Both munic­i­pal­i­ties have been world­wide lead­ers in local ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy strate­gies. The CO₂ emis­sions inven­to­ries pre­pared by each city high­light­ed the extent to which emis­sions reduc­tions could be best achieved by reduc­ing heat­ing and elec­tric­i­ty demand in res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al buildings.

The Han­nover action plan aims to reduce total CO₂ emis­sions 25% by 2005. The total esti­mat­ed annu­al CO₂ emis­sions of the city of Han­nover was esti­mat­ed to be 10.8 mil­lion tonnes. This esti­mate includes life­cy­cle emis­sions from upstream ener­gy inputs in its cal­cu­la­tions. Ener­gy end-use for build­ings and indus­try (elec­tric­i­ty, heat­ing and cool­ing) in Han­nover accounts for 83% of total emis­sions. The trans­porta­tion sec­tor accounts for 17% of the city’s CO₂ emissions.

As of 1997, the ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures of the munic­i­pal­i­ty and its munic­i­pal ener­gy util­i­ty since 1990 are esti­mat­ed to result in a an annu­al reduc­tion of CO₂ emis­sions of 199,000 tonnes. This accounts for a 2.2% annu­al reduc­tion in CO₂ emis­sions from build­ings and indus­try and a 1.8% annu­al reduc­tion of total CO₂ equiv­a­lent emis­sions. Han­nover’s mea­sures range from increas­ing the expan­sion of com­bined heat and pow­er facil­i­ties, chang­ing in ener­gy costs (least cost plan­ning) to encour­age ener­gy retro­fit activ­i­ties in build­ings, and retro­fitting of pub­lic build­ings includ­ing schools. Among Han­nover’s most impor­tant ini­tia­tives is a “green pric­ing” util­i­ty rate for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by five new wind gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ties. Util­i­ty cus­tomers are will­ing to pay a pre­mi­um for this clean, wind energy.

The Saar­brück­en action plan also sets a tar­get of 25% reduc­tion in CO₂ emis­sions by 2005. How­ev­er, unlike Han­nover, Saar­brück­en did not fac­tor upstream emis­sions in its cal­cu­la­tions. Nonethe­less, the Saar­brück­en plan builds upon an out­stand­ing record of achieve­ment in the 1980s which pro­duced a 15% reduc­tion in CO₂ emis­sions from city-wide heat­ing demand and a reduc­tion of CO₂ emis­sions from munic­i­pal build­ings of 37% between 1980 and 1990. An expan­sion of these pro­grammes, as well as an inno­v­a­tive pro­gramme to finance solar ener­gy con­ver­sions for res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial build­ings, has pro­duced an annu­al reduc­tion of CO₂ emis­sions of 1% between 1990 and 1996.

The progress of Han­nover and Saar­brück­en since 1990 demon­strates that last­ing reduc­tions in CO₂ emis­sions can be achieved with­out dam­ag­ing local eco­nom­ic health. In addi­tion to their own ener­gy effi­cien­cy mea­sures, these cas­es high­light the role that munic­i­pal­i­ties can play in intro­duc­ing new, renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies to the market.

How­ev­er, both munic­i­pal­i­ties report that they are unlike­ly to achieve their 25% reduc­tion tar­gets on their own. In order to achieve the lev­els of reduc­tions required to pro­tect the glob­al cli­mate, munic­i­pal­i­ties require fur­ther com­mit­ment and sup­port­ive actions by nation­al gov­ern­ments, indus­try and house­holds — such as ener­gy tax­es, mea­sures to reduce the growth of pri­vate auto­mo­bile trans­porta­tion, and indus­tri­al effi­cien­cy measures.

Source: The Urban CO₂ Reduc­tion Strate­gies of Han­nover and Saar­brück­en and staff reports from the Han­nover ener­gy util­i­ty (Stadtwerke Han­nover) and the Saar­brück­en Ener­gy Department.

 

5. Pro­tec­tion of Bio­di­ver­si­ty as a Local Man­age­ment Challenge
— Mul­ti-Func­tion­al Park Design and Man­age­ment in Dur­ban, South Africa

Val­ues and Prin­ci­ples for Success

Among all the envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems addressed by inter­na­tion­al agree­ments, the pro­tec­tion of bio­di­ver­si­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, rep­re­sents a local man­age­ment chal­lenge. The sur­vival of each species requires the main­te­nance of spe­cif­ic eco­log­i­cal con­di­tions in geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­tinct habi­tats. As humans estab­lish set­tle­ments and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties on all of Earth­’s ter­rain, main­te­nance of these con­di­tions requires site-spe­cif­ic plan­ning, man­age­ment, and inte­gra­tion of local social and eco­log­i­cal requirements.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, most human set­tle­ments have been estab­lished with lit­tle ref­er­ence to local eco­log­i­cal fea­tures and indige­nous species. How­ev­er, a grow­ing num­ber of local gov­ern­ments have begun to fac­tor habi­tat pro­tec­tion and species repro­duc­tion issues into munic­i­pal plan­ning and devel­op­ment approval pro­ce­dures. In so doing, they are pio­neer­ing new ways to cre­ate more sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ships between local res­i­dents and their neigh­bors in the plant and wildlife communities.

Case Sum­ma­ry

Met­ro­pol­i­tan Dur­ban (pop­u­la­tion 3.5 mil­lion) is locat­ed in a high rain­fall tran­si­tion area between trop­i­cal and tem­per­ate zones and has an almost full rep­re­sen­ta­tion of species from both zones. Ad hoc urban­iza­tion in the city’s cen­tral core, cou­pled with pover­ty, over­crowd­ing, and poor munic­i­pal ser­vices in the periph­er­al town­ship areas, has lead to the degra­da­tion of the major ecosys­tems in the city — forests are being stripped for fire­wood and build­ing mate­ri­als, soil ero­sion is rife, rivers are pol­lut­ed with untreat­ed waste­water, and nat­ur­al areas are being cleared for devel­op­ment. In an attempt to alle­vi­ate both the eco­log­i­cal and social prob­lems it faced, the city estab­lished the Dur­ban Met­ro­pol­i­tan Open Space Sys­tem (D’MOSS) as part of its long-term land use plan.

D’MOSS employs a holis­tic approach to park devel­op­ment, incor­po­rat­ing both social and eco­log­i­cal cri­te­ria into park design and man­age­ment. To ensure that local res­i­dents respect sen­si­tive eco­log­i­cal areas, the munic­i­pal­i­ty involves res­i­dents in neigh­bor­ing park devel­op­ment through a con­tin­u­ous con­sul­ta­tion process that aims to estab­lish com­pat­i­ble social and envi­ron­men­tal uses of the parks. By using park areas to pro­vide abut­ting neigh­bor­hoods with ser­vices such as waste water treat­ment, schools, health clin­ics, and com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, the parks are being designed to meet the recre­ation­al, edu­ca­tion­al, health, and eco­nom­ic needs of a diverse group of cit­i­zens. Fur­ther­more, the munic­i­pal­i­ty trains and employs local peo­ple in the con­struc­tion and main­te­nance of sec­tions of the parks, thus pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion and employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties while devel­op­ing munic­i­pal services.

Along with this very sig­nif­i­cant social com­po­nent, the parks are designed to ful­fill a num­ber of dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal func­tions for the city. In par­tic­u­lar, D’MOSS gives the local gov­ern­ment and its cit­i­zens the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a cru­cial role in main­tain­ing, and increas­ing, biodiversity.

In most cities and towns, urban con­ser­va­tion is con­cerned with the sur­vival of “islands” of veg­e­ta­tion and wildlife in a “sea” of build­ing devel­op­ment. The pop­u­la­tions with­in these islands are cut off from the main body of their par­tic­u­lar plant or ani­mal com­mu­ni­ty. This under­mines the long-term sur­vival of the iso­lat­ed species — the small pop­u­la­tions in these com­mu­ni­ties decrease the like­li­hood of uccess­ful repro­duc­tion, reduce genet­ic diver­si­ty, and increase vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and com­pe­ti­tion from inva­sive, non-native species. D’MOSS plan­ners have adopt­ed phys­i­cal design prin­ci­ples which aim to estab­lish and main­tain links between these rem­nant patch­es of orig­i­nal nat­ur­al veg­e­ta­tion and to restore dis­turbed areas to their nat­ur­al state. Large and small nature reserves are being con­nect­ed by nat­ur­al area cor­ri­dors that serve as bio­log­i­cal links. These cor­ri­dors enhance plant and ani­mal habi­tats and max­i­mize nat­ur­al dis­per­sal of plant and ani­mal species. The link­ages allow genet­ic trans­fers between the areas there­by main­tain­ing diver­si­ty both in species num­bers and in genet­ic mate­r­i­al with­in a species. In keep­ing with the mul­ti-func­tion­al design strat­e­gy, the cor­ri­dors include rus­tic trails fea­tur­ing inter­pre­ta­tive charts, bird-watch­ing blinds, and pic­nic sites, for recre­ation­al use by local citizens.

Even­tu­al­ly the park sys­tem will form a grid across the entire city, with the prin­ci­pal axes fol­low­ing the coast and sev­er­al riv­er val­leys run­ning per­pen­dic­u­lar to the coast. The water­cours­es will be retained in their nat­ur­al state with indige­nous vegetation.

In addi­tion to estab­lish­ing bio­log­i­cal link­ages, Dur­ban will under­take a process of active man­age­ment to restore miss­ing habi­tats and to encour­age the re-estab­lish­ment of indige­nous plant and ani­mal com­mu­ni­ties. Costs for this part of the project will be min­i­mized through the appli­ca­tion of bio­geo­graph­i­cal design prin­ci­ples which allow nat­ur­al dis­per­sal to assist active management.

As an exam­ple of the prac­ti­cal ini­tia­tives under­way, Dur­ban is devel­op­ing a nurs­ery for indige­nous med­i­c­i­nal shrubs and trees aimed at pro­vid­ing an alter­na­tive sup­ply of tra­di­tion­al plant mate­r­i­al. City staff will teach herbal­ists and traders how to grow these plants. Through this and oth­er ini­tia­tives, Dur­ban is cre­at­ing a mul­ti-func­tion­al park sys­tem which address­es both envi­ron­men­tal and social needs.

Source: ICLEI, Case Study #27: Mul­ti-Func­tion­al Park Design and Man­age­ment(Toron­to, ICLEI: 1995).

 

D. Obstacles to the Local Implementation
of Sustainable Development

The sur­veys and case study analy­sis under­tak­en for this report iden­ti­fied a num­ber of com­mon obsta­cles to the local imple­men­ta­tion of sus­tain­able development.

Obsta­cle 1

In most coun­tries, exist­ing poli­cies and fis­cal frame­works at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment serve as bar­ri­ers to effi­cient resource use and devel­op­ment con­trol at the local lev­el. At the local lev­el these bar­ri­ers include statu­to­ry munic­i­pal devel­op­ment plans and bud­get pri­or­i­ties that do not reflect Local Agen­da 21 or sus­tain­able devel­op­ment objec­tives. Of equal impor­tance, most munic­i­pal­i­ties apply old land-use, build­ing and pub­lic health require­ments that dis­cour­age the design of neigh­bor­hoods that sup­port pub­lic tran­sit or of build­ings that use new tech­nolo­gies for water, ener­gy and waste water man­age­ment. At the state and nation­al lev­els, gov­ern­ments main­tain bar­ri­ers such as sub­si­dies and oth­er eco­nom­ic incentives/disincentives that encour­age unsus­tain­able practices.

The cen­tral­ized con­trol of local bud­gets and resources, and poor coor­di­na­tion of nation­al invest­ment plans with local pri­or­i­ties can seri­ous­ly under­mine the abil­i­ty of local gov­ern­ments to imple­ment their Local Agen­da 21 action plans. Numer­ous exam­ples can be found of local gov­ern­ments whose aims to increase pub­lic tran­sit ser­vices and dis­cour­age pri­vate vehi­cle use are con­tra­dict­ed by nation­al­ly-sup­port­ed road build­ing schemes or trans­porta­tion subsidies.

A fur­ther area of con­tra­dic­tion between local plans and state and nation­al efforts is the lax enforce­ment or dereg­u­la­tion of pol­lut­ing activ­i­ties. Local gov­ern­ments play an impor­tant role in the enforce­ment of nation­al envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, but their efforts can only suc­ceed if they are ful­ly sup­port­ed at oth­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment. Like­wise, local gov­ern­ments can make seri­ous efforts to improve local envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, but these efforts often can be mar­gin­al­ized if oth­er lev­els of gov­ern­ment fail to enforce reg­u­la­tions on the facil­i­ties of major man­u­fac­tur­ers or nat­ur­al resource industries.

Obsta­cle 2

The rev­enue gen­er­a­tion options of local gov­ern­ments are reg­u­lat­ed and restrict­ed by nation­al and state-lev­el poli­cies; how­ev­er, at the same time, nation­al and state-lev­el gov­ern­ments con­tin­ue to trans­fer their fis­cal prob­lems to the local lev­el. This is com­mon­ly achieved by mak­ing local gov­ern­ments respon­si­ble for ser­vices or gov­ern­ment func­tions that were tra­di­tion­al­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al gov­ern­ment — with­out trans­fer­ring the tra­di­tion­al rev­enues for this pur­pose. Such trans­fers under­mine efforts to build stronger local gov­ern­ments. With­out the par­al­lel estab­lish­ment of new sources of local rev­enues, these trans­fers also gen­er­al­ly weak­en pub­lic sec­tor capac­i­ty to imple­ment new social and envi­ron­men­tal mandates.

Obsta­cle 3

The estab­lish­ment and enforce­ment of nation­al reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards is a pre­req­ui­site to improved local gov­ern­ment per­for­mance in a wide vari­ety of areas, includ­ing air pol­lu­tion and water qual­i­ty con­trol, waste reduc­tion, and pol­lu­tion pre­ven­tion. While local gov­ern­ments wel­come ongo­ing review of reg­u­la­to­ry approach­es, dereg­u­la­tion cre­ates a dual bar­ri­er to local imple­men­ta­tion of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment — it both legal­izes prac­tices that cause social and envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems and it increas­es the com­plex­i­ty of hold­ing insti­tu­tions account­able for the prob­lems they cause.

Obsta­cle 4

The devel­op­ment of resource effi­cient, social­ly vibrant (i.e., sus­tain­able) cities requires local con­trol of devel­op­ment accord­ing to clear, local­ly-deter­mined strate­gies and prin­ci­ples. How­ev­er, the open­ing of glob­al mar­kets is accel­er­at­ing invest­ments and devel­op­ment activ­i­ties in cities by exter­nal actors, such as transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, which have min­i­mal incen­tive to be account­able and com­mit­ted to local devel­op­ment strategies.

Obsta­cle 5

The unsus­tain­able design and pack­ag­ing of con­sumer prod­ucts is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to local envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. Con­sumer prod­ucts and pack­ag­ing account for a large por­tion of the local sol­id waste stream, con­tain high lev­els of tox­ic sub­stances, and rarely employ best avail­able tech­nol­o­gy to max­i­mize ener­gy and water effi­cien­cy. Local gov­ern­ments have few direct con­trols over the prod­ucts that are sold and used in their jurisdictions.

 

Donor agen­cies, often the same as those which pro­mot­ed and pro­mul­gat­ed decen­tral­iza­tion and admin­is­tra­tive reform, instead of try­ing to build capac­i­ty at the local lev­el, return to the very paras­tatal and cen­tral gov­ern­ment agen­cies in their efforts to inte­grate envi­ron­men­tal and devel­op­ment con­sid­er­a­tions and more sus­tain­able approach­es to project design and imple­men­ta­tion. These are the same con­trol gov­ern­ment agen­cies which have weak­ened the capac­i­ty of local author­i­ties for the past two decades. This pur­suit of rapid results has frus­trat­ed seri­ous attempts in build­ing capac­i­ty at the local author­i­ty lev­el. Such capac­i­ty is essen­tial for the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of devel­op­ment efforts and initiatives.

UNCHS in Mak­ing Cities Work: The Role of Local Author­i­ties in the Urban Envi­ron­ment, R. Gilbert et al, 1996, Earth­scan Pub­li­ca­tions, London.

E. Recommendations for Improved Local Performance for Sustainable Development

On the basis of the pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied obsta­cles, and reflect­ing the suc­cess­ful respons­es to these obsta­cles iden­ti­fied at the local lev­el, ICLEI sub­mits the fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions to improve sus­tain­able devel­op­ment efforts at the local level.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 1 –
Strength­en and sup­port the Local Agen­da 21 movement.

The Local Agen­da 21 move­ment is one of the most exten­sive fol­low-up activ­i­ties to the Earth Sum­mit. To expand this move­ment, nation­al gov­ern­ments, NGOs, and donor insti­tu­tions are encour­aged to sup­port the estab­lish­ment of nation­al Local Agen­da 21 cam­paigns. To inten­si­fy the imple­men­ta­tion of Local Agen­da 21 action plans, local gov­ern­ments are strong­ly urged to for­mal­ly link Local Agen­da 21 plan­ning activ­i­ties with the annu­al bud­get­ing and statu­to­ry plan­ning activ­i­ties of the munic­i­pal­i­ty. It is fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that nation­al and inter­na­tion­al invest­ment pro­grammes active­ly fac­tor the strate­gies and tar­gets of Local Agen­da 21 action plans in the selec­tion and design of projects for their support.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 2 –
Har­mo­nize pub­lic sec­tor poli­cies and approaches.

With­in each coun­try, estab­lish a part­ner­ship between nation­al, state, and local lev­els of gov­ern­ment — per­haps with­in the frame­work of Nation­al Coun­cils for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment — to iden­ti­fy and review poli­cies, legal frame­works, and fis­cal frame­works that inhib­it sus­tain­able resource man­age­ment and social devel­op­ment. It is fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that the UNCSD request a pre­lim­i­nary review report on this top­ic to be pre­pared by the UNDPCSD and ICLEI for its sixth session.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 3 –
Increase local gov­ern­ment finan­cial capacities.

Estab­lish a glob­al part­ner­ship of nation­al gov­ern­ments, local gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions, and mul­ti­lat­er­al and pri­vate lend­ing insti­tu­tions to devise and rec­om­mend local gov­ern­ment rev­enue enhance­ment strate­gies to accom­pa­ny nation­al decen­tral­iza­tion pro­grammes or “down load­ing” ini­tia­tives. Focus munic­i­pal devel­op­ment pro­gramme assis­tance on capac­i­ty-build­ing in munic­i­pal finance.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 4 –
Estab­lish flex­i­ble reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works for all areas of Agen­da 21.

The role of reg­u­la­tion in achiev­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment needs to be refined. How­ev­er reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works should be designed to con­sist of two inte­grat­ed ele­ments: min­i­mum enforce­able stan­dards and a frame­work for flex­i­ble com­pli­ance using inno­v­a­tive vol­un­tary agree­ments and programmes.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 5 –
Increase pri­vate sec­tor account­abil­i­ty to Local Agen­das 21.

Estab­lish coop­er­a­tion agree­ments between LGOs and inter­na­tion­al busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions on a sec­tor-by-sec­tor basis to encour­age all busi­ness­es and, in spe­cif­ic, transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to respect and sup­port the Local Agen­da 21 strate­gies of the com­mu­ni­ties in which they invest and main­tain their operations.

Rec­om­men­da­tion 6 –
Orga­nize local gov­ern­ment pur­chas­ing pow­ers for sus­tain­able development.

Estab­lish inter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols among local gov­ern­ments on an inter­na­tion­al basis to use their pur­chas­ing and legal pow­ers to per­suade con­sumer prod­ucts man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers to achieve min­i­mum effi­cien­cy and waste reduc­tion stan­dards in prod­uct design and packaging.

 

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Notes

1. Brug­mann, J. Man­ag­ing Human Ecosys­tems. Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives, Toron­to, 1992.
2. World Bank, Munic­i­pal Devel­op­ment Sec­tor Review. Decen­tral­iza­tion and Its Impli­ca­tions for Urban Ser­vice Deliv­ery. World Bank, Wash­ing­ton, 1993.
3. Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Local Envi­ron­men­tal Initiatives/United Nations Depart­ment for Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment. Local Agen­da 21 Sur­vey: A Study of Respons­es by Local Author­i­ties and Their Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tions to Agen­da 21. UNDPCSD, New York, 1997.
4. Inter­na­tion­al Coun­cil for Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives. Action Plan­ning, Kana­gawa Pre­fec­ture, Japan, (ICLEI Case Study Series Num­ber 28). ICLEI, Toron­to, 1995.
5. Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment. Urban Envi­ron­men­tal Poli­cies for the 1990s. OECD, Paris, 1990.
6. Jacob­son, M.R. Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment in the Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Aarhus. Paper pre­sent­ed at the Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­men­tal­ly Effi­cient Cities, Sav­soli­to, U.S.A., 1991.
7. Analy­sis made of doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the Aus­tralian Local Gov­ern­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, the Aus­tralian League of Cities, the Fed­er­a­tion of Cana­di­an Munic­i­pal­i­ties, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Local Author­i­ties in Den­mark, the Asso­ci­a­tion of Finnish Local Author­i­ties, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Local Author­i­ties of Ghana, the UK Local Gov­ern­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, and the U.S. Nation­al League of Cities.
8. Gilbert, R., et al. Mak­ing Cities Work: The Role of Local Author­i­ties in the Urban Envi­ron­ment. Earth­scan Pub­li­ca­tions Ltd., Lon­don, 1996.

 

April 1997 — Con­tents copy­right © 1997 ICLEI