Development of Local Government Organizations’ Capability in Environmental Governance at UNESCO Global GEOPARK, Satun Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research and development (R&D) were: 1) to examine the role of law enforcement in environmental management, and 2) to develop sensible key indicators for measuring environmental performance of local government organizations at Satun’s UNESCO recognized Global Geopark.

The study was conducted from June to September, 2019. Study was divided in 3 phases. The first one was to examine the role of law enforcement by in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with key informants, namely: administrators and officers of local government organizations, community leaders, religious leaders, members of village committees, chiefs of villages, health volunteers, personnel of Geopark and tour guides. The data were analyzed using content analysis. The second phase was to build the environmental management capability of public organizations by trainings and meetings with participatory observation. The third step was to perform a development of components and sensible key indicators for environmental management performance of local public organizations by using focus group discussions with key informants.

The quality of key indicators was verified by Delphi technique and then using self-administrative questionnaires for 221 in total of local governance officers, members of village committees, and village health volunteers. Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis technique, along with using principal component analysis. The factor rotation analysis were run   using Orthogonal Rotation with Varimax method.

The study showed the following.

1. Rule of law: most local government organizations failed in providing knowledge regarding environmental health management laws to local people in Global Geopark;

2. Virtues: only few had encouraged local people to participate in environmental health assessment and external auditing for local government organizations;

3. Transparency: most of administrators failed in providing information, especially in environmental health management such as solid waste, sewage, air pollution, etc.;

4. Participation: most of administrators failed in encouraging local people to participate in environmental health management;

5. Accountability: local government organizations were of relatively small size, and failed in supporting personnel’s efforts in environmental health management; and

6. Economy: most of administrators deployed and adopted Sufficiency-Economy Philosophy for environmental health management, but most of them did no cost/benefits economical evaluation for their policy.

The developed indicators and components of environmental management performance for local government organizations consisted of 2 components and 35 indicators. This could explain the 75% variation among results, with Eigen values of 39.61 and 1.648 respectively. Organization management and networking consisted of 19 indicators, while participation in the development of quality of life, environment and health consisted of 16 indicators.

These research findings could be used for developing the environmental management performance of local government organizations, in order to contribute to environmental governance in Satun’s or other Global Geoparks.