Eco-municipalities: What Are They?

Citizens of eco-municipalities develop sustainability practices at the individual, household, business, municipal, and institutional levels throughout their communities. Their systematic actions result in meeting human and community needs fairly and efficiently; reducing human encroachment upon nature; reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and reducing build-up of toxic metals, minerals, and synthetic chemicals. Sustainability practices have become the natural way of doing things in eco-municipalities. One teacher has described it as “nothing special”.

McDonalds added living plants to help clean the air, added recycling of all materials

New and creative forms of local democracy involve citizens broadly and directly in the of their communities and local government. Local economies are healthy, vital, featuring a diversity of locally-based enterprises and minimizing dependence upon a few large employers. Municipal finances and local tax bases are balanced, efficient, and effective. Communities are generating their own power through renewable sources, and producing locally-grown, healthy, chemical-free food.

In Swedish eco-municipalities, community recycling rates have shot up, in some cases as high as 90 per cent of all solid waste. Some of these municipalities have reduced fossil fuel use by 40 percent or more in five years; one town of 5,000 has been almost 100 percent free of fossil fuels since 2001. Depressed communities have used this process to bring about economic and social revitalization in an ecological way. New democratic processes include involving more citizens in municipal and civic affairs in a real way. The eco-municipalities demonstrate that the model can work in almost any community regardless of size, geography, or circumstances.

What is different about this model?

Many communities in the United States and around the world have initiated and are carrying out sustainable development projects. Green building programs, affordable housing, open space preservation, recycling, climate change initiatives, smart growth initiatives, are just a few. While these initiatives have made progress toward sustainable goals, they largely are occurring on a project-by-project or issue-oriented basis. Frequently these efforts, as laudable as they are, are unconnected and un-integrated throughout municipal governments and the larger communities.

In contrast to a “silo approach” to sustainable development, the eco-municipality model uses a systems approach. Key elements of the system's approach are widespread community awareness-raising and integrated municipal involvement, using a common “sustainability language” based upon The Natural Step framework. Using this common language brings about a shared understanding of what sustainability means and how to achieve this throughout all sectors of municipal government and the wider community. The likelihood of conflict and competition among resulting actions is therefore minimized, since all sectors are using the same “sustainability playing rules.”

Hammarby added a water retention canal that retains rain water;
under the bridges sand filters the rain water

The Natural Step approach to sustainability was developed by a group of scientists in Sweden, led by pediatric cancer researcher Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, during the early 1990s. The Natural Step approach to sustainable change involves the use of a clear framework of sustainability principles based upon science and natural law, based on a four-step strategic change process. Businesses and communities around the world are using this approach to reorient their practices in sustainable directions. The guiding objectives of APA’s Planning for Sustainability Policy Guide are based upon The Natural Step framework.

The four guiding principles of The Natural Step framework describe how we can develop our individual lives, our society and our economic enterprises in a way that restores and replenishes our Earth's life-supporting resources, rather than depleting or destroying them. These four principles provide a set of rules for how we can create both short and the long term -- or sustainable -- prosperity and health in our society. These principles, based in natural science, can be interpreted more practically as guiding objectives for how we design, develop and manage our communities.

Guiding objectives for a sustainable society, based on The Natural Step framework