The World Summit in 1992 in Rio was expecting a large deployment of Agenda 21. This process started at various pace according countries. In France and in the Brussels-Capital Region in Belgium, both cases focused by this blog, Agenda 21 respectively took off in the 00’s with the definition of a French Agenda 21 local sustainable development project reference framework in year 2000 and during the 2007-2011 period with the launch of a Agenda Iris 21 annual call for tender supported by the regional Ministry of Environment and its Bruxelles Environnement administration.

The coming Rio+20 Summit is both pretext and occasion for evaluation of the work done so far and for conducting local foresight activities to envision and outline possible evolution of the Agenda 21 process.

In France, the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Lodging (MEDDTL) together with ETD and 4D associations and within the steering action from the National Agenda 21 Committee set up a task force called Rio+20 and after: Agenda 21 of tomorrow. This task force constituted by civil servants in charge of Agenda 21 for local authorities at local, departmental or regional level together with organization and institutions supporting them aims at setting up a foresight exercise in order to envision possible futures of local Agenda 21 process in France. Strategic Design Scenarios sustainable innovation lab was involved to support the organization of the participative scenarios building and visualizing process.

In the Brussels-Capital Region, the Belgium Regional Ministry of Environment, Energy and Urban Renovation and Bruxelles Environnement proposed a call for tender to assess the first 10 Communes (neighborhood local authorities) and CPAS (Public Social Action Centre) who completed the Agenda Iris 21 process. EcoRes sustainable development consultancy and Strategic Design Scenarios joint offer to conduct a participative assessment involving all stakeholders engaged in Agenda Iris 21 process has been selected. In particular local coordinators of Agenda 21 in Commune and CPAS, AVCB and FGF associations facilitating the process, Bruxelles Environnement and the Regional Ministry of Environment, Energy and Urban Renovation collaborate to co-produce a projection of Agenda Iris 21 and scenarios of development of the process at regional level.