Importance Of Agenda 21

Agenda 21 is introduced as one of the three non-binding agreements in Rio Earth Summit (1992) which was United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. It was the first time that governments of 172 countries officially adopted Sustainable Development as the development paradigm. Agenda 21 was an authoritative set of ideas on how to promote sustainable development in practice. (Baker, 2006) There are four main areas for action plan of sustainable development covered in Agenda 21. It comprises the promotion of social & economic development, conservation and resource management for development, strengthening role of major groups and means of implementation. It encouraged bottom-up participation and community-based

(Baker, 2006) Despite comprehensive action plan of Agenda 21, it has no one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability. Local Agenda 21 is an action plan for local authorities to address specific needs of local context. It specialized Agenda 21 for particular district fitting its uniqueness. Since local is the spatial level where development impacts are clear shown, the local authorities are the main facilitator of participation. Thus, local authorities are crucial for sustainable development. Local authorities are responsible for developing and maintaining local economic, social and environmental infrastructure, overseeing planning and regulations, implementing national environmental policies and regulations and establishing local environmental policies and

LA 21 is a participatory, multistakeholder process to achieve the goals of Agenda 21 at the local level through the preparation and implementation of a long-term, strategic plan that addresses priority local sustainable development concerns. (ICLEI 2002: 3) Local authorities also play an important role in mobilizing and educating the public. A local stakeholder group was established to be the coordination and policy body. Local authorities conducted a public consultation for their citizens especially women and youth. Then, they reached a consensus with shred vision of their Local agenda 21 plan for their community. Local Agenda 21 was designed as specific action plan according to characteristic of area. Finally, local authorities use sustainable development indicator to evaluate the progress of Community Action Plan. In addition, the international community increased cooperation between local authorities by consultative process. Thus, cooperation of local authorities improved exchange of information and