Limits to participation - pubs.iied.org.pubs.iied.org › pdfs › G03123.pdf · Limits to participation. The struggle for environmental improvement in Moreno, Argentina 121 In Moreno,

Limits to participationThe struggle for environmental

improvement in Moreno, Argentina

Limits to participationThe struggle for environmental

improvement in Moreno, Argentina

Authors

IIED-ALFlorencia Almansi, Ana Hardoy, Jorgelina Hardoy, Gustavo Pandiella,

Leonardo Tambussi y Gastón Urquiza.

IIED-UKGordon McGranahan y David Satterthwaite.

115

119

125

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139

140 142

143

146

Preface.........................................................................................

I. Introduction.............................................................................

II. Moreno in context ................................................................

II.1. International contextII.2. Argentinean contextII.3. MorenoII.4. Land tenure in Moreno

III. The project’s antecedents and stakeholders......................

III.1. The municipality III.2. Community organisations

IV. The original conception of the Moreno Focus Citiesproject .........................................................................................

IV.1. Terms of the first agreement with the municipality and changes in the organizational chart

IndexBarrio in Moreno

V. The environmental conditions survey and the search for solutions......................................................................................

V.1. The participatory model: methodologies and stages V.2. Diagnosis: integrating information V.3. Participatory planning V.4. Selection of the projectsV.5. Participatory project designsV.6. Execution of pilot projects

VI. Participation and collaboration as a response to problems: conflicts and strategic agreements.........................................................

VI.1. Rhythm and timing VI.2. Adjusting the project documentVI.3. ResearchVI.4. Rivalry between neighbours over projects and selection criteria VI.5. Rejection of government proposal and changes in coordinationVI.6. The environmental education programmeVI.7. Selection of consultants for the final project designsVI.8. The urban solid waste programme VI.9. Barrio Alem VI.10. Adaptation to municipal regulations and development of procedures for executing the projectsVI.11. The bidding process and the supervisory committeeVI.12. Agreements on the use of equipment and sustainability of spaces

VII. Lessons learned: conclusions on the Moreno Focus Cities process ............................................................................................

VIII. General conclusions and recommendations.........................

Bibliography......................................................................................

Acronyms..........................................................................................

List of boxes, maps and figures.......................................................

Photos................................................................................................

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205

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Diagnosis

Planning

Execution

“Making the

invisible visible”

“To choose and

design with the

stakeholders’

participation”

“Concern for the

environment is

concern for

ourselves”

Success depends on the nature of the relation of the communitieswith the local government

The initiative known as Focus Cities, promoted by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) between 2005 and 2010, supported research studies seeking practical solutions to urban environmental issues. The programme’s unusual design offered opportunities for researchers in developing countries to go further than just publishing the results of their surveys or waiting for them to be used by decision-makers. It allowed research results to be validated in practice through concrete actions, such as proposals for policy guidelines or small urban environmental infrastructure projects. From the beginning, this challenge demanded the engagement of a large number of local partners, including communities, municipal technicians and authorities, and public and private companies, among others. The goal of validating research through practical action based on wide social

Preface

Reconquista river - Moreno

participation was the distinctive feature of the Focus Cities initiative in the city of Moreno, Argentina.

Eight projects worldwide were involved in the programme that presented such opportunities and challenges. The project developed by the International Institute for Environment and Development of Latin America (IIED-AL) in Moreno was the first, and this book summarises its outcomes. These pages afford deeper insight into policies that create environmental citizenship, examining the what, who and how of developing these policies. The authors explore the methodological and participatory basis of policy processes, and ways to strengthen them. The book also helps explain the difficulties and mistakes that often occur along the path of promoting social partnerships for building environmental citizenship. IIED-AL’s unique experience on that path evolved gradually, was achieved through hard work with the communities, and was based on the model of participatory action planning presented in this book.

Walter Ubal Giordano IDRC Senior Program Specialist

“Increased the

tecnicians’

confidence in the

process and their

commitment to it”

“We have never

had the chance

to participate in a

space like this;

it is something new,

innovative”

“Realize that we

all have the same

problem”

“Increased the

tecnicians’

confidence in the

process and their

commitment to it”

“We have never

had the chance

to participate in a

space like this;

it is something new,

innovative”

“Realize that we

all have the same

problem”

I. IntroductionThis work examines the joint efforts made by a local government, an NGO and several com-munity organisations over four years to improve, through participatory processes, the environ-mental conditions in the municipality of Moreno, located in the periphery of the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (MRBA)1. The purpose of this publication is to critically analyse the process, highlighting the conflicts faced and the results achieved. Although it is rather unusual to place particular emphasis on conflicts in a work of synthesis related to the implementation of a project, we believe that the lessons learnt in these four years of joint work can offer useful input for developing new initiatives. This work has been written from the perspective of the project staff at the International Institute for Environment and Development of Latin America (IIED-AL), the organisation that coordinated the project, with contributions and feedback from researchers at the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), a research partner in the project.

This analysis is part of the Focus Cities research initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), whose purpose is to alleviate the environmental burdens that exac-

Solid waste acumulation - Cuartel V - Moreno. Walter Santucho

1. MRBAincludesBuenosAiresCityand31othermunicipalities.

Moreno Focus Cities120

erbate poverty in selected African, Asia and Latin American cities, including Moreno; Dakar, Senegal; Kampala, Uganda; Ariana Soukra, Tunisia; Jakarta, Indonesia; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Lima, Peru. The approach of Focus Cities has been to promote research and create long-term collaborations enabling the most deprived groups to find solu-tions to the environmental problems they prioritise. All the Focus Cities projects have also sought to generate sustained action research capable of making a significant difference for many residents.

Urban environment means different things to different people. For some, it suggests environ-mental sustainability issues and the fear that urbanisation and consumption patterns could be impairing global environment for future generations. For others, it evokes environmental health issues and the fear that urban environmental hazards might constitute threats to the life and welfare of current residents. In practice, all cities are faced with a complex combina-tion of environmental burdens, both at local and global levels and in the short and long term, directly affecting people’s health or livelihoods. Speaking more broadly, however, as cities grow richer their environmental burdens affect larger areas, have longer-term effects and af-fect people more indirectly, often by undermining their livelihoods and support systems rather than affecting their health directly.

As the municipality of Moreno is poor compared to the rest of the municipalities in the MRBA, many of Moreno’s serious environmental problems affect households directly — and they are far more severe in the most deprived neighbourhoods. Residents face difficul-ties in securing access to drinking water and sanitation, waste is not picked up on a regular basis, the rain runoff and sewage system is inadequate, and some areas are frequently af-fected by floods.

These burdens affect public health as well as the population’s overall wellbeing. People acting individually cannot be expected to respond effectively, but neither can the local government, acting by itself. Providing conventional environmental services such as water and waste removal to all residents would be costly, and besides, the relationships between government and residents are complicated because many residents are not landowners, which means that they informally occupy private or public lands. As in many deprived urban areas, an important part of addressing the environmental challenges is to build better relationships between residents and the government, and to seek new ways they can work together to face local problems.

121Limits to participation. The struggle for environmental improvement in Moreno, Argentina

In Moreno, the Focus Cities initiative had its antecedent in a water project funded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which involved many of the same partners, includ-ing IIED-AL, the municipal government and several community organisations. This water project, which started in 2002 and finished in 2006, also used a collaborative methodology; but as it sought to improve water supply management and had no financial support to imple-ment any other kind of work, its environmental scope was more restricted than that of the Focus Cities project. At the same time, one goal of the Focus Cities project in Moreno was based on a proposal that came out of the former water project. A municipal office proposed the creation of an institutional platform sponsored by the city government where various players could form collaborations to improve environmental conditions in Moreno. Partly because of this goal, the Focus Cities project in Moreno had a wider geographical basis than the initia-tives in the other seven focus cities, working across the whole municipality and not just in one neighbourhood.

Focus Cities in Moreno was organised around two approaches — action and research — to develop, within four years, a process aimed at the institutionalisation of a space for multi-stakeholder participation and decision-making to contribute to environmental management. The action plan, undertaken through a variety of participatory processes, led to pilot projects in several areas of Moreno; the research focused on three lines of inquiry that supported the action processes: the institutionalisation of multi-stakeholder spaces, the resulting conflicts over environmental issues, and the relationship between land tenure conditions and environ-mental issues. The following chapters outline and examine the strengths and weaknesses of the collaborative actions carried out during the project. Chapter II places the Moreno project in its international, national and local context. Internationally, the analysis focuses on the urban environmental programmes on which Focus Cities in Moreno is based. At the national level, we examine the political context, particularly two relevant features of the Argentine political model: a predominance of ‘delegative’ democracy over ‘participatory’ democracy, and a ‘gray zone of state power’ wherein political leaders extend their influence informally into many urban low-income communities. This is followed by a description of the environmental burdens af-fecting the city of Moreno.

Chapters III and IV review the project’s antecedent and its original conception. As indicated above, IIED-AL, the municipal government and community organisations had already been

working together in a water project funded by the UNDP, and to a certain extent Focus Cit-ies was an extension of this collaboration. To shed light on the development of the project, these chapters not only summarise the initiative as proposed to the IDRC, but also examine how the different partners contributed to the design, as this affected its subsequent imple-mentation.

Chapter V describes the implementation of Focus Cities in Moreno, starting with the partici-patory processes used to identify environmental issues and alternatives, and moving through planning and work on pilot projects. Various participatory methods were introduced over the course of the initiative — for example, stakeholders set priorities consensually based on a combination of mapping by community representatives and maps created by the different government departments. Despite some delays and disagreements, six pilot projects were developed and implemented, and today Moreno has greater capacity for collaborative envi-ronmental management. In retrospect, some of the obstacles could have been avoided, but this forms part of the learning process. Therefore, we consider both the project’s achievements and the aspects that could have been improved, drawing lessons about the difficulties faced in this work and how to overcome them.

Chapter VI critically analyses the project, highlighting delays and conflicts as well as their origins and consequences. Some were caused by lack of initial consensus regarding both the project’s content and the responsibilities of each partner. Others arose from differing views about collaborative action, particularly in relation to the extent of community participation. The municipality was used to processes in which they have control delegated by the Argen-tinean electoral democracy. They feared that community participation might become a means for the community to put pressure on the local government and might give rise to unrealistic demands. They preferred community participants with whom they already had informal re-lationships, and who were used to managing public demands. On the other hand, IIED-AL wanted community representatives to be chosen by their neighbours, on the basis of their interest in the environmental issues, and not because of their role as political brokers in the community.

Chapters VII and VIII conclude with an optimistic viewpoint, reviewing the difficulties we uncovered, but also the results the project achieved. A series of environmental improvements were introduced, all of them involving the active collaboration of community organisations, the local government and IIED-AL. Making this collaboration possible was a difficult task,

Ciudades Focales Moreno122


and the partners went through various stages of consensus and dissent. Ultimately, we believe that relations were improved between the government, the most deprived communities and the numerous community organisations operating in the barrios. The Focus Cities Moreno project made significant progress on this front and developed a better understanding of the barriers and opportunities along the way.

II. Moreno in contextII.1. International context

As part of the action plan agreed upon at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio, each local authority was to be encouraged to ‘enter a dialogue with its citizens, local organisations and private enterprises and adopt a local Agenda 21’2.

Over the next decade a range of international programmes and networks were created to sup-port urban initiatives for sustainable development, going by such names as Local Agenda 21, the Sustainable Cities Programme, Localizing Agenda 21 and many more. Two features, already explicit in Agenda 21, were common to almost all of these initiatives: environmental issues were treated as an integral part of development, and efforts were made to engage a wide range of stakeholders in the planning process, including the most deprived groups.

Most of these programmes have faded out in recent years. This is in part because climate change has risen to the top of the international environment agenda and has diverted attention and resources from more integrated environmental initiatives. Also, at the local level many of

Moreno’s centre

2. Agenda21(RiodeJaneiro,1992;A/CONF.151/26Vol.III),Ch.28,‘LocalAuthorities’InitiativesinSupportofAgenda21’.


the internationally supported urban environment programmes were always at the periphery of urban governance. They could not be sustained over the long term. On a more optimistic note, in many cities environmental issues are now taken more seriously and public participation is a more accepted part of governance. There is therefore less need for international attention.

An emphasis on engaging with stakeholders, common to most of these international pro-grammes, was intended to correct a tendency for government bureaucracies to be distant from their citizens and for plans to be drawn up without public consultation or control. For advo-cates of ‘dialogic’ democracy,3 a better dialogue between government and citizens is meant to overcome the limitations of ‘electoral’ democracy, where at least in principle the main influ-ence citizens have over the state lies in the selection of politicians through popular vote. Many urban environmental issues are local in character and do not become electoral issues, making them particularly appropriate for public and stakeholder engagement.

Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and pro-moting development.4 Our work is based on the assumption that participation contributes to governance, where ‘participation is conceived as a civic right and must be active, free and significant. Compared to community participation, civic participation creates a relationship between citizens and State in which both of them are obliged to reduce the distance between them through dialogue processes and agency creation’5. As described below, the Focus Cities project undertaken in Moreno, Argentina, set out to reduce the distance between community organisations and local government in much the way advocated internationally — through stakeholder meetings, participatory research and various other forms of collaboration. Over the course of the project, however, it became clear that the principal challenge was not to cre-ate a relationship between local government and the residents of deprived neighbourhoods, but to change the nature of that relationship. This challenge is heightened by the fact that the close relationship between government and residents in Moreno is not formal and openly ne-gotiable, but is part of an informal brokering of government programmes and projects that is pervasive in Argentina, particularly under the current government.

3. E.TafoyaLedesma,‘DemocraciaDialógica:Elprincipiodialógicocomocríticadelademocracialiberalcontemporánea’,paperpresentedatXXColoquioNacionalSobreEnseñanzadelaFilosofía,Zacatecas,Mexico,21–23Aug.2008.

4. KofiAnnan,quotedinGlobalDevelopmentNetworkwebpagefortheprojectVarietiesofGovernance:EffectivePublicServiceDelivery,http://cloud1.gdnet.org/cms.php?id=grp_details&grp_id=3.

5. S.Mahmud,‘CitizenParticipationintheHealthSectorinRuralBangladesh:PerceptionsandReality’,IDSBulletin35(2004),11–18.QuotedinW.FloresandA.L.Ruano,‘AtenciónPrimariaenlaSaludyParticipaciónSocial’,inAnaHardoy(ed.)SaludParaTodos:UnaMetaPosible(BuenosAires,2009).


6. O’Donnell,G.‘LaDemocraciaDelegativa’,LaNación,28May2009.7. Cabannes,Y.‘ParticipatoryBudgeting:ASignificantContributiontoParticipatoryDemocracy’,EnvironmentandUrbanization,16(2004),27–46.8. Auyero,J.PoorPeople’sPolitics:PeronistSurvivalNetworksandtheLegacyofEvita(Durham,NC:DukeUniversityPress,2000).9. Auyero,J.RoutinePoliticsandViolenceinArgentina:TheGrayZoneofStatePower(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2007).

II.2. Argentinean context

Fifteen years ago, Guillermo O’Donnell6 observed that in Latin America a new type of de-mocracy was emerging, and he called it ‘delegative’ to differentiate it from the ‘representa-tive’ type. Delegative democracy is democracy because it comes out of reasonably free and competitive elections, and because it maintains certain freedoms such as freedom of speech, association and assembly, and free, uncensored access to the means of communication. It is delegative because those who have been elected think they have the right to decide what is good for the country without taking into account people’s opinions (i.e., they are not repre-senting or even aspiring to represent the views of those who elected them). Argentina’s de-mocracy tends to be delegative in this sense.

Local authorities in Argentina, like those elsewhere, create comparatively few formal spac-es for policy dialogue where poor communities can directly influence how funds are spent. Perhaps the best-known procedure for such engagement is participatory budgeting, which originated in Brazil but has also been implemented in Rosario and other municipalities in Ar-gentina7. Under participatory budgeting, a share of the municipal budget is put up for public negotiation between municipal government, social movements and the citizenry, which takes place at scheduled meetings. Despite its international popularity and renown, however, par-ticipatory budgeting is still used only in a small minority of municipalities.

Although formal, rights-based negotiations between local government and urban poor groups are very limited, informal relationships and hidden negotiations are pervasive and important to the way local government operates. In Argentina there is a long history of ‘clientalism’ in politics, which under Peronism has extended to include important networks of punteros, or political brokers, living and operating in low-income settlements. Though they provide a form of communication, these networks can make it difficult to set up the sort of fora advocated internationally as the means to create more inclusive dialogue and more participatory and democratic decision-making procedures.

According to Javier Auyero8,9, who has studied this ‘gray zone of state power’ in some detail, the political brokers ‘direct flows of goods, information and services from their political pa-


trons to their clients and flows of political support (in the form of attendance at rallies, partici-pation in party activities, and sometimes votes) from their clients to their patrons’.

For the poor and unemployed, these brokers are also neighbours, socially and spatially. They address everyday problems, in large part by securing access to public services that are in sufficiently scarce supply that not all eligible claimants can receive them: food from soup kitchens, subsidies from unemployment programmes, places in the hospital and so on. At times this assistance involves corruption, or something close to it. At others it simply involves giving advice. These political brokers may be admired, resented or both, but they benefit their ‘clients’ in a wide range of ways.

For the politicians, the brokers are a source of visible political support and information. The extent to which these brokers actually determine whether and how people vote is open to question. If attendance at rallies is any indication, they help with this. There is little evidence of coercion, however, and no guarantee that those who attend the rallies will vote correspond-ingly. As Auyero notes, ‘What is undeniable is that the very workings of the networks help the Peronist Party to solve important organisational problems: funding the party’s operational costs, maintaining the party in an active state between elections, providing crucial personnel during primaries and general elections, and so on’10. They also assist in governing some of the more politically volatile segments of the urban population, allocating public resources and managing their demands.

It is not uncommon for a state or a political party to engage informally with low-income com-munities and their organisations, and for this to become an integral part of their governance strategy. However, this sort of political brokerage is especially evident, and has taken on a particular form, in Argentina. Describing the Focus Cities process in Moreno, Silvia Álvarez, a trainer of organisations in the project, said, ‘There was a bit of everything: organisation on the one side and political activism on the other. The long history of these organisations and their political activism makes people lose trust’11.

The municipalities of the peri-urban area around Buenos Aires are administered by strong governments and have a wide territorial presence. Since 2001, local governments have played a leading role in handling a political and institutional crisis in Argentina; at one point the

10.Ibid.p.6311.InterviewwithMichelLichtenstein,theproducerofthefilmCiudadesFocalesMoreno.


country had five presidents within a few months. This experience has strengthened local influ-ence in political decisions.

Moreno, like most municipalities, is heavily dependent on national and provincial funding for implementation of a wide range of programmes and projects. In recent decades (mainly during the 1990s) Argentina has experienced a decentralisation of responsibilities without a matching decentralisation of revenue-raising capacities, leading municipalities to become more depend-ent on centralised resources from both the national and the provincial governments.

II.3. Moreno

Moreno is located in the MRBA. This region constitutes the biggest urban agglomeration in Argentina, concentrating around 13 million inhabitants — one third of the country’s popula-tion — over an urbanised area of 2,450 square kilometres. Of these, 3 million live in Buenos Aires City and the other 10 million belong to Buenos Aires Province.

This metropolitan territory is the main productive centre of the country, and concentrates around 52 per cent of Argentina’s gross domestic product. Moreover, the MRBA represents 38 per cent of the national electoral roll and accounts for 40 per cent of the votes, because voter turnout is higher than in other districts. Almost one out of four votes nationally are cast by residents of peri-urban Buenos Aires. Therefore, the politics of peri-urban Buenos Aires have a decisive influence when it comes to electing the president of the country as well as the governor of Buenos Aires Province.

Flooded street - Barrio Parque Paso del Rey - Moreno. Sandra Baez


The city of Moreno is situated in the west part of the MRBA, 37 kilometres from Buenos Aires City. It is divided into six localities, with approximately 156 barrios and 380,530 inhab-itants. The head locality is Moreno City, founded in 1860 by Don Amancio Alcorta in lands that were part of his farm, Paso del Rey.

The municipality is one of the poorest in the region: according to the 2001 census, 26 per cent of the population have basic needs unsatisfied, compared to 16 per cent in the MRBA as a whole, and approximately 47 per cent depend on government social plans12.

Moreno covers over 186 square kilometres. Its population grew between the 1940s and the 1980s due to the migration of rural people attracted by industrial development. The municipal government was overwhelmed by this increase and was unable to administer land use so as to attend to housing needs. Unregulated settlements were established that lacked infrastructure.

12.A.Hardoyetal.,‘Gobernabilidadparaserviciosdeaguaysaneamientoenasentamientosdebajosingresos:experienciasdegestiónasociadaenMoreno,BuenosAires’,MedioAmbienteyUrbanización,17(2005),183–199.

Map Nº 1 Moreno in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires


Moreno still attracts immigrants: its population rose 41 per cent between 1980 and 1991, and around 32 per cent between 1991 and 2001. This is far beyond the average in Greater Buenos Aires.

Different types of urbanisation coexist within Moreno: high- to middle-income areas, middle- to low-income areas, private neighbourhoods, informal settlements, and settlements built with the support of housing plans developed by the national or provincial government or by NGOs. Reacting to the economic crisis that has overwhelmed Argentina in the last 20 years with high unemployment and decreasing incomes, the national government is creating jobs by support-ing housing and infrastructural programmes. Ten thousand new units are in the planning or construction stage in Moreno, financed by various housing and infrastructural plans coming from the provincial or national government.

Moreno has low coverage of drinking water and sanitation services. Only 40 per cent of Moreno’s population is connected to the water network; 33 per cent obtain water from the company that holds the concession to supply the municipality (ABSA). and 7 per cent are supplied by 21 independent systems, very heterogeneous in terms of the number of individuals that they supply and their income levels. Only 16 per cent are connected to the sewage network. Accordingly, the great majority of Moreno’s inhab-itants have to solve their water and sanitation problems by using alternative systems, many of which are inappropriate. A survey done by IIED-AL in 2002 within the frame-work of the ARG02G58 project in the Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Environ-ment of the UN Development Programme (UNDP-PPPUE), with the municipality’s collaboration, showed that most of Moreno’s population obtain water from unprotected wells that reach only to the first aquifer, providing very contaminated water that is not safe to drink. To eliminate sewage, they use cesspits without septic tanks that fre-quently overflow because their emptying is expensive. Frequently, sewage water from houses is emptied into open trenches.

Solid waste is collected by a hired company called El Trébol. Flooding problems occur when it rains, because the collection trucks do not pick up waste on unpaved streets, which are the majority in Moreno (see environmental risk map). Floods cause overflow of the baskets into which households place their waste, and often people simply empty the baskets into a nearby open space. This solid waste often ends up obstructing the sewage and drain-age networks.


Moreno has severe hydrological problems and a high water table. One of the municipal boundaries is the Reconquista River, which is highly contaminated and has a long history of overflowing. Some structural measures taken at a national level have reduced the flood risk, but Moreno is crossed by several watersheds and contains densely populated areas with in-filtration problems on the boundaries between these watersheds. Several large-scale projects have been designed but not yet implemented due to the lack of financial resources. The mu-nicipality regularly cleans streams and channels of debris, but they get clogged even more regularly by material washed off the many open spaces and by piles of garbage that accumu-late on marginal land. Only about 30 per cent of Moreno’s streets are paved, and even these are often in poor condition. Many have no drainage or are paved in such a way that a drainage channel (known locally as a cordon cuneta) runs alongside the kerb until it reaches the mouth of an underground drain that channels the water to a local stream or river.

Within Moreno, agriculture is practiced mainly in rural areas, although cultivators can reside in the city. Apart from horticulture, farm animals are raised, including birds. A municipal institute (the Local Economic Development Municipal Institute, or IMDEL) offers technical assistance and promotes working networks between producers. In general, however, agricul-ture remains a peripheral concern for the local government and a minor part of the livelihood strategies of Moreno’s urban populations, including the poor.

Cuartel V - Moreno. Walter Santucho


II.4. Land tenure in Moreno

The Focus Cities initiative asked all eight cities to consider the issue of land tenure. In Moreno as in the other cities, land tenure and land use are connected with environmental problems, and we gave special attention to their relationship.

Since 1988, Moreno’s government has had a strong commitment to urban planning and to the resolution of land tenure problems where ownership and building rights have not been fully resolved. The government has implemented a programme through which it acquires vacant land and distributes it for common use and special needs. This unoccupied land is mostly pri-vate, the result of several subdivisions created during the 1950s and 1960s without any kind of infrastructure. Public land, national and provincial, is also provided by the government for housing projects. The government facilitates the regularisation of tenure in settlements. During the 1990s, concerns about unemployment and poverty formed the axis of an inte-grated system of urban improvement. A decentralised institute, the Urban, Environmental and Regional Development Institute (IDUAR), was created in Moreno municipality to improve environmental, urban and regional management.

Urban, Environmental and Regional Development Institute office


One of the main goals of IDUAR was to design and implement an Urban Environmental Plan that included redistribution of urban land and the recovery of unoccupied land. This was accomplished by two programmes: (1) distributing unused land acquired by donation, agree-ments with land owners, handover of properties by owners who had debts with local govern-ments, and repurposing of vacant or abandoned land; and (2) tenure regularisation, with titles transferred to poor families by various legal instruments. The government’s urban planning strategy stands out in its ambition compared to other plans in the region.

Formally, land in peri-urban areas such as Moreno is administered through the conventional legal systems characteristic of urban areas (e.g., registered title deeds). There are problems with this system, however, as large areas of land are not used by their original owners. In practice, lower-income residents gain access to land through various other strategies of occu-pancy and the validation of this occupancy, which may or may not end in legal formalisation. Most land transactions originate informally. Some achieve formality after lengthy adminis-trative procedures and negotiations. In other cases, formal ownership and legalisation are not achieved, and formal and informal systems coexist side by side. As the pressure on land grows, however, conflicts almost inevitably arise between those operating in the formal land market and those living in informal settlements. The different forms that access and legalisa-tion of tenure take, in both informal and formal systems, are important in how the conflicts play out.

Throughout the areas we analysed in Moreno, there are two main sorts of informal tenure, each associated with a different modality of social, legal and political relations. The first in-volves sparsely distributed plots that are in formal subdivisions but where there are no titles for the residences. These are known as loteo popular. The second is on private or public land with some sort of restriction on residential use. They may be below the permitted elevation, on stream banks or other sites where construction is restricted, or in sites intended for as-yet-unrealised purposes such as schools, medical centres, sports grounds or expansion of road networks.

The first modality includes a large share of dispersed plots where legal tenure has never been formalised. These plots reflect decades of creating parcels and subdivisions, which occupants usually have bought in instalments without ever receiving titles. Since the 1990s, these plots have been included in the land tenure regularisation system under national law no. 24.374, which provides for land tenancy to be registered and inscribed, giving ownership rights to


those who occupy a plot and can prove that their possession extends back to at least 1988.13 Not all plots can fulfil these criteria, not only because some were occupied after 1988, but also because of a lack of documentation of residency, or complications and conflicts involving, for example, the death of the original occupants. As a result, a high percentage of these plots in Moreno face conflicts over tenure.

In most places where titles have not been conferred, there has been an urban expansion with an infrastructural deficit. As neighbourhoods begin to grow in population density, residents start providing the missing infrastructure for themselves, either independently or in collabora-tion with local organisations. These individuals or community organisations and eventually the municipality are the key actors executing improvements in these settlements.

The other modality, in which people achieve informal tenure by occupying and creating set-tlements on restricted private or public land, gives rise to somewhat different challenges. There are 44 settlements of this type identified by IDUAR, representing about 28 per cent of Moreno’s neighbourhoods. These settlements are clusters of more than 50 households living in precarious houses in an area over one hectare. They typically are intensely vulnerable to environmental hazards on account of the lack of infrastructure and other locational deficien-

13.Law24.374hasrecentlybeenupdated.Thenewamendmentwasapprovedon12March2009fortheinscriptionofparcelingpriortoMarch2009.Thismakesitpossibleforthosewhohaveoccupiedthelandfromafter1988untilnowtoaccesstitles.

Informal settlement - Moreno

The Marilo neighbourhood is situated in the locality of Trujui, which concentrates 25 per cent of the population of Moreno. 75 per cent of Trujui is affected by various environmental problems, of which the community has identified the following: poor services, accumulation of waste, floods, presence of rats and scorpions, contaminated streams and ditches, high-voltage networks, transformers, brick ovens, excavation and earth-extraction operatio-ns, unpaved roads, lack of public lighting and sidewalks, broken sidewalks, and presence of industries.Marilo residents’ testimony regarding tenure conditions shows that their interpretation of land tenure differs from the formal definition. The recognition of occupants as ‘landowners’ does not depend on the legal status of tenure, but on their engagement in improving the environment through infrastructure, other social actions and neighbourhood organisations. Residents are aware of the formal legal categories of land tenure, but their vision does not match those categories. Some of their statements:

‘Here you will find people who have received titles for their occupation and other people who didn’t. Lately, it's not about the paper. The ‘place’ is a question of inhabiting/living. If I’m satisfied with it, I’ll take care of it; if I build, no one will evict me. If I'm sure of where I’m standing, I will join the rest.’ (Silvina, Marilo occupant).

‘The Marilo settlement was not based on the formal transfer of property by means of a title deed. Instead, the community organisations and institutions promoting projects … struggled for neighbourhood improvements [not for titles].’ (Silvina, Marilo occupant).

‘With the purpose of bringing Marilo families together, a neighbours’ commission was created to attain greater negotiation power. This commission managed to bring electricity into the neighbourhood. The struggle was always undertaken by those who are landowners and those who are not.’ (Landowner and former Marilo occupant).

‘There is a collective understanding as to where one is standing.’ (Juan, occupant of a Paraguayan settlement in Marilo).

‘Suddenly, creating a settlement is normal for anyone around here. News spreads that there is available land, a leader comes around, and they [both aliens and residents’ relations] arrive in a pick-up truck with everything ready.’ (Silvina, Marilo occupant).

Box_1 Case study: differing concepts of land tenure in Marilo

Ciudades Focales Moreno136

Informal subdivisions “Loteo Popular” Barrio Mariló, Trujui - Moreno

cies. The occupied plots are sometimes a product of parcelling that took place during the 1970s, but were abandoned by their original owners because of the restrictions preventing their residential use. In general they are located on stream banks or low-lying land. Families with financial difficulties who cannot access land through formal land markets occupy these abandoned areas, but they are even less secure than those using the first modality and could be expected to suffer from a more vulnerable and hazardous environment. Moreover, with the first type of informal settlement, residents and communities may feel that they can improve the likelihood that they will receive titles if they make environmental investments. The same does not hold with this second type of informal settlement.

137Los Límites de la Participación. La Lucha por el Mejoramiento Ambiental en Moreno

III. The project’s antecedents and stakeholders In March 2006, at the onset of the Focus Cities project, IIED-AL had already long worked with the Moreno municipality in national poverty-alleviation programmes. When we wrote the proposal from IIED to IDRC, we felt, based on our previous experience in Moreno, that conditions were ideal to develop the project. But those conditions at the start of the work were different from the ones we faced later in the process. And the principles guiding government action — at the national, provincial and municipal levels — also changed, especially after the global economic crisis of 2008.

Looking back, the principle that has guided our own contribution has been that of seeking out better forms of collaboration between the key stakeholders and the communities who are meant to benefit from the projects. We have worked with different stakeholders (with various degrees of success), including community representatives but also different areas of local government, private utilities, and others. IIED-AL strongly believes that necessary long-term changes are possible and sustainable when different stakeholders work together.

IIED-AL has always been committed to identifying solutions and implementing projects with the collaboration of key stakeholders: civil society, local government and the private sector. In

Interzonal commitee meeting with municipal technicians


all IIED-AL’s interventions, special attention has been paid to achieving balanced participa-tion that guarantees the presence and representation of diverse voices.

In the years before Focus Cities, IIED developed a collaborative approach to improving en-vironmental conditions at barrio scale for the San Jorge and Hardoy barrios in the city of San Fernando in Buenos Aires Province. That is still running and has been appropriated by the communities.14 Later, in Moreno City, a municipal-scale approach financed by UNDP focused on improving local water management. This water project involved several governmental de-partments, the private company in charge of water and sanitation supplies, community organi-sations and academic institutions, with the objective of developing an associated management model to improve the water supply. To better coordinate stakeholders’ efforts, the participants sought to create a local water agency.

Officials of Moreno municipality were part of the working team, and representatives of the bar-rios contributed their opinions and knowledge to the process through workshops and meetings.

III.1. The municipality

In a recent editorial, David Satterthwaite asked, ‘What creates and sustains good governance in any city for those city dwellers with inadequate or limited incomes?15 Four of the ele-ments that he considers fundamental are significant for Moreno: (1) a democratically elected government, (2) a government with the power and resources to act, (3) formal or informal mechanisms that enable society to influence the government’s actions, and (4) organised ur-ban groups capable of interacting with local authorities.

Regarding the first factor (democratically elected government), the members of some Moreno government teams have remained in place for more than four consecutive electoral periods. Moreover, some of Moreno’s leading politicians have occupied important positions in the provincial government and have been elected members of the provincial and national legislature.

14.Hardoy,A.Schusterman,R.Almansi,F.Monti,C.andUrquiza,G.PovertyReductioninAction:ParticipatoryplanninginSanFernando,BuenosAires,Argentina(PovertyReductioninUrbanAreasseries),London:IIED,2002;FlorenciaAlmansi,RicardoSchustermanandGastónUrquiza,‘Aportesparaelmejoramientobarrial’,MedioAmbienteyUrbanización,18(2002),13–30;RicardoSchusterman,FlorenciaAlmansi,GordonMcGranahan,IrisOliverio,RuthRozenszteinandGastónUrquiza,‘Provisióndeaguaysaneamiento:laexperienciadecuatrobarriosinformalesenBuenosAires’,MedioAmbienteyUrbanización,18(2002),63–92.

15.Satterthwaite,D.‘Whatroleformayorsingoodcitygovernance?’EnvironmentandUrbanization,21(2009),3–17.


Of the resources that enable the local government to confront problems such as a high percentage of residents under the poverty line, most funds come from national and provincial programmes; Moreno relies on a municipal tax only for street sweeping and cleaning.

When Argentina’s national constitution was reformed in 1994, many tools were introduced to make civic participation more viable — among them, participatory budgeting, access to information and public meetings. However, Moreno has not adopted any of these ap-proaches.

This project sought to improve the supply of water and sanitation services in the municipality of Moreno. It was executed in two stages from 2002 to 2006.

The major result achieved during the first stage of the project in 2002–2004, called ‘Training for the construction of public-private-community alliances for the water and sanitation service supply in informal barrios’, was an alliance between the private company responsible for water supply, the local government and the various communities of Moreno. A system was created for working in collaboration, and these stakeholders carried out a participatory evaluation of the water supply and sanitation services in the municipality.

The objective of the second stage (2004–2006) was to develop strategies for extending access to water and sanitation services to everyone in Moreno. Participants agreed on the benefits and potential of the alliance formed in the previous stage and proposed to work toward the design and institutionalisation of a local water authority. The project was made part of a wider plan for local development, which considers water and sanitation services key elements for improving neighbourhoods and low-income settlements.

Box_2 Institutionalisation of a local water authority in Moreno

Water-tank truck in a barrio with independent water system


III.2. Community organisations

Moreno has a long history of community organisations working with NGOs to provide and improve services, and these alliances have gradually been involving themselves in other as-pects of the barrios’ development. Many of the leaders of these organisations are political brokers and hold jobs in schools or health care centres that are coordinated and paid by the local government. These people, with their political histories and organisation experience, are the first to get involved in community work. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the politi-cal brokers, or punteros politicos, are organised vertically and efficiently.

When an emergency arises, a member of a poor community has limited options. Residents who want to complain of problems use the local political networks. There are few independ-ent networks of power and influence, mainly because the political system generally co-opts local leaders in order to get things done. The distance between the national and provincial government and the people is huge, but the distance to the local government can be bridged, even by those living in the informal barrios. Moreover, the local system lets them make their demands informally, using familiar means of communication, negotiation and persuasion, rather than forcing them to deal with complex bureaucratic processes. The path may be rough, but people know how to make themselves heard through this political brokerage — in many situations, it is the only way they know. In the literature on local development, there is a lot said about social networks and social resources, but little is said about the political character of some of these networks and resources, or about how social and political capital can com-bine in effective but sometimes problematic ways.

The system of political brokerage is also made more attractive by the deficiencies in the for-mal system of government. People’s belief in formal officialdom is worn down by promised programmes and solutions that are never delivered. They observe, on the other hand, that the informal routes do deliver, if not always in the ways that they should.

This confidence in the mechanisms implemented by community political leaders, and the scep-ticism about the formal means of political management, have consequences when it comes to introducing wider participatory processes for defining local project proposals and priorities.

Meeting with municipal technicians

IV. The original conception of the Moreno Focus Cities project We initiated the Focus Cities participatory management project with the aim of reducing the environmental burdens affecting residents of Moreno and other similar municipalities — problems that have more severe impacts on deprived groups, aggravating their poverty. The project’s objectives emerged from the shared vision and interests of a number of organi-sations. These groups created a partnership, agreeing to work together throughout the imple-mentation of the project and, in future, to be responsible for continuing to act on the problems identified.

The project, in its original conception, proposed a number of activities and tasks:

1. Diagnose critical risks and priorities for improvement. The activity planned in this stage was mapping of critical risks by residents, including, for example, local conditions such as ac-cess to water and sanitation, accumulation of solid waste, flood risk areas, and concentration of health problems related to environmental conditions. This tool was refined and expanded with the aim of enabling the municipal government (specifically a proposed Sustainable De-velopment Unit) to continuously update information, and enabling local constituents to en-


gage in the diagnostic process. Particular attention was paid to risks and priorities of poor and vulnerable groups.

2. Hold workshops for different groups working in the community. In Moreno, there is a long history of engagement between the local government and community groups: at the macro level, these groups are involved in analysing problems and solutions for the municipal-ity as a whole, and at the micro level, they help to address the particular needs of the barrios. Building on this, our workshops were to be tailored to the two different scales, macro and micro, and to the roles of local institutions, including municipal government departments, community organisations and schools, among others. Workshops would be focused, for ex-ample, on the capacity of schools to foster environmental awareness and enable local people to assess conditions and implement small projects, and on the capacity of community-based environmental committees to liaise with local government and support partnerships for water, sanitation, solid waste disposal and flood protection.

3. Undertake projects in three barrios. IIED-AL considered that restricting work to one neighbourhood might mean upsetting local partners and working relationships, and would counter the spirit of past collaboration. The barrio projects were to be selected through a participatory process, balancing needs and feasibility, and involving a variety of key groups representing civil society, local government and the private sector. In each case, an initial profile of the barrio would be constructed using a combination of assessment techniques such as participatory surveys and mapping exercises. The profiles would cover the socio-economic and environmental characteristics of each neighbourhood, its families and its community or-ganisations. Special attention was to be paid to environmental conditions that contribute to poverty in all of its dimensions. Thus, we allowed for projects to address a range of environ-mental issues, from water and sanitation to waste dumping and flood risks.

4. Create a coherent portfolio of multi-stakeholder partnerships for Moreno. This would take the form of a set of principles and project descriptions that identified areas of interven-tion, stakeholders involved, roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder, budget and time-line. The main idea was for the workshops to produce the following: (1) a general agreement on the guiding principles for a partnership, (2) proposals for overcoming the barriers that participants identified, (3) drafts of possible solutions, (4) an estimated budget for different proposals, and (5) a prioritisation of the proposals. This portfolio of project proposals was to be a strategic tool to guide Moreno’s proposed Sustainable Development Unit in obtaining


TASKS BARRIERS RESULTS

Undertake diagnosis and participatory assessment

Fragmented knowledge;

unheard voices

Better(more dynamic)

information system

Hold workshops bringing together key stakeholders

Greater capacityand willingness

to address environmental

deficiencies

1.

2. Indifference;

lack ofengagement

Uncoordinated improvement

efforts

Undertake projects in three barrios

Examplesof effective

partnerships(and barriers)

3. Limited localexperience with

multi-stakeholder partnerships and co-responsibility

Develop setof principles and possible partnerships for Moreno

Coherentportfolio of

partnerships for environmental managementand planning

4.

Political inertiaand vested

economic interests

Propose structure and functions of Sustainable Development Unit or equivalent

Identifiedinstitutionalplatform for supporting

partnerships

5.

Figure 1: Schematic representation of Focus Cities Moreno project.


and using funds. Members of the local government had expressed two needs: first, to gain a wider perspective on problems in the different localities and a set of agreed-upon solutions, and second, to be able to plan budgets over the long term.

5. Propose the structure and functions of, and develop the technical capacity of, a Moreno Sustainable Development Unit or its equivalent. The intention here was to build upon the expected outcomes of the UNDP-PPPUE process, which was creating an integrated water and sanitation management unit. The idea of the Sustainable Development Unit was a step further, and had been suggested by Moreno’s Secretary of Public Works and Services, who faced the challenge of designing new systems for the municipalities to manage and dispose of solid waste. For the last 28 years, municipalities in the MRBA have delegated final waste disposal and treatment to a private body, Coordinación Ecológica Área Metropolitana Sociedad del Estado (CEAMSE), co-managed by the authorities of Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires Province. Soon, however, with the closure of CEAMSE’s sanitary landfills, each municipality will have to manage individually the transportation, treatment and final disposal of its solid waste. Furthermore, results of recent water analyses undertaken in several public institutions not connected to the private utility’s water and sanitation network (including schools, health centres and soup kitchens) show that the water they use is contaminated. For the project to succeed, it was necessary to build two forms of strategic partnership simul-taneously: one tapping into the local government’s power, and the other eliciting the local government’s support in allowing community organisations to take a new role in social policy. This meant a sacrifice for the local government, which had to give up power to the community organisations. At the same time, redirecting community demands for assistance into active participation in implementing social policy was a defining principle of the project.

IV.1. Terms of the first agreement with the municipality and changes in the organisational chart

Drafting the project’s document was the responsibility of IIED and IIED-AL, with strong par-ticipation from IDRC (through the leader of the new program on Urban Poverty and the En-vironment - UPE). In the first stage the community and local government did not participate, although local government officials did approve the proposal, and the proposal was based in part on past collaboration and therefore did reflect some community and local government priorities.


The need to create a new agency arises from the following considerations. (1) There is a double tendency at the provincial level towards, on the one hand, global centralisation and planning, and on the other, decentralisation of certain functions, which are delegated to local bodies (municipalities and regional agencies). (2) The municipality of Moreno has found by experience that, although it is hard to change local administrative cultures, agencies created for specific assignments can be structured as small administrative units with legal autonomy and vested with enough decision-making power to face the problems assigned to them with both efficiency and celerity. (3) It is essential to draw a distinction between, on the one hand, deficiencies in agencies’ decisions and routine activities, and on the other, errors of general planning, projection and management in the middle and long term.

The functions of the agency to be created will need to become integrated into a coordinated framework, with roles for each sphere of power (national, provincial and municipal).

However, the trend towards the creation of small units cannot continue without limit. The purpose is to create a body for integrating certain policy sectors that can be addressed simultaneously. With this in mind, we consider that sustainable maintenance of the ecosystem constitutes a sufficient ontological unit to justify the creation of the administrative unit we are referring to.

Box_3 The goals of an environmental agency. A Moreno official expressed this opinion on the goals an environmental agency should have.

Meeting with municipal authorities


As a consequence, the first document did not cover all of the partner’s interests. Perhaps just as important, some of the key concepts were interpreted differently by IIED and the local govern-ment. In particular, whereas the local government saw collaboration with the communities as a for-malisation of their existing networks of brokers, IIED saw this collaboration as developing a new relationship between government and community organisations. Thus, for example, IIED assumed that political brokers would play a peripheral role in the stakeholder meetings and would not claim to represent the communities; but the local government saw these brokers as the most important community representatives, without whom the collaboration would not be effective.

In addition, securing approval from IDRC for the project document was itself a complicated process. Discussions between IIED, IIED-AL and IDRC took place over a long period. Al-though all parties agreed that the success of the project relied on close collaboration between IIED-AL, the municipality and the community organisations, most of their effort was spent on reaching an agreement between IIED, IIED-AL and IDRC. It was assumed that, given the his-tory of close and successful collaborations between IIED-AL and the municipality, which had also involved engagement with community organisations, collaboration on the Focus Cities project would likewise be close and successful. As the institutional setup seemed to be ideal for developing a programme like Focus Cities, including the partnership between IIED (specialising in research) and IIED-AL (focused on action-research), the proposal for Moreno was selected as a pilot project that would serve as a model for the other seven focus cities.

Once the project document was approved by IDRC, and before it was implemented, the munici-pality did have a chance to contribute to the document. This was done through ‘outcome map-ping’, a methodology proposed by IDRC as a means to firm up the project’s vision, mission and intervention strategies, as well as to provide the basis for monitoring its influence.

The community was consulted neither in the drafting nor in the revision of the project document, so their opinions are reflected only to the extent that IIED-AL incorporated them in the proposal. The application of outcome mapping was incomplete; we were only able to involve the munici-pal representatives in defining the vision, the mission and the organisational chart.

This process clarified the vision: Moreno municipality would carry out efficient and environ-mentally sustainable land management that assures better quality of life and equity in access


to urban benefits (health, education, public services, housing, recreation and culture) through proactive, responsible and committed participation of all stakeholders, by implementing an alli-ance model. The results would be synthesised and the lessons disseminated so that others could learn from the project.

As a mission, it was established that the programme would seek to integrate the work of dif-ferent municipal bodies and encourage active participation of community organisations. To promote interaction between stakeholders during the execution of the mutually agreed upon pilot projects, it would use an collaborative management model for the water and sanitation initiatives, as well as for work on solid waste management, urban agriculture, natural basin runoff and flooding.

Within the desired outcomes, it was agreed that the programme would seek a system in which an alliance of local government and citizens is continuously provided with updated, systematised and shared information to facilitate decision-making based on priorities agreed with the community. The alliance would develop several preliminary projects resulting in a map of the current and future needs of different communities. Three pilot projects were origi-nally expected to be selected and implemented. The stakeholders would also consult with spe-cialists, and would design, based on their experience, several alternatives for institutionalising the collaborative management, taking into account various scenarios. The results would be collected in a series of documents distributed widely within and outside the municipality.

Meeting with municipal authorities and IDRC representative


Proy. FCIIED-AL / MM

CPCIIED-AL CommunityOrganizations

Researchers

Universities

Other NGOs

Others

Social workers

Kitchen Soups

Schools

Others

NGOs

Technicians

Others

IIED-AL

IIED-ALTeam

InterzonalCommitee

CommiteeZone 1

CommiteeZone 2

IIED-ALCoordination

MunicipalCoordination

MunicipalTeam

direct partners

indirect partners

IDRCFC / IIED-AL

Municipal Organization ChartOriginal Organization Chart

Barrios Barrios Barrios Barrios

CPC

IDUAR

CommiteeZone 3

CommiteeZone 4

In terms of organisation, the municipality delegated responsibility for overseeing the project to its Constitutive Planning Council (CPC, formed of five members, who represent the Munic-ipal General Secretariat, the Secretariat of Public Works and Services, the Secretariat of So-cial Action, and two independent municipal institutes, IDUAR and the Municipal Institute for Local Economic Development (IMDEL)). During the project’s first, research period (March 2006 to August 2007) the CPC named the director of IDUAR as its project coordinator, and in the second stage, when pilot projects were implemented (September 2007 to March 2010), the Secretary of Public Works and Services became the coordinator.

In the original organisation chart, IIED-AL had the final accountability to IDRC, over the other project partners. This was firmly rejected by the city government, who felt that it would give IIED-AL exclusive responsibility for decisions. The municipality wanted to be at the same level as IIED-AL, and it was decided that the municipality, the community organisations and IIED-AL would be equal partners in executing the initiative. In spite of this, from the perspective of IDRC, IIED-AL was ultimately responsible, having signed the contract to receive the funding.

Figure Nº 2 Organization Chart

V. The environmental conditions surveyand the search for solutions It is uncommon for communities to participate in collaborative projects addressing environ-mental issues. These issues often have many dimensions, and their analysis, at least when un-dertaken by experts, involves so much technical information that community members find it difficult to engage, and often find their authority undermined. Moreover, the relevant informa-tion is rarely collected and presented systematically by local governments, let alone available in the form of easy-to-interpret maps. As one Moreno municipal technician put it, ‘making the invisible visible’16 is an important goal. For this reason, the different groups involved in the Moreno Focus Cities project agreed to undertake a participatory diagnosis of environmental conditions, gathering information and making it accessible to every partner. By joining in the survey, the community also discovered that ‘the environment’ was not a difficult or alien concept. Environmental problems were not just abstractions — they were difficulties that ordinary people encountered on a daily basis but interpreted in different terms. One resident said, ‘We thought that environment meant a factory emitting smoke…but environment is actu-ally everything’17.

Walking with neighbours. Villanueva - Moreno

16.Martucci,L.Municipaltechnicianinthefilm“CiudadesFocalesMoreno”(2010),producedanddirectedbyMichelLichtenstein.17.Duarte,S.interviewedinthefilm“CiudadesFocalesMoreno”(2010),producedanddirectedbyMichelLichtenstein. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcrUuyvGLsI6’43’’


The state accepts participation by the community whenever certain demands have to be ad-dressed, such as in emergencies generated by water shortages or epidemics. In such cases it is often seen as inevitable and necessary. But when it comes to land issues, coming to agreement is generally a complex process, and because of electoral, technical or resource pressures there is rarely enough time for long deliberations. ‘...opportunities arrive one day and have to be taken at that very same time. If a Federal programme arrives, you have to do it or you miss the opportunity and lose the votes. There is no time, and that’s the established dynamic; chang-ing that takes a long time. A change means that the community has to find out some things. The more information they have, the greater are the demands we receive from them, and that makes it even harder to form agreements and to offer a proper public service.’18

There is a longstanding tendency, in Argentina as elsewhere, for government bureaucracies to operate without involving citizens in decision-making and for plans to be implemented with little or no consultation. For instance, this can be seen in other programmes such as Programa de Mejoramiento de Barrios (PROMEBA), in which leaders take technical deci-sions (e.g., on housing types or urban interventional designs) without consulting the com-munity. Moreover, although local politicians and municipal officials have, as already noted, informal relationships with political brokers in many communities, these relationships are limited and do not extend to having these brokers represent the community in official plan-ning or decision-making.

When a new proposal or plan arrives for the municipal government, they have standard op-erating procedures that are hard to alter. When changes are promoted, they create tension be-tween old and new dynamics. Resistance arises to new strategies for overcoming the limits of participation, forcing the community and the local government to be in constant negotiation. This was the case for Focus Cities in Moreno, as the project’s collaborative logic completely differs from traditional interventions. In this chapter, we describe the project’s stages and the results obtained over four years.

18.Gauna,S.Marilóresident,personalcommunication.


V.1. The participatory model: methodologies and stages

The participatory methodology used in this project involved three stages: diagnosis, planning and execution.

Initially, a series of public consultations were undertaken. Community representatives and residents worked on diagnosing and mapping environmental problems city-wide. Meanwhile, municipal technicians carried out their own environmental mapping, with certain limitations: the different sectors involved were willing to dedicate only a short period of time to integrat-ing information. In a second stage, proposals were developed to address the problems that had been diagnosed. This was done in committees with small groups of representatives from four geographic zones in Moreno. In the third stage, proposals were presented and discussed by the municipality and the community, and pilot projects were selected and executed.

Typically, when Moreno’s public local governance system works to resolve environmental problems, it scarcely considers the perceptions of those directly affected. It obeys its own internal logic, confronts limitations and tensions, and has to respond to emergencies, all of which limit its capacity to include all of the people’s views and needs. At the same time, poor urban communities solve their environmental problems without incorporating the different voices of their members, as there are always some who speak more than others, have more power or better relationships, or occupy key positions. Differences in environmental burdens can be transformed into conflicting priorities that action researchers need to understand, along with other hidden conflicts.

Creating zonal committees.

Defining zonal representatives’

roles and responsibilities.

Designing pilot projects.

Creating interzonal committee.

Final participatory designs.

Formation of supervisory committee.

Call for bidding on projects.

Award of contracts.

Start of pilot projects.

Signing agreements with partner

organisations.

Outcome mapping.

Raising awareness and calling for

participation.

Environmental mapping of barrios.

Municipal environmental diagnosis.

Drafting manual of administrative

procedures.

Diagnosis ExecutionPlanning

Figure Nº 3 Stages of the Project


Environmental mapping. Trujui, Moreno

If residents of poorer barrios can become involved in an adequate participatory process — in which problems are prioritised, conflicts resolved and negotiation strategies defined — they will likely be able to agree on more effective strategies. This requires a long learning process, and it might also potentiate conflicts between partners over differing environmental interests. Continual negotiation within a participatory process could pre-vent some of these tensions, especially conflicts over the choice of pilot project. At least superficially the main challenge is no longer conflicts over priorities, but rather how the multi-stakeholder participatory process can be improved.

Such multi-stakeholder processes have become part of some negotiations on local envi-ronmental issues. A common pitfall in these negotiations is trying to overcome conflicts by seeking common objectives without appreciating the different meanings — symbolic, political, economic, and so on — that these objectives have for each stakeholder.

Mabel: ‘We are representatives of Moreno’s residents. This work is essential. Although we don't share the same ideas — we see things differently — together we do work that takes us to the same place: concern for the environment is concern for ourselves.’

Walter: ‘There’s a commitment and it shows. There’s a will and a desire for the environmental issue to become imbedded in society. Not more than ten years ago it was a subject for books, almost a utopian idea. Today we are working on this programme.’

Community participants’ views on representing their neighbourhoods


Excerpt from participatory assessment by an independent consultant1:

“In terms of objectives, whereas IIED-AL considers that the ultimate purpose of participation is strategic and long-term (empowering stakeholders, strengthening capacities and sustaining multi-stakeholder partnerships oriented towards change), the municipality seems to be focused on more instrumental issues (improving different problem areas in order to support government plans). In the view of the municipal technicians who were consulted, this is what justifies participation in initiatives like Focus Cities: the interdisciplinary and intersectoral projects respond to the policies for each sector and are implemented within the municipality's management framework. This legitimacy is provided by the participation of technicians from different municipalities in the working teams”.

Box_4 Participatory assessment: local government’s interest in participation

1. Alain Santandreu, participatory assessment document for the Moreno Focus Cities project (March 2010).

Z1

Z2

Z3

Z4

448 participants90 institutions 31 neighbours

Zones: Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4

Figure Nº 4 Participation and assistance to workshops


V.2. Diagnosis: integrating information

For the Focus Cities work, the municipality of Moreno was divided into four zones, each with different characteristics: (1) Cuartel V, (2) Trujui, (3) Moreno Norte, and (4) Moreno Centro and Moreno Sur (including the areas of Francisco Alvarez, La Reja and Paso del Rey).

Zone 1: Cuartel V. Located in the north, this zone comprises 18 neighbourhoods. It is 80 per cent rural and has very low density. More than 90 per cent of its population have no formal land title.

Zone 2: Trujui. Located in the northeast, this is the second-most-populous zone, with more than 90,000 inhabitants distributed over 31 neighbourhoods.

Zone 3: Moreno Norte. This zone covers a very heterogeneous area with some 85,000 inhabitants distributed over 41 neigh-bourhoods. 25 per cent of the population have basic needs un-satisfied.

Zone 4: Moreno Centro and Moreno Sur (Francisco Alvarez, La Reja and Paso del Rey). This very large zone is quite heteroge-neous terms of density and type of neighbourhoods. It has approxi-mately 162,000 inhabitants.

As indicated above, a central part of the activities planned early in the project was mapping environmental problems. In addition, the programme was expected to generate an Inte-grated System for Environmental Management (ISEM, also known by the Spanish acronym SIGA) for Moreno. The maps, including those created by experts on the basis of official statistics and those created by residents on the basis of their local knowledge, were meant to be part of this integrated system. In addition, there were to be information portfolios about projects that emerged from the community workshops and were developed subsequently. It was expected that the information on these projects would be linked not only to the environ-mental problems that had been mapped, but also to evolving municipal plans for resolving such problems.

Map Nº 2 Moreno’s four zones


The information gathered was intended to guide the selection of projects. This phase of Focus Cities also sought to create agreement and mutual understanding by producing information in a participatory way, shared by the community and the different municipal authorities.

This stage had several noteworthy aspects: it aroused awareness and interest in the commu-nity, helped to identify priorities, created a collaborative work dynamic unfamiliar to either local officials or community participants, and involved the community in themes and discus-sions that they rarely have the chance to engage with. However, the mapping activity did not meet its original goals. In particular, it was impossible to update the information regularly or to create a working team within the municipality that could integrate the city’s analysis of en-vironmental problems with the community’s analysis. It also became clear that the municipal government was reluctant to share information with the community. Indeed, municipal offices were reluctant to share information with each other.

All the stakeholders recognised that information could be a transformative tool, and the value of the maps was clearly appreciated. Indeed, information can be so important that it represents power — and this sometimes led to conflicts.

The Focus Cities initiative in Moreno aimed to obtain and use the information referred to above in several different ways, only some of which were successful:

a) ISEM workshops. Environmental information is located in different municipal offices. Every department jealously guards the information it produces and handles, and is reluctant to share it. For instance, the treasury considers some of its financial information too sensitive to make public. The ISEM exercise revealed the territoriality

Residents' views of the mapping activity

Walter: ‘It involved not only a neighbourhood, but the whole city. We have never had the chance to participate in a space like this; it's something new, innovative. It is useful in strengthening the bonds and links between sectors where, more than once, communication was difficult.’

Mabel: ‘Getting to know the whole city of Moreno was fundamental. We knew our sector, but we didn't know in depth the realities of other neighbourhoods and the whole city. We learned a lot from the maps.’


and distrust among the departments and their aversion to working in close and open collaboration with each other or with outside groups. Wariness of sharing data with non-government groups, in particular, is based on the widespread belief among govern-ment officials that the information will stimulate social demands that they will not be able to respond to.

b) Mapping environmental problems. The Focus Cities maps revealed the reality of current environmental problems in Moreno. An important issue emerged when the technical informa-tion provided by the government was brought into confrontation with the information pre-sented by the community. Some of the discrepancies made it clear that local government data were not showing the whole picture. The government officials recognised that some problems had not been identified, either because of mistakes in applying their procedures or because the procedures simply overlooked certain locations or problems.

c) Integrating new information with existing data. This goal of the programme was not ac-complished: the municipal team was not provided with official information from other offices of the local government.


In some cases bringing information of different types together provided new insights. Based on the information furnished by the partners of the Moreno Focus Cities programme, maps were drawn that showed correlations between land tenure and environment at city level. These allowed participants to select areas for further analysis.

Data from municipal offices:Maps were made by IDUAR using methods developed by ISEM. To create a map of environmental hazards, the sewage, water and pavement networks were taken into account, along with the distribution of people without health care coverage, proximity to industries by category, and provision of infrastructure. A separate map of socio-economic vulnerability incorporated the distribution of people by gender and age, an index of economic dependency (proportion of economically active people versus children aged 0 to 13), health coverage, overcrowding, and housing quality. Combining the measures of environmental hazards and vulnerability produced an environmental risk map.

The municipal offices also prepared a map of the city’s 44 informal settlements.1 (The areas where informal dispersed lots are concentrated were not identified, even though they are known to be located in the peri-urban area.)

Data from the community:The community, represented by members of zonal committees, developed maps that expanded on the municipal data, adding details of environmental hazards such as unofficial waste dumps, scrubland in abandoned areas, contaminated streams and ditches, and the presence of rodents. The zones with the greatest coverage in community surveys were Trujui and Cuartel V.

Box_5 Integrating information from different sources

1. Official information presented by the municipality to Programa Federal de Villas y Asentamientos (National Slum and Settlement Programmes).

Meeting of zonal committee Trujui - Moreno


Box_5

Environmental risk map and concentration of informal settlementsThis map is the result of the Superposition of hazards, vulnerabilities and informal settlements

Pilot Project’s location

Recreational park at the Los Perros stream

Environment-themed square in Barrio San Jorge

Optimisation of the community water network in Barrio Alem

Enhancement and restoration of a degraded area along the banks of the Villanueva stream

Environmental education programme: Moreno Learns

Collection, compression and storage plant for cardboard, plastics and other materials

Map Nº 3 Critical Areas and Projects’ Location


V.3. Participatory planning

The participatory planning stage took place after the participatory diagnosis. In this stage zonal committees were set up in each of the zones. The partners agreed on documents regulat-ing their roles and responsibilities (see Box_6), with special emphasis on community partici-pation and representation of diverse stakeholders in the community.

The objective of this stage was to move from problems to solutions and to allow members of the zonal committees, by means of a simple instrument — the agreement document they negotiated — to propose solutions to the problems detected in the diagnosis stage. A par-ticipant commented, ‘Zonal and interzonal committees are spaces that have allowed us to gradually become aware of the problem and to draw conclusions about what our situation actually is. We realise that we all share the same problem.’

An external consultant participated in this planning stage. In each zone of Moreno, the expert attended participatory workshops, interpreted the needs stated by residents and estimated the costs of the different intervention alternatives that were proposed. This provided committee members with a realistic perspective on possible interventions.

What emerged from these workshops was a series of project proposals for each zone, which were compiled into a portfolio. The committees then moved on to prioritising and selecting projects to be implemented.

Meeting with external consultant

19.Cara,S.BarrioAlem’sresident,personalcommunication.


On today’s date, within the Moreno Focus Cities programme framework carried out by IIED-AL and Moreno municipality, we gather the signatories below to establish the following agreement institu-tionalising the management committee of the zone … for this project.

The regulations for the management committee are hereby stated. The committee will be composed of 12 members representing the different barrios of the zone, who will have a voice and a vote during the decision-making process and when establishing agreements. New members may be inducted to assume of these 12 positions if there is a vacancy. The members participate in the committee as residents of the zone and/or representatives of community organisations; representa-tives of IIED-AL and Moreno municipality will also be part of the committee.

In the composition of the committee, we have aimed to emphasise representatives of the barrios included in the zone…. It is agreed that for the committee to be in session, at least half plus two of the barrio representatives, the representatives of IIED-AL and the Moreno municipal representatives must be present. The unjustified absence of any of the committee’s representatives on two occasions automatically removes him/her from the committee, leaving the vacant post available to any repre-sentative who was not among the original 12 members; otherwise, the positions will be held throughout the length of the project. If a representative sends a substitute when absent, he/she will have a voice but not a vote, making it possible to form a quorum.

Those present today agree upon the following functions of the committee:

Box_6 Zonal Committee Agreement - Defining roles and responsabilities

Meet fortnightly.Identify and prioritise the main environmental problems of the zone. Invite other organisations and residents who are not acquainted with the project to attend meetings, in order to incorporate new visions and contributions.Engage in the project and the diffusion of its activities.Design pilot projects that may be carried out within the programme framework.Use the present minutes book as a working tool.Prioritise and be part of the discussions over which projects will eventually be executed.At each meeting, agree the date, time and place of the next meeting by a majority of commit-tee members.Participate in the interzonal committee, meeting with other committees of the programme, local authorities and IIED-AL; for this purpose, a group is designated of no more than six members. In the interzonal committee, the projects designed for each zone will be discussed, assessed and prioritised.


Box_7 Portfolio of proposals - List of projects

“No waste” - Waste separation, sorting and recycling. Cuartel V (zone 1).“Recycling solid waste” - Waste separation, sorting and recycling. Cuatro Vientos, Las Flores, Villa Angela and Santa Paula (zone 2).“Without waste” - Waste separation, sorting and recycling. Santa Elena, La Victoria and Satélite II (zone 3)“Labranza urban sanitation organisation” - Recycling of urban waste and environmental education. La Porteña, Salas and San Jorge (zone 4).“Ecomanía” - Waste separation, sorting and recycling. Puerta de Hierro (zone 4).“Environmental awareness campaigns” - La Reja (zone 4).

Education needed to achieve better and more integrated management of urban wasteWaste and environmental awareness:

“Green areas” - Reconditioning and maintenance of green areas for recreation and education. San Alberto and Mayor del Pino (zone 1).“Better barrio future” - Improvement of streets and landscape of Avenue San Fernando. Cuartel V (zone 1).“Community greenhouse” - Greenhouse where youth in trouble with police can engage in cultivating and selling garden plants. El Vergel and Las Violetas (zone 1).“Cleaning and reconditioning of the Villanueva stream” - Barrios bordering the stream (zone 2).“Recreational park at the Los Perros stream” - Improvement and reconditioning of the stream’s borders. Barrios bordering the stream (zone 3).“Blooming gardens” - Reconditioning of green areas. Jardines I and Jardines II (zone 3).“The family goes to the park” - Improvement and reconditioning of parks. Moreno Centro (zone 4).“Improvement and reconditioning of Cañada Bajo Hondo” - Güemes (zone 4).

Increasing appreciation of water resources, promoting water conservation and improving infrastructure

Reconditioning and improving public green areas, and making them more sustainable

Water and sanitation services

Green areas and streams

“Puelche II” - Improvement of water services. Alem (zone 1).“Sanitation in Barrio Alem” - Treatment plant for sewage effluents. Alem (zone 1). “Pro water” - Potable water drilling and distribution. José C. Paz. Anderson, Don Máximo, Namuncurá, Alem, Milenium (zone 1).“Home environmental services” - Truck for empting cesspools. Cuartel V (zone 1). “Pro potable water service” - Water provision. Lomas de Mariló, Villa Trinidad and Puente Roca (zone 2).“Sanitation” - Sewage and drains. Santa Brigida (zone 2).“More pipes, less water” - Sanitation and drains. Jardines I and Pro-casa (zone 3).“Clear Water” - Water provision. Luchetti I (zone 4).“Looking into the future” - Improvement of water and sewage system. Puente Marquez (zone 4).“Improving our environment” - urban waste and sewage improving. Parque Paso del Rey, Bongiovani, Catonitas and La Bibiana ( zone 4).“Alternative sewage system” - San Francisco and Alvarez (zone 4).“Los Robles” - Municipal park project.


V.4. Selection of the projects

Although the Focus Cities plan had initially stipulated three pilot projects, ultimately six projects — one for each of Moreno’s four zones, and two that served the city as a whole — were selected within the interzonal committee framework. This framework was institu-tionalised during the process with the participation of representatives from the four zones, the municipal technical team and IIED-AL’s management team.Stakeholders selected the projects to be funded using criteria discussed and agreed previously within the interzonal committee (see Table).

Criterion Ranking

Cost Social innovation Technical innovationSolving a common problemSustainabilityTime of execution Possibility of improvementJob generationNumber of direct beneficiariesNumber of indirect beneficiariesIntegration of zones

0 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 40 to 4

Figure: 5 Criteria for selection of pilot projects


Box_8 The pilot projects selected

Environmental education programme: Moreno Learns; Area: City-wide. Objective: Develop an environmental education and communication programme that promotes community training on specific environmental issues to encourage greater participation in protecting natural resources, improving environmental management and strengthening the sustainability of zonal initiatives developed by IIED-AL, the municipality and the community organisations in the Focus Cities programme.

Collection, compression and storage plant for cardboard, plastics and other materials; Area: City-wide. Objective: Within the framework of the new integrated management system for urban solid waste, this project had a double purpose: (1) reducing the amount of waste deposited in landfills, and (2) improving cardboard collectors’ quality of life by implementing household waste separation programmes, separate collection of cardboard and plastic, and separation of these materials at the plant.

Optimisation of the community water network in Barrio Alem; Area: Zone 1 (Cuartel V). Objec-tive: Expand access to drinking water and improve the water quality of the existing neighbour-hood service, engaging the barrio residents to ensure the service operates efficiently and improving the system’s technical and administrative management.

Enhancement and restoration of a degraded area along the banks of the Villanueva stream; Area: Zone 2 (Trujui). Objective: Improve and recondition a severely degraded section of the Villanueva stream and provide it with community infrastructure, converting it into a recreational space for local residents.

Recreational park at the Los Perros stream; Area: Zone 3 (Moreno Norte). Objective: Recover a degraded public space, part of the Los Perros stream, and transform it into a green recreational area for leisure and environmental protection, to be used by families and residents of the zone and bordering neighbourhoods.

Environment-themed square in Barrio San Jorge; Area: Zone 4 (Moreno Sur). Objective: Trans-form a degraded space into a public square that, in addition to offering a site for recreational activities, can provide the setting for other activities and initiatives promoting environmental awareness and responsibility for public welfare.

V.5 Participatory project designs

Once the projects were defined for each zone, the participatory final designs were made by the zonal committees, with assistance from external experts. This stage entailed another appraisal of the participatory spaces developed through the Focus Cities process; it was also a stage in which new conflicts arose and needed time and energy to resolve. Some of these conflicts — mainly between IIED-AL and the local government — concerned which external experts


should be chosen to do the final write-up of the projects. These experts had an important role in defining the intervention identified by the zonal committee.

After the participatory designs were complete, they had to be further adapted, with the mu-nicipal technical team’s support, to bring the projects into line with the available funding.

V.6. Execution of pilot projects There were three major milestones in the execution of the pilot projects: the call for bids by contractors, the award of the contracts and the physical completion of the project.

a) Call for bids on the pilot projects. Once the participatory designs were over, the documents calling for contractor bids were written for five pilot projects (the water network, the Vil-lanueva stream, the Los Perros stream, the square in San Jorge and the waste separation plant; as explained in the next chapter, the bidding and implementation process for the education project took place separately, nine months earlier).

b) Selection of contractors. In an process without precedent for the municipality, community organisations and IIED-AL, these partners jointly chose the companies to execute the pilot projects. First, a meeting was held to describe the planned interventions to the candidate companies. Then, the sealed proposals were opened in presence of the partners and com-panies, and all three partners assessed the bids and selected the winner. The companies and the municipality both agreed that this was not the common procedure: the community usually does not engage in such processes or have decision-making power in selecting companies to receive public contracts.

Pilot Project

The first thing was to choose the site for the intervention, which was then designed with the stakeholders’ participation. There were difficulties with the municipality of Moreno, and consequently there was not enough time. We knew we would neither finish institutionalising the methodology nor strengthen relation-ships, and that funds were insufficient to complete the project.

One of the difficulties was that we started working when school classes were about to end, and teachers and students had to devote their time to their exams and administrative problems. Working with the young was good, but there were specific activities that we could not undertake with them, such as cleaning the plot.

Jorge Tellechea, a consultant for the public square project in Barrio San Jorge


c) Completion of the project. Between November 2009 and March 2010, several infra-structural projects were finished and inauguration ceremonies were performed. There were inaugural events for the pilot projects at the Los Perros stream and the Villanueva stream, the public square in San Jorge and the drinking water project in Alem. The edu-cation project, which took place ahead of the others, had also held a ceremony to award diplomas. The waste separation plant, although finished on schedule, never opened for operation.

Pilot projects - Work and inauguration ceremonies

Excerpt from the participatory assessment:1

It is important to highlight the symbolic effect of the completion of the pilot projects from each stakeholder’s point of view. Through the pilot projects, IIED-AL sought to strengthen the quality of the local collaboration in progress, and therefore it was more focused on applying collaborative management model than on accomplishing results. In contrast, the municipality, within the framework of its government plan and its management model, conceived the pilot projects not only as projects that start with an idea and finish upon the execution of the work or activities, but also as part of a long term process: [the municipality commented] ‘The work is completed but the municipal commitment to this area and the community persists’. Finally, the community desired both to solve concrete problems and to become empowered as local stakeholders with capacity for dialogue (and recognition), particularly vis-à-vis the municipality. This is quite clear for many members of the zonal committees whose participation was originally aimed at solving a concrete problem that affected them, their families and, consequently, their communities.

Box_9 Participatory assessment: Effects of pilot project completion

1. Alain Santandreu, participatory assessment document (March 2010).

Meeting with expert in participatory assesment

VI. Participation and collaboration as a response to problems: conflicts and strategic agreements

Negotiations among group sat the local level are necessary not only to decide on actions with the local government but also to resolve conflicts and to coordinate the provision of public or private services. But meetings and dialogues can be ineffective if local people are not well organised or are not in a position to negotiate. As there are processes that residents cannot influence politically or where some groups are not well represented, and as it is not possible to consult each and every individual, any dialogue has its limitations. Therefore, it is necessary not only to make participation as fair as possible but also to monitor the discussions in order to discover which points of view are not being represented. Participating in negotiations seems to imply equal power among the partners and within each of the stakeholder groups, but when certain sub-groups are not represented, underrepresented or not listened to, the participation loses its effectiveness.

In this chapter we present several situations from the Focus Cities work in which con-flicts became explicit and apparent, and we examine how the different tools and spaces introduced during the Focus Cities process contributed to fuelling and resolving these conflicts.

Detecting environmental problems - Barrio Alem - Cuartel V - Moreno


VI.1. Rhythm and timing

Differences in rhythm and timing among the partners gave rise to tension in the process. Municipal projections rarely matched the desires and expectations of local organisations, and the timeframes that Focus Cities’ funders had for measuring results were frequently shorter than what was needed for the process to come to fruition. The municipality was discussing environmental management with the community for the first time, and it was necessary to reach consensus on implementing environmental activities within the project’s framework; this required patience.

The process had a profound impact on policy (traditionally the domain of the municipal-ity), with all partners discussing where, when and how to apply the project funds. But the differences in timing and rhythm were never resolved and persisted until the end of the project.

This point was clearly understood by the partners; however, it generated conflicts when the project’s goals became impossible to meet on schedule. The community and its organisations generally needed immediate action, and in many cases the administrative responses demanded longer timeframes. And each of the institutions that formed part of Focus Cities had a differ-ent, complex structure that affected timing patterns. Obviously, the structure and timeframes of a community organization are not the same as those of an NGO, and the administrative structure of the municipality differs from that of an international funder.

One situation, for example, in which there was a major difference in partners’ rhythm and timing was the changes in municipal coordination when the diagnosis stage transitioned into the execution of projects. Two changes happened at this time: first, political control over the product shifted from IDUAR to the Secretariat of Public Works and Services; and second, the municipal technical team coordinating operations was completely replaced, and it took the new team almost nine months to match the original rhythm of work and the dynamics that the interzonal committees had established for its meetings and for advanc-ing the projects. During this period, the community organisations objected to the municipal technical team presenting, outside the process and timeline for the other pilot projects, an additional intervention in the public park Parque los Robles.



A key feature that deserves deeper examination is the different systems and institutional timeframes that should be taken into account when executing pilot projects within the framework of multi-stakeholder processes. It is evident that the timeframes established by the Focus Cities project differ from those of the municipality and the community. However, this point, which is so obvious, has received little analysis despite its relevance in explaining the dynamics in some of the pilot projects and other processes. For such a complex initiative as the Focus Cities project to run properly, the timing of the projects need to match that of the partners’ decision-making procedures. For the municipality, the project may give rise to an internal decision-making process that turns out to be slow, as well as an expenditure planning process with pre-established timeframes strongly influenced by the economic context and the everyday management problems that face the local government. This tension between the speed of the process and the project timeframe constitutes a critical issue to be resolved in future interventions, mainly when the budgets and features of the projects to be implemented cannot be identified in advance (assuming co-financing as an implementation strategy).

Box_10 Participatory assessment: Differences in systems and timing among partners


VI.2. Adjusting the project document

Perhaps the earliest conflict of Focus Cities occurred when IIED-AL and the municipality were using outcome mapping to make adjustments to the project document — a process that ex-cluded community groups, as noted in chapter IV. In particular, the municipality appeared to be establishing territorial boundaries through discussions on the organisation chart, on how deci-sions would be made and on relationships among stakeholders — specifically between itself and IIED-AL. These were not considered major problems at the time; nevertheless, analysing them from a distance, we note some deeper implications. First, the two stakeholders that were strongest in terms of resources were placed at the same level and exercised more power than resource-poor community groups. In addition, these discussions followed the common pattern of not incorporating community views when addressing local problems, especially with regard to the technical aspects of interventions — and this pattern was not questioned.

Another difference in views that became evident at this point was that IIED-AL and the mu-nicipality each had their own concepts of ‘participation’. Whereas IIED-AL and the organis-ers of Focus Cities sought a collaborative management model, the municipality defined the management scheme as ‘participatory’, not as ‘collaborative’. This could be interpreted as a


mere semantic issue. However, the municipality stressed very clearly that management would be participatory in a limited sense, but that responsibility for management would not be del-egated.

On the other hand, the municipality questioned how representative the organisations were that took part in Focus Cities. This became a recurrent theme — scepticism about the number of organisations and how well they represented citizens, considering the numerous stakeholders that could have been found. Although it is true that these organisations did not correspond perfectly to the diverse groups on the ground, the project did rely on a broad base of partici-pants in each of its stages. IIED-AL put special attention into invitations to organisations at the beginning of the project, making it an inclusive and open process in which groups from throughout civil society could take part. We worked with the Secretariat of Social Action to help coordinators from Moreno’s four zones reinforce the call to all organisations. Impor-tantly, the project’s institutional spaces — the zonal and interzonal committees— always took into account community participation and were built as systems where organisations exercised their right to take part in the decision-making process as equals to the municipality and IIED-AL.



Having a methodological instrument to adjust the project document allowed the partners to address the lack of municipal participation at the time of the document’s initial formulation, although it failed to make up for the lack of community participation. Even though outcome mapping proved to be an adequate method for adapting the project document, its application entailed several months of initially unexpected work. Another setback was that the original project document was written in English, which made it difficult to read and understand, so the municipal-ity had to translate it into Spanish. Participatory formulation of the project document would have helped to adjust expectations for implementation, avoiding the establishment of goals that were difficult to accomplish within the project’s timeframe. But in order to formulate a project document in a participatory manner, the institutions involved would need either a lot of time or a common methodology, strategy and princi-ples to guide the intervention, built on past experience and trust.

Box_11 Participatory assessment: Adjusting the project document


VI.3. Research

As described in section V.2., the data-collection stage was very important in terms of its products — the environmental maps of the barrios for each zone. At the same time, municipal data that had been separated across various offices was to be integrated by ISEM. To accomplish this, we organised workshops with technicians from the different municipal departments. We were aware, however, that access to information is a conflictive issue because of differing interests among stakeholders and the power that the information can give to those who control it.

Much of the information in the hands of the municipality is highly sensitive, and therefore city officials are not always willing to share it with other organisations, which may have vested interests in the data (for instance, some organisations can request available land for recrea-tional activities, and land occupation or real estate speculation can take place). Moreover, municipal representatives often believe that access to information can give rise to demands on the government.

The main problem for the Focus Cities project was that the data collected by the zonal com-mittees could not be integrated with the municipal technical team’s information base. Munici-pal coordinators were not able to incorporate the results of neighbourhood and community


mapping into the municipal database — and neither could they be convinced to share their own data. Some information the city did offer, such as health data and the listings on its real estate register, were disaggregated and thus of little use for the research project; and there was other information that was not shared at all. This may have been due to the lack of integration among different municipal secretariats — agencies were used to protecting information that could confer political power on rival departments — as well as to the belief that any consulta-tion at the community level not only creates demand but also delays action.

This impasse led to a widespread sense of burnout and growing tension over IIED-AL’s recur-rent demands on the local government. The project was in danger of failing to achieve one of its key objectives — to develop a new base of information about environmental problems and socio-economic conditions. To try to reach this goal despite the problems with the municipal technical team, we put new strategies into practice. The first new approach was to create a community centre for environmental information, linked to the public square project in San Jorge. This centre was originally intended to function as part of a school participating in the project. But the school did not respond as the project evolved and did not seem willing to be involved in managing the centre, so we modified the plan and aimed to build an institu-tion that went beyond the boundaries of Focus Cities. We created the Moreno Environmental Observatory, set in an office in the centre of Moreno and managed by representatives of the interzonal committee. An advisor to Focus Cities Moreno, Ruben Schonfeld, commented, ‘It is impossible to conceive of participation in an observatory without the existence of the Focus Cities programme.’20

20.Schonfeld,R.Technicaladvisorincapacitybuilding,inaninterviewbyMichelLichteinstein,directorandproducerofthefilmCiudadesFocalesMoreno(2010).

Meeting in interzonal committee


VI.4. Rivalry between neighbours over projects and selection criteria

Each zone in the Focus Cities project is composed of a number of barrios. Different problems were identified for each barrio, so initially each barrio assumed that their own project proposal should be implemented. This was resolved by considering various projects in every zone: within each zone, several groups (mainly residents of the same barrio, or those who share activities or common problems) prepared pilot plans that were shared among the groups and subsequently assessed.

Before criteria were developed for the selection of projects, each group defended its proposal only on the grounds that it would solve problems that affected them directly. Tension grew among the groups until a set of criteria for prioritising projects was defined in a participatory process in which the community, local government and IIED-AL took part. The creation of the criteria rating system (presented in section V.4.) finally helped lower the pressure and es-tablished a clear and explicit justification for the final choice of projects.

Another strategy that was useful in lowering tension between different groups was the deci-sion to implement one project for each of the four zones, rather than following the original plan to carry out only three projects. In addition, having agreed at the interzonal committee that there were two recurrent issues in all zones, which also complemented initiatives in the municipal plan, participants decided to finance two municipal-scale pilot projects: building a solid-waste recycling plant and implementing an environmental education campaign for the whole city. These additional two projects were welcomed by all partners. For the management of each project, we relied on support organisations made up of community representatives in each zone. Nevertheless, balanced participation was hard to achieve, given Moreno’s size: the widely sprawling zones had many residents living far from the projects. Moreover, each zone differed in size, population density and number of barrios, and the distances between barrios within a zone were sometimes huge.

The zonal representatives showed great comprehension of the general environmental situa-tion, solidarity while searching for solutions and creativity in proposing alternative and in-tegrated projects. Regardless, there was some tension between community members when pilot projects were being prioritised using the agreed-upon criteria. Sometimes during the process, the defence of projects that guarded personal interests took precedence over those that protected the public interest. Tension was also created by the government’s proposal to


implement a pilot project for Parque Los Robles, which was not well received by the other stakeholders. This was mainly due to the extemporaneous nature of the presentation.

Although nobody stated this, some residents or organisations probably stopped participating in the process when the project selected was not their own. There was also high turnover in the organisations that participated in the different stages of the process. In general, the community representatives provided leadership and participated in various projects simultaneously.

VI.5. Rejection of government proposal and changes in coordination

Generally, when Moreno receives an investment proposal, it creates expectations among city authorities as to how funds will be invested and incorporated into governmental plans. This was the case for Focus Cities. The programme’s start coincided with the World Urban Forum, where IDRC invited IIED-AL and the municipality to participate. During this event — with absolute transparency and sincerity — Moreno’s governor expressed his intention to use Fo-cus Cities’ support to intervene in Parque Los Robles. However, Focus Cities was intended to promote interventions as the final product of a participatory process, not as the decision of only one stakeholder.

A conflict arose between the municipal government and the community. As stated above, the government went on to prepare a pilot project for Parque los Robles that was presented after the deadline (the selection criteria had already been agreed upon) and isolated from the rest of the process (it had not been shared beforehand with the zonal representatives in the interzonal committee, nor in other meetings with partners). Initially, community organisations refused even to consider the project, but finally, under pressure from the municipal technical team, they assessed it in an open meeting of the interzonal committee. The project received a low score and thus could not be approved for financing and implementation.

The problem was solved, but the conflict did not disappear. The community felt victorious — those who took part still remember the event as an important achievement of the participa-tory process — but the local government suffered, as technicians were blamed for not being able to promote the municipal project properly. The tension between the municipality and community organisations continued and coincided with changes in the municipal team that led Focus Cities in the government.


We believe that the conflict created by the rejection of the government’s project sped up the planned changes in the coordination team. The shift in coordination had been expected from the beginning: IDUAR planned to participate until the selection of the projects, with the Sec-retariat of Public Works and Services taking over in the implementation stage. By the time of the changeover, the municipality, particularly the CPC, had long been open to dialogue with IIED-AL and the project’s funders. But the changes in coordination brought delays, as the new team had to be nominated and become familiar with the project, and the new coordina-tor’s leadership style involved less delegation.

At this moment, it became evident that there was latent tension between the interests of two gov-ernment bodies, one promoting integral waste management and the other focused on the manage-ment of water resources. IDUAR had been arguing for the creation of a Local Water Authority (ALA, per its Spanish acronym) since before the UNDP project, whereas the Secretariat of Public Works and Services, from the beginning of Focus Cities, proposed the creation of a Sustainable Development Agency. Both proposals involved a new institution, and in effect, each agency was bidding for more attention and resources to be committed to its own area of expertise.

Moreover, at times some leading neighbourhood representatives said that they never relied on the municipality or IIED-AL. This claim was voiced more loudly when the Parque los Robles project was presented, as well as later, after the selection of pilot projects and upon their completion, when some leaders who had participated in the whole process made their


From a political perspective, the municipality’s lobbying for the approval of its own initiatives disgusted community organisations, who expressed a very critical view in interviews and at a meeting within the framework of this assessment. IIED-AL believed that the municipality showed less interest than before in the pilot projects, which was reflected both in the mobilisation of human and material resources (for instance, permits for the use of machinery for earthworks) and in the political priority given to the projects. IIED-AL stated, for instance: ‘The increase in the number of pilot projects from three to six meant a reduction in the total amount allocated to each. Consequently, many interventions, particularly those in public spaces, remained as proposals for possible changes or as the anticipated first step on a longer (and costlier) process funded from sources other than Focus Cities.’

Box_12 Participatory assessment: Conflict over the government proposal

1. Documento de Evaluación Participativa, Alain Santandreu, marzo 2010.


distrust explicit in interviews conducted by the team filming the documentary Ciudades Fo-cales Moreno.

VI.6. The environmental education programme

At the participatory diagnostic stage there was broad consensus that, in order to solve the en-vironmental problems that had been prioritised in the diagnosis, we had to work on building communities’ capacity and raising awareness of environmental problems. Representatives from all zones identified environmental awareness as crucial. Most of the pilot projects in-cluded some aspect of this, but one project in particular aimed to develop an environmental education programme for all of Moreno.

In the selection criteria it had already been agreed that there would be a project for each of the four zones and two projects that would benefit the whole population; the educational programme was to be one of the city-wide initiatives. Each partner suggested one candidate institution to run the education campaign, and during a meeting of the interzonal committee, the three institutions were invited to present their past work on environmental matters and their institutional background, along with a campaign proposal and budget.

The municipality pushed for the selection of their candidate, using their political influence to ensure this institution was chosen. IIED-AL was reluctant to agree with the choice, mainly because we believed the background presented would not prepare the institution to develop

Point of view of two neighbours

María del Carmen: ‘I think IIED-AL works a lot with the municipality. We are here with all of them; the municipality of Moreno and IIED are working together in some way. From the municipality I hear everything; they think I believe everything they say, but I only believe 10 per cent. Moreno is like this. Focus Cities is a foundation. I try to make the best of it. You go along with them, and then they tell you that a municipality project has to be approved. I never trust them, I only believe when promises are met.’

Walter: ‘There was a lack of trust at the beginning of the project. Obviously, the dialogue between the municipality and the community was based on former experiences having to do with participation - a previous story that discouraged participation.’


such a complex campaign and because it was more oriented to waste management than to general environmental issues.

This conflict was never resolved, and the institution was selected despite IIED-AL’s reserva-tions. The chosen organisation soon showed that its loyalty was more to the municipality than to the Focus Cities project. Several times, we had to remind the organisation that the programme had three partners. Still, the organisation implementing Focus Cities privileged the local government’s needs, wasting opportunities for synergies and interactions with other projects.

The close ties between this organisation and the municipality ran counter to the original idea of work on environmental issues linked to the projects and the barrios’ needs. Interventions that were only in the local government’s interest were prioritised — for instance, work in schools, public talks and a mobile unit for environmental education — while work was neglected that was urgently needed to support the pilot projects and help them achieve sustainability.

As mentioned above in reference to the difficulties with timing, a delay in the start of the en-vironmental education campaign meant activities that were supposed to be initiated in March were instead begun in December — just when school classes are over and vacations start.

Another difficulty was that the campaign ended at the same time the construction of the waste plant pilot project was completed, and since this plant never became operative, environmental educators could not apply and transmit their knowledge of it.

Meeting in interzonal committee


The goal of this program was to develop an environmental education programme that would promote community training on environmental issues in order to encourage greater participa-tion in protecting natural resources, improving environmental management and support the initiatives developed by the Focus Cities Programme. Describing the programme, Miguel Moro1, a member of EcoRaices, the NGO responsible for “Moreno Learns”, said “This program leaves human beings sensitized and trained in the protection of the environment, in their daily work, walking hand in hand with the environment and with the barrio and its people” The programme was developed along three main axis: Environmental awareness and training for neighbours, environmental awareness within schools and environmental Communication

During eight months, the program trained 40 educators selected from the different barrios and 40 educators selected within the municipal staff. The educators selected from within the barrios were evaluated by the interzonal committee in order to receive a fellowship ,taking into account: assistance, papers prepared and qualityof the their participation.

Box_13 The environmental education programme: Moreno Learns

1. Miguel Moro in film Focus Cities produced and directed by Michel Lichteinstein.

Visit to San Miguel del Monte recycling plant - Buenos Aires


VI.7. Selection of consultants for the final project designs

The hiring of consultants for the participatory design of the final projects fuelled tensions between the municipality and IIED-AL. The government proposed that the municipal techni-cians themselves should be hired as consultants because they were the ones who knew the area best. IIED-AL, without disregarding this important fact, argued that the selection of consultants should form part of an open and participatory process, and therefore invited bids for the selection of four consultants, one for each zone’s project. In light of these differences, the municipality decided not to have its technicians participate in the selection process. There-fore, the consultants for the final participatory designs of the pilot projects were chosen by IIED-AL together with the community organisations.

This conflict remained latent. The municipality discounted the input of the consultants, failed to cooperate with their requests (e.g., for maps or information about municipal regulations), and refused to accept pamphlets and invitations aimed at achieving wider community par-ticipation— all of which hindered the consultants’ work. Finally, it was agreed with the mu-nicipality that the projects would be designed in collaboration with the external consultants hired, and the Focus Cities project would rely on municipal technicians for final drawings and management. This agreement diluted the conflict.

Consultant Jorge Tellechea states, ‘Unfortunately, we had no municipal support. The three representatives [of the municipal team] made very few contributions. From our experience with the Secretariat of Public Works and Services, we may say that, in general, residents are not consulted.’

Consultants presenting their work for the pilot projects


VI.8. The urban solid waste programme

At the participatory diagnosis stage, participants in all zones were concerned with the issue of waste accumulation, and urban waste disposal was identified as a priority. But in addition to this problem, the municipality had a specific agenda of starting a pilot project on waste separation and sorting, which was of great interest to the funders of Focus Cities. The project model that was finally defined diverged from the principles of the Focus Cities project, as it did not take a participatory approach either in its design or in the proposed management and implementation system.

Various project proposals had focused on urban waste disposal and suggested the construction of small plants in each zone. The municipality responded that they could not authorise waste accumulation at clean sites in some zones because the zoning code prohibited it, and also ar-gued that the magnitude of the problem went beyond the neighbourhood scale and fell under the scope of municipal management.

They then presented a proposal based on previous work developed by the Argentine Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) to build a waste recovery plant for dry urban waste. This proposal was also supported by the funders, who had engaged the municipal government in a training on the treatment of solid urban waste conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Munici-pal Administration (IBAM) outside of the Moreno Focus Cities initiative. Although the link between INTI and IBAM was fostered by Focus Cities, in practice the projects were work-ing at cross-purposes. The municipality believed that Focus Cities had to be subordinated


The payment of a salary bonus to municipal technicians for their exclusive engagement with the project outside their working hours was appreciated by both IIED-AL and the municipality, and became one of the central strategies for developing projects. This increased the technicians’ confidence in the process and their commitment to it, improved knowledge of the territory, and strengthened capacity for interventions in the zones through the municipality’s experience and expertise. All hiring was done in consultation with the municipality.

Box_14 Participatory assessment: payment of a bonus to municipal technicians



to the larger project of managing urban solid waste, whereas from the Focus City project’s perspective the most important objective was to expand dialogue and community engagement through the interzonal committee.

This waste recovery pilot project was controversial. Once the municipality got the draft ap-proved, they stopped sharing information with the other partners. As they claimed the infor-mation was sensitive, the responsibility for the project was completely in their hands. For the local government, allowing partners to invest funds in the recovery plant’s construction was the most they could offer in terms of collaboration, but for the community organisations and IIED, the project also had to include participation in the plant’s management plan and control.

These different views became barriers that affected the execution of the other pilot projects, as all projects were considered together. If the financing for construction of the waste plant was not approved by Focus Cities, the municipal offices would refuse to provide the technical approval needed for the rest of the projects to go forward.

VI.9. Barrio Alem

The difficulties that emerged in Barrio Alem with the pilot project to optimise of the piped water network are a good example of the multiple factors that arise and need to be dealt with during the initiation of an intervention process. This project in the zone of Cuartel V was the first one ap-proved by the interzonal committee. The specificity of the intervention enabled rapid progress in the development of the technical proposal.

Meeting with consultant - Barrio Alem - Cuartel V - Moreno


Two technical proposals were made, prepared by external consultants specialising in water supply systems, in collaboration with the interzonal committee and residents. Together with the technical proposal, work was undertaken with the residents to improve the existing ad-ministrative system used to charge for the water service. The water network in Alem has been managed by the community for the last 10 years. The billing system is run by the residents themselves through a residents’ commission.

The initial stage of the work was delayed on account of the red tape required by the munici-pality, such as a feasibility study on exploitation of water resources. There were also early delays due to difficulties among the residents who backed the project, such as disputes with other residents of the same barrio.

Once the project was ready for work to begin, different conflicts emerged:

a) Conflict among neighbours. The residents in charge of managing the barrio’s water sup-ply did not have an efficient and transparent administrative system. Rather, there was a commission formed by spontaneously assembled members, which a year before had criticised and displaced the group of residents who had managed the supply during the previous nine years. Thanks to help from those earlier water managers and mediation from the IIED-AL field team and a social worker of the municipality, the conflict was resolved in two stages. With a transitional commission, the first action was payment of debts with the electricity company, which had been generated by the self-assembled group’s inefficient collection practices. Second, once the pump started functioning, a more transparent and efficient billing system was organised, which permitted users and the administrative commission to register payments. The same self-assembled group of water managers also filed a complaint to the municipal authorities, questioning whether Focus Cities’ intervention was performed in an appropriate manner. This claim caused significant delays, as various municipal departments had to get involved to respond to the legal complaint.

b) Conflict with the municipality. The main dispute here arose because the project had pro-posed to install a pump on land owned by the Mutual Aid Society, but the municipality intended to do the installation on public land. The location of the pump in a public space was rejected by the community of Barrio Alem as residents believed they would lose the exclusive use of the pump. Finally, with the advice of an expert in water resource manage-


ment, who dealt directly with the provincial authorities in order to obtain the necessary permissions, the requirements for installation of the pump on Mutual Aid Society land were met, as outlined in the project proposal.

VI.10. Adaptation to municipal regulations and development of procedures for executing the projects

The Focus Cities intervention took place in a policy realm that had previously been reserved for the municipality. Community organisations, IIED-AL and even the local government had little experience of entering this realm together. On the municipality’s playing field, Focus Cities stakeholders started establishing new rules for the game.

In reaction to this, the municipality was very demanding about requirements that had to be met to obtain permission to start work on projects. Among them were surety bonds, insurance and registration as a municipal supplier. Although these are mandatory require-ments for the approval of any public works project, in the case of Focus Cities — a programme featuring extensive community participation in the decision-making process — the municipality should have simplified certain procedures in order to streamline the projects’ execution.

However, Focus Cities created a procedure manual approved by the partners that explained the administrative procedures, giving transparency to the process. As the budgets for pilot projects were considered, it was important that the partners knew how the money would be spent, how progress would be verified and which administrative requirements had to be met to achieve these ends.

Within the Focus Cities framework, residents and community organisations were responsible for the progress of projects, which allowed the programme to overcome the community’s usual suspicion regarding the management of funds (partly because they are never involved in budget decisions, in follow-up of contractors or in carrying out public works). This helped develop the organisations’ capacity for administrative management.


VI.11. The bidding process and the supervisory committee

Once the bidding terms and conditions were outlined by municipal staff and IIED-AL person-nel, it was necessary to overcome the municipality’s initial resistance to having community organisations participate in the selection of contractors, given the lack of technical knowledge within these organisations. In an unprecedented process that was highly appreciated by all partners, the companies to which the pilot projects would be awarded were selected through a bidding process with all the participating partners present.

After outlining the bidding terms and conditions, the partners met with the companies to explain the specifications of the planned interventions. Three companies presented proposals for each pilot project, the date and time for opening the sealed proposals were fixed, and in the presence of community and municipal representatives, at IIED-AL’s offices, the envelopes were opened and the minutes of the meeting were drafted. The results created a new conflict, partly because in some cases the proposed budget exceeded the funds available, and partly be-cause for one project there were not enough bidders to provide the three price proposals stipu-lated in the procedure manual. These conflicts were resolved when all three partners together asked the bidders to adjust their prices to the available funds, and the missing proposal was presented. As there was little difference in the quotes, and there was limited time to execute the projects, one project was awarded to each of the bidding contractors.

The interzonal committee delegated the management of the pilot projects to a supervisory committee formed by members from each zonal committee. The supervisory committee was in charge of managing funds and controlling the amounts spent. Like the zonal and interzonal


A handbook was developed to make the management of pilot projects more transparent and to engage the partners in the management process. The project management team drafted this manual, which presented the scheme to be used for managing project funds. It provided a means to verify that all actions taken followed the established guidelines. For instance, it specified the requirements for making purchases according to the amounts involved, the types of receipts to be used and how calls for bids should be undertaken.

Box_15 Administrative procedure manual



committees, the committee had a book of minutes where all decisions and approved expenses were recorded. This committee was also responsible for approving the payment of scholar-ships to environmental educators in the barrios, based on the assessment of the educational team of the organisation that executed the environmental education campaign.

VI.12. Agreements on the use of equipment and sustainability of spaces

For follow-up and management of the pilot projects, in each of the zones where the projects were executed, including the municipal solid waste plant, agreements were signed with com-munity organisations. In the letters of agreement, the organisations committed themselves to co-manage the intervention and to care for equipment received for the maintenance of public spaces.

These letters of agreement constituted the formal means for making the pilot projects sustainable. If the agreements were complied with and the public spaces were effectively appropriated by the organisations, their sustainability was guaranteed.

In each zone the organisations’ responses differed according to their involvement in the Focus Cities project. However, in all four zones, organisations supported pilot projects and committed to

Excerpt from the participatory assessment.1

The supervisory committee gave transparency to the spending process by double-checking expendi-tures and by training the community, raising their awareness and empowering them to manage these kinds of issues. The administrative procedure manual compiled the guidelines approved by the supervisory committee that allowed them to implement the spending process transparently.

Box_16 Participatory assessment: The supervisory committee


Bidding act - Selection of building companies


their management. The four zonal projects had inaugural ceremonies organised by residents and the community organisations, who were the main players in these opening events.

The water project developed in zone 1 (Cuartel V), was unquestionably the one with the great-est community involvement, presumably because it was the only project that sought to improve services in private homes and brought direct benefits to people’s households. In the project to optimise the water network, the community organisation not only operated the water system and administered it transparently and efficiently, but also got other residents involved in supporting the project.

In zone 2 (Trujui), although an agreement was signed with three organisations, the Villanueva stream project had the least community participation. In fact, the people who had supported the project during the construction stage and in the interzonal committee did not live near the project site. However, two organisations that collaborated in the project and signed the letter of agreement belonged to the barrios where the project took place, and they got involved sporadically in the activities.

Zone 3 (Moreno Norte), had important community involvement. The improvement of the Los Perros stream banks there was the first project to be started, with major participation of residents in the opening event. The intervention was successful, and a distinctive feature was the exceptional relationship between the community organisations and the construction company that executed the work.

Closing of Focus Cities Moreno project


In zone 4 (Moreno Sur), strong commitment from organisations was also achieved. In this case, the project of transforming an abandoned plot into a public square was carried out next to a school, whose interest in the outcome constituted a positive externality. The project not only eliminated the problem of contamination of the plot, but also gave the school adequate space for recreational and sport activities.

For the waste plant, an agreement with the interzonal committee was signed, but as explained above, the partners did not participate equally in the plant’s management. This was the only project that was not completed — although the building was finished, the plant never started operating — and it left a bitter taste, given the high expectations that had been placed on the project.

VII. Lessons learned: conclusions on the Moreno Focus Cities process Up to this point, we have described the Moreno Focus Cities process from the perspective of IIED-AL, the research group that developed the project. In the following sections, we will set out the main conclusions drawn from our experience.

When we developed the Moreno Focus Cities proposal, we based our work on a series of premises, some of which proved sound and others not quite so sound. Our premises included the following:

In order to carry out a project like the one proposed, we believed that a suitable space for articulating the project and collaboration agreements based on previously established trust relationships were indispensable elements. We believed further that such relationships had been established during IIED-AL’s previous work in Moreno. The first part of this reason-ing was true, the second was not.

We believed that the participatory management model applied in the project was the right one and that the municipal government agreed with it. Contrary to our expectations, many

Inauguration ceremony - Los Perros Moreno


meetings were necessary to reach new agreements on both the model and the project it-self.

It did not occur to us that, as the partners worked to prioritise environmental problems, con-flicts arising within the communities and the ways these issues were included in the public agenda could delay and even stop the implementation of improvements.

We did not properly evaluate the impact of the scarcity of funds that a municipality has avail-able to respond to the demands of the neediest populations. Funds to finance housing, infra-structure and environmental improvements come from national or provincial funds. Con-sequently, local governments inevitably concentrate on their relationship with the agencies providing such funds. This has two important implications. First, obtaining funding for local initiatives depends on the relationships established with other levels of government, not on public revenues. Second, if an initiative such as the Focus Cities programme brings external resources into the municipality and demands, in turn, an important municipal contribution, government members expect to decide the use of those resources, or at least strongly influ-ence decisions on their use.

We expected that the goals set out in the programme could be achieved in three years. How-ever, it took four years to execute the programme, and this was one of the main difficulties. The strategy of starting to invest in projects between the first and second year to reinforce the planned process and draw lessons from it did not succeed. Although this study confirms the need for investments, the time required was not properly evaluated; four years were needed, and even so, one of the objectives, that of data systematisation, remained unaccomplished.

Although it was confirmed that having a space for dialogue among the various stakeholders, with clear rules and transparent information, is critical in achieving efficient management of sustainable development, the institutionalisation of such a space at the desired level did not materialise.

It was also assumed that land possession influenced residents’ decisions to start improving their properties. However, it became clear that lack of land possession did not inhibit the improvements. On the contrary, improvements represented advantages when pressing for tenure regularisation.


The project’s main achievement was the establishment of alliances and associations for the im-plementation of the Moreno Focus Cities programme. Although prior relationships and joint efforts existed both with the local government and with community organisations, during the four years of project implementation those alliances were consolidated, and they are now in the course of being institutionalised. In the four zones established within the project area, zonal committees were created with the participation of the three stakeholders; an interzonal committee was established and operated with the participation of zonal committee represent-atives, municipality representatives, IIED-AL representatives, and an accounts supervisory committee.

It took some time to build agreements among the partners because we had different views about how the community should participate. Reconciling the stakeholders’ differing time-frames was, and possibly will be in the future, the most difficult variable to handle in this type of project. In practice, it proved necessary to work with a schedule adjusted to the part-ners’ pre-existing timetables — mainly those of the municipality and the Focus Cities project. For this reason, we believe that any future partnership will require addressing this issue and discussing with the stakeholders the kind of practices and strategies that might be useful to overcome this difficulty. A possible solution to this problem is to have regular meetings to establish agreements on how to handle the pressures, emergencies and changes that arise as the project advances.

Our experience confirms that the various stakeholders have different mandates and interests, and play different roles that must be understood, adequately recognised and expressed in common, multi-stakeholder spaces to reduce the risk of conflicts that may affect activity development, learning processes and sustainability.

At the outset of the activities, it is vital to understand the social, political, environmental and economic rationales, interests and dynamics involved. Reliance on recognised partners and previous activities in municipalities facilitates the implementation of complex actions (which encompass many issues, multiple stakeholders, diverse interests, extensive areas, etc.). This allowed IIED-AL to improve the participatory management model and enhance our understand-ing of the public sector, and generated a series of lessons that will lead to an improved rela-tionship with this sector, which is central to any intervention project. As an institution, we are convinced that both the community and the local government are indispensable stakeholders in every intervention aimed at changing social conditions.


Areas of conflict arise in any participatory process with the characteristics of the Focus Cities programme, since the municipality, as a stakeholder, runs some risks when it opens itself to discussions with other stakeholders (neighbourhood organisations and NGOs) over propos-als it still has some uncertainties about (the usual process is for the municipality to announce projects only when the financing is guaranteed and a solid framework for the programme has been determined). The mere act of opening a debate creates demand that, if not satisfied, poses a threat to municipal management. One of the points repeatedly stated by the municipal coordinator was that it should be possible to satisfy the demand raised by participatory work with the offerings of the municipal management plan. There is no doubt that if we could have achieved, at the beginning of the project, a higher level of collaboration and understanding from the municipality on what it means to have the community participate in problems and solutions as a co-responsible party, the results would have been different. Nevertheless, today the Secretary of Public Works and Services acknowledges the merit of the work performed with the Focus Cities programme and the methodology applied21.

In Moreno, for the first time ever, the municipality discusses environmental management is-sues with the community and a consensus is necessary to implement environmental activities within the framework of the project. Project actions, such as where and how the funds would be spent, were discussed by all stakeholders, and this left a deep mark.

Closing of Focus Cities Moreno project

21.Navarro,D.SecretaryofPublicWorksandServicesinFilm“CiudadesFocalesMoreno”.DirectedandproducedbyMichelLichtenstein(2010).


Because the Moreno Focus Cities programme is an integral scheme, it would have been dif-ficult to carry out within any specific municipal department. For this reason, it was necessary to engage with more than one department in order to work out the problems. In this way, a system of interdepartmental spaces has been established. For example, links were established with both the CPC and the Solid Urban Waste Integral Management Programme (PGIRSU). These are only two out of several spaces where the Focus Cities proposal was articulated; this achievement signals an incipient change in municipal perspective.

Another concern that came up and should be examined in depth has to do with the rela-tionship between the community organisations’ participation and the expectations gener-ated in the participants by the project. Community organisations rarely work on long-term projects. The poorest people usually focus on finding solutions to their problems from day to day, which makes it difficult to think of medium- or long-term planning. The implementation of the Focus Cities programme is important because it incorporated com-munities into the planning effort, both for their own neighbourhoods and for the whole municipality. Working on a project portfolio was similar to working on a participatory budget or developing a strategic plan, and it brought about a significant change of culture that allowed the residents to broaden their perspectives — to start thinking not of one neighbourhood but of the whole municipality, and to leap forward in time, from the short to the medium and long term.

The participatory development of the project portfolio on local environmental management enables the construction of a common vision of an area’s environmental problems. It also al-lows evaluation of priorities in the use of resources, and articulation of interests in pursuit of a common objective.

We think that promoting changes in policies is no easy task; the availability of funding helps, but it does not guarantee that the envisaged changes will be implemented. However, it is es-sential to have a committed local team, representative working spaces and agreed decision-making mechanisms adapted to the various stages of the process.

In our opinion, the municipal technical team that participated in the programme has absorbed the idea of an integrated project that goes beyond the limits of municipal bodies, and this de-spite the fact that department heads often did not show this positive attitude and continued to defend their respective areas of specialisation.


We are aware of how hard it is to maintain community participation, especially when there are no direct interests at stake, whether individual or those of a particular group. In the Focus Cit-ies programme, the community participated in the definition of the project and in the efforts to obtain resources for the whole scheme (in zones as well as neighbourhoods); this situation is absolutely new. It indicates that the previous pattern of having no community participation can be changed, and also that participation in environmental issues is gradually becoming accepted; this is one of the programme’s achievements. It was not by mere chance that, at the end of the programme, to achieve the objective of following up the implemented projects, an environmental observatory was set up under the management of the zonal committees with the aim of continuing to foster public awareness and systematising the information being gathered.

The Moreno Focus Cities programme did not end as expected, with the consolidation of an institutionalised space focused on environmental problems with community participation, but it did achieve the consolidation of a lower-level space, which will continue operating on the basis of the principles accepted and implemented within the framework of the programme. This space encourages participatory action to resolve problems, inclusively accepts all or-ganisations willing to participate, and promotes responsibility for environmental care and protection.

In brief, multi-stakeholder spaces are crucial for facilitating the development, institution-alisation and sustainability of new policy processes, and they must continue over time. Where such spaces do not already exist (whether generated by a city’s legal frameworks or by other processes), mechanisms created by projects can bridge this gap. When spaces for participation do exist, as in the Moreno Focus Cities programme, such spaces can be adapted and enhanced.

In future, we should work towards identifying other strategies for achieving a more formal institutionalisation of the partnership-based management structure and the multi-stakeholder space in Moreno and other municipalities with which we are engaging. We started a proc-ess that was not properly evaluated in terms of the time it would take to attain its objective, bearing in mind that our proposal involved innovative, inclusive practices, as opposed to the traditional way of resolving environmental problems. Taking this aspect into account, we should reinforce this action with other strategies and plan a series of steps over time to pro-duce change and achieve the desired final goal.


Another point for reflection is related to the role of IIED-AL. Did we act as facilitator or bro-ker for the municipality and the organisations, rather than as their partner? According to the project document and scope mapping, all three stakeholder groups were direct partners, and that is correct; we were partners in the project, but our approaches were different and some-times this caused misunderstandings.

Without a doubt, every member of the IIED-AL technical team who took part in direct inter-ventions or in engaging multiple stakeholders during the Moreno Focus Cities project came out stronger and gained from the experience.

VIII. General conclusions and recommendations In international contexts, we know very little about the constraints and difficulties that arise at the level of government and community when methods of a more participatory nature are introduced to diagnose problems and develop solutions together with residents of informal settlements. Many technicians in local governments and many community leaders may not be aware that any support they provide for changes aimed at involving more settlement residents in debates and decisions will ultimately benefit their own interests.

In most countries, local and national governments work together with NGOs to implement some programmes, but they do so in the framework of a contractual relationship where the government establishes the terms of the contract and the NGO follows the instructions speci-fied in the contract.

It is always difficult to think and act in consensus with local government. However, an effec-tive environmental policy requires agreements both among the various secretariats, directo-rates and departments, and between the government and civil society. In municipalities, it is often the case that each department or secretariat develops its activities with little coordina-tion with the others; working with different departments or secretariats frequently feels like

Pilot project - Los Perros - Moreno


working with different institutions. This problem is ubiquitous in public administration, be-cause budgets and control mechanisms are managed separately.

Thus, the results of a local government’s interventions in environmental problems are gener-ated not by a monolithic ‘environmental policy’ but by a combination of policies, actions, interactions and investments from its different departments and secretariats. It is not possible to achieve a consistent and inclusive environmental policy that addresses different needs and local contexts in any local government if the government’s various areas do not work together as well as with social organisations.

Success, in terms of ensuring actual benefits for low-income communities living in informal settlements, depends on the nature of their relationships with the local government. In most urban centres, this must be changed both at the level of local government, who need to start looking at informal settlement residents as partners endowed with knowledge and abilities, and at the community level, where there is a need to develop more representative and inclu-sive community structures in order to achieve the best results from partnerships with the local government.

A good way to start the process is to encourage the residents in each district of an urban area to participate in inclusive processes aimed at diagnosing their most pressing problems and developing realistic responses. This approach helps to build the information base required to make progress and should strengthen both the community processes and the community-government relationship.

Any financial backer supporting initiatives like the Moreno project must know how difficult it is to get a local government to provide more space to community organisations formed by informal settlement residents and allow them to determine priorities and engage in solution development and management. Project proposals must have a clearly defined work schedule before any financing is obtained, but if the project seeks to change institutional relationships, the implementing organisation cannot know or anticipate all future constraints.

For local NGOs wishing to promote and support political changes in local government to the benefit of the poor, the work in Moreno shows the importance of understanding the social, political, environmental and economic interests and dynamics of the different government secretariats and offices, as well as the timeframes of their work.


Government offices and secretariats, community leaders and the organisations from differ-ent districts have diverging mandates and interests and play different roles within the multi-stakeholder discussions established during a project. Reaching agreements among the various groups, coordinating their timing through the process of establishing multi-stakeholder spaces for debate, gathering information, planning, and making decisions on what initiatives to sup-port and how to implement them — these were never easy tasks.

One of the main pillars of the research process is information, which implies ongoing commu-nication between the parties involved in the procedures, whether such involvement is direct, like that of the partners engaged in the interventions, or indirect, like that of other organisa-tions, different municipal departments or the city council.

During the development of this initiative we saw how communities matured and how the resi-dents of each neighbourhood worked together, not only among themselves but also with other neighbourhoods; we saw they were capable of helping with diagnostics and assigning priority to initiatives that did not benefit them directly. Perhaps the initiative’s most lasting legacy will be the number of residents and community organisations that, by taking part in the project, have found new ways to identify themselves and act on their priorities, and who have learned from one another how to act more effectively.

To reduce poverty and address the key environmental issues faced by large-scale informal settlements, changes are needed in the way that local governments relate to the residents and community organisations from such settlements. This includes accepting contributions from the residents and neighbourhood organisations that not only identify their priorities but also influence the implementation and management of the responses. It is important that civil so-ciety organisations such as ours help to find ways and means that represent an improvement over existing ones in order to foster local government interaction with informal settlement residents.

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Acronyms ABSA Province of Buenos Aires Water Company CEAMSE Coordinación Ecológica Área Metropolitana Sociedad del Estado. Private body co-managed by the authorities of Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires ProvinceCPC Constitutive Planning CouncilIBAM Brasilian Institute Municipal AdministrationIDB Inter-American Development BankIDRC International Development Research Centre IDUAR Urban, Environmental and Regional Development Institute IIED International Institute for Environment and DevelopmentIIED-AL International Institute for Environment and Development - Latin AmericaIMDEL Municipal Institute for Local Economic DevelopmentINTI Argentine Institute of Industrial TechnologiesISEM Integrated System for Environmental Management MRBA Metropolitan Region of Buenos AiresNGO Non Governmental Organization PGIRSU Solid Urban Waste Integral Management ProgrammeUNDP-PPPUP United Nation Development Program Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Environment UPE Urban Poverty and Environment

List of boxes, maps and figuresBox 1 Case Study: differing concepts of land tenure in Marilo (136)Box 2 Institutionalization of a local water authority in Moreno (141)Box 3 The goals of an environmental agency. A Moreno official expressed this opinion on the goals an environmental agency should have (147)Box 4 Participatory assessment: local government’s interest in participation (155)Box 5 Integrating information from different sources (159)Box 6 Zonal committee agreement. Defining roles and responsibilities (162)Box 7 Portfolio of proposals, list of projects (163)Box 8 The pilot projects selected (165) Box 9 Participatory assessment: Effects of pilot project competition (168)Box 10 Participatory assessment: Differences in systems and timing among partners (171)Box 11 Participatory assessment: Adjusting the project document (173)Box 12 Participatory assessment: Conflict over government proposal (177)


Box 13 The environmental education programme: Moreno Learns (180)Box 14 Participatory assessment: Payment of a bonus to municipal technicians (182)Box 15 Administrative procedure manual (186)Box 16 Participatory assessment: The supervisory committee (187)

Map Nº 1 Moreno in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (130)Map Nº 2 Moreno’s four zones (153)Map Nº 3 Critical Areas and Projects’ Location (160)

Figure Nº 1 Schematic representation of Focus Cities Moreno Project. Tasks, barriers and results (145) Figure Nº 2 Organization chart (150) Figure Nº 3 Stages of the Project (153) Figure Nº 4 Participation and assistance to workshops (155) Figure Nº 5 Criteria for selection of pilot projects (164)

PhotosNº 1 Barrio in Moreno (111)Nº 2 Reconquista River (115)Nº 3 Solid waste accumulation. Cuartel V, Moreno (119)Nº 4 Moreno centre (125)Nº 5 Flooded street. Barrio Parque Paso del Rey, Moreno (129)Nº 6 Cuartel V, Moreno (132)Nº 7 Urban, Environmental and Regional Development Institute IDUAR’s office (133)Nº 8 Informal settlement in Moreno (135)Nº 9 Informal subdivisions “loteo popular”. Barrio Marilo, Trujui, Moreno (136) Nº 10 Interzonal Committee meeting with municipal technicians (139)Nº 11 Water-tank truck in a barrio with independent water system (141)Nº 12 Meeting with municipal technicians (143)Nº 13 Meeting with municipal authorities (147)Nº 14 Meeting with municipal authorities and IDRC representative (149)Nº 15 Walking with neighbours. Villanueva, Moreno (151)Nº 16 Environmental mapping. Trujui, Moreno (154)Nº 17 Meeting of zonal committee. Trujui, Moreno (159)Nº 18 Meeting with external consultant (161)Nº 19 Pilot projects: Works and inauguration ceremonies (167)Nº 20 Meeting with expert in participatory assessment (168)Nº 21 Detecting environmental problems. Cuartel V, Moreno (169)Nº 22 Meeting with Interzonal Committee (174)Nº 23 Meeting with Interzonal Committee (179)Nº 24 Visit to San Miguel del Monte recycling plant, Buenos Aires (180) Nº 25 Consultants presenting their work for the pilot projects (181)Nº 26 Meeting with consultant. Barrio Alem, Cuartel V, Moreno (183)Nº 27 Bidding and selection of building companies (187) Nº 28 Closing of Focus Cities Moreno Project (188)

Nº 29 Inauguration Ceremony. Los Perros, Moreno (192)Nº 30 Closing of Focus Cities Moreno Project (194)Nº 31 Pilot Project. Los Perros, Moreno (199)

Documents

Limits to participation - pubs.iied.org.pubs.iied.org › pdfs › G03123.pdf · Limits to participation. The struggle for environmental improvement in Moreno, Argentina 121 In Moreno,