Η άτυπη περιβαλλοντική εκπαίδευση στην τοπική ατζέντα 21: η περίπτωση του Δήμου Αμαρουσίου, Νομού Αττικής

Abstract

In 1992, a very important year for the environment, world leaders at the UN Conference on Environment and Development adopted a global plan of action for sustainable development, called Agenda 21. Agenda 21 included Local Agenda 21, or LA21, a smaller plan of action, which was nothing less than a “call to local governments” (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2002) to develop Local Plans of Environmental Action (Bullard. 1998-Mercer & Jotkowitz, 2000, Local Agenda 21-Greece, 2006). Such a LA21 developed and applied in some municipalities of Greece the most important of which were Marousi and Chalandri. This research will deal with the first one and its objective is to investigate the opinions that hold both local citizens and municipal servants on LA21 potential to solve greek environmental problems and to evaluate LA21 implemenation and progress. We used the method of questionnaire on a samble of 300 people to investigate the above crtitical research question; 100 of them are municipal servants and the rest 200 local citizens. For the statistical analysis of research data were used both descriptive means and factor analysis. Some key findins include the following points: - During LA21 implementation the municipality cooperated with local citizens, Non- Government Organizations, local stakeholder groups and other municipalities. - Local citizens participated in every single step of LA21 implementation both in debates on recycling and in adults seminars on Environmental Education. Were seen three dimensions of Public Participation: participation in appropriate environmental information, participation with comments and feedback participation. - Local citizens had a very positive and quite satisfying participation in LA21 implementation and hold the opinion that the most important result of their participation process was the better relations between them and municipality itself. - Demography traits contibuted a little in the amount and quality of public participation, but we can‟t completely deny their role in it. - Informal Environmental Education, as a crucial LA21 component, was revealed to be a main enhancing factor of public participation. Having a thorough examination of this research we must put an emphasis on the fact that Marousi Municipality faced a major contemporary environmental challenge and reacted satisfactory. But now the important thing is to take andvantage of its sucess and to continue to improve its public participation methods in order to gain more and better environmental public participation.