Norway

Basic information

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Mechanisms of Vertical Integration

National — sub-national linkages

Implementation of national SD priorities at the regional and local levels of governance is achieved through a strategic network named ‘Vital Municipalities’. It has to a large degree replaced the former LA21 processes. Vital Municipalities is an agreement on cooperation between the National Association of Local and Regional Authorities (NALRA) and the Ministry of the Environment. A supplementary agreement named “Green Energy Municipalities” has been implemented between the Government and 21 municipalities and 1 county. See a more detailed description of the initiatives under “Sub-national activities” below.

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Mechanisms of Horizontal Integration

According to the NSDS, a ‘Green Cabinet’, chaired by the State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and composed of state secretaries from other ministries and the Office of the Prime Minister, is responsible for ensuring policy coherence. Following increased need for coordination of the climate change issue, the mandate of ‘the Cabinet on SD’ was expanded in 2008 to cover more specifically policies related to climate change.

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Evaluation and Review

The Government presented a new, updated NSDS – The Norwegian Strategy for Sustainable Development – in the National Budget 2008. The intention behind the strategy is to guide sustainable development efforts by the authorities, municipalities, NGOs, companies and individuals. It is also intended to mobilise support for joint efforts.

The strategy focuses on how Norway can contribute to sustainable development globally and nationally. An overall strategy with clear objectives and appurtenant indicators is an important tool in making the challenges visible, and in raising support for necessary measures. Norway’s SD strategy focuses on seven policy areas covering environmental, economic and social challenges:

1. International cooperation to promote sustainable development and combat poverty
2. Climate change, the ozone layer and long-range air pollution
3. Biodiversity and cultural heritage
4. Natural resources
5. Hazardous chemicals
6. Sustainable economic and social development
7. Sami perspectives on environmental and natural resource management.

As part of the process of developing the new strategy, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance initiated a peer review of the Norwegian NSDS in spring 2006 conducted by a group of Swedish experts. In addition to examining earlier strategy documents, the review looked at Norwegian policies for SD in general, including institutional aspects. The Swedish team of experts, with support from a representative from Uganda on trade and aid, delivered its report "A Peer Review of Norway's Policy for Sustainable Development" on March 20, 2007. The report has been supplemented with a foreword by the Minister of Finance and a short summary (pp 11-13) that describes how the recommendations from the review team is followed up in the new strategy. The foreword and summary thus give a brief overview of the main aspects of the new strategy.

A summary of the peer review process was distributed at the ESDN Conference 2007 in Berlin.

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Indicators and Monitoring

A set of national indicators has been developed covering the seven policy areas in the SD strategy. The set consists of 18 indicators for assessing whether development trends in different areas are progressing in a sustainable direction. Two indicators, standards of maintenance of protected buildings and income distribution, have been added since the initial set was elaborated in 2005 ('Indicators for Policies to Enhance Sustainable Development'). Also, changes have been made to some of the other indicators to make them more politically relevant. In developing the SDI set, Norway used the so-called ‘capital approach’ which places the concept of ‘welfare’, measured as ‘National Wealth’ in a broad meaning, at the centre. For a detailed description of the capital approach, click here.

The updated indicator set can be found in Norway’s Strategy for Sustainable Development (2007).

The full list(s) of indicators as identified by a study commissioned by Eurostat can be downloaded here:

• Indicator report (2005)

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Participation

To ensure that the Government's sustainable development strategy becomes a basis for decision-making in both the public and the private sector, the Government is pursuing a policy to encourage industry, NGOs, the public administration, schools, educational institutions and individuals to participate proactively in the effort to ensure sustainable development.

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Sub-national activities

Regional (SD) Strategies:

All the 19 counties in Norway were among the first to sign up to the Local Agenda 21 initiative. A few of the counties, like Nordland and Akershus, also developed county-level Local Agenda 21 strategies. Though most of the LA21 activities have been at the municipal level, the regional project in Nordland, which supports local processes, is one of very few activities where the LA21 concept is still actively used. 

LA 21 initiatives:

The concept ‘Local Agenda 21’ with its broad and participatory approach has lost much momentum over the last years in Norway, as in many other countries. In practice, references to Local Agenda 21 are now seldom made. Instead, there are now two nationally coordinated SD projects at the local level: ‘Vital Municipalities’, which has replaced much of the focus on LA 21 and a supplementary agreement named ‘Green Energy Municipalities’.

• ‘Vital Municipalities’ is an agreement on cooperation between the National Association of Local and Regional Authorities (NALRA) and the Ministry of the Environment. The agreement was signed in 2006 and runs for a 5 year period (from 2006-2010). It was signed before the new NSDS strategy, but is referred to in the NSDS. About 150 municipalities take part in the network, close to 35 per cent of all Norwegian municipalities (status: mid-2008). The goal is to include 200 of the 430 Norwegian municipalities. The municipalities taking part in this network have to direct attention to one or two topics central to one of the three dimensions of SD. Energy and climate is the most popular topic.

‘Green Energy Municipalities’ is an agreement between the local authorities and the Government (represented by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the Ministry of the Environment). The program was established early 2007 and 21 municipalities and 1 county are designated to participate. The program’s goal is to make municipalities support work on energy efficiency, renewable energy, such as bio-energy, and to reduce green house gas emission.

About 70 per cent of the municipalities made a commitment to LA21 by signing the ‘Fredrikstad declaration’. About 40 per cent had some kind of LA21 activities in 2003-2004. Much of the LA21 activities withered after the national support programme were terminated from 2001. The Norwegian LA21 efforts covered a broad range of topics, but in international comparison were perhaps more focused on the environmetal and international poverty issues. Support from national and regional level was mostly in the form of knowledge dissemination and coordination. New posts were established within NALRA in most regions to help municipalities exchange ideas and to facilitate local processes. 

Participation:

The municipalities participate (e.g. by political and administrative leadership, and other relevant personnel from the municipal administration). Stakeholders from regions, business, labour, environmental organisations etc., mostly from the central level, participate in the network gatherings, referred to as “learning arenas“. A similar mix of stakeholders takes part in the local work.

Evaluation:

Particularly Chapter 4 in the book Realizing Rio in Norway, gives a thorough evaluation of “the rise and fall” of LA21 in Norway: http://www.prosus.uio.no/english/publications/books/Realiz_Rio.pdf

Indicators:

There are no local indicators in the National indicator set. However, an indicator set has been developed for the municipalities to measure developments in the individual municipality. The set is available at the web site: http://www.bedrekommune.no/livskraftig.htm (Norwegian).

Contact details:

Dagfinn Rivelsrud, Ministry of the Environment (Dagfinn.Rivelsrud@md.dep.no),Ole Jørgen Grann, NALRA (Ole.Grann@ks.no), Frode Lindtvedt, NALRA (Vital municipalities) (Frode.Lindtvedt@ks.no)

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This Country Profile has been last updated on: Friday, 05 December 2008

For the sources used in the country profiles, please click here.