MUNICIPAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE MONITORING IN LATVIA: TOWARDS VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL INDICATORS SYSTEM

Municipal Development Programs cover a wide scope of policies, but environmental governance monitoring has been weak. After the 2021 reform with aggregation of municipalities in the country, the situation started gradually improving. Considering the voluminosity of Environmental Governance sector and its tendency to grow, there is a need to review the set of monitoring indicators. The aim of study was to evaluate the monitoring practices in Environmental Governance sector for all 3 basic administrative levels in Latvia (municipal, regional, national), carrying out an analysis of both vertical and horizontal integration and aggregation, and finally, to develop recommendations for municipal monitoring programs and system. The document studies methods were applied. All statutory planning documents (three main documents of each municipality) were reviewed of 7 municipalities of Riga planning region. Besides document studies in Kekava municipality, detailed semi-structured interviews were conducted with municipal experienced specialists. There are accounted for around 80-100 comparatively unique indicators in total. The best monitored are Communal Infrastructure Sector and Climate Change Management Sector (also many various infrastructure indicators) with 54 and 50 indicators respectively, which have high continuity also with higher level documents and good linkages horizontally between municipalities. All planning documents mention reducing GHG emissions, air pollution, green infrastructure etc. During this project study the related recommendations for all sectors were prepared, both for particular case of Kekava municipality and in general for municipal monitoring systems. Keywords: development program, indicators in the planning process and documents, public monitoring.