The Bethlehem 21 milestones are the steps and actions that form the basis of the adopted participatory approach to move towards the sustainability of the targeted communities. These are:
- Securing and Maintaining Top Level Support
The basis of the work is securing broad top level support among the involved local and national authorities in order to maintain their involvement during and after the course of project implementation. The capacities of authorities regarding sustainable development and the process of Local Agenda 21 will be developed to ensure successful implementation of the project. The experiences of Italian, Brazilian and other local authorities in localizing Agenda 21 will be transferred to them. Moreover, a steering committee composed of members from the involved authorities will be formed in order to oversee the implementation process.
- Establishing an Effective Participatory Process
Securing broad public participation of community members with local and national authorities in the Local Agenda 21 process is essential to ensure their effective contribution towards the formulation of local Agenda 21 policies and actions. This will be achieved by exploring, through an in-depth dialogue, the environmental identities and desires of the communities; informing the lay public of the importance of implementing sustainable development programs; fostering trust in local and national authorities; and maintaining public involvement through empowering neighborhood and water user associations and forming the sustainability initiative citizens' committees.
- Creating Baseline Community Profiles
Assessment of the communities' environmental and socioeconomic conditions as well as the institutional capacity to implement sustainable development actions will be carried out using the pressure, state, current practice framework. The results of this assessment are (1) Baseline Community Profiles that characterize the environmental and socio-economic conditions on one hand and the driving forces and actions that have led to the current unsustainable situation on the other hand; and (2) Environmental Information Systems developed in GIS to allow consequent
updates and monitoring of key environmental indicators.
- Developing Local Sustainability Action Strategies "Local Agendas 21"
Building upon the knowledge generated through the baseline profiling of the communities and the development of project's ownership among authorities and public, the project team in cooperation with the steering and citizens' committees will hold community forums in each targeted community to carry out the community visioning process in order to (1) define the communities' visions for more sustainable communities; (2) formulate key areas' vision statements; (3) set sustainability targets; and (4) identify and prioritize actions that will achieve the sustainability goals and targets. All these components as well as the detailed description for each of the identified actions and the situational analysis part will be integrated into comprehensive reports that represent the local sustainability action strategies or "Local Agendas 21" for each targeted community. A publicity campaign will support the community visioning process to attract the community members to participate.
