OECD DAC Reference Manual

This document seeks to support the growing interest among development cooperation agencies and their partners in recipient countries in addressing urban environmental problems. It also brings together two issues that are often considered separately: how addressing urban environmental problems can: ? contribute to poverty reduction; and ? ensure that urban based demands for resources and the use of natural sinks for urban wastes are ecologically sustainable It emphasizes how good practice in environmental management can bring about a revolution in urban services which can: ? greatly reduce the health burden imposed on urban populations by airborne, food borne and water-related diseases, chemical pollutants and physical hazards - and in so doing bring particular benefits to low income groups in general and to women and children in particular ? support more prosperous economies; and ? limit the disruption that urban development may bring to local eco-systems and global cycles. Well managed urban centres can combine high quality, safe and healthy living environments with relatively low levels of resource use and waste generation. This document also draws on recent examples of “Local Agenda 21” programmes to show how improving practice in environmental management can also help reinforce participation and strengthen local democracy. But it also considers the difficulties in achieving good practice in countries with weak and ineffective city and municipal authorities. Traditionally, development cooperation agencies have funded environmental infrastructure directly, although now there is an increasing emphasis on helping to develop the capacity of local institutions to fund, build, extend and manage such infrastructure themselves. This document includes a focus on how environmental problems impact on people’s health and who is most affected and why. In the majority of developing countries, the most critical environmental problems facing much of the urban population are life-threatening or health-threatening disease causing agents or chemical pollutants in the air, water, or soil - or in the food they eat. Good environmental management can greatly reduce these health problems and contribute much towards poverty reduction. The discussion of the different environmental problems is also structured to highlight the environmental actions that can ‘prevent’ the problem - for instance under heading such as water-related, food- borne and airborne diseases, chemical pollutants, physical hazards and reducing the impact of natural disasters. As Chapter 3 will discuss more fully, the document could have been organized using conventional sectoral categories - but these do not bring out the ‘environmental’ dimensions of the problems and the solutions and how these often cross sectoral and jurisdictional boundaries. A sectoral view can also hide the extent to which environmental problems need coordinated actions in different sectors by different stakeholders. This document is not intended only for environmental sections of governments and donor agencies since it seeks to highlight the environmental roles and responsibilities of all sectors of government and also of civil society.