ABSTRACT
The Rio plan of action, Agenda 21, and the principle of sustainable development which underlies it, have been gradually introduced into Finland during the first half of the 1990’s. At the local level, similar ideas to those expressed in Rio were initiated at an earlier date (in the so-called 4eco-municipality program’), but, in general, the idea of a Local Agenda 21 (LA21) did not catch on prior to the autumn of 1996. Since then, there has been more widespread and increasingly effective LA21 activity. The enactment of sustainable development, and specifically LA21, has nonetheless encountered problems of interpretation and has had to fight for priority.
