UN-NGLS Publications: Implementing Agenda 21

"Slovenia, the Green Piece of Europe," a the slogan which is a part of the new campaign for tourist promotion in Slovenia. It reflects the fact that this small country is one of the greatest examples of ecological and landscape diversity in Central Europe. It also reflects the Slovenian people's pride with the nature they have inherited, and of their emotional attachment to it. Behind this slogan are two pressing questions however. How really green and sustainable is the existing development trend of Slovenia? And how can we preserve or even improve the natural environment for the future generations without having to sacrifice economic development or quality of life? The project Agenda 21 for Slovenia has been an attempt to stimulate public discussion on these two issues.

Since 1990, Slovenia has been in a process of transition as it shifted from a socialist to a market economy, built an independent state, and began approaching the European Union. While the current changes in social and economic systems present a unique opportunity for the implementation of sustainable development, there is a growing danger that this opportunity may soon be wasted. In order to prevent this, non-governmental organizations decided to initiate a public discussion on how to reach the goals set by the world leaders in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. A project of Slovene non-governmental organizations, Agenda 21 for Slovenia materialized in response to signals from the Slovenian government that it did not recognize the importance of environmental issues and of the commitments made in Rio. There is no political will to implement the Environmental Protection Act (adopted in 1993 as a contemporary comprehensive act); and there is no National Program of Environmental Protection, budget spending for environment has been in decline since 1991. At the same time, the Green Party received nine percent of the votes in the 1990 election. This reflects a somewhat utopian concept of sustainable development on the part of some government officials relative ignorance of it by others. As a result there is no systematic work in this direction at the government level;no council, strategy or research. The country is rushing into a free-market economy, rather than approaching the model of sustainability.

The project, coordinated by Umanotera, the Slovenian Foundation for Sustainable Development, began in early 1995 by conducting a brief survey among Slovenian NGOs to determine how familiar they were with key international documents of sustainable development (such as Our Common Future, Agenda 21) and whether they would be interested in participating in drafting an NGO framework strategy. Even though NGO members were not well-read on the topic, they expressed an overwhelming enthusiasm for the project.

The first national-level workshop, organized two months later, welcomed 24 members from 19 Slovenian NGOs and a number of observers from governmental institutions. Basic documents were presented, including Limits of Growth, Our Common Future, Agenda 21, Beyond the Limits, Sustainable Europe;the Friends of the Earth campaign, the Environment for Europe process, and national environmental policy. Workshop participants identified key environmental problems and barriers to sustainability in Slovenia. They were asked to distinguish between the root causes of problems and their manifestations, or symptoms.

Three types of social activity appeared regularly, cultural, institutional and economic, which represent a comprehensive social system. The main cause of the problems identified was the lack of a holistic approach from politics and science to everyday life. As a result, 'solutions' to specific problems emerged as new problems elsewhere, or for the future. So to harmonize the necessary social changes with principles of sustainable development, reform must be approached on all three levels simultaneously, with full awareness of the laws applying to interrelations within the system.

A condensed version of this national workshop was then prepared, and held by local NGOs in Ljubljana, the capital, in Maribor, the second largest town, in Trbovlje, an old mining town, and in Novo Mesto, a mixed manufacturing town on the Krka River. These served to compare specific local situations with the national framework.

A second national workshop, where we produced an action plan for NGOs as an internal document, dealt with the search for solutions. After the workshop, a small group of dedicated individuals worked together on the framework strategy for sustainable development under the title Agenda 21 for Slovenia;A Contribution of Non-Governmental Organizations. The document was based on the discussions held in the workshops, with an in-depth analysis of the present state of development in various sectors of Slovenia.

The structure of the action plan followed the three aspects of sustainability. The cultural aspect contained chapters entitled Holistic Approach, Lifestyles and Education. The institutional aspect chapters were entitled Non-Governmental Organizations, Legal State and Economic Instruments. The economic aspect chapters were entitled Industry, Energy, Towns and Settlements, Transport, Tourism and Recreation, Agriculture, and Nature Conservation. All topics were interrelated, often considering the same problem from different perspectives, as we were dealing with a common social system. The selection did not aspire to cover every issue or to provide answers to every question. Instead we focused on those areas and aspects most significant for sustainable development in today's Slovenia.

Participating NGO members were consulted on the draft before it was finally edited and sent to print. On June 19 we presented the document to the public. The response was positive: Pavel Gantar, the minister of environment announced that the document would be useful to the ministry in drafting the National Environmental Protection Programme. Zare Pregelj, chairman of the Parliamentary Council on Environment and Infrastructure, expressed the desire for Parliament to study the proposed strategy and possibly to commission a more in-depth study on transition towards sustainable development.

The project's was not only to produce the document, however. Rather, it is an ongoing process of stimulating discussion, first among NGOs, and then among the wider public, particularly decision makers. The chapters on Sustainable Development in Slovenia and on Steps Towards Sustainability explained the actions required at the national level in specific fields, and at the local level.

Clearly, the initiative for this will not come from the government, national or local. The government prefers to go with 'business as usual' and does not respond the clear commitments of Agenda 21: "Sustainable development is primarily the responsibility of governments, and this will require national strategies, plans and policies."

Civil society, on the other hand, recognizes that we share the global responsibility for a "fundamental change to replace unsustainable patterns of production and consumption." Most NGO activities focus on specific areas. For example there is a well-structured plan of action in place for organic farming in Slovenia, with the ambition to establish at least one demonstration farm within three years, to develop national standards for organic food, and to set up a network. In the field of transport much work was done to prevent Parliament from adopting the National Programme for Highway Construction, which called for the building of 400 km of new highways by the year 2004. But resistance failed and the highway programme was adopted, despite the fact that 43 NGOs (most of the active ones) signed a petition against it.

NGOs in Maribor are having more success with their programme to make the city bicycle-friendly, modeling it on a project in the nearby Austrian city of Graz. NGO involvement in nature conservation is also showing positive results. For example, at Skocjanski zatok on the Adriatic coast, Slovenia's only brachtic wetland is being turned into a protected area. There are also numerous NGOs working in the field of environmental education, but nationwide coordination is lacking.

Much of the national activity is being coordinated by Umanotera. In January 1996 it started publishing a quarterly newsletter and has prepared several projects for promotion, policy development and implementation of the transition to sustainable development. The largest is a proposal submitted to the Phare Democracy Programme for a one-year Local Agenda 21 project. It proposes to implement the NGO framework strategy Agenda 21 for Slovenia through six projects at the local level, using experience from the UK, Germany and other EU countries where the Local Agenda 21 process has already started. At the local level the key to the process of drafting (and later implementing) Local Agenda 21 will be to build partnerships between the private and voluntary sectors, local authorities and the general public. This will then serve as a model for a wider campaign.

One of the recommendations from the Agenda 21 for Slovenia workshops was that successful pilot projects, incorporating principles of sustainable development in practice would offer the best opportunity for building positive motivation and overcoming resistance to change. As a result, a three-year project was designed to 'adopt' a farm and assist it in its transition to organic farming and eco-tourism. It would serve as a demonstration farm, but would also offer valuable knowledge and experience gained in the process of transition.

According to Agenda 21 for Slovenia, "We are well aware that the road to sustainability will be a long and profound process, necessitating many changes." So we are not discouraged by occasional failures. On the contrary, these provide invaluable learning experiences. Another two passages from the document summarize the spirit of the Agenda 21 project: "Slovenia's geographic position and the legacy of its past have resulted in combining high economic development and quality of life with a well-preserved natural environment, extremely rich in its diversity of landscape biology. This should not lead us into complacency, however. On the contrary, our challenge is to seize those advantages that have resulted from a delay in Western-style development. From the perspective of sustainable development, many of our 'disadvantages' actually reveal themselves as advantages. Respecting the natural and cultural properties of our land, we can reach a considerably higher degree of development and quality of life. A combination of traditional approaches and modern technology will assist us in living within the limits of environmental space for Slovenia and the planet Earth... With this document, we hope to present an optimistic concept of a human society as a self-regulating system, capable of balancing itself with nature while not having to sacrifice economic development or quality of life. Outdated social and economic structures will be the only necessary 'sacrifices' in this process."