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.