Slovakian municipalities have embraced modern principles of sustainable development, with many already employing specialised staff for their realisation.

So concluded a recent survey carried out by REC Country Office Slovakia with support from the European Union’s PHARE fund. In the 2003 study, the office sent out questionnaires to 137 municipalities and received expressions of interest from 30, all but two with populations under 50,000.

Eighty-three percent claimed they were familiar with the concept of sustainable development and followed its principles in their work. Fifty-three percent of the respondents said their municipality has a special department responsible for carrying out sustainable development.

From a list of 30 interested cities, CO Slovakia picked three for a deeper analysis — Rimavska sobota, Sala and Puchov. The towns were to be gauged on their current success in sustainability according to 10 common European indicators, including such things as general satisfaction of citizens with the municipality, the town’s emissions of greenhouse gasses, the accessibility of local services and green spaces, and levels of noise pollution.

Although the authors reported that that they could not obtain all the information they needed for a complete analysis, they succeeded on a few points. Among their findings:

• Residents of the surveyed cites are generally less satisfied with the running of their city government than people in the EU.
• Per capita emissions of CO2 were lower than the EU average in two of the three cities, which reflects the overall situation in Slovakia.
• Children in the surveyed cities were more likely than their cohorts in the EU to get to school by bicycle or foot, and much less likely to do so by car.
• Green areas were slightly less accessible to residents of the surveyed cities than in the EU.
• Land in the surveyed communities was much less developed the EU average.

The governments involved in the evaluation were unanimously pleased they had participated in the study, citing the following concrete benefits:

• It provided them with an in-depth analysis of their community environments.
• Public participation and open discussion improved.
• They found out what citizens believed were the main problems in the towns.
• The study’s result could help with the development of city master plans and other documents.
• Study results helped in decision-making processes and internal communication between municipal departments.
• The results could guide private initiatives such as trash recycling.