ann.laure

Bonjour,
J'aurais besoin qu'un anglophone corrige ce texte ( de façon visible si possible) afin d'en efaacer les fautes et de le rendre plus idiomatique... Merci. Voici le texte ( c'est un commentaire d'un rapport de l'ONU sur le développement urbain en Afrique):


Presentation:


The following reading note concerns a paper entitled Urban Planning and Environment in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is a kind of report written by Jean-Louis Venard with the Caisse française de développement and translated in English by Jacques Jenssen. It takes part to a series of papers devoted to the preparation of a World Bank discussion paper: Toward environmentally Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa – a World Bank Perspective. The chosen paper is the fifth of the series, published in May 1995 by the World Bank in Washington (in co-operation with the Environmentally Sustainable Development Division and the Africa Technical Department).
The reading of the paper and the note taking have been made between the beginning of November and the end of December 2005.

The focus of this paper is urban environment in Sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank questions development in this main part of Africa in order to define the problem to make better both environmental cares and development, taking into account the perception of African Societies for these problems. The series of paper should help the World Bank to integrate environmental dimension into its development strategies and programs.

The type of environmental cares that leads this paper belongs to a discussion inaugurated in Rio 1992 Earth Summit by the UNCED Conference on Building environmentally sustainable development in Africa. The present paper focus on the combination of increase (multiplication and growth) of urban areas with environment: “ It aims at enriching Bank staff’s dialogue with African counterparts about improving the conception and implementation of Bank Environmentally sustainable development programs”.



Summary:


The paper is organised in five points: first, an inventory of the current situation in Sub-Saharan Africa, including demographic projections for 2025, second it gives an environmental perspective of urban planning, third the paper deals with Urban Environment Management, forth it speaks about urban projects major problems in Sub-Saharan Africa, finally the conclusion announces the strategy for the next 30 years (in 2025).

The main point of the first part is urbanisation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, one century ago, cities were near to not really existing in this region and the United Nations projections for 2025 announce near to a half of Sub-Saharan Africans living in cities. It is an important change, having consequences and being consequences of development process. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the poorest regions of the world with southern and south-eastern Asia. This region is beginning a development process with heavy difficulties. According to the paper, one of the main “difficulties” that slows development process is demographic growth (an increase of 74% between 1930 and 1960, of 73% between 1960 and 1980 and of 35% between 1980 and 1990). Demographic growth and development process lead of course to an exponential increase of urban population, even if the relative part of Sub-Saharan African urban population in the entire world still is minor. This increase will be translated into both an increase in the size of existing urban zones and an increase in the number of existing cities. The network is based on three levels: first, conurbations and megalopolises, second, large cities and third small- and medium-size cities. The XXIth century African cities led by new generations in countries where more and more people claim an urban identity will take place instead of the XXth century African cities based on a more or less segregated model inherited from colonial period. Demographic and social changes should be associated with political changing, especially in term of planning regional planning, decentralisation, and local democracy.

That is why the second part of the paper is devoted to Urban Planning in an Environmental Perspective. The first point concerns the necessity to plan urban extension, mainly because of the spatial heritage of colonial period, segregating in the one hand the Official City, centre of modern activities and the Real City in the other hand, where land are often occupied illegally and poses enormous environmental problems. To some extend, the future development of cities should be due to an increase of these zones where very few things are currently done toward development process. The advises of the World Bank Paper is to recognise the role of customary right holders, to appeal to the private sector for urban development operations, to liberalise the real estate market and get better information on its transactions, finally to delegate land management authority to the local communities. The will to “ Limit the State role in Land Management” is a pillar of the World Bank policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently land use management in cities is disputed between different actors and different authorities. The World Bank would like to regulate these land use conflicts, chiefly in order to protect environment and to prohibit settlements in fragile zones. The World Bank sees new urban actors, such as neighbourhood associations and communities, as a major tool for the implementation of urban planning process. Urban planning toward environmental dimension cannot be implemented without taking into account a strategy for economic development. That means a policy of public investments in order to make cities attractive for private investments. The last level of land use organisation is the State that should maintain its role concerning national responsibilities. The World Bank opinion is that “such a redistribution of urban planning and land management roles implies a significant increase of human resources assigned to these tasks and, consequently, the need to train and compensate these personnel.”

Making perspective on urban planning also means managing urban environment as the “brown agenda” defined it in two main items, water cycle management and urban transportation. The first item concerns drainage, access to drinking water, disposal of waste water and domestic excreta, and disposal of solid waste. No one of these four components of water cycle management is really organised in the very most number of Sub-Saharan African cities. Concerning urban transport, many of Sub-Saharan African cities are facing great difficulties because of an ineffective organisation, a lack of co-ordination between different actors. The increasing rate of motorization and the road network congestion involving atmospheric pollution worry Public Health Authorities. World Bank scenario for 2025 is a better management, organisation and network for urban transportation in order to meet the needs of urban dwellers, the capacities of private and public services, and the environment protection (by the reduction of pollution).

After having establish the current situation and the different scenario that meet urban planning and environment, J.L. Venard interests him to the problems that have posed and still poses currently urban development projects. The first urban projects in Sub-Saharan Africa began in the 1970s and until the 1980s those, which mentioned an environmental theme, remained rare. After a decade of reflection and assessment of facts, the World Bank proposed in the beginning of the 1990s a new strategy to face the challenge of urban growth (Paper published in 1992, Urban Policy and Economic Development: An Agenda for the 90s), including a will to “halt the deterioration of urban environment”. This raised two major problems in the World Bank policy: the late preoccupation for environment and difficulties linked to a lack of information what justify that this report is partly based on a scenario for 2025. In that way, the World Bank has some difficulties to implement its new policy. It is based on the finance of decentralised urban management, i.e. on a tendency to disengage the States from the management of urban, land, and environment services and to give responsibilities to local communities. Such a transfer is difficult to install, and the main difficulty is the lack of local investment. The increase of local investment implicates a new manner in local resources management, that is why the World Bank tries to appeal to local enterprises and to multiply the number of private agencies acting directly as project owners.

According to the new policies, the World Bank defined “A Strategy for the Next 30 Years”, which aimed to implement “an adequate urban planning that will care for the environment while achieving sustainable development”. Organising small cities and rural world , developing a network of medium-size cities, intermediate between the rural zones and the large cities, and planning development of large urban zones and megalopolises with environmental cares will structure territories and give coherence to national urban strategies with spatial, social and economic consequences for the States. In order to implement such projects in short- and long-term concerning land, urban, environmental and resources management, the World Bank should invests at local levels and should finance projects ,but in a long-term perspective. Previsions will only be right if local information is right, in that way J.L. Venard suggests that “each large urban zone should have an observation centre endowed with local urban information systems able to assess the urban environment evolution and the productivity of the cities”. The last question of the paper is that of the institutional status of these urban information system, to which the author do not answer.




State of research, conceptual tools and author’s references :


The concept of sustainable development became increasingly important and influent in international conferences and institutions, often integrated in development programs. “Sustainable development” is currently always used as a concept instead of that of “development”, becoming obsolete. One of the best examples of the continuation of sustainable development is the definition given in Johannesburg Summit in 2002:

“(.) The three components of sustainable development — economic development, social development and environmental protection — as interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars. Poverty eradication, changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development are overarching objectives of, and essential requirements for, sustainable development.”

Indeed, sustainable development is a « key concept » for international institutions like the World Bank, recent university researches try to show that this concept also has shortcoming and is instrumentalized to contrary aims of its principles , especially when it is instrumentalized it does not help development.

The concept of sustainable development is one of the focus of this paper, but the author also used others concepts. The geographical concepts are indispensable for such a paper: the first is that of Sub-Saharan Africa ( SSA) which includes West Africa, Horn of Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Indian Ocean Countries and Southern Africa.
Then the author needs demographic concepts : demographic growth linked with demographic transition whose definition is “the pattern of population growth, with slow (or no) growth in pre-industrial societies, followed by fast growth as the society develops and industrialises, followed by slow growth again as it becomes more affluent” ( Wikipedia Encyclopaedia).
Finally, J.L.Venard used urban and management concepts in different ways. He distinguished different kind of cities depending on their size: Conurbations and Megalopolises with more than 5 million inhabitants, Large Cities ( 500 000 to 5 million inhabitants, Medium-size cities ( 50 000 to 500 000 inhabitants) and Small-size cities ( 5000 to 50 000 inhabitants). Among this kind of basic definitions, the author used the two major concepts of Urban Planning and of Environmental Management that are land management tool. More precisely, these two concepts are emblematic of the new way ( in the 1990’s) of approaching development process in the international institutions and NGOs. This approach is centred on decentralisation, authority and competence transfer, emergence of new actors ( such as communities, association) in order to develop new organisation and better management of land use and environment ( in this case concerning urban zones).

The use of this kind of concepts reveals many things about the time when and the place where the author come from. Thus, this report is directly inspired by the principles of 1987 Brundtland Commission and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, focused on the necessity to develop poor countries to preserve environmental resources. This process is based on the concept of sustainable development (whose definition was first done is the 1987 Brundtland Commission):




“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of "needs", in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment's ability to meet present and the future needs.


This reflection was continued in 1992 Rio Earth Summit, where were defined precisely the components of sustainable development. The Earth Summit resulted in the following documents: Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Agenda 21, Convention on Biological Diversity, Forest Principles and Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first Earth Summit on Development is essentially devoted to environment, forgetting human aspects; this is the time of Sustainable Development.

The author also referred to old theories relative to demographic and economic development essentially. Although the whole paper is far from being Malthusian or Neo-malthusian, one feels an implicate reference to it, especially in the demographic analysis. The first reference’s name is of course Thomas Robert Malthus with An Essay on the Principle of Population, in 1798. He predicted that population would outrun food supply, leading to a decrease in food per person. Since the 1980’s, the development thinking knew Neo-Malthusian theories. One can also quote some more contemporary authors who belong to Neo-malthusian school: Paul R. Erlich with The Bomb Population, who predicted in the late 1960s, that hundred millions people would die from a coming over population crisis in the 1970s and the Club of Rome, which wrote a kind of manifesto for which the title is really explicit: Limits of Growth, in 1972.

All these authors essentially states that population growth tends to stay above food production increase, and as such, there is a limit as to how fast a population can progress due to the lack of expansion room and resources. Such a theory is directly linked with the principles of sustainable development, which is focused on the demographic growth, threaten environment and natural resources.

J.L. Venard also used economic references. He could have thing to Walt Whitman Rostow and The Stage of Economic Growth: a Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge University Press , 1960)according to which the process of development follows a way , the same for all countries and should achieve to a same model: high mass consumption society. That is why J.L. Venard insists on what he call a “dramatic change”: the increase of population, although the main preoccupation is development. Thus, if the population continue to grow, if development do not become sustainable and if Sub-Saharan population will achieve a high level of mass consumption just like in the United States or in Europe, the situation will become dramatic for environment and natural resources will miss ( such as fragile ecosystem will disappear…).The author also do implicit references to Rostow theory when he write about “achieving goals for 2025” or “cities have not reach the USA level of development”/ “the developed countries level of urbanisation”.

All these references also leads to implicit references to the Good Gouvernance, according to which financial helps accorded to poor countries only if they accept donors conditions , like environmental conventions and principles derived by sustainable development ( but it also imposes political conditions).

The Author’s thesis and the reader’s opinion:


Sub-Saharan Africa knew “dramatic” growth of its population since the past two decades. This growth is continuing but will slow in the 30 next years. Linked with the development of cities and of cities network since independence’s period, linked with economic change, population growth involved a higher rate of urban population growth. This growth is sensitive at different levels, in the number of cities (large, medium and small) and in urban extension. Those changes pose different problems, namely linked with environment as potable water supply, solid and liquid waste treatment, soil erosion and deforestation. In order to reduce those different problems, the World Bank makes prospects for 2025 and put in the highlight the necessity of political changes based on decentralised and local policies taking into account environment dimension in urban planning. According to this report, the management of environment could make easier the organisation of urban extension and of urban network being linked with rural organisation, agriculture production, etc… So integrating environmental dimension to urban planning and management could help Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve the level of development fixed by the World Bank for 2025.

...la suite et fin ( il ne reste plus qu'un paragraphe de conclusion) est dans un autre message ( car pas assez de place...)