Estratègies per al desenvolupament sostenible - Generalitat de ...

and national scale it will require participatory and transversal institutions andmechanisms of integration that commit governments, civil society and the privatesector in the development of outlooks, plans and decisions. All these agents mustbe more open and responsible for their actions. All these factors require a strategicapproach.Many recently attempted strategies have failed for one of the following reasons:They were not intended to and were not able to be integrated into the planningsystem currently operative; they worked in isolation and were of secondaryimportance and did not attain the required efficiency. A strategy of sustainabledevelopment is not just another strategy or plan, but an area and a process capableof integrating and of being integrated into existing strategies and plans.Many were not true strategies but were lists (often very well drawn up) of desiresthat lacked the necessary specification of strategic objectives, duly formulatedgoals, and specific well-committed and budgeted action. A strategy is not a listof everything that has to be done, but is rather a selection of objectives, goals andactions, chosen from those that are possible. It is not a technical but a truly politicalplan to which technicians may contribute.Many were drawn up on a basis of insufficient participation. They were unable tocommit the private sector and the social organisations that were necessary toachieve each objective and experienced that governmental action alone is notenough.Others failed because they did not support existing processes, strategies andcapacities, but were an attempt to start something different and new withoutconsideration for existing forces and capacities.Being strategic means setting forth an outlook by means of a dynamic, effective andconsensual process; it means establishing objectives and identifying the means toachieve them, organising monitoring and evaluation and making the whole processa system of learning. Being strategic requires an understanding of the integratednature of sustainable development, yet not undertaking a commitment to a completeseries of actions with the assumption they all may be performed at once. The keylies in knowing how to find all the openings that enable steps forward to be takentowards sustainability. For all these reasons, a strategic approach to sustainabledevelopment involves new ways of thinking and of working. It particularly requires:131