World Resources 1996-97
(A joint publication by The World Resource Institute, The United
Nations Environment Programme, The United Nations Development
Programme, and the World Bank)
(Edited by Dr. Róbinson Rojas)
1. Cities and the Environment
Box 1.7 Designing Sustainable Solutions for Cities
Hyderabad, India, where I serve as commissioner of the Municipal
Corporation, has had the distinction of being one of the fastest-growing cities in India
during the past decade. The population has increased from 3.2 million in 1985 to 5.2
million in 1995. It is said that in 1591, Muhammed Quli Qutab Shahi, the founder of
Hyderabad, prayed that the city would be filled with a population as numerous as the fish
in the rivers. His wish seems to have come true.
As managers of rapidly growing urban areas, our primary challenge, and
the ultimate challenge, is not to allow events to overtake us but to plan for and manage
growth in order to ensure a sustainable city of tomorrow. When discussing sanitation, we
should be looking not only at conveyances for removing sewage but also at low-cost
technologies for latrines. Or, when focused on questions related to a city's water supply,
we should be linking distribution systems with issues of conservation, recycling, and the
protection of water sources.
Designing sustainable solutions also requires us to look at the spatial
scale of each urban environmental problem. Deciding whether an environmental problem is
limited to specific households or affects the entire city, or whether it is a regional,
national, or even global problem, allows one to define the necessary infrastructure and
services needed to address the problem. An understanding of scale also helps to clarify
which government departments should be involved in providing the solution.
For example, the impacts of inadequate garbage collection are greater
and more immediate at the household and community level. Garbage, then, is one area that
can be addressed at the local level. In Hyderabad, people place their garbage in communal
bins located around the city; these bins are then emptied by the municipality. However,
the city began receiving complaints that garbage was not being removed from the bins
regularly. Garbage was overflowing or being dumped illegally on the streets and in drains.
The bins were constantly being moved, further hindering collection efforts.
Hyderabad decided to involve the community in solving the problem. In
one pilot neighborhood, the city helped residents form an association that would be in
charge of the garbage bins. In addition to picking a permanent location for the bin, the
association appointed one person to go from house to house to collect garbage and deposit
it in the central bins. The city paid this person 5 rupees (US$0.13) per household per
month, and the residents' association matched that amount. This amount is much smaller
than what it would cost for the Corporation to operate its own door-to-door collection
service. Since the success of the initial test neighborhood, 170 neighborhoods have set up
residents' associations to manage garbage removal.
On the other hand, problems such as traffic congestion require more
complex, comprehensive actions. The impacts are many--time delays leading to losses in
productivity, wasted fuel, pollution, and accidents--and transcend the boundaries of the
city. Policy actions would have to be undertaken at a higher level, modifying road
networks and land use patterns, increasing the diversity of transport options, and
increasing the costs of owning and driving a motor vehicle.
However we define our urban environmental problems, whether they are
simple or complex, common to the whole region or confined to one neighborhood, the
challenge is primarily a human one.
--Rachel Chatterjee
Rachel Chatterjee is commissioner of the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation
in Hyderabad, India.
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