Common Evaluation Instruments in European Municipal Networks: the Necessary Role of Environmental Education Indicators in Local Sustainability

Author(s):

Abigail López Alcarria(submitting)José Gutiérrez Pérez(presenting)Maria de fatima Poza vilches(presenting)Rodríguez Clemente

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 11 C, Assessment Policies and Evaluation Instruments

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-20

17:15-18:45

Room:

FCT - Seminario 2

Chair:

Michael Pfeifer

Contribution

This paper presents a cases study focused on the management networks of municipal sustainability in Europe. We present a partial selection of recent initiatives that have stimulated the constitution of pro-environmental networks in the European municipal environment.
We perform a generic revision of regulations that maintain an fund such networks to identify the achievements by means of evidences exposed by the research and the systematic evaluation of shared indicators.
The establishment of European networks should build discussion and reflection spaces as well as communication and education lines that allow proposals of change and improvement of local reality. After the 1992 Río Summit, we can highlight different events and actuations such as the V and VI European Program of Environmental Action (1993 and 2002), or the I, II, III, IV and V European Conference of Sustainable Cities (1994, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2007) that turn around the improvement of socio environmental quality at European level to achieve sustainable development.
Setting common action guidelines is the key to defining intervention strategies that favor the consolidation of local sustainability networks. Among the objectives of this intervention framework, we should include the promotion of educational processes and the consolidation of platforms of citizen participation oriented to municipal decision making.
The objectives of this research are as follows: carrying out a cases study; validating a system of categories from the analysis of content of studied cases; identifying the network typologies attending to the considered categories; establishing a triple triangulation system (sources, instruments and contexts) that favors the establishment of quality criteria and indicators for the creation of pro-environmental networks and participative municipal management.
Starting from the aforementioned objectives, the following research questions arise: What is the predominant management model of studied networks? Do they establish any autonomous or private or public funding sources? What participation process do they develop? Do they establish systems of indicators that guarantee the quality of the networks? In what kind of actuation environments are the networks developed? Who integrate the driving force group of these networks?
Finally, we demand a more intense common effort in favor of construction of instruments, a well-founded criteria and tracking indicators of the network work in municipalities, taking as an example various work network cases that have been applied in Europe in the past decade.

Method

The methodological design of the present research can be considered as a qualitative approach based on the well known cases study methodology supported by analysis strategies founded in content analysis of initiatives of stimulation of pro-environmental networks in municipal environments. Taking as a sample 5 European municipal sustainability management networks, we have elaborated a system of empirical categories that are useful to evaluate and monitor the network work, by means of a deductive process of indicators used by the theoretical models found in the revised bibliography, and an inductive process that starts from the obtained results in the research itself. On the other hand, with Rodríguez and Gutiérrez (2005), we can distinguish in the deployment of the present work a clear process of triangulation. In this case, we perform a multiple tridimensional triangulation based on three triangulation points (sources, instruments and contexts) that, in turn, are materialized in different confrontation levels. The goal of this complex triangulation process is to provide legitimacy to the obtained results (triangulation as a convergence process).

Expected Outcomes

From the carried out research, we can state the following aspects. - During the past two decades, a large number of networks have proliferated in Europe concerned by the establishment of citizen participation in municipal governments. This municipal participation is connected to environmental decision making in the pursuit of government models and lifestyles that are more coherent and respectful with environment. - There exist three basic modalities that serve as a reference to categorize the kind of processes of participation of networks related to environmental decision making and implementation of evaluation and tracking indicators: the descending approach (Top-down), the ascending approach (Bottom-up), and a third one that we have named "Mixed Approach". - The most used systems of indicators in the environmental management and local sustainability environment (PER Model; FER Model; FPEIR Model, MFQ Model) have offered to the networks a set of instruments of distinct nature to support their decisions and establish planning and tracking strategies of their achievements through time. - We can distinguish three large groups of countries that advance at different velocities in the European context in relation to the implementation of the local Agenda 21.

References

Agencia Europea De Medio Ambiente (2000). Environmental signals 2000: European Environment Agency regular indicator report. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of European Communities. Alberich Nistal, T. (2004). Guía Fácil de la participación ciudadana. Manual de gestión para el fomento de la participación ciudadana en ayuntamientos y asociaciones. Blanco, I. y Gomá R. (COORDS) (2002). Gobiernos locales y redes participativas. Barcelona: Ariel. Evans, B., Joas, Sundback, S., & Theobald, k. (2006). Governing local sustainability, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 49(6), pp. 849-867. Fraser, E., Dougill, A., Mabee, W., Reed, M. & MacAlpine, P. (2006). Bottom-up or Top-down: analysis of participatory processes for sustainable indicator identification as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable environmental management, Journal of Environmental Management 78 (2) 114-127. Hernández Aja, A. (2003). Informe sobre los indicadores locales de sostenibilidad utilizados por los municipios españoles firmantes de la Carta de Aalborg. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento. Gutiérrez Perez, J. & Poza, F. (2012). Action Research & Local Agenda 21: Setting up participatory municipal environmental plan in a cluster of rural villages. The International Journal Of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (awaiting publication). Hewitt, N. (1998). Guía europea para la planificación de las Agendas 21 Locales. ICLEI. País Vasco: Bakeaz. Poza Vilches, M.F y Gutiérrez Pérez, J. (2008). Modelo de investigación-acción participativa en la gestión sostenible de municipios rurales: las agendas 21 locales como estrategia para la educación ambiental. Praksis- Revista Do Ichla. Año 5. Vol. 1, Nº 2, pp. 51 – 60. Rodríguez Sabiote, C., Pozo Llorente, T., Gutiérrez Pérez, J. (2006). La triangulación analítica como recurso para la validación de estudios de encuesta recurrentes e investigaciones de réplica en Educación Superior. Relieve, v. 12, n. 2. Schuschny, A. y Soto H. (2009). Guía metodológica. Diseño de indicadores compuestos de desarrollo sostenible. Santiago de Chile: Naciones Unidas LC/W.255

Author Information

Abigail López Alcarria (submitting)

Universidad de Granada

Departamento de Métodos de Investigación y Diagnóstico en Educación

Granada

José Gutiérrez Pérez (presenting)

Universidad de Granada, Spain

Maria de fatima Poza vilches (presenting)

UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA. FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN

MÉTODOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DIAGNÓSTICO EN EDUCACIÓN

GRANADA

Rodríguez Clemente

UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA

METODOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DIAGNOSTICO EN EDUCACIÓN