From Local Agenda 21 to a localized Agenda 2030 – the Portuguese and Brazilian cases in perspective

João Guerra, Luísa Schmidt and Luiz Brito Lourenço

Community Development, 2019, vol. 50, issue 3, 352-367

Abstract: This article evaluates the previous experiences of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) in Portugal and Brazil, in order to identify factors hindering implementation and how its legacy might contribute to a localized Agenda 2030. Grounded on comparative analysis of LA21 applied research, it includes questionnaire surveys and a review of reports and action plans, in addition to statements collected from informal interviews with national authorities. LA21 outcomes seem to have been adversely affected by structural constraints arising from economic difficulties, and more specifically from inherited centralist traditions of local governance. Despite the fact that aspects such as community engagement in decision-making and the safeguarding of the local commons have been on the LA21 agenda ever since the Earth Summit (1992), our results show that actual achievements in these areas are meager. Nevertheless, LA21 planted the seeds of participative, bottom-up, and transformative development in local communities.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/15575330.2019.1599405 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:comdev:v:50:y:2019:i:3:p:352-367

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCOD20

DOI: 10.1080/15575330.2019.1599405

Access Statistics for this article

Community Development is currently edited by John Green, Rhonda Phillips and Anne Heinze Silvis

More articles in Community Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().