ABSTRACT
The major purpose of the studies here presented has been to grasp, in a systematic way, the steps taken in eight European countries to implement Chapter 28 of Agenda 21. The goal has been to report on the most salient aspects of the implementation process within a set of common descriptive and evaluative categories. As the reader will now fully understand, it has not been easy to maintain a distinction between these two dimensions. To describe, one must define and delimit – and therein lie the first steps towards evaluation. As a research network, we have developed an initial set of distinctions and categories (as set forth in the Introduction), the aim of which has been to guide our common reporting effort. We have maintained that an implementation of the UNCED-Rio program for change is best understood as a potential transition across four stages of environment-and-development policy. These stages can now be made more explicit as follows:
Pre-environmentalpolicy: ‘Business as usual’, with no active attempts to ameliorate the negative environment-development consequences of industrialism and open-ended materialism;
Environmental policy: With an emphasis on the conservation of nature and technological, ‘end-of-pipe’ solutions to environmental damage;
Sustainable-development policy: With direct or implied reference to the Brundtland Report and a greater emphasis on both the underlying socio-economic causes of environmental damage and the interdependence between environment and development in a North-South perspective;
UNCED policy: With direct reference to the values and goals of the Rio documents – in this particular case Chapter 28 of Agenda 21.
