Policy integration and public involvement in the local policy process: lessons from local green planning in the Netherland

Agenda 21 explicitly recommends the use of existing planning experience when drawing up sustainable development strategies. Many local authorities all over the world have gained experience with so-called green planning, and green plans were already addressing the escalating environmental problems before the Earth Summit took place in 1992. According to the literature, the aspirations of Local Agenda 21 (LA21, Chapter 28 of Agenda 21), particularly those concerning cross-sectoral integration and community involvement, are more ambitious than those of older types of environmental policy-making and planning. In this paper we relate these aspirations to past experiences of local green planning, touching upon the principle of subsidiarity. This leads to an examination of this older experience in relation to the constraints on effective cross-sectoral integration and public involvement at the lowest level of government. Since the publication of the first National Environmental Policy Plan on 25 May 1989, the Netherlands has been viewed worldwide as a successful pioneer in the field of green planning. The Dutch system of green planning contains very specific ideas about cross-sectoral integration and community involvement, making the experiences gained with local green planning an interesting source of material for investigating the constraints on cross-sectoral integration and public involvement at the lowest level of government.