Success Factors for Sustainable Development in Municipalities

Local Agenda 21 was introduced in Swiss Municipalities in the aftermath of the Rio Conference in 1992. In Switzerland, more than 200 municipalities have established a Local Agenda 21 or another sustainability approach, in the French speaking part of Switzerland 81 municipalities have chosen to develop the one or the other sustainability approach. Governance and organizational processes can play a decisive part in success or failure of Local Agenda 21, in particular during a period of financial restrictions and lack of resources, which might induce municipalities to put aside activities that are considered to cause important costs or to be at the limit of their responsibilities. Contrary to the fields of action and the commitments in terms of sustainability which are listed in different charters, initiatives or publications, only little literature has been published on municipal sustainability in terms of organizational structures or public management. After having established in a representative sample of nine municipalities in Western Switzerland an inventory of organizational practices of the sustainability approaches [1], the objective of the present analysis was to determine success factors for a sustainability approach in local government. For reasons of comparability the sample chosen was identical. Due to the little literature about the link between organisation and success in sustainability performance, again the methodology of an exploratory research was chosen. Guided interviews were carried out with the person(s) in charge of sustainable development. In the present study certain aspects of the sustainability approach of the different municipalities was analysed in detail, questions focused on the results of the approach the municipalities had chosen (Local Agenda 21 or a transversal, integrated approach), the methodology they used, the obstacles they encountered, the eventual impacts on governance they experienced, the requirements they had to improve their sustainability approach and finally a general self-assessment of the approach they had chosen. Major results are as follows: 1. A huge majority of the municipalities consider sustainability as a very important topic; and at least our interview partners are convinced that sustainability would be one of the imperatives of municipal governance in the years to come. Thus every single of the municipalities of the sample wanted to continue on its way to a sustainable township. 2. The majority of the municipalities that had chosen Local Agenda 21 considered LA21 as a list of actions, being added as an extra layer on top of day to day management and having difficulties to be operational. 3. The overwhelming majority of the municipalities of the sample wanted to develop a sustainability process, which should be entirely integrated into day to day management, including the vast majority of municipalities that had started a Local Agenda 21. Several of the municipalities had already started such a process. 4. About half of the municipalities which had developed a screening method for sustainability evaluation of new projects considered their approach to be well-working and the responsible person or body for sustainable development (if there was one) was better recognized and encountered fewer obstacles. The other half abandoned that approach due to different difficulties. 5. Integration of sustainability however was put into place in an individual and empirical way, different from one municipality to another and not science-based. Integration was essentially put into place by screening new projects on their sustainability. To do so, each municipality had individually developed a sort of checklist based on the appreciation of the local government what sustainability should include. 6. Municipalities are aware of the lack of a science based evaluation instrument – an overwhelming majority regrets the lack of a standardized framework with criteria and indicators permitting evaluation and controlling. The results show, that the key factor for a successful and efficient introduction of sustainable development into municipal management seems to be transversal embedding of sustainability into municipal management, this for several reasons: First an approach which is essentially a listing of different actions that are not updated on a regular basis did not show and probably cannot show satisfying results, as a once established list cannot correspond to municipal strategy after a couple of years. For this reason the difficulties experienced by a number of municipalities (short lived and punctual actions, benefits difficult to evaluate, approach will come to an end once all the actions on the list are realized) seem inevitable. We believe however, that the difficulties described above are not due to the approach of Local Agenda 21 itself – we would actually expect a list of actions which is defined and updated according to a municipal sustainability strategy to be a responsive and efficient instrument to improve sustainability performance. This would equally correspond to an integration of Local Agenda 21 into municipal management, thus corresponding to our hypothesis above. Second a comparison with enterprises shows, that all common and successful sustainability management systems like ISO 14000, ISO 26000 or SA 8000 are all entirely integrated into the general management system. Third for a transversal embedding of sustainability into municipal management, the development of a standardized but adaptable framework, reflecting sustainability requirements and indicators is absolutely vital, again for several reasons: the empirical manner by which municipalities evaluate sustainability of projects is actually the best they could do today, as a standardized framework does not exist (and is regretted by all municipalities). Such an approach bears the risk that sustainability loses its credibility because an individual and empirical evaluation might lead to the result that in the end anything might be considered as sustainable. Fourth for a real embedding of sustainability the evaluation of sustainability of new projects is certainly a first step, but day to day activities need to be included. To confirm our results and conclusions, a study with a larger sample of municipalities should be undertaken. A first framework with criteria and indicators should be developed for one municipality or one sector of its government in order to confirm or not its usefulness.