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In Spain, as in China, local administration concentrates a number of problems. This is a level of financially weak government. In addition, this fragility is increased, because the municipalities manage numerous services to citizens. Since 2008, the outbreak of the economic crisis caused many difficulties to municipalities, which borrowed. The central government has responded in 2013 with a local reform, which seeks to control the spending of municipalities. Faced with this attempt, municipalities have responded by introducing more economic discipline. Undoubtedly, some of these Spanish lessons may be important for the experience of China, where economic problems of local power are similar.

In this paper, the focus is on the role of the municipality, as an enabler of a collaboration between freight forwarders and the municipality in which the consolidation of goods is considered as a means for goods flow improvement in urban freight transportation. We present a cost allocation model that is based on solution concepts from cooperative game theory, for allocating the operational costs associated with the collaboration. It is assumed that the municipality is willing to carry some cost to ensure a stable collaboration for the potential benefits received, e.g., reduced traffic congestion in the city. The model is applied to some illustrative examples, and the cost allocation results are discussed. It is shown that the role of the municipality may be decisive in achieving a stable collaboration between the freight forwarders, and further that the municipality does not necessarily need to contribute to covering the costs.

For municipalities to fulfil their role in a nation's work for a healthy environment, and ultimately for sustainability, there is a need for better information about the pressures society puts on the environment, as well as about the underlying causes of these pressures. At present, information about society's pressure on the environment is most often provided by inventories of emissions of different pollutants. In this paper, which takes its point of departure in Sweden, it is argued that such an approach is too narrow. Regional material flow analysis (MFA) is presented as an alternative to emissions inventories. The paper ends with a thorough discussion on the role of materials accounting (incorporating MFA) in municipal environmental management. It is suggested that an early application of this "tool" can promote a change of environmental management towards regional materials management, as a means for reaching sustainability, and further into regional environmental management.