Extracted from: DANIDA Workshop Papers: Improving the Urban Environment and Reducing Poverty; December 5, 2000; Copenhagen, Denmark.

 
Enabling frameworks

Improving urban environments depends not only on what urban governments fund and regulate but also on how they encourage and support the efforts and investments of households, citizen groups, NGOs and the private and non-profit sector. In most urban centres in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the investments made each year by households and communities in improving their homes and neighbourhoods greatly exceeds the investments made by government agencies. Supporting this investment is a central part of environmental improvement.

However, in many nations, local governments lack the capacity to do so – or have little interest in this (see Table). In nations where decentralisation and democratic reforms have made urban governments more accountable, there is greater scope for external agencies to support local government action. Where urban governments remain undemocratic and unaccountable, then more attention is needed to supporting the community processes that build cities ‘from the bottom up’. This is not in conflict with strengthening local government in that strong, well-organised, democratic community organisations are an essential part of democratic local governments.
 

 
A framework of support for civil society

It is worth distinguishing between two different kinds of civil society organisation that are active in environmental issues. The first is one whose primary purpose is to work at grassroots level to improve the environment – for instance, community organisations formed by the residents of low-income neighbourhoods and the local NGOs that work with them. The second is one that concentrates on documenting environmental problems and using this as the basis for demanding action – for instance, documenting the ‘state of the environment’ in a city or highlighting the extent to which air pollution standards are being violated and who are the main contributors to this.

With regard to the first of these, there is tremendous potential in new partnerships between local governments, community organisations and NGOs. Joint programs can be set up to drain stagnant pools; to re-block existing settlements so that pipes, drains and access roads can be installed and space made for schools and health centres; to locate and destroy disease vectors within homes and their surrounds; to design educational programmes on health prevention and personal hygiene; and to set up emergency life-saving systems through which first aid can be provided in each neighbourhood and through which seriously ill or injured persons can be rapidly transported to a hospital. One of the most impressive aspects of the Local Agenda 21 in Ilo (Peru), was the 300 local projects financed and implemented through partnerships between the municipal government and community-level management committees.

There may be considerable potential for environmental improvement without local government, as shown by the early work of the Pakistani NGO Orangi Pilot Project with low-income households and community organisations in Orangi, the largest unauthorised settlement in Karachi. The fact that good quality sewers/drains were extended to hundreds of thousands of people with full cost recovery shows what can be achieved with minimal external funding and with most of the investments made by the poor households themselves. Once the local government saw this approach working, they also saw how they could use their limited funds to better effect through working with initiatives such as these. So what began as a small community-funded initiative supported by a local NGO (and ignored by government and denounced as inappropriate by a UN agency) ended up being an example that is now copied by government agencies, NGOs and community-based organisations in other parts of Karachi and other cities in Pakistan. There are other examples of innovations developed by local NGOs that, once implemented, encouraged local governments or national government agencies to support comparable initiatives – as with, for example, the influence of the Barrio San Jorge programme in Buenos Aires on programmes in other municipalities, funded by the national government (Schusterman and Hardoy 2000).

Different NGO approaches

Environmental NGOs usually use one of four approaches:

• A market orientation – with initiatives to introduce and pay for improved housing, infrastructure and services through market-related mechanisms and local entrepreneurs. Credit often plays an important role within this, as it allows low-income households to afford the capital costs of improved infrastructure (or improving their own home) and to spread the repayments over time.
• Welfare approaches with NGOs offering assistance to those in need, often fulfilling a role that government agencies should provide – for instance, provision for water or garbage removal.
• Making claims on the state, with the NGO active in the advocacy of citizen rights and in putting pressure on local authorities or other state agencies to provide infrastructure or services to the poor.
• Civil society-driven alternatives through programs which involve a combination of community and state support to provide or improve housing, infrastructure and services in non-traditional ways.

 
The first two approaches are generally the most common – with the second also the one most often funded by international aid. But the third and fourth deserve more consideration in that they seek to improve local governance, not bypass it.

Claim-making on the state: The lack of public recognition of, and support for, the needs of low-income groups leads to NGOs taking on a ‘claim-making’ role, arguing for improved provision in a wide range of infrastructure and services both for neighbourhood improvement and for more effective pollution control. Success depends on a supportive political environment. Certain city authorities have deliberately changed their policies or procedures to provide more scope for greater participation of grassroots organisation in municipal plans and activities, for instance, through participatory budgeting (as pioneered by Porto Alegre in Brazil and now also in use in many other Brazilian cities) and some Local Agenda 21s.

Civil society-driven alternatives: This approach combines NGOs working directly with low-income groups to improve conditions with using successful ‘pilot projects’ to negotiate support for many more projects from local governments and external agencies. Many are also based on community savings and credit groups. Examples include the many community development initiatives:

• In Thailand, supported by the Urban Community Development Office.
• In India, supported by the National Slum Dwellers Federation, the Indian NGO SPARC and cooperatives of women pavement dwellers.
• In South Africa, through the South African Homeless People’s Federation and the supporting NGO, People’s Dialogue on Land and Shelter.
• In Pakistan, through Orangi Pilot Project as mentioned earlier.

The methodology developed by the Indian NGO SPARC has particular relevance and has been followed (with local adaptations) by many other NGOs. It involves two critical components:

• Developing pilot projects with low-income groups and their community organisations to show alternative ways of doing things (building or improving homes, running credit schemes, setting up and running public toilets, organising community-determined resettlement when low-income households have to be moved, etc.)
• Engaging local and national officials in a dialogue with communities about these pilot projects and about how they can be scaled up (or the number of such initiatives multiplied) without removing community management.

These negotiations with government agencies can be undertaken with constant reference to what has been achieved. An important part of this is to bring government officials and politicians to visit the pilot projects and talk to those who implemented them. This approach includes ‘claim-making on the state’ but, by being able to demonstrate solutions that work, the engagement with the state is more productive.

The pilot projects also stimulate other groups to initiate comparable actions and there is a constant interchange between those involved in different initiatives. This is not an exchange of professional staff but of, for instance, the women living on the pavements or in squatter settlements who manage their local cooperative savings and credit schemes. This direct interchange between community organisers has helped develop and spread knowledge and has supported the formation and development of new community initiatives. Community members exchange ideas not only about what they do and how they do it but also about the strategies that they found useful in negotiating with government and other external agencies.

Community exchanges also help build federations of urban poor groups within cities, which work together to change local, provincial or national institutional constraints on community initiatives. Although most community exchanges are local (for instance, between groups within a city) or regional (inter-city), an international dimension also developed which is now supported by a new umbrella organisation supporting federations of the urban poor, namely, Shack Dwellers International.

However, while local (or international) NGOs can be important supporters of civil society-driven alternatives, they can also be key constraints. They often impose their agenda on communities, in part because they retain management and financial control. It is also difficult for professionals to recognise and support the right of community structures and discussions to make key decisions; or to have the patience to allow community processes to develop their capacity for planning and management; or to ensure that their NGO is accountable to the community groups with which they work.

Some international agencies have sought to institutionalise ways of funding a multiplicity of local community initiatives. These include the small-grants programme of the Thai government’s Urban Community Development Office (supported by funding from DANCED) and the C3 Challenge Funds supported by the UK Department for International Development in Uganda and Zambia. UNDP has sought to support local environmental initiatives through its LIFE programme.

Participatory tools and methods

As external agencies (from NGOs and local governments to international agencies) have sought more participatory (or collaborative) ways of working with grassroots organisations, new tools and methods have been developed to facilitate this. These include more participatory methods for gathering information within low-income settlements and of analysing it and drawing from it in developing responses to problems. They include more scope for residents to define needs and priorities, and the most appropriate means of addressing them. More participatory methods have also been developed to evaluate projects (or other externally supported interventions) and to monitor progress. And more participatory methods of information-gathering, and the information gathered, can also become catalysts for a greater involvement by residents and their community organisations.