United Kingdom Experience with Local Agenda 21 and with the Development of Local Climate Change Strategies (特集 自治体政策における環境配慮)

This paper contrasts United Kingdom (UK) experience with the adoption of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) with the development and implementation of local climate change strategies. The dramatic pace and extensive adoption of LA21 across the globe since the Rio Earth Summit1 has been promoted and monitored by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)2. Surveys undertaken by ICLEI over the past ten years have indicated widespread implementation of LA21 in European countries with significant progress made more recently in the Asia Pacific Region3. With respect to LA21, UK experience is internationally recognized as one of the success stories in the post-Rio period with over 90% of local authorities having committed to developing a LA21 strategy. The picture for local climate change strategy development is less clear and reflects the possibility that local authorities have limited experience and in-house expertise in this area. A survey undertaken by the Innovation and Development Agency (IDeA) in September 2000 revealed only 17% of local authorities had set Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction targets as part of a wider climate change strategy. At the same time there have been some isolated success stories, which may be explained, in part, by the strong legacy of LA21 in those specific regions. This paper highlights the merits of local climate change planning in one region in the UK within the context of the general evolution of LA21 in that country. We argue that the implementation of LA21 is an important precursor to the development of an effective climate change strategy. We suggest, in particular, that LA21 plays a role in the promotion of horizontal integration of environmental policy across local institutional boundaries (between local government, the community, business and academic). These new local institutions, in turn, lay the groundwork and contribute to the vertical integration between various tiers of government, which is involved in climate change strategizing. In order to test this hypothesis, we will look at a case study of multi-layered governance and the resulting climate change responses in the Northwest Region of England and specifically in Lancashire County Council. The latter is one of the forerunner local authorities with respect to both LA21 and climate change. In this context, we also put forward that the UK experience in this area exemplifies the emergence of a new modern model of governance that is interconnected (joined up), networked and multilayered. We recognize that recent transformations in environmental governance practices do not exist in a vacuum and hence we begin this paper with a brief review of some key theoretical perspectives that explain this ongoing transitional process. We use Cooperative Management Regimes (Meadowcroft 1999) as the main theoretical framework and based on our research observations we make a few minor upward revisions to the theory under the banner of the modern local government (MLG)4.