ABSTRACT
It is widely acknowledged and sufficiently documented by now that the achievement of sustainable development, the simultaneous satisfaction of social, economic and environmental goals, requires integration. Policy integration, specifically, figures prominently as policies impinge on interlinked and interdependent human activities, environmental resources, and human-environment relationships. Ordinary people, engaging in activities to satisfy their needs, and public and private sector administrators and managers, carrying out tasks to meet their organizational mandates and achieve collectively agreed goals, combine various means which originate in, or are influenced in some way by, numerous policies. In this process, laypersons and managers alike, intentionally or unwittingly, are actively practicing, or attempt to practice, policy integration within concrete geographic units, as their goals cannot be achieved, to whatsoever extent, if the policy-derived means are at conflict with one another within these units.1 Frequently also, the use of policy-related means (e.g. subsidies) to achieve local goals causes impacts (pollution, competition, migration, etc.) elsewhere, hindering or facilitating the achievement of local goals in other places. The unending list of examples suggests that the test bed of the lack of policy integration is implementation on the ground. Only then all stakeholders and the resources affected are revealed, conflicts arise and solutions are sought (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1992). The quest naturally arises then that, when policies are conceived and formulated at higher levels, they should be integrated on a spatial basis to make a genuine contribution to local or regional sustainable development.
