Case Study on National Implementation of Local Agenda 21
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CSD-6: Case Study on National Implementation of Local Agenda 21 |
Table of Content:
Introduction
Problem Statement: The Institutional Framework for Local Implementation of Agenda 21
Barriers to Local Implementation of Agenda 21
Focus on National and Sub-national Barriers
A Typology of Barriers
Private Market Barriers
Public Market and Finance Barriers
Legal and Regulatory Barriers
Jurisdictional Barriers
Professional and Trade Group Barriers
Foreign Assistance Barriers
Conclusion
This study is prepared by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and CAG Consultants in collaboration with the Division for Sustainable Development.
In the Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, adopted in June 1997, the 19th Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Sustainable Development to review progress in Agenda 21 implementation concludes that "The efforts of local authorities are making Agenda 21 and the pursuit of sustainable development a reality at the local level through the implementation of "Local Agenda 21s" and other sustainable development programmes..."[para. 12 of A/RES/S-19/2] Echoing the themes of Chapter 8 of Agenda 21, the Programme goes on to assert that
...Achieving sustainable development cannot be carried out without greater integration at all policy-making levels and at operational levels, including the lowest administrative levels possible..."[para. 24]
By the year 2002, the formulation and elaboration of national strategies for sustainable development which reflect the contributions and responsibilities of all interested parties should be completed in all countries...Countries which already have national strategies should continue their efforts to enhance and effectively implement them...Local Agenda 21 and other local sustainable development programmes...should also be actively encouraged;" [para. 24(a)]
In specific, the General Assembly states:
Global targets could be established by the Commission on Sustainable Development to promote local Agenda 21 campaigns and to deal with obstacles to local Agenda 21 initiatives.[para 32]
This paper was prepared in response to the above calls for promotion of Local Agenda 21, in particular addressing obstacles to effective local implementation measures for Agenda 21. The proposal for the paper was prepared by ICLEI, upon the invitation of and in consultation with the Division for Sustainable Development of UNDESA. The resulting research provides a framework for governments at all levels -national, subnational and local- to use in the identification and analysis of barriers to Agenda 21 implementation at the local level. In this way, the paper may provide valuable assistance to national governments in their efforts to formulate, elaborate, enhance and implement their national strategies for sustainable development.
An important element of any sustainable development strategy is the review of existing policies and measures to ensure that they are consistent with efforts to implement that strategy. Policies designed to promote a single development objective often can have unanticipated hindering effects on efforts to promote other development objectives. Likewise, measures to implement policies at one level of government -regulations, taxes and other fiscal measures, and administrative standards and directives- can undermine implementation measures at other levels. These hindering effects or barriers are often unintended and are difficult to discern from the vantagepoint of a single ministry or level of government. This paper aims to make these barriers more apparent and to aid the development of better-integrated national strategies for sustainable development.
Towards this end, Section 2 of the paper briefly describes the institutional context for local barriers to Agenda 21 implementation. Section 3 describes the different types of barriers faced by local authorities and their local partners and presents a typology, with examples of actual experiences in local communities. Section 4 presents a selection of case summaries, which provide a more detailed description of the ways in which selected barriers affect local progress towards sustainable development. Section 5 presents a straightforward analytical exercise that may be used to identify barriers to local action within a specific country context. The exercise facilitates the ranking of barriers and the identification of measures for remedial action that could be included within a national strategy. Governments may consider the merits of undertaking this exercise in the context of intergovernmental and/or multi-stakeholder forums for sustainable development, such as national councils for sustainable development.
Chapter 8 of Agenda 21 (Integrating environment and development in decision-making) highlights a variety of ways in which institutional frameworks can hamper government decision-making for sustainable development. Institutional arrangements at all levels of government can create impediments to sustainable development policy-making, planning and management at all levels of government. Chapter 8 therefore recommends that each country "conduct a national review and, where appropriate, improve processes of decision-making so as to achieve the progressive integration of economic, social and environmental issues in the pursuit of development that is economically efficient, socially equitable and responsible and environmentally sound." [para. 8.4]
With support from the international community, many countries already have undertaken such a review. Examples include the development of Agenda 21 country strategies prepared with assistance from the Capacity 21 Programme and National Councils for Sustainable Development, the National Environmental Action Plans (NEAPs), supported by the World Bank, and the National Environmental Management Plans, supported by the Asian Development Bank. Key impediments highlighted in these reviews include:
While most reviews have focused primarily on national-level policy, planning and management, many reviews have sought input from local and subnational tiers of government. The resulting dialogues have highlighted the need to further adjust policies and institutional arrangements so that consistent support for sustainable development measures is provided at the national, subnational and local levels.
Lack of integration has been observed in the emergence of Local Environmental Action Plans (LEAPs) in countries that have established NEAPs. Some LEAP planning processes were triggered by NEAPs and others have arisen from local initiatives, with different types appearing at provincial, city and state levels. Lacking any intergovernmental structure for integration of these efforts, they may confuse and diffuse implementation efforts. For example, in Burkina Faso, village associations have prepared land use plans including actions to maintain natural capital, but the country is burdened by a multiplicity of environmental plans which are not integrated with each other (World Bank, 1995). In response to these kinds of issues, some countries, such as Australia, have created intergovernmental bodies to discuss and co-ordinate environmental policy making at all levels of government.
Widening the agenda from environmental policy-making to sustainable development tends to add to the complexities and difficulties of lack of integration between different tiers of government each of which may maintain distinct, and potentially conflicting, policies for natural resources management, environmental protection, economic development and social welfare. Even while national governments, via decentralisation policies, delegate increasing responsibilities for sustainable development to the local level, the parameters for action at the local level remain defined in both apparent and indiscernible ways by national and sub-national governments. National tax and fiscal policies, regulations and investment programmes may serve as powerful barriers to specific local initiatives. If local initiatives -which have been highlighted by national governments as an increasingly central element of their national sustainable development strategies- are to have their promised impact, these barriers must be more fully understood.
Sustainable development in any jurisdiction is a process that is mediated by multiple institutional actors in the public, private and civil society sectors. The globalisation of the development process is rapidly increasing the interaction of institutional actors from the international, regional, national, subnational and local arenas in important development decisions. The outcomes of this process are sustainable development projects and activities, which, by nature, must be implemented in a local context. The implementation of sustainable development in such a global context therefore requires mechanisms to ensure that the policies, plans and practices agreed upon by these diverse actors ultimately are consistent with local realities and implementation needs.
This report primarily focuses upon the policies, plans and practices of government institutions and their impacts upon the implementation of sustainable development measures at the local level. As sustainable development implies reforming the traditional modes of development decision-making and activity, the implementation of any programme for sustainable development will inevitably require reforms to government policies, plans and practices at the national, sub-national and local levels. These reforms must particularly focus on removing the unintended barriers to sustainable development measures.
The Local Agenda 21 process, mandated in Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, has provided a mechanism for thousands of local authorities in more than 60 countries to identify necessary local government reforms for, and the related barriers to, sustainable development. This mechanism has been reviewed in Background Paper 10 titled, Local Agenda 21 Survey: A study of responses by Local Authorities and their National and International Associations to Agenda 21, prepared for the fifth session of the CSD in 1997. The current paper therefore focuses upon barriers that arise from policies, plans and practices of national and sub-national governments.
The paper describes different types of national and sub-national barriers and the ways in which they manifest themselves in the local context. These barriers arise from and are exacerbated by the institutional framework issues described in section 2 above. The resulting typology aims to assist managers in national and sub-national government to identify those barriers that are relevant to their country's institutional and policy context. This typology focuses on six types of barriers.
The table at the end of this chapter provides examples of the ways in which these barriers (and their subtypes) work in practice. Some suggestions for addressing these barriers are also included. Case summaries are presented in section 4 to demonstrate the impacts of different barriers on local sustainable development activities.
Economists have long recognised that certain failures in private markets can prevent rational market behaviour, in particular with regard to the environment, natural resources and "public goods" such as public safety or community life. While these failures operate in diverse ways, the most important ones fall into four categories: externalities, the "free-rider" syndrome, natural or publicly devised monopolies, and informational barriers to rational consumer behaviour.
Externalities
Externalities are market conditions that permit a producer or consumer to shift the costs for their economic activities to other parties. Externalities are particularly prevalent in the environmental and social arenas, as many environmental and social goods, i.e., "public goods" -clean air, clean water, public health- are not monetised and tradable in a market environment. As a result, a producer may use or damage the environment or public health through its economic activities without paying a direct cost. These costs are 'externalised' or transferred to the affected individuals or to governments which take responsibility for maintaining 'public goods'. In a market economy which aims to maximise investor profit, the externalisation of costs has proven to be a lucrative strategy for reducing costs relative to revenues, in other words, for increasing profits.
Due to their direct responsibilities for managing waste (when producers externalise this cost of business), providing social services (when corporate decisions result in unemployment or worker health problems), and addressing pollution problems caused by economic activity, local governments typically pay a high price for externalities in the market system.
A variety of instruments exist to eliminate externalities, including regulations, special taxes and financial transfers to aid affected parties, and regulated pricing schemes that 'internalise' these activities into the market. As there are many externalities implicit in the market, and producers can be very creative in finding ways to externalise their costs, solutions typically must be designed on a case-by-case basis to re-establish rational market forces.
'Free-Rider' Syndrome
The 'free-rider' syndrome is a form of externality that derives from the inability of any institution to control and charge for the use (or abuse) of a natural asset. A typical example of the free-rider system is the use of the seas. No one can fully regulate and therefore charge for the use of marine resources. Instead, governments can collect fees from a portion of users in the form of taxes and fees for fishing and other maritime activities. However, some users will find ways to avoid paying user fees and will thereby become 'free riders.' When large numbers of free riders exist, or when a single free-rider exerts a large impact, the free-rider syndrome can cause severe deterioration of a public asset.
Particularly in the area of sewage discharges, local governments themselves have played the role of free-rider. However, many cases also exist of local governments suffering from damages caused by free-rider use of ground water and surface water sources that threaten local water supplies.
Another problem arises when national laws require major companies to pay taxes in the jurisdiction of their head office, rather than in the cities where they locate their production facilities. For instance in Turkey, major automobile companies operate production plants in the city of Bursa, using local infrastructure and contributing to local pollution problems, yet they pay their municipal taxes to the city of Istanbul.
Another example is the use of tall smokestacks by power stations in one jurisdiction to pump their air pollutants into the air currents that feed the air sheds of distant cities. In North America, coal-powered electrical plants in the mid-western United States are a major source of the air pollution in eastern cities of the US and Canada. These cities must directly respond to the health problems arising from this practice.
The traditional instrument for eliminating free-rider effects is strictly enforced government regulation. However, government regulation of major natural assets, such as the seas and the atmosphere, requires establishment of international laws that are both detailed and broad enough to satisfy numerous national interests. The costs, rigidity and lack of enforceability of parallel regimes of national and international environmental laws have brought them under criticism. One recent invention devised as an alternative for controlling the free-rider syndrome is the use of tradable pollution permits. Though still highly controversial, pollution trading schemes aim to exact a charge on all resource users (or polluters) by creating a market for rights to use (or pollute) a public good.
Monopolies
Monopolies are another form of market barrier. Markets are presumed to generate rational behaviour through the disciplines of supply and demand, competition and constant innovation. Monopolies operate above such discipline. Of particular relevance to sustainable development is the so-called natural monopoly that arises, for instance, when there is only one water source or electrical power station controlled by a single company. Alternatively, governments have created public monopolies, oftentimes in response to the market's inability to generate private investment or necessary technology for major infrastructure projects. Whatever their initial justification may be, natural resource monopolies today are often inefficient and encourage non-sustainable consumption patterns. Regulation or elimination of these monopolies is the most common instruments for correcting these problems.
Electrical and water monopolies are known to prevent local governments and their local businesses from undertaking initiatives that would support sustainable development. Municipalities and businesses in the province of Ontario, Canada have been prevented from building co-generation and other energy efficient facilities because the province's monopolistic power company, Ontario Hydro, seeks to protect its market. The province is currently considering deregulation of this monopoly, but the legislation still may not support these local measures.
Information Barriers
Finally, even in this information age, informational barriers continue to serve as an important barrier to rational consumer behaviour. Rational market behaviour is predicated on full and equal access to information by producers and consumers. In reality, economic actors carefully manage the information that they provide to consumers. Many billions of dollars are spent each year to disseminate favourable information via advertising and to control access to unfavourable information. The result is the inability of consumers to consistently factor sustainability issues into their purchasing decisions. Government information disclosure requirements, public information programmes, and favourable tax benefits for public education activities are typical instruments to counteract this private market barrier.
In apartheid South Africa, the city of Durban was not able to obtain information on pollution discharges from local petrochemical factories. Today, the families abutting these facilities are seeking information on the pollution levels in their neighbourhoods and related long-term health effects. While the unique rigidities of the apartheid system can explain the Durban experience, many similar situations exist (or have existed) in democratic countries.
Government information disclosure requirements, public information programmes, and favourable tax benefits for public education activities are typical instruments to counteract this private market barrier.
Government taxes, subsidies, fees and charges, regulations and expenditures can have a tremendous impact upon prices for goods and services. Often these government instigated price impacts provide an economic incentive to producers and consumers to pursue unsustainable behaviour.
Price
In the simplest terms, if the price of an unsustainable service or product is lower than that of a more sustainable alternative, this discourages more sustainable consumer behaviour. Examples of this in practice are:
In many cities and towns, prices that favour unsustainable activities, such as wasteful consumption and commuting in private automobiles, establishes market forces that are contrary to local environmental policies to increase public transit use, reduce fresh water consumption, and reduce waste generation.
Price Structure
The way in which prices are arranged is often within the remit of national government, through the way in which taxes are levied or the structure of tariffs that result in incentives to behave in unsustainable ways.
(i) High fixed costs and low variable costs can make unsustainable options like private car use seem cheaper at the point of decision when compared with (unsubsidised) public transport. A shift from fixed to variable costs for the unsustainable option, e.g., replacing car ownership taxes with taxes on fuel, would reduce the impact of this barrier by encouraging more sustainable consumer behaviour. This would be further encouraged by a shift in the opposite direction - from variable to fixed costs - for the sustainable option, e.g. season tickets, residents' concessionary fares.
(ii) Regressive tariffs reward larger users. These are common in the energy sector, especially where government has never had or has relinquished ownership and control of companies which sell fuel.
Governments at all levels have moved slowly to adjust tariff structures for energy, water, waste water treatment and solid waste in order to provide an incentive for conservation and waste reduction. The result, often unwittingly, is higher public expenditure for new potable water sources, waste disposal facilities, and waste treatment programmes. The burdens of these expenditures often fall most directly on local governments. Where local governments lack sufficient funds, local residents pay the price in terms of water shortages or increasing public health risks. Governments often accept such outcomes as a price that must be paid to avoid confrontation with energy suppliers, large resource consumers and their lobbies.
Subsidies against the Public Interest
Subsidies or incentives often act against local sustainable development by supporting activities that have a marked adverse effect at local level.
Agricultural subsidies and incentives through tax "breaks" (fiscal and credit incentives) can encourage unsustainable development activity, causing reduction of "carbon sinks" through deforestation, loss of biodiversity, increase in soil erosion, damage through over-use of chemicals, displacement of local communities and destruction of local economies.
The provision of water for drinking and irrigation is often heavily subsidised, resulting in excessive irrigation, water logging and salination of agricultural areas as well as wastage by domestic consumers.
Fossil fuel subsidies create distortions in world markets and confer an unfair price advantage when compared with locally generated renewable energy.
Road transport is subsidised by the failure to recover the full costs of infrastructure provision. The inability of some countries to maintain roads efficiently, which results in the large expenditures each year on premature road rehabilitation, also amounts to subsidised road provision. Though local governments may be able to recover some of the costs associated with road use, such as car parking, they have no ability to influence a change to more sustainable behaviour in the face of national subsidies on this scale.
Subsidies can be broadly described in two ways, namely production and consumption subsidies. The concept is particularly familiar in the energy sector, where production subsidies are common in developed countries, whilst consumption subsidies, designed to keep domestic prices below world market levels, are found in many developing countries.
(i) Production subsidies paid to anti-sustainable producer interests. These would include the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and subsidised construction of national roadways (though for convenience the latter is described below as investment.)
(ii) Subsidies intended to alleviate poverty/inequity, which in fact promote unsustainable activities, e.g. blanket fuel subsidies.
These subsidies can have a devastating effect on local sustainable development policies, counteracting the force of local projects and programmes. Local governments themselves are often a part of the problem. For instance, in 1990 the city of Denver, USA hired a consultant to determine whether the municipality was subsidising local private automobile use. The consultant found that in 1989 the city spent $57 million on motor vehicle-related services (including roads, policing, health costs due to accidents etc.) and generated $40 million in revenues from auto-related charges -a subsidy of $17 million or 30% of total expenses.
Investment
Capital investment can promote and facilitate unsustainable behaviour and act as a powerful barrier to local initiatives.
National and sub-national governments frequently define the operational parameters for local authority planning and service provision functions. Civil service codes, building and energy codes, land tenure and development laws, and statutory planning requirements and limitations shape and sometimes constrain the manner in which local authorities can respond to local sustainable development challenges. The role of regulation in achieving sustainable development needs to be refined. Often, legal standards which were envisaged by civil servants as minimum standards are regarded as maximum standards by developers and operators at the local level, who then use their lobbying power to resist any increase in the standards which may be desirable to achieve more sustainable development. Furthermore, standards in many countries are often premised upon technologies, social preferences and economic conditions of past decades and rarely establish mechanisms to flexibly respond to new technologies and market conditions as they arise. As a result, they may not only inhibit innovative local initiatives but, in a national context, may serve as impediments to innovation in the marketplace, thereby further constraining local choices. Some examples of legal and regulatory barriers are given below.
Anti-sustainable Laws and Regulations
These are typically laws and regulations that were prepared without reference to sustainable development criteria and/or without a comprehensive review of their potential impact upon sectors other than the one that they specifically seek to address.
Anti-sustainable Standards
These are typically standards that were prepared with reference to the prevailing models and values of development of an earlier period and/or with reference to the narrow albeit 'professional' standards of interested trade and business association and investors.
Jurisdictional barriers may arise whenever government authority is not clearly, authoritatively, and unequivocally assigned to a competent government agency. Failure to adequately establish jurisdiction and adapt it to constantly changing local circumstances can result in contradictory government decisions, extended delays in efforts to address pressing local problems, costly legal challenges, and a lack of clear public agency to address a pressing social or economic problem. Jurisdictional barriers may be classified into three categories: lack of jurisdiction, multiple and split jurisdiction, and misplaced jurisdiction.
Lack of Jurisdiction
Problems of non-jurisdiction typically arise in two instances. In the first instance, rapidly changing technologies, demographics and socio-economic conditions may confront sub-national and local authorities with development decisions for which they have no prescribed authority. Thus can arise gaps in responsibility, with no agency competent or fully empowered. This instance arises particularly in systems where regulations and standards are highly prescriptive about what can be done rather than providing a flexible authority to relevant agencies to achieve overall objectives or performance standards.
In the second instance, lack of jurisdiction arises when national and subnational governments fail to regulate or choose to deregulate an area of economic activity without establishing procedures to address the resulting social and environmental side effects. 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.
Multiple and Split Jurisdiction
In many countries, the distribution of regulatory and operational authority to different jurisdictions has evolved on an ad hoc basis over periods of decades or centuries in response to shifting demographics, technology, socio-economic conditions and political regimes. As a result, in some areas of policy that are most pertinent to sustainable development, jurisdictions may be split between different ministries, agencies and tiers of government. This condition can impede or altogether prevent timely and rational decision-making on important issues.
In some cases, overlapping responsibilities and competition between agencies -with different agencies competing to take "ownership" of the area of responsibility- can trap well-meaning sustainable development initiatives in internal bureaucratic feuding. In other cases, fragmentation of responsibility, whereby each agency is only able to look at part of a problem (e.g., urban air pollution), can result in limited responses to problem symptoms (e.g., poor air quality warning system) and no comprehensive response to problem causes (e.g., metropolitan transportation strategy). Another manifestation of split jurisdiction is lack of agency integration in measuring performance. If different agencies are authorised to appraise their performance in isolation, they can all claim to be improving performance by shifting problems onto each other.
Misplaced Jurisdiction
In spite of considerable national government reforms to decentralise government authority and apply the "subsidiarity" principle, instances still exist where national or sub-national governments are making critical decisions about local development and resource management decisions, such as water tariffs, transportation and waste management budgets and tariffs and environmental regulations. This situation is particularly prevalent in fast growing urban areas, where rural areas of decades earlier have been transformed into metropolitan areas requiring strong metropolitan governance.
The historical business objective of most professional associations and trade unions has been to maximise the compensation, job security and control of work conditions of their members. Sustainable development issues have only recently been introduced to their agendas. As a result, local governments have sometimes faced opposition from professional associations and trade unions that rely on special project designs or labour arrangements protect the identified interests of their members. A classic example is trade union opposition to local recycling, materials re-use and 'greening' programmes that employ disabled, homeless and unemployed people at minimum wages. One objective of these programmes is to create employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups, but local labour unions can object to the use of non-union labour for such municipal activities. Other examples include resistance from engineers' groups to household composting programmes or alternative sewage treatment technologies or resistance from park maintenance professionals to low- and no-chemical park maintenance practices.
Due to the extensive resources that international development assistance agencies can inject into a low-income community with under-budgeted local institutions, these agencies can overnight become a major force in the local economy. This is particularly true as a result of the practice of different agencies to select the same priority countries and cities for their activities. In addition, their direct relationship to central government ministries provides a mechanism for them to determine the use of their funds and modes of their local work with minimal ongoing local involvement. As a result, in spite of the best intentions of these agencies to foster local sustainable development, their activities can have lasting, detrimental impacts upon local capacity-building for sustainable development.
Aside from the much addressed (and still prevalent) impact of transferring inappropriate technology, foreign assistance barriers include institutional arrangements, decision-making procedures, and labour market impacts.
Institutional Arrangements
Institutional arrangements for development assistance projects generally serve as barriers to sustainable development whenever they withdraw authority from existing local governance institutions (without establishment of a legitimate, local public mandate) in order to centralise planning and project management or to provide service responsibility to private institutions. Such actions are typically taken, without extensive public participation and local government strengthening, in order to facilitate project execution according to the time schedules, procedures and specifications of the donor agency and its private contractors.
Decision-making Procedures
The spread of Local Agenda 21 processes and similar participatory, local sustainable development planning efforts has resulted in the establishment of new multi-stakeholder planning forums in a growing number of cities and towns of the developing world. These forums, usually sanctioned by the local authority, provide an excellent local counterpart to donor agencies in the process of project design, assessment, capacity-building, implementation and evaluation. However, the traditional donor agency practice of employing private consultants and agency professionals to make early project design decisions in limited consultation with national, subnational and local authority representatives is still too common. In other cases, 'rapid' assessment processes are established, using hired consultants to quickly collect data and interview 'key actors', again avoiding the more laborious effort of building local stakeholder capacity for assessment activities. These approaches can undermine indigenous sustainable development planning efforts, particularly when development investment decisions do not reflect the priorities of these stakeholder forums.
Labour Market Impacts
Foreign development assistance projects typically provide salaries to nationals working on these projects at levels that are many times the normal local labour market standards. This practice creates a two-tiered labour market that draws talent away from locally-initiated (local authority, NGO, CBO) activities and undermines the motivations of those who are left working for local institutions.
The above section briefly reviews the different types of barriers that may have an effect upon sustainable development activities at the local level. Further examples of these barriers in practice can be found in Table 1. Case summaries describing the impacts of specific barriers upon specific local initiatives can be found in section 4 of this paper.
Type of Barrier |
Example in Practice |
Policy Prescription to Overcome Barrier to Local Sustainability |
Private Market Barriers |
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Externalities |
(i) Car drivers do not pay for global and local damage caused by their use of cars. (ii) Manufacturers don't pay for the costs of collecting and disposing the packaging materials that they use in marketing and delivering their products. These costs are shifted to local waste management systems. |
Adjust price to discourage car use and encourage use of more sustainable means of transport. Reduce volume of packaging, establish a mandatory package deposit fee in the product price to encourage consumers to return packaging to disposal sites, and/or require manufacturers to subsidise municipal waste management services. |
'Free-rider' Problem |
(iii) The market cannot restrict access to a valuable natural resource -such as an underground aquifer used as a city's water supply- to those who pay for the use and protection of the resource. |
Government regulation of access and use of the resource is required. Regulation must be enforced. |
Information Barrier |
(iv) Consumers are not provided access to information about the energy or water requirements for product use or about the environmental impacts of the product |
Establish product reporting requirements and make information easily accessible to the public and consumer organisations. Provide tax benefits to non-profit educational organisations. |
Monopolies |
(v) Natural resource monopolies, such as energy and water utilities, are exempt from market disciplines that would require efficient management and accurate resource pricing. They can use their powers to stop local governments from establishing more efficient local facilities. |
Regulation and even elimination of monopoly might be warranted. |
Type of Barrier |
Example in Practice |
Policy Prescription to Overcome Barrier to Local Sustainability |
|
Public Market and Finance Barriers |
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Price |
(i) Value-added taxes (VAT) on home heating fuels, while ostensibly a "green" tax, can have a severe impact on poorer people, in particular the elderly who were making choices between "heating" and "eating". (ii) Until recently, the VAT levied on fuel in the UK was lower than VAT levied on energy conservation measures, resulting in a tax disincentive for energy conservation. In this way, market forces contradict local energy efficiency policies. |
Taxes on energy are good for sustainability but adjustments need to be made to relieve the burden on the lowest income groups. Adjust taxes so that conservation and efficient use of resources is encouraged relative to consumption of resources. |
Price Structure |
(iii) Car use appears cheaper than public transport where the choice is available. This undermines the financial viability of local public transit systems and encourages continued unsustainable investment in road schemes to absorb growing automobile use. (iv) Rates for energy and water services provide a discounted rate to large consumers and a high marginal rate to low volume consumers. |
Shift from fixed to variable costs for car ownership; shift from variable to fixed costs for public transport. Structure rates so that energy and water becomes more expensive at various levels of consumption, providing accessible charges for a basic "minimum needs level" of consumption. |
|
Subsidies against the Public Interest |
(v) Agriculture
|
Withdraw subsidies; remove fiscal and credit incentives for unsustainable activities and consider transferring these benefits to sustainable alternatives. |
Type of Barrier |
Example in Practice |
Policy Prescription to Overcome Barrier to Local Sustainability |
|
Legal and Regulatory Barriers |
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Laws and Regulations |
(i) Regulations that prohibit local authorities from giving preferential treatment to developers who agree to take special measures to increase the environmental or social benefits of their buildings, such as the addition of public park facilities or use of energy and water saving design elements (often called "bonusing"). (ii) Regulations to control the price of food which benefit urban population but hurt rural farmers and depress agricultural sector e.g. in Southern Africa (SARDC/IUCN/SADC, 1994) |
Regulate detrimental bonusing activities, but provide authority for specified bonusing activities that promote sustainable development objectives. Ensure that regulations designed to address poverty are comprehensive in their application and do not exclude or act against other vulnerable groups in society. |
Standards |
(iii) Over specification of "western" drainage infrastructure in southern cities where it is inappropriate and communities cannot afford to maintain it. (iv) Building codes requiring connections to traditional urban serviced infrastructure, i.e., discouraging "self-sufficient" buildings; or requiring minimum standards for car parking space; standards based on air-conditioning rather than fans and natural ventilation (v) Use of brilliant white copy paper where off-white (unbleached, recycled) is perfectly adequate. (vi) Requirement to use newly extracted materials in construction instead of recycled aggregates (these can end up in landfill sites if there is no market for them). |
Allow local communities control over design and management of appropriate and sustainable facilities and sewerage infrastructure Review and adjust regulatory standards at regular intervals so that they specify a level of performance rather than a particular design or technology and that they incorporate changing aspirations Encourage (through example) the voluntary adoption of standards which reflect performance requirements rather than appearance Ensure that regulatory standards take account of opportunities for use of recycled materials |
Type of Barrier |
Example in Practice |
Policy Prescription to Overcome Barrier to Local Sustainability |
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Jurisdictional Barriers |
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Lack of Jurisdiction
Multiple and Split Jurisdiction
Misplaced Jurisdiction |
(i) Local drainage infrastructure overwhelmed by increase in disposal of non-degradable packaging materials over which they have no control. (ii) No agency at any level of government is provided with clear authority to approve the use of new, sustainable technologies in building construction (Ontario, Canada), thereby making innovation bureaucratically onerous. (iii) Municipality has jurisdiction over storm water drains and State has jurisdiction over sewerage system, impeding efforts to disconnect household sewage outlets from storm drains and reconnect them to the sewerage system (State of São Paulo, Brazil). (iv) A growing urban area has engulfed dozens of existing, small municipal jurisdictions. No single jurisdiction enough authority and resources to take sufficient measures to address severe air and water pollution problems in the metropolitan area (metropolitan Santiago, Chile). (v) Local authorities have budgetary and operational responsibility for delivery of social welfare programmes, but provincial government determines service requirements and levels of public funds programme activities. |
Delegate to local authorities the power to regulate to protect the local environment. Update building codes and oversight authority, providing clear procedures for builders who wish to apply new technologies. Establish performance-based standards in building and energy codes as alternative to rigid building standards. Redefine service jurisdictions so that authority for highly integrated systems rest with a single jurisdiction (preferably at the lowest appropriate level to the service user). Initiate process to create a new metropolitan local government or, alternatively, establish special purpose bodies (made up of representatives of existing jurisdictions) with authority to establish metropolitan-area policy in relevant problem areas. Provide full fiscal and operational authority to the level of government that will deliver the service and bear the budgetary consequences. |
Type of Barrier |
Example in Practice |
Policy Prescription to Overcome Barrier to Local Sustainability |
Professional and Trade Group Barriers |
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Professional and Civil Service Standards
Collective Bargaining Agreements |
(i) Strict application of traditional professional standards (set by professional associations or taught in universities) that may not be responsive to technological or policy developments, e.g., civil engineering standards for roadways or accounting standards that reflect negatively on innovative financing mechanisms. Also civil service standards that discourage innovative governance (e.g., participation, performance-based management.) (ii) Trade union opposition to the employment of low income or disabled people in municipal clean-up or recycling programmes, or opposition to reductions in unsustainable employee "allowances" encouraging private automobile commuting. |
Establish objective-based management systems which factor sustainability outcomes into personnel performance reviews.
Government can set an example to national union leadership by taxing non-essential use, car parking spaces etc.; employees can be subsidised to use public transport or bicycles |
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Foreign Assistance Barriers |
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Institutional Arrangements Decision-Making Procedures
Labour Market Impacts |
(i) An international donor agency convinces its partner central government ministry to establish a central planning bureau to "streamline" work procedures for its development project, thereby undermining local planning institutions and processes. (ii) An international donor agency overlooks or avoids existing participatory planning processes in the project design and assessment stages and establishes its own "rapid" consultation and assessment processes to suit the agency's own work schedule. This undermines local civic organisations, local planning capacity-building, and results in project designs that do not reflect local priorities and conditions. (iii) An international donor agency provides salaries to local workers (e.g., drivers, managers, experts) that are many multiples higher than standard local salaries, thereby demotivating municipal employees and encouraging various alternative income-generation activities. |
Local institutional capacity-building should be a required element of all project designs and the subsidiarity principle should be as much applied in international assistance activities as it is applied in the domestic context of donor countries. The project cycle should be scheduled and organised to support and link with established, participatory planning activities. Local "stakeholder" forums should be assigned an active role in project planning and implementation. Local labour market conditions should be better factored by external agencies and contractors. Budget savings should be applied to training and institution building activities. |
These brief case studies demonstrate local experiences with the types of barriers that have been identified and discussed in Section 3.
Private Market Barriers: Externalisation of Costs-Disposable Plastic Containers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The externalisation by producers of costs associated with their plastic packaging materials is graphically demonstrated in the case of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the early 1990s, soft drink bottlers in Brazil still used returnable glass bottles for the distribution of their soft drink products. This system provided an incentive to individuals and households to collect and return bottles in exchange for a deposit fee. Within a few years, however, bottlers ended the returnable system in exchange for the use of plastic 'PET' bottles. The conversion to PET bottles reduced industry costs, particular due to their reduced transportation weight. Also reduced were any costs borne by the bottlers for collecting and processing returnable bottles. Many bottlers marked their new PET bottles with the slogan "disposable."
This simple change in technology and bottling practices rapidly shifted responsibility for a significant commercial waste product to the municipal waste management system. The municipality of Rio de Janeiro previously had a minimal role in the collection and disposal of returnable bottles. Now, consumers were disposing their 'disposables' into city streets, alleys, streams and garbage collection containers. The resulting, costly problems arising from externalisation of packaging materials responsibility were far greater than anyone could have imagined. (They were exacerbated by a simultaneous, rapid introduction to the market of cheap, disposal plastic shopping bags.)
In many countries, North and South, the costs associated with collection and disposal of packaging materials, such as plastic soft drink containers, are so high relative to their resale value that local authorities are unable to even recover these costs through municipal waste collection fees. This contributes to the underfinanced condition of municipal solid waste management systems in many countries. Further problems are created when plastic shopping bags and soft drink containers find their way into storm water drains, causing flooding, public health risks, and a variety of economic losses. In Rio de Janeiro, tens of thousands of PET bottles never find their way into the municipal collection system. In many parts of the city, the municipality now stations workers at major storm drains to constantly clear plastic soft drink containers from the drains. These measures are not enough to prevent clogged drains and flooding.
Flooding is a common problem during periods of heavy rain in Rio de Janeiro. Floods resulting from clogged storm drains in city streets and neighbourhoods often bring traffic to a halt and damage local homes and businesses.
In February 1996, strong rains fell on the hillsides surrounding the Jacarepagua lowlands district of western Rio de Janeiro. Along the stream called Arroio Fundo, squatters had established a new neighbourhood called Novo Horizonte ("new horizons"). (The municipality sought to remove the squatters due to their hazardous location, but were blocked from doing so by the State of Rio de Janeiro.) During the rains, thousands of littered PET bottles and plastic bags were washed into the Arroio Fundo. They collected under a bridge where the plastic materials formed an artificial dam, flooding the Novo Horizonte community, destroying its homes and killing 13 people, including 8 children.
Two days later the municipal Environmental Secretary obtained a bulldozer to destroy the plastic dam. The water level in the community immediately fell by two meters. In the following weeks, the municipality used heavy equipment to dredge the Arroio Fundo, a process that was constantly interrupted by the large masses of plastic bags and containers in the stream bed.
The costly problems introduced by plastic packaging materials can be overcome by addressing the market failures that allow private companies to externalise the costs associated with their products. The 'internalisation' of these costs can be achieved in a variety of ways, including through container deposit charges, direct payments by soft drink manufacturers to municipal waste management enterprises, or regulations requiring soft drink distributors to recollect their containers at their own expense. If national and sub-national governments do not institute such measures, the result is an enforced subsidy, at the expense of local authorities, to the business costs of soft drink manufacturers and distributors. Either municipalities collect and dispose these packaging products at their expense or they face more costly problems to local life, sanitation, infrastructure -and the vitality of their local economy.
Sources: Site visits; interviews with Environmental Secretary (retired) of Rio de Janeiro.
Mwanza is the second largest city in Tanzania, located on the southern shores of Lake Victoria with a population of approximately 600,000. More than one-third of the population, or 216,000 residents, live in unplanned and technically illegal squatter settlements without access to basic urban services such as water, sanitation facilities and publicly maintained roads. These settlements, which suffer a variety of public health and economic problems, are often left to provide their own crude infrastructure for day-to-day life.
In 1995, the Mwanza Municipality and representatives from local CBOs, NGOs, trade co-operatives, research centres, and the business community constituted a multi-stakeholder committee to establish a Local Agenda 21 planning process for the city. The committee started its work by meeting with community leaders and by recruiting representatives from squatter areas and women's and youth groups to join the committee. Having established a representative body, this committee then held a series of priority-setting meetings and in June 1995selected two issues -upgrading squatter settlements and pollution of Lake Victoria- as the initial focus of an action planning process.
To prepare for action planning, the committee formed six working groups to hold meetings in different settlements and collect data using surveys (100 households in five wards), physical measuring and observation. These activities were also used to recruit the participation in the planning committee of neighbourhood leaders from squatter areas. Following these efforts, a two-day workshop was held to prepare specific objectives for each action area. Specific priority was given to upgrading water, sanitation and health services in the squatter communities.Further follow-up activities were organised to prepare more detailed projects to address these objectives. The committee then began the arduous task of finding resources to implement its project proposals.
Parallel to this community-based process, the World Bank started work on the design of its multi-million dollar Urban Sector Engineering Project (USEP) in Mwanza. World Bank project documents state that the USEP would employ "sustainability criteria" in project selection and design, the Project Interim Report indicates that "financial cost recovery should...be the overriding criterion." The Report also states that "formulation of the project will reflect local preferences. " This is to be achieved through "extensive consultations." The Report describes these consultations as follows:
[Consultations] were made with staff from municipal councils...They took place during the town visits as well as in Dar Es Salaam...All major problems and possible solutions were discussed with the staff in order to build on local knowledge and preferences as much as possible ... The meetings in Dar Es Salaam were particularly useful as they took place at a stage where the consultant had made an initial project formulation. (italics added for emphasis).
To prepare this formulation, in early 1995 a foreign Project consultant undertook "a small household sample survey" to identify service priorities. Fifty-five homes in five different neighbourhoods were surveyed. Only one neighbourhood was an unplanned low-income area. The survey revealed the following service priorities (in rank order): improved sanitation, better refuse collection, improved drainage, better roads and improved water supply. While differences between the final project formulation and the survey's conclusions might be justifiable due to the survey's limited scope, the Project ultimately allocated 74% of its 6-year programme budget to roads and drainage projects. Most of the USEP investment will focus on upgrading services in the central business district and planned areas. Only 2% of the total budget will be applied to low cost sanitation facilities.
In the course of the community's Local Agenda 21 planning process and the World Bank's USEP design process, no contact was ever achieved between the Local Agenda 21 committee and World Bank representatives. While one could argue that the Local Agenda 21 committee could have been more aggressive in pursuing contact with the World Bank, the lack of physical presence of the Bank's representatives, the Bank's stated commitments to support local capacity-building and its superior resources to take the lead in co-ordinating with the committee, must be seriously factored. As a result, one of the largest, multi-year development assistance projects in Mwanza's history will unlikely lend any support to community-based sustainable development planning efforts of the city. Only the barest support will be given to the top priorities identified by that process. In recent years, other international development agencies have flocked to Mwanza. While the story therefore is not over, the Local Agenda 21 committee remains ready and vigilant to see whether these efforts will lend it support.
Sources: Extensive local interviews and site visits by ICLEI staff. World Bank. Urban Sector Engineering Project, TWG2-Interim Report, (Washington DC, COWIconsult/inter-consult). Also Luanda, Alfred. Local initiative strategies to control the growth of squatter settlements: The case of Mwanza Municipality, (Lund, Sweden, LCHS: 1997).
In response to fiscal and environmental concerns, state and local governments throughout the United States have been researching the full costs -local, state and federal; direct and indirect- associated with different types of urban land-use patterns. The general finding of these studies is that compact, transit-friendly forms of development are more economical than low-density, automobile-dependent forms of urban sprawl. In short, relative to higher density areas, the greater distances between buildings in low-density areas increase the net costs (costs minus revenues from local taxes and service charges) for construction and maintenance of water, sewer and transportation infrastructure. These findings should encourage local governments to use their land-use and development controls to reduce urban sprawl. However, a closer look at municipal finances demonstrates a contrary economic incentive.
King County (1990 population-626,000) in the state of Washington, USA consists of the city of Seattle, its surrounding suburbs, and more distant towns and rural areas that are subject to considerable low density development pressures. In 1994 the County commissioned a study to estimate the direct costs (net) to the municipality of three 20-year growth scenarios for absorbing an estimated 35% increase in County households. The scenarios were based upon different land-use patterns -a sprawl scenario (existing plans), a medium density scenario with 16 'nodal' centres, and a higher density scenario with 8 'nodal' centres. The costs of providing urban services to each scenario were computed and compared with the tax, development fee and service charge revenues that would be generated in each scenario.
Contrary to the studies of other North American cities and counties, the King County study found that net costs in the sprawl scenario are considerably less than either of the nodal s cenarios. Revenues from a special state-level tax subsidy to support high capacity public transit services were factored in this calculation. The explanation for this apparent contradiction lies in the definition of costs in each case. While comparable studies factored in all costs, regardless of who pays for these costs, the King County study considered only those costs that would be paid directly by the municipality. The study revealed that the municipality's finances would benefit from sprawl because a large portion of transportation infrastructure costs in the sprawl scenario would be paid by state and federal governments. King County's rural areas are serviced by three major federal highways and more than ten state highways. As development in these rural areas will rely heavily on this infrastructure, a sprawling growth pattern allows the municipality to shift significant costs for development off of its balance sheet.
Both King County, the city of Seattle and the state of Washington have recognised the detrimental impacts of urban sprawl and have adopted policies to contain sprawl development. However, the King County case highlights how a lack of co-ordination of economic instruments between levels of government can split incentives and encourage development that is more costly to government, in the whole, than the sustainable development alternative.
Sources: Tischler & Associates. Marginal Cost Analysis of Growth Alternatives: King County, Washington, (Seattle, WA: King County, 1994). Also Burchell, Robert and Listokin, David. Land, Infrastructure, Housing Costs and Fiscal Impacts Associated with Growth: Literature on the Impacts of Sprawl versus Managed Growth, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutger's University, 1996). Individual studies for South Florida (FL), San Jose (CA), Toronto (Canada) were also reviewed.
Croydon's Local Agenda 21 Action Plan lists 239 points for action in order to achieve objectives and targets in key areas of pollution (air, water, land and noise), water resources, natural environment, waste, energy, transport, work and economy, education and awareness and global links. Three key waste objectives are established in the plan. These are to reduce the amount of waste (including packaging) produced by residents and businesses; to reduce the amount of waste sent for final disposal; and to increase recycling and recovery of materials.
The UK central government has introduced a landfill tax that could make an important contribution to the achievement of these objectives. However, the tax is not being applied in a way that will achieve this potential. Under the tax, waste disposal operators pay a levy for all solid waste disposed to landfill. Most of the proceeds of this scheme are to be used by the Treasury to subsidise employers' national insurance contributions, with the intention to reduce employer labour taxes and encourage job creation. However, up to 20% of the landfill tax can be paid by the landfill operator to the so-called "environmental bodies" which are licensed by a central government office. They use the money for initiatives such as improving a park or public amenity within 10 miles of a waste disposal site. However, these funds can not be used for any waste minimisation or recycling projects because such activities would be considered to directly benefit the landfill operator (either by reducing the amount of waste going to landfill and thereby the related tax liability or by commercially supporting recycling centres run by the landfill operators).
Thus, while in principle the landfill tax shifts the general tax burden from a non-sustainable activity (waste production) to a sustainable activity (employment generation), the application of the tax undermines the full potential of this positive effect. The exclusion of new recycling, waste recovery and waste minimisation projects from funding under the tax scheme acts as a barrier to achievement of the tax's primary objective -to encourage waste minimisation strategies. A more sophisticated scheme is required to address both this shortcoming and concern about tax evasion by unscrupulous operators.
Outdated building, health and energy codes can serve as powerful barriers to the introduction of new technologies required for more sustainable lifestyles. In 1991, the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation, an agency of the Government of Canada, launched a nation-wide competition for the design of a state-of-the-art, healthy and environment-friendly family home. Two winning designs were selected on the basis of the following criteria:
In Toronto, the winning design of Martin Liefhebber Architect, Inc. employed more than 15 state-of-the-art technologies to create a three-story, two-family home that is completely self-sufficient. The "Healthy House" produces its own electricity from solar panels, provides its own water supply from rainwater collectors, and fully treats its wastewater using a system of biological filters and ultraviolet light. The home is constructed of low chemical materials, employs a sophisticated, energy-saving ventilation system, as well as high efficiency appliances, lights and windows. Furthermore, the house is built on an "in-fill" lot so that no undeveloped land is used for its construction. As the house requires no government energy, water and sewage services and is located on existing transportation infrastructure, operating costs for the house are eliminated or severely reduced for the municipality and the homeowner.
For a city that had made numerous statutory plan and policy commitments to sustainable urban development, the Healthy House made tremendous good sense. However, the city of Toronto is required by laws of the Province of Ontario to implement the Province's Building Code. This Code provided numerous barriers to the construction of the house. Without intense support from both the federal government and the city of Toronto, over a period of four years, the house never would have been built.
Provincial building legislation is prescriptive only. In other words, on the basis of old technologies, it prescribes what a builder can do and what kinds of systems a builder can install. Many of the systems and materials used in the Healthy House are not prescribed in the Building Code. As a result, extensive time was spent determining which provincial agency had responsibility to grant special approvals for each individual system. The building materials used in construction of the Healthy House required individual review by the Ontario Building Code Commission. As provincial legislation has only eight categories for sewage management and none cover on-site sewage treatment, the bio-filtration system -which allows all wastewater to be recycled for bathing and washing- required a special Certificate of Approval from the Ontario Ministry of Environment. This process took 10 months. The construction of a house that would not receive electricity services from Ontario Hydro (the provincial energy utility) also required review.
The ensuing bureaucratic process lasted for a period of nearly four years. The house was finally offered for sale in 1996. Naturally, the elapse of time increased the expense of the p roject and local market conditions changed, reducing the economic replicability of such housing designs. (The process did not result in provincial changes to legislation that would reduce barriers for similar projects in the future.) Without the barriers arising from standards and lack of clear jurisdiction, the replication cost of building and installing the Healthy House's water and waste water system would be approximately US$7,000. In comparison, the cost to the municipality to connect the Healthy House (at its in-fill lot location) to municipal water and sewer services would be approximately US$ 105,000. This case demonstrates that standards need to be made flexible to support timely adoption of new technologies with environmental, health and economic benefits.
Sources: CMHC. Healthy Housing: A Winning Design, (brochure). Interviews with Martin Liefhebber (architect), Rolf Paloheimo (builder), and planning staff of the city of Toronto.
Environmental legislation in Switzerland is enacted at the Federal level and there is restricted scope to enact local laws. Environmental laws are generally adequate, but the job of enforcing them is left with the Swiss cantons (states or provinces), which can delegate this authority to local governments at their discretion. This division of jurisdiction can result in an under-utilisation of local mechanisms to achieve national sustainable development objectives. The following case provides examples of jurisdictional barriers to the implementation of city of Zürich's 1995 environmental policy, which is part of the Zürich Local Agenda 21 programme.
Urban Planning
The Cantonal Structure Plan for the Zürich region sets the parameters for growth, infrastructure and recreational and nature protection areas. The plan's orientation is to meet growth objectives. Meanwhile, the city sets binding limitations for environmental protection in development activities. The city's principles and limitations for environmental protection are not carried through into the Structure Plan commitments.
Energy
Zürich's energy conservation policy has identified a variety of actions to be taken at the Cantonal or Federal level to enable the city to meet local goals. These actions include taxation of energy use; setting energy consumption standards for established production facilities, motor vehicles and equipment; and establishing regulations that oblige owners to improve the energy performance of buildings.
Road Traffic and Air Pollution
The City of Zürich has vigorously pursued a policy of promoting public transport and reducing the use of private motor vehicles as far as possible within its jurisdiction. Nonetheless car ownership and use is increasing rapidly throughout Europe and traffic pressure on the city is growing. One possible solution being pursued by the City is to concentrate motor vehicle transport on main roads, which are under the jurisdiction of the Canton. Plans put forward by the city, such as redistributing road capacity in favour of environmentally friendly forms of transport, have been rejected by the Canton if they were seen as anti-motor vehicle.
Air quality in Zürich does not meet all the national standards, particularly with regards to nitrogen dioxide and ozone. Motor vehicles and heating installations are together the primary source of these problems. The City's authority is restricted to the enforcement of regulatory restrictions on industrial and commercial installations and the management of community streets and parking. The Canton's clean air plan cannot be enforced effectively because of the City's lack of jurisdiction over main roads, where most traffic-related emissions are produced.
Waste Management
Zürich's policy objectives for refuse and waste water call for massive reductions in the use of materials and goods, causing difficulties for the City, whose power to act is established at the end of the chain of materials flow. With few mechanisms to reduce the volume of waste, the City must focus its efforts on recycling. Zürich's recycling programmes have been so successful that plans are being made to decommission local incinerators. However, the recycling operation must be subsidised due to the collapse of the market for recyclable materials and subsidies in neighbouring countries.
Information
Swiss Federal law of environmental protection obliges authorities to inform the public about the state of the environment and the success of measures which have been taken to protect it. However there is no legal basis for granting comprehensive public access to administrative records.
The city notes that the area of competence for environmental policy has shifted in the last few years to the federal and canton levels. In contrast with the mid 1980s, the city now has little authority to enact environmentally relevant regulations, yet it is often left as the only authority that enforces regulations that are enacted at a higher level. The success of the city of Zürich in such efforts, as well as in the implementation of its own policy, will require:
Source: CAG Consultants
The barriers described in Section 3 of this paper are generic and can appear in different ways according to country context. As the cases in Section 4 illustrate, even within one country a barrier may be manifested in dozens of different ways, according to local context. Realistic responses to these barriers must also be designed according to context.
Therefore, the following exercise is presented to assist the identification of measures (policies, plans, practices, instruments), at each level of government, that either facilitate or hinder the achievement of an identified local sustainable development objective. The exercise is particularly designed for use by the sustainable development contact persons in national/sub-national government ministries/departments. It may also be an effective way for other government policy analysts, legislative staff or program directors to rapidly assess the implications of planned measures upon local sustainable development efforts.
The exercise is derived from a participatory planning tool called force field analysis. This tool is commonly used in workshops for priority setting and action strategy development. This exercise therefore will be most effectively employed in workshops that bring together representatives from all levels of government for the purpose of establishing co-ordinated sustainable development strategies. In this sense, the exercise may serve as a valuable tool particularly for National Councils on Sustainable Development.
Steps
1. Select the local sustainable development objective that you aim to support.
2. Identify and list the different measures that can be taken at the local level to achieve this objective. The listed measures should include all available local instruments for sustainable development. These include regulatory instruments, land use control, provision of infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles (e.g., mass transit, recycling facilities), economic instruments, management practices and procedures, communication and awareness raising instruments, and performance evaluation instruments. Use as many worksheets (see Worksheet #1) as necessary to list each of the key measures available to local authorities in your country context.
3. For each measure, identify the forces (policies, plans, practices and instruments) at the sub-national, national and international levels that will influence local implementation of the local measure. List these forces on a separate sheet of paper and then evaluate whether each listed policy, plan, practice or instrument will facilitate or hinder the local measure. You might compare and rank the different forces to identify those that would be most facilitating and most hindering. Then enter the most important facilitating and hindering forces into the worksheet. Continue this process until you have completed the worksheet for each measure.
[Note: Local governments also maintain policies, practices and instruments that hinder their local sustainable development measures. It therefore will be important for local government officials to also undertake this exercise.]
4. After the first worksheet is completed, identify the most common facilitating and hindering forces listed on the worksheet. Identify strategies or measures that your ministry or department can take to strengthen the facilitating forces and to reduce the hindering forces. These strategies and measures can be entered into the second worksheet (see Worksheet #2) for consultation and planning purposes.
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Worksheet 2: Measures to Support Local Agenda 21 Implementation
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Asian Development Bank (1990), Economic Policies for Sustainable Development, Manila: ADB
Carew-Reid, J et al (1994), Strategies for National Sustainable Development, IUCN/IEED/Earthscan
De Moor, A and Calamai, P. (1997), Subsidizing Unsustainable Development, Undermining the Earth with Public Funds, Earth Council/Van Lennep Program on Economics and Sustainable Development
Falloux, F & Talbot, L M (1993), Crisis and Opportunity - Environment and Development in Africa, London: Earthscan
Kamugasha, B B N (1989), Developing Institutional and Legal Capabilities for Dealing with Environment in Sub Saharan Africa, AFTEN Technical Note No 3, Environment Division, Technical Department, Africa Region, World Bank
Kitchen, T, Whitney, D & Littlewood, S (1997), Local Authority/Academic Collaboration and Local Agenda 21 Policy Processes, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 40 (5), 645 - 659
McDonald, D (1994), It's Not Easy Being Brown - ANC Environmental Policies, Southern Africa Report, Toronto, 9 (4), p 31
SARDC/IUCN/SADC (1994), State of the Environment in Southern Africa, Harare: Southern African Research & Documentation Centre/World Conservation Union/Southern African Development Community
Voisey, H, Beuermann, C, Sverdrup, L A and O'Riordan, T (1996), The Political Significance of Local Agenda 21: the early stages of some European experience, Local Environment 1 (1), 33-50
World Bank (1995), Towards Environmentally Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A World Bank Agenda, Discussion Draft 16.5.95., World Bank Africa Technical Department