24 JOHAN POST
the dynamics of one system (Berkes and Folke, 1998: 4). As a matter of fact, although
the activities leading up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro have helped to
elevate environmental problems to decision-making circles in the South, this has
hardly led to a ‘greening’ of their policies. Developing countries have made it abun-
dantly clear that environmental policies should reflect their own priorities, and, more
in particular, that they should not frustrate their legitimate desire to expand their econ-
omies (Elliot, 1998). This position is reflected in their efforts to shift the environ-
mental focus from issues of greenhouse gas emissions, natural resource depletion,
preservation of biodiversity and resource management – i.e. the prime environmental
worries of the northern hemisphere – to issues on the so-called ‘brown agenda’, e.g.
methods to mitigate the health and efficiency impacts of air and water pollution and
to improve basic infrastructural services, notably safe drinking water, improved sani-
tation and appropriate waste management (UNCHS, 1996). To a certain extent these
priorities are the ‘conventional’ preoccupations of (urban) administrators concerned
with the basic needs of their citizens.
It is increasingly recognised that a degraded urban environment has a significant
negative impact on urban productivity and efficiency as well as on public health, and
that these effects disproportionally affect the urban poor (UNCHS/UNEP, 1997;
Satterthwaite, 1997; Hardoy et al., 2001). Garbage heaps in residential areas can
contribute to the spread of infectious and parasitic diseases among residents, thereby
lowering their labour productivity or their chances to become or remain employed.
Illegal dumping of refuse into drainage canals can pollute surface water or cause occa-
sional flooding, both with detrimental effects on productive activities. In the early
1990s the need for explicit urban environmental management to combat such harmful
impacts was widely admitted. These policies were largely framed along neo-liberal
lines, the argument being that the major cause of environmental decay was the combi-
nation of misguided economic policies, poor management, inadequate investment in
infrastructure, and deficient regulatory and institutional frameworks. The advocated
policies tended to rely heavily on incentives and regulations that aimed at establishing
the true costs of environmental goods and services. A major proposition was to break
up inefficient and ineffective public sector monopolies that provided subsidised
services at well below economic costs, and to involve the private sector in service
delivery (Burgess et al., 1997: 72).
This is where both discussions, on urban management as well as urban sustainable
development, meet: they are structured around exactly the same (neo-liberal) policy
reforms. In fact, urban environmental management as practiced in most of the devel-
oping world is hardly more than a – largely half-hearted – attempt to merge the
concern for improved urban productivity with the goal of environmental protection.
The latter is simply added to the agenda, by no means as a primary goal. Although
there are occasional success stories of local governments effectively curtailing their
environmental problems – Curitiba and Porte Alegre in Brazil being familiar examples