Sustainability assessment by local population: a case study in rural areas

Abstract

Since the nineties, a lot has been written about local sustainability, mostly about big cities and/or big regions. These days the debate about small towns and/or rural municipalites has also come about. It is up to all the agents, political and from the community, as well as to the citizens to promote the transformation to more sustainable societies. It is therefore urgent the development of tools like the Indicator System (IS) at a local level, having in mind the involvement of all the agents, that will allow us to evaluate whether we are near or far from that transformation. The incorporation of sustainability criteria and its measurement, having in mind the singular characteristics of these municipalities, will allow us to know and evaluate the Sustainable Development (SD) at a local level, to increase the sensibility of the agents about environmental issues and to promote change in the community. For that to happen the population’s involvement is essential for it allows the strengthening of the commitment for SD. The case study presented is about the Beira Baixa region in the interior of Portugal, its population represent 0.8% of the resident population of Portugal. That translates as one of the lowest populational densities. The main objective of this study is to present the results of the questionnaire applied to a representative sample of the resident population of Beira Baixa, Portugal, over 18 years of age. The general aim of the questionnaire was to inquire the population awareness about sustainability concepts and IS and self-assessment of the local sustainability. The results allow us to verify that a large majority of the participants has hear the term SD, the media being the largest contributor to this and that the promotion of the SD is our own responsibility. In terms of the SD dimensions, it is the environmental and economical ones the most important, in contrast with the social and governance/institutional. About half of the participants considers that their quality of life “stayed the same”, but a quarter of them considers that it is “worse”. When asked about IS, less than half of the participants had ever heard about IS for SD, and the ones that had, heard it mostly through the media. These participants consider that the selection of the indicators should factor the citizens’ opinion, but little more than half of the participants would like to participate in that selection. It is important a wide spread of SD and of the IS among the population, because there is a clear imbalance between the economic and environmental dimension and the social and governance/institutional dimensions.