Article | Economic evaluation of sustainable development: Local Agenda 21 in French communes

SUMMARY

Quentin Dechezleprêtre, PhD in economics and, at the time of writing, head of the Comité 21 "Prospective" project.
La Documentation française | " Économie & prévision "
2019/1 n° 215 | pages 91 à 112

An offshoot of Agenda 21 (or Agenda 21), the UN program for sustainable development agreed at the Rio Summit in 1992, Local Agenda 21 is a framework for implementing sustainability aimed at local authorities. Local Agenda 21 divides the implementation of sustainable development into successive phases, from initial decision-making to action and evaluation. The sequence of different phases enables local stakeholders to be involved in drawing up a program of concerted actions to promote sustainable development in a given area. The main aim of a Local Agenda 21 is to improve well-being and quality of life. However, the ways in which Local Agenda 21s are adopted by signatory states and local authorities are often highly heterogeneous. The actions undertaken locally are also very diverse. The Local Agenda 21 is therefore deliberately protean, but this makes it difficult to grasp, either to give a unitary definition or to carry out an evaluation.

In 2014, the policy of promoting Local Agendas 21 was heavily questioned in France, mainly because of its lack of evaluation, particularly in quantitative terms.

In reference no. 70375 of July 9, 2014, the French National Audit Office (Cour des Comptes) pointed to "[...] the frequent absence of results indicators and of any financial evaluation, ex ante or ex post, of their effects". It is in response to this lack of evaluation that the main aim of this article is to propose an estimate of the impact of the adoption of Local Agenda 21 on per capita income in French communes. This estimate is preceded by a reflection on the difficulty of evaluating sustainable development schemes.

To this end, we mobilize a double-difference model to estimate the impact of a Local Agenda 21 on per capita income in French communes that adopted this scheme in 2006. The aim is to compare changes over time (between 2006 and 2011) between the economic results of communes that have adopted the Local Agenda 21 (the "treated" group) and the results of those that have not over the same period (the "control" group). The present study thus covers a five-year period, corresponding to the standard duration of Local Agenda 21. A priori, the two groups thus formed are not comparable, as communes with and without Local Agenda 21 do not necessarily have the same characteristics. To ensure that the two groups are comparable, we use a matching method to select a reduced control group forming a satisfactory counterfactual (included in the final estimator).