The implementation of an Environmental Management System in a North-African Local Public Administration: the case of the City Council of Marrakech (Morocco) - (Full paper not available on this website Accepted for publication: Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 54(6), July 2011)

This article analyses the case of the ISO14001 certification in the City of Marrakech (Morocco) as first example of a City in Africa and in the Arab world to achieve such ambitious goal. Although originally designed for industrial organizations, the most popular standard for environmental management systems ISO14001 and the Reg 761/01 (EMAS) in recent years have shown a rapid spread even among the local authorities. The City of Marrakech has achieved environmental certification through an Italian-Moroccan partnership project co-financed by the European Commission under the Programme LIFE Third Countries. The description of the case study defines the methods and approaches in the implementation of the Environmental Management Systems, highlighting what were the main differences and what the rationale and expected benefits of the certification process of the city, compared with those in the literature and due to similar experiences of the Western local authorities. To achieve this goal, we reported, among other results, the outcome of a survey on the environmental perception of the City population carried out in the ISO14001 implementation. The case described shows that the approach foreseeing a strong involvement of the stakeholders can be particularly effective as it responds to the specificities of non-EU contexts.