Abstract This study is to explore the cognition of local civil servants from the Kao-Kao-Ping Area on their value system of social development and sustainable local policies. Recently Taiwan government has adopted sustainable development as the ideal and direction of policy fulfillment, nontherless it seems bounded only at the central-government level Whether the local governments attentively adopt sustainable development principle and local civil servants own the cognition and understanding of sustainable development deserves further studying. Based on literature review on international and national materials, three parts of survey items were constructed ¡Vsocial paradigm of sustainability, sustainable development principles and local sustainable policies. Total 991 questionnaires were mailed and 381 valid responses were analyzed. The empirical analysis showed the local servants of the Kao-Kao-Ping Area generally posses positive cognition on sustainable development. Their perspectives on social development lean toward New Environmental Paradigm. Specifically, the perspectives can be divided into ¡§environment-oriented¡¨, ¡§equilibrium-oriented¡¨ and ¡§social norms ¡Voriented¡¨. The sustainable principles emphasized by the international societies and the central government are highly accepted, especially, the implementing directions of sustainable development. The local sustainable policies were highly recognized but with some vagueness on the position of ¡§main stream¡¨ values, such as highways or mass transportation, local place marketing, incentives to factories, local activities with international focus or unique locality. According to the study finding and the observations form the real situations, the cognition of civil servants on sustainable development is not related to the local policy practice.