EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Environmental cooperation Dogme 2000

Environmental cooperation Dogme 2000

Introduction

Dogme 2000 is a very useful and innovative tool. The concept of setting up concrete measures, committing politicians, involving other institutions and local actors gives it a lot of advantages, which have already been demonstrated.

Problem

Dogme 2000 has not been directly influenced of initiated by national or international regulation. Dogme 2000 is based on former local (municipal) policies and initiatives on sustainability, which have often been based on individual projects; the aim of Dogme is to make sustainability an ongoing policy.

The participating municipalities have very different contexts (political, cultural, environmental, economic), which requires an openness in the Dogme concept. Amongst the Dogme participants there were different motivations for joining the network, as well as the network has different functions in the municipality:

For Albertslund, Dogme is the foreign-policy of the municipalitys environmental policy. They already have policies on the different Dogmes, but see the Dogmenetwork as a way of strengthening environmental policies in general, and a way to collaborate with other municipalities (interview with officer, Albertslund);
For Copenhagen and Ballerup, Dogme functions as an umbrella for the different environmental initiatives and policies in the municipality. For Copenhagen, the political commitment was also a way of making the environmental policy more efficient (officer, Copenhagen);
For Herning and Fredericia, Dogme is an environmental initiative, parallel to others in the municipality. For Herning it was also a chance to participate in a network with larger municipalities, in contrast to the other networks, where they were always the largest municipality (interview with officer, Herning);
Also for the other municipalities, Albertslund and Copenhagen were seen as attractive partners in a network on sustainable development;
For all the municipalities, Dogme is seen as a way to maintain and emphasise an image as a green municipality.

Description

The Dogme 2000-network is a concept of municipal cooperation on sustainable urban development, based on measurable goals, indicators, external annual auditing of the progress, political commitment, and on local embedding of environmental initiatives (amongst residents and enterprises).

The network has at the moment seven members: the municipalities of Albertslund, Copenhagen, Ballerup, Herning, Fredericia, Kolding and Malmø. Dogme has proved to a very fruitful way of making environmental progress, especially by involving other actors in the initiatives, and the awareness of embedding the concept and goals of Dogme locally.

The objectives of Dogme is formulated in 3 Dogmas:

All human impacts on the environment must be measured;
A plan for environmental improvements has to be prepared;
The Dogme 2000 must be embedded locally. This only concerns the environmental aspects of sustainability.

As an urban sustainable policy, Dogme in principle covers all sectors. Dogme was initiated in 2000, and is ongoing. The participating municipalities are financing Dogme themselves (payment depends on size the municipality). In principle, all sectors are involved (energy, waste, water/sewage, green/blue, building and planning).

Approach

Information and dissemination of the goals in Dogme is a main challenge. A number of different methods are used, for instance:

Directly information to the departments and the institutions in the municipality about Dogme and the goals (for instance EMAScertification, or goals on organic food);
Interviewing the departments about their contribution to Dogme;
Establishing green networks with the local enterprises, and different initiatives to involve local residents and actors in neighbourhoods. The use of story-telling is seen as a way to achieve this. Therefore, a consultant has been hired to outline a communication strategy for the network, to maximise the communication of the good stories and message in Dogme.

It is crucial for Dogme to become well known in the municipal administration, as a way to embed the concept as a general policy on the municipality. The politicians needs success-stories to justify that the municipality is spending money and resources at Dogme, and local stakeholders need to be aware of Dogme as a policy in the municipality.

Results

A main problem is that the number of members in Dogme is small; therefore, recruiting new members is a major challenge (interview with Mayor, Copenhagen). The political commitment, which gives public awareness, lack of clear SD definitions and benchmarks, communication and too much power to the initiatives in Dogme, also might keep some municipalities away from joining the network. As an officer points out: "It takes political courage to be able to say open in public, we can do better, and to admit that things are not going well on all points".

Another barrier is the Danish structure-reform. It will reduce the number of municipalities, and transfer tasks from the counties to the municipalities. Due to this reform, which will take place from 2007, the municipalities are reluctant to commit themselves to new initiatives, such as Dogme 2000.

There is a large potential for using the tool. At the moment there are other municipalities participating as observers (3-4 municipalities), with the intention of joining the network at later stages. However, the potential should over time be larger. The barriers are, as mentioned before, that it requires ambitions and openness in the political system.

For international transferability this is also the case. Mayors in other European cities have been rather scared by the openness in the external audit of Dogme, which might reveal a lack of progress. Also, there are organisational and legal differences, for instance related to EMAS-certification of cities: In many cities in other European countries (especially in the UK), the local authorities typically do not own schools, institutions, infrastructure services etc., which instead have been outsourced or privatised. This makes the certification quite different (and easier) compared to municipalities who are directly responsible for such services.

Resources used

The charge for participating in Dogme 2000 depends on the size of the municipality: 55.000 Dkr. for municipalities with 15.000 to 100.000 inhabitants; 110.000 Dkr. for municipalities with more than 100.000 inhabitants.

Contact info

Municipality of Ballerup
Karin Langendorf, tel. 0045 44 77 22 96

Project start date

01/01/2000

Links

More information on the Municipality of Ballerup More information on Dogme 2000 (in Danish only)

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords

Urban environment

Institutional characteristics
Local Authority