The People's Commitment
Towards Sustainability
GOVERNING REGULATIONS
OF THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
AND SUSTAINABILITY
by Txema Castiella / Teresa Franquesa
Technical Co-ordinators of Barcelona's Agenda 21
The expression "Agenda 21"
was coined at the Earth Summit (Rio de
Janeiro, 1992) to refer to the plan of action that states would have to
implement in order to transform the current model for development, based
on the exploitation of natural resources as if they were unlimited and
unequal access to the benefits of those resources, to a new model for
development capable of covering the needs of present generations without
compromising the capacity of future generations. This is what is known
as sustainable development, i.e. development that is durable, efficient
and rational in the use of resources and equitable in the distribution
of benefits.
The final document produced by the United Nations ten years ago
contained a chapter (Chapter 28) dedicated to the role of cities in this
ambitious resolution for change. It recognises both the responsibility
of cities and their capacity for transformation. As has been observed on
occasions, seldom have a few brief lines of a formal declaration
provoked such an enthusiastic reaction. At present, over 5,000 cities
around the world are drawing up their own Local Agenda 21s through
mechanisms involving participation by the local community, with the
objective of establishing shared objectives and milestones to contribute
locally to the sustainable development of our planet's society. Local
Agenda 21s are a good example of the old ecologist maxim "think globally
and act locally".
Barcelona is one of the cities taking part in this movement and it is
now completing its Agenda 21. This article aims to outline the
characteristics of this complex and exciting process. Barcelona's status
as a large city in the context of Europe undoubtedly makes this an
experience worth studying and sharing.
In 1995, Barcelona's Town Council resolved, with the unanimous vote in
favour of all political groups represented, to become a signatory of the
Aalbörg Charter. This Charter was the local response to the challenge
issued by the United Nations and it was a harbinger of the widespread
local movement that would arise in Europe for promotion of Local Agenda
21s. In contrast with the nature of some international declarations, it
was an innovative manifesto set out in an attractive style with clearly
expressed aims. It was based on the recognition of the responsibility of
cities, particularly in the western world, for the current situation
(owing to demographic concentration, consumption of goods, services and
land, transportation, energy consumption, etc.) and the observation of
the capacity of cities to contribute to sustainable development from a
privileged position for fostering participation, agreement and
mobilisation of forces and resources. One of the specific commitments
undertaken by the signatories of the Aalbörg Charter (which has now been
ratified by 1,200 European cities) was to "attempt to reach a consensus
in our communities in respect of local Agenda 21 by the end of 1996".
This was the first definite step in the process of drafting Barcelona's
Agenda 21. The experience of our city, and that of most cities, with the
exception of some in the Scandinavian countries, has demonstrated the
value of the Aalbörg Charter as a trigger for the process and has also
shown the timetable originally called for to be unfeasible. The process,
being an ambitious one, has involved substantial conflict in respect of
content, approaches and timing, and the case of Barcelona is no
exception.
The Municipal Council for the Environment and Sustainability
Three years later, a delay that in itself speaks of the complexity and
difficulty of the process, the Barcelona Agenda 21 Promotional Forum was
created. Agenda 21 is neither a closed process nor an exercise in exact
sciences: each city must select its own approach to drafting its Agenda
21, depending on its characteristics and circumstances. This was also
the case with the Forum, which, in Barcelona, took shape as a Municipal
Council, governed by the Rules and Regulations for Citizen
Participation.
The Municipal Council for the Environment and Sustainability is a
participatory and consultative body, but its objectives include the
specific function of promoting development of Barcelona's Agenda 21.
This is a highly significant characteristic of the process that
differentiates it from other cities: the body that formulates proposals,
builds consensus and takes responsibility for results is the Council and
not the Town Hall.
The make-up of the Council is especially important: there is a
deliberate balance between representatives of the government (Town Hall,
Regional Council, Provincial Council, EMMA), the business world, trade
unions, and citizen and ecologist organisations, and of universities and
a group of private experts.
In 1998 and 1999 thirteen thematic working groups were formed with
different members of the Council to carry out, on a basis of consensus,
a diagnosis of each area, formulating proposals for future action and,
in some cases, suggesting indicators for monitoring. The task of these
interdisciplinary working groups is the core of the documents on Agenda
21: over 2,000 hours of volunteer work and over 500 proposals of
different types and magnitude.
In 2000, the Council adopted these documents as "Materials for Debate"
and resolved to undertake a phase of citizen participation and debate,
through which the Council's work will be opened to other organisations
and players and citizens as a whole. This is an extremely important
decision for the process, owing to its ambitious nature. When the
process is completed, the Council will be the body with the capacity to
decide on the approval of the final content.
The Participation Process
The extension of the debate to include citizens seemed indispensable if
the process was to be successful. Making an Agenda 21 with the greatest
possible degree of participation not only legitimates it, but above all
it allows a larger number of people to assimilate its importance and
assume its objectives. At the same time, however, obvious difficulties
arise, such as the size of the city, the lack of citizen awareness of
the process and the complexity of the issues and the relatively limited
time available.
The ability to combine ambition and pragmatism could be said to be the
motto that has guided the design of the citizen participation process
from the start and that has oriented the volume and provision of
resources in terms of planning, technical and material means and
monitoring of the process.
The main challenge, obviously, was how to attain a sufficient degree of
citizen involvement, taking into account that the move from the core of
highly informed and concerned individuals to all citizens could not be
made in a single step. It therefore seemed appropriate to focus efforts
on fostering the participation of citizen organisations and groups and
to leave the door open to intervention by individuals. This decision
implied adoption of a participatory approach that ensured that all views
were represented, while prioritising quality over quantity.
The document "Criteria and Proposals for Citizen Participation in
Barcelona's Agenda 21", drafted by the Political Analysis Team of
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, provided both the theoretical basis
for the process and the operational guidelines in respect of the phases
and instruments to make it possible. The framework document's proposal
for development of the participation process can be summed up in the
following elements:
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three phases: information, deliberation and decision
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two approaches to work: regional and thematic
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two types of involvement: organisations and citizens
These structural criteria have been highly useful, although the actual
situation made adaptation necessary in some cases. For example the first
two phases of the process were combined in practice into a single, very
prolonged phase (April-December 2001) of information/deliberation. The
reasons for this were the initial difficulties in setting the project in
motion and the protraction of information tasks, along with the
substantial differences in the speed of work in the city's ten districts
and at many of the participating organisations.
This phase opened officially on 3 April 2001, with a formal ceremony at
the main lecture hall of Universitat de Barcelona, at which the mayor
and the president of the Council gave a public presentation of the
process of citizen participation and the material placed at everyone's
disposal for discussion: Towards Barcelona's Agenda 21: A Document for
Debate. This was a fundamental document that dealt with and combined all
the different components of diagnosis and proposal, set out for the
purpose of debate.
From that moment on, a number of initiatives were undertaken on
different fronts at the same time to start up and gradually advance in
the proposal for participation throughout the city. Work went ahead on
distribution of the document for debate and on dissemination of the
process to over 500 organisation, which were invited to take part; the
web page www.bcn.cat/agenda 21 was created; meetings were held with
significant groups; thematic debates were programmed in the form of
"Dialogues" between experts on the issues under discussion; a virtual
forum was opened at the city's website; thousands of surveys were made
on priorities; three prospecting sessions were organised; the specific
Agenda 21 for Schools programme was launched; etc.
Agenda 21 for Schools
This programme calls on schools to draw up their own Agenda 21,
reviewing concepts and practices and committing themselves to
undertaking actions for improvement. In this connection, a
methodological guide and technical and pedagogical assistance are
offered throughout the school year, along with a line of financial aid
for public schools. A total of 70 schools at all educational levels took
part during the 2001-02 school year and 97 have been accepted for
participation next year. Each school chooses the issues that it will
deal with, and while environmentalisation of resource and waste
management predominates, there are also a large number of projects
focussing on improvement of the immediate surroundings, along with the
creation of gardens, use of solar energy, and the issues of mobility and
noise. Results permit a very positive evaluation, both in terms of the
actual implication of schools and the stimulus and support for the task
of environmental education carried out by them. The programme receives
support from the AGBAR Foundation.
However, the main protagonists during this period have clearly been the
city's ten districts, which, once they had grasped the importance of the
process, took responsibility for carrying it out on their own territory,
each in its own particular manner, in keeping with its circumstances and
style. The moment of greatest visibility was the formal presentation
ceremony, which was organised with a certain degree of solemnity and was
very well attended in all districts. This was followed by intense
activity in the form of publication of informative materials and
individual web pages, programmes on neighbourhood radio and television
stations, contacts with organisations in the ambit and, above all, the
programming of some 200 debate sessions, attended by around 3,000
people.
As a result of the first phase of citizen participation, the Technical
Secretariat for Agenda 21 collected approximately 1,000 proposals,
varying widely in scope and degree of abstraction. Moving on to the
practical phase required the combination of all the contributions into a
draft document that could be returned to the participants, so that
everyone who had taken part in the process would have the opportunity to
evaluate it and, where appropriate, amend it. It had to be a concise and
comprehensible document, setting out the fundamentals, objectives and
main lines of action. It was planned as a framework document that would
provide a negotiated overview of the sustainable Barcelona that we wish
to attain and to which we are all committed, each one in their own area
and with their own plan of action.
The draft of the Citizen Commitment to Sustainability was prepared
during the final quarter of 2001, simultaneously with design of the
methodology for participation in its revision. The Council approved the
draft in December and the practical phase was carried out according to
plan (January-May 2002). For this purpose, a dossier was published
containing the text and the procedure for taking part, and the Technical
Secretariat and the districts then distributed this dossier to all the
organisations and individuals implicated in the process. It was also
sent to citizen organisations that had not expressed any interest so far
and it was posted on the website to facilitate participation as much as
possible.
With the aim of permitting the collective drafting of the text of the
Commitment an extremely simple method for participation was used, based
on a set of colours and symbols, to allow everyone to express easily and
visually their assessment of and comments on each of the different
proposals. Everyone who wished to could appraise and/or propose
modifications to the objectives and lines of action. These reactions
could be entered directly on the website or sent to the technical
secretariat by fax, post, or e-mail. In any case, all the contributions
received through the different media were posted on the website to allow
viewing of the complete result.
A total of 480 users made contributions, of which 180 represented
organisations and the rest were individuals. All together, 12,000
appraisals and 1,300 amendments or suggestions were presented.
Subsequently, during the months of March and April, a series of meetings
(Agenda 21 forums) were held, to provide the opportunity to defend the
proposed amendments and to attempt to agree by reasoned consensus on
controversial proposals. Ten thematic forums were held, a specific one
for each of the objectives, along with a city forum to revise the full
set of ten articles. Around two hundred people, who had previously
submitted their assessments, attended these meetings. The districts also
worked on the draft and some of them held one or more local forums of
their own. These meetings made use of the same system of positioning by
colours, already familiar to the participants, through the so-called
"option windows".
The editorial team drew up the amendments agreed at the forums, creating a new, clearly improved version of the document that then received the finishing touches in accordance with suggestions from the members of the Municipal Environmental and Sustainability Council. Finally, on 21 May, the Town Council approved the definitive version of the Citizen Commitment to Sustainability, with its ten main objectives and one hundred lines of action (ten for each objective).
The 10 Objectives
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Protect open spaces and biodiversity, and expand green belts.
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Defend a compact, diverse city, with quality public space.
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Improve mobility and make streets an attractive place.
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Attain optimum levels of environmental quality and become a healthy
city. -
Conserve natural resources and promote the use of renewable
resources. -
Reduce waste generation and foster a culture of re-use and recycling.
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Augment social cohesion, strengthening mechanisms for fairness and participation.
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Promote economic activity oriented towards sustainable development.
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Advance the culture of sustainability through environmental communi- cation and education.
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Reduce the city's impact on the planet and promote international co- operation.
To this tangible outcome of the project, we must add the unquestionable expansion of concepts and issues related to sustainability, as well as progress in citizen commitment, a factor that is difficult to assess precisely.
Operational Instruments
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Subjects for debate. The proposals of the Council's working groups have provided the basis for promoting and structuring citizen debate. There were over 500 such medium- and/or long-term proposals, with diagnostic elements, constituting a solid foundation for participation. A summary of this work was published in the Documents series and the content was incorporated into the document Towards Barcelona's Agenda 21, an accurate social-environmental diagnosis and summary of the proposals that was published and widely distributed and formed the core of the Agenda 21 website.
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Habits and Values Survey. Under an agreement between the Town Council and UAB's Institute for Government and Public Policy, the Environment and Sustainability Habits and Values Survey was carried out as a social-environmental diagnostic element. The aim was to include environmental perception, a subjective but important component, in the different technical and sectorial diagnoses, adding qualitative information to this process and complementing other sources of information. This was the first Barcelona survey to focus exclusively on sustainability and it dealt in depth with all aspects of this area. The field work was carried out at the end of 2000 with a sample of 1200 individuals aged eighteen and over, through home interviews.
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Participation plan. The Municipal Council drew up a participation plan based on the criteria and proposals put forward by the Political Analysis Team of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The objective of the plan was to design an organised process for debate with clear standards, appropriate methodology and a timetable for different phases. See further information on this subject in the text.
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Communication plan. If an Agenda 21 is to involve citizens, as it must by definition, one of its necessary components is a definite communication strategy. In view of the limited resources for this type of campaign, it was decided to provide the process with a basic visibility centred on the logo. The logo represents the image of commitment by the city to the planet and its fundamental requirement was that it should be identified with the city and not with the Town Council. It was chosen from among three designs by the members of the Council at a plenary session. This brand has served to unify a diverse range of actions (publications, posters, leaflets, etc.). In respect of media dissemination, the local television station (BTV) has played the most important part, both in terms of coverage of the full process in news programmes and broadcast of short reports and spots.
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Technical Secretariat. In April 2001, the firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers was commissioned through a public call for tenders to act as Technical Secretariat to the process. This Technical Secretariat has acted as an auxiliary support and technical assistance body for both the participation process and the preparation of materials.
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Agent 21s. One of the key roles in the participation process has been played by the network of individuals, both volunteers and professionals, who, through their work in associations, universities, districts and other municipal departments, or in the Technical Secretariat itself, have led and galvanised the process. This highly resourceful and diverse group of around one hundred people, who refer to themselves informally as Agent 21s, has met regularly for training and co-ordination sessions.
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Information and assistance services. In a process where information and dialogue are so important, personal attention is indispensable. The Sustainable Barcelona Resources Centre, open to the public six days a week providing service through phone lines and e-mail, has been the main point of information and attention. In the districts, the Citizen Service Offices have played the equivalent role, often supplemented by civic centre services. The www.bcn.cat/agenda21 website has been another, virtual, way, used by an average of 2,250 people monthly. Service has also been provided through the 010 telephone line.
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Environmental Education Resources. Throughout the whole process, the Town Council has augmented the environmental training and information resources available to citizens. A good example in this connection is the set of seven environmental education guides (Mobility, Waste, Water, etc.) that have been prepared and widely distributed, the Sustainability Files collection, and the other publications in the area of environmental awareness, in addition to a broad and varied quarterly programme of activities.
Action 21: Working Prospects
The process of preparing Barcelona's Agenda 21 has been characterised by a few basic principles: strategy, broad base, participation, knowledge and joint responsibility.
Firstly, Agenda 21 is configured as a medium- and long-term strategic
plan with a ten-year time frame (2002-2012), based on sustainability as
the common paradigm. In fact, Barcelona's Agenda 21 is clearly committed
to a comprehensive, broad-based approach to sustainability, combining
social, economic and environmental dimensions, and thus reaches beyond
the strictly conventional domain of environmental policy. Furthermore,
as we have seen, Barcelona's Agenda 21 has been the result of the
broadest possible process of participation and information. It is not
the outcome of the work of experts or of a specialised laboratory, but
of the contributions and perceptions of a great many people and groups
with different interests that were negotiated and eventually agreed by
consensus in the Commitment.
We speak of knowledge because the process of preparing the Agenda 21,
and particularly the participation phases, have in themselves provided
an excellent opportunity to raise citizens' collective level of
environmental information, knowledge and education. In addition,
however, given that effective participation is impossible without good
access to information, the organisers have made considerable efforts in
this connection.
And lastly, joint responsibility, because Barcelona's Agenda 21 is the
set of commitments and objectives shared by the members of the Council
and is put forward as the Agenda 21 for the city. It is not the Town
Council's Agenda 21, and it is therefore based on the desire to gain the
commitment of all players, in keeping with their potential and
responsibilities, to attaining the objectives that have been set.
Precisely, the new working phase that commenced with the approval of the
Citizen Commitment to Sustainability could be called Action 21. Each
player, institution or organisation that has signed the Commitment
agrees to work in accordance with the principles of the Agenda 21 and
will specify the voluntary actions that they can take in their
respective fields to contribute to attaining the shared objectives that
have been set.
During this phase there will be new operational instruments to help to
stimulate, orient and evaluate the processes under way. A set of
indicators will serve to monitor progress and a methodological guide for
preparing action plans will be available by year end, along with other
instruments aimed at disseminating good practices and experience. The
year 2004 offers a good immediate time-frame for showing what progress
has been made.
A key stage of the city's Agenda 21, then, has been completed, and
another even more exciting stage has commenced, in which everyone is
invited to join in the collective effort at making a more sustainable
city. As concluded in the presentation text of the Commitment, we have
just begun. We have no time to waste and we have all the time in the
world.