			Home About us Contact

Municipal Authorities (municipal + authority)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

Local authorities, climate change and small and medium enterprises: identifying effective policy instruments to reduce energy use and carbon emissions

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008
Jaryn Bradford
Abstract This paper discusses potential policy options available to local and municipal authorities, to achieve reductions in energy usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Researchers conducted surveys with 112 SMEs, and the results have been used to disaggregate the category of ,SME' into sub-sectors based on industrial sector, two measurements of employee size and annual turnover. A statistical analysis identifies key characteristics and behaviours of the sub-sectors of firms and discusses the type of policy measure these groups of SMEs would probably respond to. The key results of the research indicate that categories of firms differ in terms of energy use behaviours, internal constraints and attitudes toward possible policy options. The paper presents a ,policy matrix' to represent the most and least likely policy options to achieve energy savings from different categories of SMEs. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

Organization, Management and Delegation in the French Water Industry

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2001
Jihad C. Elnaboulsi
The water industry is largely a natural monopoly. Water distribution and sewerage services are characterized by networks and its natural monopoly derives from the established local networks of drinking water and sewers: they are capital intensive with sunk costs and increasing returns to scale. In France, local communities have a local requirement of providing public services under optimum conditions in terms of techniques and cost-effectiveness, and subject to respect different kind of standards in terms of water quality and level of services. They are responsible for producing and distributing drinking water, and collecting and treating wastewater. Furthermore, the French water utilities are required to be financially self-sufficient. Rate-setting varies across regions and local territories due to a variety of organizational features of services and availability of water resources. The management of these local public services can be public or private: local governments have the right, by the constitution, to delegate water service management to private companies which operate under the oversight of local municipal authorities. Today, nearly 80 per cent of the French population receive private distributed water. Different reasons are responsible for the poor performance and low productivity of most French public water utilities: technical and operational, commercial and financial, human and institutional, and environmental. Thus, many water public utilities have looked for alternative ways to provide water and sanitation services more efficiently, to improve both operational and investment efficiency, and to attract private finance. The purpose of this paper is to present the French organizational system of providing drinking water services, and collecting and treating wastewater services: legal aspects, contracts of delegation, and competition. [source]

Re-constructing the urban landscape through community mapping: an attractive prospect for sustainability?

AREA, Issue 2 2009
Frances Fahy
Community mapping is a relatively new tool with considerable potential in giving practical effect at the local level to sustainable development rhetoric. As a repository of socially constructed knowledge, it has considerable value in democratizing information both in terms of what is recorded and public access to it, in a manner that facilitates more meaningful participation of non-experts in planning and advocacy processes. Focusing on a community mapping project in Galway, Ireland, this research paper explores how the city's municipal authority is employing community mapping not just to record and promote the city's social, environmental, economic and cultural assets but also as a practical tool to bolster public participation in policy-making and to improve local communities' trust in the municipal authority, thereby shaping sustainability practices through enhanced governance. [source]