|
Awareness Raising
and Education
Environmental Education
is a key component of the local agenda process because if the local people are
to be part in local sustainable development actions, they need to understand
the issues and why actions are needed. Public awareness raising campaigns about
the issues are one way of approaching this. Other ideas include: competitions,
special offers to buy for example less polluting cars and using local
newspapers and radio to cover relevant topics. But another obvious area of
activity is using schools and other educational establishments to get the
sustainability message across. Schools are seen as a driving force to educate
and involve other sectors of the community, and in particular children, in
awareness raising.
Consult and involve the wider community and the general
public
#As
mechanisms to consult and involve the citizens and other stakeholders, we can
find:
·
Visioning Conferences
to encourage participants to imagine what sort of community they would like to
live in;
·
Focus groups; and
·
Citizen’s juries,
which bring together local people to deliberate on a particular local topic and
come up with options to suggest the way forward.
But one of the key organisational elements of
the public participation process within Local Agenda 21 is the Local Agenda 21
Forum, which brings together representatives of the stakeholder groups to give
opinions on certain issues and steer the public participation process.
There are at least three different approaches
for structuring participation in the development of Local Agenda 21 process: a)
the “priority problem” approach; b) the sectoral or
municipal services approach; and c) the stakeholder or thematic approach.
The most commonly used means of structuring
public involvement in Local Agenda 21 is to involve stakeholders in determining
Priority Urban Environmental Problems and then structure participation around
key problem areas.
The process is as follows:
·
Background information
on the city’s urban environment is prepared (e.g. environmental data and a
"State of the Environment" report);
·
A stakeholder workshop
is held to discuss the background information and prioritise urban
environmental problems;
·
Stakeholder working
groups are created around the 2 to 6 highest priority problems;
·
The working groups
identify and prioritise options for solving the problems; and
·
A panel gathering
representatives from each working group as well as experts,
develops an integrated strategy and individual action plans for each priority
problem.
The Priority Problem approach requires:
·
A consensus on which
problems are the most important; a consensus within each problem area as to
priority options; and the participation of relevant stakeholders, especially
decision-makers.
·
Its advantages are
that it focuses the LA21 process on addressing the most important issues and
promotes an integrated approach to strategy development. Its disadvantages are
that real-life problems may be different from identified priorities if the
process takes too long and it might be difficult to achieve consensus on
priority problems and options.
The Sectoral or
Municipal Service Approach is based on the
environmental dimensions of a city’s existing sectors or municipal services.
The process is as follows:
·
Issues are analysed
sector-by-sector or service-by-service, either during a stakeholder workshop or
by experts;
·
Stakeholder working
groups are established for each key sector or municipal service;
·
Working groups
prioritise issues, identify options and prioritise options for each sector or
service; and
·
An integrated working
group develops an inter-sectoral or cross-service
strategy and sector- or service-specific action plans.
The sector- or service-
specific approach requires the active participation of key sectoral
actors (e.g. industries and neighbourhoods affected by industrial pollution) or
key services (e.g. the water and sanitation company directors as well as
representatives of their industrial, commercial and residential customers) and
a willingness to evaluate real problems in each sector or service. The
advantages of this approach are that it focuses on operational problems in each
sector or service and that it results in practical, institution-specific
recommendations. The disadvantages are that it may not identify and address the
most important environmental issues in a city and it tends to reinforce the
existing sectoral structure or service delivery
system.
In the Stakeholder
or Thematic Approach, public participation is organised around groups of
key stakeholders or pre-identified urban themes.
The process involves:
·
The identification of
relevant stakeholders or themes;
·
The establishment of
stakeholder or thematic working groups;
·
The optional
preparation of background environmental documents (e.g. environmental data and
a “State of the Environment” report to be used by the working groups);
·
The identification and
prioritisation of stakeholder- or theme-specific strategies and action plans;
and
·
Integration of working
group outputs into a city-wide action program by a stakeholder workshop or a
group of experts.
This approach requires the active
involvement of all key stakeholders and/or consensus on central themes. The
advantages are that it is easy to establish and understand, and that it can
address cross-sectoral and inter-jurisdictional
problems. The disadvantages are that: a) the resulting strategies and action
plans may not address a city’s most important environmental problems; b) the
recommendations may be too general to guide action at the level of individual
institutions; and c) separating stakeholders may create an "us against
them" mentality that could lead to divisiveness. |