The "enabling framework" gives government a central role in setting the framework for urban development but a lesser role in providing the investment. This framework encourages and supports the multiplicity of large and small initiatives, investments and expenditures by individuals, households, communities, businesses and voluntary organizations. By supporting the processes that are building and developing the city and the social economy, what appeared as insurmountable problems begin to appear more manageable.
The "enabling framework" developed in response to housing problems and the failure of conventional public sector responses. It has a wider relevance to broader issues of city management. The origins of the idea that government actions in regard to housing should concentrate on "enabling" and supporting the efforts of citizens and their community organizations to develop their own housing goes back at least to the 1950s and perhaps earlier. The concept of enablement has also spread to many other sectors - for instance, in the supply and maintenance of water systems and in the promotion of "healthy cities and communities" where individuals' capacity to be able to take effective action and to influence their own environment is seen as central to their wellbeing.
The concept of enablement is based on the understanding that most human investments, activities and choices, all of which influence the achievement of development goals and the extent of environmental impacts, take place outside "government". Most are beyond the control of governments, even where governments seek some regulation. In Southern cities, the point is particularly valid since most homes, neighbourhoods, jobs and incomes are created outside of government and often in contravention of official rules and regulations. The emphasis on "enabling policies" has received considerable support from the growing recognition that democratic and participatory government structures are not only important goals of development but also important means for achieving such development. Participation and enablement are inseparable since popular priorities and demands will be a major influence on the development of effective and flexible enabling policies.
The 1980s brought a growing realization that inappropriate government controls and regulations discourage and distort the scale and vitality of individual, family and community investments and activities, all of which are essential for healthy and prosperous cities. But there is also recognition that, without controls and regulations that are scrupulously enforced, individuals, communities and enterprises can impose their externalities on others. Preventing this is one of the main tasks of governance.
One of the key issues is then - what kind of "enabling" institution is needed that best compliments the efforts of individuals, households, communities and voluntary organizations and ensures more coherence between them all so they all contribute towards city-wide improvements. How can funding and technical advice be made available in ways that match the diverse needs and priorities of different settlements - with accountability and transparency built in to their disbursement of funding. Some important precedents have been described already - for instance the large scale kampung improvement programme in Surabaja that did involve citizens and community organizations in determining priorities, the Million Houses Programme in Sri Lanka and the support for community-level organization and action in its urban sub-programme, and the work of FONHAPO in Mexico, COINAP in Guatemala, the Urban Community Development Office in Thailand, each of which has funded and supported a great diversity of community-level initiatives in housing improvement and site development. Chapter 9 also included a review of the participatory tools and methods now increasingly used in development projects.
Cities Built From the Bottom Up
All cities are the result of an enormous range of investments of capital, expertise and time by individuals, households, communities, voluntary organizations, NGOs, private enterprises, investors and government agencies. In most cities in the South, the total value of the investments made by people in their own homes and neighbourhoods usually exceeds many times the total capital investment made by city and municipal authorities. Yet in most cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the individual, household and community efforts that have such a central role in building cities and developing services have long been ignored by governments, banks and aid agencies.
Deficits in housing and basic services seem unmanageable when aggregated at the level of the city or nation. Yet housing gets built, new residential areas appear and basic (if inadequate) services are provided in the absence of government action. In most cities in the South, most new housing is being developed by those for whom there is no official support, and no credit or technical assistance available. Any attempt by a government organization to increase the housing stock of a major city by many thousand units a year is unthinkable and yet the housing stock in most of the larger cities in the South is increasing by tens of thousands of new units built outside the law and most with no government help. What can be achieved by supporting the efforts of several hundred community organizations in a single city (and where possible doing so in partnership with municipal agencies) vastly outweighs what any single government agency can do itself. As a prominent Argentine urban specialist has noted,
"Much could be achieved in terms of direct improvements to living conditions in urban areas if governments no longer chained and repressed but supported a vast range of activities at present invisible to them - individuals, households and communities building or extending their own homes and creating a living for themselves."
The challenge for city governance is to ensure that this great multiplicity of investments and initiatives, in aggregate, improves living conditions, attracts private sector investment and encourages new enterprises.
The capacity to manage rapid change is one of the key attributes of good governance. The capacity to manage urban change is often confused with the investment capacity of city or municipal authorities. The two are not necessarily the same since such authorities can do much to encourage and support private investment not only in enterprises but also in a city's built environment and in infrastructure and services. As earlier Chapters noted, governments in the South that have worked with and supported the investments of individuals, households and community or neighbourhood organizations in their own homes and neighbourhoods have helped improve housing and living conditions and expand the provision of infrastructure and services, despite limited government funds. City authorities can greatly improve the quality of public transport by providing the framework for private firms; it is often forgotten that the public transport system of Curitiba in Brazil that is much admired for its quality and comprehensiveness is provided by private sector bus companies but within a framework set up by the city authorities. City authorities should also have the main role in enforcing legislation on air and water pollution and occupational health and safety. This does not require large investments by public authorities, but it can do much to improve health and the quality of life in a city.
Good governance also means coping with conflicting goals and the competing claims of different interests. All cities face a variety of contradictions that are not easily managed and for which sophisticated yet accountableregulations and institutions are needed. For instance, the most powerful economic interests on whose prosperity the city depends will want infrastructure and services provided to meet their needs but will also seek to keep down costs and pay as little as possible for these - and for the infrastructure and services needed by city inhabitants. They will also seek to keep down wages for their workforces yet this also diminishes the amount that their workforce can pay for housing and basic services. Enterprises and their workforce will often disagree about the level of provision for occupational health and safety. In competing with other cities for productive investment, each city authority has to keep down costs for residents and enterprises and offer attractive sites for enterprises yet also ensure sufficient funding is available so infrastructure and services are available and citizen needs are also met. In addition, as the power and resources available to city authorities grow, so too does the potential for their misallocation. The larger and more prosperous the city, the more the potential for corrupt practices, as government contracts for public services or for infrastructure projects grow ever larger and as government decisions about the location of roads or about the uses to which particular land sites can multiply tenfold, a hundredfold or even a thousandfold the value of particular land sites. But within these areas of disagreement and conflict, there is often a large degree of common ground between enterprises, trade unions (or other forms of workers' organizations) and residents. This is especially as private enterprises are increasingly looking for cities that are well managed with high quality living environments and good quality infrastructure and services.
City authorities must also look to encourage local innovation. For example, a local initiative to improve garbage collection and recycling levels may have immediate beneficial effects for the environment of a local community. Health may improve as rubbish dumps are cleared and breeding sites for disease vectors and pests reduced. The project itself may provide local employment. But if it is to spread beyond one locality, it requires a supportive local authority to encourage similar initiatives in other parts of the city. It also requires regulations to minimise risk from large-scale waste dumps and may require further incentives to encourage local business to use recycled products. National and international controls on waste may also be needed; few local authorities will promote recycling and waste reduction if it remains cheaper to dump untreated wastes or export them to another region or nation. There is also little point in a community reducing locally generated waste if their health is endangered by toxic or otherwise hazardous wastes from other sources.
Achieving the balance between addressing the needs of citizens as consumers and employees and addressing the demands of private enterprises needs a representative political and administrative system through which the views and priorities of citizens and businesses can influence policies and actions. Democratic structures remain among the best checks on the mis-allocation of resources by city and municipal governments. Actively involving a wide range of local groups in developing "city governance" helps ensure that the different priorities of a wide range of groups are addressed. Decentralizing governance from capital cities to regions, cities and municipalities can be one of the best means of promoting participation as government projects become more relevant and more effective, as the communities concerned have a real say in their planning and implementation.
The principle of subsidiarity remains important as responsibilities, tasks and control over resources are decentralized to the lowest level where their implementation will be effective. Agencies that are supra-city, whether state/provincial or national agencies or ministries or international agencies, often misunderstand the nature of local developments, resources and constraints. They also cannot identify the full range of options from which to choose the most appropriate policies, programmes and plans. External agencies can bring knowledge, expertise, capital and advice. But, without effective local government acting to represent local views, external agencies are unlikely to implement the kinds of projects or programmes that respond directly to the needs and priorities of individuals, households, voluntary groups and the private sector within each locality.
The basis for "good governance" at city and municipal level exists in most of the world's wealthier and more urbanized nations. But it has taken many decades to develop the institutional framework for this, especially in setting up democratic, transparent and accountable decision-making structures and in moderating the influence of those interests with the power and resources to form influential lobbies. In most nations in the South, as Chapter 5 described, the basis for "good governance" is much weaker. City and municipal authorities lack the capacity to raise revenue and have tasks and responsibilities assigned to them that are far beyond their technical and financial capabilities. It is common for local government budgets to have little or no funds for capital investments and a great shortage of technical skills. It is rare for a city or municipal government to have any significant capacity for expanding or extending infrastructure and services. At best, significant new investments are occasional and ad hoc, funded by central government or some development assistance agency. Meanwhile, city and municipal authorities fail to control industrial pollution and to ensure good practice in occupational health, to promote environmental health, to ensure that city-dwellers have the basic infrastructure and services essential for livelihoods and a decent living environment, to plan in advance to ensure sufficient land is available for housing for low-income groups and for economic development, and to implement preventive measures to reduce environmental problems or their impacts. It is this lack of investment capacity that necessitates a new approach that builds on and supports the "bottom up" processes that are building the cities.
Governance extends beyond governments. It includes the strengthening of institutions for collective decision-making and the resolution of conflicts. It implies new alliances and partnerships. Good governance develops a framework that succeeds in encouraging and supporting innovation and partnerships at household, community, city and regional levels. The achievement of sustainable development goals within a city will need an enormous range of household or community projects whose individual impact may be small but whose collective impact is significant. City and municipal authorities must develop sustainable development frameworks that encourage and support a sufficient number of such initiatives for their cumulative impact to be significant for particular districts and for whole cities and city-regions. Institutions and partnerships between the different actors - NGOs, community organizations, business and commercial enterprises, professional organizations or associations, national and local government - are needed to achieve sustainable development across all sectors and geographic scales and promote beneficial inter-project linkages.
The activities of certain groups are particularly influential to urban development: citizen groups and community-based organizations; non governmental organizations (NGOs); city government; commercial and industrial enterprises; and international aid/development assistance agencies.
These come under many names and are also known as grassroots groups, community based organizations, self-help groups and base-level organizations. All represent some form of primary organization by residents or workers in a city (often formed by relatively poor households) to better their opportunities or fight against some hazard. Such groups are usually formed around a residential community or workplace.
The range and relative influence of such groups varies greatly from city to city. In many Southern cities, associations of residents formed within illegal or informal settlements or tenements are much the most important "local authority" for their neighbourhood because of the lack of services provided by local government. In some, associations or federations of these residents' organizations have become powerful political forces, although in most instances, governments seek to limit their power and in many, to actively suppress it. But their importance in many cities has grown in recent years, as long established citizen movements have been given more scope to organize in countries that have recently instituted or returned to democratic rule, and as new movements have grown in importance - for instance around environmental issues or women's rights or alternative lifestyles. Most such movements challenge the legitimacy of conventional forms of city governments. And despite their volatility, these civic movements may be decisive in ensuring that cities meet the diverse social and collective needs of their inhabitants.
The capacity of citizen groups to identify local problems and their causes, to organize and manage community-based initiatives and to monitor the effectiveness of external agencies working in their locality represents one of the most valuable resources available to city and municipal authorities. This is especially so where municipal authorities remain too weak to ensure the provision of basic services to entire city populations. However, there is also the danger that, where city authorities are weak and ineffective, it is the more prosperous middle and upper income areas that are most effective at ensuring they benefit from limited government investment capacity and at avoiding any financial contribution towards the costs of managing a city effectively.
Each city neighbourhood has its own unique range of environmental problems and development priorities - and effective action demands local capabilities to identify problems and their causes and decide on the best use of limited resources. In many societies, this will require far more support channelled direct to citizen and community action. Various examples given in this Report showed how this can deliver immediate benefits to poorer groups more cheaply and effectively than more conventional state actions. It can also contribute to strengthening civil society by reinforcing democracy and participation and by developing partnerships between community based organizations, NGOs and municipal governments.
Citizen pressure can and often has encouraged city and municipal governments to pursue more sustainable patterns of resource use and waste minimization, where the ecological impacts are local or regional or (on occasion) national. Chapter 9 also noted the role that citizen-groups had in opposing large highway projects and in promoting more attention to public transport - roles that were seen, at the time, as regressive but with the benefit of hindsight have proved very important for the economy and the quality of life of the cities. The influence of citizen pressure can also be seen in the environmental movements and in the role taken by environmental issues in election campaigns in the North. But many have been largely driven by citizen concern for their own health and quality of life. There needs to be sustained citizen pressure on city and municipal governments to press for changes in production and consumption patterns that have their most serious ecological impacts overseas or on global cycles. The achievement of sustainable development depends on cities responding to the ecological damage to which their enterprises and consumers contribute far beyond their boundaries and that affect citizens in other countries.
Non-governmental organizations
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exist in so many forms with such differences in the scale and type of their work that any summary risks being incomplete and inaccurate. In most countries, there are dozens of NGOs involved in urban projects; in many, there are hundreds. NGOs vary in scale from large, well-organised institutions working in many locations to small ones operating in one neighbourhood with a tiny budget and perhaps one (part-time) paid staff member. Some are based only on voluntary, unpaid work. They vary in orientation from those working in participatory ways with low-income groups and their community organisations developing innovative approaches to development problems to those with very traditional, top-down "welfarist" approaches.
NGOs carry out many different kinds of activities which include emergency relief; technical or financial support to improve income-generating/expenditure-saving capacity; support for self-help and grassroots democracy; and lobbying and advocacy for political changes to improve the macro- level conditions that have resulted in local and national poverty (for example, debt) and environmental degradation. The scope of their goals varies from those seeking to influence change within one particular urban neighbourhood to those seeking to change the policies of governments and international agencies. Many NGOs follow more than one strategy, with different projects realising different kinds of needs.
In regard to cities, three roles have been identified for NGOs:
Enablers (i.e. community developers, organisers or consultants) alongside community-based organisations;
Mediators between the people and the authorities which control access to resources, goods and services; and
Advisors to state institutions on policy changes to increase local access to resources and greater freedom to use them in locally-determined ways.
NGOs have emerged as critical intermediary institutions supporting citizen's organizations to obtain access to resources and to negotiate with local government and other state institutions. In some cases, they may also negotiate on behalf of the citizens with the private sector, for example, when a low-income community has settled on illegally occupied private land and is trying to negotiate legal tenure from the land owner or when the residents in an illegal subdivision seek to negotiate improved provision of infrastructure from the land owners or developers. The role that many NGOs have as intermediaries between citizens and external agencies is sometimes encouraged by the local authority, although it is also viewed with some suspicion by other authorities.
NGOs may help form community organizations within the areas in which they are active or they may respond to the needs of existing citizen groups. NGOs that work with citizen groups may also be involved in building coalitions to address common goals. For instance, coalition building has been used to combat violence in the Prevention Program at the Contra Costa County Health Services Department (California) which brings together different groups who are either already concentrating on a particular form of violence (e.g. Battered Women's Alternatives) or serving a population that is particularly at risk. Instead of creating new, stand-alone programmes, existing community-based organizations join with the Program to form a single coalition that coordinates comprehensive, prevention services. These coalitions may also include representatives of governmental agencies, nonprofit groups, funding sources, or businesses.
Many NGOs have developed innovative ways to support disadvantaged groups (for instance, pavement dwellers, street children and people with physical disabilities or chronic diseases). NGOs' capacity to work with low-income groups in participatory ways to improve shelter and provide or improve services, to negotiate with governments and donors for funds and to develop the alliances and networks which promote political change (very often with federations or coalitions of community based organisations) gives them an important role within new models of urban development. As Chapter 9 described, NGOs and citizen groups have also pioneered the development of participatory tools and methods that permit a much more active involvement of citizens and their associations in identifying their needs and priorities and in determining how best to ensure these are met.
Some of the most important research on urban problems and potential solutions in the South have been undertaken by NGOs. This is perhaps most evident in Latin America, as research or action-research NGOs formed and developed during the 1960s and 1970s, largely staffed by researchers who had been expelled from universities or other state institutions under the influence of right wing non-democratic (and often military) governments. More recently, new NGO models have developed - as in the research, publications and campaigns of the Centre for Science and Environment in India that covers both rural and urban dimensions of sustainable development.
The work of NGOs is sometimes controversial. It often centres on demands for social change, perhaps inevitably if a major part of NGOs' work involves demanding a fairer deal for low-income or disadvantaged groups. Many Southern NGOs working in urban issues have been active in opposing forced evictions of low income groups - for instance the Urban Poor Associates in Manila, the Urban Resource Centre in Karachi, SPARC in Bombay and the Brazilian Movement for the Defence of Life in Rio de Janeiro. In recent years, NGOs have come to be considered as an important part of a movement of "civil society"; a broad coalition of interests determined to ensure that public interest issues are not monopolised by the state.
Many NGOs whose main work is implementing projects have been criticised for their lack of accountability to the communities with whom they work. The communities may find that a development project has been defined either by the NGO or their funders, and their own role in determining the direction of the project is marginal. There is also the problem in many countries of limited NGO capacity. This is especially so in many countries where there is no established tradition of NGO involvement in human settlement projects and where official bilateral aid programmes have greatly increased the scale of funding they channel through national or local NGOs.
At an international level, NGOs campaign and lobby to influence governments and international organizations. In this, they have long been active in both environment and development issues, although prior to the Earth Summit in 1992, relatively few sought to combine environment and development and thus work for the simultaneous achievement of the development and ecological sustainability goals that make up sustainable development. In recent years, there has been a much greater awareness of the coalition of interest between development NGOs and environment NGOs.
The strength of international NGO networks has greatly increased in the last decade and networks between NGOs in urban areas are no exception. The Habitat International Coalition is an international network of NGOs working in shelter and settlement-related issues that has been operating for over 20 years; it has over 200 NGO members and a major urban agenda. Ten years ago, a regional network for Africa, Settlement Information Network Africa, was set up. More recently in 1987, an Asian network has been established, the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. Such networks support local city-based NGOs and community organisations and put pressure on governments and international agencies to address the needs of poorer groups.
Given the diversity of cities both in terms of their size and population growth rates and in their economic, social, political, cultural and ecological underpinnings, it is difficult to consider "sustainable development" and cities in general terms. Much of the action to achieve sustainable development has to be formulated and implemented locally. The unique nature of each city and its culture and position within local and regional ecosystems means a need for local resources, knowledge and skills to achieve development goals within a detailed knowledge of the local and regional ecological carrying capacity. This demands a considerable degree of local self-determination, since centralized decision-making structures have great difficulty in developing and implementing plans that respond appropriately to such diversity. However, there are common principles such as the need for good practice in each public agency's planning, project appraisal, budgeting, purchasing and tendering with full consideration given to environmental aspects, including waste minimization and the use of goods made of recycled materials. Another common principle is the need to ensure the integration of environmental goals into all aspects of planning and management.
The achievement of sustainable development goals for any city depends on the capacity of city and district/borough/commune/municipal governments to develop the sustainable development framework outlined earlier in this Chapter and to plan and manage the area under their jurisdiction. Both the institutional framework and the planning has to be guided by the needs and priorities of its residents. At local level, the priority is for each society to develop its own response to local environmental problems and resource limitations, using the tools most appropriate to its own unique situation.
As Chapter 9 described, physical plans and land use management should provide a framework within which local households, enterprises and entrepreneurs can make choices and governments can make long-term plans for infrastructure and service development. Insufficient or poor quality planning implies enormous societal and environmental costs such as those arising from difficulties in installing infrastructure due to the chaotic expansion of cities; the development of illegal settlements in and around cities on flood plains, wetlands and other unsuitable sites due to a lack of affordable alternative sites; and the lack of provision for city dwellers (especially in poorer areas) of open space for recreation. Poor and insufficient physical planning and land use management also implies the development of cities that compound the problems of the urban poor. Only richer groups can afford to live in legal, well-serviced residential areas while most of the poor have to survive on marginal, dangerous and often peripheral sites whose monetary value is too low to prompt their eviction.
It is the city government which has to:
Promote more sustainable patterns of resource use and waste minimization among consumers and producers;
Ensure a good match between demand and supply for land for all the different land-uses that are part of any city while using its planning and regulatory system to promote resource conserving buildings and settlement patterns;
Invest in needed infrastructure and services (or plan and coordinate their provision by other agencies/enterprises) again within a resource conserving framework;
Work with local businesses to enhance the locality's attraction for new productive investment; and
Encourage and develop local partnerships to help achieve the above and other sustainable development goals within the city.
Just as all the actions and policies of city or municipal authorities can seek to improve environmental performance and reduce waste, so too can they all seek ways to contribute to poverty reduction - see Box 13.3.
Box 13.3: Options for municipal interventions in urban areas
Municipal governments can have a major role in alleviating or reducing poverty in urban areas, even when they have limited investment capacity at their disposal. A large part of this role is in encouraging and supporting the efforts of community-based organizations, NGOs and private sector institutions in supplying or improving urban services such as water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, public transport, health care and education. There is also considerable potential for poverty alleviation through changes in the regulatory framework for land management, urban agriculture and housing. For instance, low-income households often find it difficult to obtain land for housing legally as finding and obtaining (or registering) a legal house plot and obtaining permission to develop it for housing involves time consuming and costly procedures; here regulatory reform could increase the supply and reduce the cost of land for housing. Similarly, regulatory reform on building and planning regulations can reduce the cost of housing. Municipalities can also support urban agriculture and in so doing, improve food supplies and incomes for many low-income households. This can be done by developing and disseminating information on land tenure, land capacity, markets, and water, by providing technical assistance where needed, and by ensuring that provision is made for urban agriculture in urban planning.
Municipal programmes can also make major contributions to employment creation - especially through support for small scale and informal enterprises. A new and much neglected aspect of poverty alleviation is also improved access to justice and protection from crime. The urban poor rarely receive protection from the law and often turn to informal systems, as the formal judicial system is seen as slow, unpredictable and often biased against them. There are interesting precedents for municipal action to address the problems of crime and public safety which include community-mobilization and support. For instance, in Cali (Colombia), the municipal programme acknowledged the importance of operating at community level in its three action areas: law enforcement (public safety councils), education for peace (conciliation centres and school programmes), and social development (micro-enterprise development and sites for low-income housing).
SOURCE: Drawn largely from Wegelin, Emiel A. and Karin M. Borgman, "Options for municipal interventions in urban poverty alleviation", Environment and Urbanization Vol.7, No.2, October 1995. The information about Cali is drawn from Guerrero, R., "Cali's innovative approach to urban violence" The Urban Age (Urban Violence Issue) Vol. 1, No. 4, 1993, page 12.
The quality of governance determines the extent to which a city takes advantage of the potential environmental advantages of its concentration of production and population and avoids the potential disadvantages. City government also has to represent the needs and priorities of its citizens in the broader context - for instance in negotiations with provincial and national governments. It must work with international agencies and businesses considering investing in the city region. And it has to work with regional authorities to identify and minimise negative impacts and maximise positive ones.
Commercial and industrial enterprises
Governments at both a national and local level must develop the conditions to support and sustain economic prosperity but in most instances they are dependent on the private sector to respond to these opportunities. With the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and the privatization of many government agencies and responsibilities in most countries, investment opportunities are increasingly in the domain of the private sector. The private sector has a clear interest in the economic aspects of sustainable development and in the provision of infrastructure and services, but a more ambiguous position in regard to equity - both within contemporary society and inter-generationally.
Most commercial and industrial enterprises have some direct long-term interest in ecological sustainability as a depleted and degraded environment is likely to raise production costs and increase risks. For some medium and large companies, environmental degradation may also result in increasing costs in the short-term. But the main area of action on the environment among the private sector is in reducing adverse health and environmental impacts within their own facilities and in their immediate surrounds. Here, there is an immediate incentive to introduce environmentally clean technology in their own factories or to pressure government to strengthen controls on other companies. Some of the larger companies have been encouraged to introduce environmental improvements in their production processes due to consumer campaigns and changes in the goods which consumers prefer to purchase. What is termed "green consumerism" in the North has helped to drive a number of new items onto corporate agendas including environmental audits of company's performance (and that of their suppliers) and eco-labelling (so consumers can identify goods whose production and use minimize harmful environmental impacts). Trade unions have also been active in promoting "eco-audits" at the workplace - see Box 13.4.
In addition, despite recession in much of the North, there is a new vigour to the debate about business and the environment and many business leaders no longer dismiss environmental movements and are even happy to discuss such concepts as full cost accounting (where the environmental and social costs of a company's production process and products must be taken into account) and inter-generational equity. There are also examples of companies in both North and South that have made a major commitment to pursuing sustainable development goals.
Box 13.4: Mobilizing action and eco-audits at the workplace
The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has stressed that the discussions of sustainable development have given too little attention to the workplace and to the role of workers and their trade unions in acting on sustainable development issues. These issues obviously include meeting workers' needs for health and safety but they also include an important role in acting on issues such as resource use (including energy consumption), pollution control and waste management.
ICFTU has stressed the importance of eco-audits of the workplace as a way of setting and promoting action on such issues. Eco-auditing can identify the areas where any enterprise can improve its performance in accordance with the goals of Agenda 21 and can also provide a means for involving employers and local trade unions or workers' groups in partnerships towards commonly agreed goals. Community groups and local government authorities can also be involved - for instance, through being invited to review and evaluate the process.
SOURCE: International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, "Eco-auditing: sustainable development and the workplace", Discussion paper submitted to the Second Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, May 1994; and Lambe, Tony, "Trade Unions and the CSD", Eco; NGO Newsletter at the Second Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, 20th May, 1994 , page 1.
While many enterprises will benefit from the shift in employment that is part of achieving sustainable development (and there is already a very large pollution control and waste management industry in Europe and North America) for many, it will result in increasing costs. Companies may be reluctant to adopt environmentally clean production processes if they are not confident that their competitors will face the same increase in costs. A long-term programme of support and regulation can ensure a gradual but continuous improvement - for instance, through the gradual replacement of polluting industrial processes and plants with new industrial plant designs which eliminate or reduce polluting wastes and recover and re-use process chemicals.
Within an appropriate government framework of incentive and regulation, it is possible to conceive of commercial and industrial sectors greatly decreasing the scale of polluting emissions and toxic and hazardous wastes and minimizing environmental hazards in the workplace. Many private enterprises have chosen to make great progress on this even without government regulation. This has often been encouraged by share-holder pressure or by banks or investment funds that require much improved environmental performance as a precondition for investment. In some instances, it has also been encouraged by the possible scale of liability faced by a company or corporation whose production processes cause or contribute to major health impairments for its workforce or for a section of the population. What is more difficult to foresee is the means to reduce the private sector's depletion of other environmental assets, especially the use of the global sink for greenhouse gases and the use of resources whose ecologically damaging impacts are outside the city or nation in which the enterprise is located. Private enterprises in any city or country cannot afford to accept stringent controls on their use of non-renewable resources or greatly reduce the scale of greenhouse gas emissions if their competitors in other cities or nations can avoid these.
Different companies display contrasting attitudes towards environmental quality. For instance enterprises (and entrepreneurs) committed to particular cities are likely to have a greater commitment to environmental quality than enterprises that are "footloose", whose commitment to any city is only as long as that city retains cost advantages over alternative locations. Enterprises committed to a city have an incentive to invest in maintaining and improving the quality of that locality.
At the smallest level, small-scale enterprises are critical to the economy of many cities in the North and the South, especially to low-income areas. Many remain small and earn little money for their owner/workers. Programmes of support to help such enterprises typically offer training in new technology and business skills plus credit (generally at market interest rates). Some of these enterprises have an important role in the improvement of conditions in low-income settlements. Small-scale enterprise production processes may result in local pollution but in some instances, improvements are possible for relatively low unit costs, especially where a group of small enterprises share waste management or processing facilities. Sensitive and careful local planning with residents is required. This should fully recognize and support the important role of small-scale enterprises and, at the same time, minimize conflicts over land use. Certain urban authorities have set up special programmes to help small enterprises improve their environmental performance.
The role of national governments
It is difficult for any city or municipal authority to act in isolation. There are serious dilemmas facing any city authority that tries to better meet its global responsibilities for ecological sustainability. Any programme by a single city to improve its overall performance in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, use of scarce resources and disposal of wastes may impose financial penalties on its residents and businesses that threaten the city's economic prosperity. While this Report has described the many ways in which consumers and businesses in most cities can improve their "sustainable development" performance without such drastic consequences, without clear agreement and enforcement at the national and international level to ensure that all cities contribute more to meeting their global responsibilities, those that do contribute may lose business to those that do not.
National governments have the key role in linking local and global ecological sustainability. Internationally, they have the responsibility for reaching agreements to limit each nation's call on the world's environmental capital. Nationally, they are responsible for providing the framework to ensure local actions can meet development goals without compromising local and global sustainability. It is also the task of national government to consider the social and environmental impacts of their macro-economic and sectoral policies which may contribute to the very problems their sustainable development policies are seeking to avoid.
Despite the increased attention given to sustainable development, no national government has set up the regulatory and incentive structure to ensure that the aggregate impact of their economic activities and citizens' consumption is in accordance with global sustainability - although a few in Europe have taken many important steps towards some aspects. For instance, the Netherlands has a long term environmental policy both to address environmental problems and to address more ambitious sustainable development goals in the long term with the environmental goals integrated into other sectoral policies - such as transport, water management and physical planning. In most nations in the South, national governments still deny city and municipal governments the power and resources they need to promote development.
The achievement of urban development goals that also seek to promote ecological sustainability (or at least minimize the contribution of city-based activities to unsustainability) requires both incentives and regulations. Incentives are needed to encourage the private sector and individual, household and community initiatives to contribute to sustainable development. For instance, promoting a greater commitment among companies to recycling and waste minimization generally needs national action. Regulations are needed so that the workings of the market are not such that the weak and vulnerable are exploited (so development goals are not met) and air and water quality damaged, natural capital depleted and global systems degraded. Without such a framework, enterprises with good environmental practice will be always at a disadvantage to those which can reduce costs by exploiting the environment. The consumer will always bear a large part of the costs - but the issues are: what is the size of the costs, when do they occur and how are the costs distributed among different consumers?
There are also the policy options that help change the nature of demand for goods and services to those that are more compatible with sustainable development. These include ensuring that consumers are more knowledgeable about the environmental impacts of the goods they purchase or of the process which produced them. This can be achieved through information campaigns including "eco-labelling" schemes. They also include shifting the raising of public finance from employment (as in taxes on employer's wage rolls or employees' wages) or general consumption and resource use or pollution (e.g. carbon taxes).
The broad regulatory and incentive structure needed to support the achievement of development goals, within a framework which promotes local and global ecological sustainability, is relatively easy to conceive as an abstract exercise. But translating this into reality within nations and globally is far more problematic. Powerful vested interests oppose most, if not all, the needed policies and priorities. The likely levels of reduction needed in the use of non-renewable resources (especially fossil fuels) will impinge most on richer groups' lifestyles. Richer groups are unlikely willingly to forsake the comfort and mobility that they currently enjoy, although the innovative public transit schemes described in Chapter 9 show that automobile-dependent cities are not inevitable. As noted earlier, technological change can help reduce resource use and waste without limiting mobility. But if combatting atmospheric warming does demand a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and if needs are to be met in the South (implying considerably increased fossil fuel use overall), this will require changes in consumption patterns among the wealthier high consumption households worldwide. This will include limitations on their right to use private automobiles at the levels now common since this cannot be sustained even with new technologies and alternative fuels drawn from renewable resources - at least without a significant increase in costs.
The role of the international community
National governments in both North and South are unlikely to set the incentives and regulations needed to promote sustainable development outside their national boundaries without international agreements. One of the key international issues for the next few decades will be how to resolve the pursuit of increased wealth by national societies (most of whose members have strong preferences for minimal constraints on their consumption levels) within a global recognition of the material limits of the biosphere. There is little doubt that the world's natural resource endowments and natural systems can sustain the world's population both now and in the near future with absolute poverty eliminated, human needs met and all nations having life expectancies comparable to those in the richer nations. In the richest nations, it is also possible to envisage much more resource-conserving societies without a fall in living standards. What is far more in question is whether the political processes within nations and internationally can put in place both the agreements and the regulatory and incentive structures to ensure that this is achieved. The power and profitability of many major corporations and the authority of national governments will be reduced by such a move. Many jobs may also be threatened although, as described in Chapter 12, a shift of patterns of production and consumption towards those which greatly reduce the use of non-renewable resources, protect soils, forests and watersheds and promote waste-minimization and recycling also create many new jobs. Some necessary measures are likely to prove politically unpopular. Even when international agreement is reached, the world has little experience of the institutions needed to ensure compliance.
There are also international factors far beyond the competence and capacity of national and municipal governments that influence the quality of city environments. The very poor environmental conditions evident in most Southern cities are an expression of the very difficult circumstances in which most Southern countries find themselves. Stagnant economies and heavy debt burdens do not provide a suitable economic base from which to develop good governance. Governments from the North and international agencies may promote environmental policies but there is little progress on changing the international economic system to permit more economic stability and prosperity among the poorest nations. Many Southern economies have no alternative but to increase the exploitation of their natural resources to earn the foreign exchange to meet debt repayments. In the discussions about new "enabling frameworks" that the City Summit promotes, what must not be forgotten is the "enabling framework" needed at international level that is far more supportive of economic stability and greater prosperity for the lower-income nations.