Introduction

The kind of change required by sustainability implicates each community, each household, each individual. Successful solutions to problems at this level of society will need to be rooted in the cultural specificity of the town or region if the people are to be supportive of and involved in such change.

Source: UNESCO - EPD (1997) Educating for a Sustainable Future, paragraph 114.

In the end, sustainable development will be made at the local community level. All the other changes in favour of sustainability - by business, by national governments and by international agencies - help create the conditions that facilitate action for sustainable development at the local level by individuals, families, schools, hospitals, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

As a result, all over the world people are working together to build a sustainable future at the local level. The focus of this module is on the actions being taken by local governments and their citizens to make their communities sustainable. These actions are the local community version of Agenda 21 and, thus, are called Local Agenda 21 initiatives.

The urban focus of this module complements the focus on rural communities in other modules, e.g. Module 8 on local village health projects and Module 15 on sustainable agriculture.

The module provides examples of ways in which communities around the world are addressing local problems such as poverty and loneliness, unemployment and economic decline, pollution and traffic congestion. This focus on solutions helps establish several principles for sustainable community building that can be integrated into educational programmes.

Objectives

	To appreciate the scale of urbanisation around the world and the opportunities and problems that this brings;
	To identify characteristics of a sustainable community and principles of sustainable community development;
	To use these characteristics and principles to analyse case studies of sustainable community development around the world; and
	To recognise the contributions of Local Agenda 21 Planning to sustainable community development and local citizenship.

Activities

References

Internet Sites

Credits

This module was written for UNESCO by John Fien and Clayton White, in part, utilises resources of the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives and a teaching module on Sustainable Communities prepared by World Resources Institute.