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Sustainable Cities Programme/Localising Agenda 21 Programme

MID-TERM REVIEW

FINAL REPORT

17 February 2006

SCP/LA21 MTR Final Report 17/2/06 1

Glossary

ACCA21 The Administrative Centre for China’s Agenda 21ADB Asian Development BankAfDB African Development BankAI Anchor InstitutionsAIILSG All India Institute for Local Government Support ?BUS Basic Urban ServicesCA Cities AllianceCBO Community Based OrganisationCDS City Development StrategyCIDA Canadian International Development AgencyCPR Committee of Permanent RepresentativesDanida Danish International Development AssistanceDED Deputy Executive DirectorDEPI (UNEP) Division of Environmental Policy ImplementationDEWA (UNEP) Division of Assessment and Early WarningDfID Department for International DevelopmentDJBS Decent jobs, Better servicesDPDL Division of Policy Development and LawDPSCS Disaster Prevention, Safer Cities SectionDTIE Division of Technology, Industry and EconomicsED Executive DirectorEMIS Environmental Management Information SystemEPM Environmental Planning and ManagementFINNIDA Finnish International Development AssistanceGD Global DivisionGEO Global Environment OutlookGIS Geographic Information SystemGPA Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine

Environment from Land-based ActivitiesGPP Good Practice PaperGUO Global Urban ObservatoryHPM Habitat Programme ManagerICLEI International Coalition for Local Environmental InitiativesIHE International Institute for Infrastructural, Hydraulic and

Environmental EngineeringIHS Institute for Housing and Urban Development StudiesIIED International Institute for Environment and DevelopmentILO ASIST ILO Advisory Support, Information Services and TrainingILO International Labour OrganizationInWEnt Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (Capacity Building

International Germany)IPF Institute of Physical PlanningIRC International Water and Sanitation CentreISS Information Services SectionITC International Institute of Aerial Survey and Earth Observation JOC Joint Operation and Coordination GroupLA21 Localizing Agenda 21LAC Latin America and the CaribbeanLVWATSAN Lake Victoria Water and Sanitation MDG Millennium Development Goals


MTR Mid-Term ReviewNGO Non-governmental OrganizationNMT Non-motorized TransportNORAD Norwegian Agency for Development Assistance OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OIOS Office of Internal Oversight Services (or the UN office for Internal

Oversight)PPPUE Public-Private Partnership for the Urban EnvironmentPRSP Poverty reduction Strategy PaperPSAC Programmes Strategic Advisory CommitteeRO Regional OfficeROAAS Regional office for Africa and Arab StatesROAP Regional Office for Asia and the PacificROLAC Regional Office for Latin America and the CaribbeanRTCD Regional and Technical Cooperation DivisionSCP Sustainable Cities ProgrammeSIDA Swedish International Development AgencySUM Sustainable Urban MobilityTCBB Training and Capacity Building BranchTEI Thailand Environment InstituteToR Terms of ReferenceToT Training of TrainersTR Thematic ReviewUDB Urban Development BranchUES Urban Environment SectionUMP Urban Management ProgrammeUN United NationsUNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and DevelopmentUNCHS United Nations Centre for Human SettlementsUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNEP United Nations Environment ProgrammeUNESCO United Nations Education, Science and Cultural OrganizationUN-HABITAT United Nations Human Settlements ProgrammeUSAID United States Agency for International DevelopmentWATSAN Water and Sanitation WSIB Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure BranchWSSD World Summit on Sustainable DevelopmentWUF World Urban Forum


Executive Summary

Introduction

UN-HABITAT/UNEP have commissioned a Mid-Term Review (MTR) of Phases 2 of the Global Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) and Localising Agenda 21 (LA21) 2003-2007, in consultation with the Governments of the Netherlands and Belgium, carried out during October 2005 – February 2006.

The inputs for the MTR report included the review of global programme documentation and the operations of the UN-HABITAT/UNEP Core Teams, in addition to in-country reviews in Cuba, Kenya, Senegal and Sri Lanka. The MTR team was also presented with self-assessment reports – prepared by the UN-HABITAT/UNEP Core Teams and by local consultants in the four countries – prior to the review of Core Team operations and country visits. Interviews with programme partner representatives and the accumulated experience of MTR team members in other SCP/LA21 countries were also inputs to the review process.

The Mid Term Review has been constrained by the practical limitations inherent in working on the basis of these data sources and approach chosen, which, of course, were dictated by limitations of time and resources. However, the MTR team is satisfied that through the variety of data sources at its disposal it had enough factual basis for its conclusions and recommendations.

Based on the review, the report (which was finalized after extensive consultations with global programme partners and programme staff of UN-HABITAT and UNEP in Nairobi in February 2006) outlines a series of recommendations for the remaining period to complete the 2nd phase of the programmes. It also recommends a perspective beyond their completion. The report is primarily addressed to UN-HABITAT, UNEP and the Governments of Belgium and The Netherlands.

Key Recommendations for Completion of 2nd Phase

An overarching recommendation for the completion of the second phase is the adoption of greater flexibility in the implementation of activities to achieve the programmes objectives. The pre-occupation with the production of quantified outputs (for objectives 1 and 2) must be replaced with a focus on achievement of policy and capacity building outcomes.

Within the framework of that overarching shift in orientation, the major thrusts of the recommendations are for more focus on the normative functions at the global level, consolidation of in-country gains through upscaling, national replication and national policy formulation, and more strategic selection of partner institutions that can sustain support at the regional and national level. Measures to improve programme management and strategic links with other institutions and relevant programmes are also strongly advocated.

Enhance the relevance of programme design. Programme design and overall direction of SCP/LA21 remain relevant. However, other important areas of concern have emerged since the design of the 2nd phase. In order to remain responsive and relevant to demands of the times, the programmes must pay more attention to concerns such as localising Global Agendas and the MDG’s, urban environment-spatial planning nexus, and urban poverty- urban environment nexus.


Increase the flexibility of the EPM Process. The EPM process – the main operational vehicle of the programmes – must be repackaged and fast tracked in recognition of the fact that most local governments already have some planning processes in place, the short terms of office of local government officials, the fact that there are different practical operational entry points in the process in different situations, and that some urgent issues demand immediate action. The EPM approach must become more flexible and responsive to these local conditions.

Emphasize the institutionalization of the Normative Functions. In order to accomplish a sustained up-scaling and mainstreaming of the programme’s interventions, more focus should now be placed on institutionalising the programmes’ normative functions. This should be achieved within UN-HABITAT and within the participating countries and cities. Given its strategic value, more time and resources must be allocated to this work.

In countries where lower levels of governments do not enjoy autonomy, more emphasis should now be placed on working with and through national ministries to ensure national replication and adoption of appropriate national policies. In decentralised systems of government, the programmes must ensure stronger links with both executive and political bodies of decision-making to mobilise local interest and participation and increase the adoption and internalisation, of EPM in the city’s overall policies and operations.

Better use should be made of the positive experiences of the LA21 strategic structural planning approach by the elaboration of a practical guide contributing to the normative agenda of the local and national governments, based on the Urban Trialogues publication and the adoption of this planning methodology in future UN-HABITAT-UNEP policy options/guidelines for action.

The programmes’ link with local strategies to improve urban environment and urban poverty reduction should be made more explicit and visible. In that way, the programmes can be seen as readily contributing to implementing the MDGs.

Upscale and strategically use demonstration projects. Since demonstration projects have proven to be effective vehicles to apply and legitimise the EPM approach, they must continue to be part of the agenda for the remaining period. However, a more strategic perspective in selecting demo projects must be adopted taking into consideration the feasibility of national replication in order to influence national policies. More effort should also be made to link demonstration projects to follow up investment packages for the same reason.

Streamline programme implementation. Focus should be on consolidation of the achievements reached by the programmes in improving EPM application and policy implementation processes. This implies that no new activities should be undertaken in countries where the chances of sustainable replication and of influencing national policies are limited.

Selectively partner with Anchoring Institutions to strengthen capacity building. A more systematic process of identification of AIs in all regions still needs to be undertaken fully. In developing a sustainable network of AIs, the structural mandates of these AIs must be the starting point to ensure that the partnership is seen to be mutually beneficial. Structural financial support mechanisms should be recognised as the main driving force in ensuring sustainability. Using clearly defined success/outcome criteria, a critical review of already engaged AIs in capacity building strategies needs to be undertaken to assess where there is potential for continuation and further strengthening.


Intensify and expand collaboration with UNEP. The need to enhance the normative functions of the programmes and respond to emerging areas of concern demand a much more intensive and extensive relationship with UNEP. In line with institutionalisation and consolidation of programmes’ components, the poverty-environment nexus, localizing the MDGs and global issues such as climate change and coastal area pollution are all good themes for intensive areas of cooperation between UNEP and UN-HABITAT. This means building on the existing cooperation, bringing in all relevant units of both institutions and allocating significant additional financial and human resources.

Enhance programme management and coordination. The quality of programme management needs improvement at all levels. The roles of existing steering mechanisms and policy directions at the managerial levels of the programmes must be reviewed in order to achieve efficiency and better organisational performance and help achieve the programmes’ objectives.

On-going efforts to improve the horizontal and vertical co-ordination of the programmes with parallel programmes/units in UN-HABITAT and UN-HABITAT Senior Management must be sustained and strengthened . Sensible “win-win” agreements must be established between the programmes, the global campaigns and other relevant units (such as WSIB, TCBB, RTCD and GUO) and their implementation monitored through regular co-ordination meetings and follow-up by senior management.

Both internal and external operational management procedures of the core team need to be tightened up considerably. While strategically focusing on the normative functions, backstopping of field activities must be mainstreamed with the appropriate field units (e.g. regional offices. the Habitat Programme Managers, and ultimately AIs), whenever operationally viable. This recommendation will ease the burden on the management of the Core Team and allow it to focus on its normative role.

Next steps. A work plan for the completion of the 2nd phase based on the above recommendations needs to be prepared as soon as possible for discussion and approval by all programme partners.

Perspective beyond Completion of 2nd Phase

In line with the above-mentioned recommendations, a joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP urban environmental management policy/strategy/programme should be developed, building on the experiences of SCP/LA21 and other similar programmes. This will help develop and strengthen the normative functions of the SCP/LA 21 programmes in which some of the strategy elements can already be addressed during the completion of the second phase. It will provide an umbrella framework for engaging other programme partners in urban environmental management.

It is strongly recommended that the coming 2-3 years are also used to develop the scope of this new programme for external support by a consortium of funding partners to implement this strategy and to continue to support the joint development of the two agencies’ normative mandate in the thematic area of the urban environment. A programme concept note should be developed by the two agencies without delay for discussion with other partners (at PSAC or at a broader forum) during the forthcoming World Urban Forum.

Summary of Key Findings

I. Programme Concept and Design


1.1 Programmes Concept. Both the SCP and LA programme documents are consistent programme documents and cogently articulate the need for up-scaling the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) approach, achieving investment follow-up and policy impact, as well as developing a permanent normative capacity to support these processes across the globe. The programmed activities during 2003-2005 by and large form logical elements in this progression.

1.2 SCP Programme Design. The rigidly defined quantitative targets in the SCP programme design limit its flexibility to implement the mix of identified activities to achieve objectives 1 and 2 in a more strategic manner that is responsive to local conditions, and recognizes the inherent operational institutional and financial limitations of local governments and the institutional planning processes that are mandatory/optional for them. The same applies to the pre-determination in the SCP programme document of demonstration projects and associated capacity building on Sustainable Urban Mobility (SUM) and Basic Urban Services (BUS) as given priority, to the predetermined assigning of specific tasks of capacity-building, SUM and BUS support to the three Dutch specialized institutions. This contradicts the, in principle, open-ended and demand-driven nature of the EPM-based prioritisation process.

1.3 Responsiveness of SCP/LA21. The SCP/LA21 programme design is consistent with and responsive to the two agencies’ overall work plans priorities (to UN-HABITAT more than to UNEP). The programmes’ design is also responsive to global development policies and priorities. This has been enhanced by the convergence of the 2 programmes

1.4 Grant for Demonstrations. Although demonstration interventions are generally small and not always strategically embedded in other urban environmental (infrastructure) investment, they provide tangible results of participatory planning processes of the EPM and LA21 structure planning processes thus making it more relevant to cities.

II. Programme Implementation and Lessons Learnt

2.1 Efficiency and Learning by Doing. Effectiveness and efficiency of programme implementation, and achievement of output and impacts has varied. There has been a great deal of learning-by-doing particularly in the documentation of lessons learnt, the capacity-building agenda development, and SUM development which proved to be expensive and time consuming.

2.2 Capacity-building agendas. Two such national capacity-building agendas have been developed during 2004-5 (Sri Lanka and Nigeria) and none yet formally adopted. By the end of 2006 such capacity-building agendas are supposed to have been developed, adopted and be under implementation in six countries. Given the difficulties experienced to date and the protracted efforts required, the MTR team considers this ambitious.

The creation of “a cascade of capacity-building infrastructure to provide the foundations for long-term sustained EPM support” was envisaged. This has been accomplished in one country (Cuba) where a national centre has been established and a number of EPM-based training programmes have been developed. This has also been partially accomplished in Senegal.

2.3 Demo Projects. The experience with demonstration projects has generally been positive as they provide some tangible outcomes of the EPM and LA21 structure planning based participatory planning process and the ability to improve environmental conditions on the ground. This has been validated in all the four countries visited. In the case of LA21 programme, the importance of demo projects have been enhanced by being closely connected to the spatial planning dimension.


Three BUS demos have been implemented to date (out of an anticipated end-of project output of 6) with IRC support, but their impacts and value added have varied. Only one SUM demo project (out of an anticipated 4) has been developed with IHE support and is about to be completed. Its demonstration value is unquestionable but it is not sure whether the lessons of this demo experiences with significant programme and local resource implications will be appropriately captured in operational guidelines for replication.

2.4 Investment packages for up-scaling. The current situation is one of very partial achievement. Data available shows that about $ 3.3 million of SCP/LA 21 activity funds allocated during the period have levered a total of $ 12.5 million in resources from other sources in 23 programme countries. However, only a small part of these funds are for investments. Most are for counterpart funding and technical assistance. The incompleteness of the data provided also raises the question about the required attention that must be given to tracking this consistently in order to maintain an accurate monitoring of resources mobilisation.

2.5 National replications/policy. The replication efforts of the programmes have been successful, but the policy impact has been quite limited to date with some success in only a few countries (Sri Lanka and Tanzania are cases in point). Under the LA21 programme, after positive results in one city, an interesting replication programme with potential policy impact is underway in three Cuban cities.

2.6 Regional and national support functions. A strategy for anchoring EPM capacities in national and regional institutions has been developed by the Core Team and agreed with the partners. A number of Anchoring Institutions (AIs) have been identified and co-operation agreements and other contractual arrangements have been formalized. However, the process of engagement and negotiation has consumed significant time and effort, considering that most identified AIs also need to be capacitated first before they can take over the capacity building function from the Core Team and the country teams.

2.7 EPM tools and documentation of lessons learnt. National adaptation of EPM tools has been a useful instrument to support the public dissemination and capacity building efforts of the two programmes since it allows for situating the EPM tools in the local setting (e.g. the political, social, cultural, institutional settings) and also facilitates understanding by translating the tools in a readily understandable language. However, beyond translation, adaptation to local circumstances and dissemination have not always received enough critical attention. Implementation has suffered from capacity constraints in the SCP/LA 21 Core Team and problems of different perspectives between programme partners of the appropriate level of sophistication of the outputs.

2.8 EPM-SCP/LA21 integration into UNEP policy. Since the start of SCP/LA21 phase 2, UNEP’s participation in the programmes has gradually progressed from financial support to a more active and substantive role. An excellent example of co-operation is the joint work on GEO cities in Latin America, which was not foreseen. UNEP has strengthened its staff capacity to participate in SCP/LA21, but not all relevant UNEP units have been drawn in to date.

2.9 Mainstreaming SCP/LA21 in UN-HABITAT’s activities. The development and mainstreaming within UN-HABITAT (and beyond) of city consultative processes through the EPM approach has been a major achievement of SCP/LA21. Obvious opportunities to institutionalise the SCP/LA 21 work by enshrining this in a UN-HABITAT urban environmental policy and the global urban governance campaign have not yet been fully captured, and UN/HABITAT is currently addressing this. The recently renewed interest of the international community and UN-HABITAT on urban planning issues in post-disaster, post-conflict and more general developing countries contexts additionally provides an opportunity for the LA21


experience (first phase, as documented in the “Urban Trialogues” publication) to be mainstreamed in global programmes and tools.

2.10 Inputs. Financial input disbursement streams from all sources have generally been in keeping with the mid-term point of programme implementation. However, a relative over-disbursement on in-country activities and under-disbursement on global normative activities has been noted. UN-HABITAT contributed significantly out of its own resources, UNEP less so.

2.11 Links with other global programmes and institutions. There have been numerous interactions and activities with Cities Alliance, mostly at local and national level, but these are often not acknowledged as being follow-on from SCP or LA 21. Numerous activities have been undertaken with country level UNDP support either in parallel or as follow-up projects to SCP/LA21 interventions. These projects are generally undertaken with backstopping from UN-HABITAT’s RTCD Division. Collaboration with ILO has been very fruitful.

There are a number of other bilateral support programmes that support urban environmental management, but with which SCP/LA21 does not currently have active links (e.g. DfID, USAID, Norad, SIDA, FINNIDA and Danida). There are potential synergies to be explored and exploited that will help develop and disseminate a common global Urban Environmental normative agenda. The same applies to the currently limited interaction with ICLEI and IIED where opportunities and convergences can be accomplished.

III. Programme Management

Resources devoted to programme management, as well as to vertical and horizontal management co-ordination arrangements are generally not commensurate with the size and complexity of the programmes. This has led to various adverse impacts on programme delivery. On the one hand, the SCP/LA 21 Core Team has continued the labour-intensive tasks of the development and backstopping of in-country operations, which could have been partially or entirely delegated to RTCD Regional Offices, HPMs and ultimately the AIs. On the other hand the Core Team has not been able to reach out to strategic partners and adequately address the strategic normative agenda items. While these are now being addressed, co-ordination mechanisms (internal and external, horizontal and vertical) and programme implementation and monitoring arrangements require further strengthening to enhance management capacity.


Table of Contents

Glossary..............................................................................................................................................2

Executive Summary..........................................................................................................................4

1 Introduction and background............................................................................................12

2 Review approach.................................................................................................................132.1 Purpose and objective of the MTR................................................................................132.2 MTR methodology..........................................................................................................132.3 Conceptual and operational constraints.......................................................................14

3 Programme Concept and Design.......................................................................................153.1 Coherence........................................................................................................................153.2 Strategy/Policy orientation.............................................................................................173.3 Relevance.........................................................................................................................17

4 Programme Implementation..............................................................................................194.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes.............................194.1.1 An agreed capacity-building agenda to strengthen EPM applications.....................................194.1.2 Local demonstrations through EPM applications.....................................................................194.1.3 Investment packages to upscale and replicate demo-projects...................................................204.1.4 National replication/policy formation.......................................................................................21

4.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Network for Sustained EPM Support..........224.2.1 Networks of regional/national support partners.......................................................................224.2.2. Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions.................................................234.2.3 National Adaptations of SCP/LA21 and EPM tools..................................................................234.2.4 Regional and national EPM support functions and curricula...................................................24

4.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions........................................................244.3.1 EPM tools and documentation of lessons learnt.......................................................................244.3.2 Global web site and on-line database.......................................................................................254.3.3 Annual meetings.........................................................................................................................264.3.4 Routine documentation support.................................................................................................264.3.5 EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy..................................................................264.3.6 Institutionalisation of SCP/LA21 in Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT................28

4.4 Programme Management...............................................................................................304.4.1 Programmes Strategic Advisory Committee (PSAC)................................................................304.4.2 Core Team management............................................................................................................314.4.3 Co-ordination and planning tools use.......................................................................................324.4.4 Monitoring and reporting..........................................................................................................32

4.5 Inputs................................................................................................................................334.5.1 Utilisation of financial inputs....................................................................................................334.5.2 Utilisation of partner institutions inputs....................................................................................35

5 (Anticipated) Programme Results/Outputs......................................................................355.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes.............................355.1.1 An agreed capacity-building agenda to strengthen EPM applications.....................................355.1.2 Local demonstrations through EPM applications.....................................................................355.1.3 Investment packages to upscale and replicate demo-projects...................................................375.1.4 National replication/policy development...................................................................................37

5.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Network for Sustained EPM Support........385.2.1 Networks of regional/national support partners.......................................................................385.2.2. Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions.................................................385.2.3 National adaptations of SC/LA21 and EPM tools.....................................................................395.2.4 Regional and national EPM support functions and curricula...................................................39

5.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions........................................................395.3.1 EPM tools and documentation of lessons learnt.......................................................................395.3.2 Global web site and on-line database.......................................................................................41


5.3.3 Annual meetings.........................................................................................................................415.3.4 Routine documentation support.................................................................................................425.3.5. EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy..................................................................425.3.6 Institutionalisation of SCP/LA21 in Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT................43

6 Links.....................................................................................................................................436.1 Related Activities in UN-HABITAT..............................................................................436.1.1 The Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch (WSIB)........................................................446.1.2 The Training and Capacity-building Branch (TCBB)...............................................................456.1.3 The Regional and Technical Co-operation Division (RTCD)...................................................456.1.4 The Global Urban Observatory (GUO)...................................................................................466.1.5 UN-HABITAT Management.......................................................................................................46

6.2 Other Global (Environmental Management) Programmes and Institutions............476.2.1 Cities Alliance............................................................................................................................476.2.2 Other UN agencies....................................................................................................................476.2.3 Selected bi-lateral development cooperation programmes.......................................................486.2.4 ICLEI —Local Governments for Sustainability.........................................................................496.2.5 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)............................................506.2.6 InWent........................................................................................................................................50

7 Lessons learnt......................................................................................................................507.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes.............................507.1.1 An agreed capacity-building agenda to strengthen EPM applications.....................................507.1.2 Local demonstrations through EPM applications.....................................................................517.1.3 Investment packages to upscale and replicate demo-projects...................................................517.1.4 National replication/policy formation.......................................................................................52

7.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Network for Sustained EPM Support.........537.2.1 Networks of regional/national support partners.......................................................................537.2.2 Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions.................................................537.2.3 National Adaptation of SCP/LA21 and EPM tools....................................................................547.2.4 Regional and national EPM support functions and curricula...................................................54

7.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions........................................................557.3.1 EPM tools and documentation of lessons learnt.......................................................................557.3.2 Global web site and on-line data base......................................................................................567.3.3 Annual meetings.........................................................................................................................567.3.4 Routine documentation support.................................................................................................577.3.5 EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy..................................................................577.3.6 Institutionalisation of SCP/LA21 in Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT................58

7.4 Management and Inputs.................................................................................................59

8 Recommendations for completion of the 2nd phase........................................................608.1 Relevance of Programme Design and Overall Direction of Programmes.................618.1.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes............................................618.1.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Networks for Sustained EPM Support..........................628.1.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA21 Normative Functions.......................................................................62

8.2 Programme Implementation..........................................................................................628.2.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes............................................638.2.2 Develop institutional Framework and Networks for Sustained EPM Support..........................648.2.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions......................................................................65

8.3 Programme Management...............................................................................................66

9 Perspective beyond Completion of 2nd Phase....................................................................68

Annex 1 Briefing Note containing MTR Terms of Reference................................................69

Annex 2 Main documentation consulted..................................................................................87


1 Introduction and background

UN-HABITAT (UNCHS until 2002) work on urban environmental issues started in 1990 with the creation of the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP), a global programme of technical support. Following the 1992 Rio Conference (the Earth Summit), the Localising Agenda 21 programme (LA21) was created in 1995. In 1996 the SCP became a joint UNCHS/UNEP Programme. Within UNCHS SCP was located in the Technical Cooperation Division along with other global technical assistance programmes, such as the Urban Management Programme (UMP). The LA21 was created within the Research and Development Division of UNCHS, due to the initial research and capacity building focus of the LA21.

From 1990 until Habitat II in 1996, SCP focused on developing key demonstration projects in a selection of worldwide representative cities. Support was provided on the basis of a common conceptual framework namely the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) approach. During 1996-2001 (with Phase 1 Netherlands support), a large research and capitalisation exercise was undertaken which led to the development and publication of process-oriented and topical tools on the EPM. The LA21, until 2003, concentrated on supporting four demonstration cities in different parts of the developing world. Research conducted by this programme led to documenting a large number of lessons of experience. Following the revitalisation exercise of UNCHS, the two urban environmental programmes were brought together in 2000 within the Urban Environment Section (UES) of the Urban Development Branch.

Based on the know-how accumulated in both programmes, the UES prepared a 5 years strategy (2003-2007), serving as a common framework for both programmes within the UN-HABITAT work programme, endorsed by its Governing Council. This strategy aims at increasing the impact of the UES programme/activities at local, national and global levels on issues related to urban development, environmental management and poverty reduction. The strategy was also designed to support the implementation of the UN-HABITAT Global Campaign on Urban Governance and to help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The strategy is financially supported by the Netherlands Government through the SCP (US$ 7.9 million) for the period 2003-2007 and the Belgian Government through the LA21 (US$ 2.5 million) for the period 2004-2007. Programme implementation is governed by Programme Documents prepared and approved in late 2002 for SCP, and prepared in late 2003 and approved in March 2004 for LA21. Given that the programmes operate within the same strategic framework, the LA21 programme document deliberately virtually mirrors the objectives, envisaged outputs and activities laid down in the SCP programme document, in order to create maximum operational synergies. Both programme documents provide for a mid-term review to be conducted in the second half of 2005. Due to the common strategy and operational synergies of the programmes it was decided by the programmes’ partners that these reviews could be conducted as one consolidated review.

In consequence, UN-HABITAT/UNEP has commissioned a Mid-Term Review (MTR) of Phases 2 of the Global Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) and Localising Agenda 21 (LA21), 2003-2007, in consultation with the Governments of the Netherlands and Belgium. The MTR was conducted during October 2005 – February 2006 in stages as described in section 2 below. This report summarizes the outcome of the MTR, comprising findings and recommendations for the completion of the present phases of the programmes and beyond.

After briefly describing the approach to the review in chapter 2, a review of the programme design is provided in chapter 3, and a review of the implementation, results and outputs, and lessons learnt is provided in chapters 4, 5 and 7 separately for each of the programmes’ three immediate


objectives and their envisaged outputs and activities. In chapter 6 a review is provided of the operational links other than those explicitly anticipated in programme design. Chapter 8 provides the MTR team’s recommendations for completion of the current 2nd phase of the programmes and Chapter 9 dwells briefly on the future beyond that. Most of the MTR observations apply to both programmes. However, as there are some differences in design and country coverage, the report also contains some specific observations on only SCP or LA21 as the case may be.

2 Review approach

2.1 Purpose and objective of the MTR

The MTR is intended as a learning exercise to help assess the relevance of the SCP/LA21 programmes, their effectiveness in meeting their objectives, and to provide suggestions for their satisfactory completion, operation and utilizing lessons learnt.

The broad objective of the review therefore is to assess the achievement of the programmes to date during the second phase of SCP/LA21 operations 2003/4-2007, and to recommend directions during the final 2-3 years of that phase, and beyond.

2.2 MTR methodology

MTR teamThe review has been conducted by a team of four international consultants with a diverse international exposure and understanding of UN-HABITAT’s policies and operations, as well as the development co-operation policies of Belgium and the Netherlands. The MTR team comprised Dr. Emiel Wegelin (team leader, Netherlands ), Ms. Bebet G. Gozun (Philippines), Mr. Claudio Acioly (Brazil/Netherlands) and Dr. Joris Scheers (Belgium).

MTR layers and stages of workGiven the physical impossibility to review all local, national, regional and global programme activities carried out during 2003-2005 in some 80 cities in about 30 countries in four major regions of the world, as well as through a range of global events and activities, the MTR approach relied on:

a) Review of global documentation (October 2005 – February 2006);b) Review of UN-HABITAT/UNEP Core Team operations in their headquarters in Nairobi

Kenya (November, 2005);c) Country reviews in Kenya (November 2005), Sri Lanka (November – December 2005),

Cuba (January 2006) and Senegal (January 2006);d) Interviews with programme partner representatives (October 2005 – February 2006).

The MTR process started with a mission to UN-HABITAT in Nairobi by the MTR team leader in October 2005, in which final planning was done, preparation of further documentation agreed and initial interviews carried out.

The Core Teams’ operations review was conducted on the basis of self-assessment reports prepared by the Core Teams at UN-HABITAT and UNEP prior to the MTR review in Nairobi in November 2005. Presentation of these self-assessment reports and their discussion with other stakeholders within UN-HABITAT and UNEP and the MTR team formed the starting point of the Core Team operations review. The MTR team thereafter met with a wide range of stakeholders based at UN-HABITAT and UNEP Headquarters, including senior management of both agencies. Provisional findings and recommendations were presented to the Core Teams and UN-HABITAT


senior management (including its Executive Director) in a debriefing meeting on 26 November 2006.

The country review in Kenya focused on the two cities covered by the programmes, i.e. Kisumu and Nakuru, and was carried out by the MTR members in pairs and in parallel. Similar to the Core Team operational review, these reviews were guided by local self-assessment reports prepared with the assistance of a local consultant. For Sri Lanka, Cuba and Senegal similar self-assessment reports had been prepared, which served as the major documentation base for the country reviews, along with other documents on the operation of the two programmes in those countries. The country reviews, apart from providing a first hand opportunity to appreciate in-depth how the programmes operate and impact on the ground, also served the important purpose of cross-validation of MTR team observations/findings from the other above mentioned sources.

The city/country review missions ended with a debriefing meeting with the local/national stakeholders, in which the review mission presented and discussed its summary findings and provisional recommendations, which were amplified by the MTR team in a city/country review mission report. These reports comprise both localised findings and recommendations intended specifically to help improve the in-country programme implementation, as well as findings and recommendations having a bearing on the global programmes.

As noted above, these in-depth city/country reviews were only one of the instruments for the review team to obtain insight on how the programmes have unfolded in the countries covered by them. Other instruments comprised programmes’ documentation provided in progress reports, Activity Briefs, project documents and feedback from UN-HABITAT’s RTCD’s Regional Offices (ROs) and other programme partners, including the representatives of the two sponsoring governments, and the three Dutch partner institutions IHS, IHE and IRC assigned for specific support functions under the SCP Phase 2 Programme document. The detailed scope of work of the MTR is in the Briefing Note attached as Annex 1 and a listing of documentation consulted is in Annex 2.

2.3 Conceptual and operational constraints

As noted above and in Annex 1, the Terms of Reference of the MTR mandates the MTR team to review the activities programmed to be implemented/conducted during the first half of the global SCP/LA 21 Phase II programmes (i.e. during 2003-2005 for SCP and 2004-2005 for LA21) with financial and human resources provided for in these documents. This turned out to be complicated by the following: a) the programme activities conducted during the above period obviously built on the earlier work

carried out from 1990 onwards; this applied particularly to the global activities, but also to local and national activities in places where the programmes have had a long history of implementation, such as for example Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Colombo, Sri Lanka and Nakuru, Kenya.

b) particularly at country and city level, programme activities funded out of the global SCP/LA 21 programme resources were often co-funded or funded in parallel from other sources, particularly from UNDP (with UN-HABITAT as the executing agency) and the Urban Management Programme (UMP – UN-HABITAT/UNDP) and local governments;

c) the operational analytical approach agreed in the ToR did not provide for a post-facto before-after, test-control analytical framework enabling to unambiguously demonstrably ascribe impacts and outcomes to specific activities undertaken . In other words, the question “what would have happened without SCP or LA21?” (as the case may be) could not be reliably addressed.


In addition, there is the complication that SCP Phase II activities started in 2003 and LA21 Phase II activities only in 2004.

However, given the overall objective for the MTR to be helpful in assisting the programme management to improve the programmes’ operational performance (an MTR, after all, is different from an end-of-programme evaluation), the MTR team does not consider these constraints as prohibitive, but merely as making the MTR more judgemental.

In consequence, the MTR team has taken the position that its review needed to consider the sum total of activities carried out for which core global programme resources have been devoted (from 2003 or 2004, as the case may be for SCP and LA21 activities respectively) along with other resources where this took place, while being aware that these activities were often clearly building on the work carried out during the years before that. This is especially pertinent when looking to the future in terms of what the strategic orientation for the programme over the next two to three years should be, again hopefully funded by a continuing combination of global SCP/LA21 funds and contributions from other sources.

The MTR’s effectiveness in conducting the review has also obviously been constrained by the practical limitations inherent in working on the basis of the data sources and approach described in section 2.2 above: for instance, had the number of country reviews been larger, more variety in actual programme implementation could have been observed first hand. The limitations in the approach adopted, of course, were dictated by limitations of time and resources. However, the MTR team is satisfied that through the variety of data sources at its disposal it had enough factual basis for its conclusions and recommendations.

3 Programme Concept and Design

3.1 Coherence

Internal coherence The SCP programme document was prepared in its final shape in September 2002, after much soul-searching over a period of almost one year. The outcome was an impressive and internally very consistent programme document. In promoting environmentally sustainable local urban development, it builds on the successes achieved in developing and implementing the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) approach as a participatory planning and programming tool to build capacity at local level in more than 40 demonstration cities in different parts of the developing world during more than 10 years (at the onset of Phase 2 in early 2003). In its three overall objectives, it cogently addresses the resulting need for up-scaling, achieving investment follow-up and policy impact, as well as developing a permanent normative capacity to support these processes as a matter of course across the globe.

From early on in SCP implementation, it was envisaged that if the early piloting with EPM would be successful in their initial locations, this should be seen as the first phase of a much longer involvement that would consolidate and scale up the experience, broaden and anchor it (as noted above). The MTR team endorses the logic and consistency of this long-term view and appreciates the fact that the Phase 2 design comprises a set of logical steps on this trajectory. The programmed activities during 2003-2005 by and large form logical elements in this progression.

However, the thematic reach of the EPM process at local level is constrained by the constitutional and legal responsibilities of the different government levels. The municipal urban services delivery responsibilities vis-à-vis local environmental issues are often limited to only selected municipal


services (generally solid waste management, street sweeping and maintenance, development and operation of public markets and slaughter houses, while other local environmentally sensitive thematic areas (for instance, drainage and flood control, environmental protection of wetlands, development and enforcement of industrial and vehicle emission standards) are often the responsibility of higher levels of government (provincial council or national departments) and/or specialised sectoral agencies (for water supply and sanitation often municipal, regional or national utility companies are in charge). This limits the practical validity of the EPM process and tools from the perspective of being able to influence local decision-making on urban services delivery, as was clearly noted by the MTR team in the Kenya, Senegal and Sri Lanka country reviews. In Cuba, however, although local finance originates from the national budget, local governments are in charge of a broad range of municipal services.

A corollary note relates to the municipal finance agenda: to handle an often quite limited municipal services agenda, local governments generally have even more limited autonomous sources of income through local taxation, retributions and user charges, and financially depend significantly on transfer of resources from higher levels of government (of the countries visited, Cuba is at the extreme end in that regard).

The SCP/LA 21 programme designs have not explicitly focused on addressing the above two issues, while it is readily apparent that these significantly impact on the institutional ability to plan and programme local public environmental investments and finance them.

The MTR team endorses the fact that the SCP/LA 21 Phase 2 programme documents financially provide for grants for demonstration and up scaling projects resulting from the EPM process (together for a total amount of about $ 1.8 million or 17 % of the external support to the programmes) as a logical element in programme design. However, what is not particularly logical or coherent is the pre-determination in the SCP programme document of demonstration projects and associated capacity-building on Sustainable Urban Mobility (SUM) and Basic Urban Services (BUS) as components that will, in any case, be given priority. This contradicts the, in principle, open-ended and demand-driven nature of the EPM process. This is significant as these programme items together account for more than 20 % of the Dutch support budget.

The same predetermination applies to the assigning of specific tasks of capacity-building-, SUM- and BUS support to three Dutch institutions, the Institute for Housing and Urban development Studies (IHS), the UNESCO IHE Institute for Water Education (IHE-UNESCO) and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) respectively, together amounting to about $ 1.4 million, or about 17 % of total Dutch support. In the programme design UN-HABITAT could have been provided more freedom in selecting partner institutions for these tasks, and on the other hand these institutions could (as other institutions) have been assigned other tasks within their own mandates that are important in the context of the programme design (such as e.g. using the very significant experience of IHE in water resource management) .

The Phase 2 LA 21 design that was prepared more than one year after the SCP Phase 2 design virtually mirrors the SCP design, as noted above. This is quite logical, as the programmes’ implementation had seen significant convergence of purpose over time, and its management became unified in the Urban Environmental Section (UES) in UN-HABITAT’s Urban Development Branch in the Global Programmes Division. In fact, the programmes’ separate historical origins, funding support from two different donors with their associated slightly different ways of resources programming, disbursement and related reporting requirements, and the above time difference in phasing are the main reasons why there are two programmes rather than just one (which would have been simpler from an internal coherence point of view).


Two aspects are specific for the LA21 programme, the absence of predetermined BUS and SUM projects, leaving the demonstration projects completely open to the local agenda, and the use of strategic structure planning. Given the successful utilisation of strategic structure planning in the implementation of the phase 1 LA21 programme, it would have been logical to have incorporated this emphatically in the programme design.

In contrast to SCP, UNEP is not a formal partner in the programme design of the second phase of LA21. Given the joint SCP/LA21 objectives, outputs and activities, this would have been a logical step.

3.2 Strategy/Policy orientation

As noted in section 3.1 above, the Phase 2 designs form a logical step in a long term strategy, building up from developing EPM tools, pilot implementation to mainstreaming the approach through national replication, institutional anchoring and policy development.

The SCP/LA21 programme design is consistent with and responsive to the two agencies’ overall work plans priorities (to UN-HABITAT more than to UNEP), and a mechanism to ensure this would continue to be the case was established as part of the SCP programme design through the Joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP Advisory and Co-ordination Group (later called Joint Operation and Co-ordination Group or JOC).

The programme design is also responsive to global development policies and priorities as enunciated as a result of the Habitat II Conference (1996), the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD - 2002), the UN Millennium Declaration (2000) and the Declaration on Cities and other Human Settlements in the New Millennium (Habitat II +5, 2001). The programme design of both programmes provides for a Partners Strategic Steering Group (PSSG) which has the task to ensure continued consistency with global development priorities during programme implementation.

3.3 Relevance

At the time of conceptualisation, the programmes’ designs were quite relevant to the needs of the client cities, local governments, national governments and other stakeholders. One issue, more pertinent to SCP than to LA21 design, however, is that the programme design with a dominant focus on “mainstreaming the EPM approach” has not sufficiently recognised the inherent operational institutional and financial limitations of local governments (as noted in section 3.1 above) and the institutional planning processes that are mandatory/optional for them. Adopting a less rigid planning and management approach sequence would have made it easier to “embed” in local government planning practice.

A similar observation relates to spatial planning: this is not an explicit feature of the SCP/LA21 Phase 2 programme design; however, the LA21 programme has specifically addressed this through its strategic structure planning approach, which has made it easier to internalise its approach in local government practice.

In addition, client needs evolve over time. The down-side of a very detailed and specific log-frame with objectives, quantified output targets, activities and inputs as the guiding mechanism for programme implementation over a four-year period (as in the SCP programme design) is that programme design by implication assumes a high level of rigidity. As global development policies and priorities evolve, agencies change, and new comparable programmes emerge, such rigidity runs the risk that programme design impedes the programmes’ ability to respond to such external


changes. Limited flexibility of the design in turn then runs the risk of decreasing the relevance of the programme’s operations.

This is a concern as the overall development landscape at the time of the MTR is quite different from the time of programme conceptualisation in several respects:a) mechanisms similar to the EPM participatory planning approach are quite common in

planning, programming and budgeting processes advocated by a range of external support programmes now, and to a large extent such processes have been structurally adopted in a number of countries;

b) the global development agenda has moved on, with a much stronger focus now on consolidated efforts towards meeting the 8 Millennium Development Goals and the 18 specific targets in their furtherance;

c) development support efforts, by implication, have consolidated too, with increasingly broad partnership programmes being designed.

Yet, in spite of the rigidity of the SCP programme design, its application at local and national levels has been found to be quite relevant and adaptive to the local government agenda (as, for instance, demonstrated in Cuba, Senegal and Sri Lanka. In Cuba, for example, the city consultation, triggered by an environmental profile and the establishment of thematic working groups is praised as a cornerstone in city planning in the country, suitable for the local Cuban local government institutional and political reality. It is also acknowledged as such by the national planning institute and by representatives of the National Popular Assembly.

In Sri Lanka, it has introduced innovative but simple methodologies and tools to increase the level and quality of stakeholder participation and to enhance the quality of new approaches and technical responses to some of the long term problems faced by local government. These include community organization and empowerment, social mobilization, stakeholder partnership building, solid waste management, reaching out and effectively responding to poverty groups, localizing MDGs and disaster preparedness. In Sri Lanka this has been the result of re-programming activities on a two-year cycle basis as mandated by the UNDP, the largest parallel co-fonder of the programme there. Consequently, its focus of attention has shifted from urban environmental management to urban poverty reduction and urban governance issues, in as far as they are within the scope of work of local government.

At global level this has been less positive. The programme has not maximally adjusted itself to the above evolving development paradigms (e.g. along the dimension of enhancing local capacities to address global environmental agendas) and policies, and has insufficiently exploited emerging potential synergies with other support programmes (an extreme example is the virtual absence of co-operation with UN-HABITAT’s Water and Sanitation Programme). While this is largely a programme and agency management issue, the rigid focus on quantifiable deliverables in the programme design has certainly reinforced this inflexibility.

Deliberately linking the planning process throughout to provision of resources for small demonstration (demo-) projects has been a built-in feature in both programme designs that has contributed significantly not only to their success in terms of community/stakeholders participation, but also in terms of continuing relevance. However, the logic of this design feature could have been exploited better, if there had been explicit formulas included in programme design to mandatorily link programme activities to (locally financed) programmes of urban services investment.


4 Programme Implementation

4.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes

4.1.1 An agreed capacity-building agenda to strengthen EPM applications

This block of work was provided for in the SCP programme document, not in the LA21 programme document. The key programme strategy in this area has been to use research, expertise and experience of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) to strengthen capacities of national and sub-regional institutions, in order to better support cities in the design and implementation of environmental services improvement projects within the context of a participatory environmental planning and management process. In the SCP Core Team’s self assessment report for the MTR, it was noted that this was envisaged to be achieved for 8 countries during the phase 2 period.

However, the initial methodology and approach developed by IHS proved to be too elaborate and lengthy, taking at least 12 months and requiring too much human and financial resources.

So far, capacity building agendas have only been technically completed in two countries, namely, in Sri Lanka and Nigeria, building on the results of research/evaluation of SCP experiences in Sri-Lanka and Nigeria. A methodology review meeting held in Nairobi in June, 2005 between IHS/the SCP Core Team and representatives from 6 out of the 8 countries assessed progress and developed a modified, trimmed down approach.

It was noted that in Sri Lanka, the IHS work started at UN-HABITAT’s insistence at a time when there was not yet an effective orchestration of demand in place. During the MTR country review in Sri Lanka this was also observed, but it was also recognised that this work has inevitably involved a significant amount of learning by doing. The Capacity Building Agenda developed for Sri Lanka proposes a new training programme for local governments and communities, suggests a programme to strengthen existing capacity building partners and introduce new partners, and proposes an institutional framework in which co-ordination arrangements between capacity building partners are agreed. This has been laid down in a draft national capacity-building strategy, which is pending Cabinet approval. A first national TOT workshop has been designed and implemented in October 2005 with additional IHS support.

In approaching this issue in Nigeria, lessons learnt in Sri Lanka have been considered, which made the effort less time-consuming and the resource utilisation more cost-effective. The capacity building approach as further streamlined in the above methodology review meeting is intended to be fast-tracked in parallel in two countries (the Philippines and Egypt).

4.1.2 Local demonstrations through EPM applications

Introducing new planning methodologies and participation activities into existing local and national governance cultures requires a major and sustained effort. Demonstration projects help to make the relevance and added value visible, to keep involved stakeholders motivated and to serve as an ignition key to other related local, national and international funding projects. It is above all a smart way to tackle such a difficult issue as developing new urban governance.

In terms of visibility and motivation, the programme’s outputs in the four countries visited by the MTR team refer in a very adequate way to the programme’s objectives. In those cities where demonstration projects took off, all the actors involved acknowledge their added value.


Box 1: Impacts of Local Demonstration Projects

The implementation of the SUM-focused EPM process in Kisumu, Kenya has succeeded in actively engaging all local stakeholders, including the Boda-Boda (bicycle taxi) operators, the street traders associations and the municipal council itself as evidenced by the active role and composition of the SUM working Group. The EPM process has also led to the confirmation that sustainable and affordable urban mobility is a major concern of the city with its inclusion as one of the key strategies in its City Development Strategy.

On the other hand, the LA21 experience in Nakuru has led to a shift in the policy of the city in delivering its services by itself to that of tapping partners from the private sector and civil society. CBOs and NGOs have now been contracted by the city to handle the collection of waste from specific wards. They also process some of the recyclable materials and compost the biodegradable waste. Collection in the central business district and transporting same to the disposal site is being contracted to the private sector. The city now plans to expand the coverage of these arrangements to cover the entire city. This model has attracted a lot of interest among other local authorities and even the national government.

Generally, the programme’s timeframes reflect the reality, expectations and priorities in the countries, though the actual implementation of the demonstration projects took more time than foreseen. In some cases, the development of demonstration projects suffered serious delays. This is mostly due to difficulties in managing the activities and capacity building of the urban working groups. A glaring example is the relatively large SUM demo project in Kisumu, Kenya, supported by IHE, which took a very long time and very significant input resources to put together.

The programme design left the development of the demonstration projects entirely to the rhythm of the working groups. The advantage of tailor-made and fully bottom-up supported projects was sometimes negated by late, weak or absent linkages with local or national budgeting or investment programmes.

Several demonstration projects succeeded in attracted additional local funds (e.g. in Kisumu and Nakuru, Kenya, Kotte, Sri Lanka, Bayamo, Cuba, and Louga, Senegal), national and international funds (Bayamo, Louga), or at least, made the underlying governance capacities and stakeholder participation visible for decision makers.

The thematic areas addressed in the demo projects were mostly linked to waste and mobility issues, with extensions into social and health problems.

4.1.3 Investment packages to upscale and replicate demo-projects

With the exception of the SUM demo project in Kisumu, Kenya, all other demo-projects supported by the programme to date are quite small, focusing on activities like waste composting, waste recycling, household cleanliness, savings and loans groups and other, essentially community-based, activities. This inherently limits the scope for up scaling and replication in a major way.

However, in several countries, positive examples have emerged of partnerships (local and international) where this has been achieved. In Sri Lanka, for instance, waste composting demos have been replicated with partner local government resources in several programme towns and other demos have been supported through the UNDP parallel financing stream generated. In Kigali, Rwanda, the demo on industrialisation of a wet-lands area has led to a commitment of the national government to follow through with investment in all such areas of the city. In some


countries the internalisation of the EPM process in local planning processes and the replication achieved (Tanzania is a case in point) has or will lead to up scaling and replication of demo projects in the process. In Sri Lanka (Kotte and Wattala), efforts to have bankable proposals financed are still ongoing. In some cities up-scaling with other external resources has been attempted but this has not succeeded because the other external party did not recognise the value added of doing so (e.g. ADB in Sri Lanka, PPPUE, APEFE (Belgium) and the French Foundation “Ensemble” in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso)

The MTR team has the impression that this part of the programmes’ scope has not received the focused strategic attention it deserves, in part because achieving the above demo-projects objective/output 1.2 has taken much more time and effort than was envisaged. Haphazard attempts at mobilizing other resources for up-scaling and replicating demo projects beyond that have been carried out in some of the programme countries with variable degree of success as noted above. In contrast to what was intended, an organised strategy to embark on this in the 12 cites and with the 6 local and national teams as provided for in the programme document has not yet been articulated.

The Core Team self-assessment report correctly notes as prerequisites for demo up scaling to happen a clear perspective on this from the start of the initial demo and a clear embedment of the EPM process in local and national government budgeting processes.

4.1.4 National replication/policy formation

In three of the countries visited by the MTR team (Cuba, Senegal and Sri Lanka), programme implementation corresponded to the national replication objective. Local knowledge and experiences of initial pilot projects were extended to other cities and regions of the countries involved. The programme’s objectives have been shared by a large number of professionals, politicians and stakeholders. The way the dissemination is organised at this stage, corresponds to the good practices values encountered in the pilot phase.

Box 2: National Replication in Sri Lanka

SCP support in Sri Lanka commenced in 1999 as the implementation vehicle for the government’s National Programme for Sustainable Human Settlements, responding to the 1996 Habitat Agenda commitment. It was deliberately anchored in the cities starting with the Sustainable Colombo Core-area Project operating in 3 contiguous cities in the Western Province. From the beginning, it was envisaged that if successful, this 1st phase would form the basis for a much longer involvement that would consolidate and scale up the experience, broaden and anchor it with the Ministries and strengthen the policy learning and replication linkages.

The success of the initial experience led to the expansion of SCP in 10 more cities in phase II and to an additional 5 cities in phase III. SCP now operates in 18 cities in various parts of the country. This successful national replication has led to the preparation of two national policy papers on Local Governments Capacity Building and on promoting Good Governance in local bodies, both urban and rural which are now awaiting cabinet approval.

Results of the replication strategy, however, were not yet quite visible, due to the immature stage of the process. It is therefore too early to evaluate the success of the national replication. Critical success factors like strong local coordination and an engaged team of local politicians were not always in place. Given the time required before real results can be demonstrated in the demo projects themselves, it is not surprising to see that replication and translation into national policies has been limited to date, except in countries where the programmes have operated for quite some


time before the start of the 2nd phases under review. Intentions to modify national policies have been formulated in several instances, but, except in Tanzania, are not yet visible in terms of implemented projects or investment policies.

4.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Network for Sustained EPM Support

4.2.1 Networks of regional/national support partners

Recognizing that a sustainable and cost-effective way to strengthen the links between local and global LA21 and SCP activities is to develop a network of regional anchoring and national capacity building institutions and partners, this component was added in the programme document of both SCP and LA21. A strategy for anchoring EPM capacities in national and regional institutions has been developed by the Core Team with IHS support and agreed with the partners within the targeted timeframe. Prospective anchor institutions were invited to the SCP Global Partners Meeting in September 2003 where a session was held to identify capacity needs in supporting cities in EPM.

In order to improve demonstration/replication and capacity-building activities as part of the SCP programme design, IHS was expected to support the capacity building process in SCP countries through involving national and sub-regional anchoring institutions. A structured regional workshop for potential anchor institutions (AIs) has been conducted with IHS, SCP/LA21 Core Team and TCBB support for the Asia region in October 2004, from which scopes of work for several anchor institutions have been prepared. The workshop also served the objective of inducting the potential AIs to the concept and approach of Training of Trainers (ToT). At the SCP/LA21 Global meeting in Cuba in July 2005, a special session was devoted to capacity-building, i.e. broadening the capacity-building effort to additional countries. A similar regional workshop as the above Asia and Pacific one has been carried out for LAC anchor institutions in September 2005 (without IHS support), and one for Africa is planned in early 2006.

Organizing regional meetings with potential AIs was found to be efficient and effective since it simplifies the language issue (Spanish in LAC), allows for sharing examples, and provides a venue for creating and/or reinforcing regional networks. However, the time needed to identify, engage with and negotiate agreements with appropriate and strong anchor institutions was underestimated. Key to the success of this strategy is to identify strong and appropriate anchor institutions that could provide the needed capacity building support to the countries/cities. In some cases, such as e.g. in Sri Lanka and in Kenya, the AIs identified were appropriate institutions, but they needed to be capacitated first, and this has proven to be time-consuming, difficult and sometimes impossible, due to the institutional setting within which these institutions function. Adequate time must be provided to induce AIs to participate and to capacitate them before they can take over the capacity building function from the SCP/LA 21 Core Team and country teams.

Another critical factor is that the AIs must see the partnership as being mutually beneficial. They must see value added to being an anchor institution for SCP/LA21 in addition to their regular and paid for functions. Where institutions had been involved for a significant period of time with the SCP/LA21 programmes, it has been easy to engage them as local anchor institutions, since they consider such partnership as an enhancement. This has been demonstrated in the case of Copper Belt University in Zambia (which has established an Urban Management Unit and provides technical support to the Sustainable Kitwe project) and in the case of the Federal University of Technology in Mina, Nigeria (which has established a centre for human settlements and urban development studies). Where this appreciation is lacking, there is the risk that prospective AIs look at their participation purely as a contractual arrangement, in which their services are simply being paid for by the programmes.


4.2.2. Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions

In this area of work, Anchoring Institutions were meant to be assigned in all three programme regions at regional and national level to support EPM processes in 20 new cities, including 6 new national replications. As noted above, the process of identification of AIs is complex, given the mandates, technical strengths and financial support arrangements of each of the institutions considered. The process of their identification and confirmation of their role/scope of work and funding for the TA activities has been time consuming (slower than originally anticipated) and has been handled in different ways in each of the three regions.

In Asia and the Pacific region, representatives of a group of seven provisionally identified AIs have been brought together in a regional workshop in October 2004, as noted in section 4.2.1 above. This workshop provided an opportunity to match the perspectives, capacities and constraints of the institutions with the expectations and requirements of SCP/LA 21 and formed a relatively efficient and cost-effective starting point for developing SCP scopes of work with capable institutions with which there was sufficient common purpose. Based on this, six of these seven institutions have been assigned by SCP through a formal co-operation agreement with UN-HABITAT and have started their assignments. In three cases (ACCA 21 - China, TEI – Thailand, and AIILSG - India) this scope of work includes technical support work to SCP cities.

For the other regions a more ad hoc approach has been adopted. In Africa (including Arab States) this has been justified by the relative scarcity of capable potential AIs. In Latin America no specific rationale has been advanced. The capacity-building session at the SCP/LA 21 Global meeting in June 2005 was used to check out some institutions.

The anticipated matching of the role of AIs with the roles of the global resource institutions (SCP/LA 21 Core Team, UN-HABITAT TCBB and other global partners, including IHS, IHE and IRC) has not been given much prominence in the process to date.

No AI has yet been assigned a regional technical support function. In the MTR’s view this ambition was probably too high to begin with.

4.2.3 National Adaptations of SCP/LA21 and EPM tools

The national adaptation of existing SCP and EPM tools was to be done through two inter-related elements - the development of City Source Books and the translation of the EPM tools and the source books. The City Source Books were to document the actual experiences of local demonstration projects so they can serve as models for others and strengthen the national replication strategy.

National adaptation of EPM tools has been found to be a very useful instrument to support the public dissemination and capacity building efforts of the two programmes, since it allows for situating the EPM tools in the local setting (e.g. the political, social, cultural, institutional settings) and also facilitates understanding by translating the tools in a readily understandable language.

A phased process of tool adaptation is most appropriate so that improvements and expansion of coverage can be made as experience is built. However, this does not seem to have been followed. Also, experience has shown that mere translation is not enough. Adequate knowledge and understanding of the EPM is a prerequisite to the proper editing and finalization of translated tools to ensure that the translated versions are properly contextual zed. Unless consultants, institutions or partners who are already knowledgeable about SCP/LA21 are engaged for this work (as e.g. in the


case of AILLSG in India), additional time and resources to rewrite the translated tools must be provided.

A major gap identified is the lack of a distribution mechanism to bring the translated tools (translated into French, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Arabic and Sri Lanka - Singhalese and Tamil) to the countries and cities that can use them. There is also no assessment process in place to evaluate the usefulness of the translated tools. This has been recognized by the Core Team and is to be addressed.

4.2.4 Regional and national EPM support functions and curricula

Curriculum development to modularise the SCP and EPM sourcebooks, handbooks and toolkits is one of the strategies identified to mainstream the capacity building aspect of both SCP and LA21. Gaps and opportunities were to be identified through surveys of the current curricula of possible global resource institutions. The appropriate curriculum would then be developed and integrated into regional and national institutions, which will then prepare and subsequently, implement an EPM institutional development plans.

This is a logical consequence of the overall thrusts to mainstream the EPM approach. Integrating EPM within the curriculum of academic institutions and other capacity building partner institutions provides a structured and sustainable means of ensuring that graduates already fully understand EPM. However, while discussing this with academic institutions, it was realized that the process of developing a new EPM curriculum and integrating it in the curricula of an academic institution is not a simple process. More time is needed to do so, unless university professors or the academic institution itself had already been involved and providing support to the SCP/LA21, as was the case for IPF in Cuba.

On the other hand, many institutions already have EPM or EPM-related courses and some are already using SCP tools in conducting these courses. Some masters- and doctorate thesis and dissertations on EPM have been written. Enriching these existing courses with the SCP tools then appears to be the most efficient way to move this agenda forward. Where no such courses exist, more time and effort must be allocated to developing the EPM curriculum.

4.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions

4.3.1 EPM tools and documentation of lessons learnt

In accordance with the SCP programme document, at the global level the SCP has partnered with IHS to document SCP experience in 8 selected countries, capturing the lessons learned. The processes used in capturing these lessons and documenting them are participatory, using a self assessment as an initial stage followed by an international input. After the initial two exercises (Sri Lanka and Nigeria) had been completed at very considerable effort, cost and time (and which was found not to be very cost-effective), the methodology for documentation of lessons of experience was reviewed at an international workshop in June 2005. The workshop agreed on the broad objectives of documentation being knowledge management, policy advocacy and changes (e.g. capacity building), and also agreed on a trimmed down, fast-track version of the methodological approach to be used henceforth (starting in Egypt and the Philippines)

The lessons of LA 21 experience in the four programme cities covered in the previous phase has been documented in a special publication with reflections of Belgian professionals who had been involved in these cities entitled ”Urban Trialogues”. This volume of reflections (which was not, as


such, anticipated as a programme output), provided important building blocks for the development of issue-specific guidelines on strategic urban structure planning.

The documentation of the experience with BUS and SUM demo-projects obviously depended on the progress in implementing these. As noted in section 5.1.2 below, the experience with SUM has so far been limited to one demo-project (in Kisumu, Kenya), while the pace of BUS implementation is more or less as anticipated (with 2 about to be completed, 2 ongoing and 1 about start). This provides a relatively narrow base for documentation of practice and the development of source books on these issues. However, based on its prior experience with this approach and initial work in the SCP BUS demos, IRC has piloted a BUS handbook and this is improved/updated as new experiences emerge. With regard to SUM, basic guidelines for non-motorized traffic in African Cities have been prepared by IHE for the World Bank and have been used in the pilot SUM demo-project in Kisumu. As noted by the MTR review of the Kisumu SUM project, this project took a long time to materialise and its development costs were very high. However, it also generated a significant number of new operational insights and brought home the need to develop a more user-friendly guidebook to facilitate that the SUM approach can be adopted elsewhere relatively quickly and at lower costs.

Linking participation to the SCP/LA21 Global Meetings with a documentation exercise has demonstrated an efficient and relatively low-cost way of capturing the on-going experience. The documentation exercise undertaken for the Havana 2005 meeting had an unprecedented result in terms of broadness of coverage and quality. The SCP/LA21 Core Team intends to use this mechanism again for the 2007 Global Meeting.

With regard to issue-specific source books, handbooks and toolkits, the SCP/LA 21 has taken an opportunistic approach, capitalising on opportunities to develop these where an opportunity presented itself. Examples are the Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) handbook, the above-noted “Urban Trialogues” (forming the starting point of a potential strategic urban planning tool), the Guidelines on Municipal Waste Water (a co-production between UN-HABITAT, UNEP and WHO), and the joint UN-HABITAT (SCP/LA21)/UNEP tool book on air quality management currently under production.

Quite obviously, much of the above is and will continue to be work in progress. Implementation of the scope of work in this area of the SCP/LA21 particularly has suffered from capacity constraints in the SCP/LA 21 Core Team, as well as from problems of different perspectives between programme partners of the appropriate level of sophistication of the outputs.

The SCP/LA21 programmes have developed a substantial amount of documents, reports, manuals and toolkits that represent a wealth of knowledge and information depicting not only city experiences but also the processes showing how the EPM methodology is applied and its results. The LA21 label is much less prominent in these publications than the SCP, with the exception of the Urban Trialogues, which is a unique LA21 output. Apart from that, and reports and working papers on the LA21, the bulk of knowledge particularly reflects the SCP experience.

4.3.2 Global web site and on-line database Both the SCP and the LA21 programmes have their websites which are embedded in the website of UN-HABITAT, and can only be accessed through that website’s homepage. One can browse through the pages depicting both programmes in a relatively easy way and find the programmes’ main features and publications, in addition to a number of links. Not all links are functioning and not all the publications are available as downloads. There is no special call for the programmes from the homepage of UN-HABITAT.


While reviewing the web-based information available on-line, the MTR team has noted that the LA21 programme does provide city-based and/or country-based information. However, the SCP programme does not provide similar information. Thus one cannot find all the basic information about each participating city in the SCP programme on the web site. The LA21 website is better structured and allows easier and direct browsing compared to the SCP site. However, the home pages of the participating cities are not linked to either of the programmes’ website.

4.3.3 Annual meetings

A total of six annual meetings have been organised to date, of which two have taken place during the current phase in Egypt in 2003 and Cuba in 2005. The last meeting had about 200 participants, representing participating cities, partner organisations and different units of UN- HABITAT and UNEP. These meetings have also been the agreed venue for the programmes’ Partners Strategic Advisory Group – PSAG to meet, review activities, reflect on results and draw future agendas. The Global meetings have an anchoring function for other important corporate activities of UN-HABITAT such as the global campaigns. The campaigns for Good Governance and Security of Tenure in Cuba were launched in conjunction with the 2005 SCP/LA21 annual meeting. During the country visits, the MTR team appreciated that there is great appreciation for the annual meetings among the city teams, as they are a unique opportunity to exchange experience on applying the same methodology and planning approach, thus enhancing lessons learnt and greater contact between the city teams. Decision makers who participated in these annual meetings are reported to return much more convinced about their own approaches and determined to move forward with programme implementation, thus enhancing political support. The meetings also provide an opportunity for UN-HABITAT RTCD Regional Offices to strengthen their links and follow-up support to the participating cities.

4.3.4 Routine documentation support

The amount of information generated through a variety of reports is overwhelming. A large number of source books, toolkits, flyers, newsletters have been prepared by the SCP/LA21 programmes up to now. Members of the Core Team undertake coordination and editing responsibilities of commissioned reports, which at times lead to delays in publication and dissemination. This is a result of the significantly overloaded agenda of the Core Team.

Content-based documentation is mostly prepared by the Core Team in Nairobi and is generally based on progress reports and inputs provided by participating cities or a commissioned party. This is in addition to the regular annual progress reports that the Core Team prepares for the donor partners of the two programmes.

4.3.5 EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy

The programme documents1 defined this area of work fairly loosely and primarily in normative terms in recognition of the fact that UNEP has only fairly recently developed an interest in this part of its overall mandate, which, moreover, until even more recently was exclusively defined as normative and non-operational.

During the past few years of SCP/LA21 phase 2 implementation, UNEP’s participation in the programmes has progressed from financial support to a more active and substantive role.

1 Both programme documents include this output area and activities, and de-facto collaboration takes place in both programmes, although formally UNEP is not a partner in the LA21 programme.


Accordingly, UNEP has strengthened its staff capacity to participate in SCP. One SCP Core Team staff position is jointly funded by UNEP and UN-HABITAT (with support from the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) from November 2003. In March 2005 a new post was established in UNEP for interagency coordination between UNEP and UN-HABITAT, focussing on the SCP. Since September 2005 a new Urban Environment Unit has been set up in the Division of Policy Development and Law (DPDL), which has been assigned to increase the cooperation in this area between the two organisations, with clear implications for UNEP’s work programme. UNEP’s increased participation in the programmes is also reflected in the role it played in the June 2005 SCP/LA 21 Global partners meeting in Havana, Cuba (in which a joint thematic session was organised on the theme of global issues, local actors).

Apart from UES in DPDL, UNEP has several units with areas of work related to SCP/LA21 as follows: DPDL’s other units, including the Poverty and Environment Programme (which operates in

Africa only) and the Health and Environment Unit (a health and environment strategy is being developed this year).

The Division of Assessment and Early Warning (DEWA), which carries out environmental assessments within the GEO Cities and African Environment Outlook frameworks.

The Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) which works on transport, energy, chemicals and waste issues.

The UNEP Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-based Activities (UNEP-GPA), which has developed guidelines on municipal wastewater management in cooperation with UN-HABITAT and other partners and is carrying out capacity building in this area.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), which is only now starting to work with cities. A GEF project proposal for urban transport in Mexico is being developed.

The UNEP Regional Offices, which have well established networks of environment ministers which are beginning to be used in the co-operation. For example, UNEP’s RO-LAC is engaged in the Network of Environmental Authorities of Cities in Latin America and the Caribbean and has developed a database of environmental best practices in cities. RO-LAC is also carrying out capacity building on waste and other urban issues in cooperation with universities from the region.

Based on a jointly prepared strategy document in 2003, operational co-operation with the UNEP GEO (Global Environment Outlook) for cities programme has been embarked upon in the Latin America and the Caribbean region to enable establishing the link between local and global level in terms of urban environmental issues. Initially 9 cities have been taken up during 2004-2005 in three countries (i.e. Brazil, Cuba and Peru) on a cost-sharing basis. This collaboration enables the strengthening of urban concerns within environmental assessments at local, national, regional and global levels, using an internationally recognised (and well known) assessment tool (the GEO methodology) that could eventually be amalgamated with the SCP/LA 21 Urban Environmental Profile tool. In this collaboration LA21/SCP experience is used to improve the GEO City methodology, thus facilitating the mainstreaming SCP/LA21 lessons of experience within UNEP. This co-operation required a significant investment of the Core Team, especially in terms of staff time. Administratively on UN-HABITAT’s side, these activities have been financially supported and reported on as part of LA21, rather than of SCP.

However, until recently there has been little coherence of the SCP/LA21 work with UNEP’s overall work programme of activities, mainly because: UNEP does not yet have an urban environment policy (which the SCP/LA21 input was to

help develop), which is addressed in its agency work programme;


Partly in consequence of the absence of an overarching agreed policy framework and explicit senior management guidance, SCP/LA 21 has not been able to effectively reach out to most of the other above relevant units in UNEP;

there is no effective exchange of work programmes between UN-HABITAT and UNEP, although there is an annual joint presentation of progress of collaborative work to the two agencies’ Governing Councils when they meet (it is a standing agenda item).

At the time of the SCP programme design in 2002, it was anticipated that day-to-day management of the SCP programme would be handled under the joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP Advisory and Co-ordination Group, which would periodically report SCP work progress to the management of both agencies. This did not happen as such. The Joint Operation and Co-ordination group (JOC) has functioned as the main coordination mechanism between UNEP and UN-HABITAT for SCP/LA 21, and not as a day-to-day management body. However, this arrangement has functioned reasonably well, although JOC’s operation (frequency and contents of meetings) could be improved. Its scope is not entirely clear (only SCP or broader inter-agency co-operation?), and it is not always clear if the concerns of all SCP-relevant UNEP units are sufficiently reflected. It had been agreed (but not implemented to date) that JOC meetings would be supported periodically with inter-agency management meetings at Deputy Executive Director level on the Urban Environmental co-operation.

The collaboration features a twice-yearly joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP Urban Environment Newsletter (with the content defined by JOC), which covers articles about projects from three regions, one partner institution, publications and events. The preparation process and dissemination strategy is periodically reviewed in JOC.

Under the 2005 Bali Strategic Plan on Technology Transfer and Capacity Building which has been endorsed by Governments during the February 2006 9th special session of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum, UNEP will increase its work on the national level, and this is expected to lead to a further intensification of the UN-HABITAT/UNEP collaboration in SCP/LA21.

Quite obviously, the collaboration is and will continue to be work in progress. Implementation of the scope of work in this area of the SCP/LA21 has suffered from capacity constraints in the SCP/LA 21 Core Team, from problems of limited mobilisation of other units in both agencies beyond the two Urban Environmental Sections, as well as from problems of different perspectives between the two programme partners on priorities in the collaboration.

4.3.6 Institutionalisation of SCP/LA21 in Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT

At the time of programme design, institutionalisation of SCP/LA21 in the Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT’s Global Division had been primarily conceived in terms of:

a) integrating SCP/LA21 experience into UN-HABITAT’s urban environmental policy, and for staff within UN-HABITAT’s Urban Environment Unit linking regional, national and local operational experience with global normal functions as a matter of routine; and

b) that good environmental governance principles and indicators would be applied to rank Inclusive Cities in the Inclusive Cities Index as a routine.

Clearly a) strongly relates to the development of normative tools as described in sections 4.3.1. and 4.3.5. and b) to SCP/LA21 support to the Global Urban Governance Campaign, which is institutionally also housed in the Urban Development Branch of UN-HABITAT’s Global Division.


With regard to a) the MTR team has the impression that during the past few years UN-HABITAT’s interest to develop and articulate an urban environmental policy per se has declined, so that the ability of SCP/LA 21 to address this issue has been limited. As noted in the SCP/LA 21 Self-Assessment Report, the Urban Environmental Section (UES) work does not figure very prominently in UN-HABITAT’s bi-annual work plans 2004/2005 and 2006/2007, and there is no reference of an urban environmental policy in these work plans. The issue therefore has almost become tautological, in the sense that whatever exists by way of UN-HABITAT’s urban environmental policy has become synonymous with the SCP/LA 21 normative functions carried out by the UES in its own right and in its co-operation with UNEP (section 4.3.5).

Concerning SCP/LA 21 support for the Global Urban Governance Campaign, it is important to recall that from the early 1990s SCP EPM approach contributed to create and promote the City Consultation concept, which in essence is an urban governance tool, and has been used, internalised and further mainstreamed not only by SCP/LA 21 itself, but also by other global programmes in the Urban Development Branch, such as the Urban Management and Safer Cities Programmes. The principles of this participatory approach have been adopted in many programmes within UN-HABITAT and beyond, to the point that it has become a routine modus operandi.

More specifically, SCP/LA21 contributed significantly to the development of the “Tools to Support Participatory Urban Decision Making” (published in 2003), a tool developed on the basis of the combined UN-HABITAT global programme experience and their existing tools. SCP/LA21 staff also contributed to the development of “Tools to support Transparency in Local Governance” (published in 2004).

A problem appears to have been that UN-HABITAT’s Global Urban Governance Campaign has been developed somewhat in isolation from the global programmes in the branch, and particularly from SCP and LA21. Instead of making the campaign and the programmes mutually instrumental and complementary, serving the campaign was experienced by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team as an imposed activity and extra burden.

Campaign launches in SCP/LA21 countries could have been jointly prepared to mutual advantage (e.g. Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Morocco), but this was only done to a limited degree. SCP/LA 21 did support the campaign in a number of countries to the extent possible (e.g. in Senegal). In the case of Cuba, the campaign fully built on the LA21 experience. However, this has not happened in a structured and systematic manner. Coordination and joint planning needs to be mainstreamed.

The launch of the global campaigns have had significant political value and have served to raise the profile of the campaign issues by bringing together key leaders from national government (the Presidents of the country in most instances), local governments, the private sector, non-government organizations and the poor. It therefore provides an opportunity for bringing priority issues identified at the local level through SCP/LA21 to the attention of these key decision-makers to hopefully get their support for the actions required. On the other hand, development and implementation of action plans to operationalise the campaigns can be effectively undertaken through SCP/LA21 programmes. Without local anchoring, the campaigns have no real meaning and impact on the ground, and may even be counterproductive, since they will simply raise expectations without any follow through.

The MTR team understands that the global campaigns strategy is currently under review by UN-HABITAT management, and that there is therefore an opportunity to revisit the way the campaign strategies (not only the governance campaign, but also the secure tenure campaign) should interact with global programmes to mutual benefit.


Collaboration with UMP and the Safer Cities Programme in the UD Branch, which both operate on similar participatory approaches as the EPM process, has generally been positive and include a number of jointly supported activities.

The development of the indicator data base underpinning UN-HABITAT’s campaigns and the production of its flagship reports on the State of the World’s Cities and the Global Report on Human Settlements is lodged in the Global Urban Observatory (GUO), which is part of UN-HABITAT’s Monitoring and Research Division. SCP/LA 21 support to GUO is discussed in section 6.1.2. below.

4.4 Programme Management

4.4.1 Programmes Strategic Advisory Committee (PSAC)

In the programme documents, a small and effective programme “Partners Strategic Steering Group”, comprising funding partners and regional, national and local stakeholder institutions, was envisaged as part of the programmes implementation arrangements to provide strategic forward looking guidance and advice, and facilitate resource allocation and mobilisation. It was meant to meet annually as a side event during the SCP/LA 21 annual meetings.

A Terms of Reference (ToR) for this group renamed as Programmes Strategic Advisory Committee was finalised in October 2004 (after the second PSAC meeting at WUF in Barcelona in September 2004). At that time, it had already become clear that annual global partner meetings would be held bi-annually instead of each year, and other opportunities to hold PSAC meetings at least once a year were identified such as UN-HABITAT or UNEP Governing Council meetings, World Urban Forum meetings and others. In the event, the PSAC has met formally three times so far, while several smaller informal gatherings between the Core Team and funding partners were held (i.e. to prepare for the current MTR).

To have a joint PSAC for both LA21 and SCP with both funding partners Belgium and the Netherlands is a logical outflow of the joint management of the two programmes at UES in UN-HABITAT. The MTR team has the impression that the PSAC functions relatively well vis-à-vis its guidance role in terms of tabling strategic areas of concern, but it is not clear from the available documentation to what extent PSAC recommendations are acted upon by programme management or UN-HABITAT and UNEP as the case may be - at least the summary minutes of the last PSAC meeting on 1 July 2005 do not provide information on what had been the follow-up on the PSAC recommendations of the previous meeting.

The last PSAC meeting was participated in by 26 persons, with the overwhelming majority comprising participating stakeholders’ representatives. In the MTR’s view this is too large a group with a lop-sided composition for such a forum (not small and effective). The majority of the last meeting’s participants were too close to actual programme implementation to logically be able to play this steering advisory role from a distance. It is not clear what the procedures for appointment of PSAC members is and if they are appointed for the full duration of the programme implementation period (i.e. up to 2008). There does not appear to be a systematic link with the review of the annual progress reports of programme implementation, which would have been logical.

The PSAC has not functioned well in terms of supporting the programmes in allocating and mobilising additional resources, and this has therefore not happened at global level so far. To be effective for that purpose a different composition would be required, co-opting potential donor


representatives to the meeting, and being more rigorous in presenting and reviewing annual progress reports, work plans and funding requirements to the PSAC meeting. Programme management and the implementing agencies UN-HABITAT and UNEP need to be more pro-active in preparing the PSAC meetings accordingly.

4.4.2 Core Team management

The global SCP/LA21 Core Team at the Urban Environment Section at UN-HABITAT consists of 7 substantive professional staff (supported by a part-time Programme Management Officer and administrative staff) and is led by the Chief of the Urban Environment Section, who doubles up as SCP Programme Coordinator. One of the UES staff members is designated as the LA 21 Programme Coordinator. Official substantive professional staff strength is 8 persons, but the JPO position for tools and data base management has not been filled since early 2000. The team essentially continued from the first phases of the SCP and the LA21, augmented by joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP staffs, who physically works in the UES office at UN-HABITAT.

All team members have specific topical and/or area assignments and implement the in-country and regional parts of their assignments in coordination with the concerned UN-HABITAT RTCD Regional Offices and the country HPMs as applicable. The team operates on the basis of an annual UES work plan with detailed tasks (a total of 104 tasks in 2005/06, of which 35 are in-country assignments) and activities defined by quarter of the year (monitored by the UES Chief). At DPDL/UNEP two core professional staff have supported programme implementation on a regular basis. Their tasks are not incorporated in the UES staff tasks assignments, and their input is not reflected in the annual UES work plan.

Programme activities are described in Activity Briefs, project documents, institutional co-operation agreements and/or consultancy contracts, which are used for activity approval and form the basis of funds disbursement requests. The annual UES work plan is very summarily reflected in UN-HABITAT’s annual work plan (one activity line!) and reported upon. While the bulk of the UES staff time is devoted to SCP/LA21 activities, about 30% of staff time goes towards general tasks and support of other (minor) projects. UES management style is informal and flexible. No regular Core Team meetings are conducted, other than add hoc meetings on specific topics or issues (such as for the preparation for the MTR mission).

In the MTR’s view the Core Team is composed of qualified, dedicated and enthusiastic staff members. However, given the above workload, the team is clearly overstretched. In the process, some important parts of the Core Team work have fallen between the cracks. Particularly the area of normative tools development has suffered from this. This is not just an issue of the number of staff as against the workload, but also, and perhaps more importantly, an issue of work priorities and focus, as well as of management efficiency, as is amplified below.

While it is understandable that the team members were directly involved in the city/country level activities at the initial stage of programme implementation, the Core Team continues to spend a sizeable slice of their time backstopping those activities, although at this stage national replication and mainstreaming should already be handled locally in countries where the programme has been operating for a long time, if not by anchoring institutions, then by the RTCD ROs and the HMPs responsible for operational programme and projects implementation. This has led to inadequate focus more on the normative aspect of the work, including knowledge management, to have a more lasting and widespread impact, not just in the countries where it operates but also on the global urban environmental management agenda


The efficiency of day-to-day management and co-ordination of the Core Team’s work has also suffered from the work overload. Given the above wide array of complex team tasks of the team, it is anomalous that no regular internal team co-ordination meetings are held. A higher level of formality of management is needed to ensure that programme implementation remains on track (see also section 4.4.4 below on monitoring and reporting). Assignments packaging and contracting practices do not make sufficient use of the efficiency opportunities provided by the new instrument of partnership/co-operation agreements (an instrument strongly endorsed by the MTR team, see section 4.5.2). This has led to unnecessary staff time taken on a larger number of small (particularly TA) contracts than is necessary (and on resolving resulting conflicts between partner institutes and separately hired local consultants in a number of instances).

Aside from overload pressures adversely affecting internal Core Team co-ordination effectiveness, the Core Team management has also not been able to devote enough time and efforts to effectively articulate the value of SCP/LA 21, pro-actively coordinate and/or seek partnerships with the other relevant units/programmes within and outside UN-HABITAT and thus, has not sufficiently raised the profile of the two programmes within the organisation and with other like-minded programmes and organisations (see sections 4.3.5. and 4.3.6. above and chapter 6 below for detailed reviews).

These management shortcomings are detrimental to the two programmes. This is recognized by UN-HABITAT management and the Core Team management, and steps are undertaken to address them.

4.4.3 Co-ordination and planning tools use

Beyond the SCP/LA21- specific PSAC and the Joint Operation and Co-ordinating group(JOC) between UNEP and UN-HABITAT, the UN-HABITAT Strategic Vision 2003-2007 and UN-HABITAT’s annual work plans, as well as the UN-HABITAT’s Programme Review Committee (PRC) and management meetings are generic agency-wide co-ordination instruments for programme development and implementation monitoring meant to ensure that synergies are built, duplications are avoided/minimized between the various units and programmes. These instruments have not been used effectively enough vis-à-vis SCP/LA21 implementation. The MTR team has noted that this concern is shared by UN-HABITAT’s senior management and that steps are being undertaken to improve this, i.e. through joint strategic planning among the senior managers. A specific area requiring strengthening for SCP/LA 21 is implementation monitoring based on progress reports from the Core Team.

4.4.4 Monitoring and reporting

In 2001, SCP prepared a guideline entitled “Measuring Progress in Environmental Planning and Management as part of the SCP Source Book series. However, this has not been systematically used at all in SCP/LA21 implementation, nor updated based on programme implementation experience. The MTR team has not been made aware of any operational programme implementation monitoring arrangements. The UES annual work plan can be used for this purpose, as can the Activity Brief formats (which are used to prepare activities and approve resource utilisation for their implementation and which are updated for the purpose of the programmes annual reports), but these do not appear to be used independently as implementation monitoring tools.

Activity implementation (final) reports are generally prepared, but often much behind schedule, and sometimes not at all. The MTR understands, for instance that the report on the Havana June 2005 Global Partners meeting has not yet been prepared, more than 6 months after the event (a


web-based initial collation of statements made is to be translated into condensed summary multi-language reports).

Overall annual progress reports, reporting on physical progress and on funds utilisation are prepared separately for both programmes and submitted to the Governments of Belgium and the Netherlands respectively in accordance with the programme agreements with these funding partners. The physical annual progress reports for both programmes are comprehensive. The SCP report is not very accessible and lacks a section on planned activities for the next year, which is explicitly included in the LA 21 annual progress report. The reports are used to satisfy donor funding requirements but not as internal management tools or for the purpose of reporting to PSAC.

The annual financial progress reports relate to the closing of the UN financial year. In terms of their function to report on annual tranche funds provided by the two funding governments in order to trigger the next annual progress payment, UN-HABITAT has to consider that both partner governments require these reports at different points of time in the year, one well after the fiscal year has ended, and one well before. Given the fact that some time inevitably passes thereafter before replenishment, this runs the risk of liquidity problems in the former case and incomplete reporting in the latter. UN-HABITAT has adjusted its internal reporting processes as effectively as possible to deal with these contingencies.

4.5 Inputs

4.5.1 Utilisation of financial inputs

Aggregate budgets and estimated funds utilisation for the two programmes are depicted in table 1 below based on data provided to the MTR team by UN-HABITAT and UNEP. The expenditure data include actuals for 2003-2004 and provisional outcomes for 2005.

Overall programmes financial delivery appears to be on course. The combined UN-HABITAT and UNEP contribution (primarily on account of staff resources) has a comparable delivery rate as the Netherlands and Belgium contributions. The Netherlands contribution covers operational expenditure only (apart from programme management costs and agency support costs), while the Belgian contribution explicitly provides for some direct expert staff support to the Core Team as well. Costs of the joint UNEP/UN-HABITAT Core Team staff member is separately cost-shared with the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.

Table 1: Programme budgets and estimated funds utilisation 2003-2005Programme and sources of funds

Total budget in $ ,000 as per programme docs

Estimated expenditure up to end-2005 in $ ,000

Percentage utilisation

SCP total 12,676 not applicable not applicableNetherlands 7,886 (Annex C) 4,946 62.7 %UN-HABITAT Core 2,480 (Annex B) 1,242 59.1 %UN- HABITAT Project resources

735 (Annex A) 221 30.1 %

UNEP Incl. in UN-HABITAT Core

403 Incl. in UN-HABITAT Core

Miscellaneous/counterpart funds in cash or in kind

1,575 (Annex A) comparable data not available2

not applicable

LA 21 support from 2,506 1,356 54.1 % 2 In-kind contribution cannot be reliably estimated. Cash contributions made are considerable, but it is difficult to distinguish between cost-shared activities and resources generated (see text and section 6.1.3.)


Belgium

Grand total 15,182 7,988 not applicable

Note: estimated expenditure includes project funds obligated in 2005 and estimated staff costs of UES, UD Branch and Global Division inputs into the programmes during 2003-2005 (excluding 30 % of costs of staff time spent on non-programme activities)

As noted in the table, the SCP programme document envisaged significant UN-HABITAT, UNEP and other counterpart funding resources to be utilised. The MTR team appreciates that one year later no particular counterpart funding was earmarked for LA 21, but that this programme was added in the assumption that the UES would be able to take this on with existing staff resources and with additional funds provided for staff costs out of the Belgian contribution.

Allocation of resources to the three major programme objectives is depicted in table 2. This distribution table suggests a relatively under-allocation for the normative function objective.

Table 2: Allocation of programme budgets and estimated funds utilisation during 2003-2005 to programme objectives in percentagesProgramme Objectives Strengthening EPM

implementationRegional/National Anchoring

Normative Functions

Budget/disbursement categorySCP programme total 25.7 49.1 17.0

SCP Netherlands contribution

37.6 43.1 19.3

LA 21 support from Belgium 39.0 44.0 17.0

SCP Netherlands contribution 2003-2005

39.0 46.2 14.9

LA 21 support from Belgium 2004-2005

63.8 11.1 25.1

Note: in percentage of expenditure net of agency support costs. For Belgian LA 21 support actuals the support to the Core Team and mission costs have been pro-rated

In terms of actual expenditure, this is more pronounced for the Netherlands contribution to SCP and less for the Belgian contribution to LA 21. In both cases actual expenditure to date towards strengthening EPM implementation has been proportionally higher than budgeted in the programme documents.

Analysing this pattern in more detail for the data on the Dutch support for SCP the following observations on major budget line items can be made. There has been relatively under-spending (i.e. less than the average disbursement percentage of 62.9 %) for demo projects out of the Dutch SCP budget, as well as for regional anchoring support, and relative over-spending on national replications.

An amount of about $ 3.3 million of SCP/LA 21 activity funds allocated during mid- 2003 - end 2005 have levered a total of $ 12.5 million in resources from other sources, the bulk of which was for RTCD managed technical support follow-up activities in the Africa and Asia Pacific regions (see section 6.1.3.), with the balance being government and third party cost sharing in SCP/LA 21 activities (including cost-sharing by UNEP in the GEO Cities in the LAC region), as well as a limited amount of follow-up investment.


4.5.2 Utilisation of partner institutions inputs

A total of 15 co-operation agreements with partner agencies (12 under SCP and 3 under LA 21) have been committed to date at a total obligated value of about $ 1.9 million (about $ 1.6 million under SCP and about $ 0.3 million under LA21). For SCP this includes co-operation agreements with the three Dutch support institutions. The remainder comprises co-operation agreements with national anchoring institutions.

The utilisation of the three Netherlands partner institutions inputs has generally proceeded as planned, but at about $ 0.9 million at relatively high contract commitment levels as compared to overall budget availability of under $ 1.4 million. Current agreements with IHS and IHE have recently been extended budget neutrally until June 2006 and April 2006 respectively. A contract extension request from IRC is pending. As described in sections 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 above, there have been a number of reasons why this input has not been utilised very cost-effectively. Budgetary constraints add to the suggestion that their role and function require review.

The SCP and LA 21 programmes are among the first UN-HABITAT programmes in which the instrument of co-operation agreements has been used by UN-HABITAT to assign pre-determined institutions specific functions through direct contract negotiation in the interest of programme implementation, rather than having to do this through a competitive bidding process for sub-contracts. The MTR endorses the use of this new instrument as being highly suitable for the SCP/LA21 programmes, given the scarcity of qualified anchor institutions to play these assigned roles in the programme countries, while the three Dutch institutions are highly specialised global institutions with very limited effective competition in their respective fields.

5 (Anticipated) Programme Results/Outputs



According to the SCP programme document pilot Capacity Building Agendas were envisaged to have been adopted in two countries by the end of 2003. Two such capacity-building agendas have been developed during 2004-5 and none yet formally adopted. Based on the above-noted simplified approach (para 4.1.1 above), work is currently being embarked upon in two additional countries in parallel. The SCP Core Team expects that by the end of 2006 such capacity-building agendas will have been developed, adopted and be under implementation in six countries. Given the difficulties experienced to date and the protracted efforts required, the MTR team considers this ambitious.


According to the Core Team’s self assessment report, the programmes have supported local demonstrations in more than 100 cities to date. Currently the programmes are actively supporting demos in 79 cities, and projects are in the pipeline for supporting an additional 6 cities. This is quite a remarkable achievement for a programme with limited resources.

The demonstration projects reviewed by the MTR team during the country reviews were generally considered successful examples of participatory planning processes. The experience of the process and the impact on local awareness are valued. The large number of participants in the working sessions preparing demonstration projects is a clear indicator of that. Interviews with stakeholders involved confirm this. The responsiveness of demonstration projects in terms of social, gender or


thematic diversity is considered high, as well as having the impact of raising self-esteem of involved community members. With national differences being clear, the bottom-up approach does seem to pay enough attention to local as well as national decision makers in order to be receptive for its institutionalisation. This has been verified in all the four countries visited. However, their operational significance has been limited, as they are generally small and have not generally been linked in strategically with other urban environmental (infrastructure) investment.

The additional incorporation of the spatial planning dimension (based on the LA21 approach) into several demonstration projects (e.g. the Bayamo river basin) proved the value of a spatially integrated demo approach.

The implementation of the larger BUS and SUM demo projects provide a complex picture. Three BUS demos have been implemented to date in Burkina Faso and two in Sri Lanka, and these are about to be completed (out of an anticipated end-of project output of 6) with IRC support, but their impacts and value added have varied. Further BUS demos are on the way in India (Maharashtra state) and Egypt. A sixth BUS demo in Nigeria is about to start. Only one SUM demo project (out of an anticipated 4) has been developed with IHE support and is about to be completed. Its demonstration value is unquestionable, but no arrangements have been made yet to ensure that the lessons of this demo experience (with very significant programme and local resource implications) will be appropriately captured in terms of operational guidelines for replication.

The above demo experiences are far from institutionalised legally, or embedded in day-to-day policies. Demo projects have clearly strengthened local capacities and, policy intentions on the programmes’ methodology being the reference, are clearly a positive experience of programme implementation. Results in terms of capacity building, however, seem to be limited to the local level.

Box 3: Mobilization in Nakuru, Kenya

The implementation of LA21 in the municipality of Nakuru in Kenya has opened opportunities for the city to partner with various national and international organizations to address environmental issues, provide basic services to its constituents and build the capacity of the city officials, staff and other stakeholders. These partnerships which are being undertaken following the EPM approach include: Intermediate Technology Development Group (an NGO), the Lake View Environment Group

and St. Joseph Self Help group (CBOs) for the collection and processing of waste in some parts of the city

Nakuru Business Association and the Nakuru Chamber of Commerce for the greening and beautification of the city, the development of the city website, the rehabilitation of public toilets and provision of additional computers foe the city’s information centre

The city of Leuven for the improvement of water and sanitation facilities in the Flamingo housing estate, capacity building, information and cultural exchange

Agency Francoise de Development which focuses on solid waste management, relocation of the existing dumpsite, private sector involvement in solid waste management, the improvement of accessibility in informal settlements and capacity building

JICA for water quality monitoring, improved capacity for environmental management and awareness raising

New Birth Church of Atlanta, USA for the construction of children and maternity hospital 4 cities in Finland (Kalvola, Renko, Lammi and Tuulos) for capacity building of the public

sector and the CBOs in SWM and construction of classrooms Anyang City in China on trade and industry.


Several demonstration projects triggered additional funding, as noted in sections 4.5.1.above and section 5.1.3 below, not only from local resources, but also at the national level budget allocations were oriented to successful demonstration projects, supporting them in a larger policy context and some international partners.


The SCP programme document anticipated that demo projects in 12 cities would be packaged into up-scaled proposals under implementation with funds leveraged through innovative partnerships and through local and external support agencies “guarantee funds”, integrated with National Poverty Reduction and Social Development Programmes. It further anticipated that the professional capacities of at least 6 local and national teams would have been significantly improved in project proposal preparation, implementation and up-scaling.

As noted in section 4.1.3. above, the picture to date is one of very partial achievement. According to data provided by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team to the MTR team an amount of about $ 3.3 million of SCP/LA 21 activity funds allocated during mid- 2003 until end 2005 have levered a total of $ 12.5 million in resources from other sources in 23 programme countries. The bulk of this was for RTCD managed follow-up support activities in the Africa and Asia Pacific regions. The balance comprises government and third party cost sharing in SCP/LA 21 activities (including cost-sharing by UNEP in the GEO Cities in the LAC region), as well as a limited amount of follow-up investment, primarily in Sri Lanka (about $ 800,000 from Japanese sources).

The MTR team notes that the data provided are incomplete and considers that more attention needs to be paid to tracking this consistently. In the programmes projections there are several promising pipeline investment projects in Korea, Mongolia, PNG and the Philippines, but these are yet to start.

Some of the local and national SCP/LA21 teams have undoubtedly enhanced their capacity to deal with this in the process (the Sri Lanka and Tanzania teams are clear examples).

However, unless a clear and cohesive strategy to address this area of work is designed by the Core Team for implementation in selected, pre-identified relatively “mature” programme countries with relatively well developed programme teams, and unless the embedment of EPM in local and national planning and budgeting in these countries is assured, this objective and associated outputs cannot be expected to be achieved in a systematic manner.

5.1.4 National replication/policy development

In all four countries reviewed (and a significant number of others), initial EPM projects were successfully replicated to a number of cities. However, national replication is but an instrument, not an objective. A real policy transformation, fuelled by a nationally spread network of programme results, is still far away in most countries where replication has been undertaken successfully. Intentions, though, have been made explicit in several instances (refer to Box 4), but results to date remain limited to the replicated demonstration projects.

Box 4: SCP/LA 21 contributes to Local and National Policy Formulation

The success of SCP/LA21 implementation has resulted in the preparation of some policy papers in some cities/countries which have either been officially adopted or are in the process of being adopted:


Environmental By Law for Nakuru, Kenya A new By-law on Non-Motorized Transport in the Kisumu, Kenya A “lettre politique” of the Minister of Urbanism in Senegal to develop a new legal framework

for urban planning based on the participatory approach and the strategic structure planning of LA 21

A Circular from the Ministry of Local Government in Kenya instructing all local governments in Kenya to prepare Strategic Structure Plans

Two national policy papers on Local Government Capacity Building and Good Governance for Local Governments in Sri Lanka.

The bottom up approach provides more guarantees for sustainability, but this is often not adequately and rapidly followed by national (legal and political) support. While the ministries of planning remain the most open national institutions for reviewing and improving the existing administrative, legal and organisational structures and instruments of decision making, ongoing national sector-wise investments in urban infrastructure, however, do not sufficiently or not at all link up with participatory processes, not considering the programmes’ methodology important. Much still needs to be done in this regard in order to ensure the programmes’ policy impact.



The programme documents targeted 10 partner institutions already implementing ToT programmes for at least 30 cities by the 2nd quarter of 2005. So far, only 2 regional and one country ToTs (for 18 cities) have been conducted. So far, 10 agreements with anchor institutions have been signed, and several others have been tied to the programme through parallel technical support agreements as part of RTDC or third party- administered projects. Others have prepared proposals and are in the process of preparing institutional development plans to integrate EPM in their activities.

The projects proposed however are varied in nature ranging from mere documentation of the EPM experience to actually providing direct support to the cities. The exact roles which some of these institutions have to play in sustaining EPM support are still being discussed and negotiated; and, the issue of how their activities are to be sustainably funded has not yet been adequately addressed. Learning from the difficulties encountered, the MTR teams thinks that the expected outputs/results could still be achieved until the end of phase two provided additional funding and backstopping support is provided.

5.2.2. Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions

According to the SCP programme document, anchoring institutions (AIs) were to be assigned in all three programme regions at regional and national level to support EPM processes in 20 new cities, including 6 new national replications during the programme period 2003-2007. Even though this function has so far been assigned only to a limited number of AIs, and is operational in an even smaller number, this outcome is still achievable based on the discussions with assigned and potential AIs to date.

What will be a likely outcome is that the level of functioning AIs will differ significantly from region to region, with most achievement on this dimension in Asia as a result of the relatively well-organised approach taken in that region. It is not likely that a pyramid structure with an Apex regional AI will emerge, as few institutions can really claim a regional outreach in the UEM area


of work, or have a clear potential in that regard. It is more likely that several institutions will emerge in each region that will be able to provide support services in other (neighbouring) countries than its own.

Box 5: National Anchoring Institutions play key role in technical support

In Cuba, the IPF (Instituto de Planificación Urbana) took up the challenge of bringing the different involved actors of the LA21 cities together, supporting them technically and methodologically. They decided to open a centrally located national training institute in Santa Clara in close cooperation with the local universities. Medium term courses were set up in order to capacitate local and national professionals as well as interested stakeholders. A syllabus was designed and a close cross fertilization with university courses raised the quality level of the technical support.

In Sénégal, the IAGU, together with ENDA, have also set up a series of successful qualitative and highly appreciated courses on different aspects of the EPM methodology.

5.2.3 National adaptations of SC/LA21 and EPM tools

While 6 SCP and EPM source books, handbooks and toolkits were targeted to have been adapted by national partners, and disseminated by the second quarter of 2006, the translated tools are still in draft form. None have been printed. Only in the cases of Sri Lanka and Maharashtra, India are the adapted tools already being used for the next generation cities. While there are proposals for the documentation of the EPM experience, no actual city source books have been prepared. It is therefore unlikely that the original targets will still be met on time. If this is still considered desirable, additional resources and time will have to be allocated to catch up to achieve the expected outputs.


Activities to achieve this output only started in the 2nd quarter of 2004. It is targeted that the outputs of 10 sub-regional and national partner institutions teaching the EPM concept by way of a routine within their degree courses, and three special short term courses for senior professionals will be accomplished by the 3rd quarter of 2007. So far, three partner institutions (i.e. CREPA in West Africa, IPF in Cuba and IAGU in Senegal) have integrated EPM in their curriculum. As a national, then as a regional AI, CREPA, a network organization covering 10 West African countries have taken up BUS including the related EPM concept in its curriculum and its work programme. A pilot is also being formulated with TEI on resource networks for the Mekong region. Given the long and complex process of developing a new EPM curriculum and integrating this within the existing curricula of partner institutions, it may be prudent to re-examine the original targets. Focusing more on short-term courses seems more doable within the resources and time frame of the programme.



The SCP programme document envisaged 8 City demonstration projects to be documented by IHS, as well as 6 BUS projects and 4 SUM projects. The EPM source book was to have been updated with poverty reduction and gender responsiveness emphasis. I.a. based on that, new tools on implementation, and on BUS, SUM and on EPM and poverty reduction were to be prepared.


Issue-specific source books, hand books and toolkits were to be prepared. The SCP tools were to be translated into Spanish and into French by the UNON conference service.

Two documentation of SCP lessons learnt exercises (Sri-Lanka and Nigeria) by IHS are complete and two (Philippines and Egypt) are currently being embarked on. The outputs include a main document that traces the history and process, a capacity building agenda and a popular version summary of lessons of experience. These summaries will be made available on the SCP and country website pages (the Sri-Lanka report is already available). As noted in section 4.3.1 above, a fast-track trimmed down methodology was agreed in June 2005 to ensure that envisaged outputs could be reached by the end of the programme period 2002-2007.

The lessons of experience in the Tanzania SCP process during 1992-2003 has been documented separately – it includes a separate pull-out on Dar es Salaam. According to the SCP Core Team the city authorities indicate that they are now able to share their SCP/EPM experience with partners by distributing the publication.

The preparation and publication of the “Urban Trialogues”, capturing the main structure planning lessons in the four LA21 1st phase cities was a major undertaking for the LA21 Programme. It required a heavy resource investment, which, however, was seen as essential to capture the LA21 first phase experience. However, without this publication not much would have been available in terms of normative input from LA21 experiences.

The interesting feature of all these documentation outputs is that they capture much more than just the project experience in the SCP/LA 21 demo cities in the countries covered. They also document (particularly in the Sri Lanka and Tanzania documentation) the process of up scaling and replication through to the emergence of national strategies. The “Urban Trialogues” have set the scene for the development of guidelines on strategic urban structure planning as a major plank in UN-HABITAT ‘s recently started initiative on tool development in urban planning and urban design.

Documentation of the experience with BUS and SUM demo-projects has not proceeded in the same organised way, in part due to the limited progress in implementation of these demo-projects (sections 4.1.2. and 43.1. above). In spite of that, IRC has piloted a BUS handbook (now in its second version) and this is improved/updated as new experiences emerge. For SUM this has not yet been done (with continuing reliance being placed on the earlier prepared basic guidelines for non-motorized traffic in African Cities).

A first EPM source book is under preparation in Peru at national level that will allow capturing specific experience of Peruvian cities. The EPM sourcebook structure proved to be very useful to conduct this exercise.

The EMIS tools update is in process, with a review of handbook and tools by partner institutions, developing CD-ROM and ToT course and training material at the same time. The EMIS experience has been captured through status reports and (participative) updates of the EMIS handbook.

SCP tools translations into French and Spanish have belatedly started with inputs from partner institutions in the regions (Senegal and Cuba). The revision/update of the EPM Source book with enhanced poverty reduction and gender responsiveness emphasis has not yet begun. However, in the programme cities a number of city profiles, consultations and demo projects with such emphasis have now been undertaken, so that this work can now be taken up, drawing on these experiences.


5.3.2 Global web site and on-line database

The websites of both programmes are operational and accessible with a direct link or through the main homepage of UN-HABITAT. However, the knowledge produced by SCP/LA21 programmes has not reached the Internet in its totality. Not all documents are available as downloads, preventing participating cities and other public to access the wealth of EPM-based experience and information produced through the programmes. This should be rectified. Documents should be scanned, electronic versions to get a pdf format and made available through the website.

Both websites of SCP and LA21 have been re-structured. The LA21 is available in 3 different languages (French, Spanish and English) and is much more user-friendly than the SCP, which may explain why it has more than triple the number of hits compared to the SCP website. The SCP site is linked to partner organisations such as IHS, IHE, IRC, InWEnt and there are another 17 sites linked to it. There is only one link to the LA21 website. The increase in links to other websites should be considered as part of a dissemination and communication strategy that may result in an increase in the number of hits and achieve broader public and visibility.

An additional effort must be made to help participating cities to set up their SCP/LA21 sites and get them linked to the central programme site. This must be given priority during the remaining programmes‘ period, as this will strengthen network and materialise the global connection amongst participating cities thus reinforcing programme objectives.

The MTR team was informed that there is an ongoing discussion with the webmaster and content management of the UN-HABITAT website to restructure the link and access to both programme’s site as part of a new policy to design the web access to the organisation’s global programmes. The redesign of the main UN-HABITAT website may have a negative impact on the programmes’ visibility if direct link possibilities disappear. There is a need to find a consensus between the corporate policy and the programmes’ policy regarding the Internet use. The MTR team is of the view that the wealth of information generated through both programmes should be transformed and made available as web-based knowledge packaged as a result of a global network of cities. There is a risk that all this knowledge will become difficult to access if the redesign of the programme does not take into account the specificity of these global programmes.


There were two global meetings during the current phase (Alexandria and Havana). The latter, conducted in June 2005, can be regarded as a cornerstone resulting in substantial proceedings documents, panels, electronic briefings, etc. depicting the cities’ experience and briefings on the stage of the programmes in each city. Nearly 200 participants attended the meeting representing all the regions of the globe. The proceedings show the experiences of 19 countries and more than 30 different cities. According to several individuals met by the MTR team visit to that country, the impact of this meeting in Cuba was significant. The report of the meeting is still to be prepared by the Core Team and disseminated.

The web-based support for the Havana global meeting was inadequate, due to coordination problems with ISS in the update and management of the website. As mentioned earlier the planning and management of the web-based communication of the programmes should be improved from content, management and operational viewpoints.

The MRT team acknowledges that there is great appreciation for the Havana meeting amongst the city teams and authorities with whom its members met in Sri Lanka, Kenya, Senegal and Cuba.


Mayors and councillors and heads of divisions who attended the meeting were impressed and returned home with a much stronger sense of the mission and work required to move forward with the LA21/SCP programmes in their city. The Havana meeting served to mobilise political support and greater awareness amongst those who were not technically involved with the programmes.


The MTR team notes that the programmes have produced a remarkable amount of information and knowledge. There is a draft information outreach strategy and annual plans for publication outputs are part of the annual work plan. The programmes have produced joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP brochures and newsletter both in hard copies and e-format. Recipients in the French and Spanish speaking countries, however, have difficulties to access the information in English.

Both the WUF II (Barcelona, 2004) and the Global Meeting (Havana 2005) triggered the production of a series of panels and additional exhibition materials showing the different cities’ experience. In addition, the updating and editing of the SCP Source Books found their way to publication together with a Panorama (depicting the Alexandria meeting), the Urban Trialogues (with the PGHS Leuven, Belgium), the Newsletter, the SCP Snapshot and the Measuring of EPM process, the Gender Responsive EPM and the review of the SCP Decade Experience (1990-2000).

During the country reviews, the MTR team found that the country teams do not have a routine documentation system and not all the country and city-based experience finds its way into a systematic documentation to retain institutional memory and lessons learnt. While the Core Team has more structure in keeping records of the knowledge and experience, this is not replicated in the cities visited. The efforts made for the Havana Global Meeting of 2005 resulted into a valuable comprehensive city-based information in sets of proceedings and an exhibition in form of panels showing the diversity of city experiences and results. The electronic versions of these panels form a good basis for making a showcase of the programmes.

The SCP has a remarkable track record in terms of publications, but the MTR team finds that routine documentation support needs to be better structured at the Core Team level and at the participating cities level, in order to timely have the information available and disseminated. The experience with demo projects (incl. SUM and BUS), GEO-cities and other recently initiated experiences can be documented more efficiently, leading to wider dissemination of successes and failures.

Routine documentation must be closely linked to the website management and a real routine of making information available on the Internet – as downloads – will certainly help increase the impact of the programmes, turn them into a knowledge-based source and support its normative function.

5.3.5. EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy

Important intermediate global outputs comprise the UN-HABITAT/UNEP pamphlet series on local capacities for global agendas. These form starting points for the development of global normative products such as guidelines and toolkits for water and sanitation, climate change, biodiversity, and air pollution. Joint work has already been undertaken on Guidelines on Municipal Waste Water (a completed co-production between UN-HABITAT, UNEP and WHO), and on the UN-HABITAT(SCP/LA21)/UNEP tool book on air quality management currently under production. In the near future this joint normative tool development work is expected to be intensified with additional focus on climate change (local-global linkages) and waste management (solid, liquid and chemical waste). This last area (except for chemical waste) is an area on which much earlier


SCP/LA21 and other UN-HABITAT work has been done, so it should be relatively easy to support UNEP in that regard.

The twice-yearly joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP Urban Environment Newsletter has been prepared and disseminated from August 2004. The preparation process and dissemination strategy is periodically reviewed in JOC.

The cooperation with GEO for Cities in the Latin America region has contributed to a better mutual understanding of UNEP and UN-HABITAT concepts and methods. Important areas of discussion included: a) the role of urban space as a resource at city level, b) the need of conceiving the diagnosis exercise as part of a long term process, c) the value of capitalising the experience within the public realm within a reasonable period of time at low costs.


Until recently this objective had not been actively pursued during the programmes’ phase 2 period, despite the wealth of information, knowledge, more than a decennium of good track record in urban environmental management agenda, earlier policy statements prepared on the urban environmental agenda for the 2002 WSSD, and the close interaction of the programmes with city governments (the real clients of UN-HABITAT) on urban environmental management issues. Ad-hoc activities have been carried out and willingness has been expressed, but neither UN-HABITAT management nor the SCP/LA 21 Core Team had pursued this vigorously, in spite of its obvious potential.

In consequence, no significant institutionalisation at policy or campaign level had taken place. However, the currently on-going review of the campaigns strategy by UN-HABITAT’s management (envisaged to be completed by March 2006 with a final forward-looking campaigns strategy to be submitted to the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR) to UN-HABITAT at that time), as well as UN-HABITAT’s intended strategic review of urban environmental priorities (i.e. building on the outcome of this MTR) both provide excellent opportunities to rectify this situation, and ensure that this objective can be better met to mutual advantage during the remaining programme period.

Additionally, the UN-HABITAT/UNEP collaboration provides ample scope to develop a joint urban environmental policy during the remainder of the present SCP/LA21 programme period up to 2008, which would serve the objective of institutionalising SCP/LA21 in both agencies at the same time (ref. envisaged SCP outputs 3. 5 and 3.6, also reflected in the LA21 programme document). The MTR team considers that, particularly after UNEP’s adoption of the Bali Action Plan in early 2005 (see section 4.3.5. above), there now is a window of opportunity in this collaboration to jointly mainstream the normative functions and EPM-based guidelines at global, regional, national and city levels.

6 Links

6.1 Related Activities in UN-HABITAT

In addition to the SCP/LA21 institutionalisation in the Urban Development Branch in UN-HABITAT’s Global Division, which was foreseen in the programme documents (and which is discussed in sections 4.3.6, 5.3.6. and 7.3.6.), the MTR team has also considered the strategic value added of SCP/LA 21 co-operation with other programmes and units in UN-HABITAT in order to mainstream the SCP/LA 21 experience to date and enrich it with the experience of these parallel programmes. In doing so, selectivity was inevitable, and the MTR focus has therefore been on


those units with which good co-operation potentially and conceptually brings obvious benefits (horizontal co-ordination). These are described in sections 6.1.1 – 6.1.4. below, while in section 6.1.5. the relationship with UN-HABITAT senior management (vertical co-ordination) is reviewed.

6.1.1 The Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch (WSIB)

This Branch in the Global Programmes Division has over time developed from a primarily normative unit to a unit that has come to house the management of several major regional operational programmes in the areas of water, sanitation and infrastructure and the management of UN-HABITAT’s Water and Sanitation Trust Fund. Clearly the thematic area of work of this branch is closely related to the thematic focus of the SCP/LA 21 programmes and a close working relationship both on the operational and on the normative side would therefore be logical, potentially synergic and cost-effective. As observed by the OIOS Report on the In Depth-Evaluation of UN-HABITAT of April 2005, both the SCP/LA21 programmes, particularly through its partnership between UN-HABITAT and UNEP have become important focal points in the global effort to achieve the MDG environmental and poverty eradication goals, while the water and sanitation programmes managed by WSIB specifically zero in on MDG Goal 7 Target 10.

Building on the experience of the operational regional water and sanitation programmes (notably the Water for African Cities and Water for Asian Cities Programmes, both i.a.. supported by the Netherlands Government), the WATSAN Trust Fund was established in 2003 with the express purpose of supporting the achievement of MDG target to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The Trust Fund-assisted WATSAN programmes support investment-oriented collaborative arrangements with regional and international financing institutions with a view to promote increased flow of investments to the water and sanitation sector in the participating cities. The Trust Fund promotes stimulating demands for these investments by creating an improved environment with a pro-poor focus to bring added value to the investments to address the concrete service needs of the poor.

The most recently developed (sub-) regional programme in this context and managed by the Branch is the Lake Victoria Region Water and Sanitation Initiative (LVWATSAN), a $ 56 million programme of supporting secondary urban centres in the Lake Victoria Region in pursuit of MDG target 10 during 2006-2008 with contributions from the Trust Fund and a specially earmarked contribution from the Netherlands Government of $ 15 million. This programme intends to ameliorate the environmental footprint of municipalities, towns and urban centres in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on the Lake Victoria shores and in its catchment area in term of the discharge of untreated domestic and industrial waste water either directly or indirectly into the lake.

As recognised in the LVWATSAN programme document, the SCP/LA21 programme has produced and field-tested a range of tools, which are intended to be directly applied in the design of the LVWATSAN interventions. It will enable a consultative approach to be developed in the LVWATSAN towns and will enable a more integrated set of interventions. It is intended that the stakeholder consultation will follow the model developed by SCP/LA 21.

This intention is a very positive undertaking, which must be capitalised on. LVWATSAN implementation provides an excellent opportunity to begin developing operational collaboration between the UES and the WSIB. Apart from using in and adapting the EPM methodology to the LVWATSAN context, consideration should also be given by WSIB to involve in the LVWATSAN implementation (and particularly in the stakeholders consultations) the SCP/LA 21 Core Team and consultants who have been involved in SCP interventions in the Lake Victoria Region, which would enhance the cost-effectiveness of LVWATSAN implementation. Initial discussions have


also been started between the SCP/RO and WSIB in the case of Burkina Faso. The MTR team appreciates that, supported by UN-HABITAT senior management, consultations on this between UES and WSIB have recently been accelerated, and this needs to be sustained.

In addition, UES and WSIB could use this as a stepping stone to jointly support the development and operationalisation of the normative UNEP/UN-HABITAT urban environment agenda (of which urban water and sanitation issues inevitably will comprise a core element) through the development of issue-specific tools and guidelines.

6.1.2 The Training and Capacity-building Branch (TCBB)

Collaboration between SCP/LA 21 with his Branch in the Global Programmes Division has been quite positive, helped by the fact that its Chief and one of the senior staff members formerly were LA21 coordinator and SCP Core Team member respectively, and thus have an excellent understanding of the programmes’ content and direction.

TCBB and the SCP/LA21 Core Team clearly recognise the mutual advantage in furthering their mandates in co-operating closely together. They have acted accordingly in the organisation of regional capacity-building meetings (e.g. the 2004 Asia Pacific meeting in October 2004), in supporting the some of the institutions assigned as SCP/LA 21 Anchoring Institutions and in preparing training manuals (i.a. the local leadership manuals) and other materials (e.g. modifying EPM tools into training materials), and in conducting training workshops (i.a. on participatory budgeting).

This positive collaboration is expected to continue. It may be desirable to strengthen it further by designing and implementing a joint strategy, in which the three Dutch institutions involved in SCP could also provide support in the context of their current co-operation agreements with UN-HABITAT under SCP.

6.1.3 The Regional and Technical Co-operation Division (RTCD)

Local, national and regional level SCP/LA21 activities are generally implemented in close collaboration with RTCD, its regional offices (ROs) and the in-country Habitat Programme Managers (HPMs) in those countries where they have been appointed. The SCP/LA 21 activities often function as an entry point for the identification of other projects which RTCD implements directly with other resources (often UNDP). SCP thus benefits from RTCD's in-country infrastructure and networks with Government and its development partners such as UNDP. RTCD benefits from SCP/LA 21 as it prepares the ground for the development of other UN-HABITAT-important projects.

As noted in section 4.5.1. above, an amount of about $ 3.3 million of SCP/LA 21 activity funds allocated during mid- 2003 until end 2005 have levered a total of $ 12.5 million in resources from other sources3, the bulk of which was for RTCD managed technical support activities in the Africa and Asia Pacific regions, with the balance being government and third party cost sharing in SCP/LA 21 activities (including cost-sharing by UNEP in the GEO Cities in the LAC region), as well as a limited amount of follow-up investment. Pipeline data suggest an even higher leverage factor with a projected SCP/LA 21 expenditure of $ 0.5 million levering a projected expenditure from other sources of $ 6.9 million.

3 These global leverage factors are heavily influenced by a few large projects: for the data on on-going projects these were three major projects in Morocco, Mongolia and Sri Lanka, and the pipeline data comprise two large projected projects in Korea and the Philippines


Joint backstopping with the Technical Cooperation Division has also made it possible to mainstream EPM in technical cooperation activities. The design of the Africa-wide RUSPS exercise has been heavily influenced by the EPM experience. LA21’s experience in urban planning and urban design has influenced technical cooperation activities such as in Somalia and in Kosovo.

Within the above very positive overall picture, there are a few notes for concern: in some cases the division of tasks between UES and RTDC is not clear enough and inputs

from RTDC in terms of political analysis and mobilisation of political support at national level are missing;

at city and national level (and in the perception of some of the international partners) this some times leads to confusion on who drives the programme from UN-HABITAT’s side – is it the Core Team in Nairobi or the RTCD RO – and inefficient backstopping; this is more problematic for Asia and Latin America than for Africa, considering the co-location in Nairobi of the Africa and Arab States RO;

Sometimes resource mobilisation by RTCD, complementing seed funding offered by SCP/LA21, is not successful ( a particular problem in Latin America);

The HPMs do not always recognise (sufficiently) that SCP/LA 21 concerns are also part of their portfolio. The MTR team has first hand experienced both positive and negative examples of that in the country reviews.

6.1.4 The Global Urban Observatory (GUO)

The interaction between GUO and SCP/LA21 has been quite limited, mainly restricted to interacting on EMIS data origination from the GEO cities. Potential mutual benefits could be exploited such as the development of programme performance indicators and development performance indicators, such as indicators of achievement of MDG targets at local level, as well as the consistent data collection in SCP/LA21 cities and countries on these indicators once established. As an example, the SCP/LA 21 programme in several countries is in the process of developing MDG city profiles (10 in Sri Lanka alone), and these could form useful inputs in the indicators development and performance monitoring process.

6.1.5 UN-HABITAT Management

The MTR team understands that the Executive Director and other senior management staff of UN-HABITAT appreciate the value and potential of SCP/LA21. However, the articulation of the importance of the urban environmental agenda, which is fundamental in the context of the MDGs, still needs to be strengthened. As noted in the sections above, there has been only limited horizontal co-ordination/co-operation with other (potential) synergic units and programmes within UN-HABITAT. During the past 2-3 years until very recently middle and senior management have not devoted adequate institutional management support to overcome this and thus enhance particularly: the complementary role which SCP/LA21 can play to support and facilitate the

implementation of the global urban governance campaign and of other programmes in UN-HABITAT, and

the strategic partnership with UNEP through SCP/LA 21.

This highlights the importance of raising the profile of the two programmes within UN- HABITAT, not only to increase its visibility, but more importantly, to improve the understanding of its value to the entire organization. This cannot be done effectively only by the programme staff, the two Co-ordinators and the UES chief. Stronger senior management involvement is needed, especially at the supervising Branch Chief and Division Director level, who are both in a better position to champion this cause internally. The MTR team appreciates that this is now well


understood by UN-HABITAT management and that management energy is invested to remedying this. The development of a broader UN-HABITAT policy articulation on urban environmental issues through a special review in the wake of the current MTR is a very positive expression of renewed management attention to this core area.

6.2 Other Global (Environmental Management) Programmes and Institutions

6.2.1 Cities Alliance

The has been numerous interactions and activities with Cities Alliance, mostly at local and national level, but these are often not acknowledged as being a follow-on from SCP or LA 21. For example, EPM is used as the planning approach in the Lake Victoria Region CDS cities. So far, 6 cities are implementing this project. EPM has also been used in the preparation of the profiles for the Cities without Slums situation analysis in these cities. Successful cooperation also includes the approval by Cities Alliance of the Dar es Salaam City Development Strategy for Slum Upgrading in Tanzania, which is a follow-up to the SCP supported Strategic Urban development Plan. As part of the implementation of this CA project, SCP has contributed and supported a Dar+12 consultative workshop, and plans are underway to support the EMIS inputs into the project. In Thailand, the national CDS programme incorporates EPM in all the five selected cities.

There are also cased of the reverse, where SCP/LA21 activities have been carried out as follow-up to the Cities Alliance CDS, such as in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso (where BUS activities have been designed as a follow-up to the CDS) and in Kisumu, where the SCP-supported SUM was incorporated in the CA (SIDA) supported CDS .

Additional opportunities to work with the Cities Alliance have been created by UNEP having joined the Cities Alliance as a programme partner.

6.2.2 Other UN agencies

UNDPNumerous activities have been undertaken with country level UNDP support either in parallel (e.g. in the case of Sri Lanka) or as follow-up projects to SCP/LA21 interventions. These projects are generally undertaken with backstopping from UN-HABITAT’s RTCD Division as noted in section 6.1.3. above.

At programmatic level there has been significant interaction with UNDP’s Public-Private Partnerships for the Urban Environment (PPPUE), but again mostly on an ad-hoc basis and concerning specific in-country projects. For instance, PPPUE and SCP are jointly supporting a project in the Philippines aimed at integrating the work of public-private partnerships, the SCP EPM approach and the activities of the University of the Philippines, School of Urban Regional Planning, with the objective of improving the delivery of urban environmental services by integrating the EPM approach. However, given the complexity of PPPUE conditions, this positive example has so far not yet been emulated successfully elsewhere, in spite of several attempts. Negotiations are being conducted to assess how a more fruitful partnership can be built up.

ILOCollaboration with ILO has been very fruitful through two initiatives: the ILO-ASIST labour intensive and community contracting for basic urban services (linking

up with EPM working groups) and the DJBS “Decent jobs, better services” capacity building workshops (6) with ITC-Turin.


Wherever possible such synergies with other UN agencies should be exploited by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team in as far as core areas of the SCP/LA 21 are concerned, particularly where this helps to develop and disseminate a common global Urban Environmental normative agenda. The MTR team endorses the current practice that with regard to in-country activities the lead in this should be taken by RTCD through its regional offices and the national HPMs.

6.2.3 Selected bi-lateral development cooperation programmes

Danish international development assistance (Danida) Urban environment is a key focus area of Danish Environmental Assistance, and since the initiation of the special environmental assistance programme in 1996, the Danida under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has invested in numerous urban environmental activities, including in Eastern and Southern Africa, and in South East Asia. The new Strategy for Denmark’s Environmental Assistance to Developing Countries 2004-2008 explicitly identifies the urban and industrial environment as one of three areas on which assistance will be focused.

As part of its programmatic support to UN-HABITAT Danida has extended significant support to SCP through its support to UMP during the 1990s. In consequence, a number of Danida supported activities have been built on the SCP experience, but the renewed attention in Danish development assistance to this rapidly increasing issue underlines the need for an on-going learning process to elicit, collect and assess lessons of experience from the present interventions and feed this knowledge back into new programme and pilot project interventions.

A Danida working group produced a working paper on capacity development for Urban Environmental Management (UEM) in 2004 with a checklist for use in appraisals of UEM components. Building on that, Danida in 2005 embarked on a Thematic Review (TR) of its support to urban environmental management in five countries in Southern and Eastern Africa, supported by UN-HABITAT through SCP/LA 21. The review is a thematically focussed and forward-looking attempt to capture and articulate lessons of experience and good practices in a manner conducive to follow-up at political, strategic and operational levels. The primary outcomes of the thematic review are an Analytical Overview Paper (available in draft) and a Good Practice Paper (GPP), to be circulated shortly for review.

The TR included in-depth country reviews of Danida supported UEM programmes in Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. SCP/LA21 participated in the reviews in Tanzania and Zambia and jointly organised the concluding regional workshop with Danida, held in Nairobi in June 2005. The review brought out some very useful lessons of experience, which not only have a bearing on the bilateral programme activities, but which are equally applicable to SCP/LA21, such as: the need to have a strategic focus in programme design from the beginning and to embed

UEM in broader local government planning programming and budgeting processes, findings of limited impact of small and isolated demo-projects and the need to link UEM to

broader investment programming exercises, and the need for a sustained, flexible and unified external support effort.

SCP has a continuing involvement in the Danida supported process of preparing a national framework for environmental management in local government authorities in Tanzania.

The Danida Thematic Review provides an opportunity for enhanced co-operation between SCP/LA 21 and Danida, which should be captured, not only through collaboration at in-country level, but also on global normative tools development. The Thematic Review outputs comprise very useful starting points for further (joint) reflection and dialogue on how to give practical shape to this.


Netherlands and BelgiumAn unsuccessful area of cooperation for SCP/LA21 has been with the bi-lateral cooperation programmes of the Netherlands and Belgium. Despite efforts from the Core Team and UN-HABITAT’s RTCD ROs to systematically liase with embassies in the countries where the programmes operate, so far no synergy has been created between multilateral and bilateral support of the Netherlands and Belgium. In part this is because the bilateral co-operation programmes of these two countries operates only in a limited number of developing countries, and only in a limited number of cases have these support to the environment as a priority attention area in it, and in yet a more limited number of countries this extends to the urban environment. Be that as it may, wherever there is an opportunity to create synergies (the Dutch bilateral programme in Mongolia is a potential case in point), this should be pursued, again primarily by RTCD through its regional offices and the national HPMs.

GeneralThere are a number of other bilateral support programmes that support urban environmental management, but with which SCP/LA21 does not currently have active links (e.g. DfID, USAID, Norad, SIDA and FINNIDA). As in the case of the UN agencies noted in section 6.2.1. above and in the case of Danida, the MTR team feels that wherever possible potential synergies should be explored and exploited by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team in as far as core areas of the SCP/LA 21 are concerned, particularly where this helps to develop and disseminate a common global Urban Environmental normative agenda.

6.2.4 ICLEI —Local Governments for Sustainability

ICLEI is an international association of local governments and national and regional local government organizations that have made a commitment to sustainable development with a membership of about 475 cities, towns, and counties world-wide. ICLEI provides technical consulting, training, and information services to build capacity, share knowledge, and support local government in the implementation of sustainable development at the local level. It was founded in 1990 with UNEP support and is currently supported by a variety of international donor agencies, the most significant of which is the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Its main normative tool is called the milestone process for use in local campaigns. Each campaign incorporates a five-milestone structure that participating local governments work through: (1) establish a baseline; (2) set a target; (3) develop a local action plan; (4) implement the local action plan; and (5) measure results.

Clearly the scope and modus operandi of ICLEI is similar to SCP/LA21. There are no collaborative activities or links between ICLEI and SCP/LA 21 at present, in spite of earlier attempts at co-operation. UNEP continues to maintain links with ICLEI. The MTR team feels that there is sufficient common purpose between ICLEI and SCP/LA21 to justify that earlier collaboration attempts should be revitalised (perhaps together with UNEP) in the interest of creating a broader platform for the global urban environmental agenda.

In doing so, SCP/LA 21 can build not only on its own programme experience but also on the examples in which it successfully brokered decentralised co-operation (e.g. in the LA21 supported Nakuru-Leuven and Essaouira-Erttebek partnerships) and the encouraging perspectives for the same with the Italian and Catalan networks of LA21 cities. This common LA21 interest and active involvement seems to be an excellent starting point for developing long-term city-to-city cooperation as well as reaching out to ICLEI.


6.2.5 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

The IIED has a Human Settlements Department focusing on urban environmental issues in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and has helped raise interest in these topics worldwide. Its research and policy work supports efforts to ensure that cities contribute to sustainable development, placing particular emphasis on locally-driven initiatives to improve the living environments in low income settlements. It has disseminated examples of good practices and tools through its global journal Environment and Urbanization. It has recently produced a series of briefing papers on urban environmental improvement and poverty reduction and a series of working papers documenting LA 21s and other innovative attempts to create city-wide environmental initiatives.

IIED Human Settlements Department has worked with a number of international agencies on urban environmental policy issues, including UN-HABITAT. It has also contributed to a number of international policy documents, including the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s Reference Manual on Urban Environmental Policy.

There is no structural on-going collaboration between IIED and SCP/LA21 in spite of ad-hoc contacts. In the MTR team’s view closer collaboration with IIED’s Human Settlements Department would facilitate the development and dissemination of a common global Urban Environmental normative agenda grounded in SCP/LA 21 practice.

6.2.6 InWent

InWEnt is the German organisation for capacity building in development support. SCP is a strategic partner for its unit on urban development, infrastructure and communications in the department of Sustainable Business Development. Focusing on cities and countries where SCP/LA21 is active will ensure that InWEnt capacity building activities will not only strengthen individuals, but lead to strengthening municipal capacities. In a 4 years, € 2.5 million co-operative training programme on International Cooperation for Sustainable Urban Development InWEnt intends to work closely with SCP/LA21 to develop training programmes in cities in the SCP/LA21 network. A programme agreement is being finalised.

7 Lessons learnt



The most salient lesson learnt is that the development of a capacity-building agenda must feed on a demand for such an agenda, based on the internalisation of the EPM process as an integral part of the local government development agenda, as recognised not only by local actors but also by national government. It generally takes very significant development effort before such a stage is reached.

The enshrinement of the EPM capacity-building agenda in official government policy is required to mobilise resources for its implementation. In the absence of such “codification” there is little likelihood that national capacity-building institutions take up this agenda as part of their regular training and capacity mandate for local government, and that funding for strategy implementation can be adequately mobilised from sources other than external assistance.


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An important corollary lesson learnt is that the implementation of a capacity building agenda requires continued nurturing (even with additional local/ national resources and full involvement of local institutions) with international expertise over a protracted period of time.

The role of IHS as a global capacity-building partner has not been utilised strategically enough by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team. There has been a lot of learning by doing which could have been avoided by integrating its role in overall programme development more emphatically from the start. A good example of that is the national training programme on EPM designed and implemented in Cuba. Local lecturers from universities and IPF, who were neither familiar with programme methodologies, nor had all the language abilities to capture the fundaments available in English, did a remarkable job, but with these unavoidable limitations. The programme could have had a much more comprehensive impact if an embedded TOT-training of trainers programme by IHS had been considered early on.

In turn IHS has treated the SCP/LA 21 capacity-building agenda too cavalierly, instead of recognising it as a major development support activity and learning activity for the institute itself. These issues have been recognised and are being addressed by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team following the June 2005 review meeting.


The demonstration projects have been found a useful and smart instrument in the process towards a more sustainable and participatory planning method implementation. They make theoretical objectives visible on the ground. Therefore, a stricter link and follow up between the city consultations, the working groups and the demonstration projects should be envisaged, emphasizing the need to reach tangible results. ‘What can we really do ourselves’ should be a central question from the start, making the realisation of common identified objectives and priority issues easier afterwards. A strong local ownership and commitment is crucial for creating successful sustainable results. More professional training in budgeting, programming and project management of local administrators and NGO’s should be envisaged.

The city leaders such as the mayor, commissioners and council members play key roles in making local demonstration projects successful, so they should be engaged on a more permanent basis in the follow up of the process. Based on this engagement, a more explicit link between the programme activities and the local budget programmes, including several urban services investments, becomes possible.

A closer follow-up from within the programme, stressing the flexible approach of the EPM methodology, would make it easier to “embed” the programme’s activities in local government planning practice. Successful implementations are clearly important reference points for local as well as national policies and possible investment projects. Demonstration projects, moreover, can and have played an important role in town-to-town exchanges in order to show what has really worked. Additional demonstration projects should be programmed in a more diverse and flexible way.


The most salient lesson learnt is that the intention to upscale and replicate demos must be clearly articulated up-front when the demo is embarked upon and that an agreement must be reached with the local (and national) programme partners that this is the ultimate objective, which, of course, has resource utilisation implications beyond the SCP/LA21 resources used for the initial demo. Failure to achieve such commitment ex ante may be a good reason not to embark on the initial demo. The


lesson here is that relatively small contributions through the programmes to support the outcomes of the participatory planning can trigger commitments to upscale demonstration projects from public and private stakeholders at the city level and national level (as demonstrated in the cases of Cuba, Kenya, Sri Lanka and to a lesser extent Senegal), but that this should not be taken for granted and require considerable prior and follow-up effort.

An additional important corollary lesson learnt is that the chances for such commitments to be obtained will be significantly enhanced if EPM is clearly seen as being part and parcel of local (and national) government planning, programming and budgeting processes.

A clear and concise strategy is required (to be developed by the Core Team) to ensure success in the target number of 12 cities and with at least the 6 local and national teams as required in the SCP programme document. The strategy needs to identify in which cities and countries the best chances of success are, considering the maturity of programme operation, strength and credibility of the local and national team concerned and interest of external support agencies.

However, in fairness, the experience also demonstrates that this is easier said than done. Even in a “mature” programme country like Sri Lanka where the programme has successfully operated since 1999 with relatively strong national and local teams, this has been painful and problematic with only partial success. In this case the lack of embedment in government planning and budgeting processes and limited interest of external parties have been factors limiting success.

7.1.4 National replication/policy formation

Many different aspects made initial pilot projects successful. A transparent interaction and more frequent and profound communication between those projects and the replication cities is necessary, in order to establish an effective follow up. By doing so, the critical success factors can also be replicated. A more formal engagement of the nationally responsible politicians and administrations is needed. The MTR review in the countries visited generated a certain dynamic in political awareness of the programme. It was a good moment to put the programme on the agenda again and discuss the obstacles for further implementation. A follow up and replication of this kind of interesting meetings is of importance.

The review team noticed a certain amount of national follow up of the programmes in terms of administration, finance and capacity building, but lacked a more intense coaching and engagement form the coordination side. Not only does the national programme coordinator play an important role vis-à-vis the local teams, he/she is the go-between the national and the local level.

A more pro-active strengthening of a coordinating national anchor institute, e.g. . universities and training institutions, is necessary and crucial for a successful replication, as well as the integration within national policies. The programme development passes the stages of recognition, full knowledge, engagement and responsibility. In most of the countries visited, already at the second stage, some players still showed lack of full knowledge.

A continuous effort in communication and explication is therefore needed, as well as efforts to engage national actors in terms of budgets. Generally speaking, the different national ministries involved need to be stimulated in order to create a more pro-active attitude towards the programmes. A strong(er) link between the national anchor institute and the rest of the national players needs to be developed and institutionalised. The UN-HABITAT HPMs can play a more pro-active role here.




A key lesson is that prospective anchor institutions should be identified and engaged in the project from the start of the process. This will enable them to have an appreciation of and full understanding of the EPM approach and its value. This will facilitate the integration of the EPM approach in their own programs and activities since they recognize that it will enhance their work and thus induce them to assume their role as an anchor partner of SCP/LA21.

Since local (country and city) stakeholders have a wide range of capacity building needs, several anchor institutions, which already have the expertise and experience in these fields, will need to be engaged. This will allow the programme to build on their existing strengths and in the process, develop a network of local support partners.

Efforts must first be exerted to capacitate appropriate institutions which have the mandate and the mission to build the capacities of various stakeholders, as the experience shows that these institutions are not always equipped to effectively serve as an anchor institution. In addition to defining clear selection criteria vis-à-vis the objectives of the programmes, adequate resources and time must be provided for this, since capacity building is a continuing, interactive and long-term process.

ToT is a useful mechanism to impart know-how to a wide range of key stakeholders in a relative short time. However, ToTs should not be confined to the Trainer’s Manual alone, but also used as a trigger to develop indigenous capacities, locally-based tools and references. In Cuba this initial opportunity has been missed, but the establishment of a national LA21 capacity building centre anchored in a national institution like IPF provides an unique opportunity to correct that, and achieve mainstreaming national and (sub-national) regional anchoring via the IPF regional centres, provided that the support from programme partner institutions like IHS, IRC and IHE is mobilised. EMIS and on-the-job training activities should be incorporated in the ToT design together with a mechanism for assessing the effectiveness of the trainees as trainers later on.

The identification of the appropriate anchor institutions and the development of the training programmes should be based on the evaluation of the capacity building needs such as that done by IHS in Sri Lanka.

7.2.2 Direct local technical support through Anchoring Institutions

Several important lessons have emerged from the efforts to enlist AIs for the provision of direct technical support: it is imperative that a careful match is made between the institutional mandates, technical

strengths and financial support arrangements of each of the institutions considered on the one hand, and the SCP/LA 21 support requirements on the other;

to develop an adequate understanding of this takes time and effort; this has been underestimated; it is therefore productive and worthwhile to make a special effort by conducting a specific regional workshop for this purpose, as was done in the Asia Pacific region;

continuing backstopping of the AIs during the implementation of the TA assignment will be required for some years by the SCP/LA 21 Core Team, UN-HABITAT TCBB and other global partners (including IHS, IHE and IRC as the case may be) until such time as the AI has fully internalised this support role;


given the very specific scope of work for this EPM in-country technical support, it is unlikely that this will continue when SCP/LA 21 financial support will cease, unless the EPM process itself has been mainstreamed in local government planning and development, so that this support function can be seen as a regular element in local government development support.

7.2.3 National Adaptation of SCP/LA21 and EPM tools

A key lesson is that national adaptation of global tools goes beyond mere translation. While using the local language is important, the tools also have to be adapted substantively to the local situation to maximize their potential to serve as a guiding tool at the country and city levels. At the same time, full understanding of the EPM process is needed to ensure that local adaptation is also properly contextualized within the global framework. This highlights the critical role to be played by local partners who are knowledgeable of and understand the EPM process.

In the case of Latin America (and particularly in the case of Cuba), it appears that the merge between EPM and GEO-Cities methodologies – though worthwhile to be pursued and supported as a clear example of positive and practical UN-HABITAT/UNEP cooperation – requires a much stronger adaptation to national/local conditions than originally thought. The use of the GEO-Cities manual in support to preparation of the city environmental profile has proven to be time-consuming and difficult to be understood by the city teams and the stakeholders involved in the city consultation.

There is a clear down-side risk of repeating a lengthy, time-consuming data collection process, rooted in conventional and normative planning practice. A good interactive process should prevent this from happening – as is argued in this report, it is important that the EPM approach will be modified to be more flexible, adapted to the local conditions and less time consuming.

Another important lesson is that documenting the actual experience of demonstration projects should not be done at the end of the project only. This should be built into the design of the project itself and should be carried out as the project begins and throughout the life of the project. This will facilitate the documentation not only of the output/results of the demonstration project but also of the entire process. This will make the source book an even more useful tool.

Experiences from the LA21 strategic structure planning approach should be taken into account, since fast-track analysis of the major urban structures and research-by-design design gave way to a basic spatial understanding of the urban area. Also the qualitative and content-wise focus is considered to be an important added value to the EPM-methodology.


Developing a new EPM curriculum and having it adopted by an academic institution requires an appreciation of the value of EPM. This is the vital lesson learnt in this component. To facilitate this, it is important that the academic institution itself and/or some of its professors are involved in the implementation of SCP/LA21 and be part of training of trainers workshops and regional seminars focusing on capacity building and curriculum reform.

This will not only ensure greater comprehension and absorption of the EPM concepts and methodologies, but also of the value of integrating EPM into the existing curriculum offered by local/national universities. The experience suggests that publications and case studies (which are part of the assets of the programmes) as a matter of principle offer an excellent trade-off to local universities and higher educational institutions.


Otherwise, the programme runs the risk of having to “sell” the EPM concepts first to these possible partner institutions in order to get the knowledge mainstreamed into the national curriculum. This has major resource and time implications, considering that new curriculum development and their endorsement by educational authorities in themselves are already complex and time consuming exercises.



Several important lessons have been learnt in documenting the lessons learnt and associated tools development:

Firstly, appropriate procedures and processes to capture lessons learnt need to be clarified, uniformly applied and become routine. The starting point of that must be an unambiguous answer to the question of what the principal purpose of the documentation is. First and foremost the purpose should be to develop new SCP/LA21 tools and/or enhance the quality of the existing ones as a major block of work in the SCP/LA 21 normative agenda.

Secondly, the tool development work must start as soon as city or national level programme activities are undertaken that require specific guidelines (such as e.g. poverty-related EPM, MDG- related EPM, Spatial Planning-related EMP or SUM-related EPM). From the point of view of normative programme guidance it is not acceptable that such activities should proceed without bringing the best possible guidance to bear on them from the Core Team (no matter how imperfect initially).

Thirdly, in many cases, guidance material that already exists in some form or content within the programme or outside it (the guidelines used in the Kisumu SUM are a case in point, as are the LA21 experiences documented in the “Trialogues”) should be the subject of continuing analysis and refinement as the experiences proceed. This can be quickly and cost-effectively developed into operational guidelines, subject to further development and gradual enhancement as the experience on the ground develops in a variety of locations (the approach taken by IRC in the step-wise development of the BUS handbook is a positive and laudable example to be emulated).

Fourthly, tools development need not wait until operations on the ground almost force their development. The programmes must anticipate this - and have all the credentials to do so. The broader urban environmental management agenda and the city experiences continuously bring up new thematic areas of work, requiring adaptation of the SCP/LA 21 focus and operation. The themes identified in the UN-HABITAT/UNEP pamphlet series on local capacities for global agendas are prime candidates for such work perfectly linking global-local-global issues, which can lead to lasting normative results. The on-going joint work on the air quality management tool book is a good example of what can be done in this regard.

However, the development of guidelines and other operational tools is an inherently time consuming and iterative process, requiring consistent application of substantive knowledge of the concerned field and of operational conditions on the ground to ensure an appropriate level of sophistication. The Core Team has not been able to devote sufficient resources to this important area of work to date, nor has it all the substantive expertise to do so.

However, this is its core normative support function, for which it has a comparative advantage over other programmes by virtue of the size and scope of the SCP/LA21 programmes. This function is not only important for the SCP/LA21 programmes, but potentially also for other programmes


operating in the general area of urban environmental management supported by other agencies, and matching the corporate missions of both UN-HABITAT and UNEP. A good part of this substantive work can be out-sourced by the Core Team, if need be. However, quality management by the Core Team, particularly to ensure that the output appropriately responds to the level of sophistication required in the field, is essential.

7.3.2 Global web site and on-line data base

The websites of SCP and LA21 are informative of the content of both programmes. LA21 information is available on the web site in 3 different languages (French, Spanish and English). However, as global programmes and with the ambition to set normative functions and become a global reference in EPM, there is a need to for the programmes to significantly improve the interactive web-based communication possibilities.

The lesson is that in today’s world global programmes which present themselves as the focus of cooperation between two global organisations of the calibre of UN-HABITAT and UNEP – in addition to be linked to a number of reputable international partners – cannot afford not to have a user-friendly website capable to provide knowledge and information to be downloaded at any time. For that to be accomplished the Core Team must make available all the information and reports produced through the programmes to the web-master and content manager of the websites. These should be made available in a structured and user-friendly manner and assure that proper meta-tags facilitate e-searching by users visiting the site. Subsequently, a line of e-communication should be established with the participating cities, partners and anchoring institutions about the knowledge made available in the website.

The participating cities must join the e-network by developing their respective programme website – embedded or not in their respective institutional website – so that visitors and users can easily browse through the global and local information. This can be done at limited resource input and at a relatively short time, given the stage of the programme and the amount of information available. This will overcome the weakness in the SCP website of not having city-based information. The MTR team considers that this will help SCP/LA21 to become a gateway to an EPM knowledge platform.


The global annual meetings have become an excellent instrument to gather and exchange experience between participating cities, and strengthen the network, in addition to multiply the impacts of lessons learnt. The lesson from the last two meetings is that it requires a very significant amount of resource input and management effort, as well as continuous and consistent follow-up for maximum impact (including preparing the reports of the meetings).

The annual meeting can provide opportunities for participation in agenda-setting and contents development by the cities and their respective teams. The organisation and implementation of the global meetings enhance the sense of ownership and commitment, as well as increasing visibility of the programmes through the exhibitions and dissemination of information that are linked to the events.

Another important lesson is that the participation of decision makers, mayors, councillors and partner institutions – including anchoring institutes – have a positive impact on mobilising support, both political and financial. Participants met by the MTR team clearly articulated the learning and linking opportunities that the global meetings had provided to them in addition to broadening their knowledge of what can be accomplish through the EPM approach in different contexts. In that


respect, the annual meetings – though time consuming and expensive – have become an integral part of the capacity building strategy of the SCP/LA21 programme.


The SCP/LA21 programmes have a remarkable track record in terms of publications and reports. However, routine documentation support can be better structured at the Core Team level and at that of the participating cities, in order to timely have the experiences and lessons learned from cities quickly transformed into information available and disseminated in electronic format via e-mailing lists and web-based sources.

The lesson is that routine documentation has much to do with knowledge management and how this is organised and mainstreamed into the various parts of the two implementing organisations (UN-HABITAT and UNEP), as well as in the network of partners and participating city teams. It plays a pivotal role in knowledge dissemination and fulfilment of normative functions. This is closely connected to the above-noted requirement for improvements in the website and e-communication set up. Given the increase in demo projects, the need to further develop new tools and incorporate global-local issues derived from the UN-HABITAT-UNEP cooperation, a stronger focus on the improvement of knowledge management and documentation support is important, so that there is no loss of momentum or redundancy.

However, it must be acknowledged that the staff time implications of doing so are significant. The Core Team could therefore consider more outsourcing and making better use of partner organisations such as IHS, IHE and IRC (and other partner institutions) to improve knowledge generation and capacity building. This can be combined with improving routine channelling of documentation into retrieval mechanisms already available, such as CD’s, DVD’s, web-based platforms and gateways, so that it quickly becomes available to interested parties, regional offices, partners and participating cities and the different branches, units and programmes of UN-HABITAT and UNEP.

7.3.5 EPM/SCP experience integrated into UNEP policy

Through the collaboration in SCP/LA 21 UNEP and UN-HABITAT have both recognised that there is considerable value added in a strategic partnership between the two agencies in SCP/LA21, given the fact that these programmes are the most significant operational instruments to contribute at local levels to reaching internationally agreed targets on sustainable development such as Agenda 21, WSSD Plan of Implementation, and MDG Goal 7 (Ensure Environmental Sustainability).

Over time the partnership relationship has broadened and deepened, initial frictions reduced and mutual trust developed. What has been missing is an overall cooperation strategy at global level, which can act as a set of guiding principles to ensure the coherence of the joint activities and will help redefine some of these activities, as well as the way the co-operation is managed through JOC.

The on-going regional co-operation in the GEO Cities in LAC (which in contrast to the global co-operation was guided by a jointly developed strategy) has provided useful joint operational learning experience at national level and in the cities selected. This has resulted into a very positive and close cooperation between the two regional offices of both agencies in triggering city environment profiles and EPM-based participatory planning processes in Brazil, Peru, and now expanding to other countries and cities. The comparative advantages of both agencies’ experience (normative and operational) resulted in a good match that should be monitored and assessed as


cities go through the steps of the GEO-cities manual. There is no doubt that this cooperation has helped the awareness-raising of mutual strong and weak points.

As a normative agency, until very recently, UNEP did not have a mandate to operate on the local level, but, as noted in section 4.3.5 above, after the adoption of the Bali Strategic Plan by its Governing Council it now also has a mandate to provide capacity building and technical support at national levels. On UNEP’s side this has enhanced the importance of linking SCP/LA 21 cities to UNEP priorities such as water and sanitation, climate change, biodiversity, air pollution and the GEO Cities assessments.

On UN-HABITAT’s side it is recognised that the UNEP/UN-HABITAT collaboration at national level provides easier access to the Ministries of Environment in the countries where the programmes operate. As SCP/LA21 has increasingly started addressing urban environmental issues at national policy level, this is a welcome support, given the traditionally relatively weak political positions of ministries dealing with human settlements development.

The partnership continues to have a strong potential to bring cities onto the international sustainable development agenda and to highlight the urban-global and urban-rural linkages of environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity and coastal pollution. However, for this to work, it is essential that resources devoted to the partnership at headquarters level by both agencies will be increased, particularly to do justice to the demands of the very significant joint normative agenda, for which a specific joint strategy and work programme needs to be prepared and implemented.


The development and mainstreaming within UN-HABITAT (and beyond) of city consultative processes through the EPM approach has been a major achievement of SCP/LA21. This was of most significance in the first half of the 1990s, roughly up to the Habitat II conference in Istanbul in 1996. Thereafter such approaches have, with a number of variations on the theme, become generally accepted, most certainly in UN-HABITAT. There has also been justifiable criticism that the “full” EPM approach as still fairly religiously adhered to by SCP/LA 21 is too laborious, time-consuming and expensive, is not sufficiently embedded in regular local government planning, programming and budgeting processes, and by implication not sufficiently output-oriented.

A judicious mixture of process and product orientation and a flexibility to adjust the approach to different circumstances on the ground will help its further institutionalisation. In doing so, reviewing the experience and comparing it with similar approaches now used by other parties in UN-HABITAT (e.g. the RUSPS process wisely used in RTCD), UNEP (the GEO cities approach) and other agencies will have added value to enhance flexibility and efficiency.

Obvious opportunities to institutionalise the SCP/LA 21 work to date by enshrining this in a UN-HABITAT urban environmental policy and the global urban governance campaign have not yet been fully captured , although the SCP/LA21 global experience is a valuable asset for UN-HABITAT particularly to address and localise the MDG 7. This has been recognzuied and is being addressed. The programmes can provide tools, knowledge, documentation and practical results that can help in defining a global corporate strategy to localise the MDG 7 in close cooperation with UNEP. Participating SCP/LA21 cities can be considered as priority cities for localising MDG 7.

The growing policy pre-occupation in UNEP with urban environmental issues and the on-going campaigns review/forward looking strategy undertaken by UN-HABITAT management both provide an opportunity to still do this to mutual advantage during the remaining programme period.


The recently renewed interest of the international community and UN-HABITAT on urban planning issues in post-disaster, post-conflict and more general developing countries contexts additionally provides an opportunity for the LA21 experience (first phase, as documented in the “Urban Trialogues” publication) to be mainstreamed in global programmes and tools.

7.4 Management and Inputs.

The PSAC has functioned relatively well in providing substantive strategic advice, but not in terms of programme oversight and in supporting the programmes in mobilising additional resources. To be effective for these purposes the PSAC needs to be smaller and co-opt potential other donor representatives. Its agenda need to be defined and prepared more rigorously and also include presentation and review of annual progress reports, annual work plans and funding requirements in addition to the review of thematic topics. Programme management and the implementing agencies UN-HABITAT and UNEP need to be more pro-active in preparing the PSAC meetings accordingly.

Horizontal co-ordination mechanisms with other units in UN-HABITAT have functioned well in some cases (RTCD, TCBB), and not so well in others (WSIB and the Global Urban Governance Campaign), and this obviously requires attention. Vertical co-ordination within UN-HABITAT also needs to be strengthened in order to enhance the effectiveness of programme management. Both these issues have been recognised by UN-HABITAT management and strengthening measures are being undertaken.

Programme management co-ordination with UNEP through JOC works reasonably well, but also needs to be strengthened if the UNEP-UN-HABITAT collaboration is to be expanded.

As noted in section 4.4.2. above, the SCP/LA Core Team in Nairobi has suffered from staff shortages (both as against projected staff levels in the SCP programme document, as well as against the actual work load) to perform its role properly. This has led to problems in co-operation contract management, delays in reporting and limited ability to respond to additional unexpected work, to changes in the external environment and to expand programme co-operation to other relevant potential global partners (e.g. ICLEI), and has thus impaired the Core Team programme management capacity. This has been periodically pointed out by programme management in PSAC meetings and other relevant forums.

Backstopping assignments undertaken by the Core Team for all programme activities, at local, national, regional and global level have been defined quite precisely. However, the informal management style that governs the operation of the Core Team (without regular team meetings or the use of formal monitoring instruments) has led to information management problems, not only within the team, but also towards other units in UN-HABITAT and vis-à-vis co-operation partners globally and in the client countries. This has been aggravated in some instances by the occasional duplication of roles with RTCD staff in the implementation of backstopping in-country activities.

For the above reasons programme management has not been cost-effective. The main lesson learnt from the experience so far, in the MTR team’s view, is that additional staff may be necessary, but not sufficient. For simultaneous management of two complex programmes operation at local, national, regional and global levels, more structured management mechanisms are required, not only within the Core Team, but also in the distribution of responsibilities between other UN-HABITAT units and the Core Team. Principles of delegated activity/task management responsibilities should be applied in enhancing the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of programme management.


More specifically, the MTR team feels that the positive experience of co-operation with RTCD (section 6.1.3.) could be expanded further. It may be advisable to delegate the responsibility for in-country and regional activities to the RTCD ROs and their in-country HPMs where operationally feasible and ultimately, with AIs, on the basis of agreed annual regional SCP/LA 21 work plans with pre-specified funding commitments and accountability provisions. This is in line with the agency’s mainstreaming of operational functions with the field units and will reduce the burden on the Core Team members for managing and monitoring at a distance of dozens of small projects per region of responsibility and allow them to focus more on normative functions.

This will result in greater cost-effectiveness, clarity and unity of purpose/cohesiveness in backstopping in-country operations, and would free up time of the SCP/LA 21 Core Team for global activities, and the urban environmental normative agenda in particular. These would then obviously be brought to bear on the in-country operational activities, which would also provide a testing ground for new normative tools as they are developed – in such activities the SCP/LA 21 Core Team would continue to provide substantive resource input.

An additional lesson of experience is that there have been a number of contract packaging issues: individual demo packages have tended to be quite small and could be amalgamated

(particularly if dispensed through the RTCD ROs or HPMs); technical support contracts for the same or closely related activities have been assigned under

different contracts, instead of rolling them in one contract. This has applied particularly in the case of local consultant contracts related to the assignments of the three Dutch institutions. Contract procurement, management and oversight as well as assignment implementation would have been simpler and more cost-effective if these services would have been integrated in the co-operation agreements with the Dutch institutions.

These co-operation agreements have all been linked to very specific pre-determined and quantified outputs as specified in the programme documents. As noted in section 3.1 above, this rigidity has limited the options for technical support inputs IHS, IHE and IRC can provide. There may be a case to re-define this more flexibly and demand-driven in order to enhance the value of their inputs (the purely technical support already provided on demand by IHE on SUM in Cuba without that being linked to a SUM demo planning and implementation support role is an example of what can be done).

The above issues need to be addressed through a combination of measures improving Core Team management efficiency and increasing Core Team staff strength. .

8 Recommendations for completion of the 2nd phase

Based on the review, the report which was finalized after extensive discussions with global programme partners and programme staff of UN-HABITAT and UNEP outlines a series of recommendations for the remaining period to complete the 2nd phase of the programmes. It also recommends a perspective beyond its completion. The report is primarily addressed to UN-HABITAT, UNEP and the Governments of Belgium and The Netherlands.

An overarching recommendation for the completion of the second phase is the adoption of greater flexibility in the implementation of activities to achieve the programmes objectives. The pre-occupation with the production of quantified outputs (for objectives 1 and 2) must be replaced with a focus on the achievement of policy and capacity building outcomes.


Within the framework of that overarching shift in orientation, the major thrusts of these recommendations are for more focus on the normative functions at the global level, more consolidation of in-country gains through upscaling, national replication and national policy formulation and more strategic selection of partner institutions that can sustain support at the regional and national level. Measures to improve programme management and strategic links with other institutions and relevant programmes are also strongly advocated.

8.1 Relevance of Programme Design and Overall Direction of Programmes

The MTR team considers that the programme design and overall direction of SCP/LA21 remain essentially relevant. At the same time, some areas need more attention than had originally been planned if the overall development objectives of the programmes are to be achieved. Additionally, other important areas of concern have emerged since the phase 2 proposal formulation which now require attention if SCP/LA21 are to move with the demands of the times and be more relevant to the times. These areas include the environment-spatial planning and structures of cities nexus, the poverty-urban environment nexus, and localising Global Agendas and the MDG’s.

8.1.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes

While this component was designed “to strengthen the ability of local governments and their partners to improve priority urban environmental services and to help reduce poverty, targeting especially marginalized groups”, the programmes have not explicitly linked efforts to improve the urban environment with poverty reduction. This should be consciously and deliberately undertaken so that participating countries/cities realize that the programmes are not only assisting them in addressing urban environmental issues but in the process are also actually supporting them in achieving their MDG targets. This will enhance the value and profile of the programmes and increase their relevance. The same could be said about the programmes’ linkage with and contribution to the two global campaigns for secure tenure and good governance. Both issues are embedded in the programmes work since improving governance is fundamental to improving the urban environmental conditions while secure tenure is usually one of the priority areas of concern within cities. However, efforts to address them which are undertaken at the local level (such as the establishment of multi-sectoral city development councils, capacity building of the local officials and community members, community participation to improve local housing conditions, etc.) are not clearly seen as measures by which the two global campaigns are being implemented at the city/country level.

This poverty-environment nexus should become an intensive area of cooperation between UNEP and UN-HABITAT while that of good governance, secure tenure and urban environmental management should mean stronger cooperation with the two global campaigns.

The EPM approach has not only remained relevant, it has influenced the culture of planning. Participatory and multi-sectoral planning are now considered the acceptable norms for planning. The SCP/LA21 can take some credit for this. Having said that, the EPM process however now needs to be repackaged to become a more-fast tracked vehicle for addressing key concerns at the city level. EPM does not always have to be undertaken in a fixed, step wise, sequential manner, which may take too much time before any actions are taken on the ground. To continue to do so may render it irrelevant. Given the urgency of some problems, the term of office of local government officials and the fact that most local governments already have some planning processes in place, the EPM approach must now be more flexible and responsive to local conditions. Instead of assessing the total overall conditions first through the city profiles and using this as the entry point for engaging with the local stakeholders, it should now be more issue


specific to allow for faster response to glaring environmental issues which require immediate attention and action.

The effectiveness of local demonstration projects in showcasing what can be done and how partnerships of the various stakeholders can be mobilized has already been proven. However, care must be given not to have many projects of the same kind within a country since this limits the “demonstration value” of such pilot projects. The focus should instead be towards national replication and the integration of lessons into policy and legal frameworks, since it is through these programme interventions that the impacts of the 2 programmes could be maximized and sustained. This also requires more emphasis on working with appropriate national ministries with these ministries being more involved and taking the lead in project implementation from the very beginning with support from the programme staff.

8.1.2 Develop Institutional Framework and Networks for Sustained EPM Support

The programmes design to develop a network of regional anchoring and national capacity building institutions and partners to provide a cascade of mutually reinforcing support for EPM remains relevant and timely. It should still be pursued since it remains the most cost-effective, efficient and sustainable way of mobilizing EPM support for the cities/countries.

However, past experiences on this indicate that these institutions and partners need to be identified very early on in the process so that they fully understand the EPM approach and its value and will thus more readily assume the role of an anchor institution. Otherwise, engaging and mobilizing such anchor institutions will take more time and effort than originally planned. In areas where local institutions are relatively weak, focus should be on identifying and mobilizing regional anchor institutions to provide direct local support to the cities while at the same time building the capacity of these possible local institutions.

Integrating EPM in the curriculum of academic institutions is one way of ensuring a steady stream of graduates that fully understand and have internalised EPM. It will thus go a long way towards sustaining EPM support in the participating countries/cities. However, it generally takes a long time to develop the EPM modules and integrate them in the existing curriculum. The programme should consider focusing more on integrating EPM in short courses.

8.1.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA21 Normative Functions

At this stage of SCP/LA21, this is the most relevant component and should be the primary focus. Only by institutionalising the normative functions within UN-HABITAT and within the participating countries can efforts be up-scaled, mainstreamed and sustained even after the two programmes end. While the activities identified in this component are appropriate for achieving immediate objective three, their implementation is largely delayed. More time and resources needs to be allocated to this work. There must be a more deliberate effort to look for and seize opportunities for institutionalising these normative functions such as supporting governments develop new policies, implementing guidelines and manuals (such as based on the LA21 supported strategic structure planning work in Nakuru, Kenya) and documenting and synthesizing experiences and disseminating same in a systematic manner. Recommendations on how this can be undertaken are elaborated in section 8.2.3.

8.2 Programme Implementation

The lessons learnt in the implementation of activities lead to a number of MTR team recommendations for changes in programme implementation emphasis, modalities and


mechanisms to improve the programmes’ effectiveness in achieving overall objectives and their impact and sustainability. These are described in the following sections for each of the three immediate objectives.

8.2.1 Improve EPM Application and Policy Implementation Processes

With another 2-3 years to go in the current programme phase it will be important to now squarely focus on consolidation of the achievements reached by the programmes in improving EPM application and policy implementation processes. This will mean that as a matter of principle no new activities should be undertaken in countries where the programmes are not yet active or where the chances of consolidation are limited, unless:

a) there is an unusually strong demand for the application of the EPM process;b) this is embedded in the local government planning and programming process; c) this demand is backed up with financial resources, and d) there is a clear perspective that the process will directly impact on environmental

infrastructure investment flows.

In order to do so, it will be necessary to define explicit guidelines and criteria for the identification/selection of cities and the negotiation/formulation process, so that this can be clarified from the start of the engagement.

In such limited new cases of engagement, as well as in consolidation countries it must be ensured that the application of the EPM tool fits in an on-going local government planning, programming and budgeting exercise on a very explicit demand-driven basis, and that the programmes merely provide technical support to local or national governments as the case may be to facilitate that institutionalised local or national planning processes will be carried out more effectively.

Additionally, to be more cost-effective, the EPM needs to be repackaged as a more flexible, issue-specific and fast-tracked planning vehicle, in recognition that there are different practical operational entry points in the process in different situations. These options for fast-tracking need to be explored, in particular in with reference to the areas that are part of the structural mandate of local governments: e.g. urban land use, public space design, non-motorised mobility, markets, transport terminals, waste management, property registration. The objective is for the EPM process to become a much more menu-driven process adaptable to the specific demand in a city/country.

More generally, the programme activities should be geared towards ensuring the maximum use of and ownership through strengthening of the public sector at the local level, in particular the public administration in charge of urban planning and environmental management. The role of NGOs and consultants should complement tasks conducted by the local administration, and e.g. comprise training and national strategy development.

An increased emphasis on working with and through national ministries will be required to ensure sustainability and national adoption/internalisation of the SCP/LA21 approaches, as well as mobilisation of interest and participation of more cities in a country. The MTR team endorses this recommendation already made at the PSAC meeting in Havana in June 2005. In fact, in many cases this may mean that the programmes would simultaneously support the process at local and national level. The ongoing initiative in Kigali, Rwanda has demonstrated that in less than one year, an issue can be profiled, stakeholders mobilised and a consultation conducted to generate action plans that are implemented by national stakeholders, and not necessarily entirely through SCP/LA 21 support.


UNEP's country specific-networks, especially at the national level, such as the national environmental management authorities will help bringing the urban environment higher on the priority list of national development agendas. Such involvement will also help promoting local capacity and action on global environmental topics. The collaboration with UNEP in the GEO-for-cities initiative in the LAC region provides an important opportunity in this regard and needs to be vigorously pursued.

The MTR team recommends that outputs will be redefined in term of national/local planning systems having internalised the EPM process as modified above and having enshrined this in an operational national policy, rather than in terms of number of implemented consultations, demo projects, number of completed up-scaling exercises and replication strategies.

The demo projects must continue to be instrumental in this process, but funds for demo projects must be applied more strategically and flexibly in that context. This will generally mean that larger demo investments will be made, to enhance their leverage impact. This may or may not be for SUM, BUS or any other local government priority area: SUM and BUS will only be applicable if and when a city-level planning, programming and budgeting process specifically determines that mobility or low-cost micro urban services are critical issues.

The application of demo funds should also be more directly linked to mobilising funds earmarked by local government itself (as was successfully done in the Kisumu SUM project), by local or national utility companies and/or other support agencies/development banks for specific urban environment development issues. ‘Seeding’ Cities Alliance initiatives have demonstrated this potential, which needs to continue to be pursued. Technical support inputs by IHE and IRC (and IHS for that matter) must be defined more flexibly to assist in this entire process. Where technically appropriate this may include these institutions pooling their resources.

A more deliberate, systematic and structured modality of working through the RTCD Regional Offices and their HPMs for enhanced and more-cost effective programme delivery must be developed. As a matter of principle, the ROs and HPMs are much better placed to deal with the national and local environment than the SCP/LA 21 Core Team. The MTR team feels that a bold step must therefore be taken in delegating the responsibility for in-country and regional activities to the RTCD ROs , and the in-country HPMs as much as is realistically feasible, on the basis of agreed annual regional SCP/LA 21 work plans with pre-specified funding commitments and accountability provisions. This, of course, pre-supposes that ROs and HPM have this clearly specified in their term of reference, so that HMPs will facilitate the understanding of the commitments that are being asked from the local/national partners, as well as facilitate the awareness/advocacy

8.2.2 Develop institutional Framework and Networks for Sustained EPM Support

A number of Anchoring Institutions (AIs) have been identified, and in a number of cases assigned through co-operation agreements and other contractual arrangements to support the EPM process in a number of different ways. This important work needs to be continued, but taking into consideration the suggestions made in section 8.2.1 above on the embedment of the EPM process itself.

In the LAC and Africa regions a more systematic process of regional identification of AIs still needs to be completed. The MTR team recommends that in developing a sustainable network of AIs the structural mandate and financial support mechanisms for these institutions will be the starting point of the discussion, as imposing an EPM-related work load will otherwise to termination of these activities once programme funding ceases.


The Capacity-building strategy development work supported by IHS along with local partners has led to a modified trimmed down strategy development recipe/menu. The rather lengthy and painful processes of experience in Nigeria and Sri Lanka have at least clarified the necessary ingredients for success. Therefore the capacity-building strategy approach now needs to be applied by assigned anchoring institutions in selected countries, supported by IHS in a technical support role, not in the lead role. The MTR team is unable to judge if the two institutions in Egypt and the Philippines are the next best options for developing a strategy that will ultimately be enshrined in a national capacity-building policy with mandatory steps to be undertaken by the hierarchy of local and national governments, specialised training institutions and their funding, which should be the programmed outcome.

The MTR team recommends that a critical review with a range of already engaged Anchoring Institutions is undertaken to assess where there is such potential, based on: an articulated national government demand for the development of such a strategy and a demonstrated willingness by the national government department to implement it.Success/outputs must be defined in terms of a sensible capacity-building strategy having been designed, adopted by national government and put into operation.

As suggested at the last PSAC meeting in June 2005 several networking functions can also be left to other global institutions and networks such as IIED and ICLEI. The MTR team recommends that a careful review is undertaken by the programmes with such parties to assess how this can best be done in the interest of more cost-effective utilisation of programme resources.

8.2.3 Institutionalise SCP/LA 21 Normative Functions

This is the area in which, in the MTR’s view, the programmes have made least significant progress for a variety of reasons. One important reason is the allocation of resources within the programmes across the three major areas of concern. The work to be undertaken to articulate and institutionalise the programmes normative function has been relatively under-endowed with human as well as financial resources, and the MTR team therefore recommends that this is rectified, as the team strongly feels that this is the area with the best potential comparative advantage for the programmes in the last two years of the current phases and beyond.

Following the emergence of the need to localise efforts towards the achievement of the MDGs, and with the potential of a much more intensive relationship with UNEP, this has assumed additional importance, and the MTR team therefore strongly recommends that significant additional financial and human resources are allocated to this important part of the programmes, both from the programmes themselves, and by UNEP. In as far as the programmes are concerned, this can be done by reallocating some of the programmed resources away from support to local EPM processes, for which a consolidation strategy is advocated, as well as through the proposed delegation of operational activities to the RTCD Regional Offices, which will free up staff resources in the Core Team (see section 8.2.1 above).

The MTR team endorses the suggestions made at the June 2005 PSAC with regard to the areas to be addressed as part of enhancing the programmes normative focus and institutionalising this. On the one hand this will require work on normative tools that will help cities improve classical areas of the environment such as urban rivers, urban wetlands, urban bio-diversity, underground and surface water bodies and urban forests, but now as part of a an attempt to localise such global environmental agendas in partnership with UNEP. On the other hand this will also require a clear focus on helping countries to achieve MDGs (including but not necessarily limited to MDG targets 9-11) through an improved urban environment (environmental resource decision-making and


access to services). This means setting relevant local targets, developing guidelines and tools, training and monitoring. The MTR team recommends that, building on the emerging local work (e.g. through the MDG City Profile work supported by the programme in Sri Lanka and the UN-HABITAT WSIB work on the LVWATSAN initiative), this is also taken up in partnership with UNEP.

In fact, one item that according to the MTR must be on top of the agenda to set the course for programme activities during the remaining second phase of the programmes is the development of a joint UNEP/UN-HABITAT urban environmental strategy as a major flagship for both agencies to tackle the above agendas. The strategy can be prepared and partially implemented during the current programme phase, and will also set the stage for the agenda of joint normative work for the period thereafter, perhaps in a new programme framework.

Applying the EPM processes in addressing the perspectives of ecosystems and development activities with stakeholders, through placing the city's decision-making structures on the centre stage, implies that tools for this will be available, including putting in place appropriate environmental information management systems (EMIS). The programmes need to make more use of UNEP's expertise in the scientific analysis of the various environmental topics, as well as its network with global scientific institutions on these subjects which could add value to the work of the programmes.

The MTR team recommends that a better synergy is created with other UN-HABITAT units (particularly WSIB) and with the Global Urban Governance Campaign on the basis of co-operation agreements clearly defining the concrete mutual advantage of doing so, and enshrined in UN-HABITAT policy such as the revised forward-looking strategy to implement the global campaigns. In order to do so, the MTR team strongly recommends that horizontal and vertical co-ordination in UN-HABITAT is enhanced to achieve this, through negotiating and implementing this in concrete and practical working agreement terms.

A stronger emphasis on urban planning is recommended, and guidelines on strategic structure planning should be developed, taking urban space as a resource. Thus, tools for a participatory alternative to traditional master and land use planning can be an important thematic area of work in the programmes’ normative agenda.

The MTR team further recommends that the more operational supporting tools, such as EMIS, the web-site, newsletters, the Global partners meeting, publication of reports of cases of good practice and other supporting tools will all be reconsidered in the light of the above strategic considerations and adapted as necessary.

8.3 Programme Management

The lessons learnt in programme management to date lead to a range of MTR recommendations to enhance the quality of programme management in the broadest sense of the word. These are described below for the most vital elements of management as the MTR team sees it.

PSACIn the MTR’s view the PSAC needs to be strengthened, be made more compact, and perhaps meet more frequently to guide the programmes better during the next 2-3 years as the above-proposed changes will be implemented by programme management and the management of UNEP and UN-HABITAT. In addition, it needs to also focus on its mandate to support programme management in mobilising additional resources. To be effective for that purpose a different composition is recommended, co-opting potential donor representatives to the meeting. The PSAC’s meeting


agenda need to be set and adhered to more rigorously, with presentation and review (semi-)annual progress reports, work plans and funding requirements as standard agenda items. The programme management, as secretariat to PSAC will have to devote considerably more time in preparing the PSAC meetings and its minutes accordingly.

One immediate item for PSAC consideration is to consider the twin ideas of LA21 also becoming a joint programme with UNEP and/or to merge the two programmes into one with cost-sharing from UN-HABITAT, UNEP, the Belgian Government and the Netherlands Government, as there is no intrinsic rationale to continue with parallel reporting arrangements and two programme co-ordinators. In any event, it is recommended to henceforth prepare and submit only one, unified, substantive progress report. This will contribute to a more cost-effective use of Core Team human resources while also providing better understanding of the programmes’ synergies.

UN-HABITAT/UNEP co-ordinationConsidering the relative success of this mechanism, the JOC should continue to be the main implementation co-ordination mechanism for programme implementation between the two agencies. However, it should have a more strategic focus (the locus of the joint urban environment strategy by the two agencies), and have a broader agencies’ units composition. Day-to-day operational and logistical coordination can be handled between the two Chiefs of the respective Urban Environment Sections. The (monthly) JOC meetings should be augmented by six-monthly meetings on programme implementation at Deputy Executive Director level (possibly in conjunction with PSAC meetings).

Horizontal and vertical co-ordination in UN-HABITATThe MTR team recommends that horizontal and vertical co-ordination of the programmes with parallel programmes/units in UN-HABITAT and UN-HABITAT Senior Management is strengthened. Sensible “win-win” agreements need to be established between the programmes and the relevant parallel units (WSIB, the Good Governance Campaign, TCBB, RTCD and GUO), and their implementation monitored through regular co-ordination meetings. It is suggested that the Director of the Global Division takes the lead in this, supported by the Urban Development Branch Chief, and supervised by UN-HABITAT’s Deputy Executive Director. It is imperative that adequate levels of human resources are devoted from the programmes and the other concerned UN-HABITAT units to work this out, and that this is not seen as an additional burden, but as a strategic opportunity for mutual benefit.

Operational programme managementThe MTR team recommends that the UN-HABITAT UES Chief/SCP Co-ordinator continues to have overall responsibility for day-to-day programme management (and for as long as there are two programmes, the LA21 Co-ordinator for LA 21 activities within the overall scope of UES). Both internal and external operational management procedures need to be established/ tightened up considerably: a) regular (at least monthly) Core Team meetings need to be conducted with a standard agenda

and minutes of these meetings need to be prepared for information and horizontal and vertical co-ordination purposes;

b) programme implementation monitoring procedures must be established and adhered to; this can be done in the current situation by using the Activity Briefs as management information tools by frequently updating their status and reporting on progress on that basis (quarterly or six-monthly) to UN-HABITAT and UNEP management and to PSAC;

c) micro-management/organisational back-stopping of individual in-country activities should not be done by the Core Team, as this is inherently inefficient and not cost-effective (particularly for Asia and LAC regions); as noted in section 8.2.1 this can increasingly be delegated by annual programme implementation agreements to the RTCD ROs with a major


role for their HPMs (a clear example of a potential “win-win” arrangement). These agreements, by implication, will then serve as instrument for the Core Team to monitor progress as the basis for its reports to UN-HABITAT and UNEP management and to PSAC.

9 Perspective beyond Completion of 2nd Phase

The basic completion strategy for the current donor funded 2nd phase of the programmes is to establish an institutional framework for sustained EPM support at global, national and local levels. The completion strategy aims at (over time) systematically delegating direct local and national technical support to capacitated sub-regional and national Anchoring Institutions, thus deliberately reducing dependency on UN-HABITAT/UNEP scarce human resources in the field of urban environment. This is beginning to happen, as training and activity backstopping is increasingly provided by national anchoring institutions, other urban institutions and local resource persons. However, field experience to date suggests that backstopping of AIs will continue to be required for longer than the current 2nd phase period. This is one reason why it is suggested to assign this role structurally to the RTCD regional offices, the HPMs and ultimately, to the AIs. As additional spin-off projects backstopped by these offices emerge (as has already happened in quite a number of countries) this is a logical next step on the way to self-sustained activities in the Anchoring Institutions.

However, the normative functions of UNEP and UN-HABITAT in the thematic area of the urban environment are evolving and are more likely to grow than to diminish over time. Governments at national and local level, as well as the Anchoring Institutions will need to be supported with normative tools to address emerging challenges as they arise.

The four key areas noted in section 8.1. above (i.e. localising MDGs, guidelines and capacity for GEO-for-cities, local action for global agendas and the urban environment role in the Cities Alliance) are cases in point, and by implication important areas for renewed external support beyond the current phase. These areas can form the starting point for the development of a joint UNEP/UN-HABITAT urban environmental policy and strategy.

In the implementation of such a policy and strategy continued support will also be required for the development of relevant city-level monitoring mechanisms and documentation, and to help knowledge management for policy advocacy. Some resources to stimulate the implementation of local demonstration projects in these new thematic areas will also be required.

In consequence, the MTR team strongly recommends that, alongside the above suggested reorientation in the remainder of the 2nd phase of the programmes, the coming 2-3 years are also used to develop the scope of a new joint UN-HABITAT/UNEP urban environmental management policy/strategy/programme building on the experiences of SCP/LA21 and other similar programmes. This will help develop and strengthen the normative functions of the SCP/LA 21 programmes in which some of the strategy elements can already be addressed and provide the umbrella framework for engaging other donors in urban environmental management. . A programme concept note should be drawn by the two agencies without delay for discussion with other partners (at PSAC or at a broader forum) during the forthcoming World Urban Forum.


Annex 1 Briefing Note containing MTR Terms of Reference

United Nations Human Settlements ProgrammeProgramme des Nations Unies pour les établissements humains - Programa de las

Naciones Unidas para los Asentamientos Humanos

BRIEFING NOTE

Mid term review of theSustainable Cities Programme

and theLocalising Agenda 21 Programme

1. Background

UN-HABITAT work on the urban environment started in 1990 with the creation of the Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP). Following the Rio Conference, the Localising Agenda 21 programme (LA21) was created in 1995 at the same time the SCP became a joint UN-HABITAT – UNEP Programme. While SCP was located within the Technical Cooperation Division, the LA21 was created within the Research and Development Division. This decision was due to the initial research and capacity building focus of the LA21.

From 1990 until Habitat II in 1996, the SCP focused on developing key demonstration projects in a selection of worldwide representative cities. Support was provided on the basis of a common conceptual framework namely the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM). In a second phase, up till 2001, a large research and capitalisation exercise was undertaken which lead to the publication of process oriented and topical tools on the EPM. The LA21 until 2003, concentrated on supporting four demonstration cities. Research that was conducted by the Programme led to documenting a large number of lessons of experience. Following the revitalisation exercise of UN-HABITAT the two urban environmental programmes were brought together in 2000 within the Urban Environment Section of the Urban Development Branch.

Based on the know-how accumulated in both Programmes, the Urban Environment Section prepared a 5 years strategy (2003-2007), serving as a common framework for both Programmes within the UN-HABITAT work programme endorsed by the Governing Council. This strategy aims at increasing the impact of the Section’s programme/or activities at local, national and global levels on issues related to urban development, environmental management and poverty reduction. The strategy was also designed to support the implementation of the UN-HABITAT Global Campaign on Urban Governance and to help countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The strategy is financially supported by the Dutch Government through the SCP (US$ 8,000,000) for the period 2003-2007 and the Belgian Government through the LA21 (US$ 3,000,000) for the period 2004-2007. Both Programmes have included a mid-term review to be conducted in the second half of 2005. Due to the common strategy of these Programmes it was proposed that the review could be conducted jointly.

2. Objectives of the mid-term review

The objectives of the review are as follows:


To assess the progress made on the basis of the logical framework and timeline as worked out in the original programme proposals (SCP-2 - Sept.2002 and LA21 2003);

To assess the contribution made towards achieving the stated strategy’s objectives at local, national and global levels;

To assess the progress made as compared to the expected end of programme results; To assess the coherence of Programmes activities with UN-HABITAT’s and UNEP‘s overall

objectives and the mainstreaming of the EPM concept in the activities of work of both organizations;

To indicate the complementarity and added value of the LA21/SCP programme vis-à-vis other multilateral urban environment programmes;

To assess the contribution/role of LA21/SCP in localizing MDG-7, especially targets 10 and 11.

To assess the follow-up given to the recommendations made in previous reviews and evaluations of LA21/SCP;

The mid term review will be forward-looking and will make recommendations on: adjustments and identification of areas where further actions are needed to improve

programmes’ efficiency and effectiveness, including with reference to their contributions to the strategy;

how to ensure, during the second half of the programme period 2003-2007, institutional anchoring and increasingly funding of SCP/LA21 activities from regular domestic resources rather than international assistance;

desirable follow-up to the strategy with a view of maximising funding invested and consolidating mainstreaming of programme activities at local, national and global levels.

3. Organisation of the mid-term review

Composition of the review teamA team of four international consultants will be hired. It is agreed that all main partners to the strategy will be represented in the review exercise.

One consultant selected by the Netherlands One consultant selected by Belgium One consultant selected by UN-HABITAT in consultation with UNEP One consultant representing Programmes’ partners from the South

A team leader will be selected among the review team on the basis of agreed criteria among the key partners and specific terms of reference. It has been agreed among the partners that the team leader will be identified by the Netherlands.

Expertise in the team should include: urban planning, urban environment, GIS, urban sociology with experience of participatory approaches. Team members will have preferably an experience on evaluation exercises. Gender balance will be sought as much as possible. International team members should be fluent in English and at least as well as one of the following languages: French and Spanish. So that the team as a whole can cover the three languages in order to be able to review documents and to participate in meeting with local and national partners.

National consultants will be selected in each of the reviewed countries, to conduct the national self review and organise and facilitate field visits of the international consultants.

Review methodologyIn order to allow the Team Leader to participate in the design of the mid term review, the consultant who will be entrust to lead the team, will be recruited early in the preparation of the exercise. The Team leader will be involved in working out the details of the ToRs of the international and national consultants as well as outlines of outputs and detailed content of the review activities.

The review will be based on Programmes’ proposal of the SCP and LA21. Logical frameworks of these documents will readily provide objectives, activities and outputs amongst which the


Programmes will be reviewed. They will also provide indicators for measuring progress. The team will be provided with the Programmes’ proposal as well as with previous Programmes evaluation reports and key relevant Programmes’ publications. The review of these documents will be essential for ensuring that the review exercise will be accurate and useful in advising Programmes’ partners.

A number of additional documents will serve for desk review. The team will be able to take into consideration: the documentation exercise undertaken for the Havana 2005 meeting, recent project evaluations conducted with the support of IHS as well as the Danida urban environment thematic evaluation, or those conducted as routine project evaluation.

A self-review will be organized in each of the selected country. This review will be conducted at local and national levels with projects partners. National and local partners will include: relevant ministries, national associations of local authorities, partners support programmes (national or international such as UNDP), national EPM anchoring institutions, local authorities benefiting from projects activities, members of the working groups including the private sector, CSOs and NGO’s and representatives of partner academic institutions. Beneficiaries (when different from project partners) will also be involved in the self-review.

The self-reviews will be conducted by national consultants familiar with institutional, legislative and urban environment issues in their country but preferably not directly involved in the LA21/SCP projects. The national consultants will prepare a national review report that will be made available to the international consultants prior to their visit of the country.

The self-review will be concluded with the field visits of the review team. The national consultants will introduce the international consultants to national and local LA21/SCP partners, facilitate their mission and ensure that the programme of the field visit is conducted swiftly and efficiently. In each of the selected country, the review team will end its mission with a debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of their review.

These key findings will be further detailed in national review reports prepared by the international consultants. The draft national reports will be sent for comments to key national and local partners involved in the self-review exercise.

On the basis of the desk review, the field visits, and interviews with the Programmes’ core team and international partners, a draft report will be prepared by the international consultants. The Monitoring and Evaluation Section will provide guidance on UN-HABITAT standard format of evaluation reports. The format will be brought to the attention of the consultants in their Terms of reference (UN-HABITAT Monitoring and Evaluation Guide pages 44-46 attached as annex 2).

The report will be presented and discussed in Nairobi and then finalized under the coordination of the Team Leader. This report will serve as a basis for a publication (if deemed necessary) or the report will be posted on the Programmes’ websites.

During the duration of the exercise, methodological, procedural and advisory support as well as quality assurance will be provided by the UN-HABITAT Monitoring and Evaluation Section.

Choice of countriesThe choice of countries has been agreed upon among the partners on the basis of the following criteria:

More than one city being supported; Active anchoring institution; A long standing and evolving engagement; A representative mix of LA21 and SCP supported countries; If possible countries benefiting from thematic support such as EMIS, BUS or SUM; Links with the Global Campaigns, where relevant.


It is proposed to limit the review with field visit to 4 countries, one in each of the major regions where the Section is active: Anglophone Africa - Kenya, Francophone Africa/Arab States - Senegal, Asia – Sri Lanka, and Latin America and the Caribbean - Cuba. However for review of Programmes’ operational activities, the review team will also take into consideration all the documents put at its disposal for desk review.

ResourcesFinancial resources will be mobilised from both Programmes: US$ 90,000 from the SCP from the USD 160,000 that have been allocated in the budget for the mid-term and final evaluation. US$ 35,000 from the LA21

Indicative budget Items Details TotalTeam Leader 2 month PM (*)International Consultants 1.5 month @ US$ 10,000 x 3 45,000National Consultants 31 days @ US$ 250 = 8,000 x 4 32,000Missions to Kenya Travel 1,300 + DSA 1,400 = 2,700 x 7 18,900Missions to Kenya (Team Leader) 2 missions PM (*)Missions to Cuba Travel 3,500 + DSA 1,600 = 5,100 x 2 10,200Missions to Sri Lanka Travel 1,500 + DSA 770 = 2,270 2,270Missions to Sri Lanka (Team Leader) 1 mission PM (*)Missions to Senegal Travel 1,300 + DSA 1,330 = 2,630 x 2 5,260Cost of Self Assessments Travel and DSA 1,500 x 4 6,000Sundry and publication 5,000Grand Total 125,000

Review activitiesThe following programme is being proposed: Desk study on the basis of existing documents and reports Briefing of the review team in Nairobi Self-review by national consultants in selected countries Field visit to selected countries facilitated by national consultants Preparation of draft report (with copies sent to the interviewees for feedback and checking) Debriefing in Nairobi and discussion of draft report Preparation of the final report Preparation of a publication based on the results of mid-term review

Documents for desk reviewThe following documents will be made available to the Mid Term review Team for desk review: Programmes’ proposal of the SCP and LA21, Previous Programmes’ evaluation reports, SCP phase one completion report, Programmes’ progress report 2003 and 2004, The documentation exercise undertaken for the Havana 2005 meeting, Relevant documentation on local project and national programmes to be reviewed, Recent project evaluations conducted with the support of IHS, Recent project evaluations conducted as routine project evaluation, Key relevant Programmes’ publications (upon request).


General Work Plan

2005 2006Location Activity October November December January FebruaryHome base Desk review by the team

leaderNairobi Recruitment - national

consultants by Core TeamNairobi Recruitment - international

consultants by Core TeamNairobi Preparation mission by

team leaderIn country Self assessment by

national consultantsHome base Desk review by the

international teamNairobi + Kenya

Briefing of the international team + Review Kenya

Colombo + Sri Lanka

Review Sri Lanka – Week to be agreed upon

Havana + Cuba

Review Cuba – Week to be agreed upon

Dakar + Senegal

Review Senegal

Home base Report writing by the international team

In country Review of report by partners

Nairobi Debriefing in Nairobi of the international team

Home base Finalisation of the report – Team leader +Int. Cons. 1


Annex 1

Terms of Reference

Post title: Senior Consultant - Team leader of the Mid Term Review team

Geographic scope: Global

Projects titles: Sustainable Cities ProgrammeLocalising Agenda 21 Programme

Expected start: October 2005

Duration: Two work-months over a period of 5 month

Purpose: To lead and coordinate international and national consultants who will be involved in the Mid Term Review of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme.

Background: See Briefing Note

Duties and tasks:

The consultant will work in close cooperation with the SCP/LA21 Core team and its funding partners (The Netherlands and Belgium). As agreed among the partners, the Team Leader will be the consultant representing and selected by the Netherlands.

The basic task of the team leader will be to organise, coordinate and supervise the Mid Term Review.

The following tasks are foreseen:

Represent the Netherlands in the Review Team

Review Programmes’ proposal of the SCP and LA21 and identify from logical frameworks of these documents: objectives, activities and outputs amongst which the Programmes will be reviewed and indicators for measuring progress.

Conduct a desk review of key SCP/LA21 documents and organize the desk review for the international review team.

Conduct a preparation mission in Nairobi during which:o On the basis of drafts prepare by the SCP/LA21 Core Team, work out the details of

the ToRs of the international and national consultants as well as outlines of outputs and detailed content of the review activities;

o Conduct interviews with relevant UN-HABITAT and UNEP officials.

With the support of the SCP/LA21 Core Team organise the briefing of the Review team and the field visit in Kenya.

Conduct and supervise the briefing of the Review team and the field visit in Kenya.

Conduct interviews with relevant representatives of SCP/LA21 international partners especially those based in the Netherlands: Dutch Government, HIS, IHE and IRC.

With the support of the SCP/LA21 Core Team supervise the self-review which will be


organized in each of the selected country including the preparation of a national review report.

Lead the field visits of the review team in Kenya and Sri Lanka and give a debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of these national reviews.

Supervise the preparation of national review reports prepared by the international consultants.

Organize, supervise and contribute to the preparation of the draft Mid Term Review Report on the basis of the desk review, the field visits, the national review reports and interviews with the Programmes’ core team and international partners.

Present and discuss the Mid Term Review report in Nairobi and supervise its finalization.

Expected outputs:

Terms of Reference of the international and national consultants, outlines of outputs and description of detailed content of the review activities;

Final Mid Term Review Report including: self-evaluation reports, national review reports and general findings and recommendations (see outline in annex 5).

Work plan (Person/day input)

2005 2006October November December January February

Desk review 5

Preparation mission 5


6


6

Report writing 12

Debriefing in Nairobi of the international team

5

Finalisation of the report 5

Qualifications:

The senior consultant will have at least 30 years of working experience with at least 20 years of relevant international experience and with academic training and qualification in an appropriate field or fields including urban planning, urban environment, urban sociology with experience of participatory approaches. The senior consultant will have extensive experience on evaluation exercises. The senior consultant should be fluent in English and preferably in one of the following languages: French and Spanish.


Annex 2

Terms of Reference

Post title: Senior Consultant – Evaluator representing SCP and LA21 Programmes partners from the south




Duration: One and half months over a period of 5 month

Purpose: To contribute to the Mid Term Review of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme representing Programmes partners from the south (Governments, local authorities, EPM anchoring institutions, beneficiaries, etc.).


Duties and tasks:

The consultant will work in close cooperation with the SCP/LA21 Core team and its funding partners (The Netherlands and Belgium) under the supervision of the Review Team leader.

The basic task of the consultant will be to contribute to the Mid Term Review. The following tasks are foreseen:

Represent Programmes partners from the south within the Review Team

Conduct a desk review of key SCP/LA21 documents.

Participate in a briefing session in Nairobi.

Conduct interviews with relevant representatives of SCP/LA21 international partners.

Participate in the field visits of the Review Team in Kenya and Sri Lanka and give a debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of the national reviews.

Contribute to the preparation of Kenya and Sri Lanka national review reports.

Contribute to the preparation of the draft Mid Term Review Report on the basis of the desk review, the field visits, the national review reports and interviews with the Programmes’ core team and international partners.

Contribute to the presentation and discussion of the Mid Term Review report in Nairobi

Contribute to the finalization of the Mid Term review report.

Expected outputs:


National review reports of Kenya and Sri Lanka;

Draft and final Mid Term Review Report (see outline in annex 5).

Work Plan (Person/day input)


Desk review 5


6


6

Report writing 10

Debriefing in Nairobi of the international team

5

Finalisation of the report 5

Qualifications:



Annex 3

Terms of Reference

Post title: Senior Consultant – Evaluator representing Belgium





Purpose: To contribute to the Mid Term Review of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme representing Belgium within the evaluation team.


Duties and tasks:



Represent Belgium in the Review Team


Participate in a briefing session in Nairobi and contribute to the field visit in Kenya.

Conduct interviews with relevant representatives of SCP/LA21 international partners especially Belgian partners (Government, local authorities, universities, etc.).

Organise and conduct the field visits of the Review Team in Cuba and Senegal, and give a debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of the national reviews.

Prepare Cuba and Senegal national review reports.


Contribute to the presentation, discussion and finalization of the Mid Term Review report in Nairobi


Expected outputs:

National review reports of Cuba and Senegal;

Contributions to the draft and final Mid Term Review Report (see outline in annex 5).



Desk review 5

Briefing in Nairobi + Review Kenya

6


6

Review Senegal 6

Report writing 5

Debriefing in Nairobi 5

Qualifications:



Annex 4

Terms of Reference

Post title: Senior Consultant – Evaluator representing SCP and LA21 Programmes





Purpose: To contribute to the Mid Term Review of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme representing the Programmes within the evaluation team.


Duties and tasks:



Represent SCP and LA21 Programmes in the Review Team


Participate in a briefing session in Nairobi and contribute to the field visit in Kenya.

Conduct interviews with relevant representatives of SCP/LA21 international partners.

Organise and conduct the field visits of the Review Team in Cuba and Senegal, and give a debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of the national reviews.

Prepare Cuba and Senegal national review reports.


Contribute to the presentation, discussion and finalization of the Mid Term Review report in Nairobi


Expected outputs:

National review reports of Cuba and Senegal;

Contributions to the draft and final Mid Term Review Report (see outline in annex 5).



Desk review 5

Briefing in Nairobi + Review Kenya

6


6

Review Senegal 6

Report writing 5

Debriefing in Nairobi 5

Qualifications:



Annex 5

Terms of Reference

Post title: National Consultant – Evaluator

Geographic scope: […]


Expected start: November 2005

Duration: One and half month over a period of 4 month

Purpose: To contribute to the Mid Term Review of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme by conducting a national self-assessment, organising the field visit of the international team and contributing to the Mid Term review report.


Duties and tasks:

The consultant will work in close cooperation with the SCP/LA21 Core team and its local and national partners under the supervision of the Review Team leader.


Conduct a national self-assessment. This review will be conducted at local and national levels with projects partners. National and local partners will include: relevant ministries, national associations of local authorities, partners support programmes (national or international such as UNDP), national EPM anchoring institutions, local authorities benefiting from projects activities, members of the working groups including the private sector, CSOs and NGO’s and representatives of partner academic institutions. Beneficiaries (when different from project partners) will also be involved in the self-review.

Write the national self-assessment report that will be made available to the international consultants prior to their visit of the country.

Organize the field visit of the international review team: organize the detailed programme of the visit, take appointment with partners and organize logistics.

Facilitate and participate in the field visit of the international review team. The national

consultants will introduce the international consultants to national and local LA21/SCP partners, facilitate their mission and ensure that the programme of the field visit is conducted swiftly and efficiently. At the en of the mission, the national consultant will organize and participate in the debriefing with key national and local partners to present and discuss the key findings of their review.

Provide comments to the national review report.

Provide comments to the draft Mid Term Review Report.


Expected outputs:

National self assessment;

Comments on the national review report and the draft Mid Term Review Report.

Work Plan (Person/Day input)

2005 2006Oct. November December January February

Self assessment 15

Report writing 5

3 op

tions

Review Sri Lanka - Week to be agreed upon

6


6

Review Senegal 6

Comments on report from international consultants

5

Qualifications:

The senior consultant will have at least 20 years of working experience and with academic training and qualification in an appropriate field or fields including urban planning, urban environment, urban sociology with experience of participatory approaches. The senior consultant should be familiar with institutional, legislative and urban environment issues in his/her country but preferably not be directly involved in the LA21/SCP projects The senior consultant will have extensive experience on evaluation exercises. The senior consultant should preferably be fluent in English [in the case of Senegal and Cuba].


Annex 6

Recommended Content List of the Report

Key Element Contents

Executive Summary A synopsis of the report, to include project findings, lessons learned, conclusions and recommendations (4-6 pages).

EVALUATION REPORT1.0 BACKGROUND

Evaluation Background Including funding agency/governments, executing

agency/ies, cooperating agency/ies, project starting date, current phase of the project and scheduled completion of project

Budget of the project at the time of evaluation and the representation of the evaluation team

Description of the Project

Empirical evidence of the problem/issue on the ground

Summary of project development objectives and immediate objectives of the intervention

Expected outputs/results Whether the project is building on results of

previous phases Project linkage to national or sectoral objectives Comment on overall assessment of project design,

including findings, lessons learned and recommendations in this area

Extent to which both genders are involved in planning, implementing, monitoring and assessment of project

Evaluation Methodology The general approach used, main data sources

and instruments used, professional profile (and gender) of evaluation team

UN country office/government/partner support Limitations associated with methodology and

approach including possible delays


2.0 PROJECT RELEVANCEProject Relevance Issues Rationale and context of the project at its inception

Changes in project context during implementation Institutional and partner priorities (relevance of the

project in as far as the UN-HABITAT and collaborating partner(s) objectives are concerned)

Beneficiary concerns (overall assessment of project purpose and relevance in relation to beneficiary concerns and needs)

3.0 EFFICIENCYProject Progress compared to plans

Assessing the reality of the project time frame Determining whether or not project objectives were

overly ambitious Assessment of the execution modality adequacy

Actual costs and resource utilization as compared to budgeted resources

Mention of project budget modifications and any financial delays

Achievement of Results To what extent were outputs achieved? To what extent are immediate and developmental

objectives of the intervention met?Overall Resource Utilization Overall performance of the project (cost-benefit

analysis) Are human and financial resources used to full

advantage?4. EFFECTIVENESSEffectiveness Issues Expected achievement of objectives during project

design Actual or expected achievement of objectives at

time of evaluation Factors and processes affecting achievement of

objectives5. IMPACTImpact of the Project Local priorities, needs and demands at the time of

the evaluation impact (positive/negative, foreseen/unforeseen) on

target groups Impact (positive/negative, foreseen/unforeseen) on

women and men respectively Impact (positive/negative, foreseen/unforeseen) on

UN-HABITAT and collaborating partners6. OWNERSHIP, INTERNALIZATION, SUSTAINABILITYLocal Ownership, Internalization and Potential for Sustainability

Extent to which the overall achievement are likely to be sustained after project completion and after the external funding ceases

Factors affecting or likely to affect sustainability of the project (political, economic, institutional, financial, technological, socio-cultural and environmental factors)


7. LESSONS LEARNED

Operational Lessons What are the major lessons learned related to

project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation?

List of all lessons learned from the evaluation that may be applied to other project phases, other projects and programmes

8. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Conclusions (facts) Comment on project identification and design Summary on project relevance, performance and

success (actual or potential) Summary on major problems previously and

currently faced by the project that is contributing to its setback

Recommendations (future) What needs to be done to improve overall

project performance in the future?

ANNEXES Annex I: Terms of Reference for Evaluation Annex II: Itinerary for the Evaluation Mission Annex III: List of Persons Consulted Annex IV: Literature and Documentation


Annex 2 Main documentation consulted

Major references only4

Alex 2003. Environmentally Sustainable Urbanisation: Developing Environmental Planning and Management Capacities for Poverty Reduction. Meeting Report of the 2003 Global Meeting of the Sustainable Cities Programme and the Localising Agenda 21 Programme, 2004

Anchoring Environmental Planning and Management Capacities in National and Regional Institutions - Strategy and Approach, SCP, UN-HABITAT/UNEP, October 2003

Capacity Building Review of the Sustainable Sri Lanka Cities Programme and proposed Capacity Building Agenda 2004 – 2005, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), April 2004

Coalition for Sustainable Urbanisation, Partnership Commitments for Impleenting Agenda 21, UN-HABITAT, August 2002

Documentation of Experience, SCP Global partners meeting, Havana, June 2005 (two volumes)

Documentation of experiences (city, national, institutions) undertaken for the Havana 2005 global meeting of partners (2 vols).

Documentation of lessons learnt in the Sustainable Sri Lanka Cities Programme: Capacity Building on a Shoestring, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Final Report, May 2005

Environmental Assessment Requirements – a guide for UN-HABITAT supported activities, 2003.

Evaluation of SCP city projects in six African countries, SCP/Danida, 1999 Evaluation of the UN/Habitat Global Campaigns for Secure Tenure and Urban Governance ,

Governing Council UN/HABITAT, March 2005 Implementing the Urban Environment Agenda, EPM Source Book (4 vols), UNCHS/UNEP,

1997 In/Depth evaluation of UN/HABITAT, ECOSOC, April 2005 LA21 Phase-1 evaluation, UN-HABITAT/Belgium (summary and part II “Urban Poverty

Reduction”), 2001 Localizing Agenda 21: Action Planning for Sustainable Urban Development (LA21) -

GLO/95/SO2, Project Document, December 2003 Measuring Progress in Environmental Planning and Management, SCP, UN-HABITAT/UNEP,

2001 Productive and Liveable Cities – Guidelines for Pedestrian and Bicycle Traffic in African

Cities, Marius de Langen and Rustica Tembele, January 2001 Report on Sustainable Cities Programme Induction Workshop for Anchoring Capacity Building

Institutes in Asia, 2004 SCP and LA21 programmes’ progress reports for 2003 and 2004 SCP Dutch support Phase-1 completion report November 2000. SCP Working Paper series. Implementation and Replication of the Sustainable Cities

Programme Process at City and National Level. Case studies from nine cities, Urban Environment/SCP Working Paper No. 2, March 2001

SCP Working Paper series. Implementation and Replication of the Sustainable Cities Programme Process at City and National Level. Case studies from nine cities, Urban Environment/SCP Working Paper No. 2, March 2001

4 Not including informal notes, drafts, outlines, and consultants Terms of References; local and national reports are only included to the extent that they have significance extending beyond the city/country concerned.


SCP Working Paper series. Implementation and Replication of the Sustainable Cities Programme Process at City and National Level. Case studies from nine cities, Urban Environment/SCP Working Paper No. 2, March 2001

Strengthen the EPM Implementation through Demonstration Projects on Basic Urban Services (BUS), Progress Reports years 1 and 2, IRC, 2004 and 2005

Sustainable Cities Programme Phase-2, 2002-2007 Proposal for Funding, UN-HABITAT/UNEP, September 2002

Sustainable Development through Improved Urban Governance: Local Capacities for Global Norms and International Environmental Agreements and Conventions. Urban Environment Forum 2000, 2001

Sustainable Urbanisation – Achieving Agenda 21, UN-HABITAT/DfID, August 2002 The Sustainable Cities Programme in Tanzania 1992-2003: from a city demonstration project

to a national programme for environmentally sustainable urban development (2005) The Sustainable Cities Sri Lanka Programme 1999-2004, SCP Documentation Series, Volume

4, UN-HABITAT/UNEP 2005 UN-HABITAT/UNEP Urban Environment Strategy for Latin America (Spanish), 2003 Urban Trialogues: Localising Agenda 21, 2004
