Skip to content

Determinants of Local Agenda-21 Processes

The Field of Focus 4 of the Excellence Initiative of the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg funded the project. Prof. Dr. Stefan Wurster and PD Dr. Alexandra Michel led it. The project has already been concluded.
 

Project Description


It was conceived as a hypothesis-testing and -generating comparative study of Local Agenda-21 (sustainability processes at the municipal level) in four municipalities (Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Pforzheim). The aim was to analyze which regulatory and self-regulatory mechanisms at the political, administrative, and societal levels contribute to implementing sustainability policy goals. From this, generalizable findings on sustainability-oriented reform processes at the municipal level were to be derived.

Under the motto "Think globally - act locally!", the Local Agenda 21 program aimed at achieving sustainable development goals was adopted in 1992 as part of the UN Conference on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, all municipalities have been encouraged to foster new forms of cooperation among local governments, citizens, and civil society organizations to develop a long-term sustainability strategy for their municipality, thereby triggering sustainable development and learning processes. After a boom period at the beginning of the 2000s, when numerous German municipalities successfully launched corresponding initiatives, it soon became apparent that many cities and municipalities were ultimately overwhelmed by the resource-intensive and complex task in the long term. This raised the question, which was the guiding research question of the project, of what conditions must be met to implement a municipal sustainability strategy in the long term? The project aimed to identify factors that promote and hinder the implementation of a sustainability strategy (resolution of conflicting goals in the area of tension between the "magic sustainability triangle", involvement of citizens as "experts in their living environment" in local change processes). In doing so, the cross-municipal project was tied to a pilot study funded by the "Heidelberg Center for the Environment" (HCE) (duration: October to December 2013), which had already explored Agenda 21 processes in the municipality of Heidelberg.

Overall, two analytical approaches were pursued in parallel in the project. The qualitative data collection using semi-standardized interviews with key actors in local sustainability processes in the four study municipalities served to develop the model and test and extend the theory. In addition, members from civil society "agenda groups" were interviewed with a questionnaire to capture framework conditions and design features of the changes initiated in the context of the local agenda and their connection to the reactions of the group members.
 

Selected Publications
 

To top