Regional Sustainable Development: Barriers in Practice - Findings from policy, citizens, practitioners and monitoring - Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema - Universiteit Maastricht, 2011

Abstract: This thesis refers to operationalising regional sustainable development in a scientific understanding of sustainable development. It does not look at how policy can be operationalised, but it aims at making regional sustainable development more tangible in order to provide useful information for policy-makers to operationalise and, finally, implement sustainable development policy. We do this by investigating current sustainable development practices and the problems associated with them that represent barriers to implementation of sustainable development.

One issue mentioned before is that different views on sustainable development exist and that different views will result in different trajectories towards implementation of sustainable development, which is recognised in this thesis. Different modes of governance exist with which to shape sustainable development. Their role in sustainable development is recognised and explored in this thesis. Because
of the importance of the region in operationalising sustainable development, and because of the interest of the Province of Limburg in finding better ways to implement its sustainable development policies, this thesis addresses the regional level.

Thus, the research question reads: What are the barriers to implementation of sustainable development in current practices in Limburg, taking into account different perspectives on sustainable development and different modes of governance; and how can they be overcome?

Implementation in this thesis refers to operationalisation and implementation of policy and plans on sustainable development, or: policy operationalisation and policy implementation. No specific distinction between the two is made because the boundary between them is often diffuse. When the term operationalisation is used, it refers to the scientific interpretation of operationalisation: making a construct measurable and tangible.

Related sub-questions that are addressed in this thesis are:

• What role do different perspectives on sustainable development and different modes of governance play in current sustainable development practices?
• What barriers to realising sustainable development exist in sustainable development strategies (SDS)?
• What barriers exist in the current understanding of, and action towards, sustainable development of the Limburg population?
• What barriers to realising sustainable development exist in current sustainable development projects in Limburg, and what role do the different modes of governance play?
• How can sustainable development be monitored in an integrated way, and what barriers occur?

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