The creation of a Ministry of the Environment and the actions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals show the importance that the environmental issue has in the national agenda. In particular, a way in which the local and regional governments can contribute to “ensure environmental sustainability”(Goal 7 of the MDGs), is the public investment in environmental matters. Therefore, the research tries to answer these questions: (i) Are environmental issues important for the local and regional governments?; (ii) Which barriers are affecting the planning and implementation of environmental investments? This paper considers the variable “environmental project” as a proxy for the importance of the environmental topic, because its implementation is a way to execute the environmental responsibilities that these levels of government have by law. Due to an inexistent definition of “en...

The creation of a Ministry of the Environment and the actions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals show the importance that the environmental issue has in the national agenda. In particular, a way in which the local and regional governments can contribute to “ensure environmental sustainability”(Goal 7 of the MDGs), is the public investment in environmental matters. Therefore, the research tries to answer these questions: (i) Are environmental issues important for the local and regional governments?; (ii) Which barriers are affecting the planning and implementation of environmental investments? This paper considers the variable “environmental project” as a proxy for the importance of the environmental topic, because its implementation is a way to execute the environmental responsibilities that these levels of government have by law. Due to an inexistent definition of “en...