ECOLOGIA DA PAISAGEM E PLANEJAMENTO AMBIENTAL

LOCAL AGENDA 21, A PARLIAMENTARY MOTION IN BERLIN

The city of Berlin and all its 23 districts for years have been bustling with agenda-group-activities, with some financing by the Senate. Each of the districts up to now could rely on the services of two „agenda-coordinators"; unfortunately financing of this fairly successful institution is in the process of running out.

Support by the Senate is administered and coordinated by the „Agenda-Buero", associated with the Senator of City-Planning e-mail: gabriela.kordeck@sensut.verwalt-berlin.de).

Still missing up to this day is an official and legally binding Senate-decree to the effect that a „Local Agenda 21" for the city-state of Berlin must be installed.

Unfortunately any agenda-activities so far have gone practically unnoticed by the general public. Nobody ever seems to even have heard of Agenda before. That is a problem. Even journalists who think of themselves as beeing normally well-informed occasionally resort to the popular, but misleading half-truth that it „has something to do with ecology" („Der Tagesspiegel", Dec. 2, 1999), implying that Agenda is important, but „out". But in fact Agenda is „in".

What does Agenda mean?

The last try to save our children?

Maybe. Agenda is: ecology „plus".

In the early days of mankind when we were ruled by the laws of ecology, ecology permitted social development, and the economy was at the service of social development. Today when instead the laws of economy govern us, ecology serves the economy, and economy deforms and debases social development. Agenda is the attempt to get social development back into the game, it´s been rather missing lately.

In April of 1998 the Parliament of Berlin constituted a special survey committee „Sustainable Berlin" to have it investigate the chances and difficulties of a „Local Agenda 21" for Berlin. („21" stands for the „21^st century".) In doing so Parliament followed a recommendation laid down 6 years ago in the now famous Agenda–21-document, signed by some 180 governments at the World Conference on Enviroment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In this document the municipal administrations of cities and villages world-wide were called upon to

1. intensify their cooperation among each other (here of course we would think of Rio Claro and Berlin),
2. enter into a dialogue with their respective citizens so that each community should be capable of deciding upon its own specific „Local Agenda 21" (Chpt. 28) and
3. optimize their decision-making processes by re-integrating all relevant economic, social and ecological factors into their original, inseperable intertwinement as a common basis for sustainable development (Chpt. 8).

The committee conducted 5 hearings, on:

also 5 meetings on special subjects, in particular on:

Altogether the result was not more than a first snapshot of an oncoming process.

The committee-report on Sustainable Berlin was completed and handed over to plenary parliament in June of 1999. Parliament in turn then passed a formal motion, asking the Senat of Berlin to get a Local Agenda 21-process under way in the city-state of Berlin (population: 3,4 million).

Politically it was important that practically the entire report point by point in agenda-like manner had been agreed upon by compromise and consent among the four polical parties involved.

First responses to the report were favorable (among experts). To prevent the report from getting buried in some bookshelves and in order to keep „one foot firmly set in reality" we got parliament to agree on two external projects in close connection with the report:

An eleborate Agenda-Workshop, organized by activist-groups from all over town, will be part of an external Berlin-contribution to Expo 2000, the World-exhibition from June through October 2000: a formerly contaminated industrial area in former East-Berlin, converted into an attractive housing project alongside the peninsula-area of „Rummelsburg Bay", a fine example of modern city-planning. (patronage of the project: Prof. Klaus Töpfer, director of the UN Environment Programme). Our primary objective: to attain a maximum of publicity for agenda in Berlin. In that respect we hope to benefit also from:

This conference which will give the mayors of the 21 world-wide biggest cities the chance to discuss the future of their children (some 250 million people) might make the world hold her breath for a moment or two. The mayor of São Paulo will be there, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro also. Of all the mayor cities of the European Union only Paris was big enough to make it. Moscow just barely made it. The governing mayor of Berlin will be present – delighted as host to the heavyweights.

An unemployment rate of 14% in Berlin had been a central agenda-topic to the commission. It therefore had commissioned a general study on labor and unemployement and in addition had asked the Senate to check out the feasibility of some unusual, even „strange" suggestions as to how unemployment in Berlin could be markedly reduced. The corresponding feasibility study „Sustainable Berlin NOW!" – a collaboration of the Technical University of Berlin and the Senator of Labor, Social Matters and Women – will be completed by the end of this year.

I am pleased and honored by the invitation to participate in this high-ranking Forum, and I am especially delighted by the fact that all this takes place in the very country that gave birth to Agenda.