|
|
|||||||||||||
|
Implementing Agenda 21 Scotland after UNCED by Dr. Jacqueline Roddick[1]
Scotland is a small country: 5 million people, with their own political identity, legal and educational systems, regional civil service and two historic languages. United since 1707 with England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, 60 million people represented in a single parliament, it has not forgotten its own national political identity. Small countries provide an easier target for the penetration of new ideas. There are fewer people to be told, and they know one another. Political weakness gives them a greater incentive to listen. So there may be some lessons in Scottish experience post-UNCED, for the broader international community.
Lesson 1: Seeds sprout where the ground is fertile, if not always politically convenient.... Scotland already had a major groups body when UNCED was convened, so bringing another together on environmental issues, was not an impossible feat. The Constitutional Convention, campaigning for a regional parliament, unites local authorities, trade unions, churches, some business organisations, particularly those representing small business, and the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green Parties, though not the party controlling government, the Conservatives, nor the Scottish Nationalists. The Labour Party holds a clear majority of parliamentary seats in urban Scotland, and this pattern is reflected in the Convention's support among local authorities. Rural Scotland votes Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Nationalist. The Convention is chaired by a churchman, Canon Kenyon Wright, also Director of the Kairos Centre for a Sustainable Society. In 1991, viewing the Rio negotiations as a vital moral issue, Canon Wright took advantage of his contacts in the Convention to make contact with local authorities and suggest the creation of the Scottish Environmental Forum. Trade unions and church groups gave him their support, as did the crucial local authority sector, members of which were in the process of adopting environmental charters. So too did non-government organisations (NGOs) including WWF-Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland, and Oxfam Scotland. A few months later individual academics working within the Forum created the Scottish Academic Network on Global Environmental Change (SANGEC). Under Canon Wright's leadership, the Forum was more interested in campaigning to change consumer patterns in Scotland than in following the Rio negotiations. A series of "Pledges for the Planet" were organised. Separated from London by a day's train journey, Scottish organisations had virtually no involvement in pre-UNCED participative processes within the UK. Nonetheless, individuals did go to Rio and returned to play a part in local environmental politics. SANGEC, two of whose members were involved in Earth Summit PrepComs, held press conferences and put together periodic briefings on the negotiations.
Lesson 2: Cooperation with local authorities provides the foundations ... Post-Rio, the Forum acquired a new Constitution and a long list of supporters, as local authorities in particular took on board the importance of their role in implementing Agenda 21[2]. A rapprochement with the regional government (the Scottish Office)[3] resulted in recognition of the Forum and funds to match those provided by local authorities. The Forum was keen to make progress on a "Scottish Sustainability Strategy" in line with Chapter 8's recommendation that every country should draw up its own national sustainability plan. Canon Wright used his talents as a facilitator of concensus to bring together such representative economic institutions as the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (representing local authorities and industry) and briefly, the Scottish CBI, in an independent working group. But over many months, negotiations produced little more than a decision to back the idea of a broad participative process rather than a model economic plan produced by a paid consultant. which some NGOs would have preferred . Small business representatives disappeared. Local authority participants, the backbone of the Forum, now represented by professional environmental managers, were becoming restless. It was not clear how a concensus body could create an entirely new map of a "sustainable Scotland", nor what motivation different major groups would have to choose "facilitators" or make the effort to contribute once a facilitator had been chosen. Meanwhile, NGOs and academics were both discussing national reports. Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Link (bringing together the RSPB, WWF-Scotland and others) had earlier taken the initiative of commissioning a Scottish State of the Environment Report (1991) covering agriculture, forests and fishing in a little more than 80 pages, jointly financed by the Scottish Office at a cost of £5000. Kevin Dunion moved from being Oxfam's campaign organiser to Friends of the Earth Scotland, as Director; and with his support and SANGEC's, there was a brief flurry of interest in the possibilities of creating an independent NGO report on Scotland, though the project died for lack of funds. In response to early post-UNCED enthusiasm on indicators[4], SANGEC held a seminar in Edinburgh to review the State of the Scottish Environment Report with one of its authors, Dr. Tom Dargie. Dr. Dargie's account of his experience was starkly convincing on the pitfalls inherent in a comprehensive "scientific" 80-page national report, and he suggested using the alternative, 700-page Canadian model.
Lesson 3: Fears, frictions and confusion are normal. In 1993, two episodes triggered local authority uneasiness. In June a SANGEC/Scottish Environmental Forum representative chaired the NGO working group on national reports at the Commission on Sustainable Development and gave its report to the appropriate working group in the name of the Forum. In September, Canon Kenyon Wright together with Cathy McCormick, a Glasgow community activist, appeared at the UK national conference "Partnerships for Change" sponsored by the Conservative government. Logically, neither episode should have been particularly alarming. The SANGEC speech at the UN was cautious about any rigid reporting framework, reflecting an acquaintance with Southern hostility to "conditionality" as well as the strictures of Dr. Dargie, while Canon Kenyon Wright went to Manchester accompanied by a well-known working class environmental activist. Nonetheless, there was a sense of alarm, particularly among members from Labour authorities. On the one hand they felt the Forum was making no progress; on the other, they feared it was becoming a radical green crusade with dangerous ties to the Conservatives. Another way of saying the same thing, perhaps, is that it was taking Forum members into national and international political arenas whose implications they did not understand. One outcome was a change in the Forum's leadership: the removal of Canon Kenyon Wright as chair, and his replacement by Kevin Dunion. FOE-Scotland had a track record of working with local authorities on their environmental charters, and plausible contacts with Labour[5]. Canon Wright was elected Vice-Chair.
Lesson 4: If in doubt, find a catalyst .... Another outcome was a shift in SANGEC policy towards the Forum. SANGEC members had been involved in the creation of the Commission on Sustainable Development and were aware of the political importance of national reports. They were also aware of the importance of independent NGO reports as a complement to what governments said. If there was doubt about the Forum's willingness to take up this role, then other UNCED-accredited NGOs would have to step into the breach. Getting local authorities some experience of the Commission and the political parameters within which it worked simultaneously became a priority. In April 1994, SANGEC members working with local authorities joined with Strathclyde Regional Council's representative in the Forum to organise a conference on indicators for the Conference of Scottish Local Authorities. This was an exercise in educating local authority officers who were not experts in environmental issues. The organisers were cautious in handling their audience: local academics working on environmental issues were allowed to participate on strict instructions that they say nothing, for fear that a heavily expert brief would alienate those in local authorities on whose support the ultimate success of putting UNCED into practice would rest. The following day, SANGEC held an "expert" conference on the issue of indicators, involving the COSLA conference organisers together with Dr. Dargie of State of the Scottish Environment fame, a representative of Canada's State of the Environment Unit, and members of the English New Economics Foundation currently working with WWF-UK on indicators for the Commission on Sustainable Development. After the conference, soundings were taken among SANGEC members and a report of the conference and the different positions taken within it was hastily written up for the 1994 Commission on Sustainable Development in May[6]. With scientific opinion in Scotland on the credibility of a fixed set indicators divided, and SANGEC members with experience of the Rio negotiations worried about Southern reaction to new forms of "conditionality", this document leaned heavily on the conclusions of the local authority working group: "in the last analysis those working at the local level must have the final say."
Lesson 5a: Learning by doing: one toe in the water ... Three weeks after the April conferences, three SANGEC representatives arrived at the 1994 Commission: SANGEC's coordinator, Jane Brooke, the housing policy research officer from Glasgow District Council (Scotland's largest local authority) and Cathy McCormick, representing local community activists who had long pressed the Council to remodel its housing stock to solve the problem of fuel poverty and ill-health triggered by damp. Cathy is well-known in Scotland, not only from television but also as a campaigner with Scottish Education and Action for Development, which has a track record in bringing together representatives of poor communities in Southern countries and those in Scotland on issues where there are common interests. At the last minute, the Scottish Environmental Forum adopted her as its own representative at the 1994 CSD, as an "observer". The effort to bring Scottish major groups into the CSD by bringing "their own people" to the CSD to learn what it was about, had begun. The experience was a success. Through Cathy, FOE-Scotland became more enthusiastic about the UN and the Commission. Glasgow District Council began to be aware that work done in its Housing Department was contributing to environmental sustainability, and gave the effort tentative political backing. Further contacts were made through the UN, including a contact with the International Conference on Local Environmental Initiatives. City Housing is now working with the OECD and the Greater Glasgow Health Board to explore the social, economic and health impacts of its energy strategy, and examining the implications of adopting a sustainable development strategy as an enhancement to sound professional practice. The long-term impact in Scotland is likely to be substantial, since after local government reorganisation in 1995-6, which eliminates the Regional tier of government, Glasgow District Council will be Scotland's largest local authority.
Lesson 5b: .. needs to be followed by others as soon as possible. Over the summer, SANGEC intensified efforts to build on this first contact, in conjunction with Reforesting Scotland also accredited to the Commission. Scotland's absent woodland, the Old Caledonian Forest demolished over a thousand years ago leaving bare and barren hills, is locally a high profile environmental issue. The goal was to produce a Scottish NGO Report on Chapter 11 of Agenda 21, "Deforestation", and the Forest Principles. The chosen vehicle was a conference bringing together speakers from the regional government (the Scottish Office), local community activists with a track record on campaigning for land reform and for the right to take over State-owned plantation forests, local NGOs with practical experience of sustainable forestry, and others with relevant national or international experience. The time scale was short, as it had to be to comply with Commission reporting requirements: three summer months to organise the conference, and a further month to put together the final report. Initially, Reforesting Scotland and other NGOs were enthusiastic. Over the summer months, anxiety set in. Conference attendance was unpredictable. No one knew what a report would look like, or what expert evidence it would need, and the corps of scientific expertise on forestry in Scotland is large. No one knew how to handle reporting to the Commission on UK government performance: relationships with government departments, sometimes tense, sometimes friendly, could be jeopardised if the report were too "confrontational". But a bland report would anger NGOs who felt strongly that the UK government was much more progressive on issues of participation overseas than in Scottish rural communities. The exercise was almost abandoned. SANGEC insisted: whatever Northern government departments might feel about NGOs reporting on their activities, members believed that independent NGO reports from the North were essential to the survival of the Commission on Sustainable Development beyond its 1997 review. In the end, the conference went forward, with financial help from the UK Economic and Social Research Council and political help from community activists. The Scottish Office sent a representative, and Forestry Commission experts attended. A rich exchange of Scottish experiences and viewpoints, the conference also took in a summary of Welsh experience in the field of sustainable forestry which set benchmarks for the involvement of small farmers and local communities, a contact made possible by financial help from WWF-Scotland[7]. Putting a 10-page report together able to cover the essential issues of biodiversity, standards of sustainable forest management and participation took longer than expected, as SANGEC, with help from the Centre for Human Ecology in Edinburgh and Reforesting Scotland, circulated different successive drafts. The report was a month late in going to its FAO Focal Point -- though a month earlier than the final version of the UK government's own report -- and still had gaps. But it worked. The report was neither "confrontational" nor uncritical. Its expert credentials were reasonable, thanks to hard work by local NGOs involved with woodland regeneration and retired experts on biodiversity in boreal forests. Furthermore, it looked like an appropriate NGO report on Scotland's lost forests, recognising the human tragedy involved in their loss and the human responsibility for environmental degradation. Many people had been touched at some point by the reporting process, and the report gave voice to something which was a touchstone of national political identity for the Scottish environmental movement. Suddenly, making Scottish reports to the Commission on Sustainable Development began to look feasible.
Lesson 6: Coordination must allow for intra-stakeholder competition ... The struggle of the Forum's Steering Group to find a distinct role for itself in a post-UNCED context, meanwhile continued. A successful conference on "Sustainability in the Workplace" was organised in April 1994, drawing in industry representatives as well as local authorities, the churches and NGOs: this provided a snapshot of the issues which all groups felt were most critical to progress on the environmental agenda, but no "hard" strategy or conclusions. Forum working groups were set up on specific issues, including work with local communities, work on models of a "sustainable Scotland", and preparation of an adequate Newsletter and briefing service. A vital extra resource was found in the shape of six months' salary for a Coordinator, located initially in Friends of the Earth Scotland. SANGEC members and others involved in local authority work were keen to have the Forum take initiatives in the field of work with local communities, taking the lead in preparations for local authority-led "local Agenda 21's"[8]. Efforts to develop a second conference on the role of local communities were however hampered throughout 1994 by the competing interests of different participants. Canon Kenyon Wright, together with the churches and the Scottish Environmental Education Council, had set about transforming his original moral crusade into a programme for community work both moral and educative, "Vision 21". The Community Service Volunteers, also represented on the Forum's Steering Group, had received Scottish Office Funding for a newsletter covering local community involvement. Parallel work was also being carried out by Scottish Education and Action for Development, which, by 1994, was in the middle of organising conferences and tours around the theme of alliances designed for "Shifting the Balance". Furthermore, local community councils, statutory bodies with varying degrees of real local participation across the country, had also been given responsibilities in this field by the Scottish Office, and by mid-1994 the Association of Community Councils had begun to turn to Friends of the Earth Scotland for advice in an area where they had little previous experience. The future relationship between this body and activist groups was unclear. Tensions were already emerging in rural areas, between groups such as the Highlands and Islands Forum, with twelve years of encouraging and teaching community empowerment, and other participative bodies inspired by the new interest of local authorities. A conflict between activist forums and those more closely linked with different tiers of government was visibly possible. By the end of 1994, a corporate view of what the Forum was for, had finally begun to develop. There would be many local NGO and local authority initiatives under Agenda 21. The Forum's responsibility was not to organise them, but to help activists develop them within a framework where they reinforced one another. Inevitably there would be conflicts: the Forum would then be the body with over-all authority for mediating frictions and facilitating compromises: in the rural area, and perhaps ultimately in the urban as well, "a forum of forums".
Lesson 7: The best recipe for harmonising the results is Agenda 21. Following the Scottish NGO Report on Forests, reporting to the Commission began to seem the best interim vehicle for establishing this role. Local authorities were interested: reporting would allow them to take credit for the progress that was being made on the environmental front. Smaller NGOs, as well as FOE-Scotland and WWF-Scotland, recognised its legitimacy. Among community groups, the Highlands and Islands Forum had already participated in the Scottish NGO Report on Forests. The Chapter structure of Agenda 21 was now seen as an opportunity. There was no need to develop a whole-scale strategy for a sustainable Scotland at once. Rather, within each year's calendar of chapters, a focus could be found on which Scotland had something to contribute, and the Forum could take the opportunity to develop a coordinated Scottish non-government view of the state of play, the opportunities and the obstacles. Progress towards a national sustainability strategy could be made in parts, building on what was already there. On the key chapter, the Forum could perhaps bring a small group together around a table to draw up a list of issues which should be covered by the report, and follow it up with a broader seminar to discuss the report and elect a committee to write it. Where individual organisations had something more to contribute in another thematic area, the Forum could help facilitate their participation. In January 1995, work began on Chapter 9 of Agenda 21, covering ozone depeletion, transboundary air pollution, and CO2 emissions, with the convening of a group of 12 "wise heads" to draw up a list of issues. It was also agreed that the Forum's major focus for 1996 would be to hold a conference on the role of local communities in implementing Agenda 21 in Scotland, in preparation for the 1997 review of the Commission's work.
Conclusion It has taken national governments time to get the elements of their administrations together to carry out their UNCED commitments, and most NGOs see progress to date as far too slow. But local authorities and non-government organisations have also been slow to carry out their responsibilities under UNCED. All the problems of coordination between departments characteristic of the national level, recur in regional centres like the Scottish Office and all over again, in local authorities. Nor is coordination necessarily any easier among individual NGOs competing for funds than it is among employees and Ministers from different government departments. In the end, the success of UNCED depends on local success in getting three processes going in quick succession: the education of non-environment departments as well as local NGOs and members of other major groups, in the details of the UNCED agreements; their involvement in implementing the agreements within their sphere of competence; and the creation of mechanisms for resolving conflicts among them. Reports from major groups on how these processes are going, and what over-all progress has been made on implementation, may or may not solve the needs of the CSD Secretariat for accurate and standardised information. But they can provide a vehicle for putting the processes themselves in motion, and thus:
The process is a necessary step towards creating the product. That, at least, is the lesson we seem to have learned in Scotland through two years of hard work.
Footnotes 1. Coordinator of the Scottish Academic Network on Global Environmental Change. SANGEC gratefully acknowledges seed funding and conference finance from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's Global Environmental Change Programme, and the support of the Centre for Human Ecology at the University of Edinburgh. 2. UK local authorities estimate that 70% of Agenda 21 requires local government action. 3. The Scottish Office is the Departmental responsibility of the Secretary of State for Scotland, a Minister in the UK Cabinet (currently Ian Lang). Individual members of parliament for the ruling UK party are assigned sub-departments within the Scottish Office: thus Sir Hector Munro, MP for Dumfries, has responsibility for the Scottish Office Environment Department. 4. SANGEC Briefings, "The Road from Rio: Institutions and Indicators" (September 1992) and "Institutions and Indicators Update" (March 1993). 5. E.g., Labour MEP for Strathclyde West, Ken Collins, who chairs the European Parliament's Environment Committee, is a member of the FOE-Scotland Board. 6. See SANGEC Bulletin (Spring 1994), "Reporting on Sustainability". 7. See SANGEC Bulletin (Winter 1994), "People, Forests and Biodiversity". The approach to WWF-Scotland reflected the importance of its role in chairing the forests working group of Scottish Wildlife and Countryside Link. 8. As envisaged by Chapter 28 of Agenda 21.
|
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||