RECOGNITION OF SUPRANATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOALS IN SUBNATIONAL LAND USE PLANNING

Abstract

Environmental goals are often agreed upon on the international level. Local municipality land use planning can contribute to various overall environmental goals, including those necessary to reach the European Green Deal. In the current research, links between the supranational and local level activities were analysed using multi-level governance frameworks and pragmatist planning theories. A quantitative survey in the current research, addressing Estonian and Finnish land use planners, revealed variance among how much planners reported to account for environmental goals. Consideration of some environmental goals relevant also for the implementation of the European Green Deal were reported not to be considered often. Planners working in Finland (vs Estonia), in urban (vs rural) settings, in larger (vs smaller) municipalities and working with comprehensive (vs detail) planning reported to consider environmental goals more, and to be more aware of how to account for these. The factors planners considered to increase accounting for environmental goals in planning the most were those closest to planners, such as benchmarking, sharing good practices, guidance, and more clearly set environmental goals on the municipality level. National and European level contributions ranked lower as supporting factors. Future research should address the reasons behind significantly lower reported level of accounting for environmental goals in detail planning. Also, the seemingly conflicting objectives of the green deal (all sectors must contribute to one goal) and of land use planning (balancing various needs) could be researched, which may impede exploiting land use planning in reaching the goals set in the European Union policy.