Greening governmentAs the principles of sustainable development have gained wider currency,
many governments have launched various ‘managerial’ initiatives to improve
policy co-ordination, including new ‘in-house’ cabinet committees, interde-
partmental working groups and departmental ‘green’ ministers, as well as
theformation of specialist advisory groups operating alongside the formal
administrative structure. Some of the more promising reforms are to be
found in those countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Canada and the UK,
which have taken a ‘whole of government’ approach that aims to integrate
theresponsibility for sustainable development across the public sector (Laf-
ferty and Meadowcroft2000b: 350). Norway established a State Secretary
Committee for Environmental Matters in 1989 to co-ordinate its sustain-
able development strategy. A major feature of its approach has been the
development of sectoral environmental action plans by each ministry. The
Swedish government used a Delegation for Ecologically Sustainable Devel-
opment, consisting of cabinet ministers of environment, agriculture, taxa-
tion, schools and labour, to initiate a range of EPI strategies. Subsequently,
aCo-ordination Unit for Sustainable Development, within the Ministry of
Sustainable Development, was formed to co-ordinate work within the gov-
ernment, act as a think-tank and develop the national sustainable develop-
ment strategy. In Canada, the office of Commissioner of Environment and
Sustainable Development, an independent officer of Parliament, was created
in 1995, with a remit that includes making an independent, public assess-
ment of each departmental sustainable development strategy, which has to
be updated every three years (Toner 2002 : 88–92). The British government
set up a Sustainable Development Unit within the environment ministry to
promote its strategy across government, and a new parliamentary Environ-
mental Audit Committee to evaluate government policy. In each country,
theaim is to co-ordinate and institutionalise environmental considerations
into the routine decision-making of every department.
However, it seems that these reforms have mostly had only a limited
impact. Despite the raft of Norwegian integration initiatives, in 2005 the
environment ministry still reported that ‘sectoral responsibilities for envi-
ronmental policy need to be further clarified and strengthened. In particu-
lar, better co-ordination is needed to deal with diffuse environmental prob-
lems and problems that need to be solved by means of close co-operation
between several sectors and the other parties involved’ (Ministry of the Envi-
ronment 2005 ). Ironically, in Canada, although the office of Commissioner
has been a success, its positive reputation is partly based on its scathing
criticisms of the ‘lack of coordination and integration’ (Toner 2002 : 111)
across the federal government in environmental policy, as illustrated by
theCommissioner’s 2005 annual report, which observed that ‘Canadians
and parliament have no clear idea of the government’s plan for sustainable
development, how it will carry out that plan, and what progress it has made’
(Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development 2005 ). Simi-
larly, in the UK, the new Environmental Audit Committee has established