Recommendations
for future strategic actions
The central government should develop
new regulation to incorporate SD policies across government ensuring strong,
clear and steady message on SD, producing a ‘practical guide’ or ‘toolkit’ ( SDC
2012,16) to link SD to local government. It would also help launch a cross-
govt. communication group on SD to ‘exchange ideas and practices’ and improve
campaigning to ‘sell SD to local government’ (SDC 2006, 16).
All concerned departments must reflect
how KPIs and other targets can be restructured and bonded across government to
help bring the Govt.’s SD goals into reality; and independent organizations (such
as Australian Local government Association and Sustainable Development
Commission and the like in different countries) need to consider how the SD
processes best take into account the crucial issues incorporating SD into major
policies and make the best communications with local governments.
The relevant departments should examine
the key policies to measure how far SD is cohesive with them and analyze how
they can work with local government to improve ‘new SD policy initiatives’ (SDC
2006, 17). Further, collecting and sharing good practice, contact with local
government officials and councilors, coordination with central government
officials will be of great help.
It is accepted that both the central
and the local governments lack necessary skills and knowledge. The national
government must think of capacity building of ‘policy officials’ and
implementing officials at all levels of governments to address the SD issues
particularly connected to LG. It is felt that government should provide ‘SD-proofing/ local government –proofing’
training to ‘high -level officials’ ( SDC 2006,13) to increase consciousness
and understanding of SD .
Further, it is required that local
government must be involved from the very beginning of the SD policy process
with necessary ‘communication
materials’ (SDC 2006, 14). We also need to improve ‘feedback mechanisms’ and
‘two –way dialogue mechanism’ , either it be through Local Government
Associations or through national
government secretariat or a ‘new forum’
(SDC 2006,14)to facilitate dialogues between different levels of
government. It would help resolution of conflicts arisen on the SD policy issue
shortly.
In
addition, it is required build ‘local government practitioner pools’ to reach
the SD policy issue at desired position because practitioners are capable to
bounce the ideas off when it is discarded by the opponents ( SDC 2006,14).
It is imperative to have some collaboration
between the state /central government and the
Local Government Associations( LGAs);and
the community people
should participate in
decision-making and implementation of sustainability policies ; and the
LGAs must be given autonomy to such a level that they can choose development projects for their communities.
Conclusion
Therefore,
it can be said that there is a significant role for the local government in
promising sustainable consumption, encouraging conversion to sustainable
lifestyles, finding sustainable source of revenues and means of support, and
improving the present situation of environment. The challenges that may appear
while making positive change need more’ engagement with the local government
through the channel of distributed governance’ ( Bakshi 2012,14) .
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