University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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manufacturing industries and tangible products, while public organisations usually
neglect and/or omit their own environmental problems, excluding themselves from
the scope of strategic initiatives. This is important, since it is understood that public
organisations must respond to social needs not covered by the private sector. Like
any other organisation, public services should have environmental objectives, goals
and targets (Ramos et al., 2007a).
Sustainable development requires an integrated approach. Thus, national and
regional authorities should assist municipalities in achieving more integrated
management at the local level. Integrated approaches include long-term strategic
visions and policies for linking different administrative levels to ensure consistency.
For this, strategic management of the environmental impacts of all activities in the
area where local authority policy operates should be guaranteed. The approach
should be built up through cooperation between the various departments and sectors
and include meetings with all stakeholders and the integration of local, regional and
national policies (European Commission, 2007). The key agency for initiating
change is local government itself and, as the history of Local Agenda (LA21) in
Europe over the last decade has clearly shown, very little would have happened
without the energy, leadership and commitment of local government politicians and
officials (Evans & Theobald, 2001, 2003 fide Evans et al., 2006).
The public sector has frequently been left out in research work on environmental
integration in the different economic activities. This fact can be justified in part by
the natural attention that is given to sectors with a longer/greater history of
environmental impacts, e.g. industry, agriculture and transport.
The main goal of this research was to identify the environmental profile of local
public administration, through an analysis of the environmental management
practices in Portuguese municipalities. Another goal of this research was to assess
the Portuguese local public sector’s environmental performance through an index, as
an initial step towards evaluating its environmental performance at national level, in
a simplified and useful manner. This tool was used to help local decision-makers
understand the sector’s environmental signals. The index measures the extent to
which a variety of environmental practices have been adopted.
This paper, likewise, assesses the extent to which a variety of environmental issues
and practices have been adopted in this sector but, this time, on the basis of selfassessment
by the local public services. These environmental issues and practices
include the appointment of a designated environmental professional responsible for
environmental issues, environmental training for personnel, knowledge of
Environmental Management System (EMS) implementation, environmental
programmes, environmental reporting, environmental cooperation with stakeholders,
and environmental standards for suppliers, among others.