Participation in Local Agenda 21- the Malaysian experience / Hardev Kaur and Mizan Hitam

Calls for increased participation in decision-making have gathered momentum in the past few decades, spawning a wealth of theoretical and practical literature and influencing approaches to policymaking by various levels of government. In Malaysia, as in many other countries, locally generated debate and action planning has sought to apply bottom-up participatory innovative techniques. In this process, local authorities worked together with the local community to develop community action plans for sustainability under Local Agenda 21 (LA21). LA21 was promoted by the United Nations to deliver sustainable development (SD) at the level of local government. Participation in LA21 hinges upon the ability of policy makers and implementers to understand the key participatory processes that enable a more bottom up process to develop, such as motivation to participate, the principle of inclusiveness, matching the right participatory techniques with the objectives of participation and proper institutional design. This paper is an attempt to determine how participation was implemented in LA21 programmes in selective councils by identifying the key factors affecting the success of community processes.The rationale for the various questions posed was to identify experiences and challenges faced by councils and respondents participating in the programme and to provide insights and guidance to councils attempting to implement a bottom-up approach to participation within the LA21 programme. The research was conducted as a qualitative case study that made use of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews and document analysis as instruments of data generation. Samples of respondents were selected from the relevant stakeholders, council staff and councilors. The overall conclusion is that the councils were still implementing a top bottom approach to participation within the LA21 programme