1. Activity
The COLGEI is the acronym of the COalition of Local Governments for Environment Initiative. The COLGEI has held a national conference once per year since 1992, which has every time had a large attendance of about 1000 persons. It is the conspicuous feature that the heads of local governments themselves participate in the discussions in subcommittees with local government officers, local assemblypersons, NGO members and so on. Therefore, the conference makes it possible to build up vast information and human networks related to the local environment policies.
Although main members of the COLGEI are from the local governments, the number of which is now about 60, there are no members of secretariat belonging to any local governments. Some of them are university faculties, some are graduate school students, and others are exclusive staff. A member fee is 50,000 yen (about 400 dollars/350 Euro) per a year.
The COLGEI set the target in common with the members which consists of nine fields. The degree of the target achievement of each member government is grasped every year and it is compiled as an annual report. Moreover, in order to support the promotion of policies for target achievement, some collaborative projects are in process by the local governments and the COLGEI staff.
＜Organization chart of COLGEI＞
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Common target of COLGEI 1. Earth environment: contributing to global warming prevention by performing energy saving and introducing renewable energy. The index is used to indicate the degree of achievement [CO2 emissions of the whole area by power consumption, an amount of energy consumption] 2. Air environment: preventing air pollution in order to maintain civic health by converting to an eco-friendly means of transportation. [Rate of assignment of the means of transportation to cars (only in cities)] 3. Water environment: preventing and improving water quality by maintaining and recovering clean waterside environment. [Rate of the drainage waste from the household] 4. Natural environment and water cycles: Preserving and planting forest trees, and preserving and recovering natural water cycles. Moreover, stimulating industries which utilize natural resources while maintaining the public-benefit-function which forests and farmland have. [Environmental preservation functions such as a ratio of green tracts of lands to abandoned cultivated lands, air purification functions, flood prevention functions, soil corrosion prevention functions] 5. Wastes and resources: reducing the quantity of wastes and advancing effective use of resources and circulation use. [The quantity of waste incineration per person, a rate of reclamation, a rate of recycling] 6. Toxic substances: controlling the use of materials which generate toxic substances [Content such as materials unsuitable for combustion in incineration garbage] 7. Environment management: establishing the structure of both promotion and evaluation of comprehensive environmental administration. [The situations of the first stage after introducing environmental management tools, such as the Basic Environment Plan and ISO 14001] 8. Environmental education: deepening the public concerns and understanding about the environment, which stimulates individual activities for the environmental preservation [The number of environmental study in schools, environmental study lectures in public halls, the number of participants] 9. Citizen participation in municipal affairs: Encouraging citizen to participate in the environment policy process and the community improvement led by residents [The number of Citizen attendances at committees and partnership organizations concerning environmental policies] |
2. What is Ecocity? Definition of Ecocity (by COLGEI)
In Ecocity, the view of environmental priority should be taken into considerate in all policy fields. That is, every local policy should be formulated, implemented and evaluated from an environmental point of view. Environmental priority or environmental point of view means to conserve environment and to reduce the pressure of environment. Although this definition was shown for the first time in around 1991, the language of "Ecocity" has often been used recently.
We propose three major characters of Ecocity: environment action, environment management, and environment governance. Each character consists of three steps (Cf. Table 1). In each character, the third step is better than the second step, and the second is better than the first.
Table 1 Three major characters of Ecocity (by COLGEI)
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Environment action |
(1) Eco-office (in public institutions) e.g. paper, energy, waste etc. |
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(2) Environmentally sound public enterprises |
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(3) Policies for environmentally sound infrastructures and social system |
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Environment management |
(1) Environmentally conscious administration |
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(2) Check and action mechanism |
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(3) Objective policy evaluation mechanism |
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Environment governance |
(1) Actively open information and policy process related to environment |
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(2) Citizen participation in environment policy/project process |
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(3) Collaborative policy process |
Firstly, “Environment action” starts with carrying out "Eco-office" movement in public institutions, such as paper use reduction by copying both sides of papers in a work place, and switching off equipment in an idling situation, in other words, the energy consumption and waste control in public works.
When public enterprises such as a road and public facility construction are implemented, it is important to take account of environmental considerations, such as positive use of reproduction materials and the protection of nature. It advances one step further, and the infrastructure maintenance and the development of social systems are called for to guide the actions of the citizens or business in an area to eco-friendly.
Secondly, Ecocity performs comprehensive and objective policy planning in alignment with the view of environmental management. It is necessary to start with establishment of the management cycle of an individual project first of all, and to progress to comprehensive and systematic policy planning and establishment of the management cycle of the whole policy.
If a traffic policy is taken for an example, it will position a traffic policy as an environmental measure first, setting up the target based on the relation between traffic and air environment. In addition, it is necessary to select adequate measure for target achievement, for example, maintenance of park-and-ride facility and bicycle way, to examine the situations of actual implementation and target achievement, and to announce the check result to the public. In that case, objective evaluation measures, such as a benchmark, need to be introduced.
Thirdly, “Eco governance” means determining and implementing a policy by partnership or collaboration with a citizen and a business.
Not to mention the citizen participation in the implementation stage of an individual project, such as park and river managements, it is also essential that the citizens participate in the planning process of a policy. Furthermore, policy check work, such as a setup of environmental auditing and the desirable environmental images by the citizens, and the citizen participation to a whole policy process are becoming indispensable.
Although the above three characters can be said also as the requirements for an Ecocity so to speak, it is desired not only to fulfill all requirements, but also to cope with sufficient balance about three requirements.
(C) 2000-2006 The Coalition of Local Government for Environmental Initiative, Japan.
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