University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

Conclusions
516
The overall profile of environmental management implementation in Portuguese
municipalities shows a poor level of adoption of environmental management
practices. These public services should adopt new measures and public policies if
they want to change the current poor figures on the practices implemented.
There is a lack of theoretical and practical knowledge about environmental and
sustainability issues in many municipalities. To attain a higher level of adoption of
environmental management practices, Portuguese municipalities need environmental
training, education and awareness-raising campaigns among their staff, including the
top decision-makers. Various municipalities have no coordinating structure for
environmental matters and this area is frequently handled by other local sectoral
departments or services that do not have the necessary expertise, sensitivity or
resources to deal with environmental and sustainability related issues.
The MEPE index evaluates the extent to which a variety of environmental practices
have been adopted in the local authorities surveyed. This approach tries to help the
local decision-makers understand the local public services' environmental profile.
The MEPE index shows that environmental performance is higher in the larger
municipalities, despite the generally poor profile of the Portuguese municipalities
surveyed.
The comparison between the MEPE index and the municipalities’ self-assessment of
environmental performance showed contradictory results, with consistently
overoptimistic self-assessment. The self-assessment carried out by the municipalities
reveals that they consider their environmental performance as good or medium, in
contrast to the very poor and poor classifications obtained with the index. Their poor
knowledge of their actual environmental and sustainability performance and the fact
that this evaluation is mainly supported by non-mandatory practices could explain, in
part, this optimistic self-view on the part of the municipalities.
Top decision and policy makers in local government must be publicly committed to
ensuring the success of environmental and sustainability initiatives. Without this first
step, it will be particularly hard to achieve better results for organizational
performance, and all the efforts by the technical staff risk being unproductive. A
significant change in local institutional behaviour and policy practices is needed,
with an improvement in the processes of governance, communication and
stakeholder engagement.
National governments should encourage the adoption of voluntary environmental and
sustainability management practices by the local authorities. National and regional
authorities should provide adequate guidance to help municipalities to adopt these
practices – it is worth noting that there is no national guidance on the implementation
and maintenance of LA21, as a key instrument for sustainable polices at local level.
The lack of financial and human resources and the lack of mandatory regulations on
the adoption/maintenance of these environmental measures should not be a major
limitation. Many of these initiatives could easily be adopted, since they need
relatively few resources.