Methodologies for promoting the information and public participation in the process of implementing local agenda 21 – an experience from a small municipality in portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Pinto, Marta
• Data de Publicação: 2003
• Outros Autores: Santos, Pedro, Almeida, Conceição, Quental, Nuno, Silva, Margarida
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/6219

The concept of Local Agenda 21 comprises a process of participatory development by which the consensus between the authorities and several stakeholders is created, to agree on the common development and implementation of a “plan of action” in which environmental protection should be integrated, dealing with the local problems and priorities as well as economic prosperity and the social entity of the community. The council of São João de Madeira has started implementing the Local Agenda 21 by a co-operation between the City Council and the Portuguese Catholic University of Porto. Besides sustainable development one of the main goals of this process is the promotion of democratic participation. In this report the implementation of Local Agenda 21 in this council is described on the level of instruments and media used in this process: forums of discussion, strategic co-operations, direct questioning of the public, support of opinion leaders in particular teachers and the publishing of information material. The results are presented and the pros and cons of the instruments are discussed. In this report it will also be analyzed whether the perception measured among the population, about how much potential and what problems they observe in the council and whether this corresponds to the points identified by the politicians and technicians of the City Council. Identifying the diverging opinions helps to show the importance of public participation and therefore supports the decision-making process.