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Environmental Profile*

Abstract

The Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) is the principal activity of the UN System for operationalizing sustainable urban development, thus contributing to the implementation of the global Agenda 21 and Habitat Agenda. Among the 22 cities in which the SCP is currently active, there is a shared SCP process which provides a general framework for city-level project implementation. This process consists of a general pattern of Assessment and Start-Up, Strategy and Action Planning, and Follow-up and Consolidation. The preparation of the Environmental Profile (EP), which is the subject of this paper, occurs in the First Phase. It is used to identify and clarify environment issues, involve relevant stakeholders and prioritize the issues to be addressed. It does so by providing a systematic overview of the city's development activities and how they interact with the city's environmental resources, and identifying and mobilizing stakeholders. The paper describes each of the four Chapters of the EP: The City Introduction (Chapter 1), The Development Setting (Chapter 2), The Environment Setting (Chapter 3), and The Environment Management Setting (Chapter 4).

* Excerpted from the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) Book Series, Volume I, 1999 with permission from the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNCHS-Habitat)

Introduction

Life in cities depends upon a wide variety of development activities such as industry, commerce, transportation, construction, households, etc. These activities depend upon the availability of environmental resources such as land, water, air and ecological systems. In the process, however, they also often damage these very resources.

The Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS _ Habitat) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) thus aim to help cities integrate environmental planning and management with local governance. The SCP is the principal activity of the UN system for operationalizing sustainable urban development, thus contributing to implementation of the global Agenda 21 and Habitat Agenda.

SCP is currently active in 22 cities in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe. The SCP cities share a common approach, as follows:

• central focus on development-environment interactions
• broad-based participation by public, private and community sector groups
• concern for inter-sectoral and inter-organizational aspects
• reliance on bottom-up and demand-led responses
• focus on process: problem solving and getting things done
• emphasis on local capacity-building.

Among the SCP cities, there is a shared SCP Process which provides a general framework for city-level project implementation. This process consists of a general pattern of Assessment and Start-Up, Strategy and Action Planning, and Follow-Up and Consolidation. The preparation of the Environmental Profile (EP) occurs in the First Phase, to identify and clarify environment issues, involve relevant stakeholders and prioritize the issues to be addressed.

The Role and Purpose of EP in SCP Planning

Decisions about Strategy and Action Plans for an SCP Project are based on findings from The Assessment Phase in which EP is normally the first project activity to be undertaken. It brings together information about the city's development sectors and activities, its environmental resources and hazards and management systems in a way that allows a systematic analysis of how development and environment interact. In this way, EP not only highlights and elaborates the key environmental issues facing the city, but also puts them equally into the appropriate development and mwanagement context. It also identifies the different groups, organizations and stakeholders which have important (and often conflicting) interests.

It has two main purposes:

• The EP provides a systematic overview of the city's development activities and how they interact with the city's environmental resources, and
• The EP, both as a source of relevant information and through the process of its preparation, helps to identify and mobilize stakeholders.

Using the Environmental Profile

The SCP Project Team, together with Issue_Specific Working Groups, will naturally be the most intensive users of the EP. To make it useable to a wider audience, the EP should not only be physically accessible, but it should also be written in a jargon-free and readily-understandable style. It should contain important technical information but be presented in a clear and comprehensible manner.

Ideally, the EP should be completed and available before the City Consultation, so it can be used by all of those preparing and participating in the Consultation. In this way, the discussions at the Consultation will be properly informed and will be unified by the common starting points established in the EP. Since preparation of the EP is a major task which can be time-consuming, some cities have not been able to completely finish the EP before conducting their City Consultation. In these cases the EP can be distributed in an Annotated Version and finished after the City Consultation.

During the Second Phase of the SCP project, key activities will be undertaken through the Issue-Specific Working Groups, whose members should have copies of the EP. As the Working Groups proceed, they typically involve an ever-widening circle of `stakeholders' who should also be provided with copies of the EP, to ensure that they share the common starting point.

It is also important to regularly update the EP, preferably every two years or less, and to develop a mechanism for this which is suitable for the given administrative and city context. The process of updating should focus on: (a) filling in any `gaps' which remained in the previous version; (b) incorporating more up-to-date information which may be available; and (c) strengthening the analysis contained in the EP.

Content of the Environment Profile

The EP has four main points, as follows:

• City Introduction
• Development Setting
• Environment Setting
• Environmental Management

The first chapter of the EP is a short City Introduction. This should give highly summarized _ and selective _ introductory information about the city: geography and physical setting, social characteristics, and economy. The purpose is to provide information which is relevant and important for understanding the main chapters which follow. This first chapter includes one or two A 4-sized basic maps.

The second chapter of the EP looks at the city's Development Setting. This chapter examines environment-development relationships from the point of view of development activities. It discusses the city's `Activity Sectors' _ the development activities of the city (for example, manufacturing, mining, fisheries, transport, housing, etc.). The main purpose of this chapter is to describe the use of environmental resources by each activity sector, in terms of type, quantity and quality of resources used. (For instance, local manufacturing industry may consume ground water as part of its production process and may also use waterways and the atmosphere for getting rid of wastes). The analysis in this chapter will also examine the impact of each activity sector on environmental resources _ and on environmental hazards. These impacts might be damaging to the quality of an environmental resource (`degradation') _ such as polluting the air or polluting the local rivers. Impacts might also reduce the quantity of available resources (depletion) _ such as over-extraction of ground water. Finally, activity sectors may well have an impact on environmental hazards; for example, filling in swampy land to provide building sites reduces local water absorption capacity and often has the effect of making seasonal flooding more severe and damaging.

The third chapter of the EP looks at the city's Environmental Setting. This chapter considers the environment-development relationships from the point of view of the city's environment. Accordingly, in this third chapter each of the city's important 'Environment Resources' and `Environmental Hazards' will be identified and analyzed. For each environmental resource (or hazard), the use of that resource by all the different activity sectors will be brought together so the total use of that resource can be assessed. Similarly, all of the various impacts (qualitative and quantitative) on that resource (or hazard) from the different activity sectors will be synthesized.

This synthesis will highlight conflicts of interest over particular resources (or hazards). An obvious _ and all too common _ example is urban lakes: many people, especially the poor, use the lake waters for drinking and washing; the lake may also support a local fishing sector; but at the same time, the city's sewerage may be discharged (untreated or partially treated) into the lake; and even more damaging, industries may use the lake as a convenient way to get rid of their wastes, chemical or biological. Such multiple and directly conflicting uses identify the lake as a key point of concern for urban environmental management.

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