MEASUREMENT OF LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE AND THE ROLES OF PIONEERING MUNICIPALITIES. DR. THOMAS HOPPE DR. FRANS H.J.M. COENEN

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MEASUREMENT OF LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE
AND THE ROLES OF PIONEERING MUNICIPALITIES.DR.
THOMAS HOPPEDR. FRANS H.J.M. COENEN

• TWENTE CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN TECHNOLOGY AND
  SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. CSTM INSTITUTE FOR
  INNOVATION AND GOVERNANCE STUDIES. IGS -
  UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE.
• Conference Europe Matters, Nijmegen, 20 September
  2012
• Workshop European Pioneers in Environmental
  Policy and Sustainability.

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

• Relevance
• Enabling factors for local sustainability
• Performance measurement
• Case study The Netherlands (LSM)
• Lessons from LSM 1999-2009
• Pioneering municipalities
• More information

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RELEVANCE

• Environmental impacts manifest themselves at
  local level.
• Sustainable development requires all government
  levels.
• Local authorities easy accessible government for
  citizens.
• Focus on adoption and implementation of
  sustainable development policies by local
  authorities.
• Local authorities units of observation.
• Lack of research on local sustainability policy
  goal achievement (only on specialized fields).
• Few coordinated attempts to monitor local
  sustainability program performance.
• Few attempts to analyse these data.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS

• 1. What does local sustainability performance
  measurement mean in practice and what can we
  learn from a decade of experiences in the
  Netherlands?
• 2. What is the role of pioneers therein?

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FACTORS ENABLING SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE BY
MUNICIPALITIES
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PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT OF PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS

• Why measure performance?
• What is measured?
• How is measured?
• Who measures?
• What happens with the data collected?

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PERFORMANCE MEASURENT OF PUBLIC BODIES

• Show how well public policy program(s) benefit
  the populace.
• Public officials need (to gain) legitimacy.
• Transparency of policy program(s).
• Accountability of public officials.
• Publication of performance measurement of public
  bodies is considered a democratic right.
• A means to control budget spending by public
  officials.
• Performance measurement as a key element of New
  Public Management (NPM) Running government as a
  business firm.
• Modernization trend of governments during 1990s
  in OECD countries.
• Benchmarking and monitoring. Means to evaluate
  and modify programs.

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CASE THE LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY METRE (LSM)

• Trend diffused from business sector (CSR) and New
  Public Management (NPM).
• Developed in late 1990s following National LA21
  agenda.
• Implemented by NGO COS.
• Data collection since 1999.
• 8 editions so far results reported and publicly
  accessible (www.duurzaamheidsmeter.nl).
• PPP-approach to measure sustainability.
• Sample all Dutch municipalities are contacted.
  Some respond.
• Data collection online survey.
• Objective to encourage municipalities to adopt
  progressive sustainability policies.

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WHAT IS MEASURED?

• Local Sustainability a pluriform construct (PPP)
• People
• Gender
• International Treaties / regional networks
• Social
• Planet
• Climate
• Water
• Nature
• Profit
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Sustainable purchasing
• Example items climate policy (planet)

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LESSONS FROM LSM 1999-2009 (1)

• Variation in response accross years

Variation in performance accross years
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LESSONS FROM LSM 1999-2009 (2)

• Multi-year top-10 rankings

• A few usual suspects.
• Bot also newcomers and pioneers that disappear.

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LESSONS FROM LSM 1999 2009 (3)

• Pioneers remain ahead!

• Size matters.

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LESSONS FROM LSM 1999 2009 (4)

• Laggards catch up!

• Further lessons
• Signs of competitiveness among top performers.
• Some pioneers do not respond any more to LSM, and
  develop their own safe performance measures.
  Strategic behavior. Political reasoning.
• Adoption of LSM tool by other decentral
  governments (provinces, water boards).

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ON THE ROLE OF PIONEERING MUNICIPALITIES

• Pioneers differ due to
• early involvement
• above average performance
• long term commitment
• geographical location within a particular region
  with favorable conditions
• adoption of corporate social responsibility
  principles
• more international and regional network
  memberships
• (large) organizational size (and hence capacity).
• However many important items from our framework
  are not easy to incorporate in survey-based data
  collection. More in-depth (comparative) research
  is needed, as well as research on methodological
  caveats in current surveying.

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Methodological and conceptual remarks

• Sample is biased (municipality size, progressive
  Boards).
• Respondents suffer from fatigue.
• Indinctness on meaning of questionnaire items and
  sustainability in particular.
• Many items cannot simply be answered with yes
  of no.
• What is measured is output, not outcome.
• Political dimension not measured.
• Online publication of results leads to strategic
  behaviour.
• Data set difficult to use for scientific
  purposes.

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RESEARCH AGENDA

• 5 propositions
• Voluntary disclosure of a municipalitys own
  performance leads to more action, and hence
  better performance.
• Benchmarking leads to the use of other
  participants ideas and practices (a motivation
  to share information).
• Early participants have a competitive edge to
  newcomers and tend to remain ahead for years.
• The performances (in terms of policy output) of
  municipalities are unevenly distributed in the
  self-reporting model as compared to the
  regulation model which sets mandatory performance
  standards.
• Voluntary withdrawal by municipalities creates
  biased results. Stratification sampling leads to
  less biased results.

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MORE INFORMATION

• Please, look at the following publications
• Hoppe, T., and M. Klein. (2012). Meting van
  duurzame ontwikkeling op lokaal niveau. Milieu
  Dossier, 18 (4), 50-54.
• Hoppe, Thomas, and Frans Coenen. (2011). Creating
  an analytical framework for local sustainability
  performance a Dutch Case Study. Local
  Environment, 16 (3), 229-250.
• Hoppe, T. and F.H.J.M. Coenen. (2011). What Does
  Pioneering Mean in Local Sustainability
  Governance? A Case Study of the Netherlands.
  Paper presented at the 6th ECPR General
  Conference, held at the University of Iceland
  from 24-2, Reykjavik. 7 August 2011 in the panel
  Pioneers in Environmental Policy Revisited.
• Coenen, F.H.J.M. and T. Hoppe. (2010). Globale
  uitdagingen op lokaal niveau, Bestuurswetenschappe
  n,(3), pp. 77-92.
• For Local Sustainability Metre see
  www.duurzaamheidsmeter.nl
• Contact me at t.hoppe_at_utwente.nl.