ABSTRACT
Local government has been charged with the delivery of many sustainable development policy goals. This chapter focuses on one local authority’s response to the sustainable development challenge by examining a specific initiative — The Sustainable Southwark Members Initiative (SSMI), introduced to promote sustainable development action at a ward level and requiring the commitment and support of local elected Members. It explore, in respect to SSMI and sustainable development, issues around levels of understanding, “greening the greens”, lay knowledge, capacity building, local politics, and institutional barriers. The SSMI research highlighted several examples of obstacles to the mainstreaming of sustainable development into local politics. There is widespread support for the view that sustainable development will only be achieved at the local authority level by some form of internal reorganisation and refocusing of policy making. The chapter concludes by assessing the extent to which sustainable development is a mainstream policy goal at the local political level.
