Environmental Strategies for Sustainable Developments in Urban Areas

Lessons from Africa and Latin America

Edesio Fernandes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429806063
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this collaboration responds to the rapid urbanization of African and Latin American countries and features ideas for sustainable urban development in these areas from specialists in environmental engineering, sustainable cities, urban and environmental planning, air pollution, mega cities and environmental law. Scholarship has explored issues of politics and the economy such as (re)democratization and decentralization, economic conditions and privatization policies imposed by international donors, but the impact of the urban setting of these areas remains understudied despite the major environmental changes brought about by these urban contexts. Environmental Strategies seeks to solve this gap. It will be of particular interest for policy makers and urban planners.

1

Learning from the South

Edesio Fernandes

Introduction

The rapid urbanization in African and Latin American countries throughout this century has provoked all sorts of drastic social, economic and cultural changes, which have already been discussed extensively. Equally well known are the long standing technical, financial and political problems and constraints confronting the governments of those countries in their attempts at promoting economic development and controlling urban growth.

Special emphasis has been placed, since the 1980s, on the complex nature and implications of the processes of (re)democratization and decentralization in Africa and Latin America. The research on the reform of the state in those regions has been combined in recent years with a discussion on the conditions and consequences, for the national economies, of structural adjustment, liberalization and privatization policies imposed by international donors and multilateral financial institutions, within the context of the current process of economic globalization.

However, although the pace and the pattern of overall development in Africa and Latin America has also brought about major environmental changes, the existing research on the environmental realities in those regions is still incipient, particularly as regards the urban environment. In fact, most of the interest in, and knowledge on, environmental matters seems to focus primarily on issues concerning wildlife or the great ecosystems such as the Amazon, while the understanding of the environmental dimension, and resulting problems, of the process of intensive urban growth is still fragmented. Moreover, as Satterthwaite argues in Chapter 4, the research agenda on environmental matters in cities in the South has been determined, to a large extent, by the values, concerns and interests of more developed countries in the North.

Furthermore, it is also fair to say that much of the existing research has had a negative approach, be it when it emphasizes how economic development in the South has reproduced the traditional predatory patterns of the North, or be it when it stresses how the current stage of international division of labor is deeply based upon the maintenance of criteria of environmental injustice concerning the conditions of exploitation of natural resources, as well as the overall distribution of the costs and benefits of development.

Nevertheless, the growing concern about the deterioration of the urban environment in African and Latin American countries has been translated in recent years into several original, promising experiences of urban environmental management which are, as yet, not widely known. This book seeks to present, discuss and evaluate some such experiences. It has two principal aims: to acknowledge the significant advances in environmental management which are being achieved in many African and Latin American cities, and to provide information on some of the main experiences in progress, especially the fundamental ideas behind their formulation, so that they can be replicated in other cases.

Although this book is an edited collection of articles by different authors, it should be viewed as the product of a dialogue of several orders, namely: a dialogue between academics and public administrators; between governmental environmental agencies and environmental NonGovernmental Organizations-NGOs; and between representatives from local, regional, national, transnational and international organizations and institutions.

Above all, besides proposing a dialogue between countries from the South and their richer counterparts in the North, this book also promotes a long overdue dialogue between South and South, particularly between Africa and Latin America. These are two regions which, sharing as they do so many similarities, can only benefit from direct contact with one another - without the often distorting mediation and articulation provided by international organizations with their own agendas. By bringing the experiences of urban environmental management in Africa and Latin America to the attention of a wider audience, this book also aims to involve new participants in this debate.

This book comprises a broad-ranging collection of empirical studies, some of which are more general, others more specific. They touch on issues as diverse as air pollution in Mexico City and garbage collection in Cairo, tree planting in Rio de Janeiro and urban gardening in Accra, public transport in Curitiba and the pollution of the bays of Talcahuano, water supply in Cape Town and the protection of historical heritage in Tunis. However, there is at least one major theme linking the different chapters: that of the need for the formulation of new strategies for urban environmental management which reconcile economic development with environmental preservation in a sustainable manner.

This is not a guide to “best practices”, as, with all their undeniable merits, the experiences discussed in this book have many inherent problems and shortcomings. However, while the various problems concerning the replicability of unique experiences are discussed by Rabinovitch in Chapter 2 and Perlman in Chapter 7, among others, the general argument of this book is that some fundamental ideas and concepts are basically right - and ideas are, or can be, replicable.

Sustainable environmental management in the South: an overview

The phenomenon of intensive urban growth in Africa and especially in Latin America has been extensively analyzed since the 1970s, and urban research has progressed enormously in its efforts to understand the factors, agents and processes shaping urban reality in those regions. It is particularly the case of the line of research which proposes a critique of the traditional (neo)liberal framework - however dominant that may still be. Within the field of critical urban research, the urban phenomenon has been considered as the dynamic result of a complex and contradictory process of articulation of economic, political, legal and cultural forces, through which both cities and rural areas in Africa and Latin America have been redefined the by the changing nature of capitalism throughout this century, and more recently by the process of economic globalization.¹ Given the complex nature and implications of the processes of (re)democratization and decentralization in those regions, special emphasis has been placed since the late 1970s on the role played by a variety of social and political agents and institutions, especially the state and urban social movements and NGOs.²

Parallel to the progress of urban research, a whole tradition of environmental studies has been established since the 1972 United Nations Conference in Stockholm, but only in recent years have such studies focused on urban areas, particularly those in Africa and Latin America.³ Amongst the main changes underlying the evolution of urban environmental research, the adoption of a wide concept of the urban environment should be stressed: it has increasingly been viewed as the balance between natural, artificial and cultural elements which makes for a determined quality of urban life. The emphasis has been placed on environmental processes rather than on their specific aspects. While focusing on urban areas, environmental studies have also taken into account the environmental dimension of the socio-economic processes taking place in rural areas, particularly given the intertwined relationship between cities and the countryside.⁴

The multifaceted nature of environmental processes has been reflected in the undertaking of original interdisciplinary environmental studies. The growing number of studies and sources of data - UNEP, UNCHS, World Bank, international NGOs (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, etc.) and other national and international organizations - should also be mentioned, as they have certainly contributed to increasing the level of awareness of environmental realities in Africa and Latin America.

In particular, as discussed by Eigen in Chapter 9, the role of the UN agencies in raising environmental matters, producing data and information, and stimulating the adoption of original management experiences has been fundamental. Following the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, in which the concept of Agenda 21 was proposed, an intensive mobilization process involving governmental agencies and urban and environmental social movements and NGOs led to the long expected meeting of the “green” and the “brown” agendas during the 1996 “City Summit”, the Habitat II Conference promoted by the United Nations in Istanbul. The implementation of the principles of Agenda Habitat is currently the main challenge for cities in Africa and Latin America.⁵

With the development of environmental research over the last decade, many significant changes have taken place, from thematic research to the identification of global phenomena (El Nino, global warming, etc.), and from a naturalist to a human-centered approach to environmental processes.⁶ Once again, many such studies have reinforced the need to integrate the “green” and the “brown” agendas. In that respect, it is important to remark that most urbanization studies have been undertaken in the context of industrialization resulting from the traditional international division of labor, and therefore the pollution forms discussed have been those traditionally associated with industrialization processes. The factors considered by such research tradition have included, among others, the growing scale of production, population growth, the emergence of social needs, and the use of inadequate technology.

More recently, the new international division of labor supporting postindustrial capitalism has also reinforced urbanization as the condition for the economy of services and information, but this time applying new technologies and producing new forms of pollution. Such different stages of capitalist production can sometimes co-exist in the same country, as has happened in Africa and especially in Latin America.⁷

Another important change concerns the false question of “preservation vs. development”, and the evolution of concepts in that respect has been clearly reflected in policy and legislation. Following an initial stage characterized by the lack of information and concern, in its second stage environmental research opposed preservation to economic development; more recently, a third stage has been established, in which preservation has been viewed as the very condition for sustainable development. The real challenge for developing countries, therefore, is to view whatever form of pollution as a sign of the inefficiency of the economic model as a whole.⁸

Underlining this conceptual evolution is another most significant change of approach: that from a moral-humanitarian to a socio-political approach to environmental processes in Africa and Latin America, and, more recently, to a socio-economic approach. The truth is that all such approaches are valid in their own right, but need to be combined to be effective and just.⁹ The increasing incorporation, by many national laws, of the requirement for an assessment of environmental impact prior to the official authorization of several urban activities reflects such an evolution: as Martinez-Flores argues in Chapter 6, there is a growing awareness that we need to better understand the complex distribution of costs and benefits resulting from economic activities, which can only be achieved through a deep analysis proposing to evaluate the sociopolitical and cultural as well as the economic costs of pollution.

As was mentioned above, an important tradition of environmental studies has associated the process of globalization of the economy and the conditions of environmental injustice brought about by the new economic and political international relations, which have had a major impact on developing countries.¹⁰ As argued by Satterthwaite in Chapter 4, while the North-South divide becomes even more evident when the environmentally-unfriendly lifestyles in developed countries are considered, the alarming urban health indicators in developing countries prove that the link between poverty and the environment cannot be ignored any longer.¹¹ Recent events in South-East Asia and in the Brazilian Amazon, amongst many other examples, have also shown the negative environmental impact of the movement towards “economic development at any cost” in developing countries through the pressure to rapidly develop industry, occupy new areas, and burn forests.

While the processes of democratization and decentralization in Africa and Latin America are far from being consolidated, the widespread adoption of liberalization policies has forged new domestic ro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributor
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Learning from the South
• 2 Global, regional and local perspectives towards sustainable urban and rural development
• 3 The role of NGOs and CBOs in a sustainable development strategy for Metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa
• 4 Environmental problems in cities in the South: sharing my confusions
• 5 Urban environmental management strategies and action plans in S\xE2o Paulo and Kumasi
• 6 A new air pollution program for Mexico City
• 7 Towards sustainable mega- cities in Latin America and Africa
• 8 The experience of regional environmental management in Bio Bio, Chile
• 9 Sustainable cities and local governance: lessons from a global UN Program
• 10 Innovative strategies for sustainable development in the Middle East and North Africa
• 11 Sustainable cities: a contradiction in terms?
• Appendix 1 London's footprint
• Appendix 2 The metabolism of Greater London, population 7,000,000