The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide - Democrats Against UN ...

The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide
STEP 7.
Promote partnerships for implementation.
4.2.1 DEFINE THE ACTION-PLANNING PROCESS
The action-planning process begins during the process of community-based issue analysis. An effectively organized issue analysis
process will identify both key goals and the different strategies available for achieving these goals. The issue analysis process also
will establish a broad group of informed stakeholders and organize them into working groups which can now be used to develop
Action Plan proposals.
Nevertheless, before these stakeholders and working groups begin to develop the Action Plan it is important to agree upon the
contents to be included in the Action Plan and the procedures for negotiating agreements on goals, targets, and implementation
strategies.
Participation of Stakeholders and the Public
Continued stakeholder participation in the finalization of an Action Plan is necessary to build a constituency of institutions and
individuals who are committed to implementation of the plan. Participation should be maximized within the constraints of time and
resources. Every effort should be made to include stakeholders who have an identified interest in the relevant action or service area.
Short of participation, a review process should be designed to obtain comments on draft action plan proposals and documents.
However, it needs to be recognized that consultation and review is not a substitute for public participation and will not create the
same sense of ownership and commitment to the final Action Plan.
Every effort should be made to obtain a commitment from municipal and other government authorities that the
recommendations of the strategic Action Plan will be integrated and applied in existing formal planning processes.
Linkage with Existing Formal and/or Statutory Plans
Every effort should be made to obtain a commitment from municipal and other government authorities that the conclusions and
recommendations of the strategic Action Plan will be integrated and applied in existing formal planning processes such as annual
budgeting, general plan reviews, and urban development plans. If these assurances cannot be obtained, it is all the more important to
have extensive stakeholder participation in action planning, so that non-governmental stakeholders will be fully committed to the
Action Plan even if governmental institutions are non-committal.
Use of Issue Analysis Information in the Planning Effort
The planning process should permit the participating stakeholders to make full use of the information gathered through communitybased
issue analysis. This information will need to be presented in different ways and at different levels of complexity, depending
upon the backgrounds of participants. One role that can be played by stakeholder representatives is to prepare and disseminate this
information to their constituencies. The education of various stakeholder constituencies about conditions is an important preparatory
step in obtaining consensus and commitment to Action Plan targets, recommendations, and proposals.
Ranking and Priority Setting
Having considered information and analyzed the problems, the community may wish to select a few issues that will be given priority
attention in the Action Plan. This will require the design and implementation of a ranking and priority-setting exercise as part of the
action-planning process. The first step in priority setting is to decide which criteria will be used for ranking problems. Once criteria
are established, different problems must be ranked by the participants. Ranking methods can range from negotiating consensus and
voting, to the use of matrices and mathematical formulas. Force field analysis is a participatory, priority-setting method that uses a
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