This involves recognising the interaction and interdependence of all County Council activities, social, economic, cultural and environmental and their implications for the practical objectives ofsustainable development.
To inform the citizens of the county in order to gain public acceptance, cooperation and ownership of new policy directions.
The County Council Development Plan already incorporates many of the objectives of sustainability but our participation in the Healthy Cities Project and subsequent adoption of Local Agenda 21 has brought about a new awareness of the need to:
a. sharpen the focus of many policy areas in order to ensure the primacy of
sustainability objectives;
b. to adopt new policies in particular problem areas e.g. transport and waste
disposal;
c. to educate the public and to engage their acceptance and participation in the
changes needed to improve public health and thequality of life in our County.
Rapid urbanisation of the County has brought many pressures on the environment and has reduced the quality of life for its citizens e.g. urban sprawl, traffic congestion, pollution, crime and street vandalism. It has also increased the demands on the Local Authority for many basic health services - clean water, sewage and waste disposal as well as for other amenity services such as open spaces, public parks and playing facilities.
The Local Authority is not responsible for the provision of direct health care such as hospitals. This service is administered to the entire Dublin area by a Regional Health Board. However, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council services have both direct basic health implications, i.e. the provision of clean water, sewage and waste disposal and also implications for health and well-being in the broader sense through a variety of other activities, cultural, educational and environmental.
The 4 Dublin Local Authorities together with the Regional Health Board joined the Healthy Cities Project in 1989. The Healthy Cities Project is the only forum which brings together the Health Board and the 4 Dublin Local Authorities. This has proved a useful intersectoral forum for cooperation in tackling the common challenge of improving the health of the population and their environment. By undertaking many 'health' projects, the Healthy Cities Project has shown huge potential to demonstrate the link and interaction between the activities of the population and their physical environment and the health impact of the environmental changes brought about by those activities.
As part of the Healthy Cities Project, a City Health Plan is being prepared with each of the 4 Dublin local authorities taking responsibility for the preparation of different aspects of the plan. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown's area of responsibility is 'Urban Ecology'.
Through a new awareness brought about by the involvement in the Healthy Cities Project and by the pressures being exerted on Local Authority services by the rapid urban expansion, it has become clear that Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown has reached a watershed in its development. Health, well-being and quality of life will all deteriorate unless a new sustainable development direction is found. Local Agenda 21 was adopted as the ideal mechanism to deal with inherited problems of the past and of providing a sustainable path for the future.
It must be said that the initial reaction from the public has been disappointing in that the principles underlying Agenda 21 have not captured the public's imagination. Furthermore, there is considerable public resistance to measures specifically designed to strengthen sustainable development - particularly to changes to land use planning and to traffic management and public transport proposals.
However, already the Local Authority has learned some valuable lessons from this initial reaction. The prime lesson has been that our own Local Agenda 21 Plan concentrated too much on abstract principles and failed to put the person at the centre of our efforts towards sustainability. By concentrating on little understood and abstract principles such as sustainability, carrying capacity and eco systems, we failed to communicate that a prime objective of Local Agenda 21 is the health and well-being of individuals, those living within the county and those living outside both the county and country who are affected by our actions. We stressed environmental concern as an end in itself rather than as a means towards increasing our ability to ensure a cleaner safer County capable of delivering a better quality of life to its citizens now and in the future.
In short, we failed to recognise that a prime motivating factor in peoples lives is personal and family health and well-being and that only when it can be demonstrated that this is threatened or fragile are they willing to involve themselves in either personal or community action to remove the threat.
This factor is graphically demonstrated in two recent Agenda 21 initiatives in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. The first was a publicity campaign and leaflet describing the Council's investment in improving the water supply and urging water conservation. Despite the fact that the water scheme represented a multi million pound investment the request for cooperation in water conservation met with almost no public response.
On the other hand a low cost publicity campaign urging the use of pooper-scoopers in our public parks by dog owners produced an overwhelming positive and supportive reaction from the public and attracted enormous media publicity. We attributed these two very different outcomes to the fact that in the latter campaign we highlighted the positive health aspects of public parks in a densely populated urban area and the threat to health by their continued use as dog toilets. In the water campaign on the other hand, the message was about the high costs of providing water supply to the population of the County.
We now believe that a different emphasis highlighting the importance to public health of a potable water supply and the threat to that supply of water wastage might have struck a cord with the public and elicited a very different, more cooperative response. This conclusion is further reinforced by recalling the successful introduction of a ban on the sale of bituminous solid fuel in the Dublin region in 1989. The coal fire was a much loved and long standing Dublin tradition of many generations and yet, once the increasingly negative health impact was demonstrated and understood, its abolition was accepted by the population with surprisingly little resistance.
It is true that certain personal and community changes in behaviour and practice can bring an immediate and easily demonstrated health gain. In other areas where human activities interact with the environment, the consequences may be more complex, less easily understood and may even be remote both in time and place from the original action. In these cases the health link is more difficult to establish in the public consciousness. Nevertheless, there are so many areas where good environmental housekeeping brings immediate and obvious health gains that they would seem to offer great potential for use in introducing sustainability issues to the public at the initial stages of a Local Agenda 21 process. As the other 3 Dublin local authorities embark on their own Local Agendas we hope that they can gain from our experience and begin with small practical demonstration projects such as the Pooper-Scooper Campaign mentioned above or by organising a 'Walk to Workday' or other such projects where the immediate personal health gain is obvious.
If the concepts are not adequately understood, much of the language surrounding the sustainability debate sends negative messages to the average citizen. Expressions such as reducing consumption, limiting development, conserving resources all suggest a reduction in personal freedoms and lifestyles. A more positive presentation of changing practices is required if Agenda 21 is to be genuinely embraced by the public. Since good health in its broadest sense, is a universal aspiration, it can be used to sell the good news and positive gains of sustainability practices to populations who have a fear of and natural reluctance to change.
Tel: + 353 - 129 / 53 033
Fax: + 353 - 129 / 53 033
