Skip to content
Menu
Technical University of Munich
Technical University of Munich

Determinants of Local Agenda-21 Processes

The project was funded by the Field of Focus 4 of the Excellence Initiative of the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg and was led by Prof. Dr. Stefan Wurster and PD Dr. Alexandra Michel. 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 the implementation of 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 for the realization of 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 called upon to encourage new forms of cooperation between local government, citizens and civil society organizations with the aim of developing a long-term sustainability strategy for their municipality and, in the process, triggering sustainable development and learning processes. After a boom period at the beginning of the 2000s, when numerous German municipalities succeeded in launching corresponding initiatives, it soon became apparent, however, that many cities and municipalities were ultimately overwhelmed in their ability to do justice to this 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 in order to implement a municipal sustainability strategy in the long term? The aim of the project was 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 tied in with a pilot study funded by the "Heidelberg Center for the Environment" (HCE) (duration: Oct. to Dec. 2013), in which Agenda 21 processes in the municipality of Heidelberg had already been exploratively examined.

Overall, two analytical approaches were pursued in parallel in the project. The collection of qualitative data using semi-standardized interviews with key actors in local sustainability processes in the four study municipalities served to develop the model, but also to 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