Future Perfect

Local sustainability–related planning documents are very helpful to communities

Image: Pavle Pavlovic, Serbia

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ustainable

agriculture

wildlife

food

security

consumption

and

production

patterns

but three tiers of governance: local, regional and national. This

ensures an opportunity for local communities to harmonize their

development plans with larger-scale planning tools of national

importance and effectively align their priorities and goals in a top-

down fashion.

The NSDS framework also facilitates a bottom-up flow of infor-

mation into the planning process through its monitoring activities.

Information on how local communities are progressing towards

sustainability is collected and used for fine-tuning future goals and

actions. More concretely, there is the potential to use national-level

sustainable development indicators at the local level, helping the

Government to monitor the progress of each region separately and

investigate their coherence. Such detailed monitoring can be scaled

down to even lower levels in order to measure sustainable develop-

ment and quality of life in local communities.

There are at least three ways forward concerning the method-

ology for developing LSDPDs. The first way is to incorporate a

clear definition of sustainable development into LSDPDs. This

definition then practically becomes the vision of sustainability for

the local community, and the planning process will consequently

assume social and economic community goals and/or targets

derived from such a vision. The second way deals with the assess-

ment practices in LSDPDs. Such practices should ensure that

principles of sustainable development are met. Criterion-based

assessment for sustainability might prove to be an appropriate

tool, as it is not complex and easily distinguishes sustainable

development from more ‘traditional’ development

patterns. The third way forward is to examine the

sustainability of actions proposed by LSDPDs against

a set of criteria. This does not mean that replacing or

working on those criteria that are missing or exhibit

a poor record will ensure sustainability, as the mere

fulfilment of requirements does not ensure that plan-

ning systems will deliver sustainable outcomes.

Finally, the fish that more than 50 local communi-

ties in Serbia and over 300 communities in Central

and Eastern Europe have caught during the last decade

seem to have had an effect. Most of those communi-

ties have continued working for the well-being of their

citizens. They have chosen their development paths

and LSDPDs have helped them to acknowledge what a

community has and needs, and what will be the long-

term consequences of short-term choices identified in

environmental planning processes.

A nice end to the story – but what about James

Lovelock, one might ask. To paraphrase from

Lovelock’s book,

The Revenge of Gaia

, instead of

running for the hills ‘in need of a sustainable retreat,

as it is much too late for sustainable development’,

one might be better advised to run for a Local Energy

Action Plan. Or forget about the fish and start a cattle

farm. The choice is really ours.