Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
SUSTAINABLE FOR WHOM?
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
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Banashree Banerjee
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When compared with the rural sector or with the magnitude of urban problems in India, bilateral and multilateral funding in the urban sector has been small. Still, its scale and diversity is significant enough to offer meaningful learning experiences. There is no doubt that external funding has benefited millions of city dwellers. The question is, are these benefits sustainable?
While looking into this question and its related dimensions, we will focus here on interventions that lead to environmental improvements targeted at poor urban communities. This focus represents two themes that appear as priorities in the urban agendas of all aid agencies: poverty and environment. Explicit urban agendas, of course, are products mostly of the mid-nineties whereas bilateral and multilateral interventions related to environmental improvements for the poor started in the early eighties. In that sense the agendas affirm the continued validity of these themes for aid agencies.
Sustainability of interventions is also another theme that cuts across the concerns of all bilateral and multilateral agencies. However, this aspect has only been referred to in passing in evaluation and impact studies. Perhaps the lack of detailed studies on the subject is because of the infancy of the urban sector in relation to external funding. On the other hand there are definite indications to show that even in practice the issue has not received sufficient attention.
Here we will look into the strategies that have been adopted to attempt sustainability of interventions in the field of environmental improvements for the urban poor. We will examine the likely influencing factors in the process of establishing sustainability. Finally we will see if and how interventions are likely to be more sustainable given the recent recognition of the urban sector by funding agencies and their change in approach . But first we will run through the different ways in which environmental improvements for the poor have been attempted.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net