The opportunities and challenges for local environmental policy and action in the UK

In this chapter we consider Local Agenda 21 in the UK and examine how the process has unfolded. Our particular concern is to ask whether LA21 may be seen as a fruitful process, likely to deliver a greater local awareness and understanding of sustainable development issues, and an increased capacity to respond to environmental problems, or whether it may be judged as simply another initiative, high profile at present, but inevitably doomed to insignificance and obscurity.