Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
meet minimal infrastructure requirements in the most cost-effective manner
for accommodating continuing urban/industrial development. This would
include (1) establishing a reliable matching economic/environmental database,
(2) establishing appropriate standards for urban infrastructure, with attention
to the urban poor and urban slums (poorest of the poor) as well as the urban
affluent, for guiding development of matching infrastructure design technologies,
(3) fair distribution of total infrastructure investment funds, both within the
individual urban areas and between the capital region and other urban areas,
and (4) clear delineation of urbanizing/industrializing areas versus rural areas.
Some beginning efforts in this direction have been made in South Korea and
the partially industrialized DCs.
Local Municipal Planning
The critical need everywhere is to replace the
conventional discoordinated piecemeal approach, carried out by essentially inde-
pendent local government “fiefdoms,” with integrated planning that achieves
optimal cost-effective progress within the constraint of limited funds, including
use of appropriate standards/technologies and including fair distribution of bene-
fits between urban affluent/urban poor/urban slum areas, and including effective
use of the EIA and subcountry E-c-E planning processes.
River Basin Planning
In the partially industrialized DCs (as well as South
Korea), it is becoming recognized that sooner or later, it will be necessary to
establish River Basin Authorities to solve the increasingly severe problem of
managing the water resources in a river basin, so this limited resource can be
optimally used with minimum wastage to meet all development needs (rural and
urban). Although worldwide experience in the ICs has shown this to be the only
practicable solution, it is never easy to make the change because of conflict
with established government authorities. However, it must be done, and both
the national governments and the IAAs should give persistent effort to achieve
this in basins where the problem is acute. From the urban development point of
view, the problem is becoming more and more serious in that the capital and
other major cities are usually coastal cities with their surface water river supplies
being “dried up” by upstream irrigation development using excessive amounts
of water.
Decentralization/Taxation
In virtually all DCs, the message is clear that the
only feasible solution to the problem of obtaining the needed additional funding
for urban infrastructure must come from municipal property taxes and service
charges, and moreover, that the taxing power must be decentralized so that the
municipalities will not only have responsibility for municipal infrastructure but
will also have the authority/funds resources to manage this. This would encour-
age local authorities to give attention to problems of environmental degradation
through effective use of EIA and Regional E-c-E planning as valuable planning
tools. Also, the IAAs need to contribute their influences for helping to achieve
this transition.
