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Implementing Agenda 21 ICLEI Acts in Responce to UNCED by Judy Walker
The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is the international environmental agency for local governments. It was established in 1990 at the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future. The congress was held at the United Nations in New York in response to the needs of local authorities;cities, towns and counties;that are taking on increasing responsibility as managers of both the local and global environment. Presently, ICLEI has more than 190 members, including 174 local governments from 46 countries, and represent more than 174 million people. ICLEI and its membership are currently acting in response to several of the objectives established for the world community at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Local authorities and their communities share global concerns related to water, air, natural resources, biological and cultural diversity, and economics. And it is local authorities who are charged with maintaining the basic functioning of human settlements. In most countries of the world, local authorities are responsible in whole or in part for tax collection, solid waste management, water supply, sewerage services, road maintenance, land-use planning, development control, disaster mitigation, health services, regulation of markets, fire and police services, parks maintenance, inspection and licensing to maintain compliance with national standards, and education. In countries with strong local government systems, additional functions can also be found under local administrative control, such as housing provision, public transit management, environmental management and impact assessment, and energy supply. The role of local government in environmental protection is increasing on a worldwide basis. As national governments reduce their budgets and as environmental pressures increase, the demands on municipalities grow. ICLEI directly supports the management capacity of its member cities through training, research, technical assistance, and information resources and exchange. And through its project activities, ICLEI brings together municipalities that have specific expertise to develop methods and approaches for addressing regional or global environmental problems at the local level. ICLEI supports its members by:
UN Conference on Environment and Development At UNCED, ICLEI, along with local authorities and other local authority associations, played an active role in raising the profile of local governments as managers of the local and global environment. Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, which resulted from these efforts, calls upon local authorities around the world to undertake a consultative process with their communities to establish their own local Agenda 21s by 1996. This Local Agenda 21 mandate, introduced and championed by ICLEI in the Earth Summit's preparatory process, has been taken up by more than 1200 local authorities around the world. Two of ICLEI'S major ongoing programs were undertaken in direct response to the challenges raised at UNCED;specifically in response to Agenda 21 and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Local Agenda 21 During the Earth Summit, ICLEI's Local Agenda 21 proposal was endorsed. The initiative was created to assist municipalities in their implementation of Agenda 21 by establishing ongoing, local sustainable development planning processes. This initiative is organized into two separate projects. Local Agenda 21 Model Communities Program is a research and development collaboration to develop tools and models for sustainable development planning that can be used by local authorities around the world. ICLEI is working intensively over a three-year period with a group of 14 municipalities from all regions of the world. The program provides technical support for local planning efforts and facilitates the evaluation of different approaches, methods and tools by the participating municipal staff. Local Agenda 21 Model Communities include Buga (Colombia), Cape Town (South Africa), Durban (South Africa), Hamilton (New Zealand), Hamilton-Wentworth (Canada), Jinja (Uganda), Johannesburg (South Africa), Johnstone Shire (Australia), Lancashire County (United Kingdom), Manus Province (Papua New Guinea), Mwanza (Tanzania), Pimpri Chinchwad (India), Quito (Ecuador), and Santos (Brazil). In the early stages of the project, ICLEI developed and presented a general approach to local sustainable development planning called Strategic Services Planning (SSP). The SSP approach was then presented to prospective participants through a series of regional workshops. During the workshops, participants reviewed and revised the planning elements in order to adapt the SSP to their own unique needs. They exchanged planning ideas and experiences and began to prepare work plans for their Local Agenda 21 efforts. Regional workshops were held in Buga (Colombia) in August 1994, Hat Yai (Thailand) in September 1994, and Johannesburg in April 1995. In addition to the development of locally suitable planning frameworks for the participating model communities, the program will complete a set of general guidelines for local sustainable development planning and a series of papers on specific planning methods and tools. Local Agenda 21 Communities Network is a larger network of local governments, as well as associations of local governments, that are implementing Local Agenda 21 processes consistent with certain basic criteria for sustainable development planning. ICLEI is working with this expanding network to help participants exchange experiences and address specific planning issues with technical support on a case-by-case basis. At a series of seminars in Latin America, Asia and Africa, participants from 28 countries were introduced to case studies on local and national Agenda 21 campaigns. As part of this network, the ICLEI European Secretariat has joined with the major European networks of local authorities, including the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), Eurocities, and the United Towns Organization, to establish the European Sustainable Cities and Towns Campaign. More than 600 delegates, representing more than 200 local authorities from 34 European countries, participated in the European Conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns in May 1994. As a result, 300 representatives adopted the Aalborg Charter in which 80 European communities committed themselves to establish Local Agenda 21 processes and long-term local environmental action plans. As part of its support for the participants in the campaign, ICLEI published the European Local Agenda 21 Guide in March 1995. The Japan Office of ICLEI's Asia Pacific Secretariat is playing a key role in the promotion of Local Agenda 21 in Japan. In early 1995, ICLEI representatives actively participated in a national government panel mandated to develop a national policy on local agendas among Japanese municipalities. ICLEI has also supported or provided input in the establishment of national campaigns in Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. ICLEI publishes the Local Agenda 21 Network News twice a year to keep all participants updated on local activities taking place within this community. ICLEI members also have the opportunity to interact through a conference on the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) networks.
Cities For Climate Protection Campaign In January 1993, ICLEI joined with UNEP to host the first Municipal Leaders' Summit on Climate Change and the Urban Environment, which was held at the United Nations in New York. At this event, and with the support of participating municipalities and some European cities, ICLEI launched its worldwide Cities for Climate Change Campaign to help implement the Framework Convention on Climate Change established at UNCED. The campaign's original target was to engage 100 municipalities in it by 1995. By July 1995, 113 municipalities had joined the campaign, with the majority located in Europe and North America. These two continents account for about 600 megatons (MT) of CO2 emissions annually;or 10% of the world's total emissions. Membership in the campaign begins once a local council has adopted a resolution based on ICLEI's Municipal Leaders' Declaration on Climate Change. Members pledge to develop:
In addition to the above commitments, one-third of the participating cities have adopted the Toronto Target, which is a pledge to reduce local CO2 emissions by 20% or more by the year 2005 or 2010. This group is investing more than US$100 million to achieve its goals.
North America Canada has a very active campaign, with 33 municipalities committed. To encourage even stronger support, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, ICLEI's campaign partner, recently established the 20% Club for those municipalities that commit themselves to cut back emissions by 20% of 1990 levels. The eight largest cities in Canada are currently members. ICLEI has also been working with the city of Ottawa to develop a software tool to help Canadian cities to quantify their greenhouse gas emissions and identify the measures they need to apply to meet their emission reduction targets. The United States campaign was introduced in November 1994 at the annual conference of the National League of Cities. Eight months later, the local councils of 15 cities had agreed to the campaign commitments.
Europe The ICLEI European Secretariat has been very successful in recruiting members for the campaign in Europe;by July 1995, 61 municipalities had joined it. The secretariat, in conjunction with the ICLEI International Training Centre, has been active in providing workshops and seminars for participants. The city of Heidelberg, in collaboration with ICLEI and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), sponsored a conference in September 1994 on How to Combat Global Warming at the Local Level. The meeting served as a platform for the presentation of results of the OECD's Urban Energy Management Programme. A handbook of good local energy practices will be published as a result. In March 1995, ICLEI held a one-day training workshop in Berlin for European campaign members on Introduction to Local Action Plans. The meeting focused on methodologies, strategies and financing options. It also provided European campaign members with an opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss obstacles that they have encountered. After the workshop, the members stayed on for the Second Municipal Leaders' Summit on Climate Change, also organized by ICLEI's European Secretariat. ICLEI scheduled the second summit to coincide with the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). This allowed municipal leaders the opportunity to present a communiqué to the COP. The communiqué recommended that the COP create a local authority subsidiary body to support local authority efforts to help FCCC signatories comply with the treaty. The communiqué was supported by 150 local authorities and municipal organizations from more than 50 countries, which represented more than 250 million people worldwide.
Asia Pacific The Japan Office of the ICLEI Asia Pacific Secretariat has been building support for local government action on climate change in Asia. With help from the Office of the Senate of the Philippines, ICLEI convened a meeting in Manila in February 1995 to explore the establishment of the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign in the Asia Pacific region. In October 1995, the Asia Pacific Campaign was launched during the Third Local Government Leaders' Summit on Climate Change, which was sponsored by ICLEI and hosted by Saitama Prefecture (Japan). More than 230 local government leaders from 52 countries participated in the summit.
Cities for Climate Protection on the Internet In June 1995, ICLEI launched the new Cities for Climate Protection Campaign site on the World Wide Web. The site contains information on climate change, examples of what municipalities are doing to combat global warming, and excerpts from ICLEI's policy and practice manuals. The site is designed to provide an international electronic forum for municipal leaders and the general public and up-to-date information on climate change.1
Advocacy In addition to its project activity, ICLEI has continued to play a role at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), which resulted from UNCED. ICLEI was appointed by the Group of Four major associations of local governments to serve as their technical representative at the CSD.2 ICLEI prepared an extensive white paper for the Group of Four which was submitted to the Second Session of the CSD in 1994. The paper focuses on the human settlements chapter of Agenda 21. In addition to presenting this paper, ICLEI successfully achieved national government sponsorship of a mandate for the CSD to prepare a special report on local governments and the implementation of Agenda 21. Based on the achievements of the second session, the CSD secretariat entered into a contract with ICLEI to prepare the first special report of a Major Group to the CSD at its third session in 1995. ICLEI, working with the secretariat, prepared a series of case studies on Local Agenda 21 activities, which was distributed to all national delegations, organized a special panel of local government leaders at the CSD meeting, and held an exhibit about Local Agenda 21. As a result, the CSD held a special Local Authorities Day at its third session, which highlighted the direct action of local governments in response to global environmental concerns.
Results ICLEI and its members of local authorities from large and small communities around the globe are rising to the challenges identified in Rio and achieving concrete results. The challenge before the council now is to emphasize commitments to measurable targets and better evaluate performance toward those targets. We must be able to both identify our progress and isolate our most persistent challenges. In doing so, we should expect that, in combination, the independent actions of local governments and their communities that are responding to the objectives identified at UNCED will produce a ripple effect of responsible social and environmental behaviour that will ultimately encompass the globe.
ICLEI'S Offices
Notes 1. The address of the site is http://www.iclei.org/co2 2. These associations are the International Union of Local Authorities, the United Towns Organization, the World Association of Major Metropolises, and the Summit Meeting of the World's Major Cities.
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