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Project Summary Project Description Application of Tools Opinion of Tools Decision making process Contact Details

Decision making process

Name of the case study
Sustainable Development Strategy and Action Plan, Velingrad Municipality

Decision making process - stages
Actors involved in the decision-making process:
The Municipality, public organisations and NGOs, private business

Stages:
• Through the Capacity 21 Programme the community stakeholders (divided in community working groups) identified their community´s sustainable development priorities and discussed a total of 32 possible projects (later included as a basis for the Action plan within the SDS - from fitting public buses with catalytic converters to reduce air pollution to heating local schools with water from the hot springs to save energy;
• Elaboration of the Municipal SDS by the expert team based on the decisions made by the community discussions;
• Public discussion of the final SDS;
• Official approval of Municipal SDS by the Municipal Council.

Decision making process - levels
The first three decision making stages (see the listed items outlined in the Decision making stages) are connected to the expert level, while the last one relates to the political level

Decision making process - sources of information
During the elaboration of SDS different sources of information were used from:
• National Statistical Institute - concerning demographic characteristics of the population, labour force, employment in Bulgaria and the target municipality for the 1985-1999 period;
• Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry - regarding cultivation and average yields, registered farmers, crops specialisation, etc.;
• National Employment Service – information about unemployment in Bulgaria and in Velingrad municipality
• Public discussions were organised before the elaboration of SDS;
Survey of vulnerable groups, stakeholders, companies and agricultural producers in the municipality.

Decision making process - who are the decision makers
Velingrad Municipality and the Municipal Council

Decision making process - who made the final decision for project implementation
The Municipal Council made the final political decision for the SDS implementation and for Local Agenda 21 approval.


Name of tool
Set of Local Sustainability Indicators (LSI)

Decision making process - tools in decision-making process
The set of indicators is supposed to evaluate the Action Plan results. Although many of the actions planned have been partially or fully realised, the Municipality found it difficult to evaluate the results by the indicator set. Some of the indicators (predominantly sector-specific ones: percentage of green areas, water consumption per household, number of unemployed people, etc.) have been traditionally implemented even before the creation of the SDS and were considered useful for including in LSI. However it was obviously difficult to introduce a more holistic approach of tracing the complexity of links between different outcomes as it required time and resource consuming procedures of data collecting (not affordable under the current economic situation).

A Municipal Environmental Department was created as a result of the project. A Local Commission for Sustainable Development was also created at the Municipal Council to serve as an expert body. It is up to date responsible for monitoring the ongoing implementation of the Local Agenda 21 and for updating Action Plans to ensure the agenda’s implementation. Some of the members of this local commission are from the local government administration.

No qualitative indicators are included by now in the indicator set. All 48 indicators are quantitative and explanations are set for the implementation of the exact parameters in each of them. Most indicators had been already used in practice or were set in Bulgarian National Standard as relevant parameters in the evaluation of specific processes. Where no measurement had been made up to the starting moment of the Action Plan implementation, the initial measured value of the indicator was taken as a basic reference point.


Decision making process - how was the information for the dmp disseminated
The information dissemination about the decisions made was accomplished by the Municipality and the NGOs participating in the process. The preferable sources were seminars, local mass media and recently Internet. Nowadays the Business and Information Centre in Velingrad is a place where citizens are informed about all the activities undertaken and decisions made by the Municipality.

Decision making process - how was the public involved
Several working meetings were held, local round tables, seminars and public discussions were organised to present the goals and tasks of the "Capacity 21" Program and to build trust and partnership with the representatives of the Municipality. The policy implementation of the sustainability idea at the community level was considered successful.

Decision making process - was there public discussion over the project
The public discussions in the initial stage of the SDS elaboration provoked a public forum for sustainable development. A local task force was created including representatives of all interested groups (municipal administration, NGOs, private business, media, young people, etc.).

What tools were used to assess sustainability?

Set of Local Sustainability Indicators (LSI)

More information

Click here for a full description (pdf)