Presentation
Agenda 21 is an international action programme to achieve sustainable development at an economic, social and environmental level. It is the path to follow to achieve a state of environmentally sensitive development that is fair and equitable to people.
It is a global guide that should be implemented in each town and city of the world, because only by improving our environment will we manage to save the planet and life as we know it.
Achieving the sustainability objective is a complex task because it affects all aspects of our social and economic life and our relationship with the environment. The survival of our way of life depends on the frail balance between the maintenance of biological diversity, human health and the quality of the air, water and sun. Therefore if we are to become sustainable we must meet the following objectives:
1. The pace in which we consume our resources must not exceed the capacity of the natural systems to replace them.
2. The pace in which we pollute and produce waste must not exceed the capacity of the environment to absorb it.
But not everyone consumes the same amount of resources. There is an unequal distribution of richness in the world. 20% of the world’s population, who live in the more developed countries, consumes 80% of the available resources. Therefore, if we are to become sustainable we must also meet the following objectives:
3. Social justice and democracy must improve.
4. The cultural patterns that mistake consumption and the indiscriminate use of resources for quality of life must disappear.
A municipality that is sustainable today will be guarantee of development in the future. This is why the environmental and social sustainability must be a prime axis of the actions undertaken by the Sóller Town Hall. It will be developed by means of its own
Local Agenda 21.
Sóller’s Local Agenda 21 is a global management system operating in the short, medium and long term that focuses on a city document or “agenda”, in which everyone indicates what are the main commitments and what actions should be implemented in the early 21st century to achieve an economic, social and environmentally sensitive development that is fair to other people and communities.
This document or “agenda” is called “Action Plan”. A citizen forum establishes the environmental, economic and social objectives that can be measured and assessed periodically.