Appendix A Country Urbanisation Profiles

In Chapter 2 of this Report it was pointed out that, whilst there are certain administrative and networking functions that are appropriate to be carried out at the regional level, development cooperation in urban planning and management and especially concerned with environment and with sustainable development, if it is to be effective within the cities themselves, requires substantial knowledge of the particular conditions prevailing at a more local level. Programmes and projects do need to be based in particular cities or urban subregions and for this work a ‘Local Agenda 21 process’ provides an approach to project development and execution over a period of time.

However, in the first instance, cooperation in particular countries requires a process prior to work in individual cities, wherein a country urban profile and framework for collaboration is developed. Elements of such a process are already present in many countries but remain fragmented. For instance:

• ‘country strategies' produced by development agencies, including the country desks of the EU, provide some information on aspects of each country that are necessary for effective cooperation;
• urban policy reports produced by many countries, often with support from donor agencies provide substantial background relevant to development cooperation in the urban field;
• similarly country environmental strategies and action plans have been produced by most government, usually with some external support and sometimes with collaboration of more than one external support agency;
• urban development programmes funded in the past have, in some countries, gained some experience and made some progress in developing urban management capacity in general and have left a foundation upon which EPM capacity-building can be constructed;
• some ESA-funded programmes have already accumulated considerable experience in bringing together actors relevant to the development of country urban strategies (e.g. the Urban Management Programme and the UNDP-funded LIFE Programme).
• in a few cases agreements have been reached amongst donor and government agencies to coordinate activities and to organise working arrangements to ensure a reasonable articulation of efforts; this has been particularly in the area of

What is required is that coherent country urbanisation profiles be produced. These should not be produced simply by commissioning a consultant to collate existing information and to produce a report, but as a participatory process that would involve the chief actors in the present and a potential future cooperation programme in urban EPM (this might be seen as covering all aspects of urban planning and management).

Participants would thus involve relevant in-country government and non-government actors and experts. It should also include all the key ESAs already active in the country, with invitations extended to other ESAs with a potential interest in working in the country in question.

The profile would encourage information and views from all quarters and be finalised through one or more workshops. The intention would be to produce both information and programmes with indications of responsibilities and, in particular, the role of the EC and the member country bilateral agencies. The following list of headings provides in brief an outline of the content of such profiles. Five brief profiles have been produced from the research carried out in this project and these are presented in below.

Thailand has an extreme primacy rate with 45% of the urban population residing in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA), with a 1996 population of approximately eight million. In 1994 the largest municipality outside the BMA, Chiang Mai, had a population of just 185,423 and only five municipalities had populations of over 100,000. There are about 100 municipalities with a population between 10,000 and 100,000.

Population movement over the country as a whole sees a general gravitation from the outlying regions to the Central region and Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR). However, urbanisation rates across the 1980s (between the last two censuses) were very even throughout the country, ranging from 39% to 34% in ten years. The primacy rate of Bangkok is gradually declining. This indicates a rapid growth in the municipalities throughout the country.

Water pollution is such that most waterways in Bangkok almost entirely lack oxygen and waterways in all major towns are badly polluted. Two thirds of BOD levels in open waters is from untreated domestic wastewater and human waste. Until very recently there were no formal sewerage systems. However, there is currently significant investment going into the construction of sewerage systems in a number of cities. Water supply is inadequate in many cities due to poor management. In Bangkok this has led to individual groundwater abstraction that has resulted in marked sinking of ground levels, exacerbating flooding. Inadequate drainage in many cities is resulting in regular local flooding in many urban neighbourhoods.

Solid waste collection is inadequate, ranging from 3% uncollected in Bangkok to 30% uncollected in Khon Kaen. Final disposal is almost universally through extensive open dumping (no sanitary landfill). Rapid industrialisation is leading to increased production of hazardous waste. In 1996 formal treatment capacity for hazardous industrial waste was less than 10% of the volume being produced.

Traffic congestion, rendering Bangkok almost unworkable, is becoming serious in many cities. A further major problem is the growth of very poorly serviced informal settlements of which there are over a thousand in Bangkok and with most cities experience growth of such settlements. In developing the cities, little space is being retained for recreation: in Bangkok the area of parks is 0.46m² per capita, in Chiang Mai 7.82m² (by comparison the rate in London is 30.4m²).

Analysis of six cities, taking eight environmental variables (Krüger, 1996), indicated that each city suffers from a different mix of problems that needs to be addressed within its own context.

Only in Chiang Mai has an energy balance been calculated, in the context of the EC funded integrated urban energy planning exercise. Elsewhere no urban energy or resource balances have been calculated and there is no programme or municipal concern to analyse or manage resource use in the cities.

The Changwat is not an independent level of government but is the level through which the various Ministries administer their local programmes, coordinated by the governor, appointed by the Ministry of Interior. Until recently municipal development was thus mainly undertaken directly by central government agencies with municipal budgets concerned with administration, including operation of some infrastructure (schools, hospitals, markets, waste water and solid waste management). Urban plans are produced centrally by the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) of the Ministry of Interior with little local capacity to administer them.

The private sector has been incorporated into the government decision-making process strategically at national level and at provincial level through joint public-private committees (Kor Ror Or) which have a formal legal standing. Whilst this enables a potential coordination of public and private plans and investments, in practice it also means that the private commercial sector can insert its priorities into government where other actors do not have that privilege.

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment plays a regulatory and advisory role in the field of urban environment, but does not have local or provincial offices (it is establishing regional offices). As of 1996, municipalities are required to produce environmental action plans through a participatory planning process; the results are to be integrated into the municipal development plan. A system of Changwat environmental quality management plans with a focus on combating urban pollution through relevant investments is currently being implemented.

Since the early 1970 there have been numbers of NGOs focusing attention on the rights of citizens living in poor communities and more recently there has been a strong growth of urban `civic societies' acting as pressure groups to improve the quality of urban management often with a strong environmental focus (Atkinson, 1996). An important role is played by the NGO coordinating organisation NGOCord. There remains a problem concerning legal standing of NGOs in that they register, following which they face considerable bureaucratic impediments to achieving effective work. For this reason many NGOs avoid registration which, however, excludes them from obtaining public funds.

CBO organisation, particularly in poor communities, is growing rapidly. Initially this was encouraged in Bangkok by the metropolitan government as a measure to support self-help in such communities, particularly in the area of health. This now has a legal basis in the country as a whole.

Research on urban issues is well-developed in a number of Universities including Chulalongkorn (Environmental Research Centre) focusing strong attention on urban problems), Mahidol University with a strong environmental health focus and Chiang Mai University. Songkhla University has a strong programme in environment with a focus on supporting local authority environmental planning. The Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has carried out extensive research into urban and industrial development and the Thailand Environment Institute (TEI) has various research and action programmes in urban EPM.

• The Regional Cities Programme supported initially by the World Bank and Australian assistance. Development plans were produced for 12 cities with a view to investing in basic infrastructure. Progress has been slow in implementation.
• UNDP has funded programmes to improve capacity for municipal development planning and currently is funding capacity-building for financial and other aspects of urban management including cooperation between municipalities and NGOs/CBOs.
• The GTZ is funding a programme, bringing together DOLA and DTCP, aimed at decentralising urban planning. An earlier stage of the work involved the development and implementation of the municipal environmental action planning procedures referred to above.
• DANCED is funding a number of urban environmental projects including ongoing training and refinement of the urban environmental action planning process and a comprehensive environmental improvement programme for the city of Khon Kaen.

In 1992 the National Housing Authority established the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) to support the upgrading of settlements of the urban poor through organisation and technical measures. This includes developing organisational capacity of intermediary organisations working in the field and of CBOs, and establishing local savings and credit mechanisms. Whilst this is a Royal Thai Government initiative, financial support is currently being given DANCED.

The UNDP LIFE programme has been operating in Thailand since its initiation in 1993. This was initially co-financed by the GTZ in conjunction with its Urban Environmental Management Project and subsequently DANCED has provided funding. This programme, described in more detail in Chapter 4 below, is financing small projects that bring together NGOs, community organisations and local authorities to solve local environmental problems. The Thai LIFE programme is deemed to be amongst the most successful.

Bangkok is managed separately from the structure of municipal administration. It has been the subject of a number of small technical assistance programmes funded by various agencies and the Asian Development Bank is currently financing major investment in sewerage. There are no notable environmental programmes currently running in the city.

The three largest metropolitan areas are Surabaya with 3.3 million, Bandung with 3.5 million and Jabotabek - the greater Jakarta region - with 13 million. Indonesia is thus experiencing problems associated with rapidly expanding megacities as well as small and intermediate cities.

Municipal water supply intakes are in many cases direct from such rivers which water treatment plants are incapable of adequately treating. Municipal piped water supplies are therefore insanitary and leaking pipes - often resulting in over 40% losses but also taking in contaminated groundwater - further pollutes piped water where this is available. Where this is not available many households use shallow wells which are universally contaminated in urban areas.

Between 15% and 40% of urban domestic solid waste, depending on the city, is uncollected, being disposed of in watercourses and on vacant land. Although there are official disposal sites, all involve open dumping without control of leachate or landfill gas. Industrialisation has been rapid in recent years, particularly on the outer fringes of the larger metropolises. There is so far, nationally, only one disposal plant for hazardous wastes, which takes only a small fraction of the total produced.

Air pollution is a rapidly rising problem in many Indonesian cities. The URBAIR project (Sutamihardja, 1993) measured various parameters in Jakarta in the early 1990s and discovered that although only suspended particles regularly exceeded the standards, all pollutants were rapidly on the rise. The project estimated a 400% overall rise in air pollutants between 1980 and the year 2000; most of this is happening during the second half of the 1990s. A study in long term development of energy use in Indonesia, focusing attention on air pollution consequences (Kleemann, 1994) predicts, especially with the decline of indigenous oil reserves, expected increases in the use of coal, that without major programmes to combat air pollution, this will become a major health risk for the population of large parts of Java.

With the exception of the above-mentioned macro study of energy use and an energy balance calculated for Bandung in the context of the EC funded integrated urban energy planning exercise for that city, no work has been done on analysing resource flows in relation to Indonesian cities in relation to long-term sustainability.

Responsibility for staffing and in general supervising local government lies with the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, many other ministries run their programmes through offices attached to local government at provincial and regency levels. The most important ministry in this respect is the Ministry of Public Works, which has three main divisions: urban settlements (Cipta Karya), highways (Bina Marga) and water administration (Pangairen).

At present a programme of decentralisation of the administration is in progress which will see the elimination of regency offices of central government agencies. So far, however, in so far as the central government agencies have determined the structure of the decentralised offices, local authorities have not been in a position to decide how to rationalise the administration they are inheriting and the budget has yet to be decentralised.

The Environment Ministry only sets environment policy and works with other central government agencies. In the 1980s provinces and some regencies acquired environmental offices (BKLH) which, however, had no powers and little resources. An environmental impact management agency (BAPEDAL) was brought into being as an adjunct to the Environment Ministry in the late 1980s, with first regional offices and currently provincial and regency offices being established. These BAPEDAL-DA offices are intended to have substantial enforcement powers regarding pollution control.

Responsibilities for EPM at the local level will, however, remain fragmented, with local authority water supply companies (PDAM) and waste disposal departments (Kebersihan) having certain definite tasks, but waste water management usually an ill-defined responsibility and with no effective authority responsible for controlling air pollution. General planning and powers to ensure a well-regulated development process such as allocating land to different uses and reserving park areas also remain weak and diffused.

Although NGOs are by no means universally acceptable to the Government of Indonesia, there is a large number of them working in the field of development in Indonesia. These range from large environmental NGOs - of which Walhi, the environmental NGO coordination, is the best know - to local environmental groups, and with a long tradition of social and economic development NGOs operating as non-profit consultancies in conjunction with official development projects.

Whilst some environmental NGOs have recently moved strongly into the arena of urban environment, organising solid waste and other campaigns and projects, development NGOs traditionally concerned more with community development in general are now also recognising the need to focus more specifically on environmental issues.

Community organisation has been on an official basis for more than 50 years, including multi-stakeholder village committees (LKMD) and women's groups (PKK) as well as neighbourhood and block organisations. These are by no means everywhere effective, but form a basis upon which many new decentralised environmental initiatives are being structured.

The national planning agency (BAPPENAS) has recognised for many years the need to focus attention on urban issues and has promoted urban programmes in national politics and in international cooperation. Recently it established a research arm, the Urban Research and Development Institute (URDI) which links up with university research establishments. There are many public and private universities which carry out urban research, the two most prominent being the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) with a strong programme in environment, and the Surabaya Institute of Technology (ITS) which has a strong community development focus.

Considerable external assistance has been lent particularly to the PROKASI programme, with a number of bilateral agencies assisting in different provinces. Bilateral agencies are also assisting in the establishment of BAPEDAL-DA offices in the provinces and regencies. Of particular note are the Australian contribution, assisting both in BAPEDAL headquarters and in East Java (Surabaya) and the GTZ contribution in the four provinces of Kalimantan.

Two major programmes have been operating in urban areas over a number of years. These are the Kampung Improvement Programme (KIP), concerned with upgrading the conditions of informal settlements, and the Integrated Urban Infrastructure Development Programme (IUIDP), concerned with improving the performance of municipalities in all aspects of infrastructure investment and operation; the latter programme includes environmental infrastructure and in recent years greater attention has been focused on the environmental aspects of the programme (Atkinson, 1997). Both these programmes have been very extensive: the bulk of informal housing areas in the major cities have now been through at least one phase of KIP and over 140 cities and towns have been the subject of IUIDP.

Both KIP and IUIDP are primarily World Bank funded, but other agencies have taken up the programme in particular cities; there is also an intention to broaden the scope of the programme to cover all aspects of urban management as simply IUDP. The Asian Development Bank has taken up some cities, notably Jogyuakarta and the regencies surrounding Jakarta (Botabek). Of considerable note are the Swiss Development Corporation contributions in Cirebon and Jogyakarta, where a more participatory approach has been taken than has hitherto been the case.

The World Bank urban programmes were initially operated entirely through the central government, involving local government as executing agencies. Terms of reference for recent phases of the programmes have called for a more locally-determined approach but the Bank has had difficulties in operationalising this. However, the Metropolitan Environmental Improvement Programme which the World Bank is operating in Jakarta (and five other Asian cities) has been concerned to develop a participatory approach in particular to the KIP programme, which might be reproduced in later stages.

There is clearly substantial scope for decentralised cooperation around urban environmental problems. Local NGOs are developing innovative programmes and networking these effectively; these programmes would merit external support. The AusAid programmes, although centrally-based, nevertheless involve a decentralised component and the GTZ is currently extending the MEIP to Surabaya as a primarily community-based initiative, connecting to municipal functions through a Local Agenda 21 process. The GTZ is also supporting a programme for the improvement of solid waste management in a selection of cities, focusing on improving the activities of the waste pickers.

The 1986 census revealed 155 urban areas with populations of over 10,000 of these 55 had populations over 100,000 and three (of which two are contiguous, making up greater Cairo) have over one million population; although the primacy of Cairo has been falling over the last few decades, in 1993 it still contained almost half of the country's urban population. Between 1927 and 1976, the urban population rose steadily as a proportion of the total but stabilised in recent years at around 44%; this is made up of a balance between lower population growth rates in urban areas but continuing rural urban migration. The proportion of population living in urban areas is expected to rise again significantly over the coming years.

Air quality in Cairo is extremely poor with dust levels amongst the highest of any city in the world. Pollution originates from wind-blown dust from the neighbouring desert, from vehicular pollution and from industrial pollution especially from cement and other large factories in Helwan, to the south of the city. Concentrations of CO, ozone and NO₂ in central Cairo are well above WHO limits and lead blood levels have been significant in recent years albeit the sources - lead in petrol and lead smelters in Helwan - are now coming under greater control. Particulate levels in central Cairo are up to 20 times WHO limits. Levels are considerably lower in Alexandria and also in other cities where measurements have been taken; they are, however, in most cases still considerably above WHO standards.

Water management has always posed great problems in Egypt and with constantly increasing demands both from agriculture and urban areas, and with increasing production of polluted wastewater, the problems are intensifying. Urban water supply comes from surface channels (all originating in the Nile) and from groundwater, with an incipient danger of over-use. Many urban areas are equipped with extensive sewer systems, which in many cases allow for use of wastewater for irrigation. Inadequate treatment, which is very prevalent, can lead both to salination of soils and to health problems if used for food crop production. High pollution concentrations are leading to anaerobic conditions in some drainage canals. Some main waterways are also being seriously polluted by industries dumping some 127 million m³ a year of untreated wastewater.

Solid waste collection is as low as 15% in some smaller settlements and even in Cairo is no more than 70%, resulting in considerable informal dumping. Cairo, Alexandria and a few other cities have experienced an informal recycling system since the 19th century that has been the subject of considerable attention in recent years. On the one hand assistance has been given to increase the economic productivity of these activities, but these remain relatively unhealthy and recently there are indications that rapid urbanisation is precipitating a general breakdown of the system. Such a system does not exist in many cities and municipal authorities have substantial problems in fulfilling their role as waste management authorities.

With the exception of an EC project, which included Alexandria as one of participating cities in the region, urban energy management has not been a focus of attention. National energy policy is strongly focused on ensuring adequate supply for development, conventionally conceived, albeit climate change funds are being used to look at means to reduce the use of fossil fuels and some work is progressing on the development of renewable energy resources. Some attention is being paid to resource management as a component of sustainable development in the governorate action plans currently in production.

The governorates are headed by governors who are appointed by the President. They make up a Council of Governors reporting to the Prime Minister; their status is equivalent to that of minister such that in the provinces they can override decisions of individual central government agencies. Governors appoint mayors who head the Markaz. Both governorates and districts have elected councils with advisory powers only and also executive councils, made up of representatives of the various government agencies, responsible for coordinating the activities of the various agencies at governorate and local levels.

Environmental matters are the responsibility at the national level of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA). This was established in 1982 but currently operates under a new comprehensive environment law, No.4 of 1994. The agency is, however, a coordinating agency and not an executing agency: it has few in-house resources but as of February 1998 the EEAA will start enforcing environmental standards according to regulations and procedures included in the Executive Note of the Law.

The intention is that eight regional environmental offices will be established to supervise environmental matters and that governorate Environmental Management Units (EMUs) will carry out day-to-day activities relating to local environmental management. The EMUs are already in existence albeit as yet with few resources. They are located in the offices of the governors and rely upon the budget of the governorate; however, their remit is largely determined by the EEAA.

Local authorities remain the main agents for environmental management. They are responsible, either directly or via private contractors, for water supply, wastewater and solid waste management and for ensuring devising and executing programmes to maintain the quality of the environment. The trained person power and financial resources for this are, however, generally insufficient.

Governorates collect and retain other types of funds (e.g. housing funds that include sums paid for sale of land for development), and can access resources of ESAs directly or via the Central government. The Social Fund for Development and other environment funds provide support for certain projects, normally those that were not given enough resources by the Central government. These resources combined make up the 10% that are generated and retained locally.

There has been a rapid growth of NGOs in Egypt in recent years with some capacity in environmental matters and/or working in the field of improvement in living conditions amongst the urban poor. The National Committee of Environmental NGOs, which has a quasi-official consultative status with the government and is made up not only of NGO representatives but also includes representatives of the EEAA and academia; it provides an umbrella for national and local environmental NGOs. NGOs in Egypt have proved themselves able to attract considerable resources from ESAs with little impacts on communities and policies. Under a law passed in the 1960s, the Ministry of Social Affairs is able to intervene in their work to ensure control and compliance with national policies. This intervention is widely criticised.

Community based organisations exist in Egypt mainly through the framework of religion. Mosques and churches provide a wide variety of reasonable quality community services at affordable rates: community clinics, schools, business centres, vocational training workshops, etc. These organisations are normally registered with the Ministry of Social Affairs as NGOs. They collect and dispatch charity funds (Zakaat in Islam) on needy households within their (loosely defined) geographic domains. In high-income areas, there are normally NGOs that do community service work. Many of such activities are geared towards improving the quality of the urban environment. They also are registered as formal NGOs.

The relative strength of any NGOs in Egypt is conditioned by the stature of its president, members and informal supporters. CBOs and PVOs are not recognised legally.

Although university departments in several universities focus some attention on environmental matters, as yet there is no strong focus on the urban environment. The regional organisation CEDARE, located in Cairo, has undertaken significant studies and undertaking training programmes on urban environmental issues in Egypt.

• The EEAA is providing support to build the capacity of Environmental Management Units at governorate level (EMUs) and a central component of this is to generate governorate environmental action plans (GEAPs). The EEAA is being assisted in various governorates in the generation of plans by USAID (an urban initiative for the city of 10th Ramadan), DFID and DANIDA; the Dutch government is assisting with GEAPs in the urban governorates of Giza and Cairo.
• The EEAA is in process of building a system of industrial pollution control through a number of different initiatives which include:
• the Egyptian Pollution Abatement Project (EPAP) which has involved USAID in initial set-up funding with the World Bank providing loans to businesses to install pollution control equipment; the Finnish government (FINNIDA) is providing technical and institution-development support for this programme;
• the British government (DFID) is assisting on the National Industrial Pollution Prevention Programme;
• the Japanese government (JICA) are establishing testing laboratories; and
• the German government (KfW) is providing a loan fund for industrial pollution control.
• The EEAA is establishing a system of hazardous waste management for hospitals, with assistance from DANIDA; the Danish, Finnish and Swiss governments are discussing projects aimed at managing hazardous industrial waste.
• The EEAA has a concern to improve urban solid waste management and has a number of projects, generally in cooperation with other authorities and in some cases with external assistance.
• USAID is assisting in a programme to reduce air pollution levels in Cairo.
• Other EEAA programmes (environmental data base and environmental education projects) are not specifically urban-oriented).

• improving the method for producing urban plans involving local government and other local agencies and stakeholders in plan production combined with training in plan production and implementation with assistance from the French government;
• capacity-building in various aspects of urban management, including environment as a key component under a project entitled Training and Research in Housing and Urban Development (THRUD); this is being managed by the Housing Development Research Centre (HDRC) with assistance from the Dutch government.

Water supply and waste water systems are being improved in many cities. Overall responsibility at the national level lies with the National Organisation for Potable Water and Sanitary Drainage, with Municipal Waste Water and Water Supply agencies responsible for O&M. Many external support agencies are involved in assisting in these programmes.

Three major international agency programmes in urban EPM are active in Egypt; these are:

• the UNDP initiated LIFE Programme (Sherif et al, 1996): this aims to encourage local actors - local government and other local stakeholders - to cooperate around specific environmental improvement projects such as solid waste management, city greening and new urban developments; the German government (GTZ) has co-financed projects within the framework of the Egyptian LIFE programme;
• the UNDP/UNCHS/World Bank Urban Management Programme Arab States regional office is located in Egypt and has initiated a number of programmes in Egypt, most recently, in conjunction with UNDP the first urban Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to poverty alleviation.
• the UNCHS Sustainable Cities Project has been assisting in developing a systematic approach to urban EPM in Ismailia;
• the METAP Programme: this is a regional initiative headquartered in the EEAA offices and funded by the EC, the EIB, the World Bank and UNDP, with several bilateral agencies funding particular programme components. It is a major programme aimed at addressing the problem of - primarily urban - pollution abatement focusing on water resources (see Chapter 4). The programme strategy is to raise awareness and build capacity (EC and UNDP) around environmental issues as a foundation for making major investments (EIB and World Bank). Current activity in Egypt includes building awareness, management mechanisms and investment programmes to clean up Lake Maryut, Alexandria, managed by CEDARE.

Although there is no national programme aimed at upgrading the environmental quality of informal settlements, the Fund for Social Development is concerned to address these problems on a project basis. Some external assistance has been directed to this task in recent years in Cairo and with the German government (GTZ) assisting on a major programme in Aswan.

Cities are occupying unevenly the main five geographical regions: there is a highly urbanised corridor extending from the Caribbean into the Andes which contains 75% of the urban population where urbanising subregions are emerging such as along the Caribbean coast (Cartagena-Barranquilla-Santa Marta) and the coffee growing region (Manizales-Pereira-Armenia). The other regions bordering the Pacific on the one hand and the interior regions of the Amazon and Orinoco basins are only sparsely populated. Recent years have been characterised by complex migration movements due to guerrilla activities, the opening up of oil production and the expansion of drug cultivation in the Amazon and Orinoco basins; these are progressively changing the spatial distribution of settlements. The rate of urban growth as a whole in 1995 was 1.55% and is estimated to decline to 1.49% by the year 2000.

Each region has specific urban environmental problems due to its climatic position and its relation with the national economy, so EPM approaches are starting to be dealt with taking into account the different climates within the same municipality.

Each day Colombia's rivers receive 1,800 tonnes of urban and industrial organic pollutants: the cities are, on the whole equipped with sewer systems which, however, universally dump their contents into rivers and the sea untreated. A large part of the 650,000 barrels of lubricating oil used in the country each year end up in the drainage systems and rivers with no formal control. The Bogota regional corporation for environmental management, CAR, estimates that in 1989 almost 250,000 barrels were dumped into the Bogota River alone. In 1997, this river is little more than an open sewer receiving all effluents from the city untreated. The World Bank is currently negotiating a `Decontamination Programme' under which it is intended to build three water treatment plants to process the urban waste water of Bogota.

The Bogota River deposits into the Magdalena River dangerous substances estimated at a daily average of 79 kilos of lead, 70 kilos of chromium, 20.4 tonnes of iron, 5.2 tonnes of detergents, 1,473 tonnes of suspended solids, and quantities of mercury and other heavy metals. These forms of pollution have seriously affected wetlands connected to the national hydric system along the country, thus affecting the economy and health conditions of smaller cities that use drinking water from these natural sources.

Solid waste collection is reasonably efficient in larger cities but remains poor in smaller cities. Although there is some sanitary disposal of the waste, this is generally poorly managed - the main disposal site in Bogota recently was the subject of a major explosion which destroyed the site containment. An estimated 30% of the urban solid waste is recuperated by `recyclers' organised in cooperatives, small enterprises and a national association, the ANR (Comité de Mejores Prácticas, 1996); if the industries were capable of accepting greater volumes of materials, the amounts recycled could be larger. This, relatively high proportion of waste recycled is reflected in the major bottle production company using 60% recycled material and the major paper and card producer using 51% recycled material; the major steel producers are using 40% recycled material (ENDA, 1991).

Noise, causing stress, aggression, bad temper and tiredness in citizens, has also become a significant problem in large, medium and small cities with no programmes or means of control. Along the main thoroughfares of Bogota, the main sources are: industry (50%), road traffic (21%), commerce (21%) and air traffic (8%).

Much of the population lives in areas which began as informal settlements - in Bogota the figure is 60%. Planning authorities of almost all cities have tolerated the creation and consolidation of non-legal housing often in high risk areas, with high adaptation costs and affecting the tropical ecosystems of the non-controlled urbanised areas.

The 1991 National Constitution and Law 99/93 of December 1993, issued shortly after UNCED, are the general legal framework for environmental planning and management in Colombia. This created the Ministry of Environment, as the national institution responsible for environmental affairs. Law 99/93 also structures the country into 34 Regional Autonomous Corporations (CARs) for purposes of environmental planning and management. These do not conform to the Department boundaries but are defined by river basins and sub-basins. Some of the Corporations predate Law 99 by more than 20 years and possess strong regional powers to make environment investments. The CARs are responsible for making environmental plans which municipalities must incorporate into the municipal development plans.

The four main cities possess Urban Environmental Authorities responsible for urban environmental management: since 1994, Bogota has the Departamento Administrativo del Medio Ambiente (DAMA), Medellin the Unidad Ambiental del Area Metropolitana del Valle de Aburra (UAMVA), Cali DAGMA and Barranquilla DADIMA. They are currently financed by municipal funds and for institutional strengthening they have a programme supported by a World Bank loan supervised by the Ministry of Environment (see below). They coordinate actions with Regional Corporations (CARs) and share programmes with other municipal agencies coordination with the Departments is, however, weak.

The EPM Authorities are created by mayors and approved by city councils. Some intermediate cities have created special EPM units, attached to the Planning Office but in all cases they are required to coordinate with the Regional Corporations and with the Ministry of Environment. Local development plans, required by law for the allocation of national funds, are progressively incorporating local and regional environmental priorities, as environmental problems are increasingly becoming an election issue.

Articles 65 and 66 of Law 99 are the main guidelines for urban EPM. There is still a conceptual dichotomy within the urban policy regulations considering ‘the environment' to be a ‘sectoral' aspect and not an issue integrated into all urban activity. Urban environmental policy is set out in the National Development Plan 1994-98, formulated by the Ministry of Economic Development. In addition, the Ministry of the Environment, in collaboration with a range of interests and coordinated by the National University of Colombia (IDEA, 1995) has set out an urban environmental policy as a subset of its environmental policy. This aims to define strategic scenarios for a `human sustainable development' process in the regions. A National Urban Environmental Agenda will elaborate a National Urban Environmental Profile, to identify the location of the main environment investments to be made in the coming years and to promote the coordination of municipal, regional, national and international environmental policies.

According to national policy stated by the Ministry of Environment, municipalities are starting the elaboration of Local Agendas or Local Environmental Plans of Action; these are not, however, legally well-defined. These `Local Agenda 21' initiatives, however, illustrate some of Colombia's commitments to Chapter 28 of Agenda 21. A further initiative, proposed in Bogota, Manizales and other cities, involves the establishment of Urban Environmental Observatories with the intention to measure and monitor urban pollution. The capital city has started a new Observatory of Urban Culture, which should become useful as a base for citizen monitoring of local action.

Policy on the spatial distribution of population becomes a key issue underlying the coordination of EPM programmes because internal migrations due to social conflicts have not yet been considered by the official census. New spontaneous settlements have appeared in oil production areas, drug plantation regions and in disaster areas affected by the `El Niño' phenomenon. Global climatic changes have affected many areas and are producing dramatic changes in agriculture, fishing, forestry and other rural activities that start affecting the urban providers of goods and services. Ports and tourist cities and nearby islands including Cartagena and the Rosary Islands, with highly polluted bays are a national priority with regard to EPM as are frontier cities like Leticia (Tabatinga) shared with Brazil and facing Peruvian Amazonia, where EPM issues need international and intermunicipal agreements.

The larger cities have been increasingly concerned to ensure that regional water resources are managed in a way, which ensures long-term water supply without damaging the ecosystems in areas from which the urban water supply is taken. As yet there has been no coherent analysis of resource flows required by cities and how these might be managed sustainably.

Three sources of funding are available specifically for local environmental programmes and projects:

• The CARs provide municipalities with funds to carry out planning and feasibility studies for urban infrastructure and can also provide capital funding for such facilities;
• FONAM and FONADE, respectively the national environmental and development funds, finance municipalities to produce feasibility studies but do not provide capital funding;
• Colciencias and Ecofondo provide funds respectively to research organisations and NGOs to carry out environmental projects in urban areas.

Following UNCED a group of major enterprises created the Sustainable Development Commission and they have been implementing the `Eco-efficiency' model in their business. In addition, the national association of major industries, ANDI, has an environmental unit and the Colombian Popular Industrial Association, ACOPI, plays a similar role on behalf of medium and small enterprises. There has been some discussion of the key role which SMEs, including informal industry might eventually play in an effective strategy to achieve sustainable development (CINCET, 1995).

There has been a strong development of urban NGOs in Colombia, including both international NGOs establishing local offices or funding local initiatives and locally founded organisations. Key players include Fedevivienda - the national federation of popular housing associations, CCONG - Colombian Confederation of NGOs, Ecofondo - the NGO environment fund, ENDA-Latin America and the Habitat Foundation. These, together with others urban NGOs, have been orchestrating participation of different social actors in the setting up urban and environmental networks jointly with academic centres such as IDEA (Environmental Studies Institute) at the National University of Colombia and IDEADE (Environmental Studies Institute for Development) of the Javeriana University. All these entities were proactive in the HABITAT II preparatory process and are participating in the present follow-up Committee of ‘Best Practices' with the Ministries of Economic Development and Environment.

The World Bank has made a loan of US$ 40 million to develop a major programme on EPM in the four main cities and in a selection of pilot intermediate cities. One of the components of this programme is the generation of Local Environmental Plans of Action, elaborated with the supervision of the Instituto de Estudios Ambientales (IDEA) of the National University of Colombia and environmental education projects in collaboration with other universities and international NGOs.

Ecofondo (1996), which obtains funding from ‘debt for nature swaps' from the US and Canada, in 1996 spent only 20% of its allocated budget on EPM proposals submitted be NGOs. There have been manifest difficulties in the formulation of project proposals.

Local authorities have also been establishing cooperation links with other cities. A recent notable example is the Curitiba-Manizales agreement sponsored by the Inter-American Development Band to establish an exchange on EPM expertise.

UNDP has initiated a Capacity 21 Programme to support the World Bank/Ministry of Environment / National University initiatives at local level. There is also a small UNDP LIFE programme in Cartagena.

In the field of urban solid waste management, ENDA has been supported by EU funds to Training Recyclers and the Dutch NGO WASTE has been working with IDEA on municipal research on waste recycling.

Until 1950 the country was predominantly rural, but since the discovery and exploitation of petroleum resources starting in the late sixties, there has been a clear shift of the population from the country to the city. At the time, the increase of the industrial activity and the changes in the structure of the rural economy led to the creation of both working and middle urban classes. Whilst in 1974 only 41% of the population was urban, by 1990, 55% was living in towns and cities. Whereas the most rapid period of urbanisation took place between the mid-seventies and the eighties, the rate is still high, at 3 %. The rural population is decreasing at an annual rate of 1%.

The rapid process of rural-urban migration is being accompanied by an uncontrolled urban growth of the main cities, at rates that surpass those of population growth, thus de-densifying the city. By the eighties, Quito, with a present population of currently 1.4 million, and Guayaquil with 1.9 million people have annual urbanisation rates respectively of about 14% and 11%. However, national population is increasing only at about 5%, reaching densities of 85 inhabitants per hectare in Quito and 149 in Guayaquil.

In 1991, only 63% of Ecuador's urban population had access to drinkable water and 53% to sanitation. There is also a gap between the regions: following the boom of tourism, coastal towns, which have a severe shortage of basic services and poor urban management, are growing at a rapid rate as a result of the migration of the population from rural service towns in the Sierra, which are better endowed in terms of infrastructure and services. The inadequate drainage systems, the discharging of untreated industrial liquid waste directly into rivers, and poor solid waste management, all contribute to the pollution of drinking water and therefore to a high rate of mortality due to intestinal ailments including cholera and diarrhoea these account for 35% out of the 10 principal causes of death.

The Municipality of Quito is an exception. In 1993 the new elected Mayor introduced a full-scale reform of the municipality, succeeding one year to obtain passage of national legislation to grant a new Metropolitan District of Quito with administrative authority over all aspects of environmental policy, land-use regulations, transport planning and municipal organisational arrangements. The new administration decentralised municipal planning, service delivery and community development functions into three zonal administrations, which work at the neighbourhood level.

The national financing of public services and urban equipment has been falling rapidly. Over the period from 1985 to 1989 the annual budget of the state for local governments was of about 11%. This had decreased to 8.5% in 1990 and to 3% in 1994. Public investment per capita in water supply and drainage fell from US$7.40 in the seventies to a mere US$3.50 in the eighties. Fiscal decentralisation is still a key issue to be addressed.

• IULA-Latin America and CELCADEL are implementing the SACDEL project (Support System for Training for Local Municipal Development in Latin America), which provides technical assistance in policy formulation and training programmes on decentralisation, participative local planning and improvement in municipal management. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, UNCHS (Habitat), SIDA and other donors jointly support this project.
• The Minga Project concerns municipal promotion of economic development and is being executed in four cities in four countries in the region, namely Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador; in the latter the city in question is Ibarra, with a population of 170 000. A second regional project, 'Proyecto Mujer', is involving the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca, the AME and the HABITIERRA Association; it is concerned with training women from five peripheral neighbourhoods in sustainable management of local resources for employment generation.
• The Programa de Desarrollo Municipal (PDM), implemented by the GTZ, aims to reduce the municipal service shortage in the country's urban communities. The programme started in 1990 and will be implemented over a ten-year period. External agencies funding the programme include the BMZ, the IDB and the World Bank. The Ecuadorian partners are the BdE (Banco de Desarrollo Ecuatoriano) and the AME. GTZ cooperation has focused on institutional consulting, participative planning and the development of a decentralisation strategy.
• Training on Urban Management for Sustainable Development (GTZ/ICLEI/Ministry of the Environment) (1996-1998). This project is part of the GTZ project Training Material for Urban Development, which consists on a series of pilot training courses in five municipalities in Ecuador and Colombia and one province in the Philippines.
• Community Development Planning (ICLEI). In the framework of Local Agenda 21, the Municipal Administration and the residents of Martha Bucaram - a poor neighbourhood in the South of the Metropolitan District of Quito - were brought together to devise a community development plan. The process has facilitated the self-organisation of the neighbourhood into a co-operative, which works for the provision of basic urban services. The EC is funding a project of similar character in the Northwest zone of the Metropolitan District of Quito. Vida en las Laderas (1995-97), implemented by CIUDAD with the assistance of INTERMOND, aims to strengthening the capacity of the local community to improve their own environment through small-scale interventions.

The regional Urban Management Programme for Latin America (UMP-LAC), also based in Quito, has worked with the GTZ in the formulation of the national legal framework for decentralisation and the restructuring of the national Secretaría de Desarrollo Urbano, Vivienda y Saneamiento Ambiental. The project has also been supported by the EC with the technical assistance of the Dutch Institute for Housing and Urban Studies. With the support of the GTZ and the Swiss Technical Cooperation Agency, the UMP has established the PGU-RAU (Programa de Gestión Urbana - Red Ambiental Urbana), a regional network which promotes South-South NGO cooperation in urban EPM.

The purpose of the foregoing case studies is not merely to analyse the context for urban environmental programmes in specific countries, but to illustrate the varieties of context and situation. What should be clear from these analyses is the following:

• the structure of urbanisation is different even in countries within the same region and with a similar geography and level of development (e.g. Thailand and Indonesia);
• The structure of government and the process of identifying and working with the right actors for effective action are unique to each country and to an extent even to individual cities. It should be added that much failure of technical and economic cooperation has resulted chiefly from an inadequate appreciation of the incapacity of particular partners to host projects and programmes or to implement the results and it is therefore of paramount importance for the EC to have a good grasp of the appropriate institution or mix of institutions with whom to cooperate on particular programmes or projects. This is true when working with all levels of government.
• The role and status of the private sector, NGOs, CBOs and other non-government actors, and the kinds of partnerships involving various types of actors - e.g. in privatisation of municipal services - differs significantly between countries and has to be well-understood before commitments are made to cooperative programmes and projects.
• All ESAs have priority countries in which they operate and, within each country, priority themes - which are not necessarily the same from one country to another; EC involvement in cooperation on the theme of urban EPM in any one country must take account of this existing structure of ESA activity and organise its programmes to complement these. It should be clear, however, that there might be sensitivities in some countries regarding ‘collusion' of ESAs concerning programmes where these are structured too far in the absence of discussions with government and other relevant local actors.

The chief recommendation which is implied here and restated in more detail in Chapter 5, is that the EC should commission studies of urbanisation and urban EPM more or less according to the structure outlined above, as a prerequisite to intervention in cooperative programmes in urban EPM. It will be necessary to involve in detail relevant local government and non-government institutions in such studies (they should probably be produced by local experts) and ideally to cooperate with other ESAs - including active municipal organisations and other non-government organisations - in the production of such reports. The studies would then need to be used as the basis for raising the profile of urban issues and problems as a foundation for cooperative programmes and projects. Whilst the above case studies are simply sketches to illustrate the themes that need to be covered in such national reports, in practice these would need to go into considerably more depth under all the headings.

No attempt has been made in the brief country profiles presented above to address the last heading in the outline presented in the introduction to the case studies, namely The potential Role of the EU as this clearly cannot be commented on independent of the process of producing actual reports. However, as noted above, it is this section of country reports, which is of paramount importance to the exercise of producing them.