Channel NewsAsia 26 Jun 09;
SINGAPORE: The World Bank is stepping up efforts to create cities that are economical and environmentally-friendly. It's launched its Eco2 City programme, providing a platform to help developing countries achieve sustainability.
By 2030, cities in developing countries are expected to triple their built-up areas.
The World Bank said this presents massive opportunity to plan, design, and create more ecological and economical cities.
According to The World Bank, if the cities in developing countries urbanise and consume resources the way developed countries have in the past, it will take up a footprint of four planet earths to sustain this growth.
And to give cities a push in the right direction, the bank has come up with its Eco2 Cities programme.
Arish Dastur, co-team leader, Eco2 Cities, The World Bank, said: "The Eco2 city programme is a broad platform of analytical and operational support that we'll be providing to our client cities through the countries that we work with.
What this basically entails is the use of an analytical and operational framework which we have developed in the case of these countries, adapting to the particular conditions of each city. And then using a whole range of practical but very powerful methods and tools to devise to devise what we call a Eco2 pathway.”
On average about 75 per cent of global economic production takes place in cities and in developing countries, and The World Bank said this share is now rapidly increasing.
And it's not just about being environmentally friendly.
The World Bank said cities also need to think of the economic long term benefits and cost savings.
Hiroaki Suzuki, co-team leader, Eco2 Cities, The World Bank, said: “I think one example of a global best city is the city of Yokohama, the second largest city of Japan. This city has succeeded in reducing the volume waste by 40 per cent in just seven years. They did not need to construct two incineration plants which would cost them US$1.1 billion.
“In addition, because they are recycling the waste and need not buy oil, they can save US$6 million annually. This is really an economic benefit of the eco2 approach. While they are tackling the key environmental issue, they can still save a lot of money.”
The World Bank said it has already had preliminary discussions with the cities in China, Switzerland (Stockholm), Singapore. And in the Philippines, it will also be speaking to delegations from Vietnam and Indonesia. - CNA/vm
Sustainable Urbanization – Economically and Ecologically - Is Focus of New Program
World Bank 26 Jun 09;
June 26, 2009—It took the world hundreds of years to build today’s urban space of 400,000 square kilometers of cities.
It will take only about another 30 years to build that same amount of urban space in cities of developing countries, according to projections for urbanization in developing countries.
This rapid urbanization may be the “single greatest development challenge and opportunity in our century,” says a report outlining a new World Bank program called Eco² Cities: Ecological Cities as Economic Cities, launched today in Singapore.
The report notes that while urbanization has enabled economic growth, it has also contributed to environmental and socio-economic challenges, including climate change, pollution, congestion, and the rapid growth of slums.
The Eco² Cities Program is, in effect, a call to alter the way cities develop—to avoid the kind of growth that fosters heavy and inefficient use of energy and resources, while helping cities become climate-friendly economic centers. And to do so quickly.
“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to plan, develop, build and manage cities that are simultaneously more ecologically and economically sustainable,” says Katherine Sierra, World Bank Vice President of Sustainable Development.
“The Eco² Cities Program is complementary to the ongoing efforts the World Bank and its development partners are making in sustainable development and climate change.”
Eco² Cities Offers Urban Development Framework
Jim Adams, vice president for the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific region, adds that the pace of urbanization in Asia alone points to the urgency for an integrated economic and ecological approach to city development.
“Eco² is being launched at a critical historic juncture – urbanization in developing countries is a defining feature of the 21st century,” he said. “There is only a short space of time in which to make an impact on how this development takes place.”
The Eco² Cities Program has just completed its first phase—a comprehensive three-part book presenting the overall analytical and operational framework of the program.
The program’s next step is to apply this framework in several cities, and eventually be mainstreamed through national-level urban development strategies.
Representatives from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia will hear about the program first-hand this week at a presentation in Singapore.
Eco² Cities team leader Hiroaki Suzuki and co-team leader Arish Dastur say the program recognizes that successful cities create economic opportunities for their citizens in an inclusive, sustainable, and resource-efficient way, while also protecting and nurturing the local ecology and global public goods, such as the environment, for future generations.
Urban Sustainability Will Pay Compounding Dividends
Cities like Curitiba, Brazil, Stockholm, Sweden, and Yokohama, Japan, have demonstrated that they can greatly enhance their resource efficiency while decreasing harmful pollution and unnecessary waste.
“By doing so, they have improved the quality of life of their citizens, enhanced their economic competitiveness and resilience, strengthened their fiscal capacity, and created an enduring ‘culture’ of sustainability,” says Suzuki.
“What is encouraging is that most of the imaginative and practical solutions used by these cities are affordable and they generate economic returns, including direct and indirect benefits for the poor.”
Adds Dastur: “Sustainable urban planning is in fact an investment in the future of a city’s economy and welfare. An organized approach that consolidates and transfers these lessons to rapidly urbanizing countries can lock in systemic benefits for current and future generations.”
Cities Develop Their Own Eco² Pathway
The Eco² framework is designed to be adapted to local conditions. Each city taking part in the program should use it to develop its own “Eco² pathway” taking into account its own unique set of challenges and constraints, says Suzuki.
The World Bank plans to provide technical assistance through diagnostics studies that look at how efficiently the city is using resources and identify where improvements could be made.
The diagnostics would also look at the city’s infrastructure systems, urban form, policies and regulations for opportunities to realize greater synergies through integration and coordination of these elements, says Dastur.
The Bank’s technical assistance will also promote the use of life cycle costing—a method that looks at total costs, including resource depletion and environmental impact.
“A fundamental ingredient in the process is the political will to truly make a change – a genuine desire by city leadership and stakeholders to invest in the future of the city and the well-being of the citizens,” says Suzuki. “If we start with that, the knowledge exists, the methods exist, and growing support is now in place.”
Ideal City of the Future Offers ‘Concise Lifestyle’
The Eco² program is an integral part of the World Bank’s new urban strategy, scheduled for formal approval in September. The strategy looks at how to help cities harness their economic growth to improve the quality of life of their citizens.
Abha Joshi-Ghani, sector manager for the World Bank’s global urban unit , says that cities, “if managed and planned in a sustainable way, have the potential to offer a high quality of life with the least amount of resource consumption. They are also more enjoyable places to live.”
“It’s the consumption-oriented lifestyle of residents—not cities themselves—that leads to pollution. Compact, well-managed cities reduce the need for car ownership and long commutes, and are potentially much more efficient in delivering services such as water, sanitation and shelter to large numbers of people,” she says.
“The ideal city of the future is economically and ecologically sustainable,” she adds. “It’s a city which is optimizing its growth potential, creating jobs and attracting people, but at the same time offering a good quality of life, good living standards, services such as water, sanitation, sewerage. It’s also a city which is less consumption-oriented, well managed, financially sound, and which is green and ecologically friendly.”
“Really, it’s a city which offers a very compact, concise lifestyle.”
With 90 percent of urban growth in the next three decades expected to take place in developing countries, Suzuki and Dastur argue what’s needed is a “paradigm shift.”
“We’re building, for all intents and purposes, a whole new world at 10 times the speed, in countries with serious capacity constraints. At the same time, we now know what it takes for cities to be more ecologically sustainable, economically dynamic and socially viable. It would be a tremendous loss if we do not act on this opportunity. The stakes are very high.”
Singapore a model of sustainable growth
Business Times 27 Jun 09;
SINGAPORE has been named by the World Bank as one of four cities with best practices in the area of sustainable development. The bank yesterday launched a new urban development programme that aims to help cities in developing countries move towards greater sustainability.
Called Eco2 Cities - Ecological Cities as Economic Cities - the programme recognises that successful cities create economic value and opportunities for their citizens in an inclusive, sustainable and resource efficient way.
'Eco2 is being launched at a critical juncture - urbanisation in developing countries is a defining feature of the 21st century,' said Jim Adams, vice-president for the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region - which has a fair share of the developing countries expected to treble their built-up urban areas by 2030.
Singapore was lauded for its efforts in integrated land use and transport planning, and effective measures to relieve road congestion and water resource management.
The cities of Curitiba, Stockholm and Yokohoma were similarly praised for environmentally conscious practices, and the World Bank aims to model features of the programme after the systems of these places.
Eco2 Cities co-team leader Arish Dastur said the World Bank should realise that 'infrastructure finance alone is not the answer, and should take a cue from countries like Stockholm and Singapore in this new initiative'.
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